Congresses and Docs

Memorandum of Political Alternative, an updated version of 1.03.2019

Memorandum of Political Alternative

YABLOKO's Ten Key Programme Issues

THE DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO

YABLOKO's Political Platform Adopted by the 15th Congress, June 21, 2008

The 18th Congress of YABLOKO

RUSSIA DEMANDS CHANGES! Electoral Program for 2011 Parliamentary Elections.

Key resolutions by the Congress:

On Stalinism and Bolshevism
Resolution. December 21, 2009

On Anti-Ecological Policies of Russia’s Authorities. Resolution of the 15th congress of the YABLOKO party No 253, December 24, 2009

On the Situation in the Northern Caucasus. Resolution of the 15th congress of the YABLOKO party No 252, December 24, 2009

YABLOKO's POLITICAL COMMITTEE DECISIONS:

YABLOKO’s Political Committee: Russian state acts like an irresponsible business corporation conducting anti-environmental policies

 

Overcoming bolshevism and stalinism as a key factor for Russia¦µ™s transformation in the 21st century

 

On Russia's Foreign Policies. Political Committee of hte YABLOKO party. Statement, June 26, 2009

 

On Iran’s Nuclear Problem Resolution by the Political Committee of the YABLOKO party. October 6, 2009

 

Anti-Crisis Proposals (Housing-Roads-Land) of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO. Handed to President Medvedev by Sergei Mitrokhin on June 11, 2009

Brief Outline of Sergei Mitrokhin’s Report at the State Council meeting. January 22, 2010

 

Assessment of Russia’s Present Political System and the Principles of Its Development. Brief note for the State Council meeting (January 22, 2010) by Dr.Grigory Yavlinsky, member of YABLOKO’s Political Committee. January 22, 2010

 

Address of the YABLOKO party to President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. Political Committee of the YABLOKO party. October 9, 2009

 

The 17th Congress of YABLOKO

 

 

 

The 16th Congress of Yabloko

Photo by Sergei Loktionov

The 12th congress of Yabloko


The 11th congress of Yabloko


The 10th congress of Yabloko

Moscow Yabloko
Yabloko for Students
St. Petersburg Yabloko
Khabarovsk Yabloko
Irkutsk Yabloko
Kaliningrad Yabloko(eng)
Novosibirsk Yabloko
Rostov Yabloko
Yekaterinburg Yabloko
(Sverdlovsk Region)

Krasnoyarsk Yabloko
Ulyanovsk Yabloko
Tomsk Yabloko
Tver Yabloko(eng)
Penza Yabloko
Stavropol Yabloko

Action of Support

Archives

Categories

SOON!

FOR YOUR INTEREST!

Programme by candidate for the post of Russian President Grigory Yavlinsky. Brief Overview

My Truth

Grigory Yavlinsky at Forum 2000, Prague, 2014

YABLOKO-ALDE conference 2014

Grigory Yavlinsky : “If you show the white feather, you will get fascism”

Grigory Yavlinsky: a coup is started by idealists and controlled by rascals

The Road to Good Governance

Risks of Transitions. The Russian Experience

Grigory Yavlinsky on the Russian coup of August 1991

A Male’s Face of Russia’s Politics

Black Sea Palaces of the New Russian Nomenklatura

Realeconomik

The Hidden Cause of the Great Recession (And How to Avert the Nest One)

by Dr. Grigory Yavlinsky

Resoulution
On the results of the Conference “Migration: International Experience and Russia’s Problems” conducted by the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (the ALDE party)

Moscow, April 6, 2013

International Conference "Youth under Threat of Extremism and Xenophobia. A Liberal Response"
conducted jointly by ELDR and YABLOKO. Moscow, April 21, 2012. Speeches, videos, presentations

What does the opposition want: to win or die heroically?
Moskovsky Komsomolets web-site, July 11, 2012. Interview with Grigory Yavlinsky by Yulia Kalinina.

