The concept of ‘power of the powerless’ comes from an essay by Václav Havel. An apparently impotent grocer undermines the dictatorship in which he lives as soon as he refuses to put obligatory ideological slogans in his shop. In Putin’s Russia of 2022, the power of the powerless is between 10 and 30 centimeters long. Sometimes that man, sometimes woman, sometimes bona fide gender neutral. His, her, their political orientation has been expressed: against the dictatorship that Russia has become, against the war in Ukraine, in solidarity with the inhabitants of the neighboring country who should be ‘denazified’.
‘Little picketers’, English speakers dubbed the clay dolls that pop up in large and medium-sized Russian cities, in front of entrances to government buildings, on pedestals of Soviet statues, on bridge railings, on tree branches, along train tracks, in elevators. In Dutch you can call them ‘little opponents’, or ‘little attention grabbers’. They express their solidarity with Ukraine by often turning yellow and holding a blue peace sign. There are also incarnations that wave the Ukrainian bicolor. They also appear in red, and with signs and banners with texts such as ‘No war’. Their spread on social media was lightning fast.
Some of their background can be understood with the knowledge that leaders like Putin have a preference for sizes XL and XXL, and who have the typical belief that something big is also better. In the Soviet Union, colossal buildings and statues of heroic soldiers and muscular workers served not only to impress and instill fear, but also to showcase success.
It was no coincidence that translations of the Tao Te Tsing were popular in dissident circles. Readers of this small Chinese writing from well before our era learn that “the wise never aspires to the great.” Completely relevant to the Russian opposition of 2022 is the following insight: ‘He who sees the small, has insight.’ Anyone who sees XXS opponents at the foot of a statue usually also sees men in uniforms who have to keep order on the street looking over it.
Putin was the first to ban satire
Great repression necessitates small sizes. That’s almost a law of nature. With the current repression, residents of Russia have been thrown back at least 35 years in time. It has been barely 20 years since there were satirical programs on Russian state television. Satire that could hit himself was among the first things Putin banned. Then he disabled the opposition, then the audiovisual media, then the judiciary, then the NGOs, then the press, then demonstrating became dangerous, then even small groups of demonstrators were taken away in arrest vans and clay protesters in size XXS had to take over .
This has happened many times in history. Historical relatives of the XXS opponents of 2022 were the orange dwarfs from the Polish city of Wroclaw. In mid-1985 they appeared on walls where authorities had wiped out statements of support for the free trade union Solidarnosc with cleaning products. In the years that followed, meetings took place in Wroclaw at which participants wore orange pointed hats. Polish artist Waldemar “Major” Fydrych, the mastermind behind the orange dwarfs, knew that any cop would be embarrassed to be asked in an interrogation, “Why did you participate in an illegal gathering of dwarves?” As it turned out, the authorities were unable to act.
Suppose law enforcement officers in Putin’s Russia see people with telephones capturing a blue-and-yellow doll at a statue. Are you arresting someone for shooting a pro-Ukrainian leprechaun?