The opposition gained approval from Moscow city authorities to hold the protest outside at 11 am, but police began making detentions before the event even began. Members of the Yabloko and Other Russia opposition parties were among the detainees.

“Eighteen people have been detained, including myself… We didn’t violate any laws. We had one sign and flyers. We advertised that citizens could come to a rally agreed to by the authorities that was starting at 11 am,” Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin told Interfax. Also detained was Yabloko member Galina Mikhaleva, who had held a solitary protest outside the Duma.

Mitrokhin said he was held in a police station for five hours and charged with violating the order of holding a mass event. Mikhaleva stands accused of holding three posters at once during her solitary picket, and also for handing out flyers and “calling out slogans.” Mitrokhin wrote on his Twitter account that “it was written in the protocols that Galina Mikhaleva has four hands.”

One activist from Other Russia was arrested after trying to fasten a bicycle lock around the Duma’s entrance.

Sergei Davidis from the Solidarity movement was also detained. “Those impudent cows detained me in a solitary picket outside the State Duma. I stood there with a poster saying ‘the amendments on rallies are a crime!'” he wrote on Twitter.

According to Left Front activist Anastasia Udaltsova, at least 23 oppositionists were arrested. The arrest monitoring site OVDinfo.org puts the number closer to 70.

Opposition protests continued elsewhere on Tuesday. Later in the day, activists began a “peaceful stroll” while wearing the white ribbons that have come to symbolize the protest movement. Also, 30 protesters formed a human chain across the street from the State Duma. Two police vans pulled up after twenty minutes, and according to Interfax police detained “several suspicious citizens” who were all wearing symbols of the “white movement.”

While three of the four parties in the State Duma – A Just Russia, the Communist Party, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia – all oppose the new law, the majority faction and party of power, United Russia, supports it in full and it is therefore expected to pass.

A meeting by the Duma’s upper chamber – the Federation Council – is already planned for Wednesday, where the law is also expected to be passed. If it is then immediately signed by President Vladimir Putin, it would go into effect in time for a massive opposition march planned for June 12. However, because of Tuesday’s “filibustering” by the non-United Russia factions, the process may be somewhat delayed.

Gennady Gudkov, State Duma Deputy from A Just Russia

In conditions where there’s hydrochloric acid in the pool, it’s going to be difficult to win, considering that our opponent is swimming with paddles in clean water, and we’re in a pool of hydrochloric acid. With the kind of administrative and bureaucratic support that United Russia has, it’s going to be difficult to compete with the party in power. The elections are very dirty – dirtier than in March. In Chelyabinsk, for example, federal employees are being forced to vote in several different areas. We’ve been informed about this.

We’re counting on victory in the municipal elections of a number of outer-Moscow cities and on good results in several regions. If the elections were even a tad bit honest, United Russia would have joined the opposition long ago.

Sergei Mitrokhin, Yabloko Party Leader

It’s difficult to make predictions in our electoral process. I think there’s going to be ballot-stuffing in United Russia’s favor everywhere. How many will be stuffed, nobody knows. If it’s too few, then the governors, mayors, and regional administrative leaders will be risking their posts.

During the March campaign, we had good results in Tula in the Tverskaya region. There’s a positive trend, but there are no grounds at all to say that the elections will be honest. There’s going to be massive absentee voting in Chelyabinsk.

Boris Nadezhdin, Political Council Member of Right Cause

In the places where our tickets had good chances, they were removed [from the ballots]. This happened, for example, in Kazan and Kostroma. We have tickets left in Magadan and Chelyabinsk; I’m counting more on Chelyabinsk. Because first of all, a very scandalous campaign is going on in Chelyabinsk, and secondly, we are participating alongside Yabloko, and that means the chances of either party winning decrease considerably.

Andrei Andreyev, State Duma Deputy from the Communist Party

Currently I’m in Magadan, working on the elections. The electoral campaign is extraordinarily dirty and cynical. Magadan television, and the channel MTK in particular, is heaping utter garbage onto the three parliamentary parties besides United Russia.

Ilya Yashin, Solidarity Bureau Member

It wouldn’t be right to talk about the chances of the candidates, since this country has long since ceased to have elections, and instead there’s an appointment process reminiscent of elections only in appearance.

