Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
To watch the conference in English, you can turn on English subtitles.
On Tuesday, 19 October, the European Dialogue expert group and the Gender Faction of the Yabloko party held a Zoom conference on the topic “Discrimination against women in the labour market and the fight against it in Russia, Europe and the CIS countries”.
Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko
Democracy is air. One can ask the question, “Do you need air?” People can answer in different ways, but they will suffocate without air. The situation with democracy in our country is understandable, it is obvious. Democracy is the rule of the people, literally translated from Greek into Russian. It is quite obvious that there is no people’s power in our country.
Recently, President Putin, speaking of the 13,000 fatalities on the roads of the country in 2020, compared this to losses “in military actions”. True. Russia is losing a lot of people in the war that our drivers are waging against Russian roads.
However, there is another war, and the losses there are much greater! According to Rosstat [the Russian Federal Statistical Service], more than 400,000 people have died from COVID in Russia since the beginning of the pandemic! According to the official data of the operational headquarters, significantly more than 13,000 people died in October alone,
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.
Decision No 144 by the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, adopted on 14.10.2021, published on 18.10.2021
Photo: Distribution of seats in the Russian parliament based on the results of the 2021 elections. Photo: by Igor Ivanko / Kommersant
The past parliamentary elections are the first after the cynical, insulting and hypocritical imposition on the country of [Vladimir Putin’s] “amendments” to the Constitution.
We participated in these elections being well aware that in the changed conditions it is absolutely impossible to maintain the previous goals, objectives and methods of work of Yabloko as a centrist social-liberal democratic party of a parliamentary type in a campaign that cannot be called elections by any standards.
Statement by the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, adopted on 14.10.2021, published on 18.10.2021
Photo: Dmitry Muratov / Photo by Alexander Kazakov / Kommersant
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Dmitry Muratov “for his efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace” is an award to a Russian citizen, a public figure, editor-in-chief of an opposition newspaper and a member of the Yabloko party. Certainly, this is a prize to the [murdered] journalists of Novaya Gazeta – Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, Igor Domnikov, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, but not only to them.
Decision No 148 by the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, adopted on 14.10.2021, published on 18.10.2021
Photo: Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), bows to the bust of Stalin on 5 March 2021, the anniversary of Stalin’s death / Photo by Irina Buzhor / Kommersant
The Political Committee of Yabloko considers it extremely harmful for Russian politics and the country as a whole to use voting for the communists as a tactical method of fighting a repressive dictatorship. Bolshevism and Stalinism, which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation represents in modern Russia, is an ideology alien to us. Moreover, Yabloko’s position is that creation of a modern state in Russia and development of the country is impossible without overcoming Bolshevism and Stalinism. Lack of understanding this and insufficient attention to overcoming Bolshevism in the first post-Soviet decade is one of the key reasons for the failure of the reforms.
On 14 October, a closed meeting of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party took place in Moscow, 15 out of 17 members took part in it (Igor Artemyev and Svetlana Gannushkina were absent). The main topic of discussion was the results and lessons of the past parliamentary elections – the first elections after the establishment of “the 1st of July system”, the adoption of Vladimir Putin’s amendments to the Russian Constitution.
The Political Committee is aware of the difficulties and threats is store for the party in the modern political system, constructed by a repressive regime, up to and including the ban on its activities.
A faction of the Yabloko party has been created in the Petrozavodsk City Council, Karelia. It includes two deputies from Yabloko: Dmitry Rybakov and Olga Tuzhikova. Dmitry Rybakov became the leader of the faction, he headed the list of the party candidates in the elections to the City Council.
Photo: Yevgeny Gontmakher. Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 21 October, a new term of the Yabloko Party University will begin.
It will be opened by a Zoom lecture by Yevgeny Gontmakher, Professor at the Higher School of Economics, head of research of the European Dialogue group, and a member of the Public Constitutional Council.
The topic of the lecture is “Social development of the Russian Federation in the COVID era”.
On Tuesday, 19 October, the European Dialogue expert group and the Gender Faction of the Yabloko party will hold a Zoom conference on the topic “Discrimination against women in the labour market and the fight against it in Russia, Europe and the CIS countries”. The conference will begin at 18:00.
Yabloko thanks the voters who voted for our [candidates] list and our candidates in single-mandate constituencies in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg.
We appreciate your stance very much and we are certain that Yabloko received many more votes than was officially announced.
Despite the fact that due to violations and falsifications, Yabloko received fewer mandates than it should have received with your support, the Yabloko deputies in the Legislative Assembly will represent and protect your interests.
Photo: Alexander Gunko / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Yabloko branch in the Moscow Region is challenging the results of the September elections in courts. Candidates for deputies from the regional branch of Yabloko filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging the results of voting in different polling stations, where observers and members of electoral commissions recorded violations:
The first meetings of the Municipal Councils of Deputies of the new convocation of the Kriushinsky rural settlement of the Klepikovsky region and the Dubrovichy rural settlement of the Ryazan region were held. In the past elections journalist Maria Rakcheyeva was elected a deputy from the Yabloko party and Konstantin Smirnov, Chairman of the regional branch of Yabloko, was elected deputy for another term.
Photo: Map. The Chelyabinsk city pine forest / Collage by the Press Service of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko
Left: the boundaries of the forest before 2011.
Right: the boundaries of the forest now.
The court satisfied the collective lawsuit filed by Andrei Talevlin, Deputy Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko, together with human rights activist Vladimir Kazantsev, and returned the plot of the Chelyabinsk urban pine forest seized ten years ago to the boundaries of a specially protected natural area. Also, the Miass and Monakha rivers floodplains remained included into the protected territory of the forest.
Photo: Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, 15 January 2020 // Sputnik/Dmitry Astakhov/Pool via REUTERS
An article on Ukraine published by Vladimir Putin in July was completed yesterday by Dmitry Medvedev. If someone could still doubt the intentions, now everything has become obvious: Russia is moving towards war.
There is no point in discussing either the form or the content of what has been published under the signature of the former President of Russia, and now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. It is clear that rude xenophobic and chauvinistic statements against a neighbouring sovereign state are nothing more than a provocation.
Photo: Dmitry Muratov and Lev Shlosberg at the Pskov Yabloko office on 2 April, 2019. / Photo by Artyom Avanesov
Dmitry Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize as one of the last defenders of free speech in Russia. The last, not in the sense that defenders of freedom of speech in Russia will end on him, but that he is one of the last people who personally launched freedom of speech after the collapse of the USSR and who has been maintaining its level for all these 30 years.
Candidates for State Duma deputies from the Bashkirian branch of Yabloko filed 28 lawsuits to the district courts to cancel voting results in the polling stations where gross violations of the law were observed on voting days and during the counting of the votes. Yabloko activists intend to achieve a recount of votes or a repeat voting in these precincts.
Not many people know about the contribution of Dmitry Muratov [to protection of freedom of speech] in our country. But now they will learn about it – and not only in Russia, but all over the world. The Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Muratov became the third recipient of this award in our country after Acad. Andrei Sakharov and Mikhail Gorbachev. And this is fair.