James Cameron invested more than $350 million in a tale of unscrupulous capitalists developing a primeval ecosystem to the chagrin of locals, and grossed $2.7 billion out of it, thrilling half the globe with 2009's Avatar.
This kind of story happens outside the cinemas too – such as in Moscow region's city of Zhukovsky, where a pine forest is being split in two by a highway under construction – but it attracts far less attention in the absence of 3D, catgirls and moral clarity.
Still, it's real enough, complete with beatings, arrests, public protests and guerrilla tactics of cutting away razor wire in the night, as well as a price tag of 14.5 billion rubles ($500 million), and possibly more.
The story is a case study for Russian grassroots activism, which was kick-started by eco-activists protecting a forest two years ago, peaked in this winter's mass political protests in Moscow, which turned violent last week because the authorities and the public are so far no more capable of striking a dialogue than the Na’vi people and the human miners in Avatar.
Pyrrhus Smiling
When the protesters broke the fence (the razor wire was cut overnight) around the construction site on April 29, it looked like victory. An ignored policeman implored the crowd of some 200 to abstain from trespassing, while the Vityaz private guards charged with protecting the site stood aside, some with cameras, others with sheepish smiles.
Things had gone violent at this point the week before, but media vests in the crowd called for moderation. Vityaz commander Alexei, who enjoyed among the protesters a reputation for violence not unlike Avatar’s vicious Colonel Miles Quaritch, has made himself scarce.
The protest peaked with the crowd blocking a huge truck transporting soil across the construction site in the Tsagovsky forest. A sour-faced driver failed to present paperwork allowing the truck to be where it was and do what it did.
Paperwork was promised within hours, but never materialized. Instead, the police, which handled negotiations in place of the builder, state-owned Mosavtodor, promised a meeting two days hence, saying all documentation allowing to cut down some 14 hectares of the century-old Tsagovsky forest will be made available there.
The protesters were not happy, but no one could come up with any alternatives. Camping out at the construction site for days did not seem to be an option under the eyes of Vityaz guards and freshly arrived riot police.
“At least there’s no violence,” a protester observes from the crowd. “The last time, with no press, they went down hard on us.”
He spoke too early. Within 15 minutes, a swarm of riot police came down on two protesters, including a nerdy long-haired youth accused of assaulting an officer.
No one in the crowd saw the confrontation, but dozens surrounded police with chants of “Shame!” and “We won’t let you have them!” But they eventually did, allowing officers to lead one of the men away for questioning.
More trees were bulldozed the next week. City officials told Izvestia newspaper the workers just removed century-old pines brought down by the wind.
The small camp, comprising a couple of tents and a makeshift toilet, was demolished last Monday over fire safety concerns after days of rainy weather.
No Way Around
The saga of Tsagovsky forest can be traced back to 1982, when the century-old forest, boasting pines taller than RIA Novosti’s eight-story, 20-meter-plus building in Moscow, was declared a preservation zone.
Fast forward to 2007, when Zhukovsky, a city of 100,000 a short drive southeast of Moscow that the forest is adjacent to, is crippled by traffic problems impressive even by Russian standards.
Zhukovsky, a “science city” housing aviation industry enterprises, hosts the biannual air show MAKS, attended in 2011 by 440,000 visitors, many of them motorists.
It is also used for transit to the neighboring city of Ramenskoye, with up to 50,000 cars, including many eighteen-wheelers, passing through it daily. And that’s not to mention plans to turn a local airport into a commercial transit hub.
The city needed a new traffic solution, nobody argued with that. But what proved vexing was the idea of putting a new highway connecting Zhukovsky to Moscow region’s road grid through the Tsagovsky forest, demolishing about one-tenth of the 100-hectare forest within city limits.
“This was the optimal option,” then-acting mayor Stanislav Suknov told RIA Novosti in late April. “We had alternatives, but they did not fit the requirements that we drafted jointly with the road constructors.”
“We need this road like we need air to breathe,” he said.
But defenders of the forest say the clumsily planned road – which costs an estimated 14.5 billion rubles – has plenty of cheaper and more effective alternatives.
