forum 8.indb

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Andrei Moroz
Protest Folklore in December 2011.
The Old and The New1
The staggering creative wave that washed
through the streets and the Internet in relation
to the events of December 2011 demands
attempt to comprehend what happened. The
mass surge of creativity was initiated, and filled
every nook and cranny of the Internet,
considerably sooner than the protest demonstrations themselves actually began, but before
these, it was less dominant in general social
terms, and did not have as strong a resonance.
In December, the closeted creative activity in
the blogosphere emerged on to the street, and
from there, through the media and blogs, it
again returned to the Internet — but now
occupying a far more prominent place.
Andrei Moroz
Russian State University
for the Humanities,
Moscow
[email protected]
1
It should be noted that, as far as can be judged
by the author’s own memories and testimonies
found on the Internet, previous instances of
street protest activity in Russia (from the end of
the 1980s up to the beginning of the 1990s) had
been in essence more ‘serious’. There were
virtually no slogans of placards containing
wordplay, collages, caricatures and so on. That
said, even then, alongside serious slogans
such as ‘Yeltsin is the faith, hope and love of
Russia’, ‘Government! Quit mocking history!’
or ‘Shame on Garbachov_Yazov_Kuzmin! And
We would like to thank Andrei Moroz for his help with some tricky linguistic problems in the material
cited. [Editor].
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MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
the contempt of the nation!’, one could find playful examples like
‘President Misha is good, but President Borya is better!’, ‘Land for
the peasants / factories for the workers / Communism for the
Communists!’, ‘Freedom! I love you!’, ‘Yeltsin, Yell at Him!’1 and
‘Yegor, you’re wrong!’. From time to time the ‘joke culture’ would
spill out onto the streets (‘I put the bullet in Pugo’s carcass’2 —
regarding the member of the State Emergency Committee), but
there was not the same mass creativity or visual expression that we
see today. Such material was simply an appendage to the extremely
outspoken political statements of the time. Only in rare cases could
street protests then could be considered folklore — they were
predominantly individual in nature.
A peculiarity of the present day, on the other hand, lies precisely in
the ‘folklorisation’ of individual creativity. This has come about
largely thanks to the great extent of the ‘Internetisation’ of the
protester audience, and the dissemination of individuals’ work on
social network sites, accompanied by a loss of authorship. However,
this is by no means the only peculiarity. It is possible to identify
the formation of a specific canon of ‘folk placards’, leaflets, demotivators and other forms of literary and visual creativity. The
limited range of themes that, for whatever reason, came to the
authors’ attention is crucial, and the subsequent creativity develops
either through the independent creation of texts/pictures by different
people on one theme or by the use of a single range of hints and
allusions, a single visual series, a single textual model, or through the
development, deconstruction or re-working of existing placards. The
expectations of the masses, therefore, defined the theme and the
form of the protest’s creative energy, which allows us to discuss it as
a folkloric phenomenon in a certain sense of the word.
The Old
Throughout December the wave of protest creativity grew rapidly,
and was to a large extent facilitated by government reactions,
primarily speeches made by Vladimir Putin that were literally torn
apart into quotations. However, it was not only this that lay at the
base of the protest folklore. It should be noted that we were unable to
identify any succession between present-day events and the protest
wave at the beginning of the 1990s, at least in terms of the specific
nature of the protest events. No doubt there are currently numerous
appeals to the folklore of the past, but the period most noticeably
alluded to is the Brezhnev era. This parallel has been discussed
1
2
In Russian: ‘Boris, boris’ ‘ (literally, ‘Fight him, Boris!’) . [Trans.].
In Russian: ‘Zabil zaryad ya v tushku Pugo’, a variation on a famous line of verse by Lermontov, ‘Zabil
snaryad ya v pushku tugo’. [Trans.]
