Lev Shlosberg’s speech at the Federal Council of Yabloko on 30.11.2024, published on 1.12.2024

Photo: Lev Shlosberg at a meeting of the Federal Council of Yabloko on 30 November, 2024 / Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov Yabloko

The basis of the political position of the Yabloko party since its foundation has been humanism, that is, an ideology focused around the idea of the individual is the highest value.

We have already gone through more than thirty years as a political force, with humanism in our minds and hearts. Humanism is an essential alternative to populism, ochlocracy, nationalism, cynicism, and hatred. Humanism represents an essential alternative to war.

How to combine humanism with political practices? How to introduce humanism into the foundations of the state system? How to make humanism an understandable and recognised basis for politics in Russia? How to make humanism the basis of public life? We seek answers to these questions every day.

At every step of the party’s work, we formulated our position based on humanism: when we demanded reforms for the majority, when we protested against the war in Chechnya, when we spoke out against criminal privatisation, when we defended fair elections, when we defended freedom of speech and freedom of the media, and when we demanded an independent justice system. Humanism means that a state must work for people.

Humanism is a struggle so that the majority of society would be a people of peace, and not a people of war, a people of respect for man, and not a people of hatred. We have been fighting for such a people for all these thirty years.

The goals that we set for ourselves and the entire country were not achieved. We lost the era, however, did not suffer a defeat in terms of values.

Together with the country, together with all citizens who agreed and disagreed with the government, we stepped into wartime. We did not bring this time closer, but it has come.

What is humanism in wartime?

Humanism in wartime is a struggle to preserve the lives of all people without exception. Humanism in wartime is literally a struggle for life. How can we fight for life when the state produces death? How can we fight for respect for people when the state teaches us to hate?

Humanism in wartime means living in our country together with people who have to live during this wartime. There are our supporters among these people, as well as our opponents, and many people who do not hear us, do not understand us, and do not understand the importance of humanism in politics for each person.

How can we gather the majority of society on the basis of humanism? How can we unite the majority of people, including those wounded by wartime, with the idea of ​​life?

War veterans and opponents of war live side by side in one country, and in one society. How can we talk to both of them in order to find a common language with them? So that people want to live, rather than die? To live in the same country.

We need to talk to all people with respect, talk with respect to people, even if we categorically reject their position.

Democratic reforms in post-Soviet Russia would only have been successful if a real civil society had been created, a society capable of both forming and controlling the government. Thirty years ago, it was not possible to create such a society. That is why the reforms did not work. That is why democracy in Russia suffered a defeat.

To return peace and freedom to our country, we need to create a civil society in the country – after all the errors, delusions, temptations, crimes, disasters, disappointments and losses.

This society will have the experience of love and the experience of hate, the experience of lies and the experience of truth, the experience of war and the experience of resisting war, the experience of fear and the experience of fearlessness, the experience of meanness and the experience of honour, and the experience of freedom and the experience of unfreedom. We will not be able to bypass any of these experiences when creating a civil society. When creating a civil society, we will not be able to erase the most diverse people from them, including those with whom we categorically disagree today.

We will have to talk to the unjustly convicted and the executioners, human rights activists and the organisers of reprisals, and fighters for historical truth and falsifiers of history. We will have to come in a civil dialogue with the people who are persecuting us today, threatening us with imprisonment and putting our lives at risk.

We will be facing a choice: civil peace or civil war, a split in society or the resuscitation and unification of society.

In general, we will be facing the same choice: whether we are gathering the people of peace or the people of war.

This will be a different society. Having lived and survived a series of tragedies, having survived the catastrophe of wartime, society will get a chance to mature, become wise and fundamentally humane. The people will be able to survive only on the path to humanism.

This will be a very long road. The country will not be able to go through it without politicians-humanists. Without you and me, dear colleagues. Preserving humanism in politics is our main objecctive today.

It is important for us to remain ourselves. Not to give up. To withstand it without hating the people, no matter what is happening to them now.

To save the country, we need to fight for every person. Literally – to see humane in every person, fight for the humane in every person.

Only then will the party of humanists be able to become the party of the majority and justify the aspirations of people who see us as their representatives today, in the dark times of history, as their living hope for the future.

Humanism in politics is a condition of life. Humanism today is pragmatic.

I wish all of us strength, patience and faith in our own strength.