The Robin Hood Approach

august is historically a troublesome time for Russia, but this year trouble did not wait for August, as violent clashes between citizens and the authorities became increasingly regular occurrences.

When a group of young men in the Primorye region went on an anti-police rampage earlier this year, shooting at traffic police stations and setting offices on fire, many people in the Far East actually supported them: a poll on Ekho Moskvy radio indicated that 60-75 percent of listeners sympathized with the “young Robin Hoods” and would offer them help.

The father of 18-year-old Roman Savchenko, one of the rioters, told the press that all of the young men had been beaten by the police in the past, in order to pressure them to take responsibility for crimes they had not committed. A Kommersant reporter who went to investigate was told of a practice among teenage boys, who torture one another in garages, “so that everyone will understand how he will behave once he ends up in the police station.”

While the story of Primorye partizans is unlikely to ever be known to the public in all its details, it is a graphic illustration of the fact that some citizens are no longer content to fight for their rights using only civilized methods.

On the other side of the country, in Khimki, Moscow Region, activists protesting massive clear-cutting for a new road to St. Petersburg were attacked by a group of unidentified persons who masked their faces with t-shirts. Policemen who were called to the scene arrested the activists (not the attackers) for an illegal campfire. Local police denied the presence of masked goons, despite dozens of photographs.

The Khimki activists argued that the clear-cutting of the forest is unnecessary and is only being done so that land around the highway can be appropriated for commercial use. The road will be a toll-road meant to decrease traffic jams on the main Leningradskoye shosse.

In a show of support for the movement to save the forest, some 500 young people took a suburban train from Moscow to Khimki and attacked the administration building, breaking windows and scrawling graffiti on its walls. The protestors left as quickly as they came, departing just ten minutes before police arrived on the scene, Kommersant reported.

While to some the attack was a desperate act meant to influence decision makers, environmental activists said it could work against their efforts, making them out to be violent criminals. After the event, police turned on journalists who witnessed the event. Besttoday.ru Editor-in-Chief Vitaly Shushkevich was arrested and his notes and laptop were seized. Novaya Gazeta photojournalist Veronika Maksimyuk was visited early in the morning by three Interior Ministry officials. “They came to my mother’s house, where I am registered,” she told Moscow News. “Then they went to the flat where I live and seized my flash-card, the one with the Khimki photos. They asked me who had organized the Khimki demonstration and how I found out about it.”

“This entire state machine begins to find witnesses and work nights only when someone acts out against some authority – even a small, corrupt, petty authority, like in Khimki,” said Novaya Gazeta editor Sergey Mikhalych.

Joke discovered on anekdot.ru: Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev issued a joint statement: 

“We have sufficient funds to overcome the world financial crisis.” 

What the rest of the Russian people should do is so far unclear...