Boris Nemtsov, co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, and Eduard Limonov, head of the banned National Bolshevik party and the Other Russia party, were both sentenced to 15 days in jail – Nemtsov for insubordination to the police and Limonov for hooliganism. Left Front coordinator Konstantin Kosyakin received a 10-day sentence for insubordination to the police and Solidarity member Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 5 days in jail, presumably for the same offense.

In the cases of Kosyakin, Nemtsov, and Yashin, a Moscow court refused to admit testimony from 13 witnesses who asserted that the police had acted unlawfully during the rally.

According to Other Russia party member Andrei Gorin, Limonov had been arrested directly outside of his home on his way to the rally. He was sentenced that very evening.

The nationwide rallies were held as part of the Russian opposition’s ongoing Strategy 31 campaign, which is dedicated to the defense of the 31st article of the Russian constitution, guaranteeing the freedom to peacefully hold gatherings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.

In Moscow, organizers held two separate rallies, both at 6 pm on Triumfalnaya Square. Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a former Soviet dissident and highly regarded rights activist, received approval from the city to hold one of the rallies. Limonov and Kosyakin organized the second, unsanctioned rally.

As Gazeta.ru reports, the police presence at Triumfalnaya Square that night was strong even compared to previous Strategy 31 events.

“More than one thousand people have gathered at the sanctioned rally,” the correspondent reported. “Police are inspecting everyone very closely; there are a thousand of them as well… Several hundred members of the Other Russia coalition are gathered near the metro.”

An estimated 1500 ralliers came out to Triumfalnaya Square in total.

Moscow city police had cordoned off the square earlier in the day, particularly around the sidewalk between the square and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, where participants of unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies usually gather. Anyone who attempted to join that rally from the neighboring Mayakovsky metro station was detained directly at the exit.

Other Russia member Sergei Aksenov was detained after announcing over a megaphone that Limonov had been arrested.

According to Kasparov.ru, OMON riot police periodically squeezed together the participants on Alexeyeva’s side of the square – a tactic commonly used by police during Strategy 31 rallies that often makes it difficult for those present to move or even breathe.

Following up from last year, Alexeyeva came to the rally dressed as a festive snowmaiden. Other oppositionists dressed up as well: environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova came in a Little Red Riding Hood costume. Rights activist Lev Ponomarev said he wanted to dress as Father Christmas, but couldn’t get ahold of a suitable cap.

After the sanctioned rally had officially ended, some participants – including Nemtsov and Yashin – attempted to cross over to the unsanctioned rally and were promptly arrested. According to Interfax, about 70 people were detained on Triumfalnaya Square in total.

Prior to the rallies, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin had warned that the city would not allow large, unsanctioned events to be held on New Year’s Eve, and that “those who plan to violate the law” could find themselves face-to-face with some unpleasant consequences.

Viktor Biryukov, head of public relations for the Moscow city police, said that they would not allow provocateurs and participants of any possible unsanctioned rallies to ruin New Year’s Eve night for people in the city.

In St. Petersburg, police arrested about 60 people in one of two Strategy 31 rallies held in the city that night. City authorities had refused to grant sanction to either rally.

As Fontanka.ru reports, all the arrests occurred at Gostiny Dvor, where between 100 and 300 people had gathered to rally. Nine girls were detained after unfurling a poster reading “freedom is more important than Olivier salad.”

No arrests were made at the second rally, which had about 100 participants from the United Civil Front, Solidarity, Yabloko, and other opposition groups. Many ralliers wore shirts picturing Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil oligarch who was convicted for a second time last week. He will now continue to sit in prison until 2017. The conviction is widely seen as the personal vendetta of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Photographs of the Moscow rallies can be found by clicking here and here.

In contrast, Russia’s “non-systemic” opposition consists of an enormous number of political movements, organizations, and coalitions that have either been denied registration and are thus unable to participate in elections, or who don’t bother trying since they know they won’t be allowed to obtain it. Despite representing an extremely wide variety of viewpoints, what all of these groups have in common is that they are true alternatives to the current ruling regime.

In September, a group of four prominent opposition leaders announced the formation of a new coalitional party called “For Russia Without Tyranny or Corruption.” Coalition leaders said they intend to attempt to register the party and participate in upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Their party, though coalitional, would not include as wide a variety of opposition viewpoints as, for example, the Other Russia.

One large question that remains about the future of the new coalition is whether or not Solidarity – one of the most prominent non-systemic opposition movements in Russia today – will join it. In this recent op-ed, United Civil Front leader and Solidarity co-leader Garry Kasparov explains why doing so could easily create more problems than it would solve.

A Political Mess: It’s not yet time to create an ideologically narrow coalition
By Garry Kasparov
October 8, 2010
Kasparov.ru

The news about the creation of a new liberal coalition has evoked an extremely positive, if not enthusiastic, response from supporters of the liberal political wing of our country. Liberal-minded journalists are describing its prospects in the most opalescent tones. And there’s a perfectly rational explanation for such euphoria.

