Those who dared
16.10.2022
For it is best to reach this object, and if thou dost fail, let thy failure be in attempting this.
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X, 12)
On 12 September 2022, President Zelensky announced the liberation of 6,000 square kilometres in a massive Ukrainian counter-offensive.
For President Putin, the day was the beginning of a period of humiliating defeats, of the disgraceful retreat of his invasion army and a chaotic attempt at mobilisation.
But up to this very day, there had been an election campaign in Russia. In the choking atmosphere of "special military operation", under heavy censorship and immediate repression for any word of dissent, there were amazing people, independent candidates, who dared to challenge the System and utter a word of Peace in the deafening militaristic swagger.
Most of them had not been campaigning for votes, mandates and posts. Instead, explicitly or implicitly, they had been campaigning for Peace.
They had not been given a chance to win. But still, they sacrificed their time, effort and savings. They risked their freedom, which some of them lost.
They lost elections, too, as was shown in the announcement of the Russian Central Election Commission, which happened on the same day as that of Zelensky.
And yet they won. They won our respect and admiration. They proved that there is the Future of Russian political democratic tradition that managed to give signs of life in such an atrociously acid environment.
We at REM decided to introduce some of them to our readers. And we do start with the article by Pavel Nikulin for Republic and published on 6 September.
By the end of October, a month after the electoral ordeal, we will have re-interviewed them on topics like how the elections went, what they think about the situation when the course of events proved them right, and what are their further plans.
Pavel Nikulin for the Republic
On 11 September 2022, Russia will hold the Single Voting Day. These elections are the first ones to take place against the backdrop of the war. Regional heads, parliaments and local authorities will be elected in 82 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In Moscow, too, municipal elections are scheduled for the date. Just over 6,259 people will be running for mandates, with a competition of about five candidates per seat. There are news reports almost daily about the elections: some candidates can be fined for "discrediting" the army, and others can be thrown into detention centres for displaying the symbols of Alexei Navalny's projects.
The Republic interviewed the municipal deputy candidates to find out who was running for the Moscow municipal councils and why.
- My mother sent me a velour tracksuit and salmon sandwiches to the police department [where I was detained – REM], - Maria Volokh, a 25-year-old candidate for the Tverskoy district, tells fellow Yabloko members with a laugh. They are waiting for the Tverskoi court session to begin. Volokh was tried on August 25 for "distributing extremist symbols". She was detained the day before the trial and spent a night at the Tverskoy police station. There was an abnormal heat wave these days. Fish sandwiches went bad, and it was unbearable to wear a sports suit in a stuffy cell. She had to stay in her fancy dress, from which the careful police officers cut off all the laces: the rules are the rules.
In this form - without laces on her shoes and dress - Volokh appeared in court to be tried under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences (CAO) ("Propaganda or public display of Nazi attributes or symbols, or attributes or symbols of extremist organizations"). A guilty verdict under this article automatically means a ban on participation in elections for one year.
Such processes have become routine in the current election campaign. Even before the official launch of the campaign, social media pages of potential candidates had been found to bear symbols of the politician Alexei Navalny's structures, which had been officially considered "extremist". The grounds for an administrative case could be just the logo of the Smart Voting, links to the resources and social media of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBC) and the Foundation for the Protection of Civil Rights (FZPG), as well as the Navalny's Headquarters (as required by the law, we have to remind you that all organizations are recognized as “extremist” by the Russian court system). A finding used to be followed by an administrative action and a ban on running in the elections.
"In Moscow, they just detain people preventively and draw up police reports. Cops even glue Smart Voting stickers on candidates' cars and then detain them for 15 days," says Maxim Kondratyev, Avtozak Live project coordinator (Avtozak is a police wan for transportation of detainees or prisoners – REM). - It feels as if the aim is to get everyone off (elections - REM). In Moscow, for example, there were almost 500 refusals to register a candidate in the month before the elections.
One of the administrative proceedings was initiated against Khamovniki councillor Ilya Azar, a journalist, although he was not in Russia and had no plans to run in the election, and the prosecution was initiated after the registration of candidates had been completed.
The boring municipal life and the campaign for municipal councils, who seemed to decide nothing, became vivacious and, sometimes, unusually resembling action movies because of the heavy interference of the security forces and the war. Alexei Gorinov, a municipal deputy in the Krasnoselsky district, was jailed for seven years for "fake" news about the Russian armed forces; his colleague Ilya Yashin was arrested and is awaiting trial under the same criminal article; Lucia Shtein, the elected representative of the Basmanny district and a member of Pussy Riot, is being wanted.