Candidates from the non-systemic opposition can participate in elections in order to hurt the government’s reputation, but they can only achieve success in the case that the system malfunctions – as happened, for example, in Tver and several other regions.

Yevgeny Shevchenko, Representative of the Patriots of Russia:

We see the chances of our regional branches in participation in the elections positively, since they accomplished very good work. However, the news from the regions gives some cause for alarm. We are cautious about the fact that party tickets were taken off the ballots for unsubstantiated reasons. We have fewer complaints than in previous years. Clearly, the regional authorities have finally listened to the president and have begun to create the conditions for competition in the regions, but there is lawlessness in the municipal elections in a whole swath of regions.

Sergei Ivanov, State Duma Deputy from the LDPR:

I see the chances for the LDPR in the elections as very good. We’ve been up against the administration’s resources since 1989, and we always find our voters.

Aleksandr Khitshteyn, State Duma Deputy from United Russia:

I can only say what work I do, and I’m in charge of elections in Samara. I’m convinced that United Russia candidates will get the majority of the mandates in city duma elections. As far as the elections for mayor are concerned, I’m convinced that Dmitri Azarov will win – what’s more, in the first round. The campaign has been sufficiently calm. Naturally, what’s unpleasant is the use of administrative resources by the current mayor, Victor Tarkhov.

According to the news site Fontanka.ru, the bus in question belongs to a private company that lacks a contract with the city and is basically bankrupt. A group of activists paid for advertising space on the side of the bus and put up a collage featuring Stalin’s face instead of an ad.

Viktor Loginov, who headed the movement to place the collage, says that his group only “fulfills the wishes of veterans.” He specified that the adorned bus will run for two weeks in honor of Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations commemorating the end of World War II.

Memorial Director Irina Filge said that “the public demonstration of Stalin’s image – with the obvious goal of glorifying this historical figure – is leading to a schism in society.” Far from fulfilling anybody’s wishes, the picture not only inflicts moral trauma onto victims of the dictator’s repressions, but is offensive to veterans of the war and survivors of the Leningrad Blockade, the director added.

The bus did not last long before unknown persons vandalized it on Wednesday, painting over Stalin’s face but leaving the rest of the bus untouched. The bus, however, was quickly cleaned off and put back into service on Thursday.

At the same time, RFE/RL is reporting that city authorities are refusing to display anti-Stalin posters reading “For a motherland without Stalin.”

Yevgeny Vyshenkov, the deputy director of the Journalistic Investigations Agency that helped prepare the anti-Stalin poster, told RFE/RL that the company responsible for placing posters in St. Petersburg said the issue should be discussed by the city’s Media Committee.

Committee officials have said that the anti-Stalin poster cannot be placed in public places due to some “discrepancies” in the poster’s colors.

Also on Thursday, Ekho Moskvy radio reported that members of the liberal opposition party Yabloko are asking Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to officially denounce Stalin in a public address. The president has spoken out against the Soviet leader’s crimes before, but his most noticeable statements were in the form of a video blog. Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin said that such an address would only have value if done officially and directly to the nation, not through the internet or in an interview.

Both controversies come on the heels of the public release of documents directly implicating Stalin in the 1940 Katyn massacre in World War II, in which the Soviet secret police executed close to 22 thousand unarmed Polish army reservists. As the Telegraph puts it: “The sight of Stalin’s signature on what amounts to a collective death warrant quells decades of debate on the massacre and gives the lie to claims by die-hard Stalinists that their idol did not personally sanction the killings.”

Stalin’s legacy has been a divisive topic in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, but particularly so in recent months as the country has prepared to celebrate the 65th anniversary of victory in World War II. Veterans groups, human rights organizations, and oppositionists alike have criticized a number of initiatives to use Stalin’s picture as part of national celebrations. The most notable debacle was in Moscow, where a city design committee issued plans to erect informational posters complete with the dictator’s portrait in chosen parts of the capital. The plans were eventually dropped after criticism from both rights organizations and the Kremlin itself, but not before Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov promised to make Stalin’s image a fixture of future city celebrations.

Russian human rights advocates worry that any continued glorification of Stalin could lead people to forget that the dictator was responsible for the estimated 30 million lives lost as a result of repressions and widespread famine in the 1930s and 40s. “Stalin was a criminal, and his regime, which killed millions of people, is utterly disgraceful to publicize,” former Soviet dissident and prominent rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva said last March in reference to the Moscow poster plans. “It’s the same as glorifying Hitler in Germany.”

