The decision was announced at a press conference on Wednesday, which the oppositionists used to discuss cooperative tactics and strategies. “Under the current conditions, we feel that the December 4 parliamentary elections will be illegitimate,” says the declaration. “We call on citizens to boycott these shameful ‘elections’ in any rational way.”

“We call on all honest citizens to come out on December 4 to protests that will be held on the central squares of Russia’s cities and villages,” the declaration goes on.

Among the signees to the document were Solidarity co-leader Garry Kasparov, the organization’s political council organizer Denis Bilunov, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, Islamic Committee of Russia founder Geydar Dzhemal, and leading activists Yury Mukhin, Anatoly Baranov, and Aleksandr Krasnov.

Garry Kasparov said that Russians must ignore the elections and begin building a parallel political reality using contemporary technology, referring to Leonid Volkov’s internet project “Democracy 2.”

Aleksandr Krasnov proposed using December 4 not as an election day, but as the beginning of an act of civil disobedience that would end with the resignation of the ruling authorities. He insisted that the creation of a new political reality is only possible once the current one has been destroyed.

To express their discontent with the illegitimacy of the elections, Krasnov noted that voters can also de-register to strip themselves of voting rights or obtain, but not use, absentee ballots (which in Russia are available from polling stations) to symbolize that they will not be participating.

Anatoly Baranov argued that the only way to carry out the boycott is for every citizen to take their absentee ballot and bring it out to a protest.

A recent survey carried out by the Levada Center showed that more than half of Russians don’t believe that the upcoming elections will be free or fair. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they were certain that the December 4 proceedings will be no more than an imitation of an election and that the government determines who will hold seats in the State Duma.

The coalition includes a number of formerly high-ranking politicians who have since joined the Russian opposition, including former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, former Energy Minister Vladimir Milov, and former longtime State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov.

The agreement signed by coalition members states that their goal is to prepare to participate in upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Specifically, they plan to choose a single candidate from amongst their ranks to run for president in 2012. Who precisely this is going to be will be decided at a national session of the coalition, members say.

Over the course of the coming year, the coalition plan to collect the 45 thousand signatures necessary to federally register a political party. Without this registration, the party would be unable to participate in any regional or national elections.

Boris Nemtsov said he doesn’t doubt that the required number of signatures will be collected, as “there’s a demand in the regions for a new party.” At the same time, judging by previous experience, the coalition isn’t excluding the possibility that problems hindering registration could arise nevertheless.

“In that case, we’ll go out and stand up for the 13th article of the constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to create a party,” said Nemtsov. “And there’s a 13th date in every month,” he added, referencing the protest movement in defense of the 31st article of the constitution, which is held on the 31st of every month with that date.

Members of the coalition stressed that the creation of For Russia without Tyranny of Corruption was something they were forced to do. Each of the four will remain the heads of separate opposition organizations, as they were before. “We joined together to overcome the barriers [to participating in elections] that come from unjust laws,” said Kasyanov. “But we have to respect even unjust laws.”

A small scandal broke out when the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti suddenly refused to allow the oppositionists to use the agency’s premises to hold Thursday’s press conference. While the agency originally agreed on Tuesday to lend out the space, they unexpectedly cancelled the conference an hour and a half before its scheduled time, citing “technical reasons.”

The oppositionists said the sudden cancellation was politically motivated.

Reporters at Gazeta.ru attempted to contact RIA Novosti to learn precisely what “technical reasons” means, but a press representative from the agency said she didn’t have that information. Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk is out of town on a business trip, and press center manager Vladimir Aleksandrov was not reachable for comment.

In the end, opposition leaders invited journalists gathered for the event to Solidarity’s headquarters for the press conference.

Refusing to lend out space to hold meetings of the Russian opposition is a “systematic” problem, said United Civil Front Executive Director Denis Bilunov, “for example, in 2007.” At that time, the main victim of a variety of “technical mishaps” was the Other Russia coalition. For its first conference, organizers had to resort to “renting out the premises from precisely a western firm; we found a hotel that was of western ownership,” Bilunov said. Only then was the issue of being denied space resolved – for the moment. As to why opposition leaders have met with the same kind of problems once again, Bilunov remarked: “Clearly, election time is coming up, and the tendency is returning.”

