Dmitry Golubovsky, editor of Esquire Russia, interviews “Alexei Navalny — blogger, political activist, and self-described “network hamster” “:
ESQUIRE: The primary cause of the current protests across Russia were the federal parliamentary elections on December 4. What do you remember most about voting day?
__
ALEXEI NAVALNY: Everybody was nervous and worried, myself probably more than others, because I initiated a campaign against United Russia, the ruling party, under the slogan “Party of Crooks and Thieves.” The slogan appeared by accident — during a radio show, the host asked me how I felt about United Russia, and I said, “Very bad. United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves.” Later, I announced a poll on my blog — “Do you consider United Russia to be the Party of Crooks and Thieves?” — and 97 percent of 40,000 people said “Yes,” and away we go. From the very beginning, it was clear that the election was going to be unjust, but I really wanted to know if one could do any significant damage to United Russia by means of a campaign launched on the Internet. That’s what we did, and our main message was: vote for anyone except the Party of Crooks and Thieves. It seemed way more effective than simply boycotting the election — just another strategy propagated by the opposition — because it was in the interest of all the small parties that took part in the vote to join us…
__
ESQ: How much do you think the Internet influenced the December protests?
__
AN: I think about 40 percent of people came to protest mainly because of the Internet. The past year, year and a half was very important in this respect: broadband became cheaper, mobile Internet spread dramatically. And this quantity transformed to quality. The Internet has become a true information infrastructure in big cities — and can now even challenge TV. Social networks gave us some very much needed infrastructure, and different services are useful in very different ways. LiveJournal (The main blogging platform in Russia. —Ed.) was good for informational, more detailed posts. Facebook has more multimedia features — likes, links, posters, videos, events, where you can see if your friends are going to this and that rally or not. Smartphones and Twitter hook people up to news 24/7. And for some things even I, a 35-year-old, am too old — for instance, I made a big mistake when I didn’t run the campaign against crooks and thieves in Vkontakte: I simply don’t understand how this social network works, unlike my employees at “Rospil.” (A noncommercial anti-corruption project founded by Navalny this year that raised over $250,000 from Internet users. —Ed.) But the people didn’t go out on the streets because of Facebook or LiveJournal — it’s because they were angry. If it wasn’t for this informational infrastructure, they’d go anyway, but it would be harder for them to coordinate their efforts, and because of that the protest would probably break out in a more aggressive way. Now, since everything is easier to organize, the protests are more peaceful….
More detail, including an explanation of the “network hamster” nik, at the link.
The Russian Protests and Their “Network Hamster”Post + Comments (20)