The young and the restless
Just when the opposition seemed moribund, Aleksei Navalny brings it to life
年轻人、不安定份子
当反对派奄奄一息之时，阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼使之重获新生。
NOBODY inside or outside Russia saw it coming. The government seemed to have established complete control over politics, marginalising the opposition with nationalist adventures in Ukraine and Syria. Vladimir Putin’s approval rating had stabilised at more than 80%. After Donald Trump’s victory in America, the Kremlin had proclaimed the threat of global liberalism to be over. And yet on March 26th, 17 years to the day after Mr Putin was first elected, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets in nearly 100 cities to demonstrate against corruption, in the largest protests since 2012.
俄罗斯国内国外无人见到它即将到来。通过边缘化那些在乌克兰和叙利亚的军事冒险行动上表达反对的阵营，俄罗斯政府似乎确立了对政局的全面掌控。弗拉基米尔·普京以超过80%的支持率稳若铁桶。在唐纳德·特朗普在美国大选中获胜之后，克林姆林宫宣称全球的自由主义威胁已经终结。但是在3月26日，距普京首次选举获胜17年以后的这天，在近乎100个城市，数以万计的俄罗斯人走上街头示威反对贪腐，这是2012年以来最大的抗议活动。
The protests began in Vladivostok and rolled across the country to Moscow and St Petersburg, which saw the largest crowds. Riot police arrested more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone. The state media ignored the demonstrations; the top Russian search engine, Yandex, manipulated its results to push reports of them down the page. The Kremlin was speechless.
抗议的星星之火起于海参崴，燎穿整个国家到了莫斯科和圣彼得堡，在那里可以得见最大规模的抗议人群。单单在莫斯科，防爆警察就已经逮捕了一千多人。俄罗斯本国媒体对这些示威活动装聋作哑；俄罗斯最大的搜索引擎，Yandex，操纵搜索结果，压制了关于此事报道的网页。克林姆林宫也沉默不语。
The marches came in response to a call from Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner who wants to run for president next year. Despite the government’s crackdown on activism, Mr Navalny has doggedly continued publishing exposés of corruption on social networks and YouTube, and expanding his volunteer organisation. His latest target is Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister. On March 2nd Mr Navalny released a film alleging that Mr Medvedev had used charities and shell companies to amass a collection of mansions, yachts and other luxuries. The video has been watched 15m times on the internet.
边疆地区响应了来自阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼的呼吁，他是一个志于参加明年大选的反对党领袖和反贪腐活动人士。不顾政府对活动家的镇压，纳瓦尔尼坚持在社交网站和Youtube上发布了对贪腐的曝光材料，并且扩充了他的志愿组织。他最大的目标是总理德米特里·梅德韦杰夫。在3月2日，纳瓦尔尼发布了一段影片，断定梅德韦杰夫利用慈善机构和影子公司积累了一批豪宅、快艇和别的奢侈品。这段视频在网络上被观看了1500万次。
The decision to target Mr Medvedev was strategic. Whereas Mr Putin is praised for restoring Russia’s geopolitical power, Mr Medvedev is seen as weak and held responsible for Russia’s economic woes. He is often ridiculed for his taste for Western gadgets and frequent gaffes. (“We have no money, but you hang in there,”he told pensioners in Crimea last year.) He is equally disliked by security-service hardliners, such as Igor Sechin, Mr Putin’s closest confidant, and by moderate technocrats such as Aleksei Kudrin, a former finance minister. Yet the protests were not restricted to Mr Medvedev. Denis Lugovskoi, an engineering student who demonstrated in Orel, 325km (200 miles) south of Moscow, says they were aimed at the whole political elite.
决定把矛头对准梅德韦杰夫是有战略意义的。普京因恢复俄罗斯的地缘政治力量而被称颂，反而梅德韦杰夫被视为废柴大叔并为俄罗斯经济不景气背锅。他因对西方小玩意的品味和频繁出丑而屡遭嘲讽。（他去年告诉位于克里米亚的退休金领取者：“我们穷的一比，你们坚持就是胜利。”）他也不被安全部门的鹰派待见，比如伊戈尔·谢钦——普京的亲信，还有中间派技术官僚，前财政部长阿列克谢·库德林。目前针对梅德韦杰夫的抗议不受限制。丹尼斯· 卢戈夫斯科伊，一个在莫斯科以南325公里（200英里）的奥廖尔示威的工科生，说他们针对的是整个赵家。
Although the crowds were thinner than those in Moscow in 2011-12, they were in some respects more alarming for the Kremlin. The protests of five years ago, sparked by rigged parliamentary elections, were largely confined to Moscow and St Petersburg, and deliberately lacked unified leadership; the educated, urbane protesters considered this a sign of political maturity. Now both demography and geography are much broader. Protests took place in industrial towns in the heartland, such as Nizhny Tagil and Chelyabinsk, and in poorer cities such as Nizhny Novgorod. Meanwhile, Mr Navalny has become the movement’s clear leader. On March 27th a court sentenced him to 15 days in jail for organising an unauthorised demonstration.
