The Sirens of Russia

Andrey Hartley

With all the talk in the news about arms control, Polish leaders falling from the sky, 70-year-old war atrocities, and Russia’s place in the BRIC economies, I decided to post something today that has nothing to do with any of this.

Consider the migalka – the little blue siren that sits atop the black luxury cars that ferry Russia’s elite from one place to another. The migalka is one of the most coveted, hated privileges in the country today. With that little blue light, it’s possible to pull into oncoming traffic and split the road like the Red Sea. It’s also possible (and quite common, sadly) to cause fatal traffic accidents, such as a recent and infamous crash that involved LUKoil’s Vice President that killed two women in February.

Up until three years ago, there were 7,500 authorized migalki. Since 2007, there have been 977 migalki officially in operation in Russia. They belong to the following bodies: the Presidential Administration has 50, the FSB 230, the FSO 150, the Interior Ministry 20, the General Prosecutor 65, Defense Ministry 20, the Duma 12, and the Federal Assembly has six. This year, the government reduced the number again to 966.

As I’ve pointed out before, the special road status of the elite is a sore point with the Russian public. And it’s no wonder why: whether it’s the cops commandeering your vehicle to create a road block for a criminal that gets away, an apparatchik’s daughter getting off for murder, a drunk-driving police officer running over your pregnant wife and then fleeing, or a well-connected millionaire turning into oncoming traffic, it requires no great imagination to understand Russians’ widespread frustration.

For those reasons, Andrey Hartley’s actions on March 31, 2010, are both perfectly understandable (if not inevitable, really), and simultaneously quite unexpected. Driving down Kutuzovski Prospekt, a Black BWM backed out of traffic and pulled into Mr. Hartley’s lane – into oncoming traffic. Hartley reacted quickly enough to stop, but instead making way for the beamer, he grabbed his camera and walked up to the black car to find out who had almost just killed him. (It turns out the big wig in the car was Vladimir Shevchenko, presidential adviser and Kremlin veteran, with a career dating back to the days of Gorbachev.) The passenger hides himself once he realizes Hartley is filming, and the driver (a spry, angry-looking man of not very imposing build) comes around to try and swipe Hartley’s camera.

Here’s where the video (see below) earns its tastiness: a random stranger from a nearby car stuck in traffic joins the mayhem, coming to the aid of Hartley. The stranger is also spry and angry-looking, but he happens to be few sizes bigger than the migalka-car driver, who, when he notices Hartley’s reinforcements, abandons his pursuit of the camera. Just when you expect the stranger to put his fist through the passenger side window, Hartley calls off his new friend, returning to his own car, cursing the elites for the trouble.

Now what to make of an event like this? Russia studies being the polarized field it is, I can anticipate a few interpretations, marinated in all the familiar polemics:

• Hartley is a hero and a vanguard of the coming anti-Putin rebellion. It’s no coincidence that he’s a small business entrepreneur! Men like him will be the lifeblood of a liberal Russian future! See how he even inspires and then commands the brawny rabble!
• Hartley took his ex-wife’s last name! He was preparing to emigrate! Some patriot! And that he suffered no consequences for interfering with a state-sanctioned migalka-equipped vehicle proves that Russia is no police-state!

Each of these extremes, of course, offers some insight into Russia’s current migalka unrest. You’ve got genuinely angry people organizing in protest against a ridiculous legal inequality, and that sentiment produces individual heroics like Andrey Hartley’s confrontation with Shevchenko. This very clearly is a bottom-up interaction: Hartley and his buddy are second-class citizens on the road, and anybody with a migalka is free to do as he pleases.

One thing this isn’t, however, is proof that “the people” are about to “rise up.” Andrey Loshak, the journalist who interviewed Hartley for OpenSpace.ru, jokingly compares this traffic run-in to the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin. That comparison — suffice it to say — is pretty absurd, and does far more to demonstrate how much Russia isn’t the same country it was a century ago.

Since 2005, Russians have had an official motorist organization (though, like anybody without Kremlin sponsorship, they seem to have trouble getting permission for demonstrations). There is a brief but growing record of civic activism (consider, for instance, electronic campaigns to spread awareness about the issue, like these here and here). The Federation of Car-Owners of Russia isn’t a revolution, but it is evidence that the migalka issue won’t go away on its own. Indeed, even Взгляд, an extremely Kremlin-friendly online newspaper, published an article titled “Senseless Sirens” that sharply criticized the continued use of migalki in Russia, even quoting sources who described the practice as “feudal.”

The government has already vastly reduced the number of these sirens. I wonder if they’ll soon finish the job? (Before the revolution comes, of course.)