Other Russia party member Aleksandr Averin said 20 police officers armed with automatic weapons broke into the office near Moscow’s Belorusskaya metro station on Wednesday, breaking both the door and a window.

Another Other Russia party leader, Nikolai Avdyushenkov, said four activists have been detained – Konstantin Makarov, Marat Salakhiev, Dmitri Kulkov and Alena Kapotina.

“It’s obvious that today’s search is connected with tomorrow’s action on Triumfalnaya Square,” said Averin, referring to the traditional meeting place for Strategy 31 participants. “Members of law enforcement agencies are trying to frighten supporters of free assembly in carrying out the orders of their superiors.”

“It’s particularly worth noting that there was also a raid on the headquarters of Strategy 31 on January 30, prior to the last action on Triumfalnaya. It’s true that, at that time, the police officers behaved correctly. Is this really how the renaming [of the ‘militsiya’] to the ‘politsiya’ has had an effect?” Averin asked.

There were three separate raids in Moscow on January 30 that affected the Other Russia party: on Avdyushenkov’s apartment, on the apartment of a party activist in the village of Medvedkovo, and also on Strategy 31’s organizational headquarters. The raids were carried out in connection with a criminal case against members of the organization under suspicion of involvement in race riots near the Kremlin last December.

Regardless of whether the raids are meant to scare away Strategy 31 supporters, Moscow city police said on Wednesday that they intended to arrest anyone who shows up at tomorrow’s rally on Triumfalnaya Square, which has not been officially sanctioned.

“The city mayor’s office proposed several different areas to hold the rally to organizers of this event; however, traditionally and consciously entering into conflict with the authorities and law enforcement agencies, Limonov did not turn down the places chosen for him and called for people to come to Triumfalnaya Square independent of the decision by the authorities,” police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told reporters.

“Police officers have every basis to arrest and place Limonov and other active supporters of provocational actions in police holding facilities,” he added.

Biryukov also said police would be asking those gathered at Triumfalnaya to walk over to Pushkin Square, where Strategy 31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva plans to hold her own, sanctioned version of the rally.

According to a statement from the ministry’s press service, the registration application was rejected because the party’s charter “contradicts federal law.” A five-page response with the substantiation behind this claim will be sent to the Other Russia’s organization committee at some point, said a representative.

Commenting on the rejection, Other Russia executive committee member Aleksandr Averin said he was glad the Justice Ministry “deigned to remember our existence” but was surprised that ministry officials didn’t respond sooner. By law, they were required to do so by January 20 – 30 days after Other Russia organizers handed in their application on December 30.

“According to our information, a decision has been made at the highest level not to register other opposition parties as well, those like the ROT Front, the RZC, the Party of National Freedom/For Russia Without Tyranny or Corruption,” said Averin. “When we finally have the response in our hands, we will definitely appeal it in court.”

In his opinion, the ministry would not have responded at all had it not been for appeals made through the media. Phone calls by the organization to the ministry had long gone unanswered.

“We all understand that this is just a formality and that the issue of our failure to register is political, not legal,” said Averin.

Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov said he would not make another attempt to register the party.

“There was nothing more to expect from our government,” Limonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio. He echoed Averin’s remarks that the Justice Ministry was preparing to reject applications for registration from another six opposition groups.

Without official registration by the Justice Ministry, political parties cannot participate in elections in Russia. State authorities routinely deny registration to opposition parties, who counter that the refusals are politically motivated.

The Other Russia political party was founded on July 10, 2010. At the time, Limonov said he planned to register the party to participate in the 2011 parliamentary elections. He personally plans to run for president in 2012. He had expected the party to run into problems in obtaining registration.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party told Kasparov.ru that rally organizers received a proposal from the mayor’s office on Wednesday to hold the rally on either Pushkin Square, Bolotnaya Square or a small strip of Triumfalnaya Square between the Peking Hotel and Brestskaya Street.

“The problem is that the authorities are prepared to sanction a rally numbering 200 people in this section, and not 1500,” he noted.

Averin said that the three Strategy 31 organizers – former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin – would announce their official response to the city’s proposal on Thursday.

Days earlier, online newspaper Gazeta.ru reported that the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Russia has received permission to hold a rally to promote giving blood – but not an actual blood drive – also on Triumfalnaya Square on October 31.

Young Russia’s application had originally proposed holding the event on either Triumfalnaya or Pushkin Squares, “but the mayor’s office agreed to have our action be held precisely on Triumfalnaya,” said the organization’s press secretary, Natalia Maslova.

Opposition activists have maintained for months that rallies organized by pro-Kremlin youth movements for the same date, time, and place as Strategy 31 events are simply attempts to take up the space so that oppositionists are unable to use it.

The fact that the Moscow mayor’s office only agreed to let 200 people rally on Triumfalnaya may be connected with recent comments by prominent Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov – comments that do not bode well for the future of the opposition’s movement.

Following the dismissal of longtime Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Surkov spoke in an interview with the business magazine Vzglyad about the controversy surrounding Triumfalnaya Square. Surkov called the Strategy 31 protesters “virtual heroes and martyrs” who “really couldn’t organize anything,” and said that “any new [Moscow] government, per Russian tradition, will show generosity.”

