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).

The Union of Right Forces wrote in a statement on its website that Shirshov, who they said is medically classified as disabled, was in critical condition.  The businessman suffered a stroke last winter.

“During the day on October 16th,” they write, “he was admitted to the intensive care unit in a coma, in a hypertensive crisis, with extensive inflammation of both sides of the lungs, in addition to all the conditions which accompany his disability.”

Natalya Shavshukova, the Union of Right Forces press-secretary, wrote in her LiveJournal blog that Shirshov was taken in front on a court on Friday.  His trial has been closed to the public, as well as family and friends.

The businessman is being charged on two separate counts.  Authorities allege that the he deliberately drove into a traffic officer while behind the wheel on February 27th, then fleeing the scene.  He has also been charged with libel against the head of a local investigative department for an article he wrote in the Business Course magazine.

Shavshukova wrote that the charges have been trumped up, and that Shirshov was being targeted in part because of his political affiliations, and because he refused to give officers a bribe.  She told the Kommersant newspaper that police improperly seized critical party documents form Shirshov’s office when they detained him.

“A person is being physically annihilated,” she wrote in her blog, “first of all because he owns land and a business in the city center and doesn’t want to hand it over, and secondly, because he dares to be a member of the URF.  Moreover, he is anything but a radical.  The man simply want to fairly practice business and politics.  If he backed the United Russia [party], there would be no such problems.”

Authorities denied that there was any political undertone in the case.

The party’s leader, Nikita Belykh, put in his resignation and left the party on September 26th. The same day it became known that SPS had been working on a new project of “united democrats” loyal to the Kremlin. Previously, the liberal democratic party had been critical of the Russian authorities.

An unnamed source within the party told the Sobkor®ru news agency that the SPS had been in talks with the Kremlin since the spring. He said that a number of the party’s regional leadership had called for closer relations with the Kremlin, which has tried to bring small opposition parties under its control.

On October 2nd, the party’s top leadership voted 21 to 1 to dissolve the party, reforming it into a new organization. A vote will now go before delegates at a party convention scheduled for November 15th.

—

An appeal to members of the Union of Right Forces party

Dear friends and compatriots!

As result of recent events, the Union of Right Forces (SPS) has ceased to exist as a democratic opposition party.

Nikita Belykh’s place as the leader of the party was a guarantee that the SPS continue acting as an independent, living organism; a structure capable of conducting an independent policy, and defending liberal democratic ideas and values. Nikita Belykh courageously fought for the party.

The Kremlin’s scare tactics against representatives of Russian business has rid the Russian opposition of sources of financing. On a massive scale, the SPS was taken off [of ballots] in regional elections, and ran into unprecedented administrative and police pressure, [including] the arrest of its activists.

We are far from unconcerned about the fate of the party and its ordinary members in today’s difficult situation. One of us helped to create the party and was one of its leaders for a long time. The second planned on stepping into the party in the nearest term, being tied to it by a long ideological closeness. In this difficult minute, when the SPS party lost a leader who took the consistent position of standing up to authoritarianism, we feel personal responsibility for the future of thousands of commendable people, honest democrats who are members of the party.

Today these people wonder about the future of the SPS and of the democratic movement in Russia as a whole. We are addressing all the members of the SPS, who are not indifferent to the fate of democracy in Russia, with a call to refuse to participate in the project which would turn the party into the latest Kremlin lapdog.

A straight road has unfolded before the SPS, leading to a complete loss of political independence, a merger with the marionette faux parties of the Kremlin, like Civil Force or the Democratic Party of Russia, and the transformation of the SPS into a filial branch of the party of power under the guise of liberal democracy.

This path is disastrous for the liberal democratic concept in Russia. The existing authorities have completely trampled the fundamental values defended by the Union of Right Forces: freedom, private property, rule of law. By the efforts of these authorities, the country is ruled by lack of freedom, expropriation [of property], and lawlessness.