在莫斯科的抗议人群虽然比2011年12月那次略少，但是他们在某些方面引起了 克林姆林宫更大的警觉。五年前，因议会选举舞弊而被激发的那场抗议，主要局限在莫斯科和圣彼得堡，并且刻意缺少领导者；受教育的城市抗议者认为这是政治体制成熟的标志。现如今，人数和区域都扩大了。抗议不仅爆发在心脏地带的工业城市，例如下塔吉尔和车里宾斯克，还在高尔基市等稍微穷的城市。与此同时，纳瓦尔尼成为这次运动确定的领袖。在3月27日法院以未经批准组织示威游行为由，判处他15天监禁。
The crowds also reflected a generational shift. Whereas the protests in 2011-12 had a middle-aged core, the rallies on March 26th were filled with people in their teens and 20s with few memories of their country before Mr Putin. With their diverse class backgrounds, the Kremlin cannot portray them as spoiled city hipsters or pitch them against blue-collar workers, as it did with the protesters five years ago. Unlike the 30-somethings who took to the streets back then, these younger protesters have little to lose.
抗议人群也反映了整整一代人的变化。不同于2011年12月那次以中年人为主的抗议，在3月26日的这次集会充满了那些对普京以前的国家没有记忆的年轻人。面对来自不同阶层的抗议者，克林姆林宫无法像五年前对待抗议者那样，把他们扣上“城市纨绔子弟、工人阶级之敌”之类的帽子。不同于那些走上街头的三十多岁的人，几乎没有年轻人错过这次示威。
When the feeling’s gone
With the economy in trouble, the patriotic buzz of Mr Putin’s military exploits is fading. Denis Volkov of the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, writes that for most Russians, the annexation of Crimea “has lost its relevance”. The Kremlin, which successfully suppressed the protests five years ago, has fewer tools at its disposal. Arresting or beating up teenage demonstrators would risk bringing their parents onto the streets. And one of the Kremlin’s chief ideological weapons, the fear of returning to the chaos of the 1990s, is lost on a generation that has no memory of it. Another favourite concept, Russia’s resurgence to great-power status, is also of limited use: most of the protesters take it for granted.
潮水退去
伴随着经济陷入困境，称颂普京军事功绩的爱国网络声音也开始衰减。勒瓦达中心的一个独立民调人士——丹尼斯·沃尔科夫，向大多数俄罗斯国民写道，吞并克里米亚并不适当。成功遏制五年前那次抗议的克林姆林宫现如今无牌可打。逮捕或殴打年轻示威者可能增加其父母走上街头的风险。并且克林姆林宫的主要意识形态武器——对重现九十年代混乱的恐惧，在对此毫无记忆的这一代上已经失败。另一个被偏好的观念——俄罗斯的伟大复兴，也被用烂了：大多数抗议者认为这理所当然。
A group of anthropologists from the Russian Presidential Academy who have studied attitudes among young people say they lack the fear of authority instilled during the Soviet era, and are more attached than their elders to universal values suchas honesty and dignity. The Soviet coping mechanisms of cynicism and double-think are notably absent among the young. They see Russia’s current elite as financially and morally corrupt, and find Mr Navalny’s simple slogan, “Don’t lie and don’t steal”, compelling.
一组来自俄罗斯总统学院，致力于研究年轻人心态的人类学家，说年轻人对苏联时期潜移默化的权威缺乏敬畏，并且与他们的长辈相比较，他们更加喜欢普世价值，比如正直和尊严。充满犬儒主义和双重思想的苏联式应对机制在年轻人中存在感尤其稀少。他们目睹了如今俄罗斯的赵家人在金钱和道德层面的腐朽，并且认为纳瓦尔尼的简洁口号“勿欺勿盗”十分引人注目。
Television, the medium which Mr Putin’s government uses to manipulate mass opinion, has little effect on the young, who mainly get their news from the internet. The power of the regime’s use of television relies on the majority of Russians choosing to be passive spectators of the political narratives which the government creates for them. According to the Levada Centre, most Russians believe that “nothing depends on us.”The younger generation appears to be different. “I need to exercise my civil rights if I don’t want to live my life complaining about the country in which I was born,”says a 20-year-old student in Moscow. “It is wrong to say that ‘nothing depends on us.’Of course itdoes.”
电视，被普京政府用来操纵吃瓜群众观点的媒介，在年轻人中已经毫无影响力，他们主要通过互联网获取消息。这个政权利用电视的动力依赖于大多数的俄罗斯人选择去做被政府捏造的政治叙述的被动接收者。根据勒瓦达中心的调查，大多数俄罗斯人信奉“没什么取决于我们。”年青一代表现出了不同的看法。“如果我不想在抱怨祖国中度过此生，那么我就需要培养我的公民意识，”一位来自莫斯科的20岁大学生说。“说出‘没有什么取决于我们’这样的话无比错误。当然事实的确如此。”