The idea of a union of democratic forces is a panacea for all the troubles and misfortunes that our country encounters, which are not new and trace back from the time of the endless history of the unification of the SPS [Union of Right Forces – ed.] and Yabloko. Naturally, as control of the regime was tightened under Putin, discussions about unifying the opposition gained strength. And the common argument that asks how you could trust people to run the country who can’t even agree amongst themselves is as popular as ever among both supporters of the opposition and its opponents. For some reason, most of these discussions refer to the liberal opposition, although discord among the left and national-patriotic opposition forces is no less serious.

The desire of people who generally take no part in politics to speak out with dissatisfaction about the current state of affairs by simply dropping a ballot into a ballot box is perfectly clear. However, the elimination of the choice to vote “against everyone” forces the voter to search for an alternative that’s acceptable to him from the vegetarian political menu proposed by the Kremlin. Therefore, there are periodically public demands for the Russian political kitchen to come up with new ingredients. And the Kremlin chefs, reliable as ever, continue to keep their not particularly demanding clientele on a Lenten fast.

Not long ago, the New Times magazine published an article about the pre-electoral situation in Venezuela. The entire pathos of the article consisted of the idea that the country’s opposition committed a grave error several years ago by boycotting the elections, but now they’ve come to their senses and intend to participate – a type of reproach of Russian oppositionists. But all of this ignores the fact that the opposition in Venezuela is not banned, is officially registered, and can participate in elections, and in Russia, it can’t. As a matter of fact, the apparent success of the opposition in those elections relied on the unification of the most varied political forces, which set aside their differences on social and economic issues for the sake of creating a united anti-Chavez front.

In our Russian reality, playing on the feelings of people who are striving to unite to confront the regime is leading to the creation of a dangerous mythology that enables not the weakening, but, on the contrary, the strengthening of the government.

These concepts become mixed up when, in discussing the current coalition of these four well-known democratic politicians, many liberal-minded people breathe a sigh of relief – this time it’s without Limonov or the leftists. They forget that the idea of various political forces taking cooperative action against the regime, which the United Civil Front proposed be the fundamental activity of the Other Russia, has already become mainstream and no longer surprises anyone. Today, cooperation between coalitions in protests is the main key to the successes of large opposition rallies. In Kaliningrad, the largest such event of the past several years was held under banners of all the colors of the ideological spectrum. It is also worth noting that the leadership of the Communist party – the main party of the systemic opposition – tries with all its might to prevent the efforts of various ideological groups in organizing protests from coming together.

The question of to what extend this kind of cooperation can extend to larger political projects – such as presidential elections – remains, like before, unanswered. It is obvious that breaking apart the regime, or at least forcing it to consider people’s opinions, is only possible by uniting the widest possible ideological spectrum. Alexei Kondaurov and Andrei Piontkovsky recently wrote an excellent article on this point. But unfortunately, many people don’t realize that, for the time being, many basic issues could be resolved if completely different political forces came together. There are examples of successfully realized projects like this in the histories of countries that have stood in opposition to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It suffices to remember Chile at the end of the ’80s, when there was unification all across the political spectrum in order to achieve victory in the referendum and bring free elections back to the country. Democratic Russia in 1990-91 was just as wide a coalition, albeit lacking such strikingly outspoken political groups.

In conditions where independent organizations are factually banned from participating in elections, a purely ideological union – even one including some competitors, but ones that are from one part of the spectrum of groups – is a thing in itself.

It was already clear in 2007 that official participation in political life in Russia was only possible with the Kremlin’s consent, and only with the fulfillment of corresponding conditions – taking the oath of fealty. The failure to register [former State Duma Deputy Vladimir] Ryzhkov and [former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov’s party clearly defined the direction that political life in Russia develops. It’s important to note that this was not a matter of extremist organizations, but of people who themselves came from within the current government. Despite how critical these people are, only in the inflamed imaginations of Kremlin propagandists could they be referred to as radicals or extremists. Therefore, the numerous failures of [National Bolshevik leader Eduard] Limonov’s party are not even worth discussing. The recent attempt to register the Russian United Workers Front, effortlessly rejected by the Justice Ministry, also shows that the Kremlin has not allowed any changes to occur. But projects like this that create unions, which have recently been created among liberals, leftists, and the national-patriots, are undoubtedly a positive force.

From a historical perspective, these sorts of unions could become the nucleus of a future political system. And in this sense, the emergence of Solidarity in 2008 was a gigantic step forward, because, for the first time, a liberal-minded organization that had no connections to the Kremlin was allowed to be formed. The role of such organizations, both right and left, could most of all come down to developing policy positions for the future, working with citizens of the country, educating, constantly applying pressure on the government, and holding street rallies – that is to say, the role is of a tactical nature, not a strategic one. For today’s opposition, which is deprived of the opportunity to assert influence through the mass media and thus fully participate in political life, the possibilities for strategic planning are extremely limited.

