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.But the coordination and unity of social movements is,as Clément suggests, only at an early stage.Take, for example,Izhevsk, where there has been considerable success at a locallevel.A Coordinating Council for Civil Action was formed  tonegotiate with the authorities, and participating in amending the188 CHANGE IN PUTI N'S RUSSIAUdmurtiya budget to improve citizens standard of living duringthe welfare protests in 2005.In the following year, the Councilmoved from being a coalition to being an organising centre.Atthe end of 2006, the Communist Party, which had traditionallybeen the strongest political opposition in the town and had untilthen worked with the Council, backed away from it and triedto organise rival demonstrations.That failed, and the Councilwas strengthened as a coordinating centre working across politi-cal lines.In 2007, after two years of nonrecognition, the localauthorities agreed to negotiate with the Council.14Izhevsk is an exception, though.While in many localities single-issue campaign groups have forced authorities to compromise ornegotiate, a coordinated approach is rare.That is not to say thatactivists in different groups are unaware of, or indifferent, toeach other s work.On the contrary: as well as the various gath-erings (social forums, conferences and so on) already mentioned,Russia s social movements have a magnificent, high-quality Inter-net presence and a high level of blog use which helps to bindtogether groups that are geographically distant.15 (For an exampleof campaign coordination locally, see the box on page 183 on Activists under siege.)As for the future direction of social movements, a major deter-minant will be the impact of the economic slowdown on Russia.On the one hand, this may produce a dampening effect on civicactivity and organisation of all kinds, for some of the reasons thatit did in the 1990s: that is, the daily struggle for survival into whichmany people are thrown by unemployment, in particular, is oftenan obstruction to community organisation and civic activism.Onthe other hand, Russia moves into this economic crisis from a quitedifferent background from that of the early 1990s.Most people sliving standards, and expectations, have been rising, albeit slowly and while democratic rights have been eroded, Putin s rule is afar, far cry from the comprehensive dictatorship of Soviet times.Asthe recession began to bite in late 2008, Russia s leading businessnewspaper editorialised that it was those who now had somethingto lose, as well as those nearer to the poverty line, who might bemoved to join protest movements.Arguing for relief for defaultingmortgages, Vedomosti s editors wrote:Not to help the middle class now would be dangerous.In 1998,Russians who had still not lost the habits of modest post-Sovietlife styles got through the crisis with the usual servility to fate. PEOPLE: GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS 189But now they have something to lose: theoretically, 600,000mortgage payers could lose their flats as a result of failing tomake repayments.And those happy owners of cars, fridgesand other goods bought with dollar loans, even if they don tlose their property, will spend their time rushing from oneforeign exchange booth to another, guessing the rates, hopingto save at least some of their fast-devaluing ruble income onwhich to live.16The events in Vladivostok, described above, suggest that this is noexaggeration.The Russian establishment harbours much greater fears, though,about the reaction of the broader mass of working-class people tothe economic crisis.In December 2008, a survey recorded that 28per cent of people have no savings on which to fall back in case ofredundancy.The economist Yevgeny Gontmakher, who has headedthe government s department of social development (1997 2003)and held a string of other leading social welfare posts, publiclypictured a scenario in which citizens of one of Russia s industrialtowns, enraged by a closure of its main factory, occupy buildingsand take the local governor hostage.He imagined the examplethen being followed elsewhere.Such events could happen  in thevery near future , he wrote, in an article headlined  Novocher-kassk-2009 , an allusion to the workers revolt in Novocherkasskin 1962.This articulation of such fears so disturbed the federalmedia and communications inspectorate that it wrote to the news-paper in which Gontmakher s article appeared, and reminded it ofits duty to observe laws against extremism.17In February 2009, when street unrest erupted in the Baltic statesof Latvia and Lithuania over state austerity measures, Putin wasasked about the prospect of similar protests in Russia at a meetingwith United Russia parliamentarians.He emphasised the distinc-tion between lawful and unlawful protests, and that if protestersstepped outside the law,  the state and society have the right toreact and defend themselves.Without naming the Baltic states, hesaid Russia would not under any circumstances allow  the sort ofevents taking place in other countries.Given the readiness withwhich law enforcement agencies have pronounced protest actionsillegal, civil society activists feared the worst.Arkady Dvorkovich,an adviser to president Medvedev, told western journalists thatthe administration was monitoring potential trouble spots, such asfactory towns hit by unemployment [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]