Moscow orders end to anti-Putin ‘occupy’ sit-in

A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered the police to break up a week-long occupy protest that spontaneously emerged on a scenic square after strongman Vladimir Putin’s swearing in for a third Kremlin term.

The city district court said it was acting on behalf of local residents who complained of too much noise. A judge ordered the authorities to immediately “liquidate” the camp and clear the area.

The small but daring action — not seen in any Russian city since Putin’s domination began in 1999 — tested the limits to which the ruling elite was willing to put up with a form with dissent now popular in much of the West.

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Demonstrators Find Poetry in 'Occupy Moscow' Movement

Richard Boudreaux writes for the Wall Street Journal

Forget the youthful bloggers, pro-democracy crusaders and TV celebrities who launched Russia's five-month-old movement of street protests against autocratic rule. The anti-Kremlin crowd has a new unifying symbol: Abai Kunanbayev.

Never mind that he lived 2,000 miles away on the Central Asian steppe and died nearly 108 years ago. Or that few Russians had heard of him until this week. The Kazakh poet, composer and philosopher—represented by a 20-foot-tall bronze statue—just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Starting with President Vladimir Putin's inauguration Monday, protesters in Moscow had been scurrying from one public square to another, pursued round the clock by riot police who were detaining hundreds. When the police backed away late Wednesday, the mobile crowd found itself under Abai's Buddha-like gaze in a public park and dug in there, creating the first Occupy-style challenge to Mr. Putin's 12-year rule.

The unlikely rise of the camp, a new test of the limits of dissent here, reflects the improvisation and fluid tactics of an opposition movement held together as much by Facebook and Twitter as by any leader. By Friday, #OccupyAbai had become the most popular hash for Russia's Twitter users. Activists in the camp held a public reading of the writer's poetry, embracing it as humanist.

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Local bookstores report surging sales of Abai's once-obscure poetry collections. Demonstrators lay white carnations at his statue's granite base. A public poetry reading at the base of the statue featured such lines as:

"No one possesses a power enough to intimidate people nowadays." And "Train your will; it is the armor that keeps the mind alive."

"It's a funny coincidence that he has become this trendy person and everyone wants to read his stuff," said Marina Dikareva, an 18-year-old student who had attended.

Abai, born to a wealthy Kazakh herder in 1845, was educated and enlightened by Russian students who had been exiled by the czar to his family's lands for having protested a death sentence—later commuted—that was meted out to a prodemocracy activist. ...