Mikhail Lobanov: Why Police Raided My Home

Mikhail Lobanov in August 2021. Photo by Kirill Medvedev

Why did the police raid my home?

The formal reason — as follows from the court ruling and what people from pro-Kremlin media have heard — is a fictitious “connection” between me and ex-State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev. This is a product of the meager imagination of the security forces. I have not interacted with Ponomarev in any way, either in 2022 or in previous years, neither personally, nor through other people.

Why did the authorities have to intimidate me? I have two possible explanations.

The first and most likely explanation is that Moscow City Hall was behind the raid.

The following facts speak in favor of this explanation.

1) PR support. [The Telegram channel] Kremlin Laundress, which published posts containing threats and attempts to denigrate me (including a week before the raid), is a “drain tank” for the mayor’s office. The secretary of the Communist Party City Committee told me about this more than a year ago: they had been watching [the channel] for a long time and had come to this conclusion.

2) There was no investigator present during the raid. The field agents who were on hand, having unenthusiastically asked me two questions at the outset — whether I was connected with Ponomarev, and whether I had delegated [Vladimir] Zalishchak and [Sergei] Tsukasov to some congress — did not return to this topic during the six hours we spent together. But they did spend a great deal of time trying to persuade me that I should not be involved in politics by making threats (while drawing parallels with [Ilya] Yashin and [Yulia] Galyamina) and giving me “friendly” advice.

3) The mayor [of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin] will run for re-election later this year, and his “victory” may further delegitimize the regime. In 2021–2022, my name was inextricably linked with the most successful opposition election campaigns in Moscow. Teams of like-minded people formed around me during both the municipal and the parliamentary elections. By mobilizing the enthusiasm of thousands of dynamic people, we defeated United Russia and corporate candidates. Political spin doctors and administrative resources were powerless against us. By accumulating the support of ordinary people, we achieved greater results than did candidates with exponentially larger campaign coffers.

Yes, our victories were stolen [through rigging] online voting. But even today, unbowed people can together find a way to use the mayor’s re-election campaign to organize themselves and make his “re-election” problematic.

For some reason, the Kremlin’s foreign policy “successes” in 2022 have not had the effect that the people who allocate tens of billions to state propaganda wanted. If the protest-minded segment of the electorate is mobilized in a minimal way, the construction business and ruling class candidate will enjoy only a Pyrrhic victory, one based on flagrant vote rigging.

A second possible explanation is that the raid on my home and my arrest are part of preparations to transfer power to puppet ultra-right revanchists.

In this case, what is happening to me reflects the fear of people with a consistent democratic anti-war stance on the part of officials, siloviki, and the oligarchs who have fused with them. We are trying to develop real trade unions and push the topic of blatant economic inequality onto the agenda.

After the ruling group’s collapse, the far-right revanchists will try to play the card of virtual “angry patriots” and maintain the existing system of domination. If they succeed, there will be a new dictator, increased crackdowns, a new round of spending on “security,” funded by a shrinking budget and, in the medium term, another senseless war.

But I believe that there are many dynamic people in Russian society who will be able to formulate a convincing left-democratic alternative and inspire tens of millions of other people. I look to the future with hope.

Source: Mikhail Lobanov, Facebook, 9 January 2023. Thanks to Simon Pirani for encouraging me to share this piece with my readers. Translated by the Russian Reader, who is much less hopeful about Russia’s future than is Mr. Lobanov. But more power to him!

Navalny’s Musicians

13 musicians not allowed to perform at City Day concert in Moscow due to support for Navalny
The Village
Tasya Elfimova
September 11, 2021

The Federal Protective Service (FSO) did not allow several musicians to perform at a concert in honor of City Day in Moscow due to their alleged support of Alexei Navalny.

Sergei Sobyanin and Vladimir Putin were planning to attend the celebration, so the FSO vetted the lists of performers in advance. The FSO did not admit thirteen people to the performance without explaining the reasons. Dmitry Klyuyev, an employee of the State Academic Chapel Choir, believes that it happened because the musicians were in the leaked databases of Alexei Navalny’s projects or had taken part in protest rallies.

Four employees of the chapel choir, three people from the Svetlanov State Orchestra and six people from the team of directors were removed from the concert.

“The organizers are in shock, no one has explained anything to them,” Klyuyev said.

Source: OVD Info

Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Gudkov, “Aquatic Disco,” a song inspired by Alexei Navalny’s revelations that the blueprints for “Putin’s palace” contained a room labeled as such

Moscow Police Use Leaked Personal Data To Investigate Navalny Supporters
RFE/RL Russian Service
August 18, 2021

Moscow police are using leaked online personal data from projects linked to jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to investigate people who have supported the Kremlin critic.

The OVD Info website said on August 17 that police had visited some 20 individuals who registered for online projects developed by Navalny associates or donated to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and his other projects.

According to OVD Info, police are demanding explanations from the people as to how their names were included in the leaked data related to Navalny’s online projects and why they are involved with him.

In June, a court in Moscow labeled FBK and Navalny’s other projects and groups extremist and banned them. Under Russian law, cooperation with such groups is considered illegal and may lead to criminal prosecution.

Police have not said how they obtained the people’s personal data from Navalny’s websites.

One person, who was not identified, told OVD Info that police asked him to file a legal complaint against Navalny to accuse him of sharing personal data.

Journalist and municipal lawmaker Ilya Azar, whose personal data was among those leaked, wrote on Telegram late on August 17 that police had tried to visit him as well, but he was not at home.

“They talked to [my] neighbors about some personal data leaked on the Internet,” Azar wrote.

One such leak took place in April, when the online campaign called “Freedom to Navalny” was reportedly compromised.

Navalny associates said at the time that a former FBK worker had “stolen” all the personal data of those who registered at the pro-Navalny site.

After that leak, the Moscow [subway] fired dozens of workers whose personal data turned up among the names of Navalny supporters.

