Solidarity in crisis

Members of the Bureau of the Solidarity movement Boris Nemtsov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Milov and Alexander Ryklin held a press conference on February 6 at the Central House of Journalists, at which they presented a program for overcoming the crisis. According to Solidarity representatives, the Putin regime is unable to cope with the global financial and economic crisis. Therefore, the first action to get out of the crisis should be regime change - the immediate resignation of the government of Vladimir Putin. Further priority measures: abolition of censorship (including on the issue of the crisis), restoration of political competition in order to publicly discuss the country’s strategy for exiting the crisis, restoration of free elections of governors and parliaments at all levels in order to obtain power responsible to the people, restoration of the rule of law, secession courts from the executive vertical and, finally, a reversal in foreign policy in order to restore confidence in Russia on the part of international investors.

As for specific economic policy measures, Solidarity proposes, first of all, to support small and medium-sized businesses instead of privileged large companies. In addition, according to representatives of the movement, government financial assistance should be allocated directly to citizens, and not to corporations (in the form of loans, refunds of income taxes, or direct financial assistance); sharply reduce budget expenditures on the state apparatus, special services and assistance to state-owned enterprises, ensuring conditions for reducing VAT; cancel the planned increase in the single social tax; announce tax holidays for small businesses; stop deceiving citizens about “preventing the devaluation” of the ruble and eating up the international reserves of the Central Bank to artificially support the ruble exchange rate; fight rising prices; reduce budget expenses; cancel the increase in utility tariffs and tariffs of infrastructure monopolies; demonopolize the most important markets; abandon protectionism, which turns Russian enterprises into “offices for extracting state aid”; cancel decisions to increase import duties on foreign cars; develop real infrastructure projects; implement a program of measures to support the development of food production by domestic agricultural producers to reduce the negative consequences of rising import prices; repeal repressive trade union legislation; allow citizens to freely discuss the country's economic difficulties and protest against the arbitrariness of authorities and employers; organize a “hotline” to help employees in case of layoffs, salary cuts and other situations where their rights are infringed.