Press Release, 10.12.2020

Yabloko traditionally joins the charity actions for homeless held by the Nochlezhka (Night Shlter) charity organisation. Yabloko calls on residents of Moscow and St.Petersburg to support the collection of gifts for the homeless, the kits will include food and things that will help a homeless person to survive in the street.

“For many years we have been participating in the projects by Nochlezhka and, with the help of party members and supporters, have been collecting New Year’s gifts for people in trouble and those who were left without a home. This year, the situation has become much more complicated for the homeless due to the pandemic. On New Year’s Eve, everyone can do a good deed – bring gifts to our offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg for people who are now in a much more difficult situation than any of us,” Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, said.

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Press Release, 10.12.2020

“We pay a lot of money for heating.” Such a statement was made by 400 residents of the Iset village of the Verkhnyaya Pyshma urban district. Residents sent an appeal to Prime Minister of Russia Mikhail Mishustin demanding to deal with the overcharged tariffs for heating. The initiator of the appeal was Sergei Khorenzhenko, leader of the Sverdlovsk region branch of Yabloko.

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Press Release, 10.12.2020

Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko sent an appeal to the Legislative Assembly of the region with a request to admit him to participate in the next meeting of the regional parliament on December 15.

The regional branch of the party notes that according to the law on political parties, each party registered but not represented in the Legislative Assembly has the right once a year to participate in a meeting and consideration of agenda items selected by it in the legislative assembly.

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Press Release, 10.12.2020

The Bashkirian branch of Yabloko hosted a meeting of representatives of several political parties, three members of the Human Rights Council under the head of the Republic of Bashkortostan and civil activists. The meeting was dedicated to the protection of human rights and International Human Rights Day.

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The Russian Ministry of Justice responded positively to the proposal of Yabloko

Press Release, 9.12.2020

Photo: Picture by Transparency International

The Russian Ministry of Justice plans to agree with all the authorities Russia’s accession to the convention on civil liability for corruption. Such a response came from the Ministry to Yabloko’s proposal to guarantee everyone the right to compensation in court for damage from corruption.

In mid-October, the Yabloko Party Bureau adopted a statement demanding from the President of Russia to sign an international convention on civil liability for corruption, submit it for ratification to the Russian parliament and prepare the necessary amendments to the legislation.

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Press Release, 9.12.2020

Photo: Maxim Kruglov, leader of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma

Maxim Kruglov, leader of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma, submitted 57 proposals prepared by Moscow municipal deputies to the second reading of the Moscow budget for 2021. According to the present legislation, Moscow municipal deputies do not have the ability to influence the formation of the city budget. However, Maxim Kruglov launched a platform – an aggregator of amendments to the Moscow city budget from municipal deputies of the city – so that Moscow municipal deputies could introduce their amendments to the Moscow budget through the Yabloko faction of the Moscow City Duma.

In total, municipal deputies sent 172 amendments to Kruglov, but only a third of their proposals after examination were included in the final list of proposals submitted by the Yabloko faction to the second reading of the budget by the Moscow City Duma.

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Statement by the Novosibirsk branch of Yabloko, 9.12.2020

Photo: Physicist Valentin Danilov in the office of the Novosibirsk regional branch of the Yabloko party in January 2018

The European Court of Human Rights ruled out that Russia violated the right of physicist Valentin Danilov to a fair trial. Four of the twelve jurors were linked with the state security bodies. Also, the judge did not allow a cross-examination of the ten experts who prepared the indictment and the questioning of 17 witnesses of the scientist’s defence. Among these witnesses were academicians who claimed that Danilov operated with published materials.

In 2004, he was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony for espionage, although in 2003 Danilov was acquitted by a different jury.

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Revolution in the information environment and the future of politics 

POLITICAL ENTROPY (Chapter 3)
Grigory Yavlisky’s web-site, 09.12.2020

We are witnessing before our very eyes a serious transformation of the information and communications space which has already led to notable political and social changes and may have even more significant consequences in the medium and long term.

Drawing on the example of the mass media, one can track the extent to which serious changes have happened over the past 50 years.

