ATP. Farewell

In the fall of 1995, in the midst of a parliamentary election campaign, the party “Democratic Choice of Russia” passed into opposition to the authorities retreating from the liberal course. "Do you really not understand that you will lose your voice?" - Sociologists were interested in the leaders of the FER. “We understand,” those answered. “But can you do otherwise?”

I was always proud of belonging to the "demo", and later - to the Union of Right Forces. Its founders were not just politicians - they were moral leaders.

Mikhail Molostyv is a philosopher, a dissident, a nobleman (in spirit, not only by blood), who was sitting according to the 58th article in Dubravlaga and Mordovia and never broke. Sergey Kovalev is an editor of the famous “Chronicle of current events”, a prisoner of conscience, a human rights activist, who at all times put decency and truth above any political and pseudo -state reasons. Sergey Yushenkov is a military man, a patriot, a real democrat, in August 1991, who convinced the tank battalion of Major Evdokimov, go to the side of the White House defenders. Boris Nemtsov is a reformer, the most successful governor in Russia, who brought to the Kremlin and put a million signatures against the Chechen war on the president’s table.

Of course, our party had another wing. The same thing, remembered by the slogan of “Putin - to the President, Kiriyenko - to the Duma” and the phrase about the “revival of the Russian army in Chechnya”. Sooner or later, the ATP had to make a choice. At the end of last week, he made him.

Each person writes his biography himself. Some become fighters, others become collaborators. Someone, like Vladimir Bukovsky and Andrei Sakharov, defend their beliefs in the face of repression and never compromise with evil. And someone prefers the path of least resistance, justifying his intentions to “influence” evil from the inside.

Few people recall that in the German Democratic Republic - one of the most repressive countries of the Warsaw bloc, which so inspired our "national leader" - there was a "multi -party" system. In addition to the GDR, who ruled the socialist unified party in the “parliament”, the “opposition”, the Christian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Party, also met. Their quotas by the number of deputy mandates were determined in advance, even before the “elections”, and their “deputies” shaved the communist regime for several decades. It’s only on the autumn days of 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed and thousands of people went out into the streets to conquer their freedom, for some reason no one remembered these “liberals”. And, probably, few people remember that in contrast to the Moscow Helsinki group (Orlov, Bonner, Grigorenko, and Scharansky - their names recognized the whole world), the communist authorities created a fictitious “Helsinki group”, led by the “liberal” from the CPSU Fedor Burlatsky. Nobody heard her voices in defense of prisoners of conscience or protests against political repression.

Last week, the leadership of the Union of Right Forces made its choice: to abandon the difficult but honest way of the opposition and become a decoration on the facade of the authoritarian regime, creating him a “liberal” image and simulating multi -partyism. Immediately after that, I wrote a statement about the exit from the Rows of the ATP and on the addition of the powers of a member of the federal political council. This was perhaps the most difficult solution over ten years of social activity. But there could be no other choice.

The well -known Solzhenitsynsky principle of “living is not a lie” should, I am convinced, to serve as a moral guideline for each politician. The cooperation of liberals with a regime that destroyed political freedoms, which returned the Chekist methods of management and combating the opposition and the country that drives the country into international isolation, is unlikely to be consistent with this principle.

Everyone who is not ready to play the “Loyal Opposition of His Majesty” has a choice. On December 13, Moscow will be held in Moscow. People whose reputation is not in doubt in its creation: Vladimir Bukovsky, Boris Nemtsov, Harry Kasparov, Nikita Belykh, Maxim Reznik and other famous Russian democrats. They will not run to the Kremlin for permits and registration certificates, beg interest in fake elections and coordinate each comma of their “constructive-approval” statements with curators on Old Square. They will honestly defend the ideals and interests of millions of democratic voters who will not be able to deceive with fake projects.

The Kremlin propagandists, who hastened to declare the surrender of the ATP with the end of the democratic movement in Russia, were seriously mistaken. This work is just beginning.

The author is a historian, publicist, member of the Federal Political Council of the ATP in 2007-2008.