The entire country followed these elections. Barely coming out of the New Year holidays, the Novosibirsk City Hall launched an electronic voting for the New Year's talisman of the city 2022–2023. Five wards of the Novosibirsk Zoo were nominated as candidates: a manul, a polar bear, a tiger, a leopard and an orangutan. At first, the people of Novosibirsk had some nice fun by launching a public campaign against stereotypes and in support of the orangutan. But everyone forgot about the jokes when supporters of Alexei Navalny and the presidential administration interfered in the vote.
News correspondents went to Novosibirsk to find out why many saw Navalny's fight with the Kremlin in the fight between the orangutan Batu and the bear Shilka , and what does the communists, bad roads and a stuffed sodomite have to do with it.
< p class="EmbedNative_caption__1J_30">Video: Arden Arkman, editing: Alexander Lavrenov/Novaya Gazeta
1.
At the beginning of this year, Novosibirsk received the status of the New Year's Capital of Russia. The competition for the right to be called the New Year's capital was launched in 2012 by the Ministry of Culture «to develop event tourism.» In fact, the symbol of this competition is a snowflake, but in Novosibirsk they also decided to choose a New Year's talisman. The Novosibirsk Zoo announced five candidates for the elections — the female cat Aisha, the Amur tiger Max, the snow leopard Sayan, the polar bear Shilka and the orangutan Batu. This year the zoo turns 75 years old, and the choice of a mascot was supposed to draw attention to the anniversary. On January 13, the mayor's office launched an «open vote to choose a New Year's talisman for Novosibirsk» on the municipal portal. It was supposed to end on February 7.
Most likely, this vote would have passed almost unnoticed (by January 18, only 3,000 people took part in it), if not for the local journalist and photographer Alisa Aiv.
Alice is 36, she was born and lives all her life in Novosibirsk. The girl is engaged in photography — she shoots for local showrooms, foreign lifestyle magazines, makes portraits and documents urban everyday life. She also writes for the local publication about modern culture, Masters of Siberia, about parties, festivals, restaurants and local eco-projects. Alice has an active civic position. “I regularly go to the election as an observer and urge people to vote on social networks,” she says. I go to rallies from time to time. The city [Novosibirsk] is as poor as a church mouse (according to Rosstat, the average salary in Novosibirsk for 2021 was 44,429 rubles, but when you say this to the locals, they laugh — according to the feelings of the people with whom I spoke, the average salary in the city is 25 -30 thousand rubles, 40 thousand is the maximum. — A.R.). All taxes go to Moscow or to the regional budget. And from there, something stands out for the city.” We meet Aive, a short blonde woman with deep-set sad eyes, in one of the underground art spaces in Novosibirsk, located in a former technical room with no windows in the city center.
Photographer Alisa Aiv. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
I ask her to tell her about voting for the New Year's talisman of Novosibirsk.
— On January 18, I found out about the vote — I accidentally saw it from a friend in stories,” Alice begins the story of how the public campaign in support of Batu was born. — I voted for the orangutan because he had the fewest votes (January 18, Batu won only 3.29% of the votes, the polar bear Shilka was the leader of the poll with 30.54% of the votes, followed by the female manula Aisha with 27.23% of the votes .-A. R.), and he was the most unusual candidate. For me, it was about some kind of self-irony and about the rejection of stereotypes — all these kittens and cubs are always chosen as symbols. I figured that the orangutan needed only 1,000 votes to win because the voting activity was low.
Novosibirsk. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
Alice posted dozens of stories on Instagram with stories about Batu’s advantages over other candidates: they say “Novosibirsk needs a smart talisman”, and “orangutans are smart guys”,
who “use spears for fishing and boats for movement on water”, and also Batu is a fashionista, because he loves clothes and tries them on, and in general orangutans are “our historical ancestors”.
“Everyone pretty quickly began to support this campaign, make reposts, vote, invite their friends to vote,” Alice continues. — When I saw that the wave of reposts was subsiding, I purposefully sat and asked for a repost.
As a result, a public campaign was launched in support of Batu, which, in addition to Novosibirsk, was joined by residents of other Siberian cities (residents of any city could vote for the New Year's talisman of Novosibirsk on the municipal portal), for example, Tomsk residents, who launched the hashtag #yamybata on Instagram. According to Alisa, «active young people of creative professions — photographers, artists» took part in the public campaign at that time. The cartoon “Godzilla Supports King Kong” by Novosibirsk artist Eva Morozova has become popular on social networks. It is about the insecure and sad King Kong (he was seen as Batu lagging behind other candidates), who is embarrassed to wear jeggings because of his excess weight, and Godzilla, who teaches him to love yourself and set personal boundaries.
In the Novosibirsk metro. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
Batu was gaining votes. In the networks, in addition to calls to vote for an orangutan “for the sake of abandoning stereotypes”, memes appeared like “if not Putin, then Batu” and “if you want your vote to be taken into account at least in some elections, here is a real chance for you.” Someone dug up dirt on Shilka. It turned out that Shilka, who was called a “white bear cub” by the local media in the voting materials, was no longer a bear cub and, moreover, had not been a ward of the Novosibirsk Zoo for a long time — back in 2015 she was transferred to the zoo in Osaka, Japan, where she gave birth to twins in 2020. This provoked the people — many saw Shilka's participation as a forgery and injustice.
At the same time, Alisa Aiv believes that the campaign in support of Batu «initially had no political overtones», without denying, however, that for someone «perhaps it was immediately a protest vote.» The girl is sure that a truly public campaign in support of the orangutan was politicized on January 21, when Batu broke into the lead of the poll and “began to strongly oppose him.”
