The meeting near Russian government headquarters commemorating the putsch of August 19-21, 1991, August 19, 2007
Photo: Äàíèèë Çèí÷åíêî
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Putsch Looks Different through Prism of History
About 50 people gathered in front of Russian government headquarters yesterday to mark the anniversary of the event at that site August 19-21, 1991. Almost all of those at the action had been acquainted since the time of the events they were remembering. A recent survey shows that Russians are apathetic toward the putsch, although the number of those who had a negative view of the actions of the democrats is shrinking.
The police did not allow the picketers onto Gorbaty Bridge, so they uncomplainingly moved to the area in front of the monument to the revolutionaries of 1905. There, various members of the group spoke at a meeting that lasted about an hour. All the speakers expressed disappointment with developments in the last 16 years.
“Obviously, of course, there is no dictatorship now, but you can't call what is going on in the country democracy. Political dwarfs have run in all the recent elections,” said Lev Shumaev, who defended democracy there in 1991. “We have no independent courts, no free media or normal government. The road to democracy has proven much longer than we thought,” added leader of the movement For Human Rights Lev Ponomarev.
There were no incidents at the meeting, aside from aloud argument between two attendees, who called each other “followers of Putin.”
A Levada Center poll published last Friday shows that attitudes toward the attempted coup of 1991 show that the number of those who think that the mutineers were right has shrunk from 21 percent in 2002 to 8 percent this year. Those who think that “the country has taken the wrong direction” since 1991 have decreased from 50 percent in 2002 to 37 percent today. Those who think the opponents of the putsch were right remain at 17 percent of respondents. Those who are satisfied with the country's course since those events are at 28 percent this year. That figure has varied between 25 percent and 30 percent since 2003.
There were also increases among respondents who considered the putsch “an episode” in the battle between groups in power and those who attributed it to the greed of Soviet officials. Head of Levada Center Lev Gudkov called attention to the fact that the number of respondents who were unable to give answers, thought both sides wrong or avoid making political judgments has also grown sharply. He noted that there is a “politically amorphous mood” in the country today.
www.kommersant.ru
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 20, 2007
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