Building a Liberal Europe - the ALDE Project

By Sir Graham Watson

Lies and legitimacy
The founder of the Yabloko Party analyses the political situation. Article by Grigory Yavlinsky on radio Svoboda. April 6, 2011

Algorithms for Opposing Gender Discrimination: the International and the Russian Experience

YABLOKO and ELDR joint conference

Moscow, March 12, 2011

Reform or Revolution

by Vladimir Kara-Murza

Is Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko, "The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May 12, 2010

Grigory Yavlinsky's interview to Vladimir Pozner. The First Channel, programme "Pozner", April 20, 2010 (video and transcript)

Overcoming the Totalitarian Past: Foreign Experience and Russian Problems by Galina Mikhaleva. Research Centre for the East European Studies, Bremen, February 2010.

Grigory Yavlinsky: Vote for the people you know, people you can turn for help. Grigory Yavlinsky’s interview to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, October 8, 2009

Grigory Yavlinsky: no discords in the tandem. Grigory Yavlinsky’s interview to the Radio Liberty
www.svobodanews.ru
September 22, 2009

A Credit for Half a Century. Interview with Grigory Yavlinsky by Natalia Bekhtereva, Radio Russia, June 15, 2009

Sergei Mitrokhin's Speech at the meeting with US Preseident Barack Obama. Key Notes, Moscow, July 7, 2009

Mitrokhin proposed a visa-free regime between Russia and EU at the European liberal leaders meeting
June 18, 2009

Demodernization
by Grigory Yavlinsky

European Union chooses Grigory Yavlinsky!
Your vote counts!

Reforms that corrupted Russia
By Grigory Yavlinsky, Financial Times (UK), September 3, 2003

Grigory Yavlinsky: "It is impossible to create a real opposition in Russia today."
Moskovsky Komsomolets, September 2, 2003

Alexei Arbatov: What Should We Do About Chechnya?
Interview with Alexei Arbatov by Mikhail Falaleev
Komsomolskaya Pravda, November 9, 2002

Grigory Yavlinsky: Our State Does Not Need People
Novaya Gazeta,
No. 54, July 29, 2002

Grigory Yavlinsky: The Door to Europe is in Washington
Obschaya Gazeta, May 16, 2002

Grigory Yavlinsky's speech.
March 11, 2002

Grigory Yavlinsky's Lecture at the Nobel Institute
Oslo, May 30, 2000

IT IS IMPORTANT!

 

Yabloko: Liberals in Russia

By Alexander Shishlov, July 6, 2009

Position on Some Important Strategic Issues of Russian-American Relations

Moscow, July 7, 2009

The Embrace of Stalinism

By Arseny Roginsky, 16 December 2008

Nuclear Umbrellas and the Need for Understanding: IC Interview With Ambassador Lukin
September 25, 1997

Would the West’s Billions Pay Off?
Los Angeles Times
By Grigory Yavlinsky and Graham Allison
June 3, 1991

An insult to public intelligence. Grigory Yavlinsky on the “popular vote” on Putin’s amendments to the Constitution

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 30.06.2020

Photo: a voting station.

A “popular vote” to amend the Constitution is like a rape. That is, it resembles coercing into something that you initially did not want and what should not have happened, and the longer and more persistently they persuade you, the more disgusting it becomes. Now people, even if they vote, do not understand at all why they need it, and, certainly, they feel cheating.

This happens not the first time in the recent history of Russia. Any parallels are imperfect, but it is impossible not to recall the referendum on the preservation of the USSR on March 17, 1991: the desired result was obtained, but after five months there was a coup d’etat, and then there were the Belovezh Accords [on the dissolution of the USSR signed by the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus]. For all this we are now paying with bloodshed in Donbass.

 

Also there was an All-Russian referendum on April 25, 1993, which made it into history due to the propaganda slogan “Yes – Yes – No – Yes”. Then, despite all the distortions and manipulations, a public request was formed for the responsibility of the authorities and a call for search for a common language between its branches. However, the Kremlin group ignored this, seeing in the result only what it originally needed, and six months later it all ended in a bloody clash with hundreds of victims [the constitutional crisis of 1993 as a political stand-off between President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament that was resolved by military force].

 

Both in 1991 and 1993, the authorities, seeking to get a concrete result, shamelessly used lies, manipulations, coercion, intimidation, insane advertising and shows with the participation of movie and pop stars. If then the people had not been raped, but would have engaged in a dialogue in search of understanding, if the authorities had tried to listen to the society, one could have found a reasonable way out of the critical situation and avoid the tragic consequences.

