This just in from our comrades in the Pyotr Alexeev Resistance Movement (DSPA):

At 7:00 p.m. today (February 20), outside the Akademicheskaya metro station in Petersburg, anarchists and DSPA activists carried out their latest action. This action, dubbed a “flying demo,” has long ago shown itself to be a eye-catching, effective, and safe way of bringing the revolutionary word to drowsy citizens and citizenettes.

Around a dozen young people suddenly appeared opposite the exit from the metro station. They quickly unfurled a banner bearing Kropotkin’s famous slogan and lighted flares. One of the activists mounted the pedestal of a non-functioning electronic advertising billboard and addressed bewildered city dwellers streaming from the subway. His fiery speech went something like this:

Citizens, stop! The economic crisis is advancing on our country. The authorities are lying to you. Assistance is going only to the capitalists. Prices are rising; a wave of layoffs is under way. Things are only getting worse for the common man. Enough of being patient! We must decide everything ourselves. We must unite in order to become a force: only then will we be able to change our lives for the better. Begin with little things. Don’t abandon your colleague who has been laid off. Help your hungry neighbor. Form mutual aid councils!

The action lasted around two minutes. The activists ended it by shouting, “Rights Aren’t Given, They’re Taken!” They then extinguished their flares and dispersed.

During the action, two activists handed out these flyers [in Russian] to startled bystanders.

News of this flying demo set off a minor mini-debate on the efficacy and purpose of such actions. Well-known Moscow anarchist and journalist Vlad Tupikin, in a post in his LiveJournal entitled “Two Minutes of Fame,” wondered aloud what could be accomplished in two minutes. He concluded that, far from explaining one’s stance to fellow citizens or persuading them to switch sides, all that the flying demonstrators managed to do was carry out a photo shoot and get their LiveJournal account of the action in Yandex’s top of the Internet charts rating. He called the action “pure PR.”

The following day (February 21), as if in confirmation of DSPA’s tactical stance that it is dangerous to assemble in one place for more than two minutes without permission, police detained Stanislav Rudenko, an independent candidate for the 62nd Municipal District (Piskarevka) in Saint Petersburg. As reported by a correspondent on the Legal Team’s LiveJournal, Rudenko was conducting an open-air meeting with potential voters at the intersection of Kondratievsky Prospect and Bliukher Street, when a police squad car pulled up. The policemen explained that that they had information that Rudenko’s campaign flyers were “incorrect.” They detained Rudenko and took him to the 21st Precinct. The correspondent added that, according to Russian law, candidates enjoy (theoretical) immunity from prosecution for the duration of election campaigns. 

Elections for Petersburg’s municipal councils take place March 1. As the journalistic cliché goes, the campaign has been marked by massive irregularities. Dmitry Gryzlov, son of State Duma speaker and United Russia torchbearer Boris Gryzlov, had his candidacy registered by the city’s elections board even after a district board had declared that 100% of the signatures he had gathered were fakes. Would that the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other independent candidates (from the city’s opposition parties and social movements) had such influential fathers. Their support petitions have been struck down en masse (although, in some cases, court challenges have got them reinstated), and now, it appears, police have been going door to door to intimidate some of the folks who signed those petitions. The tone for this latest blitzkrieg in defense of “sovereign democracy” was set on the eve of the campaign by Petersburg’s No. 1 gendarme, Vladislav Piotrovsky. At a local Interior Ministry collegium on January 19, he warned that, in connection with the economic crisis, local human rights organizations and social movements would step up their activities and that they would be helped in this task by the foreign spy services (of course!) that finance their “extremism.” Their primary short-term goal, Piotrovsky explained, would be to win as many spots in the upcoming municipal elections as possible.

After gutting every other remnant of political democracy in Russia, one of the Kremlin’s hobbyhorses in the past few years has been local self-governance (mestnoe samoupravlenie), as expressed (so they said) by (nearly powerless and totally underfunded) district councils and residential building co-ops (which have also been red-taped to death, when they haven’t been subjected to stiffer forms of repression). In fact, any kind of meaningful democracy is a hindrance to the plans of gangster capitalism (is there any other kind?) to turn Russia’s cities into backwater hellholes, its citizens into a docile population of (now no longer very powerful) consumers. So God forbid that a handful of “extremists” on “foreign payrolls” would get the chance to decide which streets in their neighborhoods get paved first.

Rights aren’t given. They’re taken.

It has been a grim week for leftist activists in Russia. So it was encouraging to see that not everyone in the community has completely lost their courage—or their sense of humor. Yesterday (January 25, 2009) several dozen anti-fascists, leftists, and preservationist activists took to the streets of Saint Petersburg to express their total assent to state policies.

