Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
Today, four years after politician Boris Nemtsov was shot on the bridge by the Kremlin wall, people come to the site of his murder, where the so-called people’s memorial had been created by volunteers. The authorities refused to give a permission to create a memorial, so democratic people created a people’s memorial where everyone can bring flowers and candles in memory of Nemtsov. The volunteers guarding the people’s memorial regularly encounter attacks from “road workers” or “unidentified persons” who ruin the memorial. However, each time volunteers restore it.
Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, wrote on his Facebook page:
“Nemtsov Bridge, Boris Nemtsov Memorial. After the tragedy of 27 February, 2015, the volunteers I met today have been on duty for 1,461 days. These people protect the memory of Nemtsov, they demand to find those responsible for his murder. I agree with them and admire their civil courage. @ Nemtsov Bridge”
On Wednesday, 27 February, activists and leaders of the Yabloko party will lay flowers to the site of murder of politician Boris Nemtsov politician on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow.
The Yabloko party participated in the actions commemorating Boris Nemtsov. The actions took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov and other Russian cities on Sunday, 24 February, 2018.
In Moscow, Yabloko activists formed a column with a banner “Yabloko is the party of peace and is against war! ”. The column was headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, the party founder and Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Party, Emilia Slabunova, Chair of Yabloko, Nikolay Rybakov, Deputy, Chairman of the party, Sergey Mitrokhin, Yevgeny Bunimovich and Valery Borshchyov, members of the Federal Political Committee.
The Bashkir branch of Yabloko conducted a series of one-person pickets (that require to permission from the authorities) in the centre of Ufa, capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, demanding to protect residents of the city of Sibay from industrial and gas pollution.
Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, recorded a video address to Yury Chaika, Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, and Alexander Bastrykin, Chairman of the Investigation Committee of Russia, in connection with prosecution of Lev Shlosberg, head of the Pskov branch of Yabloko, by law enforcement agencies and criminals.
Unfortunately the situation is far from being calm and peaceful in Pskov.
Last morning, an unidentified man (allegedly an acting or former employee of the law enforcement or secret services) stuck a piece of paper on the sign of the public reception office of a deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly with physical threats addressed to me.
Unfortunately, in the context of a criminal attack on the Pskov Yabloko, such an action is not surprising. The instigators of the criminal case against Pskov Yabloko and me personally, and those who ordered this intruder to appear in front of our public reception office are the same people [though they can hardly be called ‘people’]. Such is politics in Russia today. Dirty people are doing it.
1. [I ] have not heard about ending the war and the country’s development strategy for the future. Only a set of individual, very limited social measures and a big arms race.
2.[And there is] a question: Why most of these social measures could not be implemented within the past twenty years? Now, in the conditions of an arms race, even if they give something [to the people], they will take everything away [form the people] in the form of taxes and [rising] prices …
In general, in terms of promises, it all looks like the speech of the President, who was first elected a month ago.
On 15 February, Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of Yabloko’s Federal Political Committee and Yabloko founder, commented to the Ekho Moskvi radio station on a criminal case against the Pskov branch of Yabloko and Lev Shlosberg, Pskov Yabloko leader and MP of the Pskov Regional Assembly.
Yavlinsky noted that the search in the Pskov branch of Yabloko and persecution its leader was a manifestation of the general weakening of power and its increasingly aggressive attempts to preserve itself and create the conditions for a further toughening of the political regime, as opposed to the emerging possibilities for change in the era of the general political crisis in Russia.
“… An unprecedented thing happened there: a police attack on the Yabloko office, searches and seizure [of hard disks and documents], this is the first time that police and Federal Security Service (FSB) attack an opposition political party, this is an unprecedented event in history, this is the beginning of a new phase.
They believe that they can search, intimidate and suppress with impunity the activities of the opposition party and Lev Shlosberg deputy of the Regional [legislative] Assembly. These are actions targeted personally at intimidation of Lev Shlosberg and suppression of the activities of the opposition party.
The Yabloko party expresses serious concern over the fact that Andrei Morev, Moscow municipal deputy from Yabloko, was summoned for interrogation to the Investigation Committee of the Yakimanka district of Moscow.
Emilia Slabunova, Yabloko party Chairperson and an MP of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, asked Karen Gabrielyan, Public Prosecutor General of Karelia, to check on the new criteria for evaluating the work of doctors.
On 14 January, 2019, the Ministry of Healthcare of the Republic of Karelia established new indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of district physicians, general practitioners and departments heads. According to the new criteria, their work is recognised as effective if there were no more than ten ambulance calls and no more than two deaths in their district per month.