 

There is such a way out in today’s situation: fair and competitive elections of a new President no later than 2024, real democratisation of the political system, rule of law, independence of the court, that is, everything that is the norm for modern life and a manifestation of real respect for citizens. But it is clear that none of this will happen.


Photo: Organisation of “voting” on Vladimir Putin’s constitutional amendments.

 

What is happening in Russia is an insult to public intelligence: the humiliating actions of the authorities against citizens, hurting the sense of human dignity and aimed at lowering self-esteem. Perhaps this is not yet obvious to everyone, but very soon people will realise this and will not forgive it.

 

The stupid story invented by the authorities about how two officers of the Russian Military Intelligence Service or sports food dealers went to “study the Salisbury cathedral”, where, “by coincidence”,  Mr.Skripal, former officer of the Russian Military Intelligence Service was “poisoned” on the same days, was insulting to public intelligence. And Putin personally commented on all this nonsense. How stupid and insulting to society it looked!

 

The doping scandal was the same insult for Russian citizens – not only the state’s machinations with the tests of Russian athletes, but also the endless and obvious lies of senior officials. This all resulted in the humiliating removal of our country from participation in the Olympics and other major sporting competitions.

 

A similar effect is produced by the conclusion of the Constitutional Court of the RF on Putin’s amendments – an absurd text justifying the refusal of the change of power by the presence in Russia of “developed parliamentarism, effective justice and separation of powers”.

 

Now it has come to a “popular vote”. The head of the Central Electoral Commission compared a package voting on the proposed changes with ordering of a set business lunch: take it all or leave it. Who is this counted on? What does Mrs. Pamfilova take Russian citizens for? And who does she think she is?

 

Not only is the Putin’s plebiscite procedure deliberately designed in such a way that control over the casting and counting of votes is virtually impossible, but the authorities have also created the broadest opportunities for “drawing” any results: one can vote pre-term and at home without any explanation, one can vote remotely via the Internet (in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region), it is possible to vote in tents in the street, it is possible to vote without registration of passport data. The revelations of the key agents of the constitutional process expose the position of the authorities, which regard the plebiscite is a technical procedure that does envisage a failure. The amendments have already been adopted. The State Duma has been already stamping laws with regard to amendments and with references to them, and a little book with a new text [of the Constitution] is already sold in book stores.

 

Certainly, one should not participate in such a mocking “event”.

Photo: a voting station in a car trunk. 

 

All this has been said more many times. But the farther, the more clear it is that the law, the country, and the people are demonstrably mocked at: “We know how to make you agree with everything we want – with taking away of your pensions, swamping the regions with garbage imported from Moscow, and self-isolation without subsistence means”. And then – with thousands of new [COVID] cases a day – parades and festivities at “the holiday of resetting of presidential terms” are organised in a snap. The health and lives of people do not matter much: the quarantine measures were quickly canceled so that to ensure the turnout at the plebiscite.

 

Having raped the society, the authorities will even more aggressively impose their agenda after July 1, believing that our people are stupid and do not understand anything.

 

But one should not think like that about the people in the country of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Sooner or later, the authorities will see it for themselves, and then they will have a really bad time.

 

An insult to public intelligence will be remembered for a long time. It is true that Russian society was very seriously affected by the Bolshevik crimes of the 20th century, the reformist idiocy of the 1990s and Putin’s authoritarianism of the past two decades. However, this does not rule out that many smart people live in our country who will not forgive these bullying.

 

The “popular vote” on the amendments runs counter to the essence of modern life and the country’s historical perspective. The meanings of the third decade of the 21st century are completely different, and certainly lie neither in a lifelong super-authoritarian rule and nor in a “separate civilisation” that opposes the whole world.

 

Therefore, the result of the plebiscite of 2020 will be the same as that of the referenda in 1991 and 1993. One can force people to vote, one can publish any results. But after some time, a historical pattern will surely break its way through.  Most likely, this road will be the most crooked and ugly of all possible.

 

Once again in Russian history, the authorities underestimate the people, insult them, not believing in their mind and their creative abilities. The idea of ​​people as cattle, needing only entertainment and handouts, widens the gap between the power and the people, makes the abyss insurmountable. No matter what the results of the “popular vote” are announced, people will act in accordance with their interests, which in principle do not coincide with the interests and motives of the organisers and performers of the “reset”.

 

Source 

 

Grigory Yavlinsky

Is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.