Lev Shlosberg’s speech at the meeting of Yabloko Federal Council
Press release, 17.12.2018

Dear colleagues, supporters of our party and citizens of Russia!

Millions of people in our country categorically disapprove of what is going on in our Russia now.

Tens of millions of people do not believe that there is a way to change the state of affairs.

Even among those who believe in changes there are few people who think that changes can be achieved in a peaceful way without any bloodshed.

Russia’s gouvernement is treating people like an occupant: cynically, cruelly and very immorally. The government is destroying the country and corrupt society.

There is a lack of justice in our country, and almost everyone can see and realise it. There is a lack of freedom too, but few people realise and see it.

We are among those few people, dear colleagues.

Is it possible to survive and function for a political party that states the necessity of both justice and freedom at the same time as freedom is a precondition for justice. There can be no freedom without justice.

Should we prioritise survival and self-preservation or protection and preservation of the country? The future of our party and the future of our country in many respects depend on the way we answer. These tasks do not contradict each other, they don’t exclude one another. The task of protecting and preserving our country is an internal task. We also need to be brave and patient to achieve it. However, we can only save and preserve the country if we change ourselves. This implies more than self-preservation. This task demands changing ourselves.

The task of changing ourselves very often demands that we make actions that are not simply hard but also painful and controversial.

How should we treat people, millions of people, who have their best intentions in mind but make a wrong choice every year, thus making both their and our existence if not completely impossible than pointless?

This is how how many people feel when they participated in election campaigns, addressed people, talked to them but were not received well and even faced aggression and disrespect. What should we do in a situation like this?

We should love people. We should love people and talk to people. The government does not speak to people, it manipulates them, it uses people for self-preservation.

The government in our country is not simply an occupant and a marauder, it is monstrously egotistic too. The government cares only about themselves. The government is using people – millions of people, as fuel for their crazy locomotive. This locomotive has no future at all, it can only hit the wall and kill everyone. However, the mad locomotive driver insists that we should go at a higher speed. You and I – all of us – are in this locomotive. No one but us can stop it.

As a matter of fact, there is a very simple formula to political success in a country with no freedom: We can hear you. We understand you. We will not give up. We will not betray you.

Consistency, tranquility and resilience are values by people in the first place. Even those people, who think that it is not possible to achieve these goals in our country at all, respect stubbornness and resilience. The reason for this is that deep inside them, in their subconscious, every single person wants to believe that changes are possible. If not for us than for our children and grandchildren.

This is what we have in us, a code of survival. It is something that makes the humankind go on.

In our country right in front of us there are millions of people who realise that what is going on in our country is inhuman, and they are ready to change the state of affairs. We should become the party for these people, for this society. We should form the image of the future of Russia for these people. We should come up with a human Russia as apposed to the inhuman Russia. We need a Russia that has a future as there will be no future in an inhumane system. There will be no place for a discussion on left-wing and right-wing liberals as any free person will not be able to exist there at all.

We should aim for the goals that seem impossible to many people right now. They seem impossible because “we are not strong enough” and “this is the destiny of our country”.

We live in a time when the majority of people what to achieve these goals but consider them unachievable.

I want to name a few of these goals. These goals are not only of a philosophical or human character, they are of an applied political character.

Free people should be represented in the parliament in 2021. We must put the period of democratic hard times to an end. These people have had no representation in the state parliament for 15 years now, there is no one speak on behalf of them in the State Duma podium in front of the country.

We should set a goal that no one has been able to achieve in the post-Soviet Russia: we need to create a party of the democratic majority. This goal has not been brought to live as a result of very dramatic and even tragic developments of the 1980s and 1990s. We have done everything in our power to realise this goal. However, we failed to do it.

Should we acknowledge that this goal is impossible, unachievable and unrealistic? No. We should learn our lessons – the lessons for the whole country, and for the Yabloko party. These lessons should make us stronger.

Nothing can make a person stronger than the hardships they had been through. We have been going through a real hardship for a quarter of a century now, it is a hardship on a national scale. Going through this and overcoming it is making us very strong.

She should not give up on our ideas. We should insist on our values, our ideals, our truth. We should not give up on any word of the truth. This is what helped us survive and preserve ourselves. It is this inner sense of justice, freedom and truth that helped us preserve ourselves in these inhuman conditions.

On 18th March [presidential Election Day], Vladimir Bonaparte concluded the post-Soviet history of Russia. This post-Soviet history ended up in a collapse. All the attempt to modernise and democratise Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union turned out to be fruitless because the people who came to power at that time could only think of themselves.

Boris Yeltsin was trying to preserve his power when the Constitution was adopted in 1993. He tried to establish his authority and preserve it with the help of this Constitution 25 years ago.

It was the Constitution for a group of people who came to power by chance at the beginning of the 1990s. It was not a Constitution for the whole Russia, for its ageing development.

This is why they began discussing the possibility of adopting a new Constitution that would fix today’s status quo, the status quo of Putin’s Russia which has no place for freedom, justice or anything humane. They want a Constitution like this.

They have the political means to adopt it, but they are running out of public resources. We need to feel, see and realise this moment, this historical chance.

There is nothing more cruel than history: it loves no one, it has no pity, it is not in debt to anyone. It simply records all our mistakes, defeats, success stories, disappointments, efforts, it is ready for anything.

It is time we realise that now, in these hopeless, as at may seem, years and even days we need to begin talking to people, to all the people of Russia about the image of the future as the foundation is being laid now.

It is not simply about writing a political programme. It is about offering values for a new state. Modern Russia has estranged people, it has nothing to do with people. It is serfdom; a state like this needs slaves, it does not need free people at all.

We are a party of free people. We need to continue struggling for the values of free people in the environment of semi-freedom or no freedom at all.

Toady it is not important how many people like this are in this room or in the whole country. The main thing is that we are ready to do it.

We are in a great debt to the country. All the people who are capable of doing something are in debt. If you are unable to do annoying, you should not. However, if can so something, you must do it.

In the situation when people lost faith, when they are desperate and disappointed we need to learn to inspire them.

Politics is one of the most inspiring activities. Politics is a way to change lives.

Friends, I think that Yabloko can do this in Russia.

Thank you!