Executive Director Olga Kurnosova of the oppositionist United Civil Front said Nemtsov and seven other activists (including herself) were detained at an apartment complex in St. Petersburg’s Petrovsky district on August 15 while distributing anti-Matvienko flyers and calling on residents to vote against the highly unpopular governor in her bid for a local council seat that would allow her to take up the position of Federation Council Speaker.

According to Kurnosova, members of a pro-Kremlin youth group, who were “coordinated” by an aide to powerful city legislator and United Russia party member Vyacheslav Makarov, attacked the oppositionists and pelted them with eggs.

When some of the oppositionists got into a car, “unknown young people” surrounded them, began throwing produce at their vehicle, and “acted aggressively in general.” Police standing nearby did nothing in response to the situation, even helping the attackers.

“We tried to drive away but the police began to stop us and pull us out so that the Nashi members could throw stuff at us,” Kurnosova explained. “At the same time, they didn’t touch the attackers. The Nashi members broke our camera and tried to climb into the car and grab our flyers. The police didn’t react at all.”

The political news website ZakS.ru reported that pro-Kremlin activists threatened to slash the tires of one of their correspondents as well as of Representative Konstantin Yershov from the St. Petersburg branch of the People’s Freedom Party (Parnas), which is co-led by Nemtsov.

On August 14, Nemtsov was also arrested under similar circumstances while canvassing against Matvienko in St. Petersburg’s Krasnenkaya Rechka district.

Matvienko was nominated for the post of Federation Council Speaker by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier this summer. In order for her to accept the post, she must be officially voted in as a representative of a particular region in Russia, which then in turn must vote for her as speaker.

According to Kasparov.ru, Matvienko plans to run on the United Russia party platform in Krasnenkaya Rechka and Petrovsky.

Representatives of the political opposition, who have been intent on providing Matvienko with some competition, have been unable to officially register as candidates. Therefore, the Solidarity opposition movement, also co-led by Nemtsov, and the Other Russia opposition party have begun campaigns calling on locals to vote against Matvienko and any other candidates associated with United Russia.

Kommersant learned that the magazine has virtually disappeared from newsstands only after receiving reports from its readers. Representatives of the publication then went around to several dozen retailers and were consistently told that copies of Vlast had either been sold or were returned to distributors as unsold, despite the fact that a new copy of the magazine is not due to come out for another several days.

The issue in question, dated July 4, is largely dedicated to the upcoming resignation of largely unpopular St. Petersburg Mayor and United Russia member Valentina Matvienko, who was controversially chosen by President Dmitri Medvedev last month to become Speaker of the Federation Council. The soon-to-be-former mayor is pictured on the cover blowing a small horn with a quote that plays on the Soviet-era award “For Service to the Fatherland” – only here the word “service” is replaced by a term made up by city authorities for the gargantuan icicles that killed a record number of residents this past winter. Matvienko was widely criticized for failing to keep streets clear of snow and ensure that icicles be removed from buildings before they could harm pedestrians. The article itself discusses her successes and failures in office, her strained relationship with the president, and the possibility that her new position may simply be an honorable discharge from Russian politics.

According to Ekho Moskvy, the newspaper is not ruling out the possibility that the issue angered the city administration. On condition of anonymity, a representative of one of two companies that distribute 90 percent of all the copies of Vlast throughout St. Petersburg told Kommersant that the order to cut off distribution came directly from the St. Petersburg City Printing Committee; the company made no official statement. A representative of the second company did make an official statement that no copies had been confiscated from retail outlets.

Printing Committee head Aleksandr Korennikov told Kommersant that he was unaware of any confiscations.

Now that the Russian opposition’s newest major political party – Parnas – has been officially denied the opportunity to present itself as an option to Russia voters, opposition activists are left dwelling over possible plans of action for upcoming State Duma elections in October and the presidential election in March. In this editorial, Solidarity co-leader and United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov offers his analysis of the opposition’s options and makes his case for a full-on boycott of the Russian electoral process.

Don’t Register the Government!
By Garry Kasparov
July 7, 2011
Kasparov.ru

The refusal to register Parnas, which was inevitable after Mikhail Prokhorov’s emergence onto the political arena, concluded the attempts of the nonsystemic opposition to act within the bounds of the sanctioned political process. In principle, nothing unexpected happened – one cannot presume a rise in the number of registered parties in the midst of a consistent purge of the political landscape.

Given these conditions, the nonsystemic opposition must define its attitude towards the upcoming electoral farce. However, before proposing any plan of action, it is necessary to at least imagine the contours of the development of events in our country. I would like to find out: what sensible people are there who continue to believe that this government can change as the result of elections? A negative response to this question is largely what defines the opposition’s strategic plan of action – not to try and attain short-term tactical advantages within the bounds of the scenario dictated by the government, but to take a course to consistently delegitimize the government in the eyes of Russian citizens.

There are four possible plans of action: 1) a boycott, which is to say a refusal to participate in any sort of official “electoral” activities; 2) to remove our ballots from voting stations; 3) to ruin our ballots by crossing out each option, writing in different parties or using the ballot to express our opinion about the current government; or 4) to vote for any party besides United Russia. Particularly striking is the second option, which many people consider to be a modification of the third, so as to demonstrate a concrete level of participation and non-participation in the electoral process.

