Press Release, 7.09.2021

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov. / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The future deputies from the Yabloko party in the new convocation of the State Duma will give up all their privileges and transfer over 75% of their salaries to orphanages and charitable foundations. This was stated by Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Chairman and Yabloko’s top candidate on the Yabloko list of candidates in the elections to the State Duma, at a press conference in Interfax.

Nikolai Rybakov in his election tours around the country people often told him about the gap between deputies and their voters. Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre conducted a study of the benefits and privileges of deputies and found that the maintenance of the State Duma costs the budget 13 billion roubles, and half of this money goes to pay for the deputies. Maintenance of one deputy amounts to 3.5 million roubles per month, including salary of about 469,000 roubles and , 2 million roubles per year are allocated for the maintenance of a deputy’s car alone.

In addition, MPs have a paid vacation of 42 days (at the average vacation in Russia of 28 calendar days), receive a pension from 50,000 to 68,000 roubles (at the average pension in Russia amounting to 16,789 roubles), and benefits when moving to Moscow from other regions both for themselves (45,000 roubles) and their families (23,000 roubles per person). They also receive benefits in case of their failure to be re-elected (91,000 roubles) and in the event of the dissolution of the State Duma (273,000 roubles). A deputy’s life is insured for 1 million roubles.

“We believe that such benefits and privileges are impossible in a country where the salary of every fifth worker in the regions is about 15,000 roubles, and every third worker in the education sector receives less than 15,000 roubles. There should not be such a disproportionate difference in the country between the salaries of deputies and the salaries of the people they represent,” Rybakov said.

According to the Yabloko leader, it would be fair for the MPs to receive an average salary in the city in which they work, that is, in Moscow, which is now about 105,000 roubles. Therefore, deputies from the Yabloko faction will keep less than a quarter of the deputy’s salary, and transfer the rest of the money to orphanages and charitable foundations.

Photo: Maxim Kruglov, Alexander Gnezdilov, Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Yabloko candidates will sign a Social Contract with Voters, in which they will refuse other benefits and privileges. With a faction of 20-30 people, Yabloko will be able to annually send 85-128 million roubles to needy children. In addition, 40-60 million roubles will be saved for the budget by refusing to use the State Duma cars, up to 114 million roubles a year will be saved on the refusal to travel in business class and first class compartments in trains, stay in the VIP-halls of railway stations and airports, and accommodation in luxury rooms in hotels.

In addition, the Yabloko MPs undertake to introduce appropriate bills in the new Duma in order to make other MPs to follow their example.

According to Rybakov, Yabloko have already had an experience in refusing high salaries and privileges. Thus, Grigory Yavlinsky, when he was an MP in the State Duma, transferred part of his salary to two orphanages. In 2011, Yabloko announced that its deputes refuse using the cars of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and has been keeping the promise for two convocations of the Legislative Assembly already.

“We guarantee that the obligations that we assume will be fulfilled,” Nikolai Rybakov said.

Photo: The first signatures under the Social Contract with Voters. / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The participants in the press conference – Nikolai Rybakov, Alexander Gnezdilov and Maxim Kruglov – put the first three signatures under the Public Agreement on the refusing benefits and privileges of State Duma deputies.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party, said in his speech that giving up most of the deputy’s salary would be an important step towards creating trust between people and the authorities.

“This is a statement by Yabloko and Yabloko deputies that they are ready to live like the people, as everyone lives, and work for the country to become different, so that there is a renewal,” Yavlinsky said.

He also stressed that the part of Yabloko that worked in the State Duma of the first three convocations and was not running this time would help and support the young deputies.

Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Returning to the main topic of the press conference – the forecast of what will happen after the elections – Grigory Yavlinsky said that he would expect higher taxes, bankruptcies of private businesses, problems in the banking system caused by non-payments on loans, as well as the degradation of the middle class.

According to Yavlinsky, the authorities would respond to these developments by toughening of the political regime. Yavlinsky also said that the probability of a war with Ukraine was high. The evidence of this, he said, was the news of recent days: statements about the creation of a combat army reserve and the blowing up of a gas pipeline in Crimea, in which the Russian authorities blamed Ukraine.

“This will be a diversion, it will be cost a lot for our country and for the future, and for every family,” the Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee said.

Grigory Yavlinsky warned against supporting the Communist Party as a protest vote in the elections. He recalled that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in its programme advocated such things as nationalisation, state planning and the restoration of the Soviet Union, and in the current communists faction in the State Duma initiated a law on the introduction of criminal liability for challenging the results of the October Revolution of 1917.

Voting for the Communist Party will give the authorities a signal on how to act, Yavlinsky said. “You are asking me what will happen after the elections, s, if you vote for the Communist Party, then all the most negative trends that exist will be strengthened and will manifest in full. This flirtation with the Stalinist legacy, which has been amazing everyone already, should make it clear to everyone that this is a direct path not only to isolation, but a direct path to the loss of civic and human dignity. Everyone should know this. Here we have such prospects,” Yavlinsky noted.

Photo: Alexander Gnezdilov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and theater director, Alexander Gnezdilov, called on free-thinking, opposition-minded voters to overcome the feeling of learned helplessness. “Stop choosing endlessly between Putinism and nationalism, between KGBism and communism. We need to choose a normal, free, and democratic way of the country’s development,” he said.

According to Gnezdilov, the Yabloko faction in the State Duma would defend freedom of creativity and art, be a voice in support of scientists who became victims of spy trials, would fight censorship, and advocate for freedom of the Internet and educational activities.

“We need to come to the polling stations on 19 September and not just express our protest, but say what we really want, what Russia should be like, and what its development programme should be,” Gnezdilov stressed.

Photo: Maxim Kruglov. / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Maxim Kruglov, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma, basing on his own parliamentary experience, said that one of the key problems in relations between citizens and the state was that no one asked people about anything. Thus, the Moscow authorities perceived Muscovites as “an annoying misunderstanding on the way of large-scale infrastructure plans and the spending of huge budgets”.

In order to change this, Yabloko in the State Duma will submit a package of bills that will envisage the obligation of the executive authorities to ask the opinion of people when making decisions affecting the lives of Russia’s citizens. “In the 21st century, it is impossible to solve everything in closed offices, behind the scenes, consulting on the spending of funds only with a narrow circle of like-minded people. This is wrong, you should not treat Russian citizens like that, they must be respected,” Maxim Kruglov said.

In the final part of the press conference, the speakers answered journalists’ questions. The full video of the event was published on the Interfax Youtube channel.