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Occupy Abay
Olga Kravets
Published on 22/08/12
It was a very strange day in Moscow, May 6 2012. I came to photograph the opposition “rally of millions” in downtown Moscow. It was happening just a day before Putin’s come back to power and nobody really expected any police violence. Still many people were arrested and afterwards one would think,- this is it, Russian spring is over. But not everybody went home next day. People were wondering trying to find a place where to set up a camp. By the middle of the night they got it, it was next to a monument of somebody I’ve never heard of before– Kazakh poet Abay Kunnanbaev.So, naturally, the improvised camp called itself “Occupy Abay”.
There were no tents, because it is not allowed by Moscow authorities. People would bring yoga mats to sit on. There was no kitchen, so people would eat cakes and sausages..
It lasted for ten days. People would be having lectures, performances; they would meet each other and fall in love and just few die-hard protestors would stay overnight.
There was definitely one thing missing, the whole thing didn’t look like a political event, instead it looked like a summer camp.
The police evicted the camp very smoothly. It happened just around the sunrise when all the journalists were sleeping after 10 days of nothing really happening.
For foreign eye the Occupy Abay might look completely insignificant. What are we talking about, there were just few hundred people over there! But for a country where for almost twenty years people did not express their political views at all it is a big step. Some people were actually joking, that those conceived at the Occupy Abay will make the new revolution in Russia. Text by Olga Kravets