Volonté Générale 2015 - n°1
held on December fourth. After the first unsanctioned march on fifth of December there were several massive demonstrations, each of which attracted around 100.000 people. Sociologist Anna Zhelninashows that, according to the VTsIOM's survey, ‘at the outset of the protests, young clerical workers, young “creative” workers, and students made up to thirty percent of protesters, but by the end of June 2012 they constituted fifty percent.’8 In her text, she examines the protests in the same fashion as David Harvey investigated the Occupy movement, namely, as a urbanites’ demand of a ‘right to the city’. (It’s noteworthy that ‘This is our city’ was one of the most frequently used chants of the protesters). Understood in this way, the protests manifest a certain political outcome of a variety of practices that were aimed at improving an urban space, but lacked the sufficient results because of a too controlled social and political environment. Taking into account the top-bottom fashion of regulating different creative urban projects, the disillusion of the young urbanites in the statebacked policies seems like a reasonable consequence. Inability to a necessary extent influence local policy-making ultimately fueled the protest activities, but the violent clashes with the police forces on sixth of may 2012 proved that any truly fruitful dialogue with the authorities is unlikely. With no other response from the authorities but police brutality and restricting laws (enormously increased fines for organization and even participation in the unsanctioned demonstrations), many of the young urbanites embraced an old-good Do It Yourself paradigm. The so called ‘theory of the small deeds’ was widely introduced into both media and social landscape. ‘Since the protests did not really succeed in changing the political system in Russia, the idea of ‘small deeds’ has become popular among younger participants in the protest rallies: they have turned their energies toward improving life in their own ‘backyards’. With no support from the local authorities, these small deeds were
aimed at analyzing and improving city problems (DIY-filling of the infrastructure lacks, dealing with the environmental issues, and various other types of urban activism) and were conducted by a number of activists whostopped dreaming about an overthrow of Putin’s regime and started working on the living space by the means at their disposal. As Zhelnina rightly mentions, an attention to public spaces and relevant urban issues has emerged, however, mostly among young cognitive and creative professionals working in the cultural, educational, and leisure industries. Dominated by architects and designers, thematic discussion clubs and events regularly take place, attracting the wider “creative’ public as well.9
To this DIY movement also belong activities of the ‘Partizaning’ group with their artistic urban interventions (imitating social advertising in the public spaces, creating new subway maps, etc.) and, for instance, Yekaterinburg-based street artist Tima Radya who incorporated political messages into very original street-art projects. However, this artistic appeal may be considered as a major shortcoming of these activities since their messages seemed to be hardly discerned by a majority of the city populations.
A Zeitgeist of despair
Nevertheless, as Zhelnina states, however exclusive such projects might be, progress is still evident: educated young professionals aiming to live a cosmopolitan, creative life-style have been claiming their right to the city by changing spaces and reshaping attitudes to urban life. The fact that these changes have focused on their own social milieu is easy to explain: new stakeholders in urban transformation have come
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