Alexei Chumakov on the trends and consequences of imposing secrecy on information

Special for the Yabloko web-site, 16.11.2021

Photo: Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defence Minister / Photo from Kremlin.ru

The protagonists of the animated film The Secret Life of Pets – Chloe the cat, Max the terrier and Gijit the Spitz – face different adventures. Their people do not even know how many interesting things happen in the life of pets. In Russia Russian citizens are in their place, as they have been forbidden to learn how the law enforcement agencies spend taxpayers’ money.

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Press Release, 16.11.2021

Photo: Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov (in the centre, wearing a mask) received a housing subsidy  amounting to 16.6 million rubles. At that time, he owned five apartments totalling ​​313.5 square meters and a country house of ​​73.6 square meters / Photo by Roman Yarovitsyn / Kommersant

The Anti-Corruption Policy Centre of the Yabloko party appealed to the Public Prosecutor General’s Office with a demand to check the information of the joint investigation of Vazhniye Istorii (Important Stories) and Transparency on the issuance of subsidies to officials who had already owned housing.

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Press Release, 16.11.2021

Photo:  Artur Gaiduk / Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko

Artur Gaiduk, a doctor and a deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly from Yabloko, commented to the Press Service of the regional branch of the Yabloko party on the proposed introduction of a system of QR codes in transport, cafes and shopping centres throughout Russia.

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Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 15.11.2021

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin at the opening of the Wall of Grief – a monument in memory of the victims of political repression in the USSR. Moscow, October 30, 2017. Putin recalled that “the repression spared neither talent, nor service to the motherland, nor sincere devotion to it.” // REUTERS / Alexander Nemenov / Pool

A submission on the liquidation of the International [human rights] Society Memorial was sent to the Supreme Court of Russia. The formal pretext for this looks deliberately contrived: the absence of a “foreign agent” label in the materials of an organisation with a large number of branches and a huge document flow, which has been encountered for a long period, cannot be the basis for such a decision.

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Statement by the Yabloko Bureau, 12.11.2021

Photo by Pyotr Kassin / Kommersant

After the elections to the State Duma, the authorities intensified repressions against civil society and the country’s intellectual elite, and began to crack down on independent public institutions.

The lawsuit of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office to liquidate Memorial, the oldest human rights organisation, in the year of the 100th anniversary of its first Chairman, Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov; hanging labels of “foreign agents” on increasingly more organisations and public figures; criminal prosecution of the rector of one of the best private universities in the country, Shaninka [the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences founded by Prof. Sir Teodor Shanin] – all this testifies to the complete degradation of relations between the state and society, the transformation of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian system into a totalitarian dictatorship, where the main concern and the raison d’être of state bodies is to maintain the power of the current grouping and gagging all dissent.

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Statement by the Yabloko Bureau, 12.11.2021

Photo: The office of the Memorial human rights society / Photo by Safron Golikov. Kommersant

The Public Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation filed a lawsuit to liquidate Memorial International, a human rights organisation with more than 30 years of history, conducting research of political repression in the USSR, with which the Yabloko party have been continuously and actively cooperating.

Memorial’s efforts not only preserved and perpetuated the memory of tens and hundreds of thousands of victims of [Stalin’s] political repressions, but also the names of those responsible for organising and carrying out of repressions.

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Press Release, 10.11.2021

Photo by IgorVetushko/depositphotos

Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, sent a number of questions to Oleg Ergashev, Vice-Governor of St.Petersburg, and Natalia Bashketova, head of the regional department of the Russian Federal State Agency for Health and Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor), about plans for compulsory vaccination of St.Petersburg residents aged 60 and older, as well as those suffering from chronic diseases.

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Press Release, 10.11.2021

Photo from the official web-site of the Moscow Mayor

Deputies of the Yabloko faction of the Moscow City Duma called on their colleagues in the Moscow parliament – deputies of the Communist Party and A Just Russia factions, to join their demands to return the Moscow City Duma regulations, according to which each deputy can ask questions and speak on the agenda of the Moscow City Duma meetings without restrictions.

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Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 5.11.2021

Photo: Dmitry Medvedev at the United Russia party congress in Moscow, June 2021. // RIA Novosti, Yulia Zyryanova

They invented a new role for Dmitry Medvedev, the current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation [and former President and Prime Minister of the RF] , – explaining the policies of the Kremlin and broadcasting unpleasant ideas.

Thus, a month ago, the Kommersant [daily] published a provocative article signed by him with vulgar and unacceptably aggressive attacks on Ukraine. Now, the former president of Russia, was apparently instructed to give explanation to the people on another topic that is difficult for the authorities – the growing coronavirus epidemic.

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Press Release, 6.11.2021

Photo: Lev Shlosberg in the office of the Ekho Moskvi in Pskov radio station / Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko

According to the Russian Federal Statistical Service (Rosstat), in 2020 the poverty level in Russia symbolically decreased from 12.3% to 12.1%. At the same time, the Pskov region remains the poorest region of the North-West of the country and one of the poorest in Russia. Lev Shlosberg spoke in the  Echo of Moscow in Pskov radio station whether the well-being of people was really growing, and why the region had been remaining a long-term outsider in terms of living standards.