The political council of the opposition movement Solidarity has proposed two slogans for the parliamentary and presidential campaigns – “I won’t take part in a farce” and “put an end to the thieving government” – and ruled that the fourth option was unacceptable. It is from there that we will begin to analyze the possible options from the point of view of the opposition’s strategic plans, instead of attempting to simply react to the government’s actions in one way or another.

We cannot deny that people who continue to insist on the fourth option have certain logic. If it were to be successfully carried out, the weakening of United Russia theoretically could lead to the weakening of Putin and to a schism within the elite. But this type of scenario would presume at least some degree of oppositionist mentality within the political parties registered by the Kremlin. The recent events in St. Petersburg have once again demonstrated the extent of this ostentatious opposition.

In order to push Matvienko into the post of Federation Council Speaker, a municipal election has to be held, during which, as is perfectly obvious, the opposition has every chance to flood the unpopular mayor. But it is precisely at such moments that the systemic opposition is forced to work out their own Kremlin registrations.

Following the Communists, who found the positive side of the political biography of former Komsomol beauty Matvienko, former Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov also chose not to attempt to damage the reputation of his supposed main political rival. This political robot, reprogrammed with an oppositionist mentality, is constantly malfunctioning due to the signal that remains in his unformatted brain of allegiance to his creator. And now, submitting to the control switch, Mironov mechanically repeats the words about how desirable Matvienko’s departure from Petersburg is even at the cost of her appointment as speaker of the Federation Council.

So do the proponents of voting against United Russia really believe that this opposition with Zyuganov and Mironov – let’s try not to remember Zhirinovsky – is capable of changing the situation in the country? But then again, it’s clear that the call to cast your vote to any party besides United Russia by politicians from the liberal flank is nothing more than a call to vote for Right Cause. It is obvious that precisely Prokhorov and Right Cause will be the main beneficiaries of this sort of algorithm of action by the opposition, since the shrunken Yabloko, which has de-facto disappeared from the country’s political landscape, cannot present them with serious competition (nobody should be misled by Yabloko’s convincing victory in a recent Ekho Moskvy radio poll).

Unlimited material resources, plus the favor of the Kremlin that opens the doors to every television channel, guarantees Right Cause with the opportunity to present information about itself to practically every voter. And regardless of the glaring inadequacies of Prokhorov’s candidacy, which will undoubtedly be used by United Russia’s campaign, precisely this party has every chance to become the main force behind the protest voting movement. The results of such “elections” will be the creation of a new liberal model intended to negate the negative effect of the establishment of the Putin dictatorship, which is not at all constrained by excessive formalities.

In the public conscience, the other three options are seen just as much to be a refusal to take part in electoral procedures. That said, the second and third options are labeled as active forms of protest.

The third option is technically simple to carry out, since the actions of a person ruining a ballot are not visually different than those of one who is checking off boxes in a disciplined manner. Nevertheless, this option still indicates one’s concrete participation in voting. Ideally, ballots dropped in the ballot box would of course be counted in the presence of observers. But don’t think anyone harbors any illusions about the possibility of setting up any real observation of the vote count in any significant amount of polling stations. Therefore, the percentage of spoiled ballots is going to remain within the boundaries defined by the Kremlin’s manipulators.

The second option, as well as a modification of it proposed by Eduard Limonov – to officially demand to be stricken from the list of voters – has in mind a need for the manifestation of civic courage. Even if activists from oppositionist organizations have no problem removing their ballots from voting stations (and even burning them afterwards), such actions are hard to realize for many ordinary citizens, especially in small towns and rural areas. And residents of large cities could lose their decisiveness to take their ballots with them if faced with resistance from police or plain-clothes cops stationed to control the actions of voters. Is there really any doubt that the government will use all possible methods of psychological pressure to the fullest extent possible against the average voter if the opposition chose the second option?

Most representatives of the nonsystemic opposition call the first option a priori meaningless since, by today’s official rules, voter turnout does not affect whether or not an election is valid. However, it is entirely unclear why the government, which jealously follows even the slightest changes in the rating of public trust in the tandem and in their “Party of Crooks and Thieves,” would react so emotionlessly to a sharp drop in turnout on voting day. Of course, this would not lead to any immediate changes in the country, and moreover, Churov’s agency would carry out a timely, massive ballot stuffing in whatever amount necessary. But the primary indicator of the success or failure of the actions of the nonsystemic opposition should be not the fictional results announced by the Central Electoral Committee, but the real number of people who refuse to support the occupying regime.

The government has fully excluded the possibility for an alternative to appear within the bounds of the normal political process. The opposition must create a contrast using new technological possibilities and attract a significant number of followers to its ranks. This task will not be resolved by mobilizing all resources in the one day designated by the government as voting day. It is laborious work that requires changes within the very algorithm of the opposition’s activities, in restructuring its system of thought, and in its readiness to develop an acting alternative on every level of government, from federal to municipal. And the first step on this path should be a boycott of the “voting” procedures held out by an illegitimate government.