Eastern exposure: Russia’s telling protests

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Over centuries, Istanbul's stunning Hagia Sophia shifted from cathedral to mosque to a proud symbol of modern Turkey's secularism. Now the president has turned it back into a mosque, a distraction tactic that isn't playing well at home or abroad. And today, production will end for the Segway, a two wheeled, self balancing gizmo that was in its way ahead of its time. It was supposed to be a transport revolution, but in the end, it only revolutionized how tourists and mall cops get around. First up, though, Unrest has taken hold in Russia's Far east over the past several days, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in towns across Khabarovsk, a region that borders China. Demonstrators chanted slogans such as Putin resign and demanded the release of the region's governor, Sergei Fergal. Mr. Fargall was arrested last Thursday on suspicion of multiple murders that took place in the early 2000s. In the eyes of the protesters, his sudden arrest was politically motivated, coming just after a rigged referendum on changes to Russia's constitution. Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin thanked voters for endorsing amendments that reset his term limits, allowing him to remain in power. 2036, the vote has ushered in a wave of repression as journalists have been intimidated or detained by Russian authorities. Mr. Furgal denies the charges against him. His arrest is being seen as just the latest strike in the crackdown, and voters in the Far east are furious.

The scale of the protest in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far east, has surprised even those who had watched the events over the past few days and weeks and months. 30,000, 40,000 people on the streets of Khabarovsk, a city of 600,000 is 5% of the population.

Arkady Ostrovsky is our Russia editor.

The trigger for the protest was the arrest of a popular regional governor who was elected two years ago, winning the election against the Kremlin's preferred candidate. He was arrested on charges of murder, organizing murder, about 15 years ago. But when people came out, they came out under the slogans of Moscow, get out of the region, Moscow, hear us, Putin resign. It was much bigger than the initial trigger suggested.

So essentially, the protesters see the arrest of this regional governor as politically motivated, I guess. But why would you say the protests themselves are so significant?

The timing of this political crisis is in itself very important and interesting because it has come really just a week after Putin's referendum, or pseudo referendum, on constitutional changes, which will allow him to stay in power past 2024, when he was obliged to step down in accordance with the current constitution. And for this to happen on the week after was not just a coincidence. I mean, what the Kremlin was very aware of, I think, is that Putin's legitimacy is waning. The way in which he tried to affirm it through this fake referendum contributed to. To the weakening of his legitimacy. And now the Kremlin has to reaffirm it by other means. And the only means that really has at its disposal is repression. So it picked this one governor who in 2018, won the election in a completely surprising way and became quite popular. Local politicians were never that popular. And when the Kremlin charged them with corruption or with any other malpractices, people cheered that. Suddenly the rating of this governor started to overtake Putin's own rating. And people now see regional authority as sort of almost a protection against the center, against Moscow. And in the Far east in particular, which is a frontier region, we're talking about people who feel they are the core Russia, they are the real country, and they've been taken advantage of by Moscow. They see Moscow as a threat.

So these protesters simply want their governor released.

What they really want is federalization. You know, Russia on paper, is a federal state. They've been deprived of their resources, they've been deprived of their decision making. What really happened here is that they feel they've elected this governor. He may be a murderer, he may be not. That's not the point. The point is they've elected him and Moscow is taking him away. What they're saying is we want our decision making powers back, please.

And how do you think the Kremlin will respond to that kind of push?

The Kremlin has not really used force. There has been no crackdown. That is not to say that they won't try to launch some sort of a provocation, but the local riot police and security services have done precisely nothing, which shows actually the limitations of the Kremlin's repressive capacities. Because the police in Khabarovsk is, you know, they're also local to that region. They have very similar sentiments to the ones of the protesters.

But how much of a threat do you think this really represents to Mr. Putin?

For Putin to see this sort of uprising happening in the regions and particularly in the Far east, is quite alarming, I think, because it's one thing to see protests of young liberals and middle class people in Moscow who don't enjoy that much support across the country and often seem in the regions as just spoiled and privileged. But now that he sees the protests coming from the salt of the earth region, from people who say, we are the core Russia, we are the frontier, we're defending Russian sovereignty, to see them rising against Putin and the whole country is now watching, destroys that premise that Putin is a popular president enjoying the support of the core of the country, of this, the real Russian people, as opposed to Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Kremlin is more worried about the local elites than it's worried about people just coming to protest on the streets. Because it's that link between a popular protest and discontent of the local elites that can lead to completely unpredictable consequences. In a way, it reminds me of the situation in the 1990-91, when one local popular regional man in the Urals region by the name of Boris Yeltsin became the biggest challenge to the Kremlin. The challenge comes from the regions. We all assume that revolutions happen in Moscow, and that's true. But it's the regional grievances and the regional elites that have actually driven that change.

And so to your mind, is the arrest of Mr. Forgal, an isolated case in the wake of this pseudo referendum, as you call it?