Aleksei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy radio, made the remarks at a session of the Moscow City Police Public Council on Tuesday. As he later clarified on his radio show, the editor felt that while the Russian government’s routine prohibition of opposition events on the square is illegal, it is necessary for opposition organizers to “take a step back” if they want to reach their goal of achieving the constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of assembly.

The comments come a week after police detained 170 protesters at a rally in defense of free assembly, part of the Russian opposition’s ongoing Strategy 31 campaign. Dozens of activists were beaten, and at least two were hospitalized. The rally, like the others before it, had not been sanctioned by Moscow city authorities, who said that they had already granted permission to pro-Kremlin youth activists to hold a rally in support of blood drives on the square that day.

Venediktov characterized the ongoing conflict over Triumfalnaya Square, which Strategy 31 organizers say has become their traditional meeting place, as a “mutual obstinacy” that, realistically, can only be resolved by “nulling the situation.” Since neither the government nor the oppositionists are willing to cede the square, “it simply must be given up,” he said.

Konstantin Kosyakin, a Strategy 31 co-organizer, rejected the proposal and told Kasparov.ru that the activists plan to hold their ground.

“People already automatically come to Triumfalnaya at six o’clock on the 31st of the month,” Kosyakin said. “The government is afraid that this place will become an attraction for all oppositionist and civil rights forces. Therefore, if we compromise, the people will think that we have betrayed them.”

“This government is a government of thieves and bandits, and you cannot meet them halfway,” he added.

Gazeta.ru Editor-in-Chief Mikhail Mikhailin, also a member of the Public Council, told news website Grani.ru that he wholly shared Venediktov’s position. He said that if large gatherings on Triumfalnaya Square truly hinder traffic – one of the reasons Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has given as to why Strategy 31 rallies are routinely prohibited – then both Strategy 31 rallies and blood drive rallies organized by pro-Kremlin youth groups should indeed be banned.

Meanwhile, Moscow Helsinki Group head and Strategy 31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva also attended the Public Council session and refuted that Venediktov asked for Triumfalnaya to be closed to protesters. “It’s possible that he said something else afterwards, it’s written on the Ekho Moskvy website, but there he said that everyone needs to be put in the same conditions: ‘Either nobody is allowed, or don’t just allow [the government’s] favorites.’ I’m told that it’s written on the website that he demanded that Triumfalnaya Square be closed. I heard nothing of the sort,” she said.

Denis Bilunov, executive director of the opposition movement Solidarity, said that Venediktov’s statements play into the hands of the authorities by calling for concessions by the opposition.

“We can make concessions when, for example, [Russian President Dmitri] Medvedev or Luzhkov speak unequivocally about the illegality of refusing to sanction protests on Triumfalnaya Square and begin to investigate this,” he said.

Correction – June 9, 2010:  This story originally reported that the event held by pro-Kremlin youth groups was a blood drive. It was, in fact, a rally in support of the idea of a blood drive; no blood was donated at the event. The article has been corrected to reflect as much.

Russian police detained as many as 170 protesters on Monday evening in Moscow, as more than 1000 opposition activists gathered for the ninth iteration of the Strategy 31 rallies, a series of protests in defense of the constitutional right to the freedom of assembly. Activists and observers present at the rally say that the violence used by the police against protesters was even more brutal than it has been in previous Strategy 31 events, resulting in dozens of injuries and at least two hospitalizations.

Despite repeated appeals by opposition organizers, the Moscow city government refused to sanction the May 31 rally – an ongoing trend that has been criticized by human rights groups and governmental bodies in Russia, Europe, and the United States. Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, which the organizers have made their traditional meeting place, had been occupied since earlier in the day by a group of pro-Kremlin youth organizations holding a rally in support of blood drives. Additionally, the entrance to the square from the adjacent metro station had been cordoned off by police.

Such was the scene when Strategy 31 protesters began to arrive for the 6:00 pm rally. According to the Kasparov.ru news site, a young man wearing a shirt indicating that he was involved with the blood drive rally grabbed a poster reading “down with the illegal government” out of the hands of one of the protesters. At that point, the crowd began loudly chanting, and police then began to make detentions.

Eyewitnesses noted that particularly harsh measures were used against participants of the rally. Police dragged protesters, including young women, along the ground and shoved them into buses waiting nearby. They also broke journalists’ cameras and fired pepper spray into the crowd, regardless of the fact that pregnant women and children were present.