Artemy Troitsky: Putin’s Last Autumn? (Song of the Ordinary Man)

Putin’s “Last Autumn”? (Song of the Ordinary Man)
Artemy Troitsky
Echo of Moscow
August 28, 2020

I’m an ordinary guy, not lacking in simplicity.
I’m just like him, I’m just like you.
I don’t see the point in talking to me —
It’s the same as talking to yourself.

The are the opening lines from Mike Naumenko’s “Song of the Ordinary Man.” Mike Naumenko died on August 27, 1991, twenty-nine years ago, an anniversary that many remembered, especially since in recent years Mike’s legacy has been held in high esteem, and rightly so. However, I’m sorry to say I won’t be talking about my late friend this time, but about something else entirely. I recalled Mike’s song because I am a one-hundred-percent “ordinary man” in Mike’s sense of the term, someone who has neither inside info nor insights, nor political science tricks up his sleeve, nor political party experience, and besides I am absolutely indifferent to conspiracy theories. At the same time, I am quite interested in what is happening in Russia, and I want to get to the bottom of it without resorting to any bells and whistles except for publicly available information and common sense.

For many months, the popular expert and lonely nightingale known as Valery Solovey has been trying to persuade his audience, weary with uncertainty, that this autumn 1) mass protests of unprecedented power will kick off; 2) the authorities will most likely be unable to cope with this “turbulence,” especially since 3) President Putin, due to “force majeure” circumstances, will hardly be able to be involved in this process and generally has been fading away; 4) although Putin has appointed a successor, there is little chance that the Kremlin’s scenario will be implemented; 5) consequently, we will probably be “living in a different country” by 2022. Needless to say, this all appears quite appetizing (to a person with my anarcho-libertarian tastes).

Because I live abroad permanently, I did not attend Solovey’s private lectures. I was too bashful to shout “Give me the details!” over the phone, so I didn’t think it possible to get into a debate or, on the contrary, celebrate our country’s imminent deliverance from the hated regime. But another dear “talker and troublemaker,” Gennady Gudkov, has just made a similar forecast (in an article entitled “Putin is leaving: the transition has already begun”). Gudkov is super-experienced: he’s an KGB officer, a former MP, and a prominent opposition figure. At the same time, like the “ordinary man” that I am, Gudkov does not rely on secret data from the backstreets of the deep state, instead making his conclusions based on news bulletins. And his conclusions, in short, are that Putin is going to leave the Kremlin, either due to unbearably bad health, or because he is just very tired. Accordingly, the people of Russia are going to be transported from one reality to another like a passenger changing planes.

This, unfortunately, is what I would like to argue with.

First of all, I don’t enjoy regularly watching Putin on screen, but from the bits and pieces I have come across, I wouldn’t conclude that he has physically and/or mentally noticeably thrown in the towel. Sixty-eight is a laid-back age: I am sixty-five, say, but I don’t do sports and fitness, I’m not under the care of doctors, I don’t inject Botox and stem cells, I don’t deny myself any “harmful excesses” (except smoking tobacco), and I feel great. And since when did a ruler’s feeble state affect anything in Russia? Let’s remember dear old Leonid Brezhnev, who could barely move his tongue, the zombie-like Chernenko, and late-period Yeltsin. Secondly, it is absolutely impossible that Putin would voluntarily deign to vacate the throne due to fatigue or anything else. He’s only going out on a gun carriage. In my opinion, it is quite clear: this is Lukashenko’s scenario, not F****ace’s. And we should note that the Reset One doesn’t even have Consanguineous Kolenka to fall back on, while iPhone Boy, the Buddhist, and the Reindeer Herder are . . . Even arguing this point is boring.

Nikolai “Kolenka” Lukashenko (far left) and his father, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, at a meeting “in the situation room of Independence Palace” on August 23, 2020. Screenshot from the Telegram channel Pul Pervogo. Courtesy of Mediazona Belarus

Nor do I think that the predictions of mighty grassroots turbulence are more realistic. Why should I? Russians have learned to put up with poverty, and empty store shelves, and “elections,” and the riot police. Russians who haven’t learned to put with these things have left the country and will continue to leave it: as many who can get out will get out as soon as the quarantine is lifted. What happened on Maidan and is happening in Belarus is regarded by the majority of the Russian populace as a nightmare, while the minority sees it as a miracle, an impossible miracle. The only obvious reaction to the events in Belarus has been on the darned social networks. In tiny Lithuania, fifty thousand people turned out for a rally of solidarity with the rebellious people of Belarus; in Tallinn, two or three thousand people lined up in a chain; in Moscow, a couple of hundred young people protested outside the Belarusian embassy on Maroseyka, most of them Belarusian nationals. And what about the Russian city of Khabarovsk? Everyone is, like, amazed at the resilience of the protesters (for the time being it’s as if they’re talking to a brick wall), but only solo picketers come out in support of them in other parts of Russia. Or have I fallen behind the times in my own little corner of Europe, and it’s just the good weather that is to blame for everything? And in the autumn Russians are going to cut loose and go bonkers?

This is how Mike’s song ends:

If you ask me what the moral is,
I will turn my gaze into the misty distance
And I’ll tell you: I’m sorry,
But, by God, I don’t know what the moral is.
We live the way we lived before,
And we’ll live that way until we die,
And if we live like this,
That means that’s how we should live!

Mike always spat out the last line with fury. I don’t know whether this was the desperate rage of a stoic or the impotent rage of a fatalist . . . Let’s hope, in any case, that I’m wrong.

Artemy Troitsky is a well-known Russian journalist and musical critic. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Thanks to TL, VL, NK, and AR for helping me to identify the Belarusian and Russian supervillains mentioned at the end of the fifth paragraph. Translated by the Russian Reader

In the Land of Great Achievements

“Citizens! Given our level of indifference, this side of life is the most dangerous!”