All the euphoria surrounding the ongoing process of creating this coalition has the quality of being distracted from reality.

The task of forming a political party seems at least strange, since its fate is probably clear to everyone. An opposition organization cannot obtain any kind of registration under current conditions. When they are denied registration and everything becomes clear to everyone, the discussions that will be repeated like mantras will be reminiscent of the folktale of the white bull, endlessly walking in circles. Or an unreasonably drawn-out speech before a skeptical audience (whether abroad or at home) that needs to hear yet another explanation of the antidemocratic essence of the current regime.

Maybe some members of the coalition are hoping for a drastic change in the situation and the emergence of the “Medvedev majority,” where this structure has a place. But nobody talks to us about this openly. What they say is that, once again, we have to take the path of collecting signatures and submitting documents to the Justice Ministry. Thus, regardless of the pointlessness of this procedure, they are trying to convince us to once again play by the existing rules. If this idea is doomed, then it is entirely unclear what we are proving and to whom. And if somebody thinks that registration is possible, then I’d like to hear where such optimism came from.

A question: what is considered to be a change in the situation? That the Kremlin suddenly considers it necessary to put a liberal force in its pocket, or is, after all, going forward with legislative liberalization? A change in the situation does not signify mercy on the part of the Kremlin, but its consent to change the rules. And that is a fundamental difference. The situation is going to change when the country operates under normal laws, and not when they let somebody [register – ed.] and not somebody else. There is also a purely practical question.

A petition, if it’s not just something to show off – which people who want to register usually resort to – is a distraction of the organizers’ energy.

After [Solidarity co-founder Boris] Nemtsov signed the agreement, Solidarity began to participate in coalition projects, and the main, if not only project of the coalition is to create a party structure. In accordance with the regulations put in place by the Justice Ministry, the founding congress of the new party should happen in December. This means that Solidarity will drag out practically in full force from the congress on December 11 to the congress on December 14. At the same time, the decision hasn’t been made within Solidarity to transform the movement into a party. Respected members of the organization such as [Vladimir] Bukovsky and Piontkovsky are categorically against it. Many of those who did not speak out against such a transformation have always insisted that the formation of plans for a party should not involve the necessary collection of signatures. Solidarity’s planned congress should resolve these issues, and it’s obvious that if the decision is made to launch plans for a party, it won’t be required for those who don’t plan on joining the party structure. Solidarity’s format as a social movement will be preserved. That position remains unchanged.

But today’s story with the coalition, which began long before the congress, puts our organization in a strange position. This kind of divided organization strikes me as extremely dangerous. The idea of creating a party through a coalition seemed to me from the very beginning as hopeless and a threat to the existence of Solidarity as the main opposition force in the liberal wing. It’s interesting that another idea – the advancement of a single candidate for president from among the liberal forces – had no problem being absorbed into party rhetoric.

Although, it is precisely this idea that has a practical basis. It is obvious that it is the president who holds power in the country, and not the parliament – which, as we know, is not a place for discussion. It is also obvious that a candidate from the non-systemic opposition will not obtain registration. But this kind of idea is more understandable, and opens an opportunity to negotiate with different opposition ideological associations, in order to take in a larger number of people. I’ll return again to the article by Kondaurov and Piontkovsky: They propose holding a general democratic congress and have a good terminological description of how “general democratic” today does not indicate ideological consistency, but the attitude towards procedures of choosing government. Therefore, people other than those with liberal ideological views would be able to take part in such a congress.

Recognizing that the future of Solidarity as an independent organization is at stake, I in no way want to oppose those in the makeup of the coalition who plan to create a party. But, that said, I have no desire to become a part of this project in the form that it is being presented to us. Right now it is extremely important to continue cooperating with all opposition forces in a political field that is independent from the Kremlin. This is the position that the United Civil Front will continue to adhere to.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

For the past several months, United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov has been engulfed in a campaign to help his former chess rival, Anatoly Karpov, win the presidency of the World Chess Federation. The incumbent, multi-millionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has been criticized for shady business dealings, alleged responsibility for the murder of a journalist, his admiration for Saddam Hussein, and a conviction that he has been visited by aliens, among other things.

On Wednesday, Ilyumzhinov won re-election in a vote of 95 to 55. “Considering the rampant abuses that took place there,” as the Karpov campaign web site puts it, “…it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider this a legitimate election.”

In an interview with the British magazine Standpoint shortly before the election, Kasparov discusses the importance of the Karpov campaign, his insights into Russia’s nefarious ruling elite, and the United Civil Front’s ongoing efforts to make the country truly democratic.

