yabloko & oborona
Recently, most of the things I read about Russian politics are rather depressing, see, e.g., this recent post. Today I read some more interesting, positive news, though.
Apparently, a leadership contest is on its way within Yabloko (Apple, an acronym of Yavlinsky, Boldyrev, and Lukin, its founders (source)), an opposition party somewhere between liberal and social-democratic. The current leader, Yavlinsky, is a very well-known Russian politician, but appears to be completely sidelined in current developments. Thanks to a revision of the electoral law, including an increase in the threshold, Yabloko has no presence in the current Duma anymore, the parliament. He has also always been blocking moves towards merging with Soyuz Pravikh Sil (Union of Rightist Forces), a more conservative-liberal opposition party. Without joining forces, Russian opposition stands no chance of changing the tide! As Oleg Kozlovsky puts it: “in the conditions of today’s Russia, such alliances are perfectly natural: after all, before you can choose among various doctrines, you first need to win the right to choose in the first place” (Kozlovsky 2007). Now, the leader of the youth movement of Yabloko, Ilya Yashin, tries to unseat Yavlinsky as the party leader.
Since 2005, Yashin has also been a member of the Oborona (Defence) movement (read more here), of which Kozlovsky is also a prominent member. The movement has no centralized leadership, but instead a networked structure (source) - I guess not only Islamist terrorists can organise themselves like this. Much along the lines of the remark by Koslovsky, Yashin wants Yabloko to join forces with the other opposition parties: “People are not able to choose between good democrats and bad democrats, (…) we need to create a democratic party that will act as a magnet for everyone with these general values” (source). The fact that Yabloko and SPS are so antagonistic to each other has always puzzled me - perhaps there is hope. Maybe Yavlinsky is right that Yashin is still too immature and too radical, but I think it’s good that these things still exist in Russia, especially when you see reports about the new youth movement to support Putin, Nashi (which even campaigns for faster production of Putin supporters through procreation!), which strongly resembles Soviet’s Komsomol.
This map reminded me of my MA thesis, in which I studied the political geography of the support for Yabloko and SPS. It definitely encourages me to someday update that research, with more recent Duma elections added, and taking into account the data here.
Add comment December 22nd, 2007