So far, nineteen people have been accused of participating in those “disturbances”; twelve of them are in jail in pre-trial confinement. Here are some of their stories:

⁃ Vladimir Akimenkov, 25, communist and activist of the Left Front. Arrested on June 10th, 2012, he will be in detention until March 6th 2013. Vladimir was born with poor eyesight. In jail, it is getting even worse. In the last examination, he had 10% vision in one eye, and 20% in the other. This, however, was not a sufficient cause for the court to replace detention with house arrest. At the last court session of the court, the judge cynically commented that only total blindness would make him reconsider his decision.
⁃ Michael Kosenko, 36, no political affiliation, arrested on June 8th. Kosenko, who suffers from psychological disorders, also asked for his stay in jail be replaced with house arrest. However, the court declared him “dangerous to society” and plans to send him for forced treatment.
⁃ Stepan Zimin, 20, anarchist and antifascist, arrested on June 8th and placed under detention until March 6th 2013, after which date his arrest can be extended. Stepan supports his single mother, yet once again the court did not consider this sufficient cause to set him free under the obligation to remain with city limits.
⁃ Nikolai Kavkazskii, 26, socialist, human rights activist and LGBT-activist. Detained on the 25th of July.

Investigators have no clear evidence proving the guilt of any one of these detainees. Nevertheless, they remain in jail and new suspects steadily join their ranks. Thus the last of the players in the “events of May 6th,” the 51-year-old liberal activist and scholar Sergei Krivov, was arrested quite recently, on October 18th. There is every indication that he will not be the last.

If the arrests of already nearly twenty ordinary demonstration participants were intended to inspire fear in the protest movement, then the hunt for the “organizers of massive disturbances” is meant to strike at its acknowledged leaders. According to the investigation, said “disturbances” were the result of a conspiracy, and all the arrested were receiving special assignments. This shows that we are dealing not only with a series of arrests, but with preparations for a large scale political process against the opposition.

On October 5th, NTV, one of the leading Russian television channels, aired a film in the genre of an “investigative documentary,” which leveled fantastical charges against the opposition and in particular, against the most famous representative of the left, Sergei Udaltsov. This mash-up, made in the tradition of Goebbels’ propaganda, informs of Udaltsov’s ties with foreign intelligence, and the activities of the “Left Front” that he heads are declared plots by foreign enemies of the state. By way of decisive proof, the film includes a recorded meeting between Sergei Udaltsov, Left Front activist Leonid Razvozhaev, Russian Socialist Movement member Konstantin Lebedev, and one of the closer advisors of the president of Georgia, Givi Targamadze. In particular, the conversation includes talk of money delivered by the Georgians for the “destabilization” of Russia.

Despite the fact that the faces on the recording are practically indiscernible and that the sound is clearly edited and added separately to the video, within just two days the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office (the agency today playing the leading role in organizing repression) used it to launch a criminal case. On October 17th, Konstantin Lebedev was arrested and Sergei Udaltsov released after interrogation, after having signed an oath to remain within the limits of Moscow. On October 19th, a third participant in the new “affair,” Left Front activist Leonid Razvozhaev, tried to petition for refugee status with the Ukrainian delegation of the UN. As soon as he stepped outside of the delegation building, unknown parties violently forced him into a vehicle and illegally transported him across the Ukrainian border onto Russian territory. Once in an undisclosed location in Russia, he was subjected to torture and threats (including regarding the safety of his family) and compelled to sign a “voluntary submission of confession” and “statements of confession.” In these “statements,” Razvozhaev confessed to ties with foreign intelligence and to preparations for an armed insurgency, in which Konstantin Lebedev and Sergei Udaltsov were also involved. Afterwards, Razvozhaev was delivered to Moscow and placed in jail as a criminal defendant. At present, Razvozhaev has asserted in meetings with human rights activists that he disavows these confessions obtained under duress. However, he could not disavow their consequences. “Razvozhaev’s list,” beaten out of him by torture, has become notorious: it contains the names of people who will before long also become objects of persecution.

Read the full letter here.