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among the media,1 primarily after the announcement on 24 September 2011 that Putin would again be running for President. Indeed,
the resemblance was indirectly confirmed by the Government itself.2
The sense of similarity was made explicit on placards throughout the
Moscow protest on 24 December 2011: a placard with the slogan
‘United Russia is the worst form of the Communist Party’ and
a depiction of Brezhnev and Honecker kissing inside the outline of
a bear — the symbol of the party ‘United Russia’ (photo 1)3; and a
placard with a collage depicting Putin in Brezhnev’s dress uniform
with all his medals and the characteristic Brezhnev eyebrows
(photo 2). The Soviet era (and the motif of taking steps backwards) is
also referred to in the caption ‘D j vu time’ written on a small hat in
the form of a cardboard boat with holes cut out for the eyes, worn by
one protester (photo 3). On the other side of the boat was written
‘Freedom of speech?’.
A series of jokes, recently brought up to date to correspond to recent
events, indicates a certain recognition of this resemblance.
1. A crow sits on a tree with some cheese, and below a fox asks, ‘Did
you go to the elections?’ ‘Yes.’ The cheese falls, and the crow wonders,
‘If I had said ‘No’, what would have changed?’ 4 In recent months this
joke began to be widely circulated orally and on the Internet in
relation to the State Duma and Presidential elections:
A crow is sitting on a tree with a piece of cheese. A fox running past
asks, ‘Crow, are you going to vote for Putin?’
The crow is silent. The fox again asks, ‘Well Crow, are you going to
vote for Putin?’
Still she is silent. The fox asks again… But the crow cannot help
herself, and shouts out, ‘YES!!! I’m going!’
Naturally, the fox got the cheese… The poor crow sits thinking to
herself, ‘But if I’d said no, would things be any different?’5
1
2
3
4
5
Cf.: ‘Putin Brezhneva dogonit’ [Putin’s Catching Up with Brezhnev], Kommersant, 3 October 2011.
<http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1785754>; P. Svyatenkov ‘Putin nachal kak Shtirlits, a zakonchil kak
Brezhnev?’ [Did Putin Begin as Stirlitz, and End Up as Brezhnev?] (Informational portal KM.RU.
5 October 2011) <http://www.km.ru/v-rossii/2011/10/05/prezidentskie-vybory-2012-goda/putinnachal-kak-shtirlits-zakonchit-kak-brezhnev> and others.
‘Putin otverg sravneniya sebya s Brezhnevym’ [Putin Rejects Comparisons to Brezhnev] (Lenta.ru.
17 October 2011) <http://lenta.ru/news/2011/10/17/putin1/>.
Most of the photos used are taken by Maria Akhmetova, Mikhail Alekseevsky, Dmitry Gromov, Vadim
Lurye and the author, but some were also found on the Internet. Due to the nature of file sharing on
social network sites it was not possible to identify the names of those who took the photos.
From Aesop’s fable of the Fox and the Crow, adapted by La Fontaine, and most familiar to Russians in
the version by Ivan Krylov (1769–1844). [Trans.].
The website ‘Anekdoty iz Rossii’ [Jokes from Russia] <http://www.anekdot.ru/id/-2040519022/>.
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
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271
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3
2. In other cases we find a more advanced development. A Soviet
joke gained a new lease of life: A bloke is handing out leaflets on Red
Square. He is stopped and the police see that he is giving out blank
sheets. He is asked: ‘Why are they blank?’ and he replies ‘We all know
what’s going on in any case’.
