9,100 attended, according to RIA Novosti's estimate

This weekend’s rally was smaller than many of the protests seen in Moscow recently. Rally organizers put attendance at around 25,000, but police estimates said the crowd was closer to 10,000 in size. RIA Novosti, who use special software to estimate crowd sizes, put the size at 9,100 with a margin of error of 15%, which indicates that the police estimate is the more accurate.

Although a few arrests were made – including Left Front leader Sergei Uldatsov – they were not of the scale seen at the previous weekend’s rally, where more than 500 were arrested.

A number of prominent opposition movement leaders addressed the rally, including Vladimir Ryzhkov, Garry Kasparov and Sergei Uldatsov. Notably, though, senior members of Russian opposition parties and the four defeated opposition candidates stayed away.

What next for Russia’s opposition movement?

It seems likely to be the last major protest that Moscow will see for a while.

Attendance has been gradually decreasing through the year and, without the focus of an upcoming election, it is unclear what direction Russia’s nebulous and politically disparate opposition movement will take over the coming months.

Some, disheartened by the apparent failure of the current methods of holding legally approved rallies, seem to be arguing for more direct action. Key proponents of this way forward include Sergei Uldatsov, leader of the Left Front movement, who was arrested at Saturday’s rally and at the previous rally. He seems to be supported by Alexei Navalny, who was arrested at last week’s rally and has recently called for a campaign of “civil disobedience”.

Many others, though, feel that opposition in Russia needs to move away from being in simple opposition and towards offering a genuine alternative to the current government, view expressed by Dmitry Gudkov, a member of the A Just Russia party who has been heavily involved in organizing a number of protests. In his blog, he wrote (RUS): “The next demonstration must not be ‘against’ but ‘for’. We need to move away from the format of ‘five minutes of hate’ and announce a plan of action, answer the question ‘What next?’ and demand the authorities conduct reforms.”

10,000 protest in Moscow against Putin is a post from: Siberian Light

Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion, says he was forced into his decision because Other Russia were not able to find a venue to occupy 500 supporters in an initiative group meeting – a requirement of Russian electoral law.

Announcing his decision to withdraw from the race, Kasparov told reporters:

“In all Moscow we have not been able to find a hall where our supporters could meet. We pay and the people agree. There are no problems.

And then they call us to say they are refusing, can’t give us the hall anymore.”

Other Russia have had problems securing venues before, as hotels and conference centres would take their bookings then pull out at the last minute. The venues always seem to blame technical reasons, but it’s hard to credit that so many technical problems would affect every venue approached by Other Russia. Instead, venues clearly believe that hosting an Other Russia conference would not be good for their business in the long term. And who can blame them.

The real reason behind Kasparov’s decision to pull out of the race, I suspect, is that he had almost no chance of securing the 2 million signatures needed to endorse his candidacy – and failing in this effort would have been political suicide. Far better for Other Russia to hold their horses, continue sniping from the sidelines and, perhaps, have another stab at electoral politics in four years time. Perhaps by then, Putin’s power will be on the wane, and there will be a real opportunity for a non-establishment challenge.

Still, I’m a little disappointed that Kasparov used this as an excuse to withdraw. I would have expected a little creativity, to be honest. Perhaps Kasparov could have arranged a meeting of 500 activists during a demonstration. Sure, it may not have satisfied the electoral commission, but it would have made for some great tv footage, as Russian police broke up the meeting.

As it stands, Russia’s democratic hopes will once again be represented in a Presidential election by Gennady Zyuganov, a Communist…

Kasparov pulls out of Presidential race is a post from: Siberian Light