Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
Primaries, selection of candidates, formation of a network of supporters are on the agenda
Press Release, 22.02.2020
Photo: Participants of the seminar in Kazan. / Photo by the Yabloko party Press Service
On February 20-21, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Deputy Chair Ivan Bolshakov held seminars in Kazan with regional headquarters.
The concept of changes in Yabloko was presented to the regional branches, which implies introduction of the institution of primaries for the selection of candidates for elections of different levels, party-wide voting in elections for the party Chairperosn, limiting the term of office of the governing bodies of the party and its regional branches, forming a network of supporters and other changes.
Today is the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland [in Russia]. A memorable day for all our multinational people, who defended our country shoulder to shoulder during the Second World War. I congratulate all those who today defend Russia from foes, diseases, poverty, arbitrariness and lawlessness. All those who love and care about our country.
But 23 February is also another memorable date. On 23 February, 1944, mass deportations of Chechens and Ingush began. 180 echelons, 100,000 servicemen were involved. In two weeks, over half a million people were deported to Central Asia and Siberia. During the deportations and in the first years after them, about 100,000 Chechens and 23,000 Ingush died, that is, every fourth representative of these peoples.
This terrible crime is not only against the Vainakh peoples [the Chechen and the Ingush]. This is a crime against every citizen of our country. And the future of modern multinational Russia depends on whether we can preserve the memory of these events, where not only the authorities are trying to play the “friend or foe” card, but also those seeking to get into power at any cost.
Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 19 February 19, a regular meeting of the Federal Political Committee (FPC) of the Yabloko Party took place. The meeting was attended by all 17 members of the FPC. The Federal Political Committee considered two issues: the statement “On systemic threats to life, health and rights of citizens” and approved the principal directions of the party’s reform. The meeting lasted about six hours.
Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, launched his own YouTube channel and was the first Chairperson of all Russian political parties to register in the Clubhouse social network.
Party members will take part in a memory watch and a round table
Press Release, 20.02.2021
Photo: Personal page of Maxim Petlin on Facebook
On 20 February, the Leninsky district court of the city of Yekaterinburg refused to approve the March in Memory of Boris Nemtsov and the memorial meeting.
On February 19, the Sverdlovsk branch of Yabloko filed an administrative lawsuit in the Leninsky district court against the Ministry of Public Security of the Sverdlovsk Region, asking to acknowledge the refusal of the city officials to permit the procession and rally in memory of Boris Nemtsov as unlawful. The march and a rally were previously announced on 27 February, the day of murder of Boris Nemtsov.
A meeting of the Regional Council of the Yabloko branch was held in Kaliningrad
Press Release, 19.02.2021
Photo: Meeting of the Regional Council of the Kaliningrad branch of Yabloko / Photo by the Press Service of the regional branch of the party
A meeting of the Regional Council of the Kalinigrad branch of the Yabloko party was held in Kaliningrad. The Regional Council discussed preparations for the 2021 election campaign.
The Regional Council made a decision to take part in elections of all levels and nominate as much as possible Yabloko candidates to the electoral districts. Igor Pleshkov, Chairman of the regional branch, outlined the main directions of the upcoming work: mobilisation of supporters of democratic choice and real changes in the region and in Russia as a whole.
In addition, the Regional Council launched the formation of the electoral headquarters and a team of volunteers and observers from the Yabloko party.
Photo: Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov/ Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Yabloko Party continues preparations for the elections to the State Duma that are due in September 2021. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Deputy Chairman Ivan Bolshakov are holding a working meeting with representatives of the regional branches of the party in Kazan on February 19 – 21. Also a number of meetings and seminars are planned with delegates from Volgograd, Kirov, Samara, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Astrakhan, Tula, Ryazan and Moscow regions, the Republics of Mordovia, Chuvashia, Bashkiria, Tatarstan and the Perm Territory. The participants of the meetings will discuss the issues of the 2021 election campaign and the main areas of party work: holding a party congress, formation of electoral lists of party candidates and campaigning.
Photo: Lev Shlosberg, Deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly from Yabloko / Photo be the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko
ANO Youth Development Centre “Loft” still continues to work in the historical buildings in the centre of Pskov, despite the violations revealed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Pskov region and the regional department of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, and the termination of the agreement with the State Property Management Committee on the transfer of these premises for free use.
