Daily Journal:

It is very sad that we have already been taught to be surprised when the authorities enforce their own law. I am far from speculating in the sand or building theories about why the authorities approved the action this time. We constantly say, both when we hold the “Day of Wrath” and when we organize actions on the 31st, that there is a law, there is a Constitution, we notify, and the authorities, if there are no obvious contradictions, must coordinate the actions. In this case, that’s what happened—the law was followed. This should be welcomed. I think that the authorities are now partly searching. They have before their eyes the example of Egypt and Tunisia. I think they are looking for effective interaction mechanisms. Maybe they have already begun to partly understand that constant bans and arrests work in the negative, create a scandalous situation and advertise more for us, the oppositionists. At the same time, they see that we are not retreating - a year passes, two, and we will still go out. Maybe they are trying to look for different tactical moves. By the way, now the authorities have not fully complied with the law: they allowed the rally to be held, but the procession was not approved. We will still go to the presidential administration in person, not along the roadway, but somehow we will get there, we will convey our demands, black marks. But we will continue to work to ensure that the processions are coordinated. We managed to win back some kind of bridgehead from the authorities - good, this should be recorded as an asset. It seems to me that now in those bridgeheads that we have conquered, we need to work to ensure that the numbers grow. To do this, we must go out with all our might, unite everyone, and not divide, because the dispute should not be in the plane of “is the rally allowed or not,” but in the plane of “how much has happened?” it should be about how many people have made claims to the authorities. If as many people come out as there are in Egypt, or at least close to this, change will happen, it is inevitable. And if five hundred or a thousand people come out, as is often happening in our country, of course, there will be no changes, the authorities will, roughly speaking, not give a damn about it. Then we need to fight for other squares, for processions. Overall, we believe that the approval of the action is a definite success. If this continues, if this is not a one-time concession, but the trend continues, very good, all last year and even longer we fought for this. In general, there is a certain tendency: after all, the Triumphal Agreement was at least partially agreed upon. It’s clear that we want everything at once; some have the approach that everything should be completely on our terms. This is correct, but we must understand that it is difficult to achieve everything at once. Nevertheless, we also recaptured Triumfalnaya to some extent. Pushkinskaya used to be closed, but now events are constantly taking place there. We came closer to the Kremlin. In principle, there are some progressive moves, and this is the success of the opposition; we need to talk about this, and not constantly shout that the authorities are violating everything. Yes, they violate, but they used to violate more. We are already seeing some progress, and, in general, this is our merit - not to anyone personally, but to everyone together. We achieved this through perseverance.

I think there has been a bit of an oversupply of different stocks lately. I understand that every political force, including us, wants to promote their political initiatives and those demands that are close to us as a political segment or organization. This is fine. But now there is a year left until the presidential election. This is a fateful year. The president will now be elected for six years, which is a lot, and if we want to achieve some local or global results, then now. And for this year, it seems to me - and we are now behind the scenes making this proposal, perhaps in the near future we will make an open appeal from the Left Front to all opposition groups, to the organizers of the main noticeable protest campaigns - actions on the 31st, Committee rallies five demands, “Days of Rage”, environmental campaigns - we need to sit down at the negotiating table and try to develop a unified schedule for the year remaining before the elections, so that we don’t have five or ten actions a month, and each one is global, all-Russian, which is presented as decisive. Naturally, in this mode it is impossible to collect numerous events. There is no such protest potential yet. We must admit frankly: we are not yet Egypt. Therefore, it seems to me that we need a schedule that would allow us to concentrate all our forces. There was a good example in 2007. Perhaps, in the end, this did not lead to any global result, but at a certain stage, the Marches of Dissent, which were held once every three months, the organization of which was devoted all the efforts of the entire real opposition, were quite noticeable, and despite all the opposition, they were quite numerous . It seems to us that we must now try to develop such a schedule. Partly because of this, we began to hold the “Day of Wrath” at large intervals. We have seen it ourselves, and our allies have told us that we carry them out too often. This is correct: you cannot drive yourself into some kind of time pressure. Previously, we had a different logic, when we fought with Luzhkov and wanted to bring the situation to the limit, so that he would prohibit us from doing something almost every week. We removed Luzhkov with our joint forces - there was a signal from above, but this did not happen without the influence of grassroots activity. Now we need tactics; we can’t repeat the same thing over and over again. Ideally, we should try to jointly agree on what day the central opposition event will take place - the 31st, the 12th, or maybe find a separate day so that no one is offended. And prepare with all your might once every two to three months, but so that these actions take place with an increase in numbers, with an increase in activity, and then it will really be noticeable, and the authorities will have to react somehow.