New anti-Putin youth movement draws old reaction

[Rose Siding]

snip>
They printed fliers, worked the Internet and got several hundred students to join an anti-government march last Saturday through the bitterly cold streets of St. Petersburg.

They also stirred up the interest of some threatening-looking men who left no doubt of their ties to the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. The men told the students they should change the group's name and strongly suggested they shouldn't openly criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin or the war in Chechnya.
...
Obozov, 20, a slight, soft-spoken engineering student, the son of a kindergarten teacher and a factory worker, clearly had been spooked. He was sure he'd been tailed to the interview with a foreign reporter, and several times he lowered his voice to a whisper when speaking about the president.....
...
Young people and university students were instrumental in dislodging authoritarian governments in a number of former Soviet republics and satellites. Most recently, youth groups helped engineer the pro-democracy Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

But that trend has yet to emerge in Russia, where Walking Together (in Russian, Iduschie Vmeste) is the only youth group of any size or political impact. A straight-laced organization that clearly has ties to the Kremlin, its members idolize Putin and wear T-shirts bearing his picture at their rallies.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10798915.htm

[Fenris]

1. Sigh. It never goes away in Russia.