Sergei Medvedev
Facebook
March 14, 2020

The cowardly “recommendations” of [Moscow Mayor Sergei] Sobyanin and the Defense Ministry regarding “voluntary attendance” of schools and universities instead of closing them altogether is a very bad sign. It means the authorities fear panic more than the virus itself and have chosen a cowardly hybrid strategy for evading responsibility. “Parents in this case know better,” it says in Sobyanin’s decree. Hang on a minute! This means parents will decide whether their children become potential carriers of the virus, not doctors or the federal epidemic headquarters. This is not just absurd, it is criminal. Just as you cannot be a little bit pregnant, you cannot declare a partial, optional quarantine. Either there is a quarantine or there isn’t one. Even one person who is not quarantined upsets the whole system.

It seems the authorities are torn between the growing need for a full quarantine (as the avalanche of news from abroad can no longer be hidden) and the impossibility of taking this step. The impossibility, as it seems to me, is purely technical: Russia simply does not have the level of governmental and public organization, the kind of screening, testing, equipment, discipline, and strict enforcement of the law that we have seen in China and, in part, in Italy. Can you imagine the Moscow subway being closed? It would be a disaster not just for the city but for the country: if this megalopolis of twenty million people ground to a halt, it would be like cardiac arrest for the whole country. And secondly, for purely political reasons you cannot declare a state of emergency before April 22 [the scheduled date of a nationwide “referendum” on proposed changes to the Russian constitution] and May 9 [the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in WWII]. They must be marked in the pompous atmosphere of national holidays, not in the post-apocalyptic trappings of Wuhan, dressed in hazmat suits, getting doused with chlorhexidine.

Therefore there will be no quarantine, only cowardly half-measures like voluntary school attendance, “recommendations” for cutting down on public events (when the authorities want to ban a protest rally, they ban it, with no ifs, ands or buts), the partial restrictions on air travel (just take the ridiculous ban on flights to Europe, but not to the UK, dear to the hearts of oligarchs and members of parliament because they have children, families, and houses there), and so forth. Excuse the pun, but the regime has washed its hands of the problem and told the population that it is to up to the drowning to save themselves. You decide how to protect yourselves, and if something happens, well, we gave you “recommendations,” so we’re off the hook.

Meanwhile, the populace has been eating up tall tales about “just another flu,” reposting memes about more people dying every year from mosquito bites, shaming “alarmists” and “hysterics,” and leading a carefree life. It’s the typical infantile reaction of an unfree, patriarchal, closed society, which denies threats, displaces fear, and is ostentatiously careless.

Meanwhile, the virus has been here for a long time already, and hardly anyone believes the ridiculous figures of 59 people infected in a country of 146 million that is open on all sides. (Before the quarantine went into effect in China, the Chinese freely walked and drove back and forth over the Amur River in Russia’s Far East, while in European Russia, tens of thousands of our compatriots traveled to and from the most infected regions of Europe throughout February and March.) The longer this goes on, the more ridiculous the official figures will be, but the real figures will be ferreted away in overall mortality statistics for the elderly, among figures for “seasonal flu” and “community-acquired pneumonia,” while death certificates will contain phrases like “acute heart failure,” which is what they also write when someone is tortured to death. Just try and object: heart failure really did occur, and facts don’t lie!

I remember the terrible summer of 2010, when there was a heat wave, and the forests were on fire. Moscow swam in a scalding smog, and up to 40,000 old people died, according to unofficial estimates. Among them was my 83-year-old father. When the policeman came, wiping the sweat from his face, to a draw up the death report, he lowered his voice and told me that his precinct alone had been processing hundreds of people day, and that there were tens of thousands of such people citywide. However, there were no statistics on heatwave-induced deaths: the whole thing was disappeared into the usual causes of death for old people.

So, I’m afraid we will remain in the mode of “voluntary attendance,” of voluntary quarantines and voluntary mortality, a regime in which even getting diagnosed will be voluntary because we are the freest country in the world! The regime’s evasion of responsibility, the mighty smokescreen concealing the epidemic’s true scale, and the habitual carelessness of the populace (aggravated by the atomization of Russian society, its low levels of social capital, the absence of trust, discipline, and social solidarity, and the Gulag principle of “you die today, I die tomorrow”) will all boomerang back on us. Yes, the epidemic will reach its natural limits by summer, and maybe Merkel is right that sixty to seventy percent of the population will be infected, and many of these people will not even suspect they are sick. At the same time, however, not only will the [Russian] constitution and Putin’s [previous] terms [as president] be nullified, but so will many lives that could have been saved if not for the things mentioned above. But when did human lives ever count for anything in the land of great achievements?

Sergei Medvedev teaches at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Thanks to Elena Zaharova for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Грандиозный заряд. Мы все умрем! pic.twitter.com/t4Ek5rhbQ6

— Fedor Pogorelov (@fpogo23) March 14, 2020

Fedor Pogorelov: “A grand charge. We’re all going to die!” Footage of Zenit fans chanting “We’re all going to die” on March 14 at Gazprom Arena Petersburg.

Thousands of Zenit Fans Chant “We’re All Going to Die” at Match
Radio Svoboda
March 15, 2020

More than 30,000 fans attended Saturday’s match in St. Petersburg between Zenit and Ural in the Russian football championship. It was one of the last mass events in the city before restrictions were imposed due to the coronavirus infection. The restrictive measures come into force on March 16.

Fans of the Petersburg club chanted “We’re all going to die” several times.

They also hung up a banner reading “We’re all sick with football and will die for Zenit.” It is reported that the fans had their temperature checked. Zenit won the match with a score of 7-1.