“The current project solves none of the city’s problems,” local activist Yevgeny Kaminsky says as he launches into a lengthy presentation for the media outlining the flaws of the project and advantages of various alternatives, which include one semi-finished road bypassing the city.
Building a highway through the Tsagovsky forest will allow the city authorities to develop the rest of the forest piece by piece, environmental champion Yevgenia Chirikova said at a press conference of the forest’s defenders in Moscow in late April.
Activists say there are already plans for further construction in the forest, including a shopping mall. City Hall, meanwhile, focuses on its promise to spend 200 million rubles on planting new trees to compensate for the lost pines.
Communication Breakdown
The million-dollar question is whether the deforestation is legal. Activists are constantly demanding that loggers and developers show paperwork confirming their right to do the logging, but rarely get satisfactory answers.
“There are dozens of volumes of documents, possibly hundreds,” acting mayor Suknov said by way of explanation of why the papers are not readily available. “It’s literally a truckload of paperwork.”
Russian ecological legislation does not allow destruction of forests within city limits. However, in 2011, Zhukovsky prosecutors successfully appealed a local council decision from 1982 declaring it a protected area – which paved the way for deforestation.
The legal battle dragged on since 2008, complete with more lawsuits, complaints to governmental agencies, signature collecting and rallies in Zhukovsky, but the city administration pressed on.
“All branches of power have betrayed the citizens,” said Anastasia Grigoryeva, a journalist from the local independent weekly Zhukovskie Vesti, which is campaigning in defense of the forest.
In March, developers moved to cut down some 14 hectares of pines in the forest. Environmental activists said the city was full of riot police at the time, ready to suppress any sign of dissent.
But dissent seethed on. A drive was launched to halt construction and replant the area with new pines – at the city’s expense – and some 50 activists camped out outside the construction site, looking to stop the work.
It was then that things began to turn ugly. A protest in the forest on April 21 deteriorated into an attack on the fence, but in absence of press, the private guards offered tough retaliation, beating back the protesters, some of whom, including three underage teenagers, were briefly hospitalized.
“It’s a new dawn for our civil society,” activist Chirikova quipped at the conference in April. “They’ve never assaulted children before.”
The protesters were the attacking party, with private guards only retaliating, city police said at their own press conference last month.
Brotherhood of the Black Eye
“I got it in the forest,” says Rostislav, pointing at his black eye. It was eight days since the clash on April 21, but the bluish injury still draws attention. So does Rostislav, shaved bald, so stocky he’s square, with fantasy tattoos on his forearms and an open, almost childish smile.
Rostislav is a National Bolshevik, a proud member of the banned radical party of writer Eduard Limonov. He is more of a nationalist than a Bolshevik, by his own admission, which makes him out of place at a protest full of eco-anarchists waving their black-and-green flag to the tune of Rage Against the Machine.
But Rostislav is unfazed by the unheard-of alliance of nationalists and the radical left, who wage a relentless covert battle in Russian streets worthy of its own saga.
“We’re all united in defense of the Russian forest,” he says.
Most campers in the forest, including Rostislav, are radical activists from outside of Zhukovsky. “I’m ashamed there aren’t more of us,” said Boris, one of the few locals who attended the protest event on April 29 which ended in the fence brought down in front of the press.
The city administration does not miss its chance to point out protest’s roots. “About 70 percent of active protesters are from outside Zhukovsky,” mayoral aide Yevgeny Solodilin wrote in an article on the PublicPost news website earlier this month. “Many come here to make a name for themselves in politics.”
No Deforestation Without Representation
A Levada Center poll paid for by local activists in 2010 showed that 81 percent of Zhukovsky residents oppose any kind of construction in Tsagovsky forest. The poll had a margin of error of more than 7 percentage points, but the figure is nevertheless telling.
However, only 16 percent said they were ready to participate in rallies against the construction. The rest were only willing as far as to come to public hearings about the issue and sign petitions.
