The phrase "blue buckets" since 2010 has firmly entered the everyday life of Russian citizens. Now it does not mean an element for children's play in the sandbox, but a whole social movement.
With the advent of the twenty-first century, the inhabitants of Russia began to think more and more about creating a civil society, which not only bears responsibility for their actions, but also hinders the arbitrariness of the authorities. Violations of Russian law by the authorities themselves and their representatives sometimes take on such a wide scope that people can no longer tolerate this. And this happened in the case of motorists who were bored with flashing beacons (they are also “flashing lights”), which began to install more and more people on the roof who were not related to emergency services, but who enjoyed the same advantages on the road.
The Blue Buckets Society arose in 2010, and Sergei Parkhomenko is considered to be its founder. He expressed the idea of an absolutely legitimate movement against the “flashing lights” on the snob.ru blog. He suggested sticking on the roofs of cars and putting inside the cabin the usual plastic children's pails of blue color, which from afar are quite similar to flashing beacons. The idea was supported by many motorists who are tired of enduring traffic violations from government officials hiding behind flashing lights. The main actions take place in Moscow, because it is the capital that sins more than other regions by installing these same flashing lights on the roofs of cars, regardless of the legality of this action.
April 18, 2010 was the first action of the company. Under the leadership of Parkhomenko, everyone who wanted to take part installed blue buckets on the roofs of cars, attaching them with ordinary tape. The column proceeded from Triumfalnaya Square to the observation deck of the Sparrow Hills. Particularly keen on the idea put these same buckets on their heads.
Representatives of the state traffic safety inspectorate stopped the protesters, but could not come up with a basis for removing the bucket from the roof, so after checking the documents they were released. In the future, they will try to break the buckets, which will lead to even greater resonance in society.
Shares of the society "Blue buckets" were gaining momentum and were held more often. Moreover, the participants not only gathered in large numbers, but also traveled individually with this distinctive sign. The reaction of the authorities followed fairly quickly. The head of the Moscow Region State Traffic Safety Inspectorate Sergey Sergeyev spoke on the topic of “blue buckets”, expressing his authoritative opinion that emergency lights are mainly installed on special vehicles, which are useless to deal with.
But bloggers just do not mind the flashing beacons on the cars of the services "01", "02" and "03", so the protest continued. Over time, despite the adopted amendments to laws prohibiting the use of vehicles in rallies, the society accepted more than one thousand people into its ranks.