Despite the threat of the coronavirus, the Russian Football League did not cancel matches this weekend. However, the possibility of taking a pause in the championship has been discussed. All the major European leagues have already announced a break, and play in the Champions League and the Europa League has also been suspended. On March 17, UEFA will discuss whether to postpone the European championship until next years.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Even Fascist Thugs Deserve Good Pay

d980753722fa6fe87bc7d8f46c7b5f01 Russian National Guard troops. Photo courtesy of Moskva News Agency and the Moscow Times

Mishustin Introduces Bonus Pay for Security Forces in Moscow and Petersburg Working Protest Rallies
Mediazona
January 24, 2020

According to the government’s website, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has introduced bonus pay for regular police and National Guard officers in Moscow, Moscow Region, Petersburg, and Leningrad Region who perform “complicated tasks.”

The bonus would be as much as 100% of the monthly salary. It would be paid to Interior Ministry officers “involved in maintaining public order,” and National Guard soldiers “involved in providing law enforcement and ensuring public safety during mass events.”

The two government decrees introducing the bonus did not clarify what was meant by “complicated tasks.”

In October, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin thanked the security forces officers who worked last summer’s protest rallies. He said they had “ensured order on the streets of Moscow” and not let rally organizers “bring events to a critical point.”

Sobyanin also called the July 27 rally a “pre-planned, well-organized riot,” claiming that protesters had forced police to use force. Last summer, the mayor said the actions of the security forces, who brutally detained demonstrators, were “completely appropriate.”

The Moscow police later decided to sue the opposition for 10.2 million rubles for having to work the protest rallies. A court also ordered them to pay the National Guard, whose soldiers were involved in policing the summer protests, 2.3 million rubles after the Moscow prosecutor’s office filed suit on their behalf.

Thanks to Ksenia Astafiyeva and Mediazona for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. Please read my previous posts on the 2019 Russian regional elections and the fallout from them, including the ongoing crackdowns against opposition politicians and rank-and-file protesters.

Stanislava Novgorodtseva: Portraits of Angry Muscovites

“The Regime Has No Feedback from the Populace”: What Are People Saying Who Support the Candidates Barred from the Moscow City Duma Elections?
Photographer Stanislava Novgorodtseva took photos of angry Muscovites, trying to find out what it was they wanted
July 27, 2019

3a28b76117eb6539c85008b98b8c8159 Viktor, 21, student and programmer. “Ideally, I would like to see all the candidates who were illegally barred put on the ballot and the Moscow City Duma dissolved, respectively. That would make sense to all of us.”

mikhail Mikhail, 23, web developer. “I came here to support Ilya Yashin, a candidate in Borough No. 45, which includes the Krasnoselsky and Meshchansky Districts. He is currently detained by the police. My big hope is that at least one election in this country is legitimate.”

vadim Vadim, 61, retired doctor. “I wanted to hear the barred candidates speak and support them, and defend our rights, which have been violated. A criminal offense has been committed and we must get to the bottom of it.”

ilya Ilya, 21, artist. “First of all, I would like to stop the lawlessness directed at the populace, the continuing poverty, arrests, and prison sentences. We need to see justice done and hold fair elections so the so-called government stops pushing us around. Because a country is not a bunch of people but a nation.”

klara Klara, 75, retired engineer and metallurgist. “We came specially to defend our candidate, Yulia Galyamina. She is a decent person, she lectures at two universities. What were the police’s grounds for searching her home? A huge number of people have supported her, but she has been barred from running.”

marina Marina, 56, psychology lecturer. “We basically cannot change anything at the moment. We are merely showing them we exist because it is impossible to change anything now. But everything will change after a while. When they see we are here, they take us into account.”

Yulia, 42, chief accountant. “I am here to get the candidates who met the legal requirements onto the ballot. We want to see an end to the manipulations, violations, and planting of drugs on people. We just want the laws to be obeyed. I want to be able to go to court and defend my rights.”

Andrei, 43, technical consultant. “It is the only thing left to us: we cannot do anything else. If we stay at home and ‘strike,’ we could die and no one would care. People have to take to the streets around the world. Otherwise, if you are not seen you are not heard. The prosecutor’s offices, courts, and police do not do their jobs. All the state agencies send formal replies or do not respond at all when you complain to them.”

Vera, 56, oil geologist. “We have a problem with infill construction, but our candidate, Elena Rusakova, has been barred from running. We are absolutely certain the signatures [on the petitions supporting Rusakov’s candidacy], are genuine: we signed them ourselves and helped her collect them. We have come to voice our protest.”

Natalya, 62, manager. “We lived in a nice green neighborhood. I was apolitical, but suddenly we were surrounded by construction sites, fences, sidewalks, and paving stones. They have been expropriating green spaces and cutting down trees. Candidates willing to fight against this are barred from holding political office. My mom is 94 years old. She survived the Siege of Leningrad. She does not leave the house anymore, but she told me I definitely had to come to this rally. Otherwise, she said, my children would live in a police state.”

Alexander, 44, activist: “I filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights because my building has slated for [Moscow Mayor Sobyanin’s massive residential building] renovation. That is one of the reasons I came. But Sobyanin and his stooges in the Moscow City Duma are bad guys not only because of the renovation program. They have been robbing and disfiguring the city. We came out to show the authorities what we think, although we have been accused of wanting violent regime change. This is not true.”

Anatoly, 48, programmer: “I came to the rally as part of a social experiment. I am not much interested in showdowns over who gets on the city council. I have more grudges against the current regime than everyone else here combined, but people are fighting for cosmetic changes. Even if [independent] candidates get on the ballot, I don’t believe improvements will follow. The regime has no feedback from the populace, but I don’t think protest rallies can solve the problem.”

Translated by the Russian Reader

All Roads Lead to Moscow?

674 versts from moscow.jpg “22 versts to Tsarskoye Selo. 673 versts to Moscow.” An 18th-century milepost in Petersburg. Photo by the Russian Reader

Moscow Trumps Russia: How Urban Renewal Has Thrown Society Backwards
Combating Russia’s “Maidan” Has Shaped the Moscow Style of Governance
Maxim Trudolyubov
Republic
November 29, 2018

The events of 2011–2014—protests against rigged elections in Russia, revolutions and civil wars in the Arab world, and the EuroMaidan in Kyiv—have had a profound effect on the discussion of what constitutes desirable social change, politicizing the debate. Society and state in Russia have each reached their own conclusions.

