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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 demon- strations 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. 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 Andrei Moroz said, even then, alongside serious slogans Russian State University such as ‘Yeltsin is the faith, hope and love of for the Humanities, Moscow Russia’, ‘Government! Quit mocking history!’ [email protected] or ‘Shame on Garbachov_Yazov_Kuzmin! And
1 We would like to thank Andrei Moroz for his help with some tricky linguistic problems in the material cited. [Editor]. 269 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. Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011 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, de- motivators 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 In Russian: ‘Boris, boris’ ‘ (literally, ‘Fight him, Boris!’) . [Trans.]. 2 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.] No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 270
among the media,1 primarily after the announcement on 24 Sep- tember 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 Cf.: ‘Putin Brezhneva dogonit’ [Putin’s Catching Up with Brezhnev], Kommersant, 3 October 2011.
Photo 1 Photo 2
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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 No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 272
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 anti- government 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 offi cial website of the democratic movement ‘We’, 3 February 2009).
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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]. No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 274
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 comp- rehensibility: ‘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 The project called ‘SpasiboPutinuZaEto’ [ThanksPutinForThat] on Twitter
6. Finally, one specific event of the Brezhnev era was factually reproduced at the protest on Sakharov Prospect. It was a repre- sentation 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 accom- paniment of a song specially written for the occasion by Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, which contained the fol- lowing 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 Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011 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 Pe- ters burg 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 funda- mental 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 No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 276
Photo 8 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 en- countered a placard depicting a hand with its index finger stretched
1 Video on YouTube ‘Lyudmila Yanukovych, nakolotye apelsiny i amerikanskie valenki [Lyudmila Yanukovych, Drug-Injected Oranges and American Felt Boots]’ (8 January 2007)
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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]. No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 278
POSING AS PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE!’1 The Ukrainian ver- sion 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 Cf.:
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. No 8 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 280
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
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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 fi les on a local network when it means ‘to make accessible’ or ‘to make accessible for other users’. 281 MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011
Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011 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).
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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 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 pro- pagating 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’. Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011 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 under- stood 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 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]. 2 Video on YouTube ‘Everyone to the protest!’ (21 December 2011)
Film 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). Cap- tion reads: ‘I’ll tell everyone what that clown PG’s done to our planet!’2 Animated film The Adventures of Burati- A placard showing Buratino sitting with his no,3 directed by Dmitry Babchenko, Ivan head propped up on his hands. Behind him Ivanov-Vano. This became a source for are Basilio the Cat and Alice the Fox. There is placards thanks to the roguish characters a slogan: ‘We don’t forget and don’t forgive’. Alice the Fox and Basilio the Cat. Animated film The Little Mermaid, direct- A placard showing the little mermaid sitting ed by Ivan Aksenchuk. This became on her tail. A slogan reads: ‘We don’t forget a source for placards thanks to the theme and don’t forgive’. On another placard she of ‘the little mermaid gives the witch her is saying to the witch: ‘I’ll give my voice if voice in exchange for a magic drink which I want to’4 (photo 18).5 makes her into a human. 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 Medve- dev 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 asso- mous revolution. ciations with the tick on a ballot paper and others), Guy Fawkes masks.
1 The fi lm, 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]. 2 The cult fi lm Kin-dza-dza (1986) has a satirical science fi ction narrative. PG (in Russian PZh) is the leader of the planet Plok, Bi and Wef members of the patsak underclass. PG is alliteratively identifi ed with Putin. [Editor]. 3 Based on Aleksei N. Tolstoi’s The Little Golden Key (1936), which itself was an adaptation of Pinocchio (renamed as Buratino). [Editor]. 4 Also, ‘to whoever I feel like’. [Editor]. 5 This depends on an untranslatable pun, since the word golos in Russian means both ‘voice’ and ‘vote’. [Editor]. 6 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. 285 MASS PROTESTS IN DECEMBER 2011 Andrei Moroz. Protest Folklore in December 2011
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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 plat- form 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 Video on YouTube ‘Legovybory’ [Legolections], (15 December 2011)