Just days after Alexey Navalny’s arrest in the Moscow airport and the publication of his killer video on “Putin’s palace,” a digital rebellion is underway in Russia, involving millions of teenagers and elder users of social media.
As of Jan. 21, the investigative video on the luxury mansion had broken all records, garnering more than 50 million views in just two days. (Navalny’s previous YouTube blockbusters were slightly less successful: nearly 39 million views for the 2017 film about then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev’s alleged corruption, and 23 million for last December’s video about the FSB’s reported attempt to kill the opposition leader.)
Much turmoil followed on TikTok, which recently emerged as one of Russia’s most popular social platform with 22.4 million monthly active users as of mid-2020.
“Navalny stay alive,” “Putin’s Palace” and “23 January” – the date of the upcoming street protests which Navalny called for – are now among the most popular Russian-language hashtags on TikTok.
In just two hours on Jan. 21 evening, videos associated with the hashtag “23января” (23January) jumped from 89.8 million to 94.7 million views, East-West Digital News noticed. In total, videos with hashtags related to these protests garnered more than 220 million views, according to Rain TV.
Many of these videos show school pupils dressing up for the street protests, defying or mocking the police or secret services.
Teens also filmed themselves removing Putin’s portrait from the walls of their classrooms, sometimes replacing them with Navalny’s photo.
@almorozova #навальный #свободунавальному быть против власти – не значит быть против Родины
♬ оригинальный звук – новый год кончился…
@aaserv пов: 23 января сын уходит за справедливостью #servand #navalny
♬ оригинальный звук – VisAVis
A variety of celebrities joined the online rebellion: singer and actor Ivan Alexeyev alias Noize MC, Russian-Belorusian actress Aliaxandra Bortsich, exiled economist Sergey Guriev, musician Mark Pokrovsky, the Kasta rap group, actress and blogger Varvara Shmykova, and many others, have recorded YouTube videos urging to free Navalny.
Other social network users have reacted in defense of president Putin — some influencers being offered money to do so. A number of videos are calling to avoid the Jan. 23 rallies, warning that protesters might “get accidentally killed” or alleging the police has received instructions to shoot into the crowd.
Meanwhile, thousands of bots created or activated accounts on social networks to follow opposition activists, seemingly aiming to get their pages blocked.
State-backed dissuasion campaign
Roskomnadzor, the state censor, has urged social networks to stop spreading information that “incites underage users to participate in unauthorized meetings.” These may “put people’s health and lives at risk” in this time of pandemic.
The authorities claim that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok , VK and Youtube have partly addressed their request.
On their side, school and university administrators across the country are openly taking part in the dissuasion campaign. Pupils, students and their parents are being warned that participation in the rallies is prohibited, and that contraveners may be expelled from schools, blacklisted by the authorities, fined or arrested by the police.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin preventively instructed all colleges, after-school workshops and children’s clubs to resume in-person attendance on Friday, on the eve of the protests, The Moscow Times reported. Meanwhile, Bashkir State University announced that there would be classes on Saturday, January 23, due to the “non-fulfilment of curriculum.”
In late 2011 and early 2012, massive discontent over fraudulent elections spread widely across Russia through Facebook and other social media, fuelling large-scale demonstrations in the capital. The crisis ended with numerous arrests; it also triggered the authorities to adopt a series of ever-more repressive Internet laws all along the decade — without going as far, however, as banning foreign social media.
The near future will tell if, this time, the youth’s digital rebellion will turn into massive real-life unrests. But the online events of the last days have already offered a new historic demonstration of the irrepressible power of social media in Russian politics.
Russian student Dmitry Khozikov, an active social media user, contributed to this story.
