Decision No 145 by the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, adopted on 14.10.2021, published on 18.10.2021

Photo by Alexander Kazakov / Kommersant

The situation in Russia, in almost all spheres, is currently determined by trends summarising the previous 25 years and set by the 2020 “constitutional reform” [Vladimir Putin’s amendments to the Russian Constitution].

This is a movement of the authoritarian Vladimir Putin’s System towards even greater closeness, repressiveness, militarisation, imitation of democracy, pseudo-patriotic ideologisation, and ultimately towards totalitarianism equipped with the latest technologies.

The Russian authorities have determined their tactics and strategy.

In domestic politics, this is intimidation and repression, defamation of opponents, not only political ones, but in general all those who are dissatisfied with the situation in the country.

There are already more than 350 political prisoners in Russia, which is more than in the USSR. Oppositionists are not only persecuted and imprisoned, they are killed and poisoned, and there are serious reasons to believe that there are “death squads” operating in the country. Increasingly repressive laws have been adopted. Spy mania hitting the academic community prevails – almost any scientist who collaborates with foreign colleagues can be falsely accused of “espionage” or “treason”. The persecution of independent journalists and media outlets, which one after another are declared “foreign agents”, has been growing, and this seriously hampers their activities. Opposition politicians and civic activists are persecuted, foreign investors are intimidated and squeezed out of the country. The consolidation point imposed by the authorities on the country is confrontation with the West, and a false concept of a “special civilization”.

In foreign policy, Russia’s self-isolation continues and is increased, relations with the United States and the European Union are continuously deteriorating, and the field of confrontation is expanding. The Cold War, declared by Putin in Munich in 2007, is intensifying. Moreover, there was a real danger of the country being drawn into a major war. Russia has been taking part in the civil war in Syria for six years already. We spend funds there that should have been used for solution of our domestic social problems and protection of our southern borders. The US fail and withdrawal from Afghanistan gives the ruling group a sense of the opening opportunity to recklessly act in self-determined “zones of vital interests,” primarily in Ukraine.

The articles by President Vladimir Putin and ex-President Dmitry Medvedev on the “Ukrainian issue” are a direct ideological preparation for a new armed conflict with Ukraine.

All this is prone of the danger of military and geopolitical adventures based on a feeling of permissiveness. The worse is the internal political situation in the country, the more likely it is to switch the attention of the population to the implementation of another foreign policy adventure – be it a new annexation or intervention in armed conflicts in Africa or the Middle East.

In our opinion, the Russian authorities are far from realising the challenges of the times and global politics in general, as well as the situation at their own borders, in particular.

In the economy, the gap between its poor condition and the ambitions of the regime will widen. The economics of the Putin system is the economics of the bunker. All standard macroeconomic proportions are more or less maintained, but there are no opportunities for development. The first decisions after the elections to the State Duma aim at a significant increase in funding for the military, the security and the law enforcement. The government has planned an increase in spending on law enforcement agencies which is record high for the past ten years, and, from 2022, it will increase funding for law enforcement agencies from the federal budget. The growth of expenditures under the item on which the budgets of the Ministry of Interior, Rosgvardia (the Russian Guard), the Investigative Committee, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the security agencies and the Federal Penitentiary Service are financed will amount to 17% and will be record high since 2012, when, after the protest actions related to the elections, funding for the security forces was immediately increased by 46%. In 2023, funding for law enforcement agencies will increase by another 100 billion roubles, to 2.91 trillion roubles, and to 3.02 trillion roubles in 2024. In total, over three years, additional 730 billion roubles will be pumped into the defence budget in comparison with the amount of funds that has been spent annually now.

It is clear that the population will serve as a resource for replenishing the treasury and financing the repressive machine.

In 2022, the Ministry of Finance plans to collect 25.021 trillion roubles in the treasury, which is 1.59 trillion roubles more than in the current year’s budget. New taxes and fees will help to squeeze out additional money (an excise tax on sugary drinks, a tax on physical persons’ transfers abroad, tougher taxation of wealthy citizens, a tax on added income of oil companies, increase in the Mineral Extraction Tax for metallurgical companies, etc.).

At the same time, the expansion of poverty will continue: the fall in incomes of the population and the “consumption” of reserves. Spare cash reserves of Russian citizens have already dropped multi-year low, and consumer demand, boosted by the distribution of 700 billion roubles before the elections, began to fizzle out. The population has spent almost all of the funds received from the budget, and meets the autumn with the minimum amount of spare cash in several years. Meanwhile, food inflation has begun to accelerate again in Russia and is becoming increasingly tangible.

