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.

As the Sobkor®ru news agency reports, Kasparov spoke before a gathering of international news industry leaders, and described the “mythology of the Putin regime.” He called the group to stand up to infractions against press freedom in Russia.

After the speech, Yevgeny Abov, the representative of the Russian delegation, renounced Kasparov’s remarks, and said that the press agency he represented at the forum, RIA Novosti, was completely free. Abov said that RIA, which is state-run, frequently publishes information about the Russian opposition.

Kasparov then asked Abov if RIA Novosti was prepared to provide him with space for a press-conference.

Abov answered in the affirmative, promising that space would be made available for Kasparov. At that point, another member of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Sungorkin stepped in. Sungorkin, the editor-in-chief of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper was doubtful: “Kasparov is a special case”, he said “as he works with the banned National-Bolsheviks, which is why I’m not sure that he would be allowed in RIA.”

The discussion’s moderator, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Spanish El Pais newspaper, then responded in his own right: “I grew up in the days of the Franco dictatorship, and we were all ‘special cases.’”

Speaking with Sobkor®ru, Kasparov said he would try to use RIA Novosti facilities to hold a press conference in the near future.

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Video of the event, courtesy of the World Editors Forum:

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Participants of the World Newspaper Congress also discussed the danger journalists face in Russia. According to Rodney Pinder, of the International News Safety Institute, Russia has emerged as the world’s second most dangerous country for journalists, trailing only Iraq.

“And we don’t know of a single successful conviction in Russia,” he told The Associated Press. “And convictions are what are needed to protect journalists.”

Garry Kasparov has frequently said that media freedom has been crushed under former President Vladimir Putin, who is now Russia’s prime minister.

The latest evidence to back his statements comes from a New York Times report on self-censorship in another medium–television. As the Times writes, Russian TV channels keep a so-called “stop list” of figures who must not appear on the airwaves.

One economist critical of the Kremlin, Mikhail Delyagin, was apparently given an appearance by mistake on a popular talk show. Before “The People Want to Know” program aired, Delyagin was digitally removed from the tape.

The show’s host, Kira Proshutinskaya, said she was embarrassed over this and other incidents, and admitted that networks are constantly intimidated by the Kremlin.

“I would be lying if I said that it is easy to work these days,” she told the Times. “The leadership of the channels, because of their great fear of losing their jobs — they are very lucrative positions — they overdo everything.”

Nikita Krichevsky, an economist that moderated the seminar, underscored the significance of the problem, commenting that shadow –or “off the books”—incomes account for 44 percent of all income in the country. Thus, some 6.5 trillion rubles ($278.8 billion or €174.9 billion) go undocumented each year, meaning that almost 850 billion rubles ($36.5 billion or €22.9 billion) never make it into the national budget. According to Krichevsky, the inability to collect these tax revenues contributes to Russia’s low pensions and low wages for government workers. He went on to name five reasons for the shadow economy, the principal of which is corruption.

Yevgeny Gontmakher, the director of the Center for Social Studies at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agreed with that assertion, adding that the problem has a political character. In his opinion, the system of taxation must be reformed to keep revenues at the municipal level. He suggested that income and property tax remain decentralized, and added that battling corruption would break the “aqueous armistice” currently drawn up between the authorities and the criminal element.

Vladislav Inozemtsev, a well-known economist from the Center for Post-Industrial Studies, commented that Russia is far from the only place with a significant shadow economy. In the US, it represents some 10-11 percent, in Europe, 7 percent, and in Latin American countries, undocumented income reaches 50 percent. Inozemtsev believes that the government is currently in a successful position, since the public and the authorities are content with the situation, and since similar conditions of corruption can exist for decades.

Economist Mikhail Delyagin, a former aide to President Boris Yeltsin, suggested that Russia’s judicial system must be changed if battling corruption was actually a priority. In his words, this could be done very simply by firing all the judges and replacing them with fresh blood.

During the seminar’s concluding remarks, Nikita Krichevsky reviewed the findings: “All the experts invited to the seminar, in general displayed an enviable unanimity, discovering a link between corruption and a shadow economy.” He added that the experts had jointly agreed that solving the problem required political steps, and must be taken on by the new elites.