According to Ekho Moskvy radio, May Day events in Moscow that had been sanctioned by the city government included five demonstrations, three processions, and eleven rallies. One of the processions was organized by the opposition movement Solidarity, which counted members from a variety of other opposition groups and public organizations among its 500 participants. Prominent figures in the procession included United Civil front leader Garry Kasparov, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity cofounder Boris Nemtsov, and former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky. Participants carried posters, political insignia, and a gigantic Russian flag spanning several meters in length while chanting “Russia without Putin,” “Moscow without Luzhkov,” “Putin is Brezhnev, Putin is Stalin,” “We need the Other Russia,” and “Putin must go,” among other slogans.

Although a smoke bomb was set off at one point during the procession, the police did not move to detain anyone. Protesters believe that a provocateur set off the bomb. Despite that, the procession successfully made its way to Moscow’s riverside Bolotnaya Square, where the event ended with a cultural festival. Police detained several people on the square without explanation, including Andrei Moiseyev, co-leader of Solidarity’s Moscow branch and one of the event’s organizers. Moiseyev was escorted away by police together with a reproduction of a painting by artist Dmitri Vrubel, entitled “The Kiss of Putin and Brezhnev” that he was holding. Also detained were artist activist Pyotr Verzilov, his wife, several musicians, and event co-organizer Sergei Davidis. Police gave no explanations for any of the detentions.

Elsewhere in Moscow, at least five thousand people turned out for a demonstration held by the Communist party. In addition to the Communists themselves, members of the Left Front, the National Bolsheviks, the anti-fascist group Antifa, and anarchist organizations also joined the protest.

The liberal opposition group Yabloko also held a demonstration in Moscow, with approximately 1200 participants. Chief among speakers at the event was Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who warned against allowing Prime Minister Putin to return to the presidency in 2012. “We need a new president who won’t rob the people of their rights and freedoms – who will fight not against the opposition, but against corruption,” he said to the crowd.

Another protest dubbed the Day of Anger was held in Moscow by the opposition group Left Front. A wide variety of oppositions, human rights advocates, environmental activists and social justice advocates came together to express their collective grief with Moscow’s ruling elite – in particular, Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Governor Boris Gromov.

Controversy had surrounded plans for the Day of Anger all last week. Left Front leader and event organizer Sergei Udaltsov had said on Wednesday that the city had sanctioned the event, but the mayor’s office denied this the next day. It remained unclear up to the end whether the rally had really been officially sanctioned or not – a vital factor, since participating in an unsanctioned rally in Russia is punishable by law, and many unsanctioned rallies end with participants being beaten and/or arrested by the police. In any case, the rally went on, but Udaltsov was detained at the end. The official reason cited by police was that more people had taken part than Udaltsov had indicated on the application for sanction. According to Left Front press secretary Anastasia Udaltsova, the unofficial version for Udaltsov’s detention, as told by several police officers, was that “representatives of the Moscow government would like to have a chat with him.”

In the city of Kaliningrad, approximately three thousand demonstrators took part in a rally of various opposition groups. According to Kasparov.ru, what began as a traditional May Day demonstration evolved into an anti-government rally. Participants brought signs to the event reading “Peace, work, May – no work, no housing,” and held up tangerines, which have become a symbol of public protest in the city in recent months. Following that, however, protesters began chants demanding for the federal government to resign.

In St. Petersburg, a procession planned by democratic opposition groups was banned by city authorities. Olga Kurnosova, executive director of the pro-democracy group United Civil Front, said that the reason involved the slogan that the protesters had planning to use, which called for St. Petersburg Governor and Putin favorite Valentina Matviyenko to resign. Supposedly, the slogan did not correspond with the slogan written on the application to hold the rally that was filed with the city. Therefore, the procession was banned altogether. Despite that, about seven hundred oppositionists held a stationary demonstration where the procession was supposed to take off from.

A photo gallery of the various events in Moscow is available here at Grani.ru.

People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) representative Yelena Dikun told Gazeta.ru that the former prime minister, who became an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after being dismissed by the then-President in 2004, said that Yabloko has responded with “fundamental agreement” to his proposal to create a political coalition. Kasyanov had said earlier that the goal of such a coalition would be to present a unified list of candidates from the democratic opposition to run in the 2011 parliamentary elections.

