Министерство науки и образования Российской Федерации
Федеральное агентство по образованию
Государственное образовательное учреждение
высшего профессионального образования
«Уральский государственный экономический университет»
Кафедра экономической теории
Кафедра иностранного языка
Аннотация
Выполнила: студентка гр. ЭКБ-10
Лукьянова С.
Проверила: Гончарова Н.А.
Екатеринбург
2011 Russian opposition stages biggest-ever rally
by Yulia Ponomareva at 10/12/2011 21:30
Between 50,000 and 100,000 people took to Moscow’s Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Saturday in a giant opposition rally challenging the results of this month’s parliamentary elections. The rally, which was authorized for up to 30,000 people, filled the city center park in the biggest opposition rally in the last decade.
The crowd, consisting mainly of young people, often chanted “Down with Putin!” and “Down with the party of crooks and thieves!”
The three-hour rally went off peacefully in sub-zero temperatures, with police not intervening – in contrast to earlier protests, where hundreds of people were arrested. Speakers from the liberal, leftist and nationalist opposition called for the Dec. 4 State Duma vote to be canceled and rerun, dismissing Central Elections Committee chief Vladimir Churov, freeing activists jailed in protests earlier in the week and the registration of all opposition parties. A letter of support for the rally from opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who is serving a 15-day jail sentence after being arrested on a protest march Monday, was read out to the rally. More rallies planned
The organizers gave the government two weeks to fulfill protesters’ demands, and announced that more protest rallies would be held on Dec. 17, 18 and 24.
“Thirteen million votes were stolen across the country - 800,000 in Moscow alone,” Solidarnost opposition leader Boris Nemtsov told the rally. He also called on opposition parties that got into the State Duma to hand back their mandates – a step that could lead to a rerun election. Gennady Gudkov, a State Duma deputy from Just Russia, pledged that he and other party members would hand back their mandates. A Communist Party speaker who failed to make the same pledge was drowned out by cries of “Hand back your mandate!” as he made his speech. Boos for nationalist
The crowd cheered most liberal speakers, but booed nationalist leader Konstantin Krylov when he started talking about an ethnic-based “Russkaya” revolution.
Political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, who worked with the Golos independent monitoring group in the elections, said it had estimated that United Russia’s real share of the vote was not 49 percent but 30 percent across the country, and just 26 percent in Moscow.
Writer Boris Akunin demanded online broadcasting of elections from each precinct in Moscow, while journalist Leonid Parfyonov spoke of the importance of equal media access for all political forces. Grigory Yavlinsky, the founder of the Yabloko party, promised to start a campaign for Putin’s dismissal through “constitutional methods.”
Live TV broadcast
In a major departure for an opposition rally, the Kremlin-controlled NTV channel broadcast live footage from Bolotnaya Square. The crowd cheered as liberal politician Vladimir Ryzhkov announced that NTV news anchor Alexei Pivovarov had threatened a walkout unless the channel ran a story about the rally.
People in the crowd expressed surprise that the rally had been so large.
“What I saw here today has blown me away,” said Vladimir, an engineer from Moscow, who said he had been going to rallies since the late 1980s.
“Some ask, ‘Why did we stage a revolution in August 1991? What did we achieve with that?’ [But] they’re like someone who last washed themselves in a banya 20 years ago and is now like, ‘Why did I wash my body 20 years ago? I’m dirty again.’ It sounds ridiculous, you should wash yourself regularly.”
Colorful banners
Many protesters held colorful homemade banners and slogans, including a placard that read “Tzar is fraud” in English, and a slogan on a balloon that said, “I’m not a sheep,” in an apparent reference to an obscene retweeted message that appeared on President Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter page that described bloggers who used the phrase “party of crooks and thieves” as “[expletive] sheep.”
Ivan, a student, came to the rally holding a badminton racket. “That’s my way of expressing contempt of Medvedev’s policies,” he said. After he sarcastically shouted out, “Modernization through innovation!” everyone around him giggled.