Can Kasparov Checkmate Putin?
By Anna Aslanyan
Standpoint Magazine
October 2010

Garry Kasparov grew up knowing that coming second was not good enough. This will to win was one of the crucial factors behind the 22-year-old Soviet chess player becoming the youngest-ever World Chess Champion in 1985. He retained his title for 15 years. The ambitious, outspoken youth was seen by the West as the new face of Russian chess — and, more importantly, of the country that was ready for the first time in 70 years to say good-bye to communism and start moving towards democracy. The Cold War, both on and off the chessboard, was over. Kasparov and his fellow players no longer had to be part of it and could concentrate on the game in which they excelled.

Or so it seemed in the heady days when Gorbachev’s reforms awoke a sense of elation in many. That was not to last long. Immediately after retiring from professional chess, Kasparov returned to action — this time on a political battleground. He formed the United Civil Front, a pro-democracy movement, and took an active part in creating The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition. After Kasparov’s plans to stand as a candidate for the 2008 Russian presidential race were disrupted — no one was willing to rent him a hall large enough to hold his supporters so he wasn’t allowed to be a candidate — he remained the leader of the UCF, organising an online “Putin must go” campaign.

However, it was not in his capacity as a political opposition leader that Kasparov visited Britain in September. He came to support his former rival, Anatoly Karpov, from whom he wrested the World Champion title a quarter of a century ago. It was the illegal arrest of Kasparov at a Moscow demonstration in 2007 that brought the two old foes back together: Karpov tried to visit his former rival in prison to lend Kasparov what support he could.

I meet Kasparov after the press conference held in London last month to promote Karpov’s campaign for the FIDE (World Chess Federation) presidency. The incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has just lost his main political asset — the presidency of the southern Russian republic of Kalmykia. When one of the journalists talks about it as “resignation”, Kasparov is quick to correct him: “People don’t resign in Russia. He was kicked out.”

The eccentric Ilyumzhinov, who claims to have been abducted by aliens at one point, has led FIDE since 1993. During his reign, chess lost a lot of its glamour. Indeed, the championships are now held in places that, to quote Kasparov, “you need to be a very good student of geography to find on the map.” Desperate to be re-elected, Ilyumzhinov made exorbitant promises to national chess federations, of the type he would have to be “at least Russian president to fulfil”, as Karpov noted in his speech at the conference. There are, however, indications that Ilyumzhinov’s popularity is fading, both in Russia and worldwide.

When the event ends, Kasparov is torn between signing books, being photographed and giving advice to chess players. I start our conversation by apologising for returning to Russian politics now that his mind is busy with FIDE and related problems. “Not busy,” he interrupts, “I am absolutely immersed in this. We have to win.” However, he is soon talking about issues with which he has been out of touch for the last four months: his comrades-in-arms supported his decision to take a sabbatical. As for his enemies: “They are probably grateful to Karpov — he managed to take me out of the game for a while, after all.”

Vladimir Putin does not rule out the possibility of staying in power for another decade or longer. What does Kasparov think of Putin’s bravado? “Putin didn’t say anything new. It was probably the form his statement took that shocked, but the content was predictable all along. It became more or less clear, I think, in the middle of his second presidential term that he would never leave. You know the expression, ‘galley slave’ — I believe there is a certain Freudian subtext to it in Putin’s case. He is doomed to stay — he has nowhere else to go. He should have thought about this much earlier, but even if he ever was trying to solve this problem, to find an escape route, he failed.”

Parallels between the current regime in Russia and those of Stalin and Mao have been drawn frequently enough, but Kasparov is more subtle. “Putin has all the traits of a dictator, but he is different from that lot — he is, in essence, an oligarch. I’ve said before that what he really wants is to rule like Stalin while living like [Chelsea FC owner Roman] Abramovich. Power for him is the means, not the end.” It was the realisation that Putin, were he to become president for a third time in 2012, could potentially stay until 2024 that made people concerned. Kasparov would not ascribe too much significance to this date, insisting that the prime minister’s recent statement naturally follows from all he has said and done before. “That he was instrumental in making [the current President Dmitry] Medvedev his heir was quite logical, too — things like that have happened before. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a clever move. Sometimes a successor, instead of toeing the party line, becomes a hindrance. Medvedev has never created any problems for Putin, who in this instance showed himself a fine psychologist.”

Remembering why he failed to stand last time, Kasparov believes this to be another example of people being afraid of the authorities. He cannot see things changing dramatically in the near future. When asked if he is planning an attempt to participate in the next election, he replies: “What exactly do you call the next election? To me, it’s just a date, 2012 or some other, doesn’t matter, which is set by them and has nothing to do with our activity. It should be clear to everyone by now that there is no democracy in Russia. You don’t need to prove this point further by trying — and inevitably failing — to register as a candidate. Only those who are on the regime’s side — and I mean, totally, without a shadow of a doubt — will be allowed to do so. To take part in this farce would mean to accept their rules, to surrender, to lie down and think of Russia, so to speak — and we are not going to do that.” This must be hard for a natural-born winner to accept. However, Kasparov’s mood is defiant, not defeatist.

