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A Piece of Yabloko*
The party of the intelligentsia obtained its own dissidents by Mikhail Vinogradov

Izvestia, October 15, 2001

*Yabloko is the Russian for “apple”

The members of Yabloko who lost in the inter-party struggle recently gathered at the Izvestia press centre. They think that the party has been transformed into a team “serving the bankrupt ambitions of one person” – its leader. Grigory Yavlinsky himself is now busy installing order in the Moscow branch of the organisation.

Last week-end the leader of Yabloko Yavlinsky assumed leadership of the Moscow branch of the party. Such a combination of two posts will last for several months, as, according to the Ideology Secretary of the Yabloko party Sergei Mitrokhin, “the previous leader failed in management and this situation requires a crisis manager”. This leader Vyacheslav Igrunov, together with several members of Yabloko’s Central Council, has broken off and sums up the essence of the crisis in the personality and policies of the party leader. Yabloko’s “dissidents” are sure that their leader actively resisted any attempts to make the party a real political force.

According to Professor Alexei Kuzmin, the organisation performed “class betrayal of its own class” – the party set up to protect the interests of science and education did not make any real steps in this area in the State Duma. This is an erroneous statement, as last week the Yabloko faction together with the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) proposed that the government increase expenditure on education in the state budget for 2002 by 4.5 billion roubles. There were also other actions, as for example, the law on deferral of military conscription for teachers. The “dissidents” think that owing to the efforts of its leader Yabloko has been driven into the “electoral ghetto” and that the only goal of the party is to obtain as in the past five per cent of the vote and about 15 seats in parliament.

Mitrokhin called the accusations of Igrunov and other “dissidents” “a painful reaction to party reform” when Igrunov had to change into “a member of the team” instead of the main “party-builder”. All attempts of the “plaintiff” to break up the party led to the decision of Yabloko’s members to part with Igrunov and several other people.

The Ideology Secretary of the Yabloko party is convinced that Igrunov’s offense “was used by Kremlin’s political technologists who dream of liquidating Yabloko for its unwillingness to play according to the rules of a “manageable democracy”. “All his (Igrunov’s – M.V.) accusations are a lie. And I can prove this,” says Mitrokhin.

Izvestia, October 15, 2001

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