Deputy Chairman of Yabloko Ivan Bolshakov on how the party can exist in the current conditions

Press Release, 9.12.2023

Photo: Ivan Bolshakov /Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them,” Yabloko Deputy Chairman Ivan Bolshakov began his report at the 22nd Party Congress with this quote from George Orwell.

“I think this also refers to Yabloko,” Bolshakov noted. “When the authorities promote a misanthropic ideology and implement the principle “people are trash,” we are talking about saving people, saving lives.”

According to Bolshakov, for 30 years Yabloko has been offering the country a different path, being a moderate third force between the radicalism of opposition and the authoritarianism of the authorities. At a time when numerous opposition projects appeared and disappeared, Yabloko continued to pursue its line.

“When some [opposition figures] engaged in verbal exercises against their political opponents, we were only interested in the essence of the matter,” Bolshakov said.

According to Bolshakov, Yabloko was ahead of time. “What we proposed now will be realised years later. At first we are harshly criticized, then they admit that we are right. However, the forks have already been crossed, and sometimes irrevocably,” Bolshakov noted.

However, now the moment is coming when Yabloko’s position, time and society’s understanding of the prospects are beginning to converge at a single point, as can be seen from the election results in progressive cities and the attention that is now being paid to Grigory Yavlinsky and the party’s position on a ceasefire. “When this understanding and awareness takes place, everything will have to be done to ensure that the new fork of the road is finally taken in the right direction,” Bolshakov believes.

In recent years, radical conservatism and isolationism have been promoted through propaganda and school education. According to the Deputy Chairman, this trend will definitely make itself felt, just as it already was with nostalgia for the Soviet Union in the 1990s and 2000s. “That is why the tasks of education, debunking myths, and the autonomy of cultural and educational institutions should come to the forefront. They will sometimes be more important than economic diversification and democratic legislation,” Bolshakov says.

He also noted that after the authorities destroyed the majority of independent public organisations, there was no one to carry out systematic work in many sectors.

Therefore, according to Bolshakov, today Yabloko should replace Greenpeace** in matters of environmental protection, Transparency International** in the field of anti-corruption, and also continue the work carried out by Memorial* and the Moscow Helsinki Group in supporting political prisoners and preserving the memory of the victims of Stalin’s repressions, intensify actions in the field of political education, which was carried out by the “Moscow School of Civic Education”*.

“We need to turn Yabloko’s offices into the centres of civil society in cities and regions,” Bolshakov notes.

“Yabloko” remains the only open and legal opposition in the country, therefore, at a time when there is no one else, the party’s mission should be to integrate into its work the most important areas that bring our country closer to freedom and justice.

“Today we have the moral right to speak on behalf of everyone who does not agree with the course of the authorities and wants change,” Bolshakov says.

At the same time, the fundamental ideas and values of Yabloko are needed not only by the democratic electorate, because they are universal. Therefore, all citizens, the entire country as a whole, need our programme to be implemented, Bolshakov believes.

Yabloko is fighting for the development vector that no one else in the country advocates, and it exists because millions of citizens need such a vector to be realised.

Russia’s European path is not a utopia, but the main task, which we should strive for to the best of our abilities, Bolshakov notes.

“Sooner or later the window of opportunity will open. And it seems to me that time is already on our side,” Bolshakov concluded.

* – organisations recognised as foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice

** – organisations recognised as undesirable organisations by the Public Prosecutor General’s Office

Ivan Bolshakov

is Deputy Chair of the Yabloko party. Political analyst. Member of the Russian Association of Political Science. Head of the Analytical Department of Yabloko.