On December 5, 2014, I want to say once again only this: December 5, 2011 should be remembered not with nostalgia, and not as a time to dwell on missed opportunities (who among those heading to the famous rally at Chistye Prudy in Moscow was thinking about any kind of “opportunities”?), but with the understanding that there is still a great deal of unfinished work.
Nothing has changed: there are no elections, no courts, no justice. But we are still here, we still want all of that, and we continue to live in our country—Russia. And we will go on living here, raising our children here, retiring here, and, obviously, dying here too.
And if that is the case, then the sensible choice for any normal person is to live, raise children, and every day demand and work to achieve free elections, honest courts, and justice in Russia.
This is not romanticism; it is a rational choice. Otherwise, it all becomes completely absurd.
Yesterday, almost exactly on the anniversary of the events of December 5, 2011, the European Court finally issued its ruling on the arrests made back then—arrests that, I am convinced, gave rise to what is called the “protest movement” in modern Russian history.
So far, the ruling concerns only me and Yashin, but the other complaints are on the way. In a sense, it also sets out the case for everyone who took to the streets afterward: the right to freedom of assembly was violated, as were the right to a fair trial, the right to liberty and security of person, and so on.
Interestingly, one of the ECHR judges (from Portugal) even issued a separate opinion on this ruling, in which he states plainly: the Russian authorities stage a judicial farce under the guise of legal proceedings.
Here is another quote:
And we will have courts and judges who discuss “harm to democracy” in their rulings, rather than simply rubber-stamping verdicts delivered on a flash drive.
Hundreds of millions of people to our west—nations close to us (certainly closer than North Koreans or Iranians)—live and prosper in societies where democracy generally works (with problems, yes, but generally it does), where honest courts exist, and where it does not even occur to anyone to abolish mayoral elections.
And that is what we want too, and we will get there, and we are capable of it. No matter what anyone says, what we see is only a process of mass emigration—hundreds of thousands of people—from Russia to the West, and not a single movement in the opposite direction. No other proof of the civilizational preferences of Russians and the other peoples of Russia is needed.
It is complete bullshit to say that only certain “liberals” want European-style change in Russia. Show me a “conservative” who would move to Uzbekistan to enjoy a traditional society there, and then I’ll believe it.
So that work has to be finished—three times more energetically, and with all the mistakes taken into account.
It will have to be done anyway, and no one is going to do it for you.