- In 2016, the United Russia party won all or almost all elections in Moscow simply because it had support and knew how to win. Since then, the opposition has gained ratings and learned how to run election campaigns. So now, United Russia can't win these elections without defaming us, barring us, imprisoning us, and bringing us to administrative proceedings - Alexander Zamyatin, the organiser of the VyDvizheniye ("Nomination" as well as "YouMovement" in Russian - REM) platform and Zyuzin district's MP, explains the radical change in the government's behaviour.
Zamyatin organised the platform together with former Duma candidate Mikhail Lobanov. VyDvizheniye aims to help candidates independent of the city council register, run the campaign and be elected.
Complicating the trend described by Zamyatin is a radical change in the political landscape in Russia after 24 February. As the Russian Armed Forces' started an offensive in Ukraine, public authorities at all levels have launched a similarly broad assault on electoral rights.
- The mood of the Moscow City Council, the ruling elite, and their approach to the opposition have changed. If before there were people there who wanted to play games with Katz (a mild opposition leader from Moscow - REM), let's say, now... What games? No way! - smiles the politician.
Zamyatin sits in a cramped headquarters on the ground floor of a large house on Azovskaya Street. He is constantly distracted from the interview by the ringing phone and the supporters who have come to get campaign materials. His cup of tea is on the table, as well as a hardly started roll bought in Vkus-Villa around the corner: he has no time for a proper lunch.
Zamyatin sips his tea from a mug with a portrait of Marx and explains the nuances of the electoral killers' business: those designated people who prepare materials to get rid of independent candidates and seek dirt on the candidates in social media.
While some candidates are being prosecuted for extremism, election committees reject voter signatures collected by other self-nominated candidates, find mistakes in documents, and obstruct campaigning in any way possible.
"The authorities are using the strictest possible interpretation of the law. They punish anyone who makes the slightest mistake," said Nikita Taratorin from the movement Obschestvo.Budushchego (The Society of the Future - REM) modestly described as an "election chief" on their website.
- In some election committees, there was a lot of mayhem. For example, no handwriting expert has ever been challenged by anyone. The expert opinion is the final "Ulta" (the strongest attack in the game, causing huge damage - author's note) delivered by the electoral committees. You can even bring to the court hearing the very person who put his/her signature on the document. The court would still trust the handwriting expert who has established that the signature was falsified."
Compared to 2017, the percentage of registered candidates has decreased. Self-nominated candidates accounted for most of the rejections. Golos, the All-Russian civil movement for the protection of voters' rights, reported that in the upcoming elections, the real competition is much lower because of the "openly 'contractual' relations" between formally competing parties and candidates, pressure on the opposition and disguise of candidates supported by the authorities as opposition or self-nominated candidates.
"The Moscow municipal elections are indicative in this sense: 1,614 candidates were registered out of 2,387 self-nominated candidates (67.6%); and out of 179 candidates of the Yabloko party, 152 candidates were registered (84,9%), and from the coalition My District, which the administration supports, 157 candidates were registered out of 158," says the organisation's report.
Taratorin lists the pretexts used to disqualify independent candidates: a blot in the signature sheets, omitted subdivision codes from the passport data, intellectual property rights: "A man has his picture taken in a T-shirt with a minion. That was the cause for removal [lt]...[gt] the political field is scorched. Particularly dangerous candidates can be removed at the snap of a finger".
For Maria Volokh, the prosecution referenced her volunteering at Navalny's headquarters in 2017, published on an English-language CV on LinkedIn, the website blocked in Russia. On 25 August, she was found guilty and got a fine of 2,000 roubles. The measure was understandable but, in Volokh's case, unnecessary. Earlier, the territorial electoral committee decided that she had a Dutch residence permit (the girl herself denied this) and did not allow her to run in elections.
In fact, Volokh had no plans to run for office and did not see herself in public politics at all. She studied EU law in the Netherlands and Great Britain, worked for the FAS, engaged in modelling shoots, and planned to move to Brussels and work for a European law firm. Unfortunately, the war intervened in her plans.
"Because of these events, I was left with no other choice. It seemed to me that something had to be done. So I joined various human rights organizations and volunteer organizations. I joined everywhere I could to try to make any difference, to do anything," she says.
Yabloko offered Volokh to run as a candidate in the Tverskoi district, and she accepted since the party was positioning its campaign as an anti-war effort. Although the nomination became a kind of protest action and a way of marching against the war, there were no plans to get elected.
- All those park benches and lamp posts aren't really my thing," she admits.
