One of the march organizers, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, said that a meeting was held with police on February 10 to discuss allegations that the February 4 march began a half hour before its scheduled time and that participants were walking along the sidewalk instead of the actual road, where they were given permission to march.

Udaltsov and other opposition leaders insist that the march started on time at 1:00 pm, since this is when people began walking down the road. That some people were walking down the sidewalk a half hour earlier they say is irrelevant, since the sidewalk was not fenced off and hence not an actual part of the march route.

Moreover, the fact that police failed to file charges within the two-day time frame allowed by law – there was no written notification until February 8 – leads the organizers to doubt the legitimacy of the charges.

Their court date is set for February 13. If convicted, the organizers face a fine up to 2000 rubles (~66 USD).

On Wednesday, Novaya Gazeta published a statement by a postal worker that included a letter sent to local Pochta Rossii managers. The letter, signed by a representative of the company’s personel service, demanded a list from each branch of employees who would be taking part in the February 4 protest at Moscow’s Victory Park.

The letter then states: “We would like to bring to your attention the fact that worker participation is mandatory!”

In addition, another Pochta Rossii worker said on a live broadcast of Russian News Service radio that management had promised to pay each worker 6 thousand rubles (~200 USD) for going to the rally.

“A mechanic was running around with an anxious look on his face: ‘Guys, who wants to go to the rally on February 4? You only have to be there for two hours. They’ll take us in a bus, you’ll get double pay, as if for an entire day,’” the worker said.

Organizers of the rally, consisting of supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, intentionally set the date to conflict with an opposition rally taking place elsewhere in the city that day – what will be Russia’s third mass anti-government rally since highly-criticized elections last December.

According to LiveJournal blogger stilett-1, employees of the Moscow Bureau of Technical Cataloging are also being coerced into attending the pro-Putin rally. Employees will have to “sign in on a special list” at the rally; those not present are threatened with “unpleasantries” at work.

Public workers in Russia have long complained of pressure to vote for ruling party candidates or turn out for pro-government protests.

In particular, the Russian Public Chamber has opened a hotline for teachers being forced to attend the February 4 rally.

“It’s important for us to know what’s actually going on. I am a practicing teacher and can say that in my school none of the teachers received any order. But what’s being written in the media and discussed on social networking sites needs to be checked out,” said project coordinator Sergei Volkov.

According to Agora, Russia was home to 730 rallies, demonstrations, and pickets attended by a total of more than 400 thousand people during 2011. Of those participants, more than four thousand were detained before, during, or immediately after the event.

The group found that 117 civil activists, made up mostly of bloggers, anarchist or antifascists, and members of the banned National Bolshevik Party, were subjected to criminal prosecution in the past year. They were mostly incriminated under Russia’s controversial “extremism” laws, which critics denounce for their broad, vague wording, and also under laws against slandering or insulting government figures. Among the persecuted activists was music critic Artemy Troitsky, Novosibirsk artist Artem Loskutov, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev of the art group Voina, and Tyumen State University professor Andrei Kutuzov.

Three activists were killed in 2011: in May, editor Yakhya Magomedov of the Avar-language Islamic newspaper As-Salam; in June, Rector Maksud Sadikov of the Institute of Theology and International Relations was shot along with his nephew in Makhachkala; in December, Gadzhimurad Kamalov, a journalist and founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, was murdered in Dagestan.

Agora also recorded 45 incidents of beatings and other attacks.

The most at-risk groups were ecologists (primarily members of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest and opponents of environmental damage due to Olympic construction in Sochi), LGBT activists, and activists and participants of protests in the North Caucasus.

There were also 42 arrests, most commonly of members of the National Bolsheviks, Khimki Forest activists, and members of the electoral watchdog Golos. Irina Teplinskaya, a vocal critic of Russia’s treatment of drug addicts, was arrested in a Kaliningrad airport in August, and Golos head Liliya Shibanova was arrested in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in December. Noting the arrests of blogger Aleksei Navalny, oppositionist Ilya Yashin, and pianist Fedor Amirov, analysts at Agora said that from December 5-7, Russia for the first time began detaining people en masse and sentencing them to the maximum term of administrative arrest, with more than 100 people turning up in Moscow holding facilities during that time.

Additionally, 2011 saw 25 police searches of NGO offices and activists’ apartments.

The searches included a firm owned by Khimki Forest activist Yevgenia Chirikova and her husband, the office of the opposition movement Solidarity, and the Ulyanovsk branch of the Memorial human rights center.