Those who hope to help in improving the country’s position by collaborating with authorities are committing a fatal mistake. Even if these hopes are spoken with the best intentions, there will only be one outcome: those democrats who collaborated with the authorities will first be used to “cleanse” the image of the ruling regime, and afterwards will be undoubtedly broken, induced to support the most unsavory actions by authorities, and the liberal ideas they propose will be thrown into the wastebasket. This has happened more than once before, and will happen this time as well.

We are appealing to all members of the SPS party who do not want to become accomplices in the destruction of the last liberal democratic party in Russia, and who want to continue defending freedom, with a call to not remain in a party awaiting a shameful fate as a Kremlin marionette.

We are calling on you to become participants in the process of consolidating Russia’s democratic opposition and of taking part in the creation of a single Russia-wide democratic movement, whose establishment is planned for a convention of democratic forces on December 13, 2008. Having united, Russia’s democrats are in a position to form a political power capable of properly standing up to the authoritarian political regime.

It is of utmost importance that the liberal-minded people, the highly proficient professionals, the intellectuals and businessmen that are a part of today’s SPS are adequately represented. Your help in the creation of a new democratic movement will be invaluable.

We await you in the unified democratic movement. Together we can raise the fallen banner of freedom and democracy in Russia.

Boris Nemtsov
Vladimir Milov

Moscow, September 29th 2008.

translation by theotherrussia.org

—

About the authors:
Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister (1997-1998) and Energy Minister, later founded the Union of Right Forces party. He has authored key anti-corruption legislation and served as a representative in Russia’s State Duma (2000-2004).

Vladimir Milov worked from 1997-2002 as an energy expert and a policy-maker in the Executive branch. He now heads the independent Institute of Energy Policy in Moscow, and has led the charge for reforms of Russia’s energy policies and infrastructure. He is widely considered Russia’s leading independent energy expert.

Nemtsov named the key players in the new organization: the SPS, the Yabloko party, Mikhail Kasyanov’s People’s Democratic Union, the United Civil Front with leader Garry Kasparov, as well as Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent politician. Lev Ponomarev, head of the For Human Rights NGO, told Interfax that he may also join the movement, and that he is currently engaged in consultations and negotiations.

“It’s too early to speak of any details,” Ponomarev said. “But I can say that it will be a liberal democratic movement with regional branches.”

Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Moscow-Helsinki Group and another veteran of Russia’s Human Rights movement is not planning to take part. The executive director of the United Civil Front confirmed that party’s participation in negotiations.

On December 10th, 2007, Kasparov and Ryzhkov issued a joint statement where they revealed the idea for a new, broad-based and democratic opposition political party. At the time, Kasparov noted that since the Yabloko and SPS brands aren’t working, the question isn’t about uniting these parties, but about forming a new one.

Nemtsov also urged Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party and Mikhail Kasyanov of the People’s Democratic Union to step down, commenting that the outcome of the election has been pre-determined.

The move marks the latest point in the receding pool of opposition candidates, and leaves Russians with one less option in the March, 2008 election. As a Gazeta.ru editorial argues, Nemtsov’s decision shows the extent to which legitimate opposition in Russia has been stifled and excluded from political life, a situation which is both dangerous and unstable:

Without Superfluous Opinions

Gazeta.ru, December 26th [via BBC Monitoring]

The opposition is just as much an inherent element of the current state management system as the real parliament and government.

Boris Nemtsov’s refusal to take part in the elections and his designation of principles on which any normal presidential campaign should indeed be based and on which it clearly is not based in Russia today is an attempt to draw attention to the obvious exclusion of the opposition from the life of the country. The Russian authorities, whose leader won in 2000 with a result of “just” 52.52 per cent of those who went to the polls, will now basically not permit either a simple victory (only the victory of a constitutional majority of votes) of its puppet party in the parliamentary elections or a second round of voting in the presidential (never mind the possibility of the defeat of the successor)…

The refusal to acknowledge equal rights for the opposition along with the authorities to conduct any election campaign (elections in Russia are getting fewer and fewer, however), the refusal to debate with the opposition, a policy which United Russia has pursued in two Duma campaigns, the stranglehold of the administrative resource, the absence of equal access of each and every legal political force to the media -all these things are clear features of how the authorities’ “tsarist refusal” of any independent forms of control over itself by society is dominant. We are dealing with a Kremlin autocracy and a Kremlin opposition.