He stresses that his politics have nothing to do with his personal ambitions, and that he got involved in a business where you cannot win driven solely by the motto: “Do what you must, come what may.” Yet it takes a lot of courage to embark on something as uncertain and unpromising. “Yes, I was prepared for uncertainty. Then again, how do you define a victory here? A defeat? This is a different game played by very different rules and you have to take it as it is. I’ve always said to my colleagues: ‘We are in for a marathon race, which can become a 100-metres sprint at any moment. The starting signal will be given by someone else and we should be ready for it.’ So it’s difficult to talk about winning and losing given the nature of the game. However, I don’t consider our efforts to be a failure. The fact is that most of the ideas I came up with back in 2005 are still relevant, perhaps more than ever, in Russian politics. If you look at our programme published in 2006, it’s all in there. We used to be criticised by other opposition forces for being too unrealistic, but now those concepts have become part of the mainstream.”

Characteristically, Kasparov is reluctant to call his activity straightforward politics. The UCF is part political party, part human rights organisation and part social movement. “We try to use the existing social landscape in order to promote democracy as the only way forward. Our approach is to take a particular problem — for instance, that of the Khimki Forest — and work with it.” He is referring to the ongoing battle to save a park in a Moscow suburb, a legally protected eco-system that will be wiped out by the construction of the new Moscow-St Petersburg motorway.

“Our main and, for now, only activity should be propaganda. We need to demonstrate to the people of Russia that changes are needed. A moment must come — it would probably require a backlash of some kind — when the country is ready to embrace democratic ways.” Kasparov goes back to the question of settling for a successful career as a trainer and an entrepreneur, one of his interests being chess computer programs, and adds: “We all had high hopes in the early 1990s. Then it became obvious pretty soon that you couldn’t just step aside. You had to fight or leave the country. I chose to fight — and have been doing what I can ever since.”

Leaving the country would have been easy for someone like Kasparov. He has been repeatedly criticised by Russian nationalists for acquiring American citizenship — rumours he dismisses as disinformation propagated by Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth organisation that is often compared to the Soviet-era Konsomol or even the Hitler Youth. “Neither I nor my wife has an American passport. My daughter, the youngest, does — she was born in the States. But I never applied for one. Those thugs thought they could say anything about me, but when the case came to court their only excuse was that they meant another person, an American citizen whose name also happens to be Kasparov.”

Returning to the forthcoming FIDE elections, we talk about Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has repeatedly been accused of accumulating an enormous fortune by unscrupulous means, and his statement that “a wealthy president is the best safeguard against corruption in the country”. Kasparov points out that the oligarchs who are running Russia these days made their money after they came to power: “This is what makes the whole difference. Russia can only serve as a counter-example in these speculations since it has no history of wealth going back a couple of centuries. On the other hand, I would have nothing against a leader who was well-off before, and not as a result of, starting a political career. Such wealthy people might be immune to corruption — at least, I’d like to hope so. At the same time, the temptation may be too strong even for them. The way I see it, corruption is about your personal attitude. For me, it’s simply unspeakable to steal, to bribe or take bribes — but then again, I am relatively poor compared to the ruling classes.”

In a country where at least 15 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, corruption is a serious problem. Although not suggesting it can be resolved immediately, Kasparov has a vision of future changes. “You have to explain to people that their financial troubles result from the lack of basic freedoms. Until this is understood, democracy will remain impossible. Sure, TV is a powerful weapon,” he continues, then quips with a smile, “of mass destruction. But at the end of the day, as domestic appliances go, a fridge is more vital.”

Andrei Pivovarov, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian People’s Democratic Union (RNDS), was convicted on September 15 of organizing an unsanctioned rally and “insubordination to the lawful demands of a police officer.” He has been ordered to pay a 2000 ruble fine (about $65) and must spend 14 days in a criminal detention facility.

The rally was part of the Russian opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign, which is dedicated to the right to free assembly guaranteed under Article 31 of the Russian constitution. Pivovarov was among organizers of an August 31 rally at St. Petersburg’s Gostiny Dvor, attended by about 700 people. Several dozen rally participants were detained, including Pivovarov and other prominent local opposition leaders.

Pivovarov and the RNDS are planning to appeal both of Wednesday’s convictions. The organization began holding a series of protests outside of Pivovarov’s detention facility that same day.

The RNDS is convinced that Pivovarov’s sentence “was not based on the law” and is an attempt by the authorities to frighten the opposition.

“In my view, this is an extremely inappropriate measure,” said Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front. “I’ve already said multiple times that I don’t understand in general why they detain people at Gostiny Dvor. Nothing happens there that violates the public order.”

Activists participating in Strategy 31 rallies throughout Russia are routinely beaten and detained by the dozens.