It would seem that in itself this joke did not have a return to popularity
(although it is occasionally recollected in blogs), although its subject
was quite consciously selected as a model for protest. For example,
at the Moscow demonstration on 24 December 2011, round white
badges without any picture were given out, which on the one hand
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can be judged to be a variation on the white ribbon, and on the other
an allusion to the cited joke. There was also a placard on show in the
form of a blank white sheet with a caption underneath that read ‘Why
write anything? We all know what’s going on…’ (photo 4). There was
even a plain white board. Three years earlier (31 January 2009), this
Brezhnev-era joke was dramatised, in a literal sense, by activists from
the movement ‘We’, who stood in front of the Russian White House
in Moscow with placards in the form of blank sheets with mouths
stuck on. After a short confrontation with the police they were taken
to the Department of Internal Affairs. Their arrest reports state that
the demonstrators were holding placards with slogans of antigovernment content.1
Photo 4
3. Similarly it is possible to examine the widely-discussed motif of
money being given by the US Department of State to fund the
protests. On 8 December 2011m at a meeting of the National People’s
Front Coordination Council, Putin announced, ‘The US Department
of State had put hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian
elections.’ This rhetoric is not exactly original — it was used even in
Soviet times, and noisy accusations on similar lines were heard
during the Orange Revolution in Kiev. Accordingly, a wave of
placards has appeared with texts touching upon the theme of receiving
the much talked-about money: ‘Hillary, I’m still waiting for my
money’ (photo 5); ‘I’m here for free’; a white badge (see above) with
‘I’m on the US State Department payroll’ written on with a marker
pen (photo 6) and other examples.
1
‘Pyat’ sutok s chistogo lista’ [Five Days for a Blank Sheet] (the official website of the democratic
movement ‘We’, 3 February 2009). <http://www.wefree.ru/?id=3&news_id=192>.
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
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273
Photo 5
Photo 6
The model by which these kinds of texts were constructed is a joke
that appeared at the end of the 1980s:
Rabinovich calls up the Pamyat Society:
‘Hello. Is that Pamyat?’
‘Yes! What do you want, you Jewish swine?’
‘Is it true that the Jews sold Russia?’
‘Yes!’
‘So where can I get my share?’1
1
The joke itself is linked to the period of perestroika; however, since Pamyat (which emerged in 1985–
1986) had its roots in the Brezhnev era, the joke’s theme is relevant to pre-perestroika times. [Pamyat,
or ‘Memory’, was a conservative nationalist movement of the late 1980s that revived traditional slurs
about how the Jews had ‘destroyed’ Russia. Editor].
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Of course, in this case we are not dealing with a direct quotation, but
the propagandistic tactics of Soviet times are ridiculed in the same
way in each case.
4. There is yet another reference to the Brezhnev era (also, it would
seem, unacknowledged by a section of the protesters, but nevertheless
important) made by the act of wishing Putin a happy birthday in
October 2011 using the hashtag #ThanksPutinForThat on Twitter.
The original idea of a completely pro-Putin flashmob belonged to
Vladimir Burmatov, a party member of United Russia, who had
written a couplet based on the first part of a Soviet-era joke: ‘Winter’s
over, summer’s here — / Thank you, Party, for a lovely year! The sun
is shining on and on — / Thank you, Brezhnev for what you’ve done!’
The flashmob became a mass event, primarily in a spirit of parody.1
5. In our opinion, a reference to the Brezhnev era can also be found
on placards with a text by young people that has a limited comprehensibility: ‘Trick@ry is the Chekist’s friend’2 (photo 7). Along the
sides of the text on the placard were two small photographs of Hitler,
which refers to another motif of ‘Putin is Hitler’ (cf. Putler, Kaputin
and so on). Putin’s Chekist past and the allegations of electoral fraud
call to mind the phrase from the folklore of children’s games — the
deliberate deception or trickery that is followed by self-revelation:3
‘Trickery is the Chekist’s friend!’
Photo 7
1
2
3
The project called ‘SpasiboPutinuZaEto’ [ThanksPutinForThat] on Twitter <http://spasiboputinuzaeto.
com>.
As much as can be judged by the questions circulated on the Internet regarding the meaning of this
phrase and its links to tattoos.
An example from British childlore would be the card-game, ‘Cheat’, the two aims of which are to lie
extravagantly and to expose other players for lying. [Editor].
