I decided not to write about this on May 9. It would have looked especially awful: on the eve of Victory Day (the holiday marking the Soviet victory in World War II), police raided the homes of Russian citizens and seized leaflets calling for an end to the occupation and plundering of the country.
Many people probably saw it in the media as well. It’s true: during the night (!) from May 8 to May 9, our Kirov headquarters was searched. About ten police officers and investigators (led by the deputy head of the Kirov city investigative department) showed up in response to a complaint from an unknown citizen to check whether we had any extremist materials.
And, just to be safe, they counted and confiscated ALL campaign materials in the office. Mostly newspapers and leaflets about various Putin-linked thieves, like Rotenberg and Timchenko. Actually, if you want to check a leaflet or newspaper for “extremism,” you’re supposed to take one copy and send it for expert review. And only if there are clear signs of extremism. How they can seize ALL the leaflets and newspapers there (which are, in fact, someone else’s property) without a court order or any expert examination is beyond me. I wonder, if some citizen reported that extremist materials were being stored at a United Russia headquarters, would the Investigative Committee go there too and confiscate everything?
There were activists at headquarters at the time, and they organized a live broadcast of the search and seizure procedure, which several thousand people watched that night. On the one hand, it was absurdly funny to watch an Investigative Committee officer and plainclothes operatives counting leaflets one by one: two hundred twenty-three, two hundred twenty-four, two hundred twenty-five. On the other hand, it was monstrous, of course: the eve of May 9, the next day all the cops are on heightened duty, they’re up to their necks in work, the number of drunken brawls and all sorts of other crimes is rising, and here are ten idiots spending their time counting leaflets. So we look gloomily at tables like these
without understanding why we are paying to maintain such an army of freeloaders, or what exactly they do. This is the kind of crap they do: they see the words “Putin is a thief,” and ten of them come running to count leaflets. While I’m at it, I want to send my regards to the activists at our Kirov headquarters, and to all campaign activists across the country doing important and necessary work:
And now the second item in the category of “disgusting antics and filthy tricks by the occupation authorities, along with all sorts of thieves”:
Despite the nonstop propaganda on TV about how political parties can now supposedly be registered completely freely, on May 6 the Occupation Commandant’s Office Ministry of Justice suspended the registration of one of the very few genuinely independent parties: People’s Alliance.
Leonid Volkov writes about it in detail here, and here there is a legal analysis of whether the refusal was justified. Basically, they went through all 2,000 pages of documents that had to be submitted and collected typos. Amusingly, in their own three-page text they referred to V. A. Ashurkov as A. S. Ashurkov. By their logic, typos in the suspension order should now suspend the suspension. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice is registering all sorts of sham pocket parties by the dozen. Here, for example, are some “defenders of social justice”:
One legal address, the same people involved. They changed one word in the party charter, held fake congresses on paper only, and the Ministry of Justice is already standing there with its stamp: WE ARE REGISTERING YOUR REAL PARTY. They’ve already churned out 65 of them, and at best only ten of those have even 100 real supporters. And by the way, take a look at the astonishing sums parties receive from the state budget. Few people stop to think that we are still lavishly feeding this whole crowd at our own expense. Impressive. Obviously, the “Alliance” will fix all these typos and resubmit the documents, even though that will require a new congress and a pile of expenses. It is equally obvious that the crooks at the Ministry of Justice were simply carrying out an order from the Kremlin riffraff: People’s Alliance must not be registered in May, so that it cannot take part in the elections in the fall. Above all in Yekaterinburg, where it has very strong positions and where United Russia is doing badly: in the last State Duma elections, they got 25% of the vote in the city. No big deal. What matters is not pinning deputy badges on each other’s chests, but doing real political work. Real political work in Yekaterinburg means crushing United Russia and all those fake Putin-front organizations. Driving out those fake “working people” — repainted United Russia apparatchiks. Keeping People’s Alliance off the ballot in Yekaterinburg will become one more reason for city residents to vote and act against the “Party of Crooks and Thieves.” And we’ll find someone to support in the election. There are good people in that city, and plenty of them.