A Modern Protesting Ground
Today, Red Square remains open to the inhabitants of Moscow as a place to raise their voices and criticise the government. There have been many protests in the post-Soviet era, with a recent, and notable riot being that of Pussy Riot’s demonstration in Red Square, in front of St Basil’s Cathedral. The radical feminist group ‘have become the latest symbol of young Russian discontent’[1], which brings a fresh group of people who are using Red Square as a place to demonstrate their dissidence.
In 2014, huge rallies of thousands of people gathered in Red Square ‘to protest the conviction of the top Kremlin critic and his brother, in one of the boldest opposition demonstrations in Russia in years’[2], implying that these more recent protests are much closer together in frequency than those that occurred centuries ago. This would suggest that Red Square is now also a place that inhabitants feel they can use frequently, and has become normalised as a place for protest in Moscow.
It appears as though Red Square has evolved through its palimpsest into a space that can be called the People’s Haven, since the people of Moscow now feel that the Square is appropriate to protest, from more conventional forms of protest such as rallies, to less conventional ways of protest, such as artistic self-expression in the form of nudity, and performances in the style of Pussy Riot. Red Square remains loyal to its characteristic of being a public sphere that is open to the public to display their ideas and contest the work of government, more so than it has been in the past.