MOSCOW ? The Kremlin?s chief political strategist sought to soothe the discontent of street protesters a day before another large planned rally by saying in an interview published on Friday that the government has already acquiesced to many of their demands.
?The system has already changed,? Vladislav Y. Surkov, a former advertising man who has crafted the Kremlin?s public messages for years, said in the interview published in Izvestia newspaper.
His comments continued what appears to be a two-pronged effort to defuse street protests with concessions, while attacking its already splintered leadership with accusations of foreign backing.
With 40,000 people indicating on a Facebook forum that they would attend a protest on Saturday in Moscow, the highly influential Mr. Surkov made a point of bowing to some criticism, saying the Russian government had grown ?deaf and stupid before your eyes.?
But he insisted that calls for change had been heeded, pointing to Thursday?s state of the nation speech by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who leaves office within a few months. Mr. Medvedev, who has always labored in the shadow of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, recommended long-sought political reforms, including restoring direct elections for governors and creating an independent public television station for news.
?Tectonic structures in society are shifting, the social fabric is taking on a new quality,? said Mr. Surkov. ?We are already in the future. And the future is not calm. But there?s no need to be afraid.
?Turbulence, even strong ? is not a catastrophe, but a form of stability. All will be fine.?
Mr. Surkov, who is an amateur novelist and author of rock music lyrics, is an architect of the Russian government?s plans to counter street politics, which were drawn up after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine pointed up the dangers. To his critics, he is a man who long ago moved from advertising to propaganda.
He vilified those protesters who he said represented foreign-inspired interests, repeating a formulation many officials in Moscow have used to dismiss the unrest, distinguishing them from the home-grown variety. ?The point is not these scoundrels,? Mr. Surkov said. ?It?s the absolutely real and natural protests. The best part of our society, or rather, the most productive part, is demanding respect for itself.?
?People are saying, ?We exist, we have significance, we are the people,? ? Mr. Surkov said of the protesters. In an earlier interview he had characterized these people as ?annoyed urbanites,? a demographic of creative, urban-dwelling professionals whose lifestyle now seems out of step with the country?s political system. ?It?s impossible to arrogantly wave away their opinion? and important that the government respond, he added.
However, he said, ?Some want to convert the protests into a color revolution,? something that the Kremlin will not tolerate.
Some Russian protesters, Mr. Surkov said, are using the methods of Gene Sharp, an American academic and Russian bogeyman whose studies of nonviolent political change formed a template the Kremlin has said was used to topple governments in the color revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the last decade, and in the Arab Spring uprisings today.
?They are acting literally according to Sharp?s book and contemporary revolutionary methods,? Mr. Surkov said. ?So literally that it is even boring. I?d like to advise these gentlemen to deviate a bit from the instructions, to fantasize.?
The Russian government devised a litany of tactics to counter street movements of the type advocated by Mr. Sharp, like deploying crowds of pro-government youth to disrupt demonstrations and setting up ice rinks or children?s fairs in politically important public spaces.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bdcdc4e90767000191e018c8196de5a8
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