“The RNDS and Yabloko are now working on coordinating a joint political statement,” said Dikun, without commenting further on details of the negotiations.

Yabloko’s leadership, however, immediately denied the announcement. “I refute the idea that we’ve given our agreement; there wasn’t any,” party leader Sergei Mitrokhin told Gazeta.ru. “There’s an appeal from Mikhail Kasyanov, and we haven’t refused to discuss it. There’s an ongoing electronic correspondence, I have all the letters saved – why Kasyanov took it as a “fundamental agreement” to create a coalition, I don’t know.”

Mitrokhin stressed that creating a political coalition was a gradual process: “It’s not possible to race through this – that would bring about something frivolous,” he said.

The Yabloko leader did say that such a coalition would not succeed if the two parties remained separate. “[A coalition] would be possible as a fraction within Yabloko; there are no other methods in the current situation,” he said, adding that creating a unified list of candidates for the elections was impossible by “hooking on from the outside.”

Declining to comment on Mitrokhin’s statement, Dikun said only that “I confirm my statement.” Konstantin Merzlikin, a deputy representative from RNDS, said that negotiations were indeed still ongoing, but were focused on determining what political platform the coalition would be based on. “It’s important to us that the coalition begin its work long before the elections,” he added.

Regarding Mitrokhin’s statement that the RNDS may have to become a fraction of Yabloko, Merzlikin responded that it was too early to say. “We are discussing the possibility of creating a coalition,” he stressed. “Whether or not this process will develop into a merger, time will tell.”

In addition to Yabloko, Kasyanov had issued the February 4 appeal for unification to the opposition movement Solidarity and Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front. Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov, also a former prime minister, said that while his party was declining the offer, “the unification process is very important – but it will not be simple to do.”

“Until now, Yabloko has not been seen in any of the processes for unification,” Nemtsov elaborated. “We will be glad if Mikhail Mikhailovich’s effort works out, but for me personally, it’s hard to believe.” Nemtsov’s former party, Union of Right Forces, held unsuccessful negotiations for several years to unify with Yabloko.

Nevertheless, Solidarity was more than ready to welcome Kasyanov into their ranks. “Our doors are open to him,” Nemtsov said. “Almost all the RNDS members besides him belong to Solidarity. We’ve told him a thousand times – come join us.”

An estimated two thousand people attended a protest in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Saturday, and another 1200 people attended an unrelated protest in the city of Samara on the same day. Among other demands, both groups had harsh criticism for the prime minister and called for him to immediately step down.

In Irkutsk, residents, workers, and environmental activists gathered to protest the reopening of the controversial Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill. After decades of protests, operations at the mill were finally suspended in October 2008 due to environmental concerns regarding the mill’s discharge of toxic waste into Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, a decree signed by Prime Minister Putin in mid-January allowed the mill to reopen, sparking renewed outrage from citizens and environmental activists internationally.

A coalition of ecological and civic organizations organized Saturday’s protest, and politicians from the local legislative assembly and Moscow showed up to support the effort. Leader Sergei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko Party and co-leader Vladimir Milov of the Solidarity opposition movement were among those present. Activists from the banned National Bolshevik Party also attended the protest, holding a banner reading “People! Baikal! Victory!” – the acronym of which matches with the acronym of their party name in Russian.

Protesters singled out oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has control over the mill, and Prime Minister Putin, who they accuse of covering up Deripaska’s unethical business practices, as the main targets of their enmity.

Irkutsk city officials had warned prior to the rally that security would be tight. Blaming “the current economic situation of Russia” for an increase in opposition protests, Deputy Internal Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky promised that “no excuses will be accepted” for failures of the police to curb demonstrations.

Given that, the city dispatched a number of armored military vehicles to flank the demonstration. Photographs published online of the vehicles, one of which resembles a small tank, were decried on Tuesday by the Russian Internal Ministry as “provocational and not corresponding to reality.” In a statement to Kasparov.ru, Solidarity activist Ilya Yashin maintained that “my colleague Vladimir Milov took these photographs, and many people saw these machines.”

The increase in police forces was especially notable because of the comparatively small security presence at a January 30 rally in Kaliningrad, where 12 thousand people gathered to protest rising tariffs and to demand the resignations of the prime minister and local Governor Georgy Boos.