“This measure is an act of intimidation,” Kurnosova concluded.

Georgy Sarkisyan, a leader in the regional branches of both the United Civil Front and Solidarity opposition movements, was first arrested on June 30. At the time, police blamed the activist with attempting to steal a cell phone – a charge that Sarkisyan and his representative, civil rights advocate Dmitry Krayukhin, dismissed as a “provocation.” On July 1, Judge Svetlana Sandulyak sent word to local police that the files submitted on Sarkisyan’s arrest were not in order. Beginning on the evening of July 5, police repeatedly attempted to enter the oppositionist’s apartment, and detained him on Tuesday morning as he tried to enter a taxi. While the police told Sarkisyan that they had a subpoena to bring him to court, they failed to present a copy of any such document.

Later that day, Judge Sandulyak convicted the opposition leader of “hooliganism,” although what exactly this accusation entails was never clarified to either Sarkisyan or Krayukhin.

According to the rights activist, Judge Sandulyak is guilty of grossly violating the oppositionist leader’s rights. Sarkisyan was not informed until very late of the precise time and place of the judicial proceedings, and thus was unable to present witnesses in his defense. Moreover, the prosecution’s case includes obvious contradictions and inconsistencies that the judge seemed uninterested in clarifying, he said.

“The case materials speak of one place where an offense to the law occurred, and witnesses from the prosecution speak of a different place, but this does not in any way worry the judge,” said Krayukhin.

The rights advocate also said that Judge Sandulyak “made strange inferences.” For example, she took Sarkisyan’s testimony that he was walking along one street as evidence that he committed a crime on an entirely separate one.

Georgy Sarkisyan has recently proven to be a thorn in the side of Orel’s local government, due to his offer of consultational and organizational support to a group of merchants who began to be evicted from the city’s central market in May. The evictions came despite a promise from the mayor during his electoral campaign two months earlier not to do so. On July 1, when 700 market pavilions were officially closed, six merchants began staging a hunger strike that is still going on today.

The document was written by two of Solidarity’s co-leaders, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov. As Nemtsov puts it, the pamphlet is meant “to tell the truth about the results of the rule of Putin and the tandem,” as the relationship between the prime minister and president is commonly referred to.

Immediately after the authors presented the report, its host website was hit by DDOS hacker attacks that rendered it completely inaccessible. Then, on Tuesday, police in St. Petersburg seized 100 thousand copies of the published report, a tenth of the total million that were printed by the organization.

As the Moscow Times reports:

Police seized pamphlets criticizing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the eve of a high-profile business forum showcasing Russia, opposition leaders said.

St. Petersburg police confiscated 100,000 copies of a new report on Putin’s decade in power co-authored by Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, said Olga Kurnosova, head of the local branch of the opposition United Civil Front.

Kurnosova and Nemtsov contended that police were trying to keep the 32-page report [in PDF form; 48 in MS Word form – ed.] from the public and visitors at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which started Thursday.

“The police had the task of preventing the distribution of the report during the forum among its participants and citizens,” Kurnosova said.

St. Petersburg police declined to comment.

Police held the driver of the vehicle that was delivering the pamphlets for several hours, Kurnosova said.

She said police told her that they had sent the pamphlet to be checked for evidence of extremism — a tactic that opposition politicians say authorities sometimes use to stifle criticism — and that the check would take two or three days.

Nemtsov has co-written several reports highlighting corruption and other problems that he contends have gotten worse since Putin was elected president in 2000.

On Thursday, Nemtsov wrote on his blog that another 100 thousand copies of the report had been confiscated from the printing house by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers:

Instead of arguing with the theses in the report, denying the basis of the theses, they decided to show their effectiveness by acting in a Putin-like manner. Grossly violating citizens’ right to information, they decided, like in the good old days, to liquidate the opposition’s literature.

The reason is that facts and figures of the true results of Putin’s rule are laid out in the report. They tell us that they’ve built an effective state, while in fact, the level of corruption has reached monstrous proportions (on the level of the most backward African countries) in these ten years of rule. They assure us that the birth rate is rising, and that the death rate is falling – as a matter of fact, under Putin, Russia has been losing half a million people per year. They tell us that he has gained victory over the oligarchs and poverty – actually, there are more than 60 billionaires in the country, and 20 million poor. They tell us that Putin has pacified the Caucasus and gained victory over terror – as a matter of fact, in the ten years of his rule, the number of terrorist attacks has risen six times, and the regions of the Caucasus, receiving many millions in subsidies, have wound up outside of the Russian legal realm.

This is the truth that, in Putin’s opinion, Russians mustn’t know. This is where the actions of the security officials come from.

While distribution of the pamphlet started in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Solidarity is planning to release copies of the report all over Russia. For now, and especially given that police have apparently seized 1/5 of all of the printed pamphlets, the organization is encouraging citizens to print their own copies and distribute them in samizdat fashion.

