A speech by Boris Vishnevsky at the meeting of the Federal Council of Yabloko
Press release, 17.12.2018

I see the current state of affairs as darkness before the sun rise. I can see that the darkness is falling but I hope that the sun will rise. It is our task to bring it on.

We have been fighting against it [the darkness] during all the 25 years of Yabloko’s existence. However, it is not possible to understand what to do next if we do not see the reason why darkness fell.

One of the reasons for this is that political system that was established in Russia 25 years ago in an autocratical Constitution that was designed in favour of one person. It was designed so that no one could stand in the way of the president and the government. So that the parliament could have no influence on the executive branch. So that the citizens could not influence the decision-making process through their elected representatives.

Today’s political regime which we can characterise as an authoritarian with some strong totalitarian features is a direct consequence of this system. We need to change the system, as the saying goes…

We have the President who was brought up by the secret police. He can only create a police state, and he is creating it. We have a repressive state machine that sees an individual as dust on the road, have actionably have the revival of Stalin’s traditions, we have “state bodies that make no mistakes”, we are in a situation when anyone may become a victim of the repressive machine.

Why are amazing people like Oyub Titiev and Yuri Dmitriv for the Memorial human rights group are being prosecuted? Why is the St. Petersburg branch of Memorial being evicted from premises? This is happening because the heirs of Stalin’s executors, who are keeping Stalin’s portraits as well as Beria’s busts in their cabinets, do not like that [some people] remind them of the names of the victims and executors.

Today, unlike what we witnessing at the end of 1980s, there is some protest. However, there is less hope. Many of those who want changes are not ready to take to the streets and vote in the elections. We need to explain to them that the raise of the retirement age, taxes and the intensification of repressions is the result of the election of Vladimir Bonaparte, as Lev Shlosberg has just said (presidential election 2018).

Our goal is to persuade people to support our candidates. How can we achieve this result? Yabloko has never experienced difficulties with coming up with clever ideas. We used to have problems with communication channels, sometimes we failed to persuade people that the truth is with us, sometimes we failed to find the right words to explain that what we want is what the country needs. But today we need to educate people, to work with them, we need to prove to them everyday that we are with them in difficult situations, that we are with them if their rights and freedoms are being violated, that Yabloko is the first political party ro come for help.

We need to show to people that Yabloko has the same values within our own party. That we have democracy, pluralism of opinions, the we can criticise our party leaders, that we are not searching for internal enemies. We must show that we respect each other witting our party the way we want the government to respect people. It is when people see that we abide by the principles we declare within our own party they start having faith in us.