In Russia today the real opposition with links to the system of power is not legal parties but internal Kremlin political clans, pulled apart by a struggle for business assets and control over state institutions. The FSB is in opposition to State Narcotics Control [as received], and the Prosecutor-General’s Office is in opposition to its own Investigative Committee. Medvedev is actually the candidate from the opposition to the notional candidate [Sechin], and not the candidate from the four parties which supposedly at their own volition put him forward at a meeting with the current Russian president…

Boris Nemtsov did not want to take part in the type of farce which the parliamentary elections became and the presidential elections will almost certainly become. The interests of all people without exception cannot by definition coincide. If these non-coinciding interests are not expressed by legal political structures, the authorities will explode from within due to internal contradictions.

The opposition within the system also exists in order to prevent the authorities from exploding from within and the people from having the chance to change the rulers in line with the correct peaceful and legal procedures which in democratic republics (it is precisely this sort of state system that exists in Russia according to the Constitution) take the form of presidential and parliamentary elections.

Irrespective of Nemtsov’s chances of victory in the presidential elections, his refusal is a reminder of the systemic problem which has been created by the current authorities and which they will have to resolve, whoever of the Putin-Medvedev tandem becomes the real master of Russia after March 2008.

Yet the sale of party headquarters was apparently not enough to solve the SPS financial problems. Kommersant’s source claims that the party owes “millions of dollars.” Before the December 2nd election, each party turned in a 60 million ruble deposit to the Central Electoral Commission. Since SPS received less than four percent of votes, the Commission will not return its deposit. SPS will also be forced to repay some 60 to 90 million rubles for the free air-time and campaign ads that ran in state-owned media. According to recently updated electoral laws, political parties are granted the right to free advertising, but must pay for it if they gather less than two percent of votes.

The Union has also lost State funding as result of its poor showing in the election. Parties that win more than 3 percent of the vote are entitled to a yearly payment of five rubles per vote received. From 2004 to 2007, SPS was issued 12 million rubles from the government budget.

The Union of Right forces has been forced to take drastic measures, including selling off assets, to repay loans. Boris Nadezhdin, a State Duma representative and member of the party’s advisory committee, mortgaged his personal office in the town of Dolgoprudny, and sold two cars. He used the money to pay his campaign staff. Leonid Gozman and Boris Nemtsov, two SPS front men, also admitted to Kommersant that they used personal finances to partially pay for the campaign.

SPS and Yabloko, two of Russia’s most prominent liberal parties, were some of the biggest losers in the December 2nd election. According to official counts, SPS took only 0.96 percent. In order to retain seats in the Parliament, the party needed a minimum of seven percent.

Several political parties, including SPS and Yabloko, have denounced the Parliamentary elections as flawed and illegitimate. Theotherrussia.org has chronicled some methods of abuse, including ballot stuffing and using absentee ballots. Statistical evidence has also shown that results in a number of districts were likely faked.

Itar-Tass reports that an investigation is underway, but that no suspects have been apprehended. An official dealing with the investigation noted that Pashaev’s employment was the most likely reason he was targeted.

“For some time now, he had been investigating the murders of members of the “Union of Right Forces” [political party], which took place in the electoral campaign in the Dakhadaevsk region of the Republic,” the official said.

Pashaev’s death comes at a time of rising instability and recklessness in Dagestan, which borders Chechnya. On December 10th, Gaidimagomed Magomedov, a member of the Dagestani Popular Assembly, was shot to death nearby.