“Putin. Results. 10 Years” is available in Russian by clicking here.

On Wednesday, the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow handed down the sentence to 56-year-old Sergei Mokhnatkin, finding him guilty of assaulting a police officer during a December 31, 2009, rally that was part of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign in defense of free assembly. In the yearlong history of the rallies, he is the first person to receive an notable term of confinement.

Mokhnatkin’s supporters insist that he had nothing to do with the protest. According to United Civil Front representative Aleksandr Khatov, the now-convicted man was detained when the rally was broken up by police. “He was just a passerby on his way to Red Square in order to meet the New Year there,” said Khatov. “But then he saw that police had seized a woman and were dragging her towards a bus.”

Mokhnatkin came to the defense of the elderly woman and, as a result, was detained and put in a police bus with nine other rally participants. There, Khatov went on, the man was handcuffed to his seat and beaten in front of all those present.

70-year-old Raisa Vavilova, the woman who Mokhnatkin tried to help, testified as a witness for the defense during the trial. She told the Interfax news agency that Mokhnatkin had never previously appeared at any demonstrations by the extra-systemic [those denied the right to operate in the political system – ed.] opposition. “He was an accidental passerby who stood up for me when I was detained on Triumfalnaya Square. They thought he was one of us,” confirmed the elderly woman.

According to Khatov, Mokhnatkin testified that the incident with the police officer took place in the police bus where he was put after being detained. There, said the defendant, a policeman attempted to choke him. The court ruled, however, that the officer did not use any violence against Mokhnatkin, as an examination had found no signs of trauma on his body, and the officer, meanwhile, had a broken nose.

“He couldn’t have hit anyone, because he was handcuffed to the seat,” said Khatov. “Maybe he turned clumsily while he was being beaten.”

Mokhnatkin turned out to be the only one of the 60 people detained at the rally who met the New Year in police confinement; all others had been let out before midnight. After being released, the man filed a complaint with the police department demanding that the officers who beat him be punished.

On June 1, Mokhnatkin was summoned to a police station where, he was told, he would have a chance to identify his assailants. Instead, said Khatov, police wanted to fingerprint the Tver resident. When Mokhnatkin refused, he was arrested and sent to a pretrial detention facility.

In response, Mokhnatkin declared a dry hunger strike – no food, no water – which Khatov says the man has now sustained for eight days. While dry hunger strikes are known to sometimes last as long as a week, most people cannot survive more than three days without water. When the trial began on June 8, his supporters found that he looked quite ill and feared for his health.

The verdict handed down today noted that the court considered only the police officers to be credible witnesses, dismissing all those on the side of the defense as persons of interest.

“It’s notable that the testimony from defense witnesses was not accepted for consideration,” Anastasia Rybachenko, an activist with the opposition movement Solidarity, wrote on her blog. “The judge felt that she couldn’t trust them, since they entirely refute the testimony by the prosecution’s witnesses – police officers.”

While prosecutors asked Mokhnatkin to be sentenced to the full five years allowed by Russian law, the court, according to Gazeta.ru, took “all circumstances of the case” into consideration and ruled that it was possible to hand down a lighter sentence.

Mokhnatkin’s lawyers do not plan to appeal.

“He was given a state lawyer who didn’t even show up at the verdict reading,” said Rybachenko.

Renowned rights activist and Strategy 31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that the defendant had turned down legal aid that rights advocates had offered him.

“We sent Makhnatkin a lawyer. For some reason, he turned him down; it’s possible that he didn’t understand that it was free aid,” Alexeyeva said on Ekho Moskvy radio. “He’s something of a strange man, this Makhnatkin.”

“Not only does he not deserve two and a half years, but those police officers who fabricated this case deserve punishment,” she added.

Alexeyeva explained that police at the rally had taken Makhnatkin “for one of [National Bolshevik Party leader and Strategy 31 co-organizer Eduard] Limonov’s guards and was very glad that a guard of Limonov allowed himself to hit a police officer,” she went on. However, “when it became clear that he had nothing to do with Limonov, it was already too late.”

Alexeyeva said she would work to ensure Makhnatkin’s release.

“The man is innocent and we are going to get him released,” she said.

Solidarity bureau member Sergei Davidis said that his movement is looking into getting Makhnatkin a lawyer to appeal the court’s verdict.

Speaking to Ekho Moskvy, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity bureau member Boris Nemtsov denounced the case as a show trial.

“This is an act of intimidation; it is aimed at making it so that the people who more and more gather on the 31st date become afraid of winding up in prison,” he said. “It is a show trial, done so that all the rest who plan to come out on July 31 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, stop.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The majority of the rallies took place on Saturday, and came in the wake of two explosions in the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia’s Kuznetsk Basin on May 8 that left 67 miners dead. In one protest, about 150 opposition activists gathered on Moscow’s Chistie Prudy to stand in solidarity with the miners and demand a governmental response to their grievances. They asked for an objective investigation of the May 8 explosions, punishment for those guilty for the tragedy, and monetary compensation to miners for lost work time.

