Work continues

The next large-scale protest action in Moscow is scheduled for February 4. The Organizing Committee has not yet shown any signs of life, the gathering of creative people in the “Workshop”, which called itself the League of Active Voters (LAKI), has temporarily frozen, and the Initiative Group, spurred on by the tireless deputy and Left Front activist Ilya Ponomarev, gathered on January 5 for its first meeting in 2012. Present, in particular, were the Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov, who was released the day before, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alekseeva, a representative of the Collective Action Institute Karin Clément, the chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia Heydar Dzhemal, representatives of Solidarity and others. The meeting was chaired by a representative of the White Ribbon movement, Igor Bakirov; however, when it came to summing up the results and voting, Ilya Ponomarev took the reins. Before those gathered began the discussion, for some reason Igor Talkov Jr. sang a song to them.
The first to speak was Udaltsov, who raised the topic of possible negotiations with the authorities. He called on everyone to scratch the negotiating itch until preparatory work has been carried out with the participation of all forces. At the negotiations, in his opinion, it is necessary to discuss not only political, but also social reforms. In addition, he did not rule out the possibility of addressing presidential candidates with a “road map” of behavior; According to Udaltsov, it is possible to support the candidate who guarantees that, if he wins, he will be the technical president, so that his powers expire in a year, and during this time it will be possible to reform the electoral legislation. The speakers argued about whether it was necessary to participate in the upcoming elections in any way at all and what kind of bodies should be formed. There were calls not to enter into an alliance with the nationalists. Vladimir Tor and Konstantin Krylov, who were present at the meeting, were offended. Some speakers stated that control over the elections was not necessary, others, on the contrary, argued that it was the fact that people themselves took part in the elections as observers and saw what was happening there that led them to the rallies. The leader of the movement “For Human Rights” Lev Ponomarev said that the only possible topic of negotiations with the authorities is the release of political prisoners; If the authorities here take some step forward, we can already talk about something else. Many spoke about the need to work with the regions. Various options for further action were proposed, such as the formation of people's election commissions or the organization of an indefinite continuous demonstration.
The meeting confirmed the powers of the previous working groups (Vladimir Tor proposed replacing Lev Ponomarev in the editorial group with Konstantin Krylov - on the eve of the rally on Academician Sakharov Avenue, the text of the resolution caused the most controversy: Ponomarev did not include key theses for the nationalists in the final version of the text; as a result, the resolution in general was rejected; now the meeting decided not to remove Lev Ponomarev, but to add Krylov to him and Ilya Ponomarev in the group). New working groups were also approved to form a corps of observers; monitoring the activities of courts; technical issues related to voting; electoral legislation.
The interaction between the Initiative Group and LACI caused great controversy (the Organizing Committee was practically not mentioned). It was ultimately decided to welcome the creation of all civil and political initiatives aimed at growing and coordinating protest activity. The Initiative Group was unable to determine its own status: they decided to decide on both the name and structure for the next meeting. A negotiating group was formed in order to take into account the positions of all organizational centers of the protest movement: it included both Ponomareva, Udaltsov, Alexei Navalny (he was not at the meeting) and Igor Bakirov. The candidacy of Thor was proposed, but this time the nationalists were unable to add their own person to the next group.
In addition, a point concerning the charter document of the body into which the Initiative Group should eventually mutate caused controversy. Some of those present proposed taking the Civil Accord as a basis , which was actively opposed by nationalists. In the end, the text was rejected, the editorial group was instructed to prepare the text (so we’ll see how Lev Ponomarev will negotiate with Konstantin Krylov).
The next meeting is scheduled for January 17. And on January 9 at 14.00 near the metro station “Ulitsa 1905” there will be an action of solidarity with Kazakh workers, whose protest was brutally suppressed at the end of the past year in the city of Zhanaozen.