Police went about the detentions and general brutality despite the presence of observers from the European Parliament, Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, reappointed by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2009, and Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman Aleksandr Muzykantsky. The police, in fact, attempted to detain Lukin before realizing who he was.

Editor-in-Chief of the New Times magazine, Yevgeniya Albats, was also detained, but was quickly released after she began reporting live from the scene, presumably by cell phone or through other reporters present.

Two of the three Strategy 31 organizers, former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva and writer Eduard Limonov (both of whom have been detained at previous rallies), were surrounded a ring of personal guards and reporters during Monday’s event. The police, however, violently detained the guards for no apparent reason. At the same time, people in the same blood drive rally shirts as the previously mentioned young man attempted to provoke fights with those surrounding the organizers.

Kasparov.ru reports that police detained at least 140 people in all, while Interfax reports the figure as closer to 170. Among those detained were Solidarity bureau member Ilya Yashin, Oborona coordinator Oleg Kozlovsky, Forum.msk news site Editor-in-Chief Anatoly Baranov, Sergei Aksenov of the Other Russia coalition, and Konstantin Kosyakin, the third Strategy 31 organizer. Numerous other journalists were also arrested. Reporting from one of the police buses, Solidarity member Nadezhda Mityushkin said that activists were being severely beaten, Kozlovsky in particular.

The detainees were split up and taken to several different police stations, where the situation for many began to deteriorate. Writing on their microblogs, a number of the detained activists said that OMON riot police held them in hot buses for more than an hour and refused to give them water. An ambulance was eventually called for one Solidarity member who became sick after being kept in one for “several hours.”

The most scandalous case appears to be that of Solidarity activist and Gazeta.ru journalist Aleksandr Artemev, who was hospitalized after police allegedly crushed his shoulder to pieces. The incident allegedly occurred when police ordered detainees off of one of the police buses, before following to violently shoved them back in.

Kasparov.ru reports that doctors have diagnosed Artemev with a comminuted shoulder fracture; as a result, he will have to spend ten days in the hospital.

Artemev noted that he came to the Strategy 31 rally as a civil activist, not as a journalist, and that he did not present his journalist credentials to police upon being detained.

The activist also said that he plans to file suit against the police, and that he has several witnesses as well as video footage of the incident.

Mikhail Mikhailov, editor-in-chief of Gazeta.ru, told Kasparov.ru that the incident was “monstrous.”

“The horror of it is that the police officers used violence against a person who possesses a passport as a citizen of the Russian Federation, and at that did it openly, fearing nothing,” said Mikhailov.

Colonel Aleksandr Khavkin, head of the Zamoskvoreche police station where Artemev was injured, denied that his officers were at fault.

Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk of RIA Novosti, who also heads the Public Council of the Moscow City Police, told Gazeta.ru that what happened to Artemev was “outrageous” and promised that the council would invite him to give his side of the story.

Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that once inside one of the police stations, the detained activists were held for five hours before being interrogated by men presumed to be Federal Security Service (FSB) officials.

Kasparov.ru reported Tuesday morning that most of the detainees were held by police overnight, and that by this afternoon some had still not been released. The majority are being charged with participating in an unsanctioned event (punishable by up to a 1000 ruble/$32 fine) and resisting a police officer (up to 15 days in detention).

Opposition activists also held a Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg. Police detained between 50 and 100 of the 500 gathered on Gostiny Dvor after the crowd began to shout “We need a different Russia” and “Russia will be free.”

Elsewhere in the city, 1500 oppositionists gathered for a “March of Dissent,” also dedicated to defending the constitutional right to free assembly. According to United Civil Front’s St. Petersburg branch leader Olga Kurnosova, OMON riot police initially attempted to block the march before backing down in the face of the insistent protesters.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of the rock band DDT and outspoken Kremlin critic, had asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday whether or not the march would be allowed. The prime minister then responded that it would be allowed if participants acted legally and did not, for example, hold the march near a hospital. The media followed to take his words as an official sanction of the march, although Putin’s press secretary refuted this the next day.

Additionally, in an interview with Gazeta.ru published on Sunday, Shevchuk said that he had received a call from the Russian White House before the meeting and was asked not to pose any “harsh questions of a political character” to the prime minister, because “the prime minister is very tired and you don’t need to irritate and upset him.”

