The best tactic for fighting an authoritarian regime is most often pointed out by the authoritarian regime itself. Just look at those 100% legal and lawful actions they are trying to ban and are panically afraid of.
This is nothing like “I’ll cut off my nose to spite my face” (literally in Russian: “I’ll freeze my ears off to spite my mother”), because freezing off your ears was never part of the political toolkit to begin with. Our shared task now is to put our efforts into the methods that many different people in many different countries have used time and again.
And that is what our current debate is about: should we vote or boycott? Go to a rally, or is it too much trouble/too scary? Which politicians should we support? Should we donate money, and to whom? Whose articles should we share? Should we hand out leaflets, or is that pointless?
These are the right questions, and to find the answers, just watch how the authorities react.
Here is what happened just yesterday alone.
Completely unlawfully, in violation of every deadline and procedure, a court ordered the liquidation of the organization through which we conducted our formal work on elections, and now on the voter strike campaign (rent, contracts, and all that).
Even though the liquidation ruling does not take effect for another month, Alfa-Bank decided to demonstrate its usefulness to the Kremlin and instantly blocked our account. With the explanation, “Well, deposit a trillion rubles, and then it will work.” Absolutely illegal.
That is, they still have not even given us the court ruling. They say it “has not yet been prepared.” But the accounts are already blocked.
All of this is part of a major crackdown, with clear signs that criminal cases are being prepared. Take a look—Volkov explains it in detail here:
The authorities are absolutely furious about the January 28 action and are now grabbing its organizers almost at random. The event is fully authorized and poses no risk to participants, but they are dredging up old cases and jailing our coordinators.
Right now there is a search at the campaign office in Vladivostok. There is a search at the campaign office in Vologda. They are looking for and confiscating the very leaflets (these and these) that we are urging you to distribute.
Just now, another bank account was blocked completely unlawfully and without any explanation:
Just a couple of minutes ago, we found out the reason for the block: it was an enforcement order issued yesterday by a bailiff on the basis of a court ruling that not only had not entered into legal force, but had not even been prepared yet (!)
At the same time, across the country an outright hysterical campaign is underway: GET PEOPLE TO THE POLLING STATIONS BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
Referendums, surveys, text messages, hourly targets, teachers drawing up lists, public utilities workers going door to door—all forces have been thrown into fighting our voter strike.
So draw your own conclusions about what is worth doing now if you dislike this government and want to replace it.
Your independent funding infuriates them. So take part in it.
The January 28 action drives them mad. So come to it in your city.
They go crazy over any campaigning and over our leaflets. So let a leaflet always be posted in your apartment building entrance (you can download it here or here).
And what they dislike most of all is that we are not just sitting on the couch doing nothing—we are working. So let’s not stop.