In the long term, the key risk factor for the economy will be the continued dependence on hydrocarbon exports, which becomes fatal in the context of the reduction of global carbon dependence. We can confidently assume that as a result of a decrease in the cost of exporting hydrocarbon goods, and then also introduction of a cross-border carbon regulation (tax), Russian exports will degrade relatively slowly but steadily. As a result, in the foreseeable future, poverty will continue to grow up to impoverishment of increasingly more social groups, and the natural growth of discontent will be suppressed by total control using the latest technologies, repression and brainwashing. The lack of demand in the labour sphere of an increasing number of citizens will make them completely dependent on social handouts from the authorities, predetermining political dependence.

The situation in the world has been also developing very unfavorably for Russia. The world is entering a period of splitting up, self-isolation, protectionism, and a narrowing of the perspective of thought. Fully controlled elections in Russia have not received serious international scrutiny. Western politicians and journalists were much more interested in the dramatic development of the situation on the gas market and Russia as a source of energy carriers.

Geopolitical risks have been seriously growing. One of the key features of the modern world is the formation of insurmountable gaps and lags. We have reiterated that the future of Russia lies in the formation of a single global economic centre with Europe, capable of competing on equal terms with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region that have already united in the Comprehensive Economic Partnership and North America. However, all of Russia’s official policies target exactly in the opposite direction. However, the situation is changing, and in the near future Russia may find itself between the American-European Union and the Asia-Pacific Union as between the rock and a hard place.

Time has been accelerating, but the chain of tactical decisions aimed at maintaining power, “freezing” the country, and conservation of “Putin’s stability” does not take this into account this any way, which leads to the closing of the “windows of opportunity” and the exhaustion, if not complete destruction of Russia’s development potential in the 21st century. The lack of understanding by the Russian leadership of the strategy, even that of medium-term and short-term, a lack of understanding of the new world, new technologies, of what is happening in the West and the peculiarities of the crisis in the West, entails inevitable consequences for our country.

***

The current situation in the country and in the world is not conducive to domestic Russian political changes.

The prospects of a much needed change in the direction of the country’s development are not visible from inside the system. What we see – the contradictions between the “towers” of the Kremlin, the growth of the influence and ambitions of the “military and security bloc”, adoption of political decisions by the “siloviki”, openly sounding proposals to create a kind of “people’s empire based on the principle of autocracy”, and “the transition to a mobilisation economy and partial closure from the disintegrating global world,”- means, at best, the conservation of the status quo, and, at worst, movement back in time, to the past, which President Putin regards as a model for himself. During these years that were lost for meaningful politics, the repressive system not only strengthened, but ensured a transit to a new qualitative state.

Talking about civic and political activity, protests have been going around in circles for the past ten years: an attempt to replace a policy based on values ​​and programme content by activism leads to nothing but disappointment and repression.

Calls to “break the regime”, “topple Putin, and then we’ll see”, attempts to influence the government in such ways as the notorious Smart Voting, without understanding what needs to be built instead of Putin’s system, – all these are pseudo-politics. It only leads to an increase in the number of those arrested, thousands of law suits [against protesters and those dissenting], public disillusionment, an increased influence of the Stalinists-communists as a systemic “opposition” on the authoritarian government, accelerating its movement towards totalitarianism, and, as a consequence, to the strengthening of the Putin system.

As a result, society is deprived of political subjectivity and the prospects of having a voice in the future.

Observing the hysterical state of protest of some part of society, the so-called “Internet intelligentsia”, we consider it necessary to declare: for us it is absolutely obvious that in Russia the government and its policies cannot be changed from the street. A stake on destabilization of the situation in the country, whipping up hatred and rebellion can only turn into a mass bloodshed. All attempts to act against the authorities in the field of populism, nationalism and Bolshevism turn into degradation of the moral resistance of society to the regime, which cynically and successfully uses nationalism and social discord for its own purposes.

***

We are aware that there is no place for a party like Yabloko in the modern political system constructed by a repressive regime, and the Party can be closed by the authorities at any moment. Nevertheless, we continue working due to our results achieved for almost 30 years. The party has become a political institution that has its own meaning, content, and place in the modern history of Russia.We use all our capabilities in the interests of the people and our country.

All social events in our country, including the authoritarian government, move by inertia. And this is their weakness. Neither society nor the authorities see the prospects, they have closed into a “sovereign cocoon” from the future. The country is losing the prospects of future development and is afraid of it.

The meaning of Yabloko is to understand the future, understand where the country needs to go, in order to provide the foundations for the prosperity of Russia in the 21st century.

The Yabloko party is convinced that an alternative perspective for the country’s development must be worked out – a meaningful development strategy for decades, determining Russia’s place in the world and the path of movement, educating and training cadres, developing political structures and persistently pursuing a policy line based on respect for a person and his/her freedom, and life without fear. All this will not appear by itself, we have to prepare and convince people. If the people of Russia have a meaningful vision of the future, its value basis with its national and cultural points of support, the forcible methods will lose their effectiveness and a meaningful field for dialogue with the authorities, including that on our terms, will arise.

Grigory Yavlinsky,

Chairman of

the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko