Forum and Protest in Moscow

Watershed events often coincide. Based on the tenor of the Moscow Urban Forum over the past three days, it seemed that "global city" ideology had found another haven of unconditional support. This was part of a wave of surface change associated with the initial hope inspired by outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev, based on visions of a more open, innovative, cosmopolitan society closely integrated with the global economy.

Initial protest at Chistye Prudy on December 6, following disputed parliamentary elections.

However, as Julia Ioffe explains in an incisive account of the current political climate in Moscow, the announcement of Vladimir Putin's plans to succeed Medvedev and the disputed results of the parliamentary elections last weekend have pushed many into the arena of direct opposition. Over five thousand people gathered in protest on Monday, and 253 were arrested (see video above). Another protest will take place in a few hours at Bolotnаyа Square. Around 30,000 are expected to participate despite astonishingly underhanded attempts by the federal government to prevent them (see Ioffe's article for a full account).

There are many intersections between the Moscow Urban Forum, the Russian federal government, current protests and the Occupy Movement. At the forum, increasingly retrograde neoliberal schemes mixed with contemporary urbanism provided a channel for many people's desire for change. The autocracy of the federal government was (for the most part) not directly criticized, but attendees were obviously dissatisfied with the current state of the country. Their fight is different from that of the Occupy Movement, but the core problem is the same: abuse of power allowing a small group of people to make a disproportionate amount of decisions and control a disproportionate amount of resources to the detriment of most people's well-being.

I'm about to leave for Bolotnаyа Square, but I plan to write more about the conference and protests soon. Bolʹshoy Gorod (Big City) magazine has been documenting events as they unfold. Although the articles are in Russian, they include a lot of imagery and they're very worth Google-translating. I'll include other good sources as soon as possible.