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MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
6. Finally, one specific event of the Brezhnev era was factually
reproduced at the protest on Sakharov Prospect. It was a representation of the end of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. At
this event, held at the Luzhniki stadium, the symbol of the games —
a bear — was released, carried by balloons. It flew to the accompaniment of a song specially written for the occasion by Alexandra
Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, which contained the following words: ‘Farewell, Moscow, our tender Misha, / Return to
your wood of fairy tales.’ On Sakharov Prospect, besides balloons in
the shape of a bear with these lines written in pen, a special stunt was
organised: a fairly sizeable teddy bear was released into the air,
carried by balloons. In this way the protesters were bidding farewell
to the President and the political party United Russia. On the same
occasion there was another ‘launch’ — of a large portrait of Putin.
According to eyewitness reports, the crowd even sang the song
quoted above. The words to this song first acquired a political
meaning at the beginning of the 1990s, after the State Committee for
Emergency Situations, in relation to Mikhail Gorbachev, and so
quoting it could be considered as another reference to ‘bidding
farewell’ to the first and last President of the USSR.
A series of parallels to today’s protest folklore can be seen in the
folklore of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. The similarity has
been recognised by the public figures themselves. As early as the first
few days of the protests in Moscow, the following joke appeared:
‘A notice displayed in Kiev. ‘For sale, second-hand tent, 7 years old.
Discount for Muscovites’’ (the author first heard this joke in St Petersburg on 6 December).
Unfortunately, we did not have enough material at our disposal to
enable us to put together an adequate picture of the protest culture
during the Orange Revolution, although the data we do have
indicates a similarity. The Ukrainian authorities and Yanukovych’s
supporters also actively cultivated the theme of financial and
organisational involvement by the Americans in the events in 2004.
The propaganda, clumsier than that in Russia, provoked a much
more active and creative repudiation of such claims. The fundamental impulse for the carnivalesque hyperbole used was an absurd
speech made by the wife of one of the two presidential candidates,
Lyudmila Yanukovych, on 30 November 2004: ‘Dear friends, I am
from Kiev, and I can tell you what’s being done there, it’s an orange
rampage. There are rows of felt boots, gloves, scarves, jackets and
tents on these, um, platforms, these mattresses, everything is
American, yes, and there are mountains of orange oranges, and this
is against the background of the ‘orange sky…’, do you see, so, it’s
just a nightmare. And I want to tell you that these oranges are not
ordinary oranges, they’re [drug-]injected ones, people took an
orange, they ate it, they took another, so, and they reach out and
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Photo 9
reach out their hands.’1 The reaction to this speech was a display by
street protesters of felt boots and oranges with the caption ‘Made in
USA’ and the wide dissemination on the Internet of photographs of
‘injected’ oranges (photos 8 & 9).
A significant role is played in Russian protest activity by the meme
‘Party of swindlers and thieves’ (or PZhiV), a name which, thanks to
the subtlety of Aleksei Navalny, has become so widely used that
United Russia even filmed a pre-election agitational video entitled
‘Vote for the party of swindlers and thieves!!!’2 A banner with the text
‘Swindlers and thieves flushed down the toilet’3 simultaneously
rephrases the name of the PZhiV party and a statement made by
Putin on 24 September 1999, which made a threat to terrorists: ‘We’ll
get them, we’ll flush them down the toilet…’
A famous statement made by Vladimir Putin in relation to Mikhail
Khodorkovsky ‘Thieves belong in prison!’4 was assimilated into the
folk name of the United Russia party and became the basis of
numerous slogans. In some, this phrase itself is quoted, either exactly
or in an abbreviated form (‘Put Those Thieves Away!’), while in
others the text has been changed, often to the point of being
unrecognisable, and acquiring new meanings. For example, we encountered a placard depicting a hand with its index finger stretched
1
2
3
4
Video on YouTube ‘Lyudmila Yanukovych, nakolotye apelsiny i amerikanskie valenki [Lyudmila
Yanukovych, Drug-Injected Oranges and American Felt Boots]’ (8 January 2007) <http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=oicOHnK9ihM>.
Video on YouTube ‘Golosui za partiyu zhulikov i vorov!!! [Vote for the Party of Swindlers and Thieves!!!]’
(1 December 2011) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAv54E-zrC4>.
In the sense, ‘exterminated’ (from criminal slang such as mochit bez sortira — ‘to flush someone away
[bump them off] without a toilet’, etc. [Editor].