The attitude to the steps needed to change state and society for the better has taken different shapes in the grassroots and within the elite. The grassroots have been disillusioned and disenchanted, while the elite has identified a threat. The liberal community’s heightened interest in institutional reforms in Georgia in the noughties and the prospects for similar reforms in post-revolutionary Ukraine in the aftermath of 2014 has turned the Kremlin’s attitude towards them from mistrust to outright rejection.

Talk about how make the state work for society rather than for the elite, about what a state that would be focused on ordinary citizens might be like, quietly came to naught, yielding to talk of Russian political spinning techniques, China’s big data state, urbanism, and comfortable urban environments. In other words, the talk turned to the tools the state had at its disposal rather than to the meaningful questions asked by the general public.

Sidelining Institutions
Russia is still a place where the rules for elections change from one election to the next, laws are written as if they were political lampoons, the conditions of doing business are as unpredictable as the weather, and no one can quickly tell you what the right of private property means. You cannot say the right does not exist, but nor can you say it does exist. In 2018, the Kremlin is even personally involved in permitting and banning pop music concerts.

It is hard to say how the Kremlin measures stability in Russia, but apparently it believes the level of stability is still high. Nearly all the regional elections went as planned. Putin’s approval rating is still above fifty percent. The oligarchs are obedient. Everything is cool. But stability of the rule of law, and the rules of the game generally, are much more important in the long run than approval ratings and managed elections. As it has pursued official so-called stability, the Kremlin has in recent years continued its demolition of institutions and the rules of the game, the things that make long-term relations in society possible, meaning that the Kremlin has tried to score short-term victories by sacrificing a stable, certain future.

Stable institutions, such as protection of property rights, enforceability of contracts, and the rules of the game, would seemingly benefit the Russian elite itself. The Kremlin publicly calls for the repatriation of Russian capital, but it is hard to believe in its sincerty. How can money be repatriated when the rulers themselves (who also often double as capitalist moguls) are always busy redrafting the laws and regulations? It is simply impossible to make plans under this regime, and this applies to the people running the regime.

Fortifying the regime in the face of a possible homegrown “Maidan” has, in fact, sidelined and archaized institutions. This is not entirely accurate, however. Simply holding identical “elections” and tightening the screws would be too negative a program. Moscow also has a positive program. It does not involve internal structural transformations, but the top-down imposition of a new “civilizational” lifestyle. In reality, this new lifestyle is rife with restrictions on movement, freedom of speech, and even freedom of music. The city of Moscow is a successful example of the new approach, which is simultaneously an old approach because it is a traditional Muscovite approach.

The Politics of Municipal Improvement
In Moscow, municipal improvement is a rejoinder in the debate about institutional change. By repairing roads, constructing a new transit system, and achieving significant improvements in municipal beautification projects and the provision of amenities, which are often regarded positively by their users, the inhabitants of Moscow, the city has ultimately been tackling several problems at the same time. On the one hand, it tackled economic problems by employing Moscow’s huge construction sector at a time when the market was saturated and property values (a considerable source of the Russian elite’s wealth) threatened to collapse. It tackled political problems: the regime had to be strengthened. Recalling its experiment with the 2013 mayoral election, Moscow rejected even competition for show when the 2018 mayoral election rolled around. Candidates who could compete with Mayor Sergei Sobyanin in terms of media interest, if not in political terms, were kept off the ballot.

The city also tackled civic problems. Moscow has built new public spaces, whose architecture and landscaping encourages people to spend more time outside and in each other’s company. Meanwhile, the federal government has passed laws and regulations that have restricted the ways these beautiful spaces can be used by the public. It was once enough to notify the authorities of a protest rally, but now they must issue permits for such events. The powers of law enforcement agencies have been beefed up. Consequently, using these public spaces for their intended purpose, as venues for spontaneous discussions of politics and life, has been rendered nearly impossible. Whether this was the plan or not, the upshot has been that one arm of the state has emancipated and complicated public space while another arm of the state has restricted people’s ability to move freely around in public space, thus institutionally archaizing public life.

Zaryadye14 Zaryadye Park in Moscow, opened in 2017. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Most people get their information about Moscow from the municipal government. One has to look long and hard for independent perspectives. Moscow city hall has the Active Citizen social network and numerous local news media outlets in its pocket, which mirror each other, generating a constant atmosphere of approval. The Moscow press operates like the laugh track on TV sitcoms. Viewers realize it is a sound effect, but they laugh and applaud anyway. While urban renewal proceeds apace, the news media are impoverished.

Muscovites enjoy high-quality municipal services. Sometimes, the services are of such a high quality that they anticipate people’s needs, demonstrating city hall’s technocratic sophistication. Muscovites, who used to be dissatisfied subjects, have been transformed into happy clients while bypassing the stage of citizenship and grassroots civic involvement. The effect is the same. Urban renewal simplifies and archaizes civic behavior.

Moscow’s urban renewal program was meant not only to improve municipal services and show foreign tourists the beauty of the Russian capital but also to supply an alternative to grassroots activism aimed at the changing the rules of the game. The idea was to prove everything could also be done from the top down, and everyone would be happy. New public spaces could be fashioned, but so too could new laws that would make certain uses of them illegal, and everyone would be happy. While pursuing a program of urban renewal, you could also produce a rigidly authoritarian political regime, and everyone would be happy.

The conversation about social transformation in Russia has been conducted not only with word but also with physical actions as incarnated in bricks, stones, and tiles. Moscow’s parks, streets, and squares have been used as venues for modernizing urban space while strengthening the authoritarian civic order.