Demonstrators at a counter-protest in Irkutsk organized by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party praised the reopening of the mill, with between a thousand and 1500 participants holding banners with the phrases “Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill – our life” and “Thanks to the government for the opportunity to work in Baikalsk.” One placard directed at opponents of the mill read “Suitcase – Station – UNESCO.”

In contrast to their choices during the Kaliningrad rally, the regional branches of the token opposition groups Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and A Just Russia sided with the United Russia counter-demonstration. State Duma Deputy and LDPR member Andrei Lugovoy, who is wanted by a British court for suspicion in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, travelled from Moscow to address the crowd.

The second protest, in Samara, was initially intended to be held “in defense of constitutional rights and freedoms.” In addition, however, protesters turned out to voice their disapproval of numerous governmental practices, including rising housing and utilities tariffs, crumbling infrastructure, and the failed modernization of the local AvtoVAZ automobile manufacturer. Among their concrete demands were the return of direct gubernatorial elections and the resignations of Prime Minister Putin and Samara Governor Vladimir Artyakov, who is also the former head of AvtoVAZ.

A number of civic and labor organizations took part in the rally in Samara, including the All-Russian Strike Committee, which was invited by AvtoVAZ factory workers. According to Committee coordinator Nikolai Nikolaev, several groups of auto workers from the cities of Tolyatti and Syzran were unable to attend the demonstration because police had blocked off the road.

Given the failed modernization of the auto manufacturer, Nikolayev said after the rally, “people discussed the issue of how to live from now on. The AvtoVAZ workers said that the authorities are not dealing with their problems.”

In their own way of dealing with their problems, regional police in Samara are planning to initiate criminal charges against the rally’s organizers. During the demonstration, voters rights activist Aleksandr Lashmankin called for participants to stage a repeat demonstration on March 5 – a statement that “was not covered in the application to hold the rally,” a police representative explained to the Interfax news agency.

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.

During its convention over the weekend in Moscow, Yabloko deputies voted to implement a ban that will force its members to cease participating in political organizations that they have deemed unacceptable: the Other Russia, Solidarity, the United Civil Front, Vanguard of Red Youth, Left Front, the banned National Bolshevik Party, the Russian Communist Workers’ Party/Russian Party of Communists, the Russian People’s Democratic Union, and members of the National Assembly.

According to the decision, “the convention stressed that the task to preserve and develop the party demands a clear and unambiguous approach to interaction with other parties, political and organizations.”

Yabloko members will have three months to quit the aforementioned organizations or face expulsion from the party.

Additionally, deputies at once restored and again stripped party membership from Ilya Yashin, the former leader of Yabloko’s youth branch who was expelled from the party last December for joining the opposition movement Solidarity, a decision judged as “inflicting political damage.”

Yabloko originally made a statement on Sunday that Yashin’s membership had been restored by the party’s arbitration bureau, but the decision went to a vote after fifteen delegates complained.

The decision was then annulled, 62 to 20, with three abstentions.

Yashin said on Monday that he would no longer fight the decision. “Many decent and worthy people remain in Yabloko. I sincerely hope that they will be able to achieve reforms in the party,” he said.

Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the opposition Solidarity movement, decried the decision in his blog on Monday. “What prompted this kind of decision can be understood. Most likely, [Yabloko leader Sergei] Mitrokhin and the party elite got fed up with blushing in front of their colleagues for supporting the corrupt Moscow authorities during the last ‘elections’ of October 11,” among other hypocrisies.

Nemtsov added that another decision made at the convention – a refusal to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – was no less significant: “Putin’s genuine democrats and oppositionists!” he declared.

The address to the Federal Assembly elicited a multi-faceted response from the population, with critics expressing doubt that the president could put force behind his rhetoric to tackle a broad array of foreign and domestic problems.

Among a series of necessary shifts, the president stated that Russia must develop a “smart” economy and that its “archaic society” must become “a society of intelligent, free, and responsible people.” From now on, Medvedev declared, “we will build a real Russia.”

The president noted that although Russia suffered from the world economic crisis more than many other countries, the government had nevertheless been successful in fulfilling its social functions. While the government could stabilize the economic situation in the social sphere, he said, the financial sector lacked innovation and needed to be perfected. He also revisited recent statements concerning the future of state-owned corporations, calling them “a futureless form of property” that should be liquidated if they are non-competitive.