There are 100,000 people in Zhukovsky, but only some 2,000 to 3,000 attended the pro-forest rallies and some 200 to 300 came to protest events at the construction site, risking tussles.
The standoff between police, Vityaz warriors and men with anarchist insignia is still ongoing at the barren ground that was part of the Tsagovsky forest on April 29, but just 500 meters outside it, young mums are airing their offspring in the park and skaters hone their skills at a playground. It is as if Avatar’s protagonist Jake Sully and his Earthling friends were fighting to preserve Na’vi’s sacred site from miners with the catpeople themselves watching from the sidelines.
“I cannot attend the protests, myself,” says local resident Svetlana, pointing at her baby carriage. “But I’d like to know more about possible alternatives to the highway, and I do think the protesters are doing the right thing there.”
Most locals, however, are reluctant to take up the topic. “We need the road,” a man in his fifties says, hurrying his companion away. The other man starts saying something about the protests coming too late, but his friend hushes him. They refuse to give even their first names.
Grassroots Déjà Vu
The Tsagovsky forest is colloquially known as “Khimki Forest 2.” Indeed, the déjà vu is eerie: since 2010, the administration of the city of Khimki on the other side of Moscow has been pushing to demolish part of a local forest for the sake of an $8-billion Kremlin-backed highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg, dismissing vocal opposition to the project.
Protesters, headed by the same Yevgenia Chirikova now involved with Tsagovsky forest, campaigned, camped out and clashed with developers. Two activists were beaten into permanent disability by thugs who still go unpunished.
The story hit the media spotlight in 2011, thanks to Chirikova’s relentless protest drive. The Kremlin even ordered the construction to be put on hold for a while, though later sanctioned its resumption, saying it was too late to turn back.
However, the Khimki forest standoff was a milestone for emerging Russian grassroots activism, which turned political this winter. When tens of thousands rallied at anti-government protests in Moscow this winter, the fiery Chirikova was one of the rallies’ organizers.
The protests – the first of this magnitude after a decade of complacency – resulted in notable, if not radical, softening of political legislation.
But as most analysts pointed out, the Kremlin did not attempt to engage in a proper dialogue with emerging grassroots opposition – a situation not unlike the standoff in Zhukovsky.
“It’s a typical thing for neighborhoods outside Moscow,” regional analyst Alexei Titkov said. “A coalition of authorities and real estate developers pushes forward with construction, and whoever opposes it is declared either an obscurantist or a provocateur.”
“There is no counterbalance to developers,” Titkov said. “We have rules and regulations, but they are just not implemented.”
Land around Zhukovsky is priced at 10 million to 25 million rubles ($320,000 to $800,000) per hectare on average, according to real estate database Realty.dmir.ru.
The general public remains mostly apathetic because environment remains far down the list of priorities for most Russians, he said.
But some protesters are more upbeat about the rise of eco-conscience. “There are more locals and less outsider activists here than in Khimki forest. Its defenders paved the way for us with their sacrifices,” said Alexei Sakhnin, aide to federal opposition lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, both of whom supported Tsagovsky forest defenders.
The Mosin Rifle
When police led away an alleged cop beater from Tsagovsky forest on April 29, the crowd slowly dissipated.
“There’s no way of reasoning with them,” Alexei Bychkov said, staring at the cops in the distance with an embarrassed smile.
“I would really like to pick up a Mosin rifle and go at them,” he continued with the same smile, the bloodlust in his words not matching the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He sported a Soviet-era worker’s jacket that has clearly seen decades of use.
Bychkov soon bowed out, saying he has an evening shift at the city’s Gromov Flight Research Institute, but not before apologizing for fellow city residents ignoring the protest in the forest.
He was the only protester who agreed to give his full name for publication. But he was not the only one in Tsagovsky forest to call to arms that day.
Plenty of Tsagovsky forest defenders, including Rostislav the National-Bolshevik, turned up in the thick of things on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on May 6, when hundreds of opposition activists clashed with police.
There were no firearms on Bolotnaya, but stones and flares flew about liberally, some 30 cops were injured and some 650 protesters briefly detained – with Rostislav among them.
