14 years ago, the "March of Millions" took place in Moscow. Looking back on the protest with our ed...

14 years ago, the "March of Millions" took place in Moscow. We remember the protest together with our editor, and formerly a defendant in the "Bolotnaya case," Alexey Polikhovich

14 years ago, I was a young, enthusiastic anarchist who went to a big opposition rally in Moscow. That rally changed my life quite a lot, and it seems it changed Russia quite a lot too.

The "March of Millions" on May 6, 2012, was one of the most iconic protests in the country's modern history. Back then, on the eve of Putin's third inauguration, tens of thousands of people came out onto the streets of Moscow. It was one of the last breaths of the white-ribbon protests that had begun in December 2011.

Bolotnaya then united Navalny, Nemtsov, Udaltsov, socialists and liberals, right-wingers and left-wingers. At the very least, they all fit into one square, getting by with practically

no insults.

And although the rally had been authorized, yes, that used to happen too, the security forces set up a cordon at a narrow point on the approach to the square, thereby creating a bottleneck. And the columns heading to the event site ran into a wall of OMON riot police and conscripts. And behind the backs of that cordon, the road to the Kremlin was blocked by the mighty orange hulks of watering trucks.

The protesters tried to break through, and OMON responded with mass violence, detentions, and beatings. It all turned into mass clashes between the rally participants and the police.

The Investigative Committee would later call it "mass riots

on Bolotnaya Square." More than 30 people were charged in the criminal case, and dozens of people received sentences of several years in prison camps for touching OMON officers.

I myself served 3 years and 3 months in this case. None of the police officers who used violence against protesters that day

were punished.

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