Solidarity bureau member and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov took part in the March of Dissent in St. Petersburg, and commented on the situation in Moscow on his blog:

The situation in Moscow is markedly worse. More than 100 people have been detained, including our colleagues Ilya Yashin and Oleg Kozlovsky. Yashin was holding a Russian flag, Kozlovsky was holding nothing in general. They were held in a scorching hot bus, and are now waiting in the stations. This is a question of the dialogue between Shevchuk and Putin the other day. There are no hospitals on Triumfalnaya Square or Gostiny Dvor, nobody besides the OMON officers themselves blocked traffic. Nobody held banners or used megaphones. Nevertheless, there are more than 100 detainees. A classic example of hypocrisy and lies. Say one thing, think another, do something else.

Of course, having met with Putin, Shevchuk held his March of Dissent spectacularly. And decent people are grateful to him for that. But with Putin, like always – spite, an attempt to deride a distinguished rock musician, and a pathological fear of his own people.

In addition to the events in Moscow and St. Petersburg, several other Strategy 31 rallies were held on Monday all across Russia, including in the cities of Tomsk, Voronezh, Vladivostok, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk.

A video of the proceedings in Moscow can be seen by clicking here (note: the music that comes on halfway through was from the blood drive rally organizers).

Correction – June 9, 2010:  This story originally reported that the event held by pro-Kremlin youth groups was a blood drive. It was, in fact, a rally in support of the idea of a blood drive; no blood was donated at the event. The article has been corrected to reflect as much.

Approximately seventy people attended Wednesday’s event, which was organized by opposition leaders to discuss the history, current state, and future of their campaign against the prime minister. Denis Bilunov, executive director of the opposition movement Solidarity, said the petition was originally intended for social and political organizations to sign, not the general public. However, he said, it turned out that the petition’s message appealed to a far greater number of ordinary Russians than was expected, so a website was set up to collect signatures online. Over 12 thousand people signed the petition in the first week alone.

Bilunov additionally spoke about the technical problems faced by the campaign, including frequent attacks by hackers that have repeatedly disabled the petition’s website. He also said that a full third of the 42 thousand signatories that had been collected by Wednesday have expressed interest in more actively supporting the campaign.

United Civil Front leader and Solidarity bureau member Garry Kasparov spoke at the meeting as well. Given that anti-government opposition groups face a great deal of repression in Russia, Kasparov said that the organizers would have considered even five thousand signatures to have been a success. He spoke about the fact that the petition has been subjected to an information blockade in the media; state-run television channels remain the main source of news for most Russians, and all of them have failed to mention the petition in their reporting. Nevertheless, said Kasparov, the thousands of messages of support and direct connections formed between citizens on the petition’s website make the project worth doing.

“The demographic and biographic cross-section of the signatories shows that there are a great deal more people in Russia who are discontent than they want us to know,” said Kasparov. “We don’t know yet what will come of all this, but 42 thousand people, even by today’s draconian laws, already almost constitutes a political party.”

Prominent political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky pointed out that for all the verbal attacks by the campaign’s critics, not a single person has come forward to speak out in defense of the prime minister or to refute the petition’s accusations.

“This is testimony to the fact that the regime is in a state of decay, insofar as there are no people who believe in any kind of ideology,” Piontkovsky said. “Regimes like this usually end in the collapse of the elite.” The political analyst went on to say that he didn’t believe Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and his political team would be able to successfully rid themselves of the prime minister – only because they fear being left alone with a society that would continue to raise uncomfortable issues with the government.

Piontkovsky also proposed a number of measures to increase awareness of the campaign against Prime Minister Putin, including serious preparations for a rally in Moscow, which he proposed by held in the fall.

“Even three thousand people demanding that Putin be dismissed would be a serious political event,” he said.

Despite the already massive number of signatures on the petition, attendees of the meeting agreed that the campaign needed to move from the internet into the living world to become an effective force for change. Participants proposed a number of measures to that end: increasing awareness that the petition does indeed have a great deal of support from Russian society, involving various political movements in their campaign, using social networking and blogs to spread information, and holding one-man demonstrations – the only form of protest that does not require government sanction to be held legally in Russia – to collect more signatures.

