MOSCOW—Russian authorities this month offered to allow a demonstration by opposition activists in Moscow's Triumphal Square on Saturday, after more than a year of harshly suppressing such protests. But the concession they demanded—exclusion of the protests' original architect—threatens to split the movement, activists said.
Though the organizers rejected the offer for this month—and were denied a permit for the demonstration—debate over whether to accept the authorities' terms in the future rages on the Web and Moscow radio talk shows.
Since they started in early 2009, the demonstrations have been a rare success for the Kremlin's beleaguered and fractious opponents, attracting hundreds of protesters from a wide range of antigovernment groups, often despite official bans. Held on the 31st of each month that has as many days, the protests defend Article 31 of Russia's constitution, which ensures the right to free assembly.
Authorities in Moscow have been particularly strict, regularly rejecting applications for permits and detaining demonstrators.
But early this month, as organizers were preparing to apply for a permit, city officials indicated that they were willing to compromise and allow the protest, on the condition that the permit application not include Eduard Limonov, a veteran opposition leader who first proposed the 31st demonstrations, according to city officials and protest organizers.
"It was really an offer to reconsider the whole interaction with the opposition," said Alexander Muzykantsky, the Moscow city government's human-rights ombudsman and one of those who discussed the proposal with opposition leaders.
Mr. Muzykantsky admitted that the offer was essentially illegal, since Russian law allows authorities to negotiate with permit applicants only over the time and place of demonstrations. He said he was simply an intermediary and didn't know the government's motivation in making it.
Some opposition leaders welcomed the chance to finally have their protest without the threat of arrest, potentially attracting far more participants.
"The authorities made huge concessions," said Lyudmilla Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who is the doyenne of Russia's human-rights community and was detained at a Dec. 31 demonstration. "In my view, it's not a matter of principle" for the opposition to have different names on the permit application, since Mr. Limonov and his supporters can still attend the protest, she said.
"We don't need the authorities to sow discord in the ranks of the opposition," she said. "We can do that well enough ourselves."
Mr. Limonov has long been a controversial figure in Russian politics. His National Bolshevik Party—a thinly supported hybrid of nationalism and socialism whose flag combined Nazi and Soviet imagery—was banned by court order as extremist in 2005.
But his loyal followers—known for their showy and often humorous protests—have been key supporters for the opposition in recent years, as official pressure on critics has risen. Earlier this month, they published the program of a new, more moderate party, Other Russia, calling for broad democratization and, among other things, the creation of a new capital city somewhere in southern Siberia.
He and other activists denounced the idea of allowing the authorities to dictate who can file for permits for the 31st demonstrations. "They're forcing us to kiss the Sultan's slipper," he said.
Despite being denied a permit, he, Ms. Alexeyeva and the other activists say they plan to gather in Triumphal Square on Saturday. City officials have scheduled a auto race there for the entire weekend and threatened to detain demonstrators.
Ms. Alexeyeva says she hopes a compromise might be possible next month. Mr. Muzykantsky said he wasn't sure whether the compromise offer would still be on the table in August, however.
"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
____________________________________________________
"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."
Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=
____________________________________________________