This phrase was used during a live studio-audience broadcast on 15 December 2010, when the Prime
Minister quoted Zheglov — a character from Stanislav Govorukhin’s film The Meeting Place Cannot Be
Changed [i.e. a famous TV thriller in five episodes first shown in 1979; Zheglov, played by the cult actor
and guitar poet Vladimir Vysotsky, was the senior detective in a section of the Moscow police detailed
to bring down the ‘Black Cat’ gang of robbers. Editor].
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
277
Photo 10
Photo 11
out, pointing down at a dog, with the text ‘Putin, down!’1 (photo 10)
or a black balloon with a picture of handcuffs and the text ‘The
punishment balloon’. Among the placards that picked up the criminal
theme was the following: a drawing of the faces of Putin and
Medvedev face to face, stylized like identikit pictures, with a caption
below: ‘Identikit picture of persons suspected of anti-State activity
and other serious crimes’ (photo 11). A similar placard was in
circulation in Ukraine. It had a photograph of Yanukovych in profile
and side on (like the pictures taken for a criminal case) and the text:
‘Beware, wanted: twice condemned man Viktor Yanukovych for
committing serious crimes against the [illegible] nation. MAY BE
1
Literally, ‘sit!’ (as said to a dog, but also the colloquial expression for serving a prison sentence).
[Editor].
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POSING AS PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE!’1 The Ukrainian version not only plays on electoral fraud, but also on Yanukovych’s two
convictions.
The slogan ‘Churov, count!’ or ‘Putin, count!’ can be considered
a direct borrowing from Ukrainian protest activity. It became
widespread in Russian folk placards after Sergei Parkhomenko
recollected the protests at Independence Square in Kiev ‘There was
a man in Ukraine called Sergei Vasilyevich Kivalov. […] In world
political history Sergei Kivalov will be forever remembered thanks to
the slogan that essentially began the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution”:
KIVALOV, COUNT! […] “Count” in Ukrainian means nothing
more suggestive than “re-count”.2 Kivalov was head of the Ukrainian
Central Electoral Commission, and it was under his leadership that
the scandalous elections of 2004 took place, which were completely
distorted and hijacked by Yanukovych’s supporters. The demand for
a re-count — which in the end was supported by the Ukrainian
Supreme Court — was the beginning of the revolution.’3 In the
bilingual crowd at Independence Square, the association of the
Ukrainian word pidrakhui with swearwords in Russian was patent,
and came to the foreground for Russian speakers particularly. The
imperative was substantivised and became Kivalov’s nickname (his
surname was turned into Kidalov),4 with an obscene connotation.
In an article written in Ukrainian, Natalya Lisyuk records it as
follows: ‘Kidalov-Co*nt5, which bears witness to the obscene
perception of this nickname by those who speak Ukrainian. To the
Russian ear, the obscene component is uniquely relevant, which
leads to such graphic changes as: ‘Putin the count’.
Sergei Kivalov’s personality was played upon in another way in
relation to the deception when counting votes, by suggesting that
he had written an arithmetic textbook: ‘Sergei Kivalov: Arithmetic
from Y to Z.’6 Reflecting the direct parallel to the December protest
activity in Russia was a placard imitating the front cover of a textbook
‘[X7] for ‘dummies’’ with the caption: ‘Vladimir Churov. Arithmetic
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Cf.: <http://www.theorangerevolution.com/orange11.jpg>.
A exact translation would be ‘count up’. [The Ukrainian word ‘pidrakhui’ bears a resemblance to a vulgar
Russian expletive (pidor = bender [derogatory term for a homosexual], khui = prick)]. [Trans.].
S. Parkhomenko ‘O lozunge tekushchego momenta’ [On the Slogan of the Moment] (Ekho Moskvy,
7 December 2011) <http://echo.msk.ru/blog/serguei_parkhomenko/836975-echo/>.
From kidat in the slang sense, ‘to swindle’. [Editor].