Kasparov noted that there was a limit to how many anti-government protesters the authorities could endure before they became decidedly afraid. “If in Moscow, for example, 100 thousand people come out into the streets, many of the people in that crowd are going to turn out to be the relatives and friends of a lot of police officers and OMON [riot police] officers, so we don’t know if they would carry out their orders” to break up the event, he said. “Through our actions, we are changing the balance of power in society.”

Kasparov said that Prime Minister Putin’s resignation was the campaign’s primary political goal because it would free President Medvedev to implement legislation that would allow for free and fair elections. Currently, politics at every level and in every region of Russia is almost entirely monopolized by United Russia, the Kremlin-backed political party headed by the prime minister himself. What isn’t controlled by United Russia is largely controlled by Kremlin-loyal opposition groups, such as A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. The government has done virtually nothing to address the widespread accusations of fraud that consistently come up during major elections.

Since its inception on March 10, 2010, the petition calling for Vladimir Putin to resign has been signed by a wide variety of opposition figures, human rights advocates, public figures, journalists, and other activists. Among the first to sign were prominent rights activists Elena Bonner and Lev Ponomarev, Solidarity bureau members Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, and Ilya Yashin, Yabloko party members Maksim Reznik, Boris Vishnevsky and Aleksei Melnikov, journalists Yevgeny Ikhlov, Anatoly Baranov and Aleksandr Ryklin, and writers Vladimir Bukovsky and Viktor Shenderovich. At the time of publication, 43,012 people had signed the petition in all.

According to Dymovsky, the rallies are meant to support five Russians involved in three different criminal suits: two young men and a young woman from Novosibirsk who have been sentenced to 2-5 years in prison for supposedly beating 20 police officers at once, despite their claims that they themselves were the victim; Oleg Ivanov, a regional leader in Omsk who was charged with fraud, violence against a government authority, and abuse of authority after allowing Dymovsky to legally reside in his region; and Krasnodarsky Krai businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who says that his business has been illegally taken away from him by the local police.

“I want to speak out in defense of real people, not abstract parrots,” said the former officer.

Dymovsky said that iterations of the June 12 rally will be held in Omsk, Novosibirsk, and the Krasnodarsky Krai, and also most likely in the cities of Volgograd, Novorossiysk, Samara, Sochi, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Where precisely Dymovsky himself plans to be that day, he didn’t say.

“Wherever it’s going to be more difficult, that’s where I’ll go,” he said.

Dymovsky added that he’s currently negotiating with a variety of social and political organizations to help coordinate and support the events. In particular, he said, opposition leader and Solidarity bureau member Garry Kasparov has promised to support the initiative. Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that bringing his opposition movement and Dymovsky together was a “positive trend.” The ex-major was a featured speaker at Solidarity’s May Day celebration earlier this month.

The plans for the June 12 rally come a month after Dymovsky’s latest video message on April 12, when the ex-major called for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to establish order in the country by November 12, 2010, or face an angry mob on Red Square. While Dymovsky’s original video last November gained widespread media coverage, the ex-major said in April that a media blockade had forced him to resort back to the online video format instead of holding a press conference. The April video has been viewed on YouTube more than 100 thousand times in the past month, in addition to the number of people who viewed it on his website.

Aleksei Dymovsky was fired from the Novorossiysk police soon after posting two videos online that detailed corruption he witnessed within his agency. After fleeing to Moscow in response to threats to himself and his family, Dymovsky held a highly-attended press conference and revealed that he had secretly recorded more than 150 hours of audio in support of his allegations. He was arrested in January on trumped-up charges of fraud, which were dropped in April. His messages have spurred dozens of similar videos from other Russian police officers, state prosecutors, and other government workers from all over Russia. Many people who have come forward to help Dymovsky have found themselves persecuted for their actions. Neither President Medvedev nor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have publically acknowledged Dymovsky’s existence.

City authorities originally denied official sanction for the march, but later agreed to a second appeal by activists.

A broad array of social, political, and human rights organizations were represented at the march, which proceeded through the middle of the city north of the Kremlin. Notable participants included For Human Rights Executive Director Lev Ponomarev, Memorial human rights center Director Oleg Orlov, Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, and Solidarity director Denis Bilunov.

Per agreement, participants in the march carried no political flags or symbols, although it was not immediately clear whether this agreement was made among the participants themselves or on the order of city authorities.

