Local Opposition Divides Ahead of March

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: September 12, 2012 (Issue # 1726)

St. Petersburg will join Moscow and nearly 50 Russian cities in holding a rally called the March of Millions on Saturday.

According to organizer Andrei Pivovarov, City Hall authorized the rally Tuesday after initially rejecting it.

The main demands of the rally, which coincides with the International Day of Democracy established by the UN in 2007, are the resignation of President Vladimir Putin, early elections, the release of political prisoners, an end to political repression and the establishment of social justice.

The march is due to start at 2 p.m. near the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Ligovsky Prospekt and end on Konyushchennaya Ploshchad, where a stationary rally is scheduled to be held from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Despite the local opposition having split into several groups, which filed applications with City Hall separately, all the rallies were authorized for approximately the same starting point within half an hour of each other.

According to Pivovarov, City Hall effectively helped the protesters to overcome their differences.

“The split has been resolved by the authorities themselves, who got everybody together into one united march,” he said by phone Tuesday.

On Sept. 4, City Hall refused to authorize the same route, referring to road repairs and other events allegedly due to be held in the area, and proposed the remote Polyustrovsky Park instead. The organizers continued to insist that the rally should be held in the city center, starting from the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall.

The Other Russia, Left Front, Left Alliance, ROT Front and National Democrats are among the organizers.

Late last month, however, another group formed to hold its own rally under the same name on the same day, but in a different location.

Tatyana Dorutina, one of the leaders of the group that called itself “Democratic St. Petersburg,” said she wanted to break away from nationalists and communists.

“Take ROT Front [Russian United Labor Front], they’re Stalinists,” Dorutina told Zaks.ru. “Maybe we will defeat Putin, and they will send us to the Gulag. How could I know?”

The Democratic St. Petersburg committee comprises the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council, the League of Female Voters, Soldiers’ Mothers, Memorial and the Vykhod (Coming Out) LGBT rights group.

On Monday, the Solidarity Democratic Movement said that it would only take part if one consolidated rally was held. Earlier, on Sept. 4, it joined Democratic St. Petersburg, but left the alliance after another Internet vote was held on Monday.

Youth Yabloko said that they would refrain from participating in both rallies because of the split, while St. Petersburg Observers — an association formed last year to observe the Dec. 4 State Duma elections — said they would march with the original group.

“Over the past few years, we have seen with amazement that any successful campaign gets cloned [in St. Petersburg], and people are trying to hold their own events on the very same day and at nearly the same time,” The Other Russia’s local leader Andrei Dmitriyev said.

“It started with Strategy 31; as soon as we started to go to Gostiny Dvor, there emerged a group of ‘pure democrats,’ ‘pure liberals,’ who didn’t wish to meet up with the scary and terrible The Other Russia and ROT Front, and who started to go to Palace Square. […]

“Now they are saying it in a perfectly clear way: We don’t want to march with nationalists, we don’t want to march with left-wingers, we’re ‘Democratic St. Petersburg,’ we’ll march on our own. I don’t understand why they would ‘support’ the united Moscow rally and call their rally ‘March of Millions.’”

On Tuesday, a third march applied for by maverick liberal activist Olga Kurnosova and nationalist Nikolai Bondarik was authorized.

Previous Marches of Millions were held on May 6 and June 12. A 500-strong group from St. Petersburg went to Moscow to take part in the May 6 march, while on June 12 the march from Oktyabrsky Concert Hall to Konyushennaya Ploshchad was held in St. Petersburg, under the name “Russia Day Without Putin.”

Seventeen people are in pre-trial detention for participating in the May 6 march in Moscow, which ended in riots as a result of alleged police provocation. Hundreds of people were interrogated by a large team of investigators, estimated to number between 100 and 200, in the wake of the rally. The apartments of opposition leaders, including anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny and television presenter Ksenia Sobchak, were searched.