Two Poles: Moscow and the Maritime Territory
Providing friendly, efficient services and amenities for the people of Moscow is a considerable, genuine achievement, but it establishes a clear decision-making hierarchy in which ordinary people occupy the bottom rungs. Now the city has been giving them gifts that would be stupid and practically impossible to refuse, but later people will have to swallow something less desirable than wide sidewalks and convenient bus service.

Moscow has made a point of the putting social rights of its residents above their individual rights. The beautification of the city and the housing renovation program (i.e., the wholesale demolition of five-storey Soviet blocks of flats and the construction of new residential buildings) have proven that individual property rights are insignificant. The vast majority (around ninety percent) of the residents of the old five-storey houses predictably and understandably decided to exercise their right to more modern living space rather than their right to private property. The proprietors of the kiosks and shopping pavilions, demolished by the Sobyanin administration, tried to defend their rights in different ways. They challenged the city’s demolition order in the courts. They agreed to demolish their pavilions themselves in exchange for minimal compensation. They filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights. Moscow, however, fully implemented its plan to rid its streets of the ugly, “uncivilized” shops on schedule.

Sobyanin’s Moscow is the Kremlin’s most successful political project, and it would be odd not to try and transfer this know-how to the whole of Russia. The Comfortable Urban Environment program is already underway. Federal authorities have allocated 85 billion rubles [approx. $1.3 billion] over three years (less than was spent on Moscow alone), and the regions have to match these funds.

But these efforts will be mere window dressing if each of the regional capitals fails to turn itself into “Moscow” in the civic sense, into a city of satisfied consumers who never think hard about where their “comfortable environment” comes from, a place where the trains run on time, but the lives and property of its people are administered by officials guided by constantly changing rules, rules only they know.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, it would be ideal to turn every major Russian city into a “Moscow.” But how do you reproduce Moscow? Moscow attracts over half the total flow of migration within Russia. Moscow is a region that grows due to an overabundance of people, resources, and tax revenues. Obviously, officials are betting on the fact that the capital of each economic macro-region will become a miniature Moscow, i.e., it will transform the dissatisfied residents of the outlands into satisfied users of what the new, improved capitals will have to offer. This, by the way, wholly jibes with Alexei Kudrin’s idea that Russia should focus on developing twenty urban agglomerations, and with the notion that there are millions of “superfluous” people scattered around the country.

This plan for concentrating Russia’s population in particular metropolitan areas, implemented naturally and spurred by the authorities, could be described as the desire to replace Russia with Moscow, meaning with a certain number of cities that reprise Moscow’s civic functions and could superficially come to resemble Moscow as well. The city halls of the selected major cities renovate their public spaces while the federal authorities draft laws on how to use these spaces in a civilized way.

The question of the plan’s effectiveness boils down to the independence and individual “modernization” of Russians. Everyone has their own individual, professional, and social benchmarks, just as they have their own means of communication. Moscow can continue seeing itself as the sole source of enlightenment and progress, but Russia is home to many economically and civically dynamic people capable of thinking for themselves.

A recent reminder of this has been the unwillingness of people in the Maritime Territory, Khabarovsk Territory, and other regions to behave at the polls according to the schemes imposed by Moscow. The Maritime Territory, where the rigged elections model will be tested again, symbolizes a different political realm, a place that is not Moscow, an independent region with a propensity for grassroots economic activity. On one pole is Moscow with its civilizational approach to the rest of the country; on the other is the country itself, with its own spontaneous rules. Top-down Moscow-style modernization still has competitors nowadays.

Maxim Trudolyubov is a columnist for Vedomosti and The New York Times International Edition and an editor at InLiberty. Translated by the Russian Reader

Migrant Worker Blues

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Central Asian migrant workers queuing outside the Russian Interior Ministry’s work permit application center on Red Textile Worker Street in St. Petersburg. Photo by the Russian Reader

Should Everyone Disappear into the Shadows? What the Fee Increase for Migrant Worker Permits Entails
Yekaterina Ivashchenko
Fergana News
November 29, 2018

The license [in Russian, patent] system for foreign nationals seeking permission to work in Russia was introduced in 2015. The cost of a work permit has varied from one region to the next. In Moscow, for example, it initially cost 4,000 rubles a month. In 2016, the price rose by 5% to 4,200 rubles, and in 2018, it rose by 7% to 4,500 rubles.

It is absolutely necessary to have a work permit. Without it, a migrant worker faces up to 7,000 rubles in fines, expulsion from Russia, and a ban on entering the country for a period of three to ten years. Employers who hire employees without work permits are punishable by fines, and their operations can be suspended for up to ninety days.

Something important happened on November 21, 2018. The Moscow City Duma approved a law bill increasing the cost of a work permit in Moscow. In 2019, it will rise by 500 rubles (11%) and cost 5,000 rubles a month (approx. $75).

The next day, November 22, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the city’s revenues from legal migrant workers had been growing and would exceed 16 billion rubles ($241 million) by year’s end.

“By paying such a high price for permits, migrant workers have come to occupy a fair position vis-à-vis Russian nationals [rossiyane] working in Moscow, because in the past they paid nothing at all, and, of course, it was profitable to employ them, but the situation has changed today,” said the mayor.

On January 1, 2019, the cost of a license for migrant workers seeking employment in Moscow Region will increase by 450 rubles. The Moscow Region work permit, which cost 4,300 rubles ($64.60) in 2018, will cost 4,750 rubles ($71.50) per month in 2019.

Taras Yefimov, chair of the Moscow Regional Duma’s budget, finance and tax committee, said the measure would enrich the region’s coffers by around one billion rubles [approx. $15 million]. In 2018, Moscow Region made six billion rubles [approx. $90.5 million] on migrant work permits.

St. Petersburg has decided to raise the price of the work permit from 3,500 to 3,800 rubles a month. City officials noted the decision was made because foreign nationals had begun earning considerably more money.

Filling out the forms for extending a work permit. Photo courtesy of Fmskam.ru and Fergana News

Wages Are Not Growing
Svetlana Salamova, director of Migranto.ru, a website for migrant workers looking for jobs and employers seeking to hire migrant workers, has not seen the real growth in the wages of migrant workers that officials have cited.

