The Un-Alarmist Article Will Not Be Published

Julia Ioffe, a young journalist who’s written for Fortune, Newsweek, and the New Yorker, has an interesting new article out in Foreign Policy. “The Revolution Will Definitely Not Be Televised” is about the Russian opposition’s new campaign of “thirty-firsts,” which is an uncharacteristically well conceived strategy that’s recently popped up among the liberals.

Modeled on the Soviet-era protests in favor of human rights following the Helsinki Accords in the Seventies and Eighties, demonstrators have taken to gathering on the 31st of each month to celebrate the thirty-first article of the Russian Constitution, which — you guessed it — guarantees the freedom of assembly. Ioffe does an excellent job explaining how the 31st Movement is an example of the Russian opposition at its best, which, it turns out, is still not enough to pique the interests of the average citizen.

Enter last week’s relatively massive protest in Kaliningrad, which attracted over ten thousand people, many of whom came to complain about more than raised automobile taxes. The elite of the liberal movement wasted no time planting themselves right in the middle of all the unhappiness, perhaps getting there a little early to help stir the pot.

There’s not much to argue with when Ioffe claims that the Kremlin strangles Russian television, preventing the televised dissemination of knowledge about episodes like Kaliningrad’s “unrest.” Her conclusion, however, that an untelevised revolution “doesn’t even exist” seems to be plainly wrong.

What happened in Kaliningrad was a response to a local government measure. That it brought people together outside who also wanted to chant slogans against Putin shouldn’t come as such a great surprise. Even at 70 percent approval ratings, for instance, more than one in every four Russians openly disapproves of Vladimir Putin.

Ilya Yashin, an uppity former Yabloko youth organizer turned Solidarnost youth organizer, says it best (though unintentionally, I think): “they [Russians] see TV as entertainment, as educational; as anything other than a source of information.” Add to this the fact that Russians don’t listen to the radio or read the newspaper “for information,” either, and you begin to wonder if it’s really television that is responsible for the great failure of “the revolution.” The Iranians, after all, were out in the streets tweeting their bleeding hearts away — all without the help of your nightly news anchor.

What’s missing in Russia is public interest in the very idea of dissent.

Then again, “the article” without alarmist commentary on civil unrest and looming totalitarian threats “will definitely not be published,” either.