A Russian Deja-Vu
The Political Development and the Objectives of the YABLOKO
party
Sergei Mitorkhin's lecture in the British
Parliment
London, November 12, 2012
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends and colleagues,
First of all let me thank you for your invitation to deliver
a speech on Russia in one of the oldest parliaments of the
world.
Soon it will turn a year since the beginning of mass protest
rallies in Russia. For many people these rallies meant hopes
for rapid democratic changes. Frankly speaking, I have never
shared such an optimistic point of view.
For me, it was clear that Vladimir Putin would consider the
awakening of the society as disorders and side-affects of
the "liberalization" carried out by ex President
Dmitry Medvedev. And this meant that Putins only possible
response to the mass protests could be "tightening the
screws" or, in other words, increase of reprisals.
This is how Vladimir Putins regime tries to avoid the fate
of his Middle Eastern counterparts. Obviously, Putin has been
very concerned of the fates of his colleagues from the Arab
world, and this makes him take up preventive measures against
the Arab Spring scenario in Russia.
Instead of starting a dialogue so much demanded by the society,
the Russian government began looking for a more or less convincing
excuse for suppressing rising public activity.
And the government found such an excuse on the 6th of May,
when the police and security services managed to use the adventurous
moods of some leaders of the protest movement for mass provocations
at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow.
The beatings and fightings of the 6th of May were a turning
point after which the government began implementing a previously
developed programme targeted at curbing of civil rights and
liberties.
Political Reprisals
Today we observe a new wave of reprisals in Russia against
opposition activists and the civil society.
The government launched the acts of intimidation against
the participants of the protest actions. Thirteen people were
arrested and were charged with public disorders of the 6th
of May. Four people have been still under threat of arrest.
They are made confess in crimes that they did not commit.
The authorities deliberately imprisoned ordinary participants
rather than protest leaders so that to frighten all those
who may participate in further actions.
Reprisals against the opposition are manifest not only in
numerous arrests, searches and charges against participants
of mass actions. They also take extralegal forms of persecution:
kidnappings, threats, printouts of bugged conversations and
forged 'opposition' chronicles broadcast on TV, as well as
tortures for forcing false self-confessions, as was the case
of Leonid Razvozzhayev.
Prosecutions also affected our party colleagues accused and
convicted on false evidence. Maxim Petlin, City Council deputy
in Yekaterinburg (in the Urals), was persecuted by the FSB
on the order of commercial structures severely criticized
by Petlin for corruption. In Southern Russia our activists
and candidates to the regional parliament Suren Ghazaryan
and Yugeny Vitishko were persecuted for accusing Governor
of the Krasnodar region Alexander Tkachyov of unlawful grabbing
public lands on the Black Sea coast.
The situation with Gazaryan is very dangerous. He is facing
several years of imprisonment. We have called on the ALDE
groups to raise the issue in the European Parliament and the
Council of Europe and draw the attention of the Russian government
to the inadmissibility of persecutions for criticism.
Toughening reprisals against the opposition the government
demonstrates its impressive care of the police and secret
services engaged in the suppression of the protests. Policemen
are awarded bonuses and even gratuitous apartments for breaking
peaceful rallies.
Toughening of the Laws
Simultaneously with intensification of selective reprisals
against civil society activists the government has launched
a broad programme of legislative changes targeted at suppression
of civil rights.
Since June the Russian goverment has been pouring onto the
civil society numerous amendments increasing the powers of
secret services and the police and restricting political and
civil activities. Journalists have even started calling the
State Duma a "crazy printer", because the parliament
have been adopting repressive amendments at a record high
speed - sometimes within a few days only.
The key such amendments are as follows:
First, penalties for violation of the law on rallies have
been considerably increased. The new amendments envisage huge
fines for violations, and the list of such violations has
been broadened and brought to the point of absurdity. For
example, there are huge fines now for trampling the grass
or interference with the pedestrians movement. These fines
amount to several thousand US dollars.
Besides, the police always reports some violations that are
not actually made. And the judges always take such reports
as reliable evidence. All this has reduced to zero the constitutional
right to peaceful assembly.
Second, amendments to the law on non-governmental organisations
envisage that those receiving international grants must from
now on register as "foreign agents".
Third, the concept of "treason against the State"
was broadened: any citizen cooperating with foreigners or
even international organizations may be accused of this crime
if the goverment and secret services wish to do so.
Fourth, the control over the Internet has been enhanced under
the guise of combatting child pornography.
Fifth, new restrictions for mass media are underway: some
have been already adopted and some restrictions are under
preparation.
Clericalisation of the State
The reaction of Vladimir Putins regime to mass protests
is not simply intensification of reprisals. Putin responded
to the challenge made by the society with a new state ideology
based on aggressive clericalism.
Orthodoxy has been exploited by the regime in a very specific
interpretation focusing on its contraposition to the European
values and the Western way of life. This "sacred resource"
provides the authorities an ideological basis for criticism
of the human rights concept, as well as political systems
based on respect to civil liberties.
In other words, the specific interpretation of Orthodoxy
has begun playing the same role for Vladimir Putin's regime
as the interpretation of Marxism by Soviet communists, or
racial theories by Adolph Hitler or Catholicism by General
Franco.
The stance of the "true Orthodoxy" makes it much
easier to blame any oppositional movement in "undermining
the foundations" of the state or accuse representatives
of the civil society in servicing the interests of hostile
outside forces.
