September 16, 2013 – The Russian Reader

The anti-capitalist movement is stronger than Putin and no matter how many activists end up in jail, Putin can’t stop working class opposition growing daily more visible on the streets of Moscow and elsewhere.

—Stewart Home, “Open Letter about Alexei Gaskarov”

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avtonom.org

Moscow Anarchists Leave AntiCap

As we reported earlier, the march organizing committee had reached an agreement to ban the participation of nationalist organizations and the use of nationalist slogans. However, today, 15 September, anarchists who came to the march discovered a column from the nationalist group People’s Will carrying a banner that read, “Free, social, national.” Nationalists marching under black banners chanted slogans about “Russian socialism,” as well as anti-feminist and homophobic chants.

After chanting anti-fascist slogans and “Don’t disgrace the black flag” in response, the anarchists, along with members of the Left Socialist Action and Rainbow Association column, decided to leave the event before the start of the march. As they left, they shouted, “We came to AntiCap, / But all we found was crap!”

A number of anarchist and anti-fascist groups had earlier decided to boycott AntiCap because information had appeared on the social networks that nationalists would come to the protest.

The virtual merger of the leftist movement with nationalist groups that attempt to blend incompatible ideas in their propaganda and aesthetic is a trend that cannot help but disturb members of the anti-fascist movement. The mass protests in Russian in 2011–2012 have already led to the legalization of nationalist discourse within the civil protest movement, despite the opposition of anti-fascists. New ways of combating fascist infiltration of the non-systemic opposition to the current regime must be sought.

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Homophobes attack activists from the Rainbow Column at the Anti-Capitalism March in Moscow. September 15, 2013. Video by Dmitry Zykov

http://jordanrussiacenter.org/event/the-long-year-2012/

Conference: The Long Year 2012

The year 2012 was one of political and social upheaval in Russia, more than could even fit in one calendar year. The protest movement, which dominated so much of the news that year, began with demonstrations calling for fair elections in December 2011, and its effects continue to be discussed. 2012 was also the year of Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer’ in Moscow’s Church of Christ the Savior (and their subsequent trial), the Bolotnaya Square Case, intensifying controversy over the LGBT rights, outrage over the “Magnitsky List,” and the passage of the “Dima Yakovlev” law, banning adoption of Russian children by American parents.

What does this turmoil mean for contemporary Russia? Our roundtable looks at the intersection of art and politics, writing and protest, activism and performance in a year that moved Russia back into the world’s headlines after years of indifference.