Police officers patrolling the event required activists to march in groups of 50, with separate police escorts assigned to each group. Several dozen protesters did attempt to break through the area cordoned off by security forces, lighting smoke bombs and unfurling banners. Approximately 24 protesters were beaten and detained by police as a result.

The march was intended to conclude with a rally at the end of the designated route, but was delayed due to police requiring all 600 participants to file through only two metal detectors.

After forty minutes of delay, a crowd of protesters broke through the police barrier in an attempt to begin the rally, resulting in police detaining 18 participants and beating dozens more.

Another 50 participants were detained throughout the course of the event, with activists alleging that police were especially harsh in their treatment of younger members of the crowd.

In addition to the memorial march, Moscow residents brought flowers and candles to the place where Markelov and Baburova were murdered throughout the day on Tuesday.

Stanislav Markelov was shot in the head in central Moscow on January 19, 2009. He died at the scene. Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova, who had been walking with Markelov, was also shot, and died the same day in the hospital.

Markelov was known for his work defending victims of human rights abuses in Chechnya and violence from ultranationalist and neo-Nazi organizations. Two suspects in the murders, alleged neo-Nazis Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgeniya Khasis, were arrested in November and have pleaded guilty to the crimes.

The measure was introduced as an amendment to current Russian legislation that governs demonstrations and other public gatherings.

Legislators explained the measure in an explanatory note, saying that solo protesters sometimes set themselves on fire or, alternatively, come under attack by other people. Under current legislation, the note continues, local police receive no notification that a protest is planned and therefore are unable to properly respond when such a situation breaks out.

Until now, solitary demonstrations were the only legal means of protest for Russian citizens that did not require any type of official sanction. Opposition protesters have frequently been forced to utilize this provision after being denied sanction for larger gatherings.

Russian rights activists and opposition leaders reacted strongly to Friday’s announcement that their last remaining means of legal protest would soon be effectively banned, rejecting the idea that the measure was for their own safety.

Denis Bilunov, executive director of the opposition movement Solidarity, said that the initiative “directly contradicts” federal law.

Roman Dobrokhotov, leader of the opposition movement We, said that the initiative was no surprise given the Ministry of Transport’s recent move to stiffen penalties for protesters who blocked roads or highways.

The new penalties were introduced to the Russian State Duma at the end of December, with fines rising from 2,500 rubles ($84) to 100,000 rubles ($3,340), and the maximum prison sentence rising from 15 days to two years.

Blocking highways has become a growing means of protest in Russia for older citizens and pensioners who have failed to affect change through other means. Residents in the devastated industrial town of Pikalevo were able to receive long unpaid wages only after gaining nationwide media attention by blocking a federal highway last June.

According to Dobrokhotov, both pieces of legislation will backfire if adopted.

“We will block the roads and hold solo protests out of principle, to fight for our rights,” he said. “Moreover, we will hold such demonstrations more often than before.”

Dobrokhotov added, however, that essentially “nothing is changing” since police have often interrupted solitary demonstrations regardless of the fact that they are legal.

In November, Solidarity leaders obtained an internal police memo that ordered officers to illegally disrupt a series of solo demonstrations. The movement plans to use the document in a lawsuit against the Russian Internal Ministry’s notorious Center for Extremism Prevention, which, according to the document, ordered the illegal detentions.

Ilya Yashin, a Solidarity member who posted the police memo on his blog, agreed that there was nothing surprising about the newest government initiative. “The authorities consider this type of demonstration to be a menace, since it’s the only measure that the opposition can still use relatively effectively,” he said.

Approximately 50 protesters took to the streets in Moscow on Saturday in response to both pieces of legislation. Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political organization, said that activists would protest outside of the Kremlin when the amendments come up for deliberation.

“The year is beginning badly,” Udaltsov said. “The government’s initiatives attest to the fact that they are expecting a second wave for the crisis and, consequently, a rise in protests.”

Police officers subjected people attempting to join the protest to a thorough search, banning some from taking part on the basis of unspecified written material that the people in question were carrying.

Prominent human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev said that the amendment to strip citizens of the unconditional right to solitary protests would be harmful for citizen society at large. “If a person is connected with a political group, he knows how to submit applications for demonstrations and rallies. An ordinary person only knows that at any moment he can go outside to hold a solitary demonstration and nobody will arrest him,” Ponomarev said.

