A week ago a round of protests went around Russia. As usual, estimation of participation differs several times between authorities and protesters. But for most of Russians both figures and fact of protests do not matter much.
We treat protests in Russia almost in the same way as we treat protests in France or US, i.e. as a kind of TV picture of something remote which has a little to do with life of people here.
The reason for protests is mainly obscure to most of common people. Though Navalny is promoted by West mass media as a politician of great influence, he is of almost no interest to most of Russians. For them the question is not if they support him or not, they are just not interested.
And the reason for protests seems to be rather obscure to most of the protesters, making it a kind of a hype for them. If they would be asked, what exactly freedom they are lacking and what freedom they are fighting for, such a question could cause an embarrassment.
Of course, professional protesters on the side of opposition, and professional protest-fighters on the side of authorities play their usual role.
Protesters prefer to avoid the official procedures of receipt of confirmation of their actions, which is quite easy to explain: who would buy a picture of peaceful protests? Police prefers to act in the only way they know how to act. Never-ending story.
But that doesn’t deeply touch common people.
On the other hand in history we have a lot of examples of protests with an unclear aim which caused clear problems.
Today a new round of protests is expected. I sincerely hope that both sides will finally get tired and take some reasonable moves. I hope that would make the round of today the final one. I hope, but do not believe.
