I don't have time to write full impressions right now, and frankly, others saw and know more than me. However, there is one aspect of today's "meeting" on Novyi Arbat that I do find interesting and even encouraging.
While the speeches and slogans from the stage are all well and good, their reception is at best difficult to gauge and, more often, lukewarm. However, I am encouraged by the range of political goals and views represented in the crowd. This includes not only the widely publicized homemade signs, but also the retail politics happening at the level of person-to-person interactions.
This is one of the few places I have ever seen people openly advocating their political views, seeking signatures for petitions, and distributing literature. This includes not only election related issues, but also various non-election-related reform initiatives, social problems, and political platforms from the left to the nationalist. It is, truly, retail politics in public, in person-to-person interaction.
I think that this is a process of taking opposition politics from Internet-savvy few, among whom political debate has been developing in recent years, into the street. More than the slogans and the rallies themselves, this development might offer a way forward to building a movement that the opposition's leaders seems to be unable to build themselves at present.
While the speeches and slogans from the stage are all well and good, their reception is at best difficult to gauge and, more often, lukewarm. However, I am encouraged by the range of political goals and views represented in the crowd. This includes not only the widely publicized homemade signs, but also the retail politics happening at the level of person-to-person interactions.
This is one of the few places I have ever seen people openly advocating their political views, seeking signatures for petitions, and distributing literature. This includes not only election related issues, but also various non-election-related reform initiatives, social problems, and political platforms from the left to the nationalist. It is, truly, retail politics in public, in person-to-person interaction.
I think that this is a process of taking opposition politics from Internet-savvy few, among whom political debate has been developing in recent years, into the street. More than the slogans and the rallies themselves, this development might offer a way forward to building a movement that the opposition's leaders seems to be unable to build themselves at present.
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