Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Protest and Regimes
- 2 Protest and Regime in Russia
- 3 The Geography of Strikes
- 4 A Time for Trouble
- 5 Elections and the Decline of Protest
- 6 Vladimir Putin and Defeat-Proofing the System
- 7 Protest, Repression, and Order from Below
- 8 Implications for Russia and Elsewhere
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Event Protocol
- Appendix 2 Sectoral and Seasonal Strike Patterns
- Appendix 3 A Statistical Approach to Political Relations
- Index
2 - Protest and Regime in Russia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Protest and Regimes
- 2 Protest and Regime in Russia
- 3 The Geography of Strikes
- 4 A Time for Trouble
- 5 Elections and the Decline of Protest
- 6 Vladimir Putin and Defeat-Proofing the System
- 7 Protest, Repression, and Order from Below
- 8 Implications for Russia and Elsewhere
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Event Protocol
- Appendix 2 Sectoral and Seasonal Strike Patterns
- Appendix 3 A Statistical Approach to Political Relations
- Index
Summary
“The world was changed all right, and quite noticeably … the people walking past him were gradually transformed from devoted disciples of global evil into its victims.”
Viktor Pelevin, Buddha's Little Finger.On October 30, 1997, at the initiative of the Primorskii Krai Federation of Trade Unions, more than 250,000 protesters took part in marches in Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Ussuriysk, Arsenev, and other cities in the Far Eastern region of Primorskii Krai. The marchers demanded payment of wage arrears amounting to 1.37 billion rubles ($236 million at the then prevailing exchange rate) and an end to economic reforms that protest organizers claimed had forced 80 percent of the region's population below the poverty level. The demonstrations brought together miners, energy sector workers, teachers, physicians, fishermen, and workers of the municipal housing complex, many of whom were engaged in strikes and lawsuits in addition to the main protest action.
Later that year, on November 13, 1997, the Vladivostok News reported on further demonstrations at which similar demands were expressed:
[H]undreds marched, waving red banners, in honor of the Revolution of November 7. Strikers in Vladivostok said the government owes an estimated $233 million in late salaries in the Primorye region. They are desperate at the prospect of facing another winter without money to pay for heating bills, they said. Demonstrators filled Vladivostok's central square, many of them doctors, teachers, and construction workers whose patience had run out.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Protest in Hybrid RegimesManaging Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, pp. 40 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010