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 the 100th anniversary of Academician Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov
Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 21.05.2021
Photo: Andrei Sakharov. The 1st Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, 1989
The prosperity of Russia is possible only if our country develops as a free and democratic state. This condition was once very precisely formulated by Academician Sakharov. Andrei Dmitriyevich is not with us for over three decades, but this thesis has become increasingly more relevant. Today it is already obvious that this key condition is the imperative for the development of our country.
Photo: Academician Andrei Sakharov / Photo by Sergei Guneyev, RIA Novosti
The photo exhibition of the Andrei Sakharov Center* “Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov: Anxiety and Hope”, which will not take place in Chistoprudny Boulevard due to the ban of the Moscow Mayor’s Office, will be held at the central office of the Yabloko party (31 bldg. 2, Pyatnitskaya Street).
Yabloko was preparing its own photo exhibition for the 100th anniversary of the outstanding Soviet academic and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. It was supposed to open on his birthday, 21 May. However, when it became known about the refusal of the Moscow Mayor’s Office to approve the exhibition in Chistoprudny Boulevard, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov turned to the Director of the Andrei Sakharov Centre, Sergei Lukashevsky, with a proposal to host the exhibition in the party office in the centre of Moscow.
Photo: Emilia Slabunova, MP of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, and Yelena Rusakova, head of the municipal district Gagarinsky, Moscow / Photo by the Press Service of the Moscow branch of Yabloko
On May 27, the Yabloko Party University will hold a conference (in Zoom) dedicated to successful election campaigns of women candidates at different levels. The conference will begin at 19:00.
Is there any specifics of women’s participation in elections? Are there topics that women candidates pay special attention to? How do voters react to them? What is the secret of success?
By-elections to the regional parliament of the Saratov region took place past week-end. Yabloko’s candidates ran in three of the four vacant single-mandate constituencies. Ksenia Sverdlova, Chair of the regional department of Yabloko, ran in the Volzhsky district, Ilya Kozlyakov, Deputy Chairman of the party branch, ran in Kalininsky district, and Dmitry Lepensky ran in Marksovsky district. The total number of voters in the three districts was 250,000 people. The single slogan of the campaign was “It is time for the smart. Time for the honest. Yabloko’s time”.
Ksenia Sverdlova summed up the campaign results on her Facebook page:
The trade union of the Moscow metro reports mass dismissals of workers – at least 50 people lost their jobs since the beginning of May. However, different figures are quoted: 100 and 200 people. They differ, since not everyone has yet applied to the trade union for protection. The dismissed associate this with their political position – they registered on the web-site in support of Alexei Navalny, and the data from the web-site had previously leaked to the Internet.
Photo from the official web-site of the Pristensky District municipality
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Kursk Region recognised the refusal of the local authorities to give a permission for a single picket in the village of Pristen as unreasonable and unlawful. The Public Prosecutor’s Office found that the refusal of the authorities violated the requirements of Articles 7 and 12 of Federal Law No 54 “On rallies, demonstrations, processions, and picketing”, as well as a loose and incorrect interpretation of Clause 16 of the Governor’s Order No. 60-rg “On the introduction of a high alert regime”. Based on the violations revealed, the Public Prosecutor’s Office made a submission to the head of the village, Vadim Katykhin, to amend the violation.
Yan Furtsev, a member of the Kursk branch of Yabloko, disputed the unlawul refusal of the local authorities in the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Speaking in the State Duma, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that the amount of dividends that Russian companies brought abroad in 2019 amounted to 4.3 trillion roubles (these are passive incomes of companies, dividends, interest, royalties, and rent payments).
Congress Resolution No. 409, published on 14.05.2021
To: The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
The Russian Union of Rectors
Heads of institutions of higher education of the Russian Federation
Address
Persecution of university students for their civic and political activity has become more frequent in Russia.
Those who openly express their civil and political stance with is undesirable for to the authorities, take part in protests, and speak out in defence of political prisoners, are expelled from universities under far-fetched pretexts, depriving them of the opportunity to get a higher education.
Photo: Alyona Popova / Photo from Alyona Popova’s personal Facebook page
On Tuesday, 18 May, lawyer Alyona Popova will give a lecture for the students of the Yabloko Party University and Yabloko’s Gender School on the topic “Feminism in Russia: the System’s Struggle Against Equality, Why Are the Authorities Afraid of Women?” The lecture will be held via Zoom and will begin at 19:00.
On April 28, Olga Radayeva, First Deputy Chair of the Gender Faction of the Yabloko party, took part in an online conference on gender equality organised by Svensk Ungdom (Finland) and Civic Forum (Belarus).
