frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I can't believe that there are still people who seem to think these protests are somehow progressive and pro-democracy.
Its not always as simple as that
Shortly before I came to Moldova there were protests against the (pro-russian) Communist party government by opposition groups, many of whom were far right and a lot who were pro European liberals.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Moldova_civil_unrest
A group who was involved in the protests was the Romanian nationalist movement Basarabia pamant Romanesc (Bessarabia is Romanian land) they ended up occupying government buildings, setting fire to them etc. Eventually the protests and the international reaction to them ended up putting in power a coalition of pro-EU parties and far right Romanian nationalist parties after the vote was recounted.
The protests were organized by groups such as the pro-EU Hyde park and curaj.net, which as I discovered also produced racist anti-russian material.
Once in power the coalition promptly introduced an austerity programme which was initially targeted at groups such as pensioners and war veterans etc who more likely to support the communist party and see themselves as ethnic Russians or Moldovans. Surprisingly a lot of people there supported this. They also changed the day of the Christmas bank holiday to December 25th from January 6th.
There were reasons why people supported the protests - a lot of people supported them who weren't far right or nationalist at all. The communist party in Moldova was extremely corrupt and basically didn't have anything communist about it at all apart from being a pro ethnic Russian party. There was a huge amount of poverty and corruption and many people thought being part of the EU would help prevent this. The far left there is practically non existent, tbh (not that it would necessarily make any difference if it wasn't)
I think what also happens is that support for particular stances for some people anyway ends up going along ethnic lines, so opposition to the EU would end up being seen as 'communist' and pro Russian..