Well, congratulations: today marks the largest police operation in modern Russian history. Simultaneous raids are taking place at more than 200 locations in 41 cities across the country.
Our offices, the apartments of coordinators and their relatives, activists, former coordinators. And several people who were clearly included on the search lists by sheer accident.
The Interior Ministry, the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), the Investigative Committee, the FSB. Of course, military-police operations in the North Caucasus involve far more personnel—apparently around 1,500 to 2,000 right now—but in terms of geographic scope and the number of locations, this is definitely the biggest thing the country has ever seen.
If only they carried out an operation like this against corruption, right?
The searches are being conducted as part of that same fabricated "billion-ruble money laundering" case, which later turned into "75 million rubles in money laundering," and then into "laundering who-knows-what."
"Money laundering" always goes hand in hand with some other crime. After all, you can only launder criminal proceeds. And for two months now, we haven’t been able to get an answer to a simple question: what crime did ACF commit to earn the money it was supposedly laundering?
There is still no answer. The Kremlin simply ordered the Investigative Committee to declare all your donations to ACF over the years to be "criminal money."
Why this hysteria?
Two words: "Smart Voting."
I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again: the Kremlin knows how to count. We are the ones underestimating our own strength, while they understand perfectly well. They are genuinely afraid, and they want to burn out all these ideas of collective action in elections—and beyond—with a hot iron.
Just take in these numbers. They are enough to make anyone whose power rests on United Russia start stomping their feet in panic.
Moscow. Across all districts combined, 555,063 people voted for United Russia candidates, while 586,286 voted for Smart Voting-backed candidates. In other words, despite fraud and the use of administrative resources, more people voted for the good side.
Moscow. In the previous election, a United Russia candidate received an average of 47% of the vote and easily beat the main challenger, who averaged 21%. In this election, the average United Russia candidate got 36%, while the average Smart Voting-backed candidate got 38%. And that’s without counting Zyuganov Jr. and Gubenko, who could be classified as both Smart Voting-backed and pro-government.
Moscow. In the previous election, 17 of the 38 winning United Russia candidates received more than 50% of the vote. Do you know how many managed that this time? Zero. United Russia’s majority has gone poof—not just in opinion polls, but even in elections boosted by administrative resources and state-sector employees.
Moscow. Mathematical calculations show that Smart Voting gave its candidate an average boost of 19% in votes. It is completely wrong to say that "Smart Voting" simply turned candidates into deputies. It’s not a magic button—you press it and get a legislator. There are many factors involved, and Smart Voting is one of them. I would put it this way: Smart Voting became a tool that allowed candidates, at least in part, to offset the administrative resource.
Moscow. If you and I had managed to bring just 50,000 more people into Smart Voting—a laughably small number for Moscow—United Russia would have lost every single seat. All of them. They would have ended up with zero deputies.
Russia. Smart Voting was successfully implemented in 31 election campaigns.
In 2014, 762 seats were contested in those races, and United Russia won 643 of them.
In 2019, 778 seats were contested, and United Russia won 537. That is 15.36% less in proportional terms.
(There are a lot of nuances involving different elections, tricky districting, and so on, but overall these are the numbers.)
A total of 776 Smart Voting candidates were nominated—two fewer than the number of seats, because in Salekhard there were not enough non-United Russia candidates in two multi-member districts.
Of them, 145 were elected as deputies—that is, 18.6%.
Another 369 finished in second place.
So Smart Voting makes elections highly competitive. It effectively turns the political system into a two-party one: the thieves from United Russia versus everyone else.
There were astonishing results in the regions. Everyone is writing that Smart Voting’s main success was Moscow. Not even close. Smart Voting’s main success was Yoshkar-Ola! There, the average margin by which a Smart Voting candidate finished second was even smaller than in Moscow—3.4%! It used to be 32 United Russia members out of 35; now it is 16 out of 35, and 12 Smart Voting-backed candidates won seats.
In Birobidzhan, it used to be 18 United Russia members out of 21; now it is 10. Out of 21 seats, 7 candidates were elected with Smart Voting support.
In Penza, it used to be 32 United Russia members out of 35; now it is 15 out of 25. Nine Smart Voting candidates were elected.
In my first video after the election, I said that we were sitting down and thinking about how to improve "Smart Voting." The main point is already clear: we need to believe in ourselves more. If we stop whining and doubting our own strength, and instead work hard to engage people and get them registered for "Smart Voting", then after a couple of election cycles, there will be no United Russia left at all.
That is exactly what today’s raids are meant to do. Intimidate. Demoralize. Force people to give up collective action.
ACF cannot be intimidated, but we do need your help. By this evening, we will have nothing left at all. I mean, we’ll be even stronger in terms of people, but we’ll have nothing in terms of material resources. So we’d be grateful if you took a look here.
And in general, it would be great if you wrote or told someone a few kind words about ACF, the campaign offices, and "Smart Voting."