The US Congress is preparing the next package of sanctions. Again in many countries Russia is called the main threat to the world. Moscow is put on the same “axis of evil” where once were Iraq, Libya, and now Iran and North Korea. The reasons are obvious: the annexation of the Crimea, the war in the Donbas, threats to Ukraine, the war in defense of the Assad regime, and endless spy scandals. It has been clear for a long time that this course leads to a deadlock (see “A Conscious Choice?” Novaya Gazeta, February 2015). Over the past four years, the situation has become much worse.
Representatives of the Yabloko party are members of the organising committees of the Boris Nemtsov March in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These actions paying tribute to the memory to the politician shot on the bridge opposite the Kremlin four years ago will be held this Sunday, 24 February.
The Yabloko party expresses a categorical protest against the search conducted by the Investigation Department of the Investigation Committee of Russia and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Pskov Region in the premises of the Pskov regional branch of the Yabloko party on 13 February.
A politically motivated forceful persecution of opposition political parties, use of a police repressive machine against legal political opposition is an anti-constitutional act. This is another shameful illustration of the unwise policies of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, which suppresses any civic activism.
The Investigation Committee is conducting a search in the office of the Pskov regional branch of the Yabloko party, as Dmitry Permyakov, Deputy Chair of the Yabloko branch confirmed to the Press Service.
The Saratov regional branch of the Yabloko party appealed to the Electoral Commission of the Saratov Region with a request to check on the facts given in an interview with Inna Dozorova, the former head of the Saratov Kindergarten N 83, where she told that she had had to participate in the election fraud on the order of the administration of the Leninsky district of Saratov. Dozorova described specific fraud mechanisms and gave the names of the organisers of the crime.
“For the first time it was publicly confirmed what everyone participating in the elections in the region in a particular status knows and which was reflected in our party’s numerous statements on the results of the past election campaigns,” runs the statement of the Saratov branch of Yabloko.
While the state propaganda on the Russia-24 TV channel talks about the “so-called human rights activists”, without giving them a word, and the benefits of the expedition of the Russian Military-Historical Society to Sandarmokh [the place of shooting and burial of the victims of Stalin’s reprisals in Karelia], which causes many questions from historians, human rights activists, journalists and relatives of the repressed [as the Society announced that this was a place of burial of Russian soldiers shot by Finns during the WWII rather than Stalin’s victims shot and buried there by the NKVD], regular hearings of the case of Yury Dmitriyev, Chairman of the Karelian branch of the [human rights society] Memorial are taking place.
On Saturday, February 16, well-known human rights activist Andrei Babushkin will conduct a seminar in the Moscow office of the party on the topic “If you became a suspect, detainee or are accused in an offence”. The seminar will be broadcast on the Internet.
Andrei Babushkin is member of the Federal Bureau of the Yabloko party, Chairman of the Interregional Public Charitable Organisation “Committee for Civil Rights”, member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, member of the Expert Council under the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, member of the Public Council under the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation on the problems of the activities of the penitentiary system, and member of the Public Council at the Moscow Main Department of Internal Affairs.
Alexander Yermishin, Chairman of the Saratov branch of Yabloko, demanded that the authorities should resume functioning of children’s clinic No 10 and children’s infectious diseases hospital No 6 in the Volga district of Saratov. Both medical institutions fell victim to the government’s practices of “optimisation” in the form of merger with other medical institutions resulting in cutting qualified medical personnel and drop in the quality and availability of medical services for city residents.
In his speech at the rally against the optimisation of health care, Alexander Yermishin stressed that in 2012 the federal budget spending on health care amounted to 613.9 billion roubles, and in 2018 only to 460 billion roubles.
Ruslan Zinatullin, Chairman of the branch of the Yabloko party in Tatarstan, held a one-person picket in support of Anastasia Shevchenko and other political prisoners in the center of Kazan on the eve of the “Mothers’ Rage” march (demonstrations against political reprisals held in different cities and demanding freedom for political prisoners after a daughter of activist Anastasia Shevchenko died in hospital while her mother was under house arrest).
Zinatullin stood with a placard “Verdicts for free-thinking are a shame of Russia.”
On Tuesday, 12 February, a documentary film “The Optimists”, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Yabloko, will be shown in the conference hall of the Moscow office of the Yabloko party.
Specially for the documentary, the filmmakers recorded about 60 interviews with the founders, leaders, activists and allies of the party.