N. Lisyuk. ‘Fol’klor yak politychna zbroya’ [Folklore as a Political Weapon] (Ukrainian Centre for
Independent Political Research) <http://www.ucipr.kiev.ua/modules.php?op=modload&name=News
&file=article&sid=5341&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 >.
Ibid. [The literal meaning of the text here is ‘from Ya to Yu’, from the initials of the rival candidates.]
[Editor].
Any subject, e.g. Excel, poker, getting a flat stomach, digital photography, playing guitar and so on.
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
279
Photo 12
for idiots. 4 % + 9 % = 49 %’ (photo 12). It would seem that in the
placards of December 2011 the theme of special mathematics was
developed with far more variety and more actively (using motifs such
as ‘Churov Gauss’, ‘Churov — maths fail’, ‘146 %’ and others).
The last link to Ukrainian protest activity that we identified was the
use of the colour orange. At the protest in Moscow on 24 December
2011 we noticed a person with an orange (not white) ribbon on his
hat. Some Communist supporters wore red ribbons.1
The New
There was much more that was new in the protest folklore in
December than there was old — this demonstrates folklore’s instant
response to new challenges and provocation. Each response merits
separate commentary which it would be impossible to make room for
in an article, therefore we will pause only on several general trends.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the most important, if not the
main driving force of the whole protest activity was the Internet and
primarily social networks. It is no coincidence that the protesters and
the preceding wave of dissatisfaction online were dubbed net hamsters
by their opponents. The ‘online origination’ of the protest was
reflected in ‘folk placards’ in which various symbols and terminology
from social networks were widely used; the same usage can be found
1
I am sincerely grateful to Elena Boryak for her corrections made in this section of the work.
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in jokes. Thus, on Sakharov Prospect there was a placard for the
Pirate Party with a picture of the ‘Like’ emblem (a thumbs up),
which is used on Facebook, and the text ‘It’s time to ‘share’1
government ;)’ (photo 13); a placard with the same symbol but
inverted into a thumbs down (to signify dissatisfaction) and the
caption ‘Not Like’ (photo 14); and a placard with a picture of Putin
and the caption ‘Unlike’ (photo 15). In this way, symbolism from the
blogosphere was transferred to the streets. It is reflected in a joke
circulating online: ‘Sergei is fiercely leading the battle against the
regime. 40 tweets, 25 likes, 4 posts on FB, 2 on VKontakte. He bit his
lip, got up and went to bed. For today, the battle is complete.’
Photo 13
Photo 14
1
The Russian word used is rassharit. This is a word from computer geek slang that combines the Russian
for ‘to widen’ and the English word ‘share’, and it applies to computer files on a local network when it
means ‘to make accessible’ or ‘to make accessible for other users’.
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Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
281
Photo 15
The transfer of Internet images, models and concepts onto the street
not only shows that net hamsters are more accustomed to their own
environment than being on the street, but it is also a direct indication
that they are conscious of their own numbers and unanimity. A very
vivid illustration of this is the practice of making placards from
screenshots in which a Google or Yandex search page is open with
some text entered into the search box and a list of autosuggestions.
One placard showing the Yandex page with ‘United Russia’ typed
into the box had the following list:
united russia party of swindlers and thieves
united russia country against us
united russia moscow oblast
united russia vacancies
united russia moscow
united russia wikipedia
united russia party
united russia wins (photo 16).
Photo 16
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One placard showed the autosuggest options for typing ‘Medvedev’
into Google:
medvedev dances
medvedev twitter
medvedev badminton
medvedev jew
The screenshots are genuine: the author of this article verified the
search, and received almost identical results. Since the list of search
engine autosuggestions usually has the most-typed phrase at the top,
this suggests that the corresponding theory is generally accepted.
Naturally, in reality it is possible to alter the frequency rating of
search criteria (for example for advertising purposes: after the first
few places in the autosuggestion list or search results there are goods
and services). If that is the case in this instance, then the very act of
deploying the people who hacked the search engines to get these
phrases into the autosuggest list transforms these hypothetical
hackers into sophisticated protesters.
