The Prokofievs, an elderly lady and her adult son, lived in Butovo, a small village on the outskirts of a big city. They had a log house and a plot of land. Slowly but surely the growing metropolis expanded and threatened to absorb their village. Finally, the moment came when Moscow municipal authorities determined to pull the village down for high-rise construction, with the villagers to resettle in modern apartment blocks. Some snatched at the offer. Others, the mother and son among them, refused to leave their ancestral home.
The city fathers made Shakespearean passions boil round this routine situation. Live television broadcasts from Butovo are a breathtaking sight, with suspense that rivals blockbuster movies. With deafening shouts, the riot police pull down the villagers' rickety barricade. Sobbing people have their arms twisted. The women are thrown into hysterics. Presidential Public Chamber observers murmur something coaxing as the pogrom rages on. "What? Am I to take this as a threat?" a bailiff snarls as Anatoly Kucherena, a well-known city lawyer, tries to persuade the police to stop the attack.
The Butovo residents are not as rustic as they may appear. They know all there is to know about their civil rights, and have their mind on the money. Their plots will be worth several million U.S. dollars by the end of the year, when all landholding papers are to be drawn, to make them as affluent as the New Russians, who settle in their expensive properties in the west of the city. Yet all they are modestly demanding is a $100,000 per capita compensation for their homes.
Municipal functionaries have turned out to be more stingy and obstinate than expected. They wanted the Butovo house owners to make do with the tiny apartments assigned to them. Russian people today, however, are no longer what they were in the Soviet times. They are no longer so docile as to put up with the scraps thrown to them. The public mentality has taken a new turn. It is no longer, "We gratefully take what our betters give us." The authorities no longer "give," they "offer," and their proposals are considered and accepted if they comply with the law and reflect the market situation. The alternative is riot policemen bludgeoning defenseless people and breaking glass: the shortest way to a bloody mutiny. Luckily, the public indignation took the form of organized nonviolent resistance.
The Butovo drama makes me admire the Public Chamber. True, its members may be suspected of hunting publicity-but I wonder if any big Russian official would dare stand unarmed in the way of riot police as they take a barricade by storm.
Anatoly Kucherena is no Robin Hood. He is part of a well-knit checks and balances arrangement. The logic of current developments, and his legal experience put him in the vanguard of protecting the Law. Today, I listen with bated breath to every word he utters, for he is in the crux of a maelstrom that reflects the authorities' desire to settle any matter by brute force, clashing with ONE citizen's determination not to bow to that force-not to agree that might is right, and never mind what motives that citizen has for resistance.
"She [Mrs. Prokofiev] was evicted from her home. She has no roof over her head any longer. She did not get any compensation for her property <...> She will have our support. We will stand up for all those people's rights and interests, and we will insist that the authorities start a dialogue with them," says Anatoly Kucherena. Even if he loses the case and the court verdict demands the Prokofievs' tiny house pulled down, the public will accept it since that verdict rests on the law, unlike the lawless riot police.