Denis Bilunov, leader of the Solidarity opposition movement and among those detained, said activists were able to photograph a memo from Colonel Timur Valiulin of the Russian Interior Ministry’s notorious Center for Extremism Prevention (Center “E”) to Public Safety Police General Vyacheslav Kozlov, discussing “the necessity to take measures to disrupt the series of solo protests of the Solidarity movement” in support of Limonov. Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia coalition and the banned National Bolshevik party, was sentenced to ten days of administrative arrest on November 12 for “insubordination to a police officer” and participation in an “unsanctioned rally” on October 31.

Activists managed to photograph the document with a camera phone after an officer accidentally left it in view. Solidarity leaders intend to use it as evidence in a court case that they hope would close Center “E,” criticized by Amnesty International for stifling dissent from journalists and activists and for torturing criminal suspects.

According to Solidarity member Ilya Yashin, who published the document on his blog, “The published paper is more than sufficient as a minimum for the prosecutorial review of the activities of this structure, consistently and blatantly in violation of the Constitution and the law.”

Bilunov and seven other activists were detained on November 16 when their solo protests, which do not require sanction from authorities, were approached by men posing as activists wanting to join them. After the protests ceased to appear solo, police arrested all participants.

Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and co-founder of the opposition party Union of Right Forces, was among those detained. He calls the men, believed to be undercover police, “simple provocateurs.” He explained his support for Limonov on his blog:

“Many people ask me, how you, a political antipode of Eduard Limonov, defend him. The answer is that Limonov, organizing regular protests on the 31st date of every month, defends our and your right to rallies, processions, [and] demonstrations, as provided by the 31st article of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Putin’s regime is taking this right away from you systematically, absolutely illegally and cowardly.”

Nemtsov further writes: “The arrest of Limonov for 10 days does not have any relationship to the law. He did not, naturally, show any insubordination to the police, first of all because he is experienced, and secondly, he is no longer a young man.”

Leaders in the Communist Party have promised to raise the issue of Limonov’s arrest and the arrest of the other activists in the State Duma. According to National Bolshevik member Sergei Aksenov, Communist Party leader Vladimir Kashin felt that “if this is how things continue from now on, then after a couple of years the Communist Party could also end up without our traditional processions on November 7, and our position on the freedom of speech and assembly must be asserted.”

On Wednesday, Limonov’s ten-day sentence was held up in court on appeal. Prominent human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva blamed the decision on a growing trend of corrupt police commanders forcing officers to give false testimony in court.

The October 31 protest during which Limonov was arrested along with approximately 70 other oppositionists was part of the Other Russia coalition’s “Strategy 31” movement, in which opposition leaders file applications to rally on Triumfalnaya Square every month with a 31st day, in reference to the 31st article of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly.

A full scan of the police memo and a corresponding transcription can be found on Ilya Yashin’s blog (in Russian).

Solominsky was detained after an apparent clash with police on October 9. A group of men in plain clothes, believed to be officers of a regional St. Petersburg police department, had blocked off access to the Khasansky market complex. When Solominsky asked them for official identification, he was beaten into a concussion, thrown into a car without police license plates, and taken to the 13th Police Precinct.

Although the beating was captured on video, prosecutors have refused to initiate criminal proceedings against the police. Instead, a suit was brought against Solominsky, charging him with “public insult of a representative of authority.” The charge carries a sentence of 6 months to 1 year of remedial labor. Police have placed Solominsky under house arrest.

“Petersburg authorities, obviously,” he says, “have decided to deal with the oppositionists who have long annoyed them.”

Signatories of the petition include writer Vladimir Bukovsky, politician Boris Nemtsov, political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, Right Cause member Boris Nadezhdin, journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, Cato Institute senior fellow Andrei Illarionov, Yabloko member Yevgeniya Dilendorf, Solidarity executive director Denis Bilunov, Solidarity member Sergei Davidis, and many others.

According to the petition, Solominsky had previously been detained for distributing books written by Bukovsky, a Soviet political dissident, and for organizing an “unsanctioned” rally of businessmen.

Police abuse is notorious in Russia. A recent study estimated that 1 in 25 people are tortured, beaten, or harassed by law enforcement officials in Russia each year. An activist in the city of Voronezh claims he was abducted and tortured by police on October 31 as a result of his participation in opposition activities.