Members of the Communist Party, Worker’s Russia, the Revolutionary Workers Party, the Left Socialist Movement, the International Organization of Communists, ROT Front, the Other Russia, and others made up the more than thousand participants who marched down along the Moscow River near the Kremlin on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Holding a multitude of banners and proceeding under the cry of slogans like “Russia without Putin” and “Russia for the workers,” the marchers demanded the release of opposition activists currently being held under suspicion of inciting riots during anti-government protests this past May. The charges are widely criticized as politically motivated, and the cases of the detainees were largely overshadowed this past summer by media attention focused on the Pussy Riot scandal.

Representatives of the leftist movements expressed a general sentiment that the system of values in Russia today is such that it’s pointless to even talk about such problems as free and fair elections, social welfare, and other necessary reforms, because whoever becomes the next president will inherit the same set of circumstances.

“We are the first to say that it’s not Putin who’s to blame, but the system, in which every new Putin is going to be just the same as this Putin,” said Denis Zommer, secretary for the Union of Communist Youth.

“Capitalism is the source of all of the problems that we’re experiencing,” he added.

While Sunday’s march was sanctioned by Moscow city authorities, the process was a long and arduous one.

Organizers presented the mayor’s office with six different routes for their march, none of which was deemed acceptable. The final route was only established after a long series of negotiations with city civil servants.

Udaltsov was detained when he and a group of protesters attempted to march toward the presidential administration building in Moscow at the end of a routine Day of Wrath protest last week, intending to deliver a list of grievances to government officials. While the rally was sanctioned by city authorities, the march was not; Udaltsov was arrested along with three others. He was convicted of disobeying police and declared a hunger strike in protest.

An ambulance was first called for Udaltsov on October 15, and a blood analysis showed that the activist’s blood sugar level was lower than normal. At the time, Udaltsov declined to be admitted to the hospital.

The next day, doctors claimed that a second test showed that Udaltsov “is not yet in such a critical condition” as to require hospitalization. However, doctors declined to admit him despite Udaltsov’s requests; apparently, he felt that his condition had worsened significantly.

When Udaltsov asked to file a complaint against the head doctor for denying him admittance to the hospital, police turned him down.

Finally, on the night of October 16th, the activist was admitted to the therapeudic wing of Moscow’s Hospital #12 with complaints of low blood sugar, heart pain and “noises in his head.”

Further updates on Udaltsov’s condition will be related through the Left Front’s press service and theOtherRussia.org.

In Russia, taking part in a demonstration that hasn’t been sanctioned by the government can cost citizens their right to work in federal agencies. Officially dubbed “unreliable” citizens, opposition activists and other political protesters are entered into special blacklists drawn up by law enforcement agencies for purposes that are not entirely understood. It was on such a blacklist that Vera Sizova, a retired resident of St. Petersburg, unexpectedly found herself – upon being told that she was banned from working for the 2010 Russian Census because of her son’s opposition activities.

Sizova first got the idea to work as a census-taker when she received a call from the Russian Federal State Statistical Service (Rosstat) asking about her son, Maksim Malyshev. “The commissioner for the census in the Kalininsky District of St. Petersburg, Elena Sviridkina, called,” explained Sizova. “She proposed that Maksim work for the census as a group leader. He had already worked for the 2002 census as a deputy group leader – he had experience. But Maksim is very busy with work, so I decided to ask for the job myself. They accepted me, inviting me to go through training and build up a team.”

Her first day of work was typical: Sizova was registered into her new position, given the necessary documents, and promised an employment contract. “But in the evening Sviridkina called me and said that I wasn’t going to get the contract because my son and I were on a list of people that the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Regional Main Department of Internal Affairs (GUVD) has compromising information about,” Sizova said.

Maksim Malyshev is the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Left Front, a socialist opposition organization that holds a variety of sanctioned and unsanctioned anti-government protests. Their members are often arrested for participating in and organizing rallies such as the Day of Wrath, which is held monthly as a venue for Russians to voice their general grievances against local authorities. In its time, Garry Kasparov’s Other Russia opposition coalition included the Left Front within its ranks.

The news that her son’s opposition activity would bar her from working the census came as a shock to Sizova. She sent three inquiries to Rosstat demanding an explanation, and in the end got a response with a different reason altogether – that she had failed to take a pre-training test on time. The pensioner said that while this was true, it was because she was sick on testing day and in any case had been told by on-staff statisticians that “it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Sizova attempted to fight the decision in court. At the end of January 2011, she filed suit against the local Rosstat branch in St. Petersburg’s Petrogradsky Regional Court. “According to the Civil Code, you can see how they hired me; since I worked there for one day, they admitted that I was fit for that position,” Sizova explained the essence of her case.