The agreement between the Committee for State Property Management of the Pskov Region and the ANO Youth Development Centre “Loft” on the transfer for free use to Loft of three historical buildings in the city centre (with a total area of 496.6 sq. m, which previously belonged to the Pskov city hospital) was concluded before the inclusion of these buildings into the List of Property Owned by the Region and Provided for Free Use, which violates regional legislation.
Photo: Maxim Petlin / Photo from personal page of Maxim Petlin in Facebook
The Sverdlovsk region branch of Yabloko filed an administrative lawsuit against the Ministry of Public Security of the Sverdlovsk Region, asking to declare unlawful the refusal of the authorities to give a permission to the procession and rally in memory of Boris Nemtsov scheduled for 27 February.
Photo: Monument to the victims of political repression in Novgorod / Photo by the Press Service of the Novgorod branch of Yabloko
Sergei Busurin, Mayor of Novgorod, refused to the Novgorod branch of Yabloko in holding a march and a rally in memory of the Russian politician Boris Nemtsov “For freedom and against repression”. The Mayor’s Office referred to the restrictions established by the decree of Andrei Nikitin, Governor of the Novgorod region, “On the introduction of a high alert regime”. The regional branch of the party intends to appeal in court against the refusal to approve the commemorative action.
Activists of the Novgorod Yabloko emphasise that there have been mass public events organised by the authorities in the Novgorod region in the past week, these events were held without observing the mask regime and social distancing. Hundreds of people were present at these events and the authorities allowed all this, encouraged and even participated.
The Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko applied to the Operational Headquarters for the implementation of measures to prevent and control the spread of coronavirus infection in Nizhny Novgorod asking to adopt a decision on holding the March in Memory of Boris Nemtsov in Nizhny Novgorod. Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was the first Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in 1991 – 1997.
Photo: Session of the Third Court of Cassation considering the case of Yuri Dmitriyev, 16 February, 2021
“Here, in the Sandarmokh area, a place of mass executions, over 7,000 innocent people were killed from 1934 to 1941 by the NKVD executioners: residents of Karelia, prisoners and special settlers of the White Sea – Baltic Sea labour camp, prisoners of the Solovetsky prison. Remember us, people! Don’t kill each other! ”
This inscription was to be carved on the monument to victims of political repression in Sandarmokh, Karelia. But before the opening of the monument, the words “NKVD executioners” disappeared from the text. The thing is that the heirs of those same NKVD [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1934 – 1943, engaged above other things in political reprisals and executions] executioners are now in power in our country. And, as the investigation of the Project has shown, these heirs are not only ideological, but sometimes biological.
This week the cassation court upheld the verdict to the historian Yuri Dmitriyev. A verdict in a completely falsified case. The verdict, according to which the 65-year-old head of the Karelian Memorial [human rights society] was sent to a strict regime penal colony for 13 years. This is a Stalinist massacre not only over a definite person, it is an attempt to repress the memory, the history of our country, this is a crime against the people.
Photo: Maxim Kruglov, leader of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma
Today, the Moscow authorities have finally revealed their strategy for the coming years. Instead of building modern, flexible, horizontal management structures, the Mayor’s Office and [the government’s] United Russia [party], on the contrary, concentrate all powers in their hands. At a meeting of the Moscow City Duma, they pushed through two laws that are important in this sense.
Photo: Anna Cherepanova and Ksenia Cherepanova / photo from Anna Cherepanova’s personal page on Facebook
On 17 February, protocols of administrative offence were drawn against Anna Cherepanova, Chair of the Novgorod branch of Yabloko and deputy of the City Duma, as well as Ksenia Cherepanova, head of the regional branch of Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre. The protocols were drawn up on an administrative offense under Article 20.2 Part 5 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of the established procedure for organising or holding a meeting, rally, demonstration, procession or picketing”). According to the police, Yabloko members committed the offense during a protest action on 23 January, 2021.
Photo: The Boris Nemtsov March in Moscow in 2018 / Photo by the Press Service of the Yabloko party
UPD. Applications for a rally have been submitted also in Tula, Cheboksary and Novosibirsk, thus, the number of cities where rallies can take place increased to 22.
