In an episode that would be hilarious if one read it in the works of Nikolai Gogol or Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, but is actually a grim illustration of Russia’s environmental sickness, officials in a Siberian town were reprimanded last year for painting snow white. Pollution in the coal-mining region is so horrendous that the snowfall is thick with soot and ash. The officials responded, in the time-honoured manner of provincial Russian bureaucracy, by painting over a problem they felt helpless to solve.
Environmental protection is one of several fronts on which lines of confrontation are emerging between an increasingly restless Russian public and the power apparatus of President Vladimir Putin. Dozens of protests have been held across Russia against plans to build vast landfills in the countryside for rubbish from the Moscow metropolitan area and other cities. Simmering sources of discontent include inflation, stagnant living standards, rising retirement ages, new road fees for long-haul truck drivers and efforts to control social media.
If political change is to come in Russia, it may arise from these strongly felt irritations of daily life rather than from the narrower cause of democratic reform embraced by Mr Putin’s most vocal critics. True, weekly demonstrations in Moscow in support of free local elections have drawn larger numbers than at any time since the winter unrest of 2011-2012. The outcry against the arrest of Ivan Golunov, an investigative journalist, on trumped-up drugs charges underlined public indignation at the high-handedness of the police and intelligence services.