The suit, however, was thrown out. During the hearing this past June, Elena Sviridkina again invoked the blacklist of unreliable citizens. “Before the beginning of the census, all branches of Rosstat were given an order to do checks on the census-takers against the GUVD databases – if there were issues with anyone, they wouldn’t be allowed to take part in the census,” Sviridkina said. “We checked Sizova – she turned out to be on the list. We don’t have the right to let her go out to people.” A copy of the blacklist for the Kalininsky District obtained by the Moskovsky Novosti newspaper did indeed include Sizova and her son on it, along with four other people.

The Petrogradsky Regional Court did not see the existence of such a list as particularly unreasonable. According to the court’s judicial ruling, checking lists of people with the police is not a violation of Vera Sizova’s rights, “since by its very nature it’s meant to protect an unlimited group of people who are going to give over personal information about themselves during the census.” Sizova has already appealed the decision in St. Petersburg City Court. “I’m prepared to go to the Supreme Court,” she insisted.

But Rosstat appears to be intent on holding its ground. “There is nothing surprising in that Rosstat would check out the backgrounds of the people who are going to collect citizens’ personal information, go to their house – no,” a source in the agency told Moskovsky Novosti, also confirming that the order to do the checks against the police database was indeed sent to all regional Rosstat branches. The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Regional GUVD did not deny the existence of the blacklist, either. “But I can only say anything about it to citizen Sizova, and at that, only in response to an inquiry,” said Vyacheslav Stepchenko, head of GUVD public relations.

Malyshev is puzzled as to why his mother should suffer from his own unapologetic adherence to oppositionist views, especially considering that they did nothing to prevent him from working for Rosstat in the past. “I took part in protests, but that didn’t bar me from working for the 2002 census. Now, clearly, the authorities have decided to secure themselves against unreliable persons, so that the public doesn’t get any information about violations,” Malyshev told Moskovsky Novosti.

A situation in which a mother has to answer for her son’s opposition activity is manifestly unlawful, says Anatoly Kucherena, representative of Russia’s federal Public Chamber commission on law enforcement agencies control and judicial-legal system reforms. “And in general – what does ‘compromising information’ mean? If the police have suspicions upon which to begin criminal proceedings, they should work to file that case. If there’s no basis to do so, then a person and their relatives have the right to live a normal life,” Kucherena said.

Director Pavel Chikov of the Agora human rights association believes that the blacklist itself is a gross violation of the presumption that one is innocent before proven guilty. “The state has the right to collect any sort of information about citizens, particularly if it’s negative, only when they are suspected of having committed a criminally punishable offense and only with the goal of investigating that particular crime. De-facto, the St. Petersburg police have introduced a state of emergency that limits the constitutional rights of city residents and punishes them with a blow to their rights, however it wants to, without a court or investigation,” Chikov told Moskovsky Novosti.

The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that it is illegal for Russian law enforcement agencies to draw up blacklists of unreliable citizens – at the end of June 2011, the court declared a police transport database in the Volgo-Vyatsky region called “Watchdog Control” to be unlawful. The successful case was filed by Sergei Shimovolos of the Nizhny Novgorod Human Rights Society, who was arrested in 2007 under suspicion of “extremism” as a result of being included in the database.

Left Front opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov said that demonstrators called for the government to file criminal charges in response to incidents of illegal tree felling. They also demanded that government authorities sit down for negotiations on the construction of a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, currently planned to go through the forest.

Udaltsov noted that there are eleven possible alternative routes for building the highway.

Demonstrators gathered around the Griboyedov monument on Moscow’s Chistie Prudy with posters of police officers and what they said were “bandits” who have physically assaulted Khimki Forest activists.

On May 23, Russia’s Presidential Council on Human Rights held an emergency session to discuss a resolution to the ongoing conflict between environmentalists and highway construction workers in the Khimki Forest. The years-long conflict reached new levels of desperation in early May when three activists were injured in a raid by what are believed to have been private security forces hired by the company subcontracted to clear the forest. The raid came after some pieces of construction equipment were torched, allegedly by the activists.

“This is going to be an emergency session that will include representatives of every law enforcement agency and legal entity. It’s important to hear every side’s position,” said council member Kirill Kabanov.

