10 October Demonstration against Gazprom Tower

On Saturday 10 October, the announced meeting took place outside the Iubileynyi (Jubilee) Stadium. (See post below.)

During the day, Fontanka reported that estimates of the size of the meeting varied. The police estimated that about 2500 people were there; a participant estimated 3500. Other observers reported that about 3000 were present, but not all simultaneously; these observers estimated that about 30% of those attending were clearly against the Gazprom skyscraper, while others had other complaints related to urban development – encroachment on green space, eviction from private car garages, or unregulated infill construction.

Zaks.ru reported that a petition with signatures compiled during the entire course of the meeting gathered just over 4600 signatures total.

The number of signatures prompted a commenter on the Delovoi Peterburg site to claim that the total attendance at the meeting was nearer to 5000 people.

Fontanka reported that isolated groups of protesters on a range of issues could be seen throughout the crowd, including workers from the local Ford plant and people dissatisfied with the presale conditions for residential purchase.

As the Fontanka reporter pointed out, this meeting is the first in the past two years to gather more than 2000 people. She also commented, “The atmosphere on the square recalled the best times of informal parties in the late Leningrad period.” Her coverage focused partly on the participation in the meeting of people who had been in the Leningrad artistic underground and frequented the café “Saigon.”

The headline for a similar article in Delovoi Peterburg on 10 October read “In Petersburg, a reincarnation of civil society in honor of Gazprom.” This reported claimed that “the Saturday meeting in defense of Petersburg resembled the November demonstrations from the 1980s: songs and dances, handing around fruit and vegetables, smiling people, a packed house."

Reporter Belogrudova wrote, “Instead of just the 2-300 ‘dissenters’ who came to the last march, here there were 1500-2000 acording to police, 2500-3000 according to the participants. The ‘marginal’ figures who usually dominate such events were replaced by professors and students, doctors and managers – the kind of faces that you are more used to seeing in the Financial-Economic Institute or St. Petersburg State University, in an expensive clinic or a class A business center than on a square with flags and revolutionary slogans.”

She also reported that the meeting’s organizers considered that they were ahead in the fight to turn aside the skyscraper’s construction. First, during the two years of struggle, opponents have succeeded in changing the terms of the building’s financing: Gazprom now has to pay for the construction itself, instead of getting the city of Petersburg to build it. Second, it has been agreed to do a historical-cultural impact statement, and third, opponents have gotten UNESCO on their side.