No, it's not. It's really part of A sort of a larger and broader crackdown. The security services have also arrested a former Russian journalist who was a spokesman for the country's space agency, Ivan Safronov. Lots of his colleagues came out on the street to protest against that. What Putin is trying to do is he is now trying to send signals to all the elites, the media, the academic community, you know, sit tight, sit quietly, don't try anything. And the central question in my mind, and the one to which we don't yet have an answer, is, can Putin survive just by the means of repression, when his legitimacy is being eroded? If they were to give an order to the police in Khabarovsk, for example, to crack down on this protest and disperse 40,000 people, will they actually follow this order? And this is always the most dangerous moment for authoritarian regimes, when your legitimacy is dissipating. Your repressive mechanism might not serve you as well as you might have hoped.

But as things stand, Mr. Putin can stay in office beyond 2024, the end of his current term, maybe until 2036, now that the constitution has been fiddled. Do you see him finishing his term?

I see him finishing the term. I even see him getting through 2024 and staying in power a year to however many after. What I also see is that the regime has passed its peak. It's in decline. This doesn't mean that Putin's regime is about to collapse. It has plenty of resources to sustain itself for another few years. What I can't see is, is how Putin can restore his legitimacy and can regain his popularity. In a way, what I do see is a downward trend. And I also see that with this protest, Russia is entering more turbulent times, which we will see a lot of expression of in the coming months and years.

Arkady, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

In the lively old heart of Istanbul, near the banks of the Bosphorus, there are mosques, bazaars, and bath houses that have been crowded since the city was the Ottoman Empire's capital. Then there's a vast edifice that embodies the city's whole history, the Hagia Sophia, one of the very earliest churches, then a mosque, then a secular museum. Now it's changing again. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is using the monument to appeal to his Islamist base by converting it from a museum back into a mosque.

It's an incredible building, beguiling cross between a cathedral and a mosque.

Piotr Zalewski is the Economist's Turkey correspondent.

The dome seems to be supported by these four cherubs, these four angels that have been painted. And below them, you have these four circular discs bearing the names of the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali. And this is all surrounded by mosaics of the saints of the Virgin Mary. There is a carved traditional Muslim pulpit and a prayer nook facing Mecca. For nearly a thousand years, it was the world's largest cathedral. And in 1453, this is when the Ottomans conquer Istanbul. And it's only when Mehmet the Conqueror arrives at the Hagia Sophia that he decides to have the basilica converted to a mosque.

And now, all these centuries later, what is the status of the building?

As of 1934, the Hagia Sophia has been a museum, and it was converted into a museum by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. And there were no prayers to be had in the Hagia Sophia. It was an entirely, at least by definition, secular place.

But that set of scenes set to change.

Yeah. So on July 10, Turkey's top administrative court ruled, following a an appeal by an Islamic ngo, that the Hagia Sophia would be converted into a mosque from a museum. And that decision was sealed by a decree issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which was read out in Parliament shortly thereafter to APPLAUSE Formerly, the Hagia Sophia has already been converted into a mosque, but it will officially reopen as such on July 24th.

And did this move take you by surprise?

Well, this is something that Erdogan in particular has been campaigning for for a while now. President Erdogan understands the symbolic value of the Hagia Sophia. Now, we need to bear in mind that many of his supporters, especially his religious supporters, and perhaps Mr. Erdogan himself, think of the entire Kemalist era, the era that began with the foundation of modern Turkey by Kemal at the Turk, as something of an aberration, or as one analyst that I spoke to termed it, a parenthesis in Turkish and Ottoman history. And the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque seems to mark the closing of that parenthesis. Erdogan is drawing on Ottoman references, and he sees Turkey today as a country that needs to restore the legacy of conquest. And so to him, the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque marks, in a way, another conquest, a second conquest of Istanbul, a conquest by his religious supporters from the secularists that ran Turkey for the better part of the 20th century. You can see clear echoes of this in the celebrations of the conquest on May 29th. Each year. Each year, Erdogan holds ever grander celebrations of the conquest Constantiniye. The most recent actually took place at the Hagia Sophia, where Islamic prayers were read on May 29, the day that the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453.

And so what's been the response to this change both in Turkey and beyond?

In Turkey, most people support the conversion. On the other hand, elsewhere and especially in the west, there have been major reservations and condemnations by governments and by religious leaders. The EU first of all has condemned Turkey's decision, saying that it will inevitably fuel mistrust, promote renewed divisions between religious communities and undermine efforts at dialogue and cooperation. The Pope said he was very pained while the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul described the move as memoricide. In addition, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had urged against the move. This is not a one off. It seems to be only the latest example of Turkey's failure to preserve, or even worse, its repeated attempts to remove traces of Christian meaning, Greek and Armenian heritage in Turkey. Now Turkey complains all the time that mosques in places like Greece have been converted into churches and that the Turkish and overall Muslim population across Greece might not have adequate places of worship. And certainly there it has a point. But you know, two wrongs do not make a right. And this policy of whatever you do, I can do worse is not going to win Turkey any friends in Europe.

