Following yesterday’s student protests in Moscow, Neeka went to see for herself what was happening and found… not a lot.
There was not a trace of the rally when I got there – I was late, I guess, though I’m still wondering how such an impressive crowd could vanish so fast. (One of the clues to this riddle could be Zhirinovsky: according to Gazeta.ru (in Russian but with photos), he showed up at one point and started handing out 500- and 1,000-ruble bills (approximately $18 and $37), which pissed off the Rodina Party guys and caused a little fight between them and Zhirik’s bodyguards – but "the 500- and 1,000-ruble bills have played their role: the students quickly moved under Zhirinovsky’s flags, and that was the end of the protest rally.")
So, instead, she visited a makeshift shrine to the October 1993 riots – the month Yeltsin laid seige to and then stormed the White House.
Two babushkas came up to one of the crosses as I was taking a picture of it. They stood right next to me, crossing themselves over and over again, and saying proudly: "They died for Sovietskaya vlast’." Then they moved over to the next cross, and then to yet another one. Finally, they walked across an open space to join a bunch of teens drinking beer by the fence at some distance from the crosses – and very soon the teens started yelling, "Putina na hui!" (translated roughly as "Fuck Putin!").
Read the rest at Neeka’s Backlog.
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