The Moscow protesters also demanded a stop to the persecution of miners and residents of Mezhdurechensk, a town close to the Raspadskaya mine where riot police arrested approximately 28 people in on May 14 during a protest made up of relatives of miners killed in the accident and their supporters. Criminal charges have been filed against some of those protesters for blocking off a railroad, a move they took out of desperation to draw attention to their grievances.

A rally meant to take place in Mezhdurechensk on Saturday, however, fell apart after an increased police presence intimidated miners into staying off the streets. Former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky, famous in Russia for his work exposing corruption in the country’s police forces, had arrived in the city to support the miners. At the designated time on Saturday, he told the Kasparov.ru online news site, approximately 70 journalists came to the local government building where the rally was supposed to take place. Only an hour later, however, did ten miners arrive and tell Dymovsky that the rest of them had been frightened away from coming to the protest. The police presence, which included officers brought in from other nearby towns, dispersed the ten miners after half an hour.

On Monday, opposition leader Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front issued a press release saying that another rally in support of the Kuznetsk Basin miners would be held in Moscow on May 25. “To this day,” reads the statement, “virtually none of the miners’ demands have been satisfied. Despite the fact that the participants of the demonstration [in Mezhdurechensk on May 14] have been released, the criminal suits against them have not been dropped.”

The organization commented on Saturday’s failed Mezhdurechensk rally by noting that local police and police brought in from other areas scared the population into submission, and referred to an apparent plan by the police dubbed “The Fortress” to intentionally stifle protests.

For more on the Raspadskaya mine explosions and their aftermath:

• Who to Blame in Russia Mine Deaths? – The Wall Street Journal
• Mine Director Replaced After Rebuke From Putin – The New York Times
• Russia’s mine accident relatives ‘targeted by gangs’ – BBC News

The demonstration would be the ninth iteration of the Strategy 31 rallies, named for the 31st article of the Russian constitution that guarantees freedom of assembly. The rallies have been held, despite lacking official sanction, for the past year on the 31st of each month with that date in Moscow and other cities across Russia.

“I received a call from the mayor’s office and was told that there is going to be some kind of big cultural event on Triumfalnaya Square on that day.” said Alexeyeva. “We’re being turned down for the ninth time,” All previous rallies have been turned down for similar reasons, but Strategy 31 organizers insist that the city is working to intentionally deny them access to Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, since its central location gives the rallies relatively high visibility.

Alexeyeva was adamant that rally organizers maintain their constitutional right to hold the rally on the square and would not move it to a different location, as the city has repeatedly proposed. Since these alternative sites would render the rallies virtually invisible to the general population and confuse people who wanted to take part as to where they were going to be held, Strategy 31 organizers have continued to insist that the event be held on Triumfalnaya Square.

“We’ll come to Triumfalnaya Square on May 31 all the same,” said Alexeyeva. “But it won’t be a rally. We’ll come with signs with the number ’31’ in defense of the 31st article of the constitution,” most likely meaning that the oppositionists don’t intend to carry political insignia to the square. In that case, the event would not constitute an actual rally that would require government sanction to be held legally.

Alexeyeva added, however, that she still expects the police and OMON riot forces to beat and detain event participants as they have during all previously Strategy 31 rallies. The 82-year-old Alexeyeva herself was detained during last December’s New Years Eve rally, prompting an outcry from rights groups and federal representatives in Europe and the United States. “They’ll probably start seizing us again,” she said on Wednesday. “I want to discuss the developing situation with the leadership of the Moscow City Police.”

Strategy 31 co-organizer and opposition leader Eduard Limonov added that Moscow city authorities are currently trying to organize a meeting with rally organizers. He said that he does not believe, however, that the city is prepared to make any concessions and is simply trying to save face. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has expressed disdain for the Strategy 31 movement and has given conflicting statements on why his government continually rejects their applications to hold rallies on Triumfalnaya Square.

Saving face may very well be on the minds of the city administration this time around. International pressure has been mounting against both federal and city authorities in Russia and Moscow ever since Alexeyeva’s arrest made global news out of the brutal treatment of opposition protesters by the police. And for the May 31 event, Strategy 31 organizers have invited a delegation from the European Parliament and the editors-in-chief from more than a dozen large Russian media outlets to observe the proceedings.

News also broke on Wednesday that the St. Petersburg authorities have similarly refused to sanction a Strategy 31 protest in that city on May 31, also on the basis that another event had already been planned for the oppositionist’s chosen site. Organizers of the rally, which included the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council, the Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, the liberal opposition party Yabloko, the opposition movement Solidarity, and a number of youth democratic advocacy groups, also said that they intend to hold the rally anyway.