Communists and veterans stage protest actions in Kirov on the day of Nikita Belykh's inauguration.
What is the difference between a protest and an inauguration?
Police never disperse an inauguration, but they can disperse a protest at the drop of a hat.
Protests were dispersed and their participants detained in Kirov before, under the previous governor. However, as of January 15 the region has a new governor, Nikita Belykh, and considering his liberal mindset, protesters should be given tea with lemon and given money for the trip back home. Anyway, the authorities reacted with restraint to the first protest on Belykh's watch, which took place at the same time as his inauguration. Belykh was accepting congratulations at the Drama Theatre while two or three hundred veterans, Communists and ordinary citizens converged on Vladimir Putin's public reception office. This is said to be a mere coincidence - the protesters allegedly had no complaints about Belykh. The posters they carried were targeting somebody higher up: "Putin, do not cheat the invalids", "No to Putin's reforms".
The protesters expressed their anger over low pensions, the state of the healthcare system, and utilities rates. Their appeal to Putin reads in part: "Mr Prime Minister, we have repeatedly asked for pensions and allowances to be raised to a real living minimum and not that invented by your ministers. Yet our voice is not heeded. Your answers on the TV show on December 4, 2008 give little hope, either."
Not that the functionaries at the local branch of the United Russia had any hopeful message for the picketers.
"About thirty protesters were invited into the reception room and were allowed to sit down around the table," Vladimir Osetrov, Secretary of the regional Russian Communist Party Committee for protest movements, told Novaya Gazeta. German Goncharov, Head of the United Russia regional executive, reminded us that his office was working on behalf of and on the instructions of Putin and Medvedev, who are "very much trusted in our region". I reminded him of the dirty elections that belied that trust, and cited examples of vote-rigging.
In regards to the substance of the picketers' demands, they were, as usual, given promises that the matter would be consulted with relevant figures and looked into. There were no attempts at intimidation and no OMON presence. The authorities tolerated even the temporary planting of a red flag at the reception office entrance. The President and the Prime Minister are far away, while Governor Belykh will soon have to confront protest actions.
"The first peak of mass layoffs will occur in January-February," says Osetrov; seventy enterprises have notified the employment service about it. The Belokholunitsky engineering plant is cutting 577 jobs, the Luzsk timbering enterprise, 679. The Kirov tyre plant may go under if Belykh fails to help it. We are planning to hold a protest action against enterprise closure and worsening living standards on January 28.
Left-wing sentiments are traditionally strong in the Kirov Region, a fact that right-wing Governor Belykh will have to deal with. During the inauguration the local Cossacks presented Belykh with a Cossack hat, a dagger, and a colonel's shoulder straps. Surely he knows better, though, than tilting his hat and barking orders to disperse at a crowd of people carrying posters.
Boris Bronstein