A polar bear in the Novosibirsk zoo. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
First, on January 25, the popular city portal of Novosibirsk published material about the start of parallel voting for the New Year's talisman with the same candidates. From this material, many Novosibirsk residents learned for the first time that voting has also been going on at the State Services since January 13 (at the time the material was published, “a little less than 100 people voted through the State Services”), and that the Novosibirsk City Hall, when summing up the results, will take into account indicators from all sites. Only those registered in Novosibirsk could vote through the State Services.
Batuists accused the mayor's office of getting scared and changing the rules during the game.
Then, on January 28, during a press conference, the mayor of Novosibirsk, Anatoly Lokot, said that he likes the manul, because the manul lives in Siberia and, in general, the manul «looks decent, very interesting, attractive.» At the same time, according to Alisa, “posts, most likely bought, began to appear in local popular publics, in which they called for voting for the manul.” On the nsk.54 Instagram account dedicated to Novosibirsk (184 thousand subscribers), I managed to find a post dated February 3 with a call to vote for the manul: “Personally, I have nothing against the orangutan, but we live in Siberia and this is a bit different from the symbol that would represent our region. I really want the handsome manul to win!».
Batu the orangutan. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
“In early February, they tried to block me on Instagram,” Alice continues to say. — Complaints rained down massively on my Instagram account. I began to receive messages that in the local chat rooms they were agitating to vote for the bear cub. On January 27, stuffing for Shilka began — she suddenly began to gain votes, despite the fact that no one drowned for her publicly.
The editors have at their disposal screenshots from the voting page on the municipal portal on January 26, 28 and 31. They show that on January 26, Batu gained 36% of the vote and was ahead of his closest pursuer, the female Pallas' cat Aisha, by almost 15% of the vote. Shilka then had a little less than 19% of the vote. But in just two days, Shilka won 7% of the vote, overtook the manul and came in second with almost 26% of the vote. On January 31, Batu was already losing half a percentage point to Shilka — at the same time, as the Batuists noted, on January 29 and 30 there were days off, during which the survey unexpectedly «added almost 2,000 participants.»
Novosibirsk Zoo. Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
It was then that the vote for the New Year's talisman acquired a «political overtone». “The campaign against stereotypes has turned into a ‘let people pick a monkey’ campaign,” Alice says. Social media users posted screenshots from the voting page on the municipal portal and wrote that “even these elections are being taken away from the people.”
A theory has emerged that it is no coincidence that it is Shilka who is gaining “100 votes per minute”: they say, Shilka is a polar bear, and the polar bear is the symbol of United Russia.
Even more fuel was added to the fire by the message of the local publication Taiga.Info that “the administration of the President of the Russian Federation was seriously concerned about the fate of the mascot,” according to the source of the publication, Shilka pulled ahead after “to the mayor’s office of Novosibirsk from the apparatus of the Siberian plenipotentiary The head of state received an urgent request not to allow the orangutan to become a symbol of the New Year's capital. Batu was dubbed the “opposition candidate”, and the hashtag #batu became trending on Russian Twitter — the social network was filled with jokes like “Batu the orangutan was recognized as a “foreign agent”, “Batu the orangutan was burned on the square in Grozny”, “Batu the orangutan will speak in the European Parliament on Wednesday «. As a result, it seems that all the federal media spoke about voting for the New Year's talisman of Novosibirsk, and millionaire bloggers joined the campaign in support of Batu. And on February 4, Batu again took the lead in voting, overtaking Shilka. And not only on the municipal portal, but also on the State Services — Alice recorded entire video guides on how to vote for Bata through the State Services. class=»SingleImage_image__3qIDn» alt=»» />
Photo: Arden Arkman/Novaya Gazeta
True, the supporters of Batu did not celebrate for long. On February 6, the Sayan snow leopard completely unexpectedly took the lead — if on the evening of February 5 he gained less than 5% of the vote (with 56 thousand voters), then exactly a day later — already 38%, 1% more than Batu. At the same time, the number of voters doubled. Batuists immediately dubbed Sayan a «compromise candidate», deciding that the authorities decided to wind up votes in his favor so that the victory would not go to «neither ours nor yours.» The protest of the Batuists flared up with renewed vigor, and the orangutan quickly caught up and overtook the Sayan. Late in the evening of February 6, a day before the end of the survey, the zoo issued a statement that «the animals became participants in a farce organized by people.» Representatives of the zoo blamed «a number of bloggers, deputies, journalists» for all the troubles, who «urged their audience to give the poll for the talisman a political coloring» and made «offensive memes.» Therefore, the zoo «asks to stop the poll and not take into account its results.»
And the mayor's office immediately stopped the vote.
Alisa Aiv explains the opposition of the authorities to the supporters of the orangutan with “general ignorance.”
— Many locals wrote to me in the comments on Instagram that they would laugh at us [Novosibirsk residents] [if Batu wins] — like we don’t know that orangutans do not live in Siberia, says Alice. “It seems to me that they [in the city hall] think the same way. Here everything goes along some very deep rut, we hang a stuffed sodomite on holidays (in 2015 in the Kolyvansky district of the Novosibirsk region at the military-historical festival «Siberian Fire — 2015», dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War , the organizers hung an effigy with a sign «sodomite» on a pole. The effigy symbolized the executed gay. The curators of the festival called it a reconstruction, saying that «in Medieval Europe, and even in Russia, there was a very unfriendly attitude towards sodomites» and «issues with them were resolved quite quickly — A.R.).
“I just wanted something a little different with such a talisman than usual, more fun and without denseness.”