“We are completely unconcerned with such events,” Surkov went on. “For a democratic state, they are completely normal. The main thing is that everything be done according to the law. If two hundred people in Moscow, a city of many millions of people, want to gather without fail on the 31st date and without fail on Triumfalnaya – let them gather.”

Since Strategy 31 events are regularly attended by upwards of one thousand protesters, Surkov’s statement that only 200 would want to gather on Triumfalnaya may be based on police statistics of the number of rally attendees, which are often much lower than the attendance as reported by independent media sources and opposition organizers.

Surkov went on to say that “the opposition should not get the feeling that everything is permitted to them. They aren’t permitted everything.”

“Over the course of these past few years, all of the actions of the city authorities and the Moscow police in regards to all street actions, all rallies and marches, sanctioned and unsanctioned, have been lawful and correct,” Surkov argued. “I would say – irreproachable. I’m sure that this is how it will be in the future.”

The actions that Surkov has judged as “irreproachable” include scheming to deny oppositionists space to hold their events and calling out riot police and internal military forces to brutally beat and detain hundreds of peaceful protesters.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party said that the July 20 ruling gives oppositionists the opportunity to have the case reexamined by the Tverskoy Court.

The banned rally was part of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign, which holds demonstrations on the 31st of every month with that date in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly. Article 31 of the Russian constitution enshrines this right, hence the name and date. As holding unsanctioned rallies is punishable under Russian federal law, Strategy 31 organizers routinely file applications for official sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office. However, they are consistently refused – as was the case for the December 31 event.

However, documents obtained with the help of Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin convinced the Moscow City Court that the city’s refusal to sanction the rally needs to be reconsidered.

Usually, Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction Strategy 31 events under the pretense that other events have already been planned for the same time and place. While the December 31 event was refused sanction on this basis on December 22, the newly-revealed documents show that the place in question, Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square, was actually free until December 29. Only then was an event planned for the very time and place where the Moscow authorities knew the oppositionists were intent on holding their rally.

Averin said that by overturning the Tverskoy Court ruling, the Moscow City Court has effectively admitted that the Moscow authorities’ refusal to sanction Strategy 31 rallies is politically motivated and has nothing to do with a conflict of events.

The decision comes just a day after Strategy 31 organizers were denied sanction for an upcoming rally on July 31.

Former Soviet Dissident and Strategy-31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that an official from the mayor’s office called to inform her on July 19 that the rally could be held at several other locations, but not on Triumfalnaya Square – which has already long since become a traditional gathering place for Strategy 31 participants.

“I didn’t even ask for a reason,” said Alexeyeva. “I’m not interested. It’s the same thing over and over again.”

Aleksandr Averin, member of the executive committee of the coalition, said on Tuesday that a founding congress would be held for the party on July 10. There, participants will adopt a charter and party program, he said. The coalition is confident that enough members can be recruited in the months leading up to the October elections to reach the minimum necessary for the official federal registration required for parties that wish to participate in Russian elections.

Other Russia cofounder and head of the banned National Bolshevik Party, Eduard Limonov, will head the organizational committee, Averin added.

“We are going to demand the abolition of registration for political parties, and also participation in elections for all those who wish to,” Limonov said. He called the electoral campaign the Other Russia’s “second front,” the first being the “Strategy 31” rallies, held routinely in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly.

Limonov added that he expects the government to do everything possible to keep the opposition party out of the October elections.

A variety of Russian opposition groups have recently begun making renewed attempts to create officially registered political parties. The opposition movement Solidarity, lead in part by former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, announced in May that it would be creating its own party to operate side-by-side with the movement. The groups Democratic Choice and the National Patriots have also made similar decisions in the past few months.

The requirement for the federal registration of political parties is widely criticized by Russian opposition groups as a tool used by the government to keep political competition out of the electoral system. Altogether seven parties are officially registered and allowed to participate in elections: the Kremlin-backed United Russia party, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, Patriots of Russia, Yabloko, A Just Russia, and Right Cause. This is down from 15 parties in 2008, 19 in 2006, and 35 earlier in 2006. The number decreased following changes in federal registration procedures over the course of those years.

While some opposition parties, such as three Bolshevik-related parties, are banned outright in Russia, many are simply never able to register. Andrei Savelyov, leader of the unregistered Great Russia, told the newspaper Kommersant that his own party has no such chance. That said, he hopes that “the government will come to its senses and allow citizens to exercise political freedoms.”

Vladimir Ryzhkov, representative of the unregistered Republican Party, expressed similar doubts. “Our government, and most of all the president and prime minister, grossly trample on the constitution and deprive a significant part of the political forces and society of the opportunity to participate in elections,” he told Kommersant. “In these conditions, it is the task of the opposition to explain to the population that this is not an election, but a farce.”

Dmitri Badovsky, Deputy Director of the Institute of Social Systems, agreed that it was unlikely that unregistered parties would have any success in either the registration process or, theoretically, the actual elections. “For the survival of the political arena, the Kremlin will enable a sharp activation of the small parties that are already registered, most of all Right Cause,” he explained.