One act which could be considered similar was that of attaching an
iPad to a stick or simply holding it aloft by hand while it showed
a slideshow of different images and slogans (photo 17).
Photo 17
Judging by the material we have available, a new feature in the protest
activity of December 2011 in Russia was the abundance of placards
which were not only completely unrelated to the events taking place,
but also often contained captions that were unlike a slogan. Most of
the time these statements were not accompanied by any image. This
series of placards included, for instance: ‘People!!! Love one another’,
‘Peace / Goodness / Love’, We ≠ the Party / We = family’; as well as
‘Glory be to tits!’, ‘Good morning!’, ‘I want a new dress and for all
Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
283
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
shitheads to drop dead!’, ‘Thanks, Pash, now we see!’1, ‘Blah-blah’,
‘I’m looking for a wife!’, ‘I’m looking for a girl’ and others. The latter
two placards may well have been inspired by a widely-circulated comic
video on YouTube summoning people to the protest on 24 December
2011.2 It showed, based on statistical data, that the majority of those
gathering at the protest were young, intelligent, and unmarried men,
and it suggested that no dating site could provide such a wide range of
choice for girls. It would appear that other placards, whether propagating eternal values or demanding the instantaneous fulfilment of
a whim, were developing the theme of the empty placard, suggesting
that whatever you write, it will be correctly understood by onlookers,
because ‘we all know what’s going on in any case’.
Seemingly, this trend began at the Bolotnaya Square protest on
10 December 2011. At the first protest on 5 December the carnival
aspect was only visible in the form of a variety of wordplay on a theme
(in particular, a placard with the text ‘ELECTION? / ELECT
I NO… / ONCE LET I / ENTICE LO!’ was recorded there). As
early as the Bolotnaya Square protest, the slogan ‘Bring back snowy
winter’ appeared along with ‘Bring back fair elections’. The theme of
winter was continued at Sakharov Prospect. At that protest the
following placard was noted with the protester’s demands outlined in
two bullet points:
• Snowy winter
• Fair elections
Still waiting...
The first point was ticked with an orange marker pen (on the eve of
the protest on 24 December it snowed in Moscow). A variation on
this placard simply had the text ‘They brought back snowy winter.
Now it’s the turn of fair elections…’
The current wave of protest folklore is to a great extent based on
intertextuality and comprises an endless combination of different
kinds of hints, references and projections that, as a rule, are understood not by everybody, but by significant groups of people united by
social, generational and cultural factors. In addition to those we have
examined in detail, we will mention one more area that has fed the
protest creativity — a small number of popular films whose characters
speak on behalf of protesters or personify their opponents:
1
2
Users of the social network VKontakte utilised this slogan as a statement addressed to its creator Pavel
Durov in response to permission being granted to view higher quality photographs in the news feed.
However, its presence at Sakharov Prospect could be also due to the fact that Durov refused the FSB’s
request to close opposition groups on VKontakte. [‘Pash’ is the informal vocative of the name ‘Pavel’,
from ‘Pasha’.] [Editor].
Video on YouTube ‘Everyone to the protest!’ (21 December 2011) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_embedded&v=Ly-jqHerbn8>.
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Usage
Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession, di- Placards with shots from the film with the
rected by Leonid Gaidai
captions ‘Not the tsar!’ ‘Tsar unlawful!’.1
Kin-dza-dza, directed by Georgiy Dane- Placards with the characters Wef (Evgeny
liya
Leonov) and Bi (Yury Yakovlev) sitting with
their hands apart (a deferential pose). Caption reads: ‘I’ll tell everyone what that clown
PG’s done to our planet!’2
Animated film The Adventures of Buratino,3 directed by Dmitry Babchenko, Ivan
Ivanov-Vano. This became a source for
placards thanks to the roguish characters
Alice the Fox and Basilio the Cat.
A placard showing Buratino sitting with his
head propped up on his hands. Behind him
are Basilio the Cat and Alice the Fox. There is
a slogan: ‘We don’t forget and don’t forgive’.
