Of course, we all went to the rallies to defend freedom. But each of us also had personal reasons. Let me confess mine.

I didn't go to the very first one on December 5th last year at Chistye Prudy. Because it was pouring rain, and because I thought no one would go.

I went the next day to the unauthorized rally at Triumfalnaya, where there were about five hundred people, it seemed. And several thousand more stretched along the Garden Ring. I went because it felt like History was passing by, and also because I was ashamed of my cowardice the day before: anyone can write angry posts on Facebook, but to step out onto the street for your declared beliefs — that takes courage. That's what I thought back then. I went to Triumfalnaya with my passport, seriously ready for fifteen days in a holding cell.

My fifteen days never happened. Neither then nor later.

I went to Bolotnaya out of principle, testing my resolve, seeing the police equipment gathering in Moscow, again with my passport and a dramatic, even tragic mindset, convinced that no more than five thousand would show up and that it would be a bloodbath. Seventy thousand came, and it was the first time I felt: now is the moment when everything can change. A passionate moment. Seventy thousand suddenly gathered at the clay feet of the colossus, surrounded them — and it was afraid to crush the ants.

There was this magical moment, there was: when it seemed that we were having a velvet revolution, August 1991, that we could just push a little — and it would roll, fly, crumble, dissipate, pass like a mirage. What needed to be done for this? Encircle the Kremlin? Block the Garden Ring? Declare a general strike? I don't know. And apparently, no one knew. And no one did anything.

Then I went to Sakharov Avenue. Already more to hang out with school friends: I always protested with them. It seemed right to me: to do this with those you know from childhood, in front of whom you don't have to pretend. I thought that's how you should go to rallies: in the crowd. Not as a guest star, but as any participant.

For roughly the same reason, I never climbed onto the podium or asked to, because it seemed to me: for a somewhat public person, there is a very fine line between a civic stance and self-promotion. As, indeed, in politics in general. I thought: if I use my contacts to get on the podium, to get in front of the cameras — it means I'm doing and saying it not out of conscience, but for fame. A somewhat public person can't completely forget about fame, but you can fight with yourself.

Then I went to the White Ring. Well, it was fun, of course, but already there was a feeling that the struggle had degenerated into buffoonery, event making. Soap opera epics with rally approvals — begging the authorities for permission to hold a revolution — also dampened the fervor.

And I went to New Arbat. Then I was at the Writers' Walk — for the company — and once more in the summer, just out of inertia, without any hopes. And then I stopped going. And I won't go on the fifteenth.

Now many in the opposition are repenting, saying they did the wrong things and in the wrong way. That they should have talked to the people, not to themselves. That they shouldn't have been drawing creative posters about Putin being a thief, but sending envoys to grandmothers to agitate them about housing and utilities. I don't think that would have helped.

For velvet revolutions to succeed, you don't need tens of millions to take to the streets across the country. Five hundred thousand in the capital is enough.

Last year's protests were a revolt of the well-fed. The middle class, which was already satiated, took to the streets, and, according to Maslow's pyramid, wanted self-respect. They were humiliated by the vile farcical elections to the Duma — and they came out to give a retaliatory slap. And they continued to come out every time the authorities irritated them. And I went too, because I thought: no, well, now this is a test: will we swallow it or not. I called my friends, and we went.

So why did I deflate?

Not because I'm afraid of the OMON or their new stupidly draconian laws. But because there's no point: the passion has fizzled out, the moment has passed, the struggle at this historical turn is lost. Alas.

And because — let's admit it — our life today is tolerable. We chat on Facebook, our salaries aren't being cut, we travel to Europe as we did. We thought there would be a dictatorship — and they added Lurkmore to the list of banned sites. We expected Pinochet, but Pinochet threw people from helicopters into the sea to leave no trace, while Putin flies with cranes.

There is no struggle because there is no one to fight against again. There is no regime, no System — there is a swamp, their entire power vertical is actually a horizontal, a mutual cover-up between prosecutors, judges, tax officials, the Presidential Administration, and so on at all levels; it's not a colossus, but liquid clay, a lump of dough in mold. And it's advantageous for them to be dough because dough is harder to defeat.

And yes, there were no charismatic leaders among the opposition, the snow revolution did not give birth to heroes. Everyone was too hesitant, too shy, too apologetic. Too well-mannered people gathered there, that's what, but not without a tendency to self-admiration. Navalny, perhaps? — a sweetheart, of course, but that's what spoils him. In general, I listened to their speeches — and overall — "well, yes," but my heart didn't beat in unison. The direction is generally clear, but there's no one to follow. Maybe that's also the problem.

By turning the elections into a puppet theater, the Ozero cooperative put a pressure cooker with a closed lid on the gas stove. Rallies were allowed to lift the lid a little; overall, it worked. And now there is the Coordination Council, it seems to me, infiltrated by emissaries of the Presidential Administration's Internal Policy Department — an ideal kettle with a whistle. The steam comes out, noise is generated, and it doesn't boil over. An organ was created that seemingly doesn't recognize the authorities, but de facto, it is still forced to exist in its coordinate system, which means it is enveloped by it and is already being digested.

Desperately flailing last December, we could have — on magic, on enthusiasm, on the charm of the moment, on revolutionary adrenaline, on the effect of surprise — changed something. But no. We didn't manage.

And I — as an ordinary citizen who went to these rallies — can say this for myself. I won't go to the next rally. And I won't go until I feel: now it's ripening again. Now the situation is forming again. Now I would go out not to show the cameras a "victory" or a creative poster, but if there was a chance to change the fate of the country.

And there's no need for us to worry that today we can't gather a hundred thousand on Bolotnaya anymore — and they have nothing to rejoice about. These people haven't gone anywhere, and they haven't come to love the authorities. They've just spent their zeal on events, didn't have the patience to wait for the revolution. They've hidden their fig in their pocket and are waiting to see what happens next. And when they take their hands out of their pockets next time — who knows, maybe a stone will be clenched in their fist.

‍