Medvedev also criticized Russia’s foreign policy, saying that the country should not take an egotistical stance since “we are interested in the intake of capital.” He added that current policy activities opposing NATO have been a mistake.

In a proposed series of electoral reforms, Medvedev proposed allowances for regional parties to build factions, for parties garnering more than 5 percent of the vote to take part in legislative meetings, and to abolish a requirement for candidates to collect signatures in order to appear on the ballot.

The president did not, however, address a recent set of fraudulent elections, which he has previously admitted were flawed. Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the oppositionist Yabloko party, said that the Medvedev’s electoral proposals were “microscopic steps to democratization,” but that “the basic flaws did not change at all.”

Regarding ongoing conflicts in the Caucuses, Medvedev called for the federal government to take a main role in fighting “an unprecedented level of corruption, violence, [and] cronyism” in the region. The comments follow a number of recent high-profile killings in the Caucuses blamed on power conflicts between the government, security forces, and various militant factions.

The war on corruption has numbered high on Medvedev’s stated list of priorities since taking office, and he continued his criticism in his address on Thursday. Saying that the problem needed to be tackled from all directions, the president stressed that a solution would only come over time: “We won’t solve the problem in a single bound, but we have to dig in.”

Despite his criticism of the status quo, Medvedev concluded his speech on a hopeful note. “I believe in a new Russia,” he said. “We must remember and respect our past and work realistically for the sake of our future.” In conclusion, the president declared: “Go, Russia!”

Numerous critics felt that while the president’s proposals were praiseworthy, the lack of any viable solutions caused them to ring hollow. Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and co-founder of the opposition party Union of Right Forces, said that Medvedev lacked the political power to push any of his proposals forward. “In order to bring about modernization, Putin needs to be kicked out, and accordingly, the Putin hierarchy needs to be dismantled,” he said in an interview with Kasparov.ru. Therefore, Nemtsov concluded, Medvedev “delivered the right diagnosis, but with these guys you nothing works out. I think that, deep down, the president understands that the tasks he has put forward are unachievable.”

An editorial in the Vedomosti newspaper echoed Nemtsov’s concerns. “The plans for modernization outlined in the president’s address do not match his own conclusions about the state of the country’s economy,” the editorial said. “The measures proposed are inadequate to deal with the problems the country is facing.”

A full text of the speech can be found by clicking here.

He also said, however, that the election results did indeed “reflect citizens’ political party preferences.”

These comments follow Medvedev’s weekend meeting with leaders both from opposition parties and parties normally loyal to the Kremlin. Despite being presented with 120 counts of electoral fraud, he stated that the election results would not be annulled. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and close Putin ally, was a surprising critic of the elections. According to Zhirinovsky, the president stated that election annulments “do not, in principle, happen anywhere in the world, and that the situation has to do with the fact that we must use the judicial process – and we are using it in full force.”

Medvedev did agree that the elections had not been ideal.

Boris Gryzlov, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Putin’s United Russia party, said that by having the meeting, Medvedev had “fulfilled his constitutional role as guarantor of the Constitution.” He proposed that anyone in disagreement over the election results turn to the courts, stressing that there should not be any “political disorder.”

Medvedev requested at the beginning of the meeting that party representatives not turn the discussion into a funeral for democracy. “I intentionally dressed darkly today, thinking that, who knows, you all might be in the mood for a funeral,” said the president.

Deputies from LDPR, A Just Russia, and the Communist party walked out of an October 14 session of the State Duma in a sign of contempt at the election results of October 11. However, after a telephone call with the president the next day, LDPR and A Just Russia agreed to return to their posts; the Communist party returned for the sake of budget discussion.

Elections took place on October 11 in Moscow and 75 other regions of Russia for officials on various levels of government. They delivered sweeping wins for United Russia across the country, continuing the political monopoly it has held since its conception in 2001. Observers noted massive electoral violations, including ballot stuffing and multiple voting with the same absentee ballot.

In Moscow, the majority of opposition candidates had been banned from the ballot. Widespread electoral fraud quickly became clear and has now been statistically documented. Numerous incontrovertible examples highlight the unabashed nature of these violations – opposition party Yabloko, for one, received no votes even at the polling station where its leader, Sergei Mitrokhin, had voted.