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Statement by the Bureau of the regional branch of Yabloko, 5.11.2021

Photo by the Press Service of the Saratov branch of Yabloko

The Saratov regional branch of the Yabloko party is concerned about the revealed facts of human rights violations and torture in Saratov correctional facilities, the reaction of the region’s top officials and the inaction of the Human Rights Ombudsperson.

The conveyor system of torture in the Federal Penitentiary Service demonstrates the qualitative degeneration of the law enforcement system. The Soviet punitive justice system was fundamentally different from the modern Russian system of total corporate concealment of the inhuman crimes of the employees of the penitentiary service, while the current government only fuels repressive sentiments, which are so widespread in Russian society.

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Press Release, 30.10.2021

Photo by the Press Service of the Kemerovo branch of Yabloko

Members of the Kemerovo branch of the Yabloko party Vitaly Ilyin, Alexander Kalashnik, Svetlana Bondar and Vitaly Bakharev honoured the memory of the victims of the political repressions of 1937 –1938 by laying flowers at the place of execution and mass graves of the repressed in the Yagunovsky residential area of ​​Kemerovo.

During the Great Terror of the 1930s of the 20th century, those sentenced to death in Kuzbass were brought to Kemerovo. From October 1937 to May 1938, the half-constructed Yagunovskaya mine (now the Yagunovskiy residential area of ​​the city of Kemerovo, Bakh street 13) became a “shooting camp”. There were temporary wooden barracks in the area surrounded by a high fence; convicts from the Kemerovo-Sortirovochnaya railway station, as well as prisoners from the Kemerovo prison of the NKVD were convoyed here.

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Press Release, 2.11.2021

Photo: Andrei Avtoneyev / Photo by Ivanovskiye Novosti

The Frunzensky District Court found Andrei Avtoneyev, Chairman of the Ivanovo branch of Yabloko, guilty of organising a rally in memory of the victims of political repression. Avtoneyev was fined 21,000 roubles, but he will appeal this decision.

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Press Release, 30.10.2021

Photo: Lev Shlosberg and Artur Gaiduk / Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko

Deputies of the Pskov Regional Assembly by a majority vote rejected the Yabloko bill, which envisaged relieve candidates for the post of the head of the region, nominated by parliamentary parties, from the need to collect signatures of municipal deputies and heads of municipalities in support of their nomination. Four parliamentarians voted for the initiative, 16 against, and three abstained.

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Press Release, 1.11.2021

Photo: Anna Tyomkina / official website of the European University at St. Petersburg

On Thursday, 11 November, a Zoom-lecture “What is gender” will be held by famous sociologist Anna Tyomkina at the Yabloko Party University and the Gender School of the Party. The lecture will begin at 18:00.

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Congratulations from Grigory Yavlinsky, 30.10.2021

Photo: Dmitry Muratov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Dmitry Muratov, Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a member of the Yabloko party, turns 60 on 30 October. Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, congratulates Dmitry Muratov on the anniversary:

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Press Release, 30.10.2021

Photo: Andrei Avtoneyev / Photo by Ivanovskiye Novosti

The memorial event in memory of the victims of political repression in Russia organised by the Ivanovo branch of Yabloko took place in the park near the Ivanovo circus on 30 October. The participants of the action paid tribute to the memory of the victims of political repression and demanded the release of all the political prisoners who are currently in prison.

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Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 29.10.2021

Photo: Solovetsky Stone monument to the victims of political repressions in Lyubyanskaya Square, Moscow, October 2021

Pyotr Gerasimovich Kunatsky, 37, worker at the construction site of the department of public education. Shot on 4 December, 1937.

Sergei Vasilievich Mokshanov, 55, head of the sports department of the Posyltorg of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade of the RSFSR. Shot on 22 March, 1938.

Pyotr Ivanovich Grushevsky, 32, a clerk at the Main Military-Industrial Directorate of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR. Shot on 28 June, 1930.

***

Yuri Alekseyevich Dmitriev, 65, historian, Chairman of the Karelian branch of the Memorial human rights society, investigated the burial places of victims of Stalinist repressions. On 29 September, 2020, sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security colony.

Ivan Ivanovich Safronov, 31, journalist. Has been under arrest since July 13, 2020, and faces up to 20 years of imprisonment.

Azat Fanisovich Miftakhov, 28, graduate student of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Moscow State University. On January 18, 2021, sentenced to six years of imprisonment.

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Press Release, 29.10.2021

On Wednesday, 3 November, the launch of the book by Sergei Mitrokhin and Galina Mikhaleva “Along the Track of a Special Path” will take place. The event will take place via Zoom and will start at 18:00.

The authors of the book attempt to answer the question of why the peculiarities of Russian civilization impede modernisation, as well as consider the interaction of the government and society in a historical context.

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Press Release, 29.10.2021

Leaders, members and supporters of the Yabloko party took part in the action “Returning the Names” and read out the names of citizens shot during the Great Terror 1936-1938 and Stalinist repressions of 1930 – 1953. The action in memory of the victims of political repression has been annually organised by the Memorial human rights group since 2007. The action took place at the Solovetsky Stone monument in Moscow and gathered hundreds of people. The Solovetsky Stone in Moscow is one of the most significant monuments to the victims of political repression killed in Joseph Stalin’s period, 1930 – 1953. The stone was brought to Moscow from the territory of the former Solovetsky Camp, which became the symbol of the GULAG.

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