Speaking to Kasparov.ru, Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia’s executive committee said that the filing deals specifically with the first of the coalition’s Strategy 31 rallies – thus named for the 31st article of the Russian constitution guaranteeing free assembly – held on May 31, 2009. At the time, Moscow city authorities had refused to officially sanction the rally – a trend that continued with each of the proceeding rallies, which the coalition has held on the 31st of each month with that date. Taking part in an unsanctioned rally in Russia violates federal law, and each of the unsanctioned demonstrations have resulted in scores of protesters being beaten, detained, or both.

The Other Russia lawyer Dmitri Agranovsky asserts in the Strasbourg complaint that by banning the May 31 event, Russian government agencies violated three separate articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 6 – the right to a fair trial, Article 10 – the right to freedom of expression, and Article 11 – the right to freedom of assembly. If accepted for consideration by the court, the case may not be heard for years.

Many Russian human rights groups, journalists, and oppositionists often appeal to the Strasbourg court either after or instead of attempting to navigate Russia’s own judicial system – partially out of fears of corruption, and partially in hopes of gaining the binding mandate issued by the prominent European court. Along with the Strasbourg suit, the Other Russia is also filing suit against the Russian government in Russia’s Constitutional Court.

The coalition is also filing a separate case in Moscow’s Tverskoy Court regarding the most recent Strategy 31 rally held this past March. Rally organizers Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Eduard Limonov and Konstantin Kosyakin are arguing that the Moscow city administration’s refusal to sanction the rally is illegal under Russian law.

According to National Bolshevik member Sergei Yezhov, Center “E” officials attempted for several hours to enter an apartment on Volgogradsky Prospect, but the residents refused to open the door as the officials would not state the purpose of their visit.

Present in the apartment at the time was National Bolshevik and member of the executive committee of the Other Russia coalition Sergei Fomchenkov, and National Assembly deputies Taisiya Osipova, Margarita Filippova, Mikhail Klyuzhev, Nikolai Medvedev, and Maksim Gromov, as well as an infant child.

The apartment is currently undergoing a search.

A second apartment owned by Aleksandr Averin, press secretary for National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov, was broken into by Center “E” officials that same afternoon.

Officials detained Averin and his apartment is also currently being searched.

Gromov had arrived in Moscow to attend a meeting with Heidi Hautala, chairman of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights. He stated that the legitimacy of the activities of Center “E” was to be a topic of discussion during the meeting.

The Center for Extremism Prevention is accused by Amnesty International of stifling dissent from journalists and activists under charges of extremist activity; a 2009 report cites accusations of torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects. In November, members of the opposition Solidarity movement obtained an internal memo indicting Center “E” in the illegal detentions of a number of activists. Solidarity leaders are planning to use the document in a criminal suit against the center.

Organizers have been careful to alert city officials well in advance, and to do everything in their power to obtain permits for the events. Yet after countless rebuffs, stalling and poor responses on the part of City Hall, organizers say that working with authorities has become impossible.

The most recent protests, set to take place in Moscow and St. Petersburg on December 14th, have proven the point. In both cities, officials have denied the proposed marching routes, and have made negotiations difficult. Organizers said both cities seemed intent on banning the Marches.

The protest’s organizing committee went as far as suggesting that it may stop notifying city officials about the protests altogether.

“If City Hall refuses to agree to the demo, and the rights of the marchers are violated again,” said Aleksandr Averin, a committee member, “the organizing committee of the March of Dissent will not continue with the unworkable practice of submitting notifications in the future, and will instead directly invoke the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which proclaims that citizens have the right to the freedom of assembly.”

Other Russia leader Garry Kasparov echoed the same sentiment, pointing out that the Moscow city government had no legal right to curb the March:

“Let the mayor’s office make a decision,” Kasparov told the Interfax news agency. “The selectivity of Moscow city authorities is mind-boggling. They let the KPFR (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) and numerous pro-Kremlin movements stage mass events.”

“I would like to remind [them],” he added, “that only those representing the authorities have ever resorted to violence at Marches of Dissent, while there were no incidents from our side.”

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Read more about the May 6, 2008 March of Dissent, which was canceled out of concern for the safety of participants.

The location of the protest, expected to draw some 2000 demonstrators, is by the Griboyedov monument, at the Chistye Prudy metro station.

Aleksandr Averin, a member of the Other Russia executive committee, told the Sobkor®ru news agency that a pro-Kremlin youth group had attempted to sabotage the application. A representative of the group allegedly tried to register a different public gathering at exactly the same location as the one proposed by the Other Russia. Similar techniques have been used to block opposition rallies in the past. According to Averin, the Other Russia managed to turn their forms in first.

Organizers expect to hear back from the Mayor’s office within a week. By Russian law, protesters must register a rally by declaring when and where it will take place, but do not need to ask permission from authorities. For that reason, officials cannot prohibit a demonstration without significant justification.

Still, the most recent March of Dissent, which took place in Moscow on March 3rd, was forbidden by authorities and shut down violently by OMON riot police. As result, over 200 people were arrested.