“The wages of foreign nationals who are employed on the basis of work permits has remained at the level of 29,000 rubles to 35,000 rubles [$435–$525] a month. Maybe the Moscow authorities are focused on high-profile specialists who make 168,000 rubles a month officially?” Salamova sarcastically wondered.

Salamova has noticed wage increases only among Kyrgyz nationals. After Kyrgyzstan joined the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), employers offered them 40,000 to 45,000 rubles a month.

“But they work without permits. (EAEU nationals can work in Russia without permits as long as they have an employment contract — Fergana News.) Besides, many Kyrgyzstanis agree to low wages of 19,000 to 20,000 rubles a month. They work part time in several places at once, and so ultimately they make a decent amount of money,” explained Salamova.

Salamova did not discount the possibility that fees for work permits have been raised in light of the fact that employers must index wages for inflation as of the new year. Perhaps the authorities decided to increase the cost of permits for foreign national because they took into account this indexation of wages on the Moscow job market.

Immigration center in Moscow. Photo courtesy of Mos.ru and Fergana News

But what do migrant workers themselves have to say about it?

“Since 2015, the fee for the work permit has increased three times, but I have not even once received a raise. We spend little as it is: 4,500 rubles for the permit, plus the fee for residence registration; 6,000 rubles on rent, 5,000 on groceries, 2,000 on transportation. I sometimes buy clothes and medicines, and there are unforeseen expenses, like when my phone stops working. So, I have only 10,000 rubles left over from my monthly salary of 35,000 rubles. The latest 500-ruble increase will definitely affect my expenses. 6,000 rubles a year is a lot of money: an average family in Tajikistan could live for a month on that amount. It means my relatives back home will have to get by one month of the year without receiving a remittance from me,” said Magomed, who comes from Khujand, Tajikistan’s second-largest city.

Pushed into the Gray Economy
In June 2017, Mayor Sobyanin said the problem of illegal migrant workers in Moscow had been solved and had ceased to be a source of concern for Muscovites. Most migrant workers were employed legally and duly paid their taxes.

Experts believe the increase in the price of the work permit could lead to a rise in the number of foreign workers who decide not to pay taxes.

“The cost of the work permit will increase by 11%. An extra 6,000 rubles a year might not seem like a huge amount of money. But for migrant workers, who earn this money literally with their blood, living far from their families, and undergoing numerous hardships and risks, this is not a small amount at all: the overall cost of a permit for a year will be 60,000 rubles or $900. Some migrant workers will thus decide to go off the books. Consequently, Moscow’s budget is unlikely to get a huge boost, but the city will be supporting a policy of pushing migrant workers into the gray economy with all the attendant social consequences,” says Professor Sergey Abashin.

“It is odd that Moscow MPs say we will start earning more. Every migrant worker pays around 12,000 rubles to get a work permit in the first place. Then every month he pays for the work permit and his residence registration, he pays the rent, and he buys groceries. He even has to pay bribes to the police. People are taking money from us at every turn. What will we have left to send home?” said Muhammad, who is originally from Samarkand.

Batyrzhon Shermuhammad, a lawyer and founder of the website Migrant, also sees no signs of a wage increase.

“If you look at the want ads, you will see that the wages of migrant workers who are employed on the basis of work permits range from 25,000 rubles to 35,000 rubles a month. We monitor the job market, and no one mentions anything about a salary of 40,000 rubles a month. On the contrary, the economic crisis in Russia has been deepening. There is inflation, and the dollar/ruble exchange rate has been rising, which affects the remittances sent by migrant workers,” Shermuhammad said.

The latest increase in the cost of the work permit will force migrant workers to retreat into the shadows, he argues.

“One could understand the increase if the economic situation had improved, but the trends are negative: the prices in shops have increased, and the dollar has become more expensive vis-à-vis the ruble. People have no money, and so they have been having problems with residence registrations. Also, by law you cannot be late paying for your work permit even by a day. If a migrant worker is paid his wages late, he cannot pay the fee for his work permit, and he has no way of shelling out approximately 12,000 rubles to have a new work permit drawn up. While introduction of the work permit system brought migrant workers out of the shadows, the subsequent tightening of immigration laws and the increase in their expenses has been leaving migrant workers with fewer chances to stay legal, even if they would want to,” Shermuhammad said.

Migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan. Photo courtesy of Kloop.kg and Fergana News

“Even though I make good money, a 6,000-ruble increase in the price of the work permit is a serious expense, and I have huge expenses aside from the permit. My mother, sister, and I pay 33,000 rubles a month for a place to live. That is 11,000 rubles per person, plus utilities. In addition, I have to pay the fees for my studies twice a year: that is another 100,000 rubles each time. We don’t spend a lot on food, no more than 10,000 rubles per person a month. I also spend money on transportation, clothes, and gifts, and I spend 5,000 to 7,000 rubles a month for English lessons. Lately, we have not been sending a lot of money home, $200 to $300 per month at most. Mom and I used to be able to save money, but in the last six months our expenses have skyrocketed, and after the new year they will increase even more due to the work permit. Basically, the increase in the work permit fee means I won’t be able to pay for English lessons for a month,” said Ilkhom, who hails from Tashkent.

“For migrant workers, 500 rubles is a mobile phone connection for a month,” said human rights active Karimjon Yorov. “It is the cost of a week’s worth of subway trips. It is two lunches, finally. For families with children, it means being able to buy school supplies or pay for school lunches. In short, 500 rubles is a lot of money.”

Yorov argues that raising the cost of the work permit will make migrant workers not want to pay for it, meaning that revenues to Moscow’s coffers will actually decrease.