In practice such ideological evolution resulted in a demonstratively
cruel sentence to the participants of the Pussy Riot punk
band, inspired anti-liberal "Orthodox leanings"
or aggressive patrols by the Orthodox Banner Bearers and establishment
of theology faculties in technological universities.
The Orthodox Church gets the function of a political truncheon
against the dissenting, who are mobbed by chauvinists from
the Black Hundreders as the alien and people of a different
confession are labeled as "infidels".
Paradoxically, but the Stalinist methods of suppressing the
opposition are very organically combined with the Orthodox
propaganda. For example, Sergei Rybko, a well-known Orthodox
preacher, has recently labeled all citizens who participated
in the rally in Bolotnaya Square the "enemies of the
people", despite the fact that there were many believers
among the protestors. Thus, clerical activists consider support
for Vladimir Putin be a far more important sign of "true
Orthodoxy" than faith in God.
Simultaneously the legislative basis for a clerical police
state has been rapidly formed.
An initiative introducing into the Criminal Code a punishment
for injury of religious beliefs and feelings of up to five
years of imprisonment has been submitted to the State Duma.
Obviously, opponents of clericalisation of the state will
be the first victims of this vague norm based on subjective
estimates. This Kremlins initiative was supported by all
the factions of the State Duma, which demonstrates broad support
of totalitarian trends in the transformation of the regime.
An obvious stake at an anti-Western and anti-European policy
has changed the political situation in Russia before our eyes.
A conflict with the West has become more apparent and moreover
demonstrative. Cultivation of xenophobia and hostility to
the outside world allows the regime to feel more confident
when rejecting accusations of election fraud, destruction
of an independent judiciary, and so on. All these liberties,
rights and institutions that the awakening civil society has
been demanding from the government are alien to the political
order based on traditions of the "true Orthodoxy".
Aherence to the "true Orthodoxy" is a good protection
from any anticorruption initiatives that are regarded as being
rooted in the 'alien' Western values.
Problems of the Opposition
Russian opposition looks quite chaotic against the background
of a clear evolution of the ruling regime.
And here I would like to say first of all about the strategy
of my party. YABLOKO offers a coherent alternative to Vladimir
Putins regime. We stand for the European way of development
for Russia and have a definite program of actions here. We
believe that such an alternative can be implemented only in
a peaceful and lawful way, by means of winning positions in
the parliaments of different levels and, thus, gradually taking
away the power from the current elite.
The results demonstrated by our party in the local elections
last month showed that this strategy has good prospects: we
have good results in a number of small cities which was not
typical for us in the past as we were considered a party of
big cities only. So we managed to expand our electoral base.
YABLOKO does not accept any alliances with nationalists and
left-wing radicals.
The desire of these political forces to shove Vladimir Putins
regime does not justify in any way these initially antihuman
ideologies. YABLOKO has been fighting against Vladimir Putins
regime so that it were not replaced by the new Bolsheviks
or slightly disguised fascists.
However, such views are not shared by all the liberals in
Russia. Some of them find it possible to create common political
bodies with left and right-wing radicals justifying such "latitude
of views" by the need to overthrow Vladimir Putins regime.
In the beginning of the 20th century the leader of the Russian
coup-detat Vladimir Lenin called such liberals "useful
bourgeois idiots".
A new political structure the Coordinating Council of the
Opposition supported by such liberals represents a kind
of a lift to the big politics for left radicals and nationalists.
Realizing the deadly danger of radical ideologies for Russia
YABLOKO has to resolutely dissociate itself from the so-called
"united opposition" dominated by left-wing radicals
and nationalists. Their views by and large are not an alternative
to the ideology and practices of the ruling regime.
Zakhar Prilepin, a writer and a representative of the left
opposition, expressed all this best of all addressing s liberals,
Comrades liberals,
Our requests and demands to the government are different
and even opposing. You are infuriated by their military rhetoric,
the Soviet anthem and Orthodox obscurantism. And we do not
like that the government does not really mean it when declaring
all this. Sometimes their rhetoric is almost correct, however,
unfortunately they lack the experience.
If we were in power, we would tell the same things, only
even in a worse variant, and after that we would implement
all this with grim and austere faces. And certainly we would
not restrict ourselves to returning the Soviet anthem only.
And you are still wishing to get a normal country , but
there are plenty of normal countries in the world, why do
we need a normal country? We would like to have an abnormal
country.
Now you realise why it is absolutely impossible to vest hopes
for positive changes in Russia in the so called "united
opposition".
We can say that today the main confrontation line in Russia
runs between the anti-liberal reactionary government and non-liberal
revolutionary opposition. This opposition consists mainly
of radical socialists, nationalists and a small number of
liberals tolerating them.
We had a similar situation exactly 100 years ago, when mostly
radical left opposition opposed anti-liberal autocracy. However,
right-wing radical nationalists fully supported the Tzar then,
while today they have been in opposition to the government.
And this is generally speaking the only difference. This means
a complete deja-vu of the developments we had 100 years ago.
In such circumstances, I believe that the mission of the
YABLOKO party should be as follows: strictly marking the liberal
and the European vector in the Russian politics to work for
a peaceful change of the regime without any revolutionary
upheavals that may lead either to destruction of the country,
or to another period of totalitarian rule by the left-wing
or the right-wing.
The deja-vu situation implies that there should be at least
one party which remembers the lessons of the history and therefore
has a chance to avert repeating of the tragedy.
See also:
Human
Rights
Freedom
of Assembly
YABLOKO
Sister Parties
Understanding Russia
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