Well, since they totally agree with Plan Putin and all its ways, they had to do everything by the books. First of all, that meant applying in advance for a permit for their march. (We should note that this action was planned well before news came of the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova.) Second, that meant agreeing to the march route proposed to them by the police—in this case, two hundred meters of a lonely snowbound street on the far end of Vasilievsky Island, right next to the icebound Gulf of Finland. Third, that meant (more or less) “cheerfully” not resisting arrest by the police. Because, despite their enthusiastically demonstrated support of Russia’s oligarchic police state, five of the demonstrators ended up being taken to the hoosegow. Although they were later all released, they were charged were breaking the agreed rules for holding a demonstration—i.e., for crossing the road (a common charge made in the absence of any real violations), while a sixth “assenter” (who showed up at the precinct to get them out) was charged with desecrating the Russian flag (see below).

Still, one cannot help but be gladdened by the absolute precision of yesterday’s action. Subversive affirmation gets overused in protests and quasi-protest artist interventions, but this was one instance of its use when the message will be absolutely clear to anyone who reads or sees press accounts of the event. And the organizers were savvy enough to get a good press presence there for their act of utter self-abnegation. For example, local Channel 100 aired this report in its evening news broadcast:

The fetching news reader explains that the march was organized by anti-fascists and that around fifty people took part in it.

March co-organizer Alexei Yarema (whose name is misspelled in the captions) tells the Channel 100 reporter: “Right now there is nothing more important than saving the national economy. And for its sake we’re ready to sacrifice everything, including paying however much money for anything whatsoever.”

In this video, we see in the march in progress. Another of the march’s co-organizers bellows out a text expressing the marchers’ complete confidence in the ability of the country’s leadership to bring the country out of the crisis. This is followed by scenes of the arrest of him and another assenter. The cheerful anti-fascist who now has the megaphone registers his surprise that people who support the government should be arrested by the police. The clip ends with a young man, a “Saint Vladimir” icon on his chest, shouting, “Long live the dictatorship of the banks!”

An activist from DSPA (Pyotr Alexeev Resistance Movement) posted the following account of the day’s events on their LiveJournal page:

March of the Assenters
Yes, now even rank-and-file citizens have understood how heavy is the lot of activists from the Nashi and Young Guards youth movements. It turns out that it’s not so easy to carry out an action in support of the Russian government in the Northern Capital. Nevertheless, during this difficult hour for the country, simple laborers found the strength to assemble at a specially designated site on the Maritime Embankment and declare their sincere, passionate support for all the initiatives of our dearly beloved government.

After they had assembled at this lively, crowded spot (practically on the ice in the Gulf of Finland), the demonstrators raised their banners, standards, and placards in an outpouring of unanimity. They brandished such slogans as “Yes to Price Increases for Basic Products!” “Yes to Utility-Rate Hikes!” “Yes to a Twelve-Hour Workday!” “Yes!!!” “Life Has Become Better, Life Has Become Merrier!”

Chanting “More Work, Less Pay!” and “Crisis, Crisis, Go Away!” in a fit of patriotic ecstasy, the demonstrators marched the two hundred meters of their sanctioned route under the trusty protection of the police, who outnumbered them several times over. In their speeches, the action’s organizers appealed to the government to impose a tax on air and introduce an eight-day work week.

Stopping next to a picturesque bio-toilet, the martyrs were on the point of marching back in the other direction when suddenly a vigilant policeman detected in the actions of the Assenters illegal use and even desecration of the Russian Federation national flag. The fact of the matter was that some irresponsible citizen had written the phrase “We Agree to Everything!” on the flag. It was for this offense that several demonstrators, including DSPA activists, were arrested.

Moreover, the Assenters quite quickly assented to this decision on the part of the brave police and, after demonstrating a bit more, they went home. And that was the right thing to do, gentleman! If the police believe that those who support the authorities have to be put behind bars, then that’s the way it is—because the police are always right. 

The more diligently our police do their jobs, the fewer people there will be who agree with the authorities! Hurrah!

You can find more coverage (photos, videos, articles—in Russian) here:

Humorous Action by Leftist Radicals in Saint Petersburg (Israeli site)

Petersburg Indymedia

In Petersburg, 5 People Are Arrested for Desecrating the Flag (Polit.Ru)

Petersburg Police Arrest Five People for Desecrating the Flag (Gazeta.Ru)

Photo Reportage: “We Agree to Everything” (Fontanka.Ru)

Local Protest Chronicler Vladimir Volokhonsky’s Account

Knowledge in Action, a special joint issue of Chto Delat and the Petersburg Street University is now online!

This issue presents a critical selection of activists today who are consciously continuing the tradition of autodidactic initiatives in direct actions. We would like to place this new local experience of today into the international context of independent educational structures and their history.

The issue features articles by and about the Street University, the War Group, DSPA, the New SDS, Copenhagen Free University, and Universidad Nomada, and inspiring graphics by Max Neroda and R.E.P.

Read it online or download it here.

In the coming week, we’ll also be posting articles from the new issue in this blog.