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Press Release, 8.12.2020

The Chelyabinsk  branch of Yabloko submitted to the Regional Electoral Commission its proposals to include Yabloko representatives in the 26 territorial electoral commissions of the Chelyabinsk Region. By the end of December, the Regional Electoral Commission must decide on the new composition of territorial electoral commissions in 46 territories.

It should be noted that according to the norms of federal legislation, at least 50 per cent of the composition of electoral commissions should be formed on the basis of proposals from political parties. If candidates are nominated by parties represented in the federal and regional parliaments, the regional electoral commission is obliged to appoint them to the territorial electoral commissions. Candidates from all other parties are included in the composition of electoral commissions at the discretion of the Regional Electoral Commission.

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Press Release, 8.12.2020

The Ivanovo branch of Yabloko relaunches the work of its public reception office after a break caused by coronavirus restrictions at the address: office 106, per. Posadsky 4, Ivanovo.

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Press Release, 7.12.2020

The Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma submitted a package of amendments for the second reading of the Moscow city budget for 2021 and the planning period of 2022-2023. A significant part of the amendments concerns allocation of funds for subsidies to organisations and individual entrepreneurs affected by restrictions due to COVID-19 lockdown. According to Yabloko, Moscow could allocate this money to help businesses to survive if it gave up senseless transport expenses and payment for the Mayor’s Office publicity campaigns.

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Press Release, 6.12.2020

A criminal case under Article 115 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Intentional infliction of minor harm to health”) was opened against Artyom Gelfanov, a member of the Bashkirian branch of Yabloko and an activist of the StopKambarka ecological movement.

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Press Release, 4.12.2020

Yabloko municipal deputy Maxim Gongalsky is elected head of the Ramenki municipal district in Moscow. Ramenki became the third district of Moscow headed by Yabloko: municipal deputy Yelena Rusakova heads the Gagarinsky district, and municipal deputy Andrey Morev chairs the Yakimanka district municipal council.

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POLITICAL ENTROPY (Chapter 2)
Digital technologies and the globalisation of disorder

As a series of events sent shockwaves globally, a large-scale process proceeded in the background imperceptibly, with the creation of new forms and methods to manage social phenomena, to all intents and purposes representing the birth of a new type of political system.

It has been clear to everyone that political systems in Western countries have started showing signs of strain during the past decades — and have been malfunctioning. Externally, this was manifested in the inability of political systems to effectively counter manipulation by forces and factional groups extraneous to the previous balance of interests.

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Press Release, 2.12.2020

Photo: Sofia Pugachyova and her lawyer Yelena Mayatnikova

In September 2019, two Yabloko activists and deputies – 38-year-old Sofya Pugachyova from Novorzhev and 59-year-old Svetlana Vasilkova from Pustoshka won elections and became heads of districts. However, representatives of the ruling United Russia party began to interfere with their performance of their duties, among other things, United Russia deputies decided to give “bad” marks to Yabloko’s heads of districts for their activities, so that to dismiss them from their posts despite their due diligence and good implementation of their duties.

On 30 November, the Pushkinogorsk District Court fully satisfied the claim submitted by Sofia Pugachyova, head of the Novorzhevsky district, elected in 2019 from Yabloko, to the Council of Deputies of the Novorzhevsky District. Pugachyova claimed that the decision by the Council of Deputies on recognition of her performance unsatisfactory was politically motivated and unjust.

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Press Release, 2.12.2020

Photo (from left to right): Magomed Mutsolgov and Ruslan Mutsolgov

Magomed Mutsolgov, public figure, journalist and human rights activist, forwarded an appeal to Tatyana Moskalkova, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Valery Fadeyev, Chairman of the Council on Civil Society Development and Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, Andrei Babushkin, Chairman of the Standing Commission on Assistance to the Public Monitoring Commission of the Reform of the Penitentiary System and Prevention of Offenses of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, and Ibragim Tzechoev,  Commissioner for Human Rights in the Republic of Ingushetia, asking their assistance in protection of human rights of himself, his brother Ruslan Mutsolgav, leader of the Ingush branch of Yabloko, and members of their families.