The 850 cases of persecution recorded by Agora in 2011 followed 603 such cases in 2010, 308 in 2009, and 144 in 2008.

According to Sergei Davidis, one of the organizers of the “For Fair Elections” march, a sticking point was that Deputy Mayor Aleksandr Gorbenko proposed a route that would keep the protesters outside of the Garden Ring, which encircles central Moscow. When Gorbenko rejected oppositionists’ requests to allow the march to be held closer to the center of the city, the organizers apparently felt they had no other choice but to agree.

But even the status of that proposal – the city’s own – was unclear.

“We were told that we’ll get an official written response tomorrow per our request to hold the march from Luzhniki to Krimsky Bridge,” said Davidis. “We’ll have to wait and see what we’re going to do after that.”

Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov also confirmed that organizers had no luck in reaching an agreement over the route with city authorities.

He stressed that the city had insisted that the oppositionists gather at Luzhniki since the very beginning of negotiations, and had refused to make any concessions.

“Organizers of the march and rally still intend to insist on holding the events in the center of the city,” said Udaltsov.

The mayor’s office first turned down the march’s proposed route during a meeting on January 20, when Gorbenko claimed that it would be impossible “from the point of view of safety.” However, the move followed a long tradition on the part of Moscow authorities of driving oppositionists to the less-visible outskirts of the city under the pretext of preventing traffic problems.

The February 4 march will be the third mass protest against falsified election results in the past two months. The demonstrations have been the largest Russia has seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, and so far more than 19 thousand people have pledged on Facebook to turn out for the next one.

While the history of corruption in Russia is a long one, what’s begun to change is the status of those speaking out against it. Starting with police officer Aleksei Dymovsky in November 2009, who was promptly fired and discredited by the establishment he tried to criticize, more and more whistleblowers with prominent posts have begun to step into public view.

One such figure, whose story has been lost in the flurry of events since Vladimir Putin announced his presidential run in late September, is Sochi Federal Judge Dmitri Novikov. After attempting to bring several of his colleagues to justice for appropriating public land and selling it back to the government for more than $100 million, Novikov found himself the victim of a system that he already knew was overrun by corrupt officials – but never had to face as a defendant.

As Novikov explained during a press conference last November, he was retroactively stripped of his right to immunity as a judge, “which was absurd,” and held in prison for eight months. He was then freed, all charges against him were dropped, and he was reinstated as a judge – not, however, unscathed.

“I am probably the only judge who went from being a judge to being in jail and then becoming a judge again. And what I saw there and understand – if I, a person with a decent amount of experience and a degree, don’t have the strength to fight this machine, then any of you would simply rather die than have this situation happen to you,” Novikov said.

The judge then described the months of dehumanizing torture he sustained while in jail. Among other measures taken, Novikov was made to strip naked during each interrogation, forced into a concrete box to sit under a stream of ice water for up to two hours, confined to small spaces once the doctors learned that he had claustrophobia, and deprived of air conditioning in 130 F temperatures, to the point that blood began to run from his ears. The torture went on despite the hours of testimony that Novikov voluntarily gave, but which investigators ignored and insisted never happened. “Sometimes the interrogations were held altogether without me,” he said in an interview with Express Gazeta.

Novikov’s account of the torture he endured under politically-motivated charges that were eventually thrown out would be frightening enough on its own. What he had to say about the systemic corruption that that all federal judges participate in to obtain their posts was just icing on the cake.

“The position of a judge in Sochi costs up to half a million dollars,” Novikov explained. “And who has the capacity to sell it? What makes up this sum? This sum is the sum that you give to representatives of the qualification college of judges, which ensures that you get elected; it’s the money that you give to the representatives of the president’s regional plenipotentiary, to federal inspectors, all so that your candidacy is passed by the plenipotentiary. You give a little money to the FSB, you give a little money to the procurator, you even give a little money to the presidential administration.”

He went on to explain how most judges in Sochi abuse their positions to make money off of construction ventures.

“Who in the justice system carries this out?” Novikov asked. “It’s clans. It’s clans where the dad is a judge, the mom is a judge, the son is a judge. Our procurator is another son of an investigator. Not long ago, the president passed an incredible measure to make it so that one family can’t have the mom be a judge, the dad be a lawyer, and the son be an investigator. What began to happen? All the families began to get legal divorces. All of them.”

According to Express Gazeta, numerous television executives have been filming Novikov’s story, questioning his friends and acquaintances in the process. Whether or not they help him escape another eight months of torture following a new set of charges brought against him remains to be seen.

