As Long As We're United...

I’d like to share a few thoughts about the rally on Bolotnaya square. I have mixed fillings about it. On one hand tens of thousands of people who are unhappy about what is going on in our country are obviously willing to make a difference. As it was pointed out at the rally, the civil society is finally emerging.  And that’s great. I welcome that and I’d like to be a part of it. But on the other hand there were things that really disappointed me.

There were a lot of different people on Bolotnaya square on February 4 and I’m not sure all of them were prepared to support some demands that the coordinators put forward at the rally called “for honest elections”. First of all I didn’t think I wanted to denounce the electoral committee’s decision not to register Yavlinskii as a presidential candidate. Secondly, I’m not a Putin’s fan, but mocking him and calling him names from the stage looked rather dishonorable. Chants “Russia without Putin” (although I generally support the slogan) weren’t quite in place in the circumstances. Why can’t we just focus on the main objective – ensuring fair elections. Thirdly, one of the resolution demands was to set free all political prisoners, which by itself is a beautiful thing. However it is unlikely to happen in one day period and it makes the resolution hard to fulfill right away. People join forces to protest against election fraud and lies and that universal goal might help consolidate our civil society.

A crowd of people at a bus stop is not a society for they have been brought together by a momentary interest, purely by accident. People gathered at a rock concert are not a society either since the common interest keeps them together for only several hours and during the show they all remain passive spectators. In order to achieve their goal – to listen to the music – they did not have to communicate with other fans in the concert hall. A group of people can only be called a society if its members are cooperating in order to achieve common objectives voluntarily shared by all. Such a coupling of individual and collective goals is often referred to as “conciliarity” (соборность). The term was introduced by A S Khomiakov who wrote that “conciliarity provides a possibility to gather a multiplicity into a voluntary unity.” So the civil movement united by the common goal of making changes in the electoral system consists of people with different views and backgrounds and each of them can express his/her own opinion and he/she will be heard. In addition to that common people’s opinions are taken as seriously as the opinions of the leaders. I don’t know for sure, but that might be one of the reasons why the protesters don’t have an official leader. However there were some attempts to impose certain responsibilities on politicians who join the movement. That seems counterproductive to me. The rally coordinators came up with so called “candidate’s minimum” that makes a presidential candidate commit to the agenda developed by them. For instance, they insist that the next president should stay in power for only two years. That contradicts the principle of congregationalism. While the common goal – honest elections – is being achieved, the details could be more flexible.

What really needs to be made unacceptable is using vulgar language. One of the speakers at the rally allowed himself to use a curse word. I think it’s disrespectful for the audience and people shouldn’t tolerate that similarly to the way they don’t tolerate being told lies.

So, what’s next? Another rally, discussions on the Internet…Whatever it is, sticking to the principle of conciliarity and staying focused on one goal will sure make a difference.