Oh, how glad I was to see this article in Novaya Gazeta. It’s a high-profile piece, and you’ve probably already seen it: in Mytishchi, just outside Moscow, the State Duma elections were falsified completely and utterly. Election commissions simply entered made-up figures into the GAS Vybory system (Russia’s state election database) instead of the numbers recorded in the official precinct protocols.
There is watertight legal proof for all of this. Nice job.
And here’s why I was glad. Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, whom I deeply like and respect, commented on our Barvikha experiment, in which ACF’s head of legal affairs, Ivan Zhdanov, took part. At the time, we sharply criticized Ella Pamfilova, who had just been appointed to the Central Election Commission, for covering up fraud and being no different from Churov:
Disgusting management of political discrediting.
And also boorish little tantrums.
When I read that back then, I was terribly upset.
Not because Muratov was scolding us—let him, everyone is entitled to their own opinion—but because the first stage of election fraud had already successfully taken place. And unfortunately, Dmitry Muratov became one of its participants.
What was that first stage? Obviously, it wasn’t ballot stuffing. A thief first has to get into the apartment or win your trust, and only then start going through your pockets.
So the first stage was this: when Pamfilova was asked the first perfectly reasonable questions about why she was supposedly NOT Churov if she was running elections exactly the way Churov did, all sorts of respectable people, Muratov among them, rushed out shouting: Don’t touch Pamfilova—we served together on Kolchak’s fronts (a sarcastic reference to old shared struggles and loyalties).
After that, Pamfilova could calmly get on with falsifying elections in a favorable environment. And we wouldn’t be allowed to criticize her, because 22 years ago—when Zhdanov still had a little hedgehog sticker on his locker—she did 18 or 19 good deeds. Truly good ones; I’m not being sarcastic. Good and brave ones.
But what are we supposed to do now? Grant her a lifetime indulgence just because it would be awkward to interrupt the collective singalong of “How Young We Were”?
One way or another, the first stage worked exactly as the presidential administration intended. The rest followed after it.
As a result:
12 million votes were stuffed in for United Russia.
when hundreds of neighboring polling stations all produce the exact same 62.2% result, as if copied from a template, Pamfilova declares it a mathematical coincidence. “Believe me, because back in my youth...”
- in that same Barvikha, the main opposition candidate was removed from the repeat election. There has been no investigation into the earlier violations.
the chief election falsifier of 2011 is reappointed head of the Moscow City Election Commission.
- Pamfilova is in fact no better than Churov, and there’s no arguing with that.
- *Novaya Gazeta* writes about the fraud in Mytishchi.
Pamfilova claims that an information war is being waged against honest Russian elections.
And do you know who will be reviewing *Novaya*’s investigation into the fraud in Mytishchi? The higher-level Moscow Region election commission, whose chair—appointed on the recommendation of Pamfilova’s Central Election Commission—previously worked on election commissions in... Mytishchi.
That’ll be some review.
So it turns out Ivan Zhdanov was right, even if he still had a hedgehog sticker on his locker back in the days when Dmitry Muratov saw Pamfilova not as a falsifier, but as a decent person?
So it turns out I was right not to go to the Central Election Commission with flowers and apologies?
Looks that way. Otherwise, Novaya’s article about the fraud is nothing more than boorish little tantrums.
We’re not expecting Dmitry Muratov to show up at ACF’s office with flowers and apologies—we already think very highly of him. For his work.