The response of the authorities to the antiwar candidate was snappy. First came the administrative charges under two articles: 20.2 ("Violation of the rules of holding public events") and 20.3.3 ("Defamation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation") of the Administrative Code for action against censorship and repression; Volokh and other Yabloko candidates marched through downtown Moscow with their mouths sealed shut with a duct tape and carrying a sign with eight stars on it (which is a code for "No War" – the Republic). Later the story of the residence permit surfaced, and the case of the CV related to Navalny.
Already an ex-candidate, Volokh is not discouraged and intends to continue to fight for peace, and she is thinking of changing her job at the FAS to something more human rights-focused. Employment in Europe has been postponed until better times.
It is possible to become a municipal deputy candidate from the age of 18. It is enough to satisfy a few requirements: not to have an unexpunged criminal record, not to have a recent record of an administrative offence, and either to collect the required number of voter signatures, as VyDvizheniye and the OB did or to find a party willing to nominate you, as Volokh did.
Sometimes coalitions of parties and political movements are long and fruitful, as with Yabloko and the Left Socialist Action (politician Nikolai Kavkazsky is in both), and sometimes it is unobvious and has the elements of love-hate, as in the case of the Marxist Trend (MT) and the CPRF (the parliamentary Communist Party). The candidates are nominated in the Zyuzino district. Their leaflets are logos of the MT and the Communist Party, but "there is a nuance": young Marxists dialectically renounce their "senior comrades" in a tweet: "In these elections, we will be nominated by the CPRF, as at present this is the only, albeit modest, opportunity to bring the opposition agenda "to the masses of people" in the institutional public policy. At the same time, we will not forget and will always say that the CPRF leadership pursues a policy that does not correspond to the interests of the working class and is categorically far from the principles of Bolshevism.
Municipal deputies work on a voluntary basis (i.e. without payment - REM). A municipal deputy is more of a "powered-up" district activist than a politician on a payroll, which a municipal deputy, by the way, is not entitled to. Once a quarter, they can get compensation from the mayor's office for "delegated powers" in the amount of 15,000 rubles (240 euros - REM) a month, and they also are granted a free public transport pass. That is all.
Municipal council elections experienced a radical influx of young people 10 years ago. It all started with politician Maksim Kats. He was then nominated as a candidate for the council of the Schukino district and won the hearts of the local residents with a naive leaflet in which he called the municipal council a "meaningless body without powers," admitted that he was sick of politicians and promised to make Moscow a comfortable place to live. Having burst into public life, he spent the last 10 years engaged in urbanism, was a member of the Coordinating Council of the opposition, was a member of Yabloko, argued and reconciled with Navalny, and managed to train and successfully guide a considerable number of deputies through 2017 electoral campaign to the genuine councillors' seats.
Those elections were generally perceived as a victory of the opposition. However, no opposition candidate, even via a formed coalition, would have been able to pass the municipal filter to participate in the mayoral election.
At that time, in the city of Moscow, Yabloko got 176 seats, the CPRF got 44, Fair Russia got 10, the Party of Growth got 5, the LDPR got 4, and PARNAS got 2. Self-nominated candidates got 108 mandates.
In fact, at that time, only the votes who came to the polling stations and the "homebound" voters were counted. The Distance E-Voting (DEV) system did not exist at that time. And its emergence could affect the outcomes dramatically.
In the last Moscow City Duma campaign, electronically cast votes changed the electoral landscape dramatically. Based on the results of the Distance E-Voting (DEV), the mathematician Mikhail Lobanov, who had won by a margin in the offline polls, lost to the TV host Yevgeny Popov. Lobanov then claimed that e-voting had "added 20,000 votes" to his rival and tried to challenge the result unsuccessfully.
- Everything can be trashed on the last night, as Lobanov's experience has shown," says Zamyatin. - Wouldn't that demotivate people? Wouldn't we be doing ourselves a disservice by driving them into this campaign and then finding out it was all for nothing? There is such a risk. At the Lobanov's campaign, we asked participants: would they have come to the headquarters if they knew the DEV would slaughter us? Would they have spent the whole summer here? Some answered "yes", but there were those who said "no". I observed that the first category was more engaged in the campaigns.
"Society.Future" had already decided they wouldn't get too upset about a possible defeat at the Distant E-Voting.
- I don't know how e-voting will run in this election. Will it be a story about the effective mobilization of administrative resources or just a story about blatant generating any numbers they would need?" says Taratorin. - If the candidates win at the "live" polling stations but end up losing, taking into account the DEV, I will consider that we have done an excellent job.