Five speakers shared their experience of defending women’s rights in their countries: Ellinor Juth (Svensk Ungdom, Finland), Marina Korzh (Feminist movement “March Babe!”, Belarus), Olga Radayeva (Gender Faction of the Yabloko party, Russia), Olena Stadnik- Stefurak (European Youth of Ukraine, Ukraine), Ghena Ayach (Future Youth Movement, Lebanon).
The speakers told about their organisations, the situation with women’s rights, positive and negative trends in the field of gender equality in their countries, what problems in the field of gender equality came to the forefront in their countries, which legislative acts contributed to the achievement of gender equality, and which on the contrary, slowed down the process.
Parents of children in the Prionezhsky District of the Republic of Karelia and Petrozavodsk have been finally paid in full the parental compensation for raising a child in kindergarten (for missed days) which is due to them according to the law. This is stated in the response of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to the appeal of Emilia Slabunova, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia from Yabloko.
In the Prionezhsky district, a recalculation was carried out and 45 parents received the corresponding compensations. In Petrozavodsk, recalculation was made for 13,738 parents.
Photo: Ilya Shablinsky / Photo from Ilya Shablinsky’s personal Facebook page
On Thursday, May 20, the Yabloko Party University will hold a zoom lecture by lawyer Ilya Shablinsky. The topic of the lecture is “The electoral law and the electoral process. History and Law “. The lecture will begin at 19:00.
The issues to be covered at the lecture are as follows:
– How has the Russian electoral legislation evolved?
– Electoral systems and elections in Russia in 1993 – 2016.
Yabloko leaders and activists honoured the memory of those who died in the Second World War at the Preobrazhensky cemetery in Moscow. They laid flowers and a wreath at the War Memorial.
The solemn and mourning ceremony was attended by Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko founder and Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, Sergei Ivanenko, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, Ivan Bolshakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy of the Moscow City Duma, Kirill Goncharov, member of the Federal Bureau of the party, Galina Mikhaleva, head of the Yabloko Gender Faction and others.
On 8 May, on the eve of Victory Day, the Yabloko Chair Nikolai Rybakov and the party delegation laid flowers and wreaths at the memorial to the victims of the siege of Leningrad at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg.
“The Piskarevskoye cemetery is a special landmark for every Leningrad and St. Petersburg family. Almost everyone has relatives who died at the front line defending the city, or died in the besieged Leningrad from hunger and diseases. Coming here, to the sound of an incessant metronome, we honor the memory of everyone – from soldiers to little Leningrad citizens who died in the besieged city. And this memory unites people – people who should never allow new wars,” Nikolai Rybakov said.
Leaders and activists of the Yabloko party laid a wreath and flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in Moscow in memory of those who died in the Second World War.
The ceremony was attended by Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko founder and Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, Sergei Ivanenko, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, Ivan Bolshakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, Acad. Alexei Arbatov, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, deputies of the Moscow City Duma Sergei Mitrokhin and Maxim Kruglov, Kirill Goncharov, member of the Federal Bureau of the party, Andrei Morev, head of the Municipal council of the Yakimanka Moscow district and many others.
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent an appeal to Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Electoral Commission, proposing to hold a one-day rather than three-day voting in the elections to be held in September 2021. Rybakov also proposed not to conduct early voting, remote voting and outdoor mass voting in order to avoid possible violations.
Twenty years ago, a hostile takeover by the state of NTV, the first all-Russian TV channel independent of the state, took place. By common consent, NTV, established in 1993, became a world-class TV channel [in Russia] in a few years. But in 2001, a year after Vladimir Putin came to power, the TV channel was virtually eliminated, and in front of the entire country: it was deprived of its independence and transferred to the ownership of Gazprom. The reason for the destruction of NTV was its independent information policy, which really did not obey the Presidential Administration. Today it is hard to believe, but that was exactly the reputation of the former NTV with a multimillion audience. Therefore, then, in April 2001, thousands of people took to the streets in defence of the TV channel being destroyed by the authorities. There had already been the explosions of blocks of flats and the beginning of the Second Chechen War, further there had to be acts of terror in a theatre in Moscow and a school in Beslan, the murders of [Yabloko MP] Yury Shchekochikhin and [journalist and human rights activist] Anna Politkovskaya, the seizure of Crimea and the war in Donbass, all against the backdrop of complete nationalisation and subordination to the Kremlin of almost all politically significant media outlets.
Yevgeny Bunimovich, Chairman of the Moscow City Duma Commission on Education and a member of the Yabloko faction of the Moscow City Duma, called the ameded law on educational activities represents a manifestation of censorship. The law will come into force on 1 June and will seriously limit the possibility of holding lectures, master classes and other educational events at various venues.
Chairman of the Yabloko Party Nikolai Rybakov sent a letter to Ella Pamfilova, Chair of the Central Electoral Commission, demanding to ensure the right of candidates to hold campaigning public events in connection with the upcoming elections of deputies to the State Duma.
