I drove into an area with more or less stable mobile internet (it’s amusing that between Oryol and Kaluga, along a major highway, there are huge stretches with almost no signal, like somewhere out in the tundra) and went to see what was actually going on.
I noticed that many people pointed out that in my congratulatory post to the newly elected Moscow deputies, I mentioned neither Dima Gudkov nor Maxim Katz.
Thank you for this entirely fair remark. You are, of course, absolutely right, and I am absolutely wrong.
I’m happy to correct that:
Indeed, the Gudkov.mundep project became an example of strong political and organizational work. My congratulations to both Dima (whom I like) and Maxim (whom I do not).
In the end, it has to be acknowledged that the project’s advantages outweighed its drawbacks, among which I unquestionably count the mass nomination of candidates through YABLOKO, with the signing of idiotic commitments. That is political bondage, and the worst possible practice in our conditions, when party “licenses” are effectively issued by the Kremlin.
Independent candidates performed no worse (and in my view, even better). But YABLOKO affiliation destroyed the election chances of those running in districts where there is no traditionally strong vote for democrats.
So I arrived in Maryino at my polling station. I met the candidates and observers—nice people—but as someone who has spent his whole life far from places like Khamovniki and Arbat (central, affluent Moscow districts), I felt terribly sorry for them, because I understood they had zero chance of being elected under that party label.
And I say this despite the fact that I’m actually rather fond of the YABLOKO party myself and was a member of it for many years. It’s just that now I travel around the regions, we’ve opened 80 campaign offices, and I assure you, folks, it’s all Maryino, not Arbat. But we can absolutely win there too, if we stop trying to revive something that has long been dead.
There you have it. It was obvious from the very beginning that this would happen, and it’s equally obvious that I cannot support something like this:
That, in fact, was the reason I did not support the Gudkov.mundep project, and instead chose to support independent teams (Yashin, Jankauskas, Motin).
However, I’ll repeat: overall, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages.
Anything that leads to Putin and United Russia being defeated and beaten back is very good.
When Putin pompously cast his vote in Gagarinsky, and then his party failed to win a single seat there—that was exactly the political equivalent of rubbing his face in it.
And Gudkov and Katz made a wonderful contribution to that. Congratulations to them, and thank you.