Materials from the meeting will then be sent to President Dmitri Medvedev.

“He won’t be at the session. But the president reacts to all legal violations very seriously. Private security companies don’t have the right to beat people,” Kabanov said.

President Medvedev temporarily halted construction of the highway through the forest this past August. However, several months later Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that construction would resume, citing reports by a government-organized commission.

Dozens of complaints of attacks on activists have been filed with Moscow regional police, but according to Gazeta.ru, not a single measure has been taken in response. Meanwhile, the activists claim that Khimki government officials and the local police are openly supporting the attackers.

Elkhan Mirzoev was arrested during a Day of Anger protest on April 10 in Moscow. Police say the journalist threw himself on them repeatedly in an attempt to break through their barrier. In court on Tuesday, witnesses testified that this was untrue, and Mirzoev himself said he is a journalist and was arrested while carrying out his duties.

Mirzoev’s lawyers originally attempted to reschedule the proceedings on the basis that the materials in the case had been drawn up in an extremely careless fashion. However, On April 12, Tverskoy Regional Court Justice Borovkova dismissed the motion, saying that “consideration of the case has already begun.”

In the end, the judge sentenced him to four days of administrative arrest.

Mirzoev maintains his innocence and therefore plans to continue a hunger strike begun on April 11 in a sign of protest against what he says was his illegal detention.

The journalist was among ten people detained at the Day of Anger protest. They group was charged with disobeying police orders.

Police officers reportedly used force to remove public defender Denis Yudin from the station where the group was being held. Yudin had intended to provide the detainees with legal counsel.

The next day, the Tverskoy Court returned materials against the detainees that they had received from the police on the basis that they had been incorrectly prepared. The proceedings were then rescheduled.

According to Anastasia Udaltsova, press secretary for Udaltsov’s Left Front movement, the oppositionist does not believe he is guilty and has announced a hunger strike for the duration of his arrest.

Judge Yelena Abramova convicted Udaltsov on charges of disobeying the lawful demands of a police officer – an administrative offense in Russia.

Udaltsov was first detained on February 12 when approximately 500 protesters gathered on Moscow’s Teatralnaya Square for the Russian opposition’s monthly Day of Wrath protest. It was the first time that city authorities had agreed to sanction the rally, with previous events routinely cracked down on by police. Udaltsov also applied for permission to hold a march following the protest but was denied.

Intended as a venue to voice Russians’ general grievances against their government, the Day of Wrath rally attracted participants from the Left Front, the Solidarity opposition movement, the Russian Federation of Automobile Owners, the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest, defrauded real estate investors, communists, and numerous other causes.

Following the rally, writes Kasparov.ru, law enforcement officials gave Udaltsov permission to march along the sidewalk to the nearby presidential administration building to hand in a list of demands and symbolic “black marks,” with the caveat that the participants could not carry any flags of shout slogans along the way.

About 250 people joined in the march. “There were no flags or slogans,” Udaltsov said. However, upon reaching the Hotel Metropol, the marchers found themselves blocked by OMON riot police, who soon began to detain them. The first to be arrested was Udaltsov himself.

According to Udaltsov, 22 people were arrested during the march. Moscow city police put the figure at 14.

It was unclear exactly what orders police gave to Udaltsov that he supposedly disobeyed, or what else occurred that provoked the OMON to arrest some of the protesters – especially considering that a small group was allowed to go on and carry the list of demands to the presidential administration anyway. “Approximately 15 people went by themselves to Staraya Square and submitted our demands,” explained Udaltsov. “But it’s unclear why they had to stop us from walking. A march along the sidewalk is not a crisis.”

An opposition group in Moscow says it has been given the green light to hold an antigovernment protest in the Russian capital next week, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

The Left Front opposition movement said the February 12 “Day of Wrath” protest would air a range of demands under the slogan “Time for a change at the top.”

The demands include a halt in tariff rises, direct elections for regional governors, and the preservation of the threatened Khimki Forest near Moscow.

Authorities refused permission for all previous Day of Wrath protests in 2010, and police routinely stepped in to arrest demonstrators.

Sergei Udaltsov, a Left Front leader and one of the campaign’s organizers, told RFE/RL that authorities banned the protesters from marching to the presidential administration building in Moscow.

Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front and Russian United Labor Front opposition movements told Kasparov.ru that a group of oppositionists, long forced to operate outside of Russia’s political system, decided at a meeting on September 21 to unite as a coalition under the name of the Russian Opposition.