And what about the sort of political motivation to do this as a distraction? Do you think that part will work?

So this might give him a slight bump in the polls, but it's likely to be short lived. There's no election in sight, at least for the time being. And so that bump will come and go. I think people are much concerned with the unemployment rate, with the slowing economy than they are with Hagia Sofia. And in fact, there's been speculation that Erdogan would have gone ahead with the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to pave the way for an early election, assuming there's no early election in sight right now. It seems that he has now pulled this ace out of his sleeve and used it up and he will have to resort to more gimmickry ahead of another election.

Piotr, thank you very much for joining us.

And thank you.

To learn a lot more from our correspondents reporting from every corner of the globe. Subscribe to the Economist to find the best introductory offer. Wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer Nearly two decades ago, engineer John Pompa was at work on a top secret project.

We weren't allowed to take them outside or you know, we had paper over the windows and like, you know, if a plane flew overhead, we would jump on the vehicles and throw blankets over them.

Under the blankets was what would eventually become the Segway, the first commercial vehicle to use self balancing technology. You only had to lean forward or backward to move and stop.

To make a robot that actually held a human up was pretty novel at that time.

His team envisaged a revolution. The Segway had no brakes, no steering wheel, no engine and a top speed of 12 mph.

The big thing was that they'll be building cities around this because it's so user friendly and you don't need a car once you have it.

But that wasn't exactly how things turned out.

We designed something that was really excellent for riding around in our office building, but not something that was excellent for commuting with.

Today, Segway will stop making the personal transporter. This is its iconic self balancing scooter.

Kenneth Werner writes for the Economist.

There were high expectations for the personal transporter when it launched. It was meant to usher in a revolution in personal transport, but it ended up as a kind of punchline. It's been skewered in Hollywood films.

He's always been dedicated.

Paul Blurton, mall cop and tragically a boss of the company, rode off a cliff to his death on his personal transporter.

Several years ago, the body of the British man who liked the Segway so much he bought the company was found along with his machine in this river near his home in northern England.

And that tragedy, I guess, couldn't have been a worse bit of publicity for what was a transformative product when it was new.

Yeah, it was a really big development. Dean Kamen, the inventor of the personal transporter, unveiled it in 2001 on Good Morning America.

There it is.

Now what does it do?

This is the world's first self balancing human transporter.

And his vision was to create what he called empowered pedestrians. He basically thought the personal transporter would be a vehicle for short distances to replace the car.

We're very sidewalk friendly. We are empowered by pedestrians.

It would be cheaper than cars, it would be more efficient, it would be cleaner. And unlike bicycles, the personal transporter was designed to replace pedestrian travel to go on sidewalks. It was meant to turn a kind of 30 minute walk into a 10 minute Segway ride.

Segue, if you look in the dictionary says a smooth transition from one position or idea to another, and this is a nice one way to go from one place to another and it is an idea, it's a change in thinking about how people get around cities.

So what happened? Consumers just didn't buy the hype?

No, they didn't sell well. The company initially thought it would sell 100,000 units in its first year, but to date, it's sold 140,000 units in total. So it really was a commercial flop. John Pompa told me that part of the reason for its failure was that neither the vehicle nor cities were really fit for the revolution.

It was too big and heavy to fit into the pedestrian landscape. You couldn't ride that thing and not disrupt the flow of pedestrian traffic. And I think that really hindered adoption because the rhetoric was you're a powered pedestrian, but the reality was that you were definitely on a vehicle.

And you think that was the problem?

Yeah, well, there were a couple problems with it. It was very expensive. It was initially priced at just under $5,000. That's a lot more than a bike or a scooter costs. It was also pretty heavy. It weighs between 70 and 80 pounds. So it's not the kind of thing that you can just swing over your shoulder and climb a flight of stairs with. There was also confusion and debate about whether it really could be written on sidewalks. They're still banned on sidewalks in the uk and it took a big lobbying campaign to legalize them on sidewalks in most states in America.

And you have to admit, they weren't all that cool.

Riders on them just looked kind of nerdy. There were some really highly publicized falls and crashes with celebrities. George W. Bush famously fell off one in 2003, and that kind of made it a bit of an embarrassing thing to ride.

But even if it is disappearing today, we can thank the Segway for starting the revolution that it thought it was going to finish. Yeah.

Interestingly, the kind of micro mobility revolution that its inventor had envisioned has come to pass. Not really on the personal transporter itself, but through E Bikes and E scooters. Ultimately, these vehicles are a lot cheaper and a lot less clunky. And it's the owners of Segway Ninebot that makes these.

And so the key was simply to look a little less nerdy.

Exactly.

Thanks very much for joining us, Kenneth.

Thanks for having me.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow, Sam.