1. An astonishing spectacle is unfolding right before our eyes: United Russia has practically begun canonizing Pekhtin of Miami. Oh, what a man. Honest, kind. And now, on top of that, he has performed a courageous act by refusing to yield to pressure from scoundrels. Here is how Pekhtin announced that he was stepping down:
http://youtu.be/wMdcuERTDOU "I have nothing to reproach myself for before my voters" "We will not allow dishonest political opponents to besmirch the HONEST NAME of UNITED RUSSIA" (What?!) and finally, "We will fight on yet!" After that, the United Russia faction gives him a standing ovation, and State Duma Speaker Naryshkin thanks him for his honest and responsible act. And the comments! My favorite is the patriotic little mattress Zheleznyak: "this decision speaks very well of him as a responsible, accomplished, courageous, and brave man" and "Pekhtin has shown the opposition an example of willpower". And the official United Russia website outdid itself. You read it and your jaw just drops. Pekhtin never hid behind his comrades' backs Vladimir Pekhtin has never given any reason to doubt his honesty, decency, or reliability. This opinion was expressed on Wednesday, February 20, by Vyacheslav Timchenko, a member of United Russia's General Council and deputy head of the party's State Duma faction, commenting to ER.RU on deputy Pekhtin's decision to voluntarily relinquish his mandate. ... "I am convinced that Vladimir Pekhtin will defend his good name. Yes, politics, as the classic said, is not the sidewalk of Nevsky Prospekt (the famous central avenue in St. Petersburg). A real political struggle is underway. They strike at our most loyal, most reliable comrades. But the party has learned to take a punch. With people like Vladimir Pekhtin in our ranks, we simply cannot lose," the parliamentarian concluded. With people like that, we simply cannot lose. Bingo. The guy has been a deputy since 1999. During that time, on some murky income, he bought real estate in Russia and Florida worth several million dollars. Or rather, it's clear what kind of income: Pekhtin worked in power-industry construction, and we have an excellent idea of how construction works there. He even got his deputy's seat—the one he talks about from the podium as having won in an "honest struggle"—after other United Russia members were shoved aside and cheated in the party primaries, something they complained about loudly for a long time and even made videos about. After he was caught with undeclared foreign property, he lied for a week as best he could. Now, when it became clear that lying any further would only make his position worse, he performs a "courageous act." We have started receiving the first certified documents from the U.S. about Pekhtin's property, so in a couple of days this "courageous act" would have looked utterly pathetic.
You can understand the emotions of the United Russia members giving Pekhtin a standing ovation:
Stay strong, Vladimir Alexeyevich. You are our old comrade. We all have Swiss bank accounts and houses in Spain and London. But it just so happened that you're the one taking the hit for all of us. So hang in there—go live in that awful Miami in your million-dollar apartment. We know it's bitter for you without a deputy's mandate, and they won't let you into the official delegations' lounge. Clench your teeth and hold on. You can do it.
They visit each other in Marbella. They know perfectly well that everyone is compromised. So on a human level, they feel sorry for Pekhtin. This could happen to anyone.
2. On the usefulness of likes and reposts.
This is, of course, no kind of "Navalny victory."
"Pekhting" was a collective effort. First and foremost, it was doct_z, who discovered Pekhtin's property by checking deputies against databases.
Zhora dug through these papers, verified them, requested new ones. Lyuba wrote letters and requests. And so on and so forth.
But the most important thing was spreading the information. The people who clicked, liked, linked, reposted. In other words, they created such a level of information flow that even the traditional media could no longer ignore the story.
That matters. Probably more than anything else.
When dealing with the biggest crooks, you can't count on "big television" 95 percent of the time. Remember Bastrykin's Czech residence permit. The internet was in an uproar, while television stayed silent. The same thing happened with Shuvalov.
You have to know how to overcome that silence—to make silence even worse for them.
Twenty-one million people in Russia use broadband internet. If 3% of them were civic-minded enough to spread information about various Pekhtins and Bastrykins, instead of thinking the tedious thought, "why post it myself, everyone will read it on Navalny's page anyway", then the zombie box (state TV) would lose the competition.
It doesn't matter if you have 17 friends or followers. What matters is that those 17 trust you 35 times more than they trust me or any other person they don't know personally. Everyone has heard of the six degrees of separation theory, right? So there you are, posting something about Pekhtin on your VKontakte page, and two days later on the Amur River someone sets fire to a United Russia office old ladies outside the post office are discussing how "those bastard United Russia people robbed us and now sit around in their Miamis".
And I've written about leaflets a hundred times already. They're absolutely lethal.
In short. Once again. Information is everything to us. No Pekhting without informing.
3. The main thing.
Along with the jokes about Pekhtin and "Pekhting," it's important to remember that for the Crooks and Thieves (a common opposition nickname for the ruling party), the negative consequence, for now, is ending up in Miami without a deputy's mandate.
For us, it's different. Today another person was arrested in the fabricated "Bolotnaya case" (the prosecution of protesters after the 2012 Bolotnaya Square rally).
Alexander Margolin. I know him a little: we served our December arrests in neighboring cells. An ordinary, decent person. Not a political activist at all. He went out to a rally against election fraud and corruption. And now he is sitting in a cell because people like Pekhtin, Zheleznyak, and Putin clearly understand the connection between stolen percentage points in elections and stolen billions from the oil pipeline.