Actions in memory of Boris Nemtsov, organised by the regional branches of the Yabloko party, can take place in 19 cities of Russia. In two more cities, local authorities have already refused to give a permission to the organisers.
To date, applications for rallies and pickets on the day of the murder of Boris Nemtsov on 27 February have been submitted in eleven cities: Barnaul, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Ivanovo, Kemerovo, Magnitogorsk, Novgorod, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Pskov, Smolensk, and Yaroslavl.
It is planned to submit applications in eight more cities in the coming days: Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Oryol, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Tomsk, and Ulan-Ude.
In the photo: Ivan Krisanov / photo by the Press Service of the Ivanovo branch of Yabloko
On 17 February, the Oktyabrskiy District Court of Ivanovo found Ivan Krisanov, a Bureau member of the Ivanovo branch of Yabloko, guilty of committing an administrative offense under Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation “Violation of the established procedure for organsing or holding a meeting, rally, demonstration, procession or picketing” and imposed a fine of 20,000 roubles.
Today we are congratulating Viktor Sheinis on his anniversary. The Yabloko party was created in a large part due to Viktor Sheinis. It was Viktor Leonidovich Sheinis in 1993 who proposed to Grigory Yavlinsky to form a political association to participate in the parliamentary elections, he is also one of the authors of the Yabloko ideology.
Viktor Sheinis started his career as a history teacher at school. After his article “The Truth About Hungary” criticising the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he was expelled from the graduate school of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and ended up among the workers of the Kirov plant in Leningrad.
Six years later, he was able to return to academic work, as a result he became one of the leading Russian experts on the economics and politics of developing countries. In 1993 he took part in the drafting of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. For two convocations he was a State Duma deputy.
We are happy to congratulate Viktor Leonidovich on his birthday, and wishing him good health and staying with Yabloko as long as possible.
This article is a discussion of what is happening, about the growing threats, and about the future of our country, about what to do to make Russia free, democratic and modern. Such a discussion cannot avoid touching upon Alexei Navalny, who has been in the centre of public attention since August last year [when he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent] and who strives to be not just a politician, but a leader. Consequently, his political position, obviously, should be the subject of analysis and discussion. Fortunately, he is healthy and has fully recovered from severe poisoning. Indeed, he was sentenced to two years and eight months in a penal colony. But one shouldn’t hope that Navalny will be released as a result of an appeal or for some other reason – this will not happen.
Well, for how long should such a conversation be postponed in this situation? When will it be timely to talk about the vitally urgent things? In a week, a month, a year? Before or after the elections? When he will it be released [after serving his sentence]?
Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky/Photo by the Yabloko party Press Service
The Federal Bureau of the Yabloko Party adopted a statement supporting the theses outlined in the article “Without Putinism and Populism” by Grigory Yavlinsky and noted the relevance of this article. The statement was submitted to the Bureau for consideration by Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and all three Vice-Chairmen – Ivan Bolshakov, Sergei Ivanenko and Boris Vishnevsky. 14 members of the Bureau voted in favour of the adoption of the statement, and one abstained. There were no votes against.
“If my people follows Gamsakhurdia, I will have to go against my people”.
Merab Mamardashvili, 1989
Almost 10 years have passed since the protests of 2011. During this period we have witnessed different street actions in our country with differing levels of participation, and each time people would say hopefully: “This time is completely different, now everything will turn out differently.”
In actual fact during the past ten years of protest activism nothing has changed either in terms of the number of protesters or the nature of the protest. And that is being optimistic. Less people turned out for the protest actions in Moscow in January 2021 than in 2011 and 2012, and even less than in 2019. One hundred million views of a YouTube video were converted into approximately 200,000 people for the country as a whole and 20,000-30,000 in the Russian capital1. Admittedly, by modern standards this is a large number for an “offline” event. However, this is far below the number needed to influence the political situation in the country, all the more so, to coerce the regime to agree to peaceful and meaningful dialogue (which is the key). Moreover, the waves of protests during these years in Russia have never been a serious problem for the regime. The main visible result of this protest activity is the increase in the number of arrested people and political prisoners who derive no benefit from some “public pressure” and who are unlikely to released. Against this background, another such cycle of protest actions will lead to even more disappointment. Even Navalny’s command staff now understand this to be true and have declared that for the time being they will no longer call on people to come out on the streets and be bludgeoned.
