Statement by the 21^st Congress of Yabloko dated 4.04.2021, published on 20.04.2021

Photo by Vitaly Timkiv / RIA Novosti

The YABLOKO congress states that the situation in our country has qualitatively changed over the past year. On 1 July, 2020, there was a breakdown of the Russian statehood in the form in which it existed for almost 30 post-Soviet years. The Constitution has been ousted from the legal field, and the process of destruction of law has been launched on a national scale.

The main reasons for this landmark event are as follows: the rejection of the state-legal assessment of Stalinism and the crimes of the Soviet period, gross miscalculations in the logic and content of the reforms of the 1990s (hyperinflation, loans-for-shares auctions, the merger of power with property and business, the creation of an oligarchy, and the criminalisation of society).

On this basis, a nomenklatura autocratic, unlawful, semi-criminal and antisocial political regime was created in the country with an ideology of demagogic patriotism, a chronically stagnating economy and a population sliding into poverty.

The “Putin system” regards people as a resource necessary for the implementation of the regime’s priority goals: self-preservation, ensuring external and internal non-interference into its policies, creation of zones of influence outside the country and pursuing a policy of limited sovereignty towards a number of neighbours.

Institutionalisation of unconstitutional military and security structures in the form of private military organisations has been taking place. The issue of the “death squads” and the use of chemical warfare agents against political opponents is acute on the agenda.

These conditions make impossible any normal political and party work associated with participation in elections, representation of citizens’ interests in government bodies, and improvement of legislation.

Relying on populism and reducing the agenda to the fight between “good guys against bad guys” is not only futile, but also extremely dangerous. It is categorically unacceptable for us to build an alternative to Vladimir Putin that would be based on nationalism or inciting social hatred, revenge and hatred. This is the path to the destruction of the country and human deaths.

Equating political leadership with possession of technologies for manipulating the mass consciousness is a mistake. No decent future can be built if, here and now, we do not practice the attitude towards citizens which would correspond to the Russia we want to create.

Today, it is necessary to strengthen the alternative to the regime, which would be based on humanistic values, and preserve the following directions in the social and political life:

– preservation of people’s lives;

– inviolability of private property and private life;

– observance of fundamental human rights and freedoms;

– unacceptability of Bolshevism and Stalinism;

– opposition to imperia complex;

– the European vector in foreign policy.

Our goal is to build in Russia the institutions of a modern state based on European values. We must make this goal the driving force behind the civic movement for change. We will rely on people who openly oppose the Putin system, but at the same time do not support populism, reject nationalism, leaderism, Bolshevik incitement of social hatred, do not accept substitution of the democratic procedures and institutions by the mob rule, and manipulation.

Only massive, conscious support for our political stance will allow a public dialogue with the authorities to take place and open the way for Russia to the future. We regard the upcoming elections as the first step in this direction.

Basing on this position, the Yabloko Congress

– confirms the correctness of the decisions of the Federal Political Committee:

On the fundamental inadmissibility of voting on Putin’s amendments to the Constitution, dated June 5, 2020;

On the assessment of the plebiscite on July 1, 2020 and the tasks of the Party, dated July 27, 2020;

On systemic threats to the life, health and rights of Russian citizens;

– recognises the work on the creation of a new Constitution launched by the Public Constitutional Council by to be extremely important and promising;

– supports the reform of the Party aimed at preserving the political core of the democratic opposition in an extremely aggressive environment;

– considers protection of human rights and the release of all political prisoners to be the most important task today.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman