For democracy activists in Russia, the real victory this week isn’t that Vladimir Putin’s party performed so poorly in Sunday’s Moscow city council election.
That’s just a consequence of a far more important change in the country: the shattering of a feeling of helplessness in the face of the government’s authority.
In Russia, conformism is the safest course for a vast majority of people. “Initiative shall be punished,” went a popular Soviet-era saying.
For opposition politicians, the greatest challenge isn’t the government’s systematic efforts to ban them from standing in elections or crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters. It’s something Russians call beznadyoga — a …read more
Source:: European Voice