Animated film The Little Mermaid, directed by Ivan Aksenchuk. This became
a source for placards thanks to the theme
of ‘the little mermaid gives the witch her
voice in exchange for a magic drink which
makes her into a human.
A placard showing the little mermaid sitting
on her tail. A slogan reads: ‘We don’t forget
and don’t forgive’. On another placard she
is saying to the witch: ‘I’ll give my voice if
I want to’4 (photo 18).5
Harry Potter. The Harry Potter theme At the protest: a person dressed up as Harry
emerged in relation to a widespread meme Potter with tape over his mouth.
of ‘Churov the magician’ that appeared
thanks to a phrase used by Dmitry Medvedev in his address: ‘Well you’re quite the
magician!’ Accordingly, the theme of the
elections as sorcery rather than fair voting
was used to great effect.
TV series House. The theme of a stern doc- A placard with the face of the character
tor informing a patient of their diagnosis Dr House, and the text: ‘UnitedRussitis’
face to face and without beating about the (photo 19).
bush.
V for Vendetta, directed by James A placard with the sign of a V made by parting
McTeigue. Use of the theme of an anony- one’s index and middle fingers6 (cf. the assomous revolution.
ciations with the tick on a ballot paper and
others), Guy Fawkes masks.
1
2
3
4
5
6
The film, a smash hit of the 1970s, has a fantasy time-travel plot in which two Ivan Vasilieviches,
a twentieth-century Muscovite and Ivan the Terrible, end up shuttling between their respective eras.
[Editor].
The cult film Kin-dza-dza (1986) has a satirical science fiction narrative. PG (in Russian PZh) is the
leader of the planet Plok, Bi and Wef members of the patsak underclass. PG is alliteratively identified
with Putin. [Editor].
Based on Aleksei N. Tolstoi’s The Little Golden Key (1936), which itself was an adaptation of Pinocchio
(renamed as Buratino). [Editor].
Also, ‘to whoever I feel like’. [Editor].
This depends on an untranslatable pun, since the word golos in Russian means both ‘voice’ and ‘vote’.
[Editor].
The same symbolism was also used by Putin’s supporters (the so-called ‘United Actions HQ’), who
selected this sign and motto ‘V for Vladimir’ as a slogan for his pre-election campaign.
MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
285
Photo 18
Photo 19
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Other films used included The Matrix, Good Bye, Lenin!, and the
cartoon series The Simpsons.
No less popular as a source for quoting and as proto-texts to which
placards refer were online comics and pieces of street art (placards with
the caption ‘Obey’), as well as short ‘remakes’ of famous films in
videoclip form of the kind found all over the Internet. Thus, according
to the model whereby famous film are remade using Lego figures
instead of actors, the elections to the State Duma were the subject of
the clip ‘Legoelections’1, then, following in its wake, a piece of
performance art: on Sakharov Prospect two girls whose costumes
imitated the Lego figures held up a placard that read: ‘This Duma is
not legotimate’ (photo 20). Alongside a series of short videos re-writing
a fragment of Olivier Hirschbiegel’s film Downfall about the final days
of Hitler (with the subtitles replaced with new text on a completely
different topic), was a video called ‘Hitler and the Opposition’2.
Photo 20
This surge in folk creativity, in keeping with the joke culture of
December 2011, and the plethora of political statements presented in
joke form, were the main distinguishing features of the people’s
protest activity. On the one hand, this demonstrates the shared platform on which people with different — at times opposite — political
views unite, as well as those with no views at all, and on the other
hand it underlines the entirely peaceable, non-aggressive nature of
the protest they are involved in.
Translated by Rosie Tweddle
1
2
Video on YouTube ‘Legovybory’ [Legolections], (15 December 2011) <http://www.youtube.com/
watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AJWl32yENDg>.
Video on YouTube ‘Gitler i oppozitsiya’ [Hitler and the Oppositio] (17 December 2011) <http://www.
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=spseDhbwCvU>.