On November 21st, the leader of the regional brach of “Yabloko” was wounded in Makhachkala. Like Pashaev, Farid Babaev was shot at the doorstep of his building. He died of his wounds several days later.

Government officials and law enforcement agents are now frequently targeted in Dagestan, and violence is also on the rise in nearby Ingushetia. The perpetrators are rarely caught. Some experts have predicted that the region is heading towards a disastrous destabilization. For now, the Kremlin’s response has been a heavy-handed, and much-resented crackdown. The Special Forces have been given wide leeway in their operations, and have allegedly used any means necessary, including torture, to extract confessions.

Read more about the situation from Telegraph.co.uk.

Earlier, it became know that the People’s Democratic Union (NDS), a party led by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, had agreed to join forces with SPS, and had accepted a supplemental clause “on trusted individuals” for the presidential coalition.

Boris Nemtsov, an SPS front-man, proposed a possible outline for how a single candidate could be chosen. As potential contenders, he named Garry Kasparov (OGF), Vladimir Ryzhkov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Grigory Yavlinsky (Yabloko), Vladimir Bukovsky, and himself. According to his design, each of the politicians could collect the two million signatures required to appear on the ballot. However, each of the contenders must also pledge to serve as an envoy for whoever is ultimately chosen at the unified candidate.

On November 28th, NDS presented paperwork for a coalition treaty, which will most likely provide the basis for choosing a unified candidate. According to the document, the single candidate will independently lead his own electoral campaign, and will undertake to coordinate the main points of his platform with the coalition.

Earlier this year, the Other Russia led its own primary campaign. The coalition selected Garry Kasparov of the United Civil Front as its presidential candidate.

It is disgusting to watch the “Vremya” nightly news on Channel One, which reminds me of the broadcasts during the Brezhnev era. It is appalling how all of the famous journalists who disagreed with the Kremlin were fired. It is disgusting that the St. Petersburg clan in the Kremlin controls billions of dollars in wealth. It is offensive that the level of corruption is now twice what it was under Boris Yeltsin, which has earned Russia shamefully low marks in international corruption ratings every year.

It is reprehensible that police beat people with truncheons, not because they are guilty of crimes, but because they have taken to the streets to demand justice. It is offensive that Putin’s portrait hangs in every public office. . . . It is offensive that Moscow is swimming in wealth while the rest of Russia lives like a poor colony.

It is offensive that under Putin the state has taken on the role of plunderer and racketeer, with an appetite that grows with each successive conquest. It began with the break-up and expropriation of Yukos, then the questionable purchase of a majority share in the Sakhalin-2 project and now Gazprom’s purchase of the Kovytka gas field in East Siberia. The country’s great size and wealth only means there will be much more for the Kremlin to grab. But the greatest calamity is that nobody is allowed to utter a word in protest regarding all of this. “Keep quiet,” the authorities seem to say, “or things will go worse for you. This is none of your business.”

It is truly disgusting that people’s opinions don’t mean anything. “You are welcome to elect whom you choose,” they tell us, “as long as it is one of the candidates we have put forward.” There used to be 100 million voters. Now there is only one. It is offensive that we have resigned ourselves to accepting as Putin’s successor whomever he happens to slap on the back. According to recent polls, fully 40 percent of Russians are prepared to vote for whomever Putin supports — no questions asked. . . .

Where do we now stand? If we analyze Putin’s presidency, it becomes clear that, year after year, he has taken away the rights of the people. We didn’t have many rights to begin with, but he managed to take away what few we had. But Putin could not have achieved this without firing all the dissenting journalists, instituting censorship of the mass media, annulling the direct popular election of governors, passing repressive electoral laws, eliminating the cumulative pension system and de-privatization, to name only a few.

We wonder what would happen to the publisher of such commentary in a Russian-language daily. Actually, we don’t have to wonder, since there are plenty of examples of the firings and harassment that occur when the truth accidentally slips into the papers.