Magomed Mutsolgov writes that “on 28 November 28, at about 7 o’clock in the morning, my family and the family of my brother Ruslan Mutsolgov, Chairman of the Ingush regional branch of the Yabloko party, as well as the adjacent streets, were surrounded by heavy armored vehicles and numerous fighters of special operation forces. For several hours, his house was blocked, officers of the Department of Internal Affairs for the city of Karabulak, a district commissioner were summoned to the scene, in addition, the security forces asked the neighbours exactly which houses we and our families lived in, when they last saw Ruslan, and whether they knew his phone number. By coincidence, Ruslan was not at home, and in his absence the law enforcement did not break the gates and, without waiting for his return, left at about 10:30 a.m. My absence from home at this time wasa due to my being outside the country. In the spring of 2019, at the insistence of my family and friends, I decided to leave the country so as not to provoke the security forces and not become another victim of the reprisals launched in the republic.”

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Press Release, 2.12.2020

The Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Karelia admitted that during the so-called expeditions of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO), established by Vladimir Putin’s decree and chaired by ex-Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, to the place of mass burial of Stalin’s victims in Sandarmokh the remains of twenty people were exhumed, and not seventeen, as reported previously. This is indicated in the response of the Investigative Committee to the appeal of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia from Yabloko – Emilia Slabunova and Ivan Gusev.

The Russian Military Historical Society made two expeditions to Sandarmokh, trying to prove that this mass burial is not a burial place of Stalin’s victims shot in Sandarmokh during Great Terror in 1937-1938, but was a place of burial of prisoners of war – the Red Army soldiers and officers – kept in Finnish concentration camps and killed and buried there in 1941-1944. The legitimacy of the expeditions raised many questions from journalists, human rights activists and historians. Many historians and researchers regard the situation around Sandarmokh as a political campaign by the Russian authorities targeted at silencing or revising the history of Stalin’s reprisals, indicating that the purpose of searching for the remnants of Soviet prisoners of war at the site of the memorial cemetery of Stalin’s victims (when the names of many  victims were found out and confirmed) represented shifting the emphasis, replacing and ousting the memory of the state’s terror against its citizens.

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Grigory Yavlinsky’s website, 1.12.2020

The year 2020 is drawing to a close. One can only imagine what will come next. According to Deutsche Bank strategists, the era of globalisation, which has lasted for almost four decades, is coming to an end and will be replaced by the “age of disorder”¹. Numerous unpredictable events and potential divergent paths lie ahead, and, as they say, no one knows which way we will go. However, even developments today are to a large extent indicative. For example, in public discourse pent-up demand for security is strengthening compared to the desire for freedom. From the state’s perspective, this translates into the tightening of controls, which have clearly been enjoying more public understanding, if not outright support. Tolerance of everyday restrictions and interference in private life has increased, inter alia, amongst the higher strata of society. This may also be true of political restrictions.

The value of the inviolability of private life is being degraded in line with the manipulation of individual interests and requirements which are being created artificially: this is a new trend which would appear to be here for the long haul. And all this is happening against a surge in populism: political systems appear unable to consolidate to block populist politicians, whereas the ability of the traditional elite to retain their role as a politically responsible class has weakened significantly.

POLITICAL ENTROPY
Digital technologies and the globalisation of disorder

• INTRODUCTION
• ON THE POLITICAL SYSTEMS OF THE NEW AGE
• THE PANDEMIC AND POLITICS
• INFORMATION OCHLOCRACY
• THE NEW AGE ECONOMY
• MASS PROTESTS AND THE MODERN WORLD
• WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? INSTITUTIONALISATION OF VALUES 

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Condolences by Nikolai Rybakov, 1.12.2020

On 1 December, Irina Antonova, President of the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum passed away at the age of 98. She would have turned 99 in March. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov expresses condolences on behalf of the party and himself:

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Press Release, 30.11.2020

The first design code in the Leningrad Region that will change the look of the city will be developed in the city of Murino, which borders on St. Petersburg. This was announced on 26 November by Dmitry Kuzmin, head of the Murino urban settlement and a member of the Yabloko party, during the launch of the project.

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