“Migrant workers will prefer to work without a permit and cross the border every three months. Currently, a trip to the border and back (i.e., exit and re-entry) costs 8,000 rubles in total, while the cost of a work permit for three months is 13,500 rubles, meaning they save 5,500 rubles by exiting Russia and re-entering it. This comes to 22,000 rubles, plus 12,000 rubles for the initial paperwork. The total is 34,000 rubles, which is the same as the cost of round-trip plane ticket to Uzbekistan. When you do the maths, it makes more financial sense for migrant workers to be off the books. The authorities themselves are forcing migrant workers underground, especially now that the laws on immigration registration have been tightened. Whether you get a work permit or not, if you do not live at the address where you are registered, you will be deported. Migrant workers will emerge from the underground only when the law on immigration registration has been abolished,” Yorov concluded.

Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

“Anti-Americanism”

There are eleven Russian words in this poster for the April 29 St. Petersburg Craft Event at Art Play SPb, and twenty-one English words. Photo by the Russian Reader

Oh, how they hate the United States!

My boon companion was just chatting with a neighbor lady, a woman who has lived in our building her whole life and makes the best salt pickles I have ever tasted.

As it happens, our neighbor is friendly with a member of our municipal district council.

If you follow the news from Russia closely, you would know that the beleaguered united opposition, led by Dmitry Gudkov, made significant inroads in Moscow’s municipal district councils during the last elections to these entities. One of the people thus elected, the young, well-known liberal politician Ilya Yashin, has now announced plans to challenge the incumbent, Sergei Sobyanin, during the next Moscow mayoral election.

In reality, municipal district councils are the lowest rung on the political totem poll in Russia. They have very little power and are perpetually too underfunded to do the work they are supposed to do.

However, since Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, is power hungry and paranoid, they try and stack the lowly municipal district councils with their own members.

God knows what could happen otherwise.

The municipal district council member with whom our neighbor is friendly is one such United Russia Party placeholder.

“And she’s a real louse,” my boon companion would add.

The councilwoman recently got back from a trip to the United States. It turns out her daughter and son-in-law have lived there for a long time. They have a big, beautiful house in Silicon Valley.

The councilwoman told all this to our neighbor lady, explaining how much she had enjoyed the trip and how much she liked the United States.

“Why did she have to tell ME this?” the neighbor lady asked my boon companion, “Why couldn’t she have told someone else?”

Remember this little story the next time you see Foreign Minister Lavrov or President Putin or the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations or Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova huffing and puffing and blowing America’s house down.

Everything they say is meant for domestic consumption only. They don’t really hate the United States. They just need a Big Enemy to occupy the minds of the Russian people, to distract them from their own more serious crimes and misdemeanors.

The con seems to be working so far. // TRR

Our humble municipal district newspaper, as published by our municipal district council. This is the one of two spots in our municipal where I know one can read it. Maybe there are more, but otherwise the newspaper is not distributed to the municipal districts’s residents, because the less they know about our municipal district’s business, the better, I guess. Photo by the Russian Reader

We’re Celebrating the 1917 Revolution by Staging a Counterrevolution

Overview of the Moscow renovation program’s showroom, opened yesterday, July 6, 2017, by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Photo courtesy of Sergei Vedyashkin/Moskva News Agency & Meduza

Authorities Plan to Divide Moscow into Private and Public Areas
Anna Trunina
RBC
June 26, 2017

Moscow’s renovation program provides for the complete redevelopment of residential building courtyards. The mayor’s office argues that these spaces should not be passages, so for the first they will delineated into private [privatnye] and public spaces.

By autumn, the Moscow authorities expect to adopt new regional urban planning norms that will divide residential districts into private and public areas for the first time. The mayor’s office has proposed rejecting the idea of communicating courtywards, Marat Khusnullin, Moscow’s deputy mayor for urban policy and construction, said in an “interview” published on the mayor’s official website.

According to Khusnullin, the renovation program not only consists in updating the city’s housing stock but also in creating a “full-fledged integrated urban environment,” in redeveloping and landscape the courtyards.

“The concrete jungles, as Moscow’s bedroom communities were rightly dubbed, were erected over decades. Now they must become a thing of the past,” Khusnullin argues.

According to preliminary calculations by the authorities, says Khusnullin, after neighborhoods are replanned and space is freed up by the demolition of five-story houses in Moscow, the number of parking spots will double. The project for public spaces will not be uniform, but will be unique in each of Moscow’s districts. The standards of comfort and improvement will be identical, however.

The space in the renovated neighborhoods, Khusnullin notes, will be divided into residential and public areas.

“For example, when they go into their courtywards, residents will enter a zone of a peace and comfort where there will be minimum of strangers and cars. Naturally, the entrances to the shops on the first floors will be located on the streetside. There will be no walk-through yards [prokhodnye dvory]. We will provide convenient pedestrian walkways from residential buildings to subway stations and bus stops, so that residents won’t have to blaze their own trails through lawns,” claims Khusnullin.

“Five-Storey Russia: An RBC Major Investigation of Renovation,” Published June 22, 2017 on RBC’s YouTube Channel

Khusnullin says that development and construction in Moscow during the Soviet era was “very uneven and disorganized.” It was this that caused the emergence of “strange, unused spaces” within neighborhoods.

City authorities also plan to increase the number of green spaces in the districts.

“Our proposal is to construct gardens, lay down paths, and set up benches on the same sites. But this in no way means all the old trees will be cut down. There will be more greenery. Planners have been tasked with taking care of the existing green areas while finding places for the additional planting of trees and shrubbery,” says Khusnullin.

Currently, the law bill on renovation has passed its third and final reading in the State Duma. Subsequently, the Moscow mayor’s office summed up the votes of Muscovites, which showed that 90% of the buildings initially slated for the program would be demolished and rebuilt.

Translated by the Russian Reader. See Leonid Bershidsky, “Why Putin Is Tearing Down My Childhood Home,” Bloomberg, May 4, 2017, for an excellent, brief explanation of the whys and wherefores of Moscow’s urban planning counter-revolution.