Russian Voter Riots

[L.Y.S.]

I don't know too much about the incident so I won't go into much detail about it. It would seem as though wealthy Russian citizens are "peacefully" protesting against the currently governmental system and calling for more transparency. Russia has suffered from voter issues for years, but in the opinion of many prominent Russian officials corruption in modern Russia has increased exponentially, to the point where the government is almost ran as if Russia were controlled by mafia dons.

Voters it would seem, are fed up with Putin and calling for him and the United Russia party to step down. I don't quite understand what that would mean for Russia, but the second most powerful party in Russia is the communist party of Russia. Should United Russia be ousted, I do not know exactly what this would mean for Russia, but it would signal a regime change of some sort.

 

[Gazpacho]

I don't have any comment on the Putin question, but as far as I know the protests have indeed been peaceful and not "riots."

 

[L.Y.S.]

Sorry, I meant "protest" but I wrote the article on such short notice. From what I've read, this protest is being conducted by young well off professional Urban elites. It is a phenomenon that has been taking place in Russia since the late 70s, but exponentially exploded during the years of the Putin Presidency due to his economic policies which helped maintain economic growth in Russia till the 2008 financial crisis. Amid stagnant wages and "suspicious" electoral results, these urban elite took to the streets and made 5 demands.

1.) Free Political Prisoners

2.) Annulment of Election Results

3.) The resignation of Vladimir Churov, head of the election commission, and an official investigation of vote fraud

4.) Registration of the opposition parties and new democratic legislation on parties and elections

5.) New democratic and open elections

Putin and United Russia's response till this point has been to stage "counter-protest" by the likes of Nashi (coined the "Putin Youth"), and the Young Guard which is another wing of the United Russia party.

Unlike protests seen in Western Europe and America there are a lot more concise and organized demands. These protests are not the protests of day to day workers, but of the urban well-to-do and the intelligentsia.

It is not clear what this means for Russia, but it is a sign that nearly 500 years of political patronage style government is over. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, corruption has drastically increased in Russia. Furthermore, it has transformed from a set of corrupt bureaucratic oligarchs to a set of even more corrupt plutocrats.

It is not known what will come from this. As I have said in the previous post, the second largest party in Russia by default is the communist party of Russia. It is likely that the communist will gain some seats in the Russian Parliament, although, I doubt that they will win in major political elections unless they have a platform similar to what was used in China. For now, this is all that has been said on the issue of the protest. The protest itself is only about a week old, and unlike recent anti-government protests in the west (especially in America) this movement is fairly organized and has very specific demands. I am sure that there will be at least some partial change. We will see in the upcoming days and months.


I'll keep this post open if there are any updates to be made.

 

[L.Y.S.]

Ups, this is a duplicate post. Could the Admins merge this post with "Russian Elections" post in the "non-American general politics" section of the thread. Thank you.