Aside from Udaltsov, activists at the meeting included Anatoly Baranov, Eduard Limonov of the Other Russia, and Mikhail Delyagin of Rodina: Common Sense.

In the coming days, the coalition is expected to release a statement regarding the Russian government’s routine refusal to officially register opposition political parties, which prevents them from taking part in elections.

The Russian Ministry of Justice denied the Russian United Labor Front registration this past July, citing technical reasons. Udaltsov maintains that the refusal was completely unfounded and that the mentioned technicalities do not correspond to legislation governing political parties.

Speaking to Gazeta.ru, former Deputy Prime Minister and co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement Boris Nemtsov said that the offer came several days ago from Vladislav Surkov, a primary Kremlin ideologist and highly influential aid to both the president and prime minister. Nemtsov refrained from specifying precisely to whom the proposition was made, but reports cite that it was to the “moderate” wing of the Russian opposition. Nemtsov denied that Surkov made the proposal directly to him, as some sources were reporting.

Left Front opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov expressed certainty that the Kremlin met with representatives from Solidarity, “since the Kremlin considers them to be moderate figures.”

According to Limonov himself, the offer was made both to Nemtsov and noted human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, who heads the organization For Human Rights and is also part of Solidarity’s leadership. “At first they confirmed it. Then, clearly, they began to shy away – because now they have connections in the Kremlin,” he said.

Limonov, whose National Bolshevik Party is officially banned by the Russian government, characterized the proposal by the presidential administration as “the arrogance of a government that doesn’t want to give into Limonov.” He added that he has no intention of giving up his post as Strategy 31 organizer: “You cannot make concessions to the government: today they’re asking to sacrifice Limonov, but tomorrow it’ll be Limonov’s children.”

Meanwhile, the Kremlin denied the existence of any contact with the opposition at all. One high-level presidential representative, speaking under condition of anonymity to Gazeta.ru, said that he had no knowledge of any such negotiations.

In any case, opposition leaders are categorically refusing to abandon Limonov.

“I think the proposal is obscene,” Nemtsov said, noting that Limonov and his supporters had participated in Strategy 31 since the very beginning in July 2009. “And although it’s now a shared event, nobody has the right to start colluding with the government in this regard,” he concluded.

Vsevolod Chernozub, co-chairman of the Moscow branch of Solidarity, commented that the Kremlin’s proposal “reflects the cop-like and Chekist style of thinking of the current government.”

Strategy 31’s organizational committee has routinely consisted of Limonov, former Soviet dissident and Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin. The three have applied to the Moscow mayor’s office for official sanction on seven separate occasions – on each month with a 31st date – and have been denied every time.

Alexeyeva also said that she had no plans to exclude Limonov for the upcoming rally on July 31. “I’m in favor of holding consultations with the Moscow government, as is required by law. Like always, three representatives of the event will hold these consultations,” she told Gazeta.ru.

Limonov added that, as a Strategy 31 organizer, he is currently participating in mediation procedures with Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman Aleksandr Muzykantsky. Their most recent session was held on June 1, one day after police violently broke up May’s Strategy 31 rally. During that meeting, said Limonov, a different proposition was made: “The July 31 event could be held on Pushkin Square, and then as a reward they would supposedly give us Triumfalnaya [the next month], and the next time again on Pushkin, and so on,” he explained. “But I said that this was unacceptable to us: we aren’t migrant workers who can be driven back and forth.”

The Kremlin offer comes two weeks after Limonov announced the creation of a political party based on the Other Russia opposition coalition and his intentions to lead the party in upcoming parliamentary elections. Reports about the Kremlin proposal itself come on the same day as the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Guard announced that they have been denied sanction by the Moscow authorities to hold an event on Triumfalnaya Square on July 31 – the same date and place where the Strategy 31 rally is planned to be held. A representative from the Moscow regional government told Gazeta.ru that a three-day automobile festival has been planned for the last weekend in July on Triumfalnaya Square.

The leadership of Young Russia confirmed that they had been denied sanction for their event, and also expressed a great deal of disbelief. As has been the pattern until now, Strategy 31 opposition leaders are continually denied sanction for their own rallies, with one commonly-given excuse being that pro-Kremlin youth groups have already applied to use the same space at the same time.