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THREAD: The Kremlin's new crackdown on @Navalny_En‘s FBK anti-#corruption foundation is reprehensible but predictable: as the focus shifted from cosmopolitan Muscovites to the region’s + impoverished public servants, that's when Navalny risked being a threat... /1
...After all, protests in Moscow were awkward + embarrassing, but so long as the security forces remained loyal + effective, that’s all they were. Even at the height of Bolotnaya, this never looked to be a Russian Maidan... /2
...as Navalny targets public servants (including, NB, police) + seeks to build up network in the regions, this could *potentially* be something v different. Kremlin knows #corruption is its Achilles heel, something that can mobilise oppo across class, region, ethnic divides /3
...for a while, the risk didn’t seem worth the flak/hassle of a serious crackdown. Now, an already-jumpy elite seem to be adopting a different calculus: better be ahead of the curve, even at the cost of looking ugly + repressive... /4
...they may well be morally wrong + practically right. I don’t know how many explicitly frame it in these terms, but their nightmare is Solidarity/Poland 1980, massive latent discontent suddenly becoming active because of a random, unpredictable catalyst... /5
...of course, #Russia 2019 is not Poland 1980, in many different ways, but the way that opposition movements can quickly metastasise is not unique to that eg. I suspect the era of limited tolerance, hipster authoritarianism, may be coming to and end. /END
