A huge number of acquaintances who, I thought, understood politics keep asking me all sorts of naive questions about the elections, about Kostroma, about a “deal with the Kremlin,” and so on. So let me give a political briefing. What is happening, and what needs to be done.
First, stop talking about all these “inside leaks from the Kremlin towers” — it’s all nonsense. Everything worth analyzing is in open sources.
The Kremlin’s current political articles of faith are stated quite clearly both at semi-closed meetings with crook political consultants and at similar meetings with journalists. For example, let’s read the most informative post by this kind of “political analyst,” Kalachyov:
So we believe in and place our hopes on FOM polling (remember how these “sociologists” forecast the mayoral election), according to which Putin has 86%, and also on the weakness of the opposition’s personnel. And of course, the absence of unrest here and now proves everything we already believe.
At the same time, the Kremlin riffraff clearly understands that there is no real 86%, and certainly understands that Putin’s relatively high rating does not trickle down to regional bosses and United Russia. But just as a shaman runs around with the skull of a mother walrus despite inwardly knowing it cannot affect the sable population, so too summer-house owner Volodin runs around with his own articles of faith and percentages — after all, what else is he supposed to run around with?
If we set aside all talk of revolutions and Maidans (the reference is to Ukraine’s Maidan protests), about which a consolidated decision has already been made — “if anything happens, we won’t be like Yanukovych, we’ll crush it with tanks” — then what poses the greatest threat to the power of the mother-walrus skull hanging on a knotted stick?
Tactically, the biggest threat is that in 2016 a faction will be created in the State Duma — even if a small one — of normal, independent deputies representing people with democratic views. In other words, us. As I have written many times, in any large city such people make up as much as 30%. The faction itself will not win 30% of the seats, of course, but it will rest on the support of that many people, and that will cause the mother-walrus skull a lot of trouble with speeches explaining that the problem is not that there are too few sables, but that no matter how many you catch, the shaman will steal them all and trade them for firewater. It is important to remember here that Putin’s regime took shape and exists under conditions of a complete absence of opposition in parliament: since 2003, not only has there been no independent opposition faction in the State Duma, there have barely even been any decent deputies at all — you could count them on one hand.
The only registered party that can now create a genuinely independent faction of normal deputies — not crooks and not puppets — by selecting candidates through primaries, is PARNAS, whether we like it or not.
In order to prevent PARNAS from forming a faction in 2016, it is crucial for the Kremlin to preserve the public perception that has existed for 12 years about the opposition democratic party: the democrats hover around the 5% threshold and most likely do not clear it. This is the key point.
What is described in point 7 has long since ceased to be true (see the elections in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, etc.), and the shamans of the mother-walrus skull understand this. That is precisely why they decided not to let PARNAS onto the ballot in any region where it nominated candidates. Otherwise it would get through, and the legend of democrats stuck at one or two percent would be badly shaken — and with it, the stick holding the mother-walrus skull would shake too. As you remember, in all four regions (Novosibirsk, Kaluga, Kostroma, and Magadan) we were denied registration.
Kicking parties off regional ballots is the easiest thing in the world. Nobody has ever cared much about regional elections, so Volodin was sure everything would go as usual: the opposition would be barred, breathe a sigh of relief, and say, “Fine by us — no need to do any work.”
This time it turned out differently: PARNAS being barred from the elections became a central issue on the political agenda, the opposition’s moral rightness and the Kremlin’s fear of competitive elections became obvious, and the hunger strike in Novosibirsk shifted all the usual terms of debate. We even saw crooks at Izvestia writing columns along the lines of: why weren’t they allowed to run if they only have 0.5% anyway?
The discussion the Kremlin did not expect, and the consolidation of many people under the slogan “we demand access to the elections,” also put the Kremlin’s articles of faith at risk (see point 2). Its key claims — “we’re not afraid, we have 86%, and we’re ready to compete more or less honestly” — came under threat, and the whole picture started falling apart.
In order to prevent us from consolidating under the slogan “We demand access to the elections,” and without publicly renouncing its own articles of faith, the Kremlin ran the numbers — most likely through polling and the like — and decided to allow us onto the ballot in only one region.
Those writing sensational “inside scoops” like “Putin decided to let you run in Kostroma” should not bother — that is not even a scoop. Obviously, it was a political decision: to let us run in Kostroma. First they decided not to let us in, then they changed course and dressed it up as a comical ruling by their obedient servants at the Central Election Commission. But that decision was made because we pushed for it, and the Kremlin judged the damage from a total ban to be greater than the risk of our doing well in Kostroma. That’s all there is to it.
Kostroma Region was chosen because it was decided that every possible method would be used there to keep us below 5%: 18 parties on the ballot; the “Against All” party is listed first on the ballot; the local YABLOKO branch has been bought by a local oligarch who just left United Russia, and it will devote its campaign to attacking us with that oligarch’s money. They have already started; former campaign chief Andrei Pivovarov is being held in pre-trial detention (SIZO) on a fabricated case, which creates a generally negative backdrop (“someone from their side is in jail, the whole thing looks suspicious and criminal”); the region is considered economically depressed; Kostroma’s share of the population is small, so the campaign has to be run across the whole region, with trips of 400 km (about 250 miles) between towns, which is expensive; and so on.
So all current politics boils down to something simple: their task is to stop us from clearing the threshold by any means necessary; ours is to clear it no matter what.
Everyone will be waving the results of this campaign around while preparing for the 2016 elections. - either: “If we cleared the threshold in Kostroma under this kind of pressure, then in the federal elections, with the big cities on our side, we will definitely crush you” - or: “They demanded to be allowed onto the ballot, we let them run, and what happened? They did not even clear the threshold.”
End of the political briefing; now for the practical part.
We will clear the threshold. The campaign headquarters is being led by Volkov. We have good, hard-working candidates, and they will hold dozens of meetings.
We have volunteers — we held the first training session two days ago.
There is a campaign plan.
We know how to organize things. Yesterday at 12:00 we had a completely empty new office, and by 19:00 we were sitting in a fully equipped open-plan workspace, having launched the headquarters and held the first meeting with canvassers.
To appreciate the heroism of this feat, you have to understand the realities of Kostroma: when you call to request an internet connection and they tell you, “We can come by next week”; when there is no IKEA in the city; when out of six cleaning companies only one agrees to come the same day. In other words, this is not Moscow, and “quickly” means “with great effort.”
How can you do your part and help all of us beat those vile United Russia people in this 2015–2016 battle?
Money — we really need money. More than anything right now. Here is the donation link for the election fund; go there without delay and chip in whatever you can.
We also need volunteers. Money is still more urgently needed, but volunteers are needed too. So the optimal sequence of actions is: 1) send money, 2) go volunteer. Volunteers are needed, of course, in Kostroma and the surrounding region (travel, food, and accommodation are officially paid for from the election account) and in Moscow (for the call center). Sign up here.
Join in — it will be interesting, fun, and you will start understanding everything without needing political briefings.