Russians Revolt Against Putin: The Bolotnaya Square Protest

Editor's note: this page previously carried a full reprint of a copyrighted newspaper report. It has been replaced with an original summary.

On December 10, 2011, Moscow witnessed its largest anti-government demonstration in two decades. Tens of thousands of people — police estimated at least 25,000, organizers claimed far more, independent observers put the figure around 50,000 — filled Bolotnaya Square, just across the Moskva River from the Kremlin, in falling snow, chanting "Russia without Putin!"

The trigger was the December 4 parliamentary election. Vladimir Putin's United Russia party officially won just under half the vote — down roughly 15 points from 2007 — but international monitors reported serious irregularities including ballot stuffing, and the opposition produced videos and documents it said proved massive fraud. The head of the central electoral commission, a staunch Putin loyalist, insisted the vote was clean.

What made Bolotnaya different from every protest before it was who showed up. Previous opposition rallies had been small, swiftly broken up affairs. This time the square filled with people who had never protested before — young professionals, families, older citizens — united less by ideology than by a shared sense that the election had been stolen and that twelve years of the same leadership was enough.

The cast of speakers told the story of a movement finding its leaders. Anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny — who had popularized the devastating nickname "the party of crooks and thieves" for United Russia — was absent, serving a 15-day jail term from an earlier protest. Boris Nemtsov, the veteran opposition figure, addressed the crowd. Oleg Kashin, the journalist beaten nearly to death in November 2010 for his reporting, appeared on stage. Environmental activist Yevgeniya Chirikova, known for her fight against a Kremlin-backed highway through the Khimki forest, declared that Putin could no longer take public support for granted.

The Kremlin's response mixed concession and defiance. Putin publicly blamed the United States — specifically then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — for encouraging the unrest. State media, which had largely ignored earlier protests, covered Bolotnaya. A top United Russia official promised the protesters' voices would be heard, without promising anything specific.

As darkness fell, the loudspeakers played "Peremen!" ("Changes!") by the Soviet-era rock band Kino — an anthem of the 1980s anti-Soviet protests, now adopted by a new generation. The crowd gave the Kremlin two weeks to respond, promising to return on December 24 if it didn't.

Most analysts judged Putin safe in the short term — he had already announced his return to the presidency in the March 2012 election — but the protest marked something new: the first serious, mass-based challenge to his rule since he came to power at the end of 1999. Russia's urban middle class had found its voice, and it was not going back to silence.