Because he was feeling ill, Udaltsov announced before the decision was read that he wouldn’t be able to appear at Saturday’s court session.

The court building itself was surrounded by approximately 20 journalists before the reading, and entrance was only granted to those with special permission.

Activists had gathered nearby and unfurled banners reading “Justice is higher to or equal to the law,” which were removed by police.

Udaltsov was arrested and sentenced to time in jail repeatedly during the month of December. His health suffered significantly because of a hunger strike held during that time. He and his supporters maintain that the charges filed against him were politically motivated.

Yashin was released on Wednesday at 2:30 am in northwest Moscow. According to his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, he was feeling fine.

Navalny was released from another facility at 2:35 am to a waiting crowd of journalists and supporters. The whistleblowing blogger said that intends to file a complaint against police for forcibly transferring him from a detention center to a police station.

“Ilya Yashin and I were asked if we’d like to go to the police station, but we declined. Several hours ago I was called supposedly to sign a document, after which someone in a t-shirt and flip-flops forced me into a car and took me away,” Navalny said. “I consider this to be unlawful and am going to complain about these actions by the police.”

Both oppositionists were arrested on December 5 following a mass rally at Moscow’s Chistye Prudy and sentenced to 15 days in jail for supposedly “violating police orders.” They were among 300 other demonstrators arrested out of a crowd of approximately 10,000; about 60 were given jail sentences from between 10 and 15 days each.

Oppositionists have scheduled another mass rally to protest the election results for December 24.

Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, said that protesters gathered on Pionerskaya Square and shouted slogans including “Power to the millions, not to millionaires!” “Putin, step down!” and “We are for fair elections!”

Along with Kurnosova, Oksana Dmitrieva from A Just Russia and leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov made speeches at the rally.

While the protest had been sanctioned by city authorities, witnesses reported that around ten armored military trucks were seen making their way towards the center of the city on Sunday morning.

In addition, police briefly detained Nemtsov at the Moskovsky train station and demanded an explanation for his trip to the city.

According to Grani.ru, the police presented Nemtsov with a document labeling him as a “leader of extremists.” The opposition leader was released after explaining that he had come to participate in a sanctioned rally.

The incident compacted Nemtsov’s fears that he is being watched. “The police continue to follow me earnestly, and I suspect that my freedom could soon come to an end,” he said.

Accusations of “extremist” activity are commonly used by Russian government authorities to persecute or marginalize opposition politicians.

Also on Sunday, the Russian Central Electoral Commission rejected an application by fellow opposition leader Eduard Limonov to run for president.

The commission stated that the rejection was based on a lack of minutes from a meeting that is required by law to be held in support of the candidate.

Limonov denounced the decision as politically motivated and promised to challenge it in court. On December 15, the oppositionist found himself without a physical place to hold the meeting, since the hall he had rented was abruptly closed for “urgent repairs” the day of the meeting.

In a press release issued Friday, the Yabloko party said that it had sent a packet of documents testifying about fraudulent results at eight areas in Moscow. “The data results issued by Yabloko’s observers in these areas significantly differs from the official results,” the statement asserted.

Party members noted that observers were included among the plaintiffs and that the complaints had been sent to seven different district courts. They plan to submit even more documents next week.

The lawsuits come following the largest protests Russia has seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. Despite widespread anger among Russian citizens at alleged blatant electoral fraud, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has downplayed protesters’ complaints.

On Thursday, the Federation Council dismissed a European Parliament resolution calling for a review of electoral results and for jailed oppositionists to be released as “legally untenable.” The president made no comment, saying that the resolution “means nothing” to him.

Predicable as it may be, then, it was nevertheless surreal to hear the news on Sunday that the Kremlin-loyal opposition party A Just Russia had been charged with violating public transportation laws for a bus advertisement that officials say contained “agitation against United Russia.” Under Russian law, it is illegal to spread negative propaganda against a political party or candidate, and it was on this basis that the charges were filed. But while A Just Russia had recently taken up the slogan “For Russia Without Swindlers and Thieves” and included it in the offending ad, there was no explicit mention of United Russia itself. The Russian authorities, it seems, have begun to take the connection between United Russia and “swindlers and thieves” for granted.

A Just Russia candidate Alena Popova posted a scan of the official charges online. The red check indicates the article the ad supposedly violates, reading “advertisement information (interior, exterior) without client’s agreement;” the handwriting reads “agitation against United Russia.”