Second class winners

Dmitry Khitarov

The roar of fireworks in honor of the newly elected president was drowned out by several shouts of “Hurray!” regarding the replenishment of the Duma

In the subway, a hefty guy with a bushy patriotic beard, wearing a padded jacket with a vest visible underneath, custom striped trousers and worn-out Skorokhodov boots with different laces, was gloomily reading something post-election, it seems, Sovraska. Some interjections systematically flew out of the beard, from which the young lady sitting next to her shuddered and blushed deeply. When the guy suddenly growled and began to look around those around him with wild eyes, the young lady picked up her trunk and, demolishing everyone and everything, rushed to the other end of the car. Following her rushed some fragments of phrases, from which only individual words could be clearly made out: “as much as possible,” “parasites,” and unprintable. The young lady never found out that the reason for this outburst of rage was the announcement of the additional election of eight more State Duma deputies.

Indeed, this fact, against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin’s triumph, remained little noticed. This is understandable: we have one guarantor, and four and a half hundred deputies. And considering that usually only a quarter of the people’s representatives are present at meetings in the hall, no one will notice the lack of eight people at all. But meanwhile, curious characters fought for the parliamentary mandates that were not up for grabs in December.

Chairman of the Central Election Commission Alexander Veshnyakov considers the main achievement of the by-elections in eight single-mandate constituencies to be that “all the big names associated with the criminal world were left out, as it should be in the civilized world.” Indeed, Viktor Sergeevich Averin, more often mentioned in the media in connection with the notorious Solntsevo group, under the nickname Aver, did not become a deputy. In the fight for the mandate from Odintsovo constituency # 110, he took only third place, beating, however, the famous director Yuri Karu.

The pre-election battle in the Sverdlovsk region was indicative of an “anti-criminal” character, where the head of the regional police department Nikolai Ovchinnikov and the president of the Uralmash industrial group Alexander Khabarov, whose connections with local authorities have already become the talk of the town, clashed for the right to represent the interests of voters in Ordzhonikidze district # 165 in the Duma. . The fact that the “promoted” general-pogromist Albert Makashov took only fifth place is evidence that the battle was life and death. As a result, there were more of those who want to live according to laws, and not according to concepts. True, only four percent.

The strengthening of discipline in the Duma and the country should also be facilitated by the arrival of two military men in parliament: Vice Admiral Valery Dorogin, who won in Kamchatka (District # 87), and especially the commander of the Moscow District of Internal Troops, Arkady Baskaev, who won a mandate in Mytishchi near Moscow (District # 108) from Sergei Baburin himself (in the December elections, the colonel general lost to the chairman of the Duma budget committee, Alexander Zhukov, although he bombarded all the former “Veveshniks” conscripts with letters “remember how well you served, fellow soldier, friend, brother”).

The idea of the legendary Yegor Shugaev (who doesn’t know - there was such a fictional people’s deputy, whose legislative initiatives passed from hand to hand for a long time in typewritten form, and then were published in a book “edited” by Sergei Yushenkov) about hereditary deputyship is beginning to be implemented. True, Konstantin Yuryevich Sevenard, the son of Communist Party member Yuri Konstantinovich Sevenard - the latter, by the way, did not get into the Duma, having lost the by-elections in the Leningrad region - had to go through the election procedure in the St. Petersburg North-Western district # 210, where he won, beating "Yabloko" Anatoly Golov, "Honored Artist of the State Duma" Vyacheslav Marychev, defendant Yuri Shutov and one of the leaders of the Union of Communist Parties - CPSU Teimuraz Avaliani.

But the old guard is still great. In the already mentioned Odintsovo district, Victor Alksnis, a very famous character, although half-forgotten, won. The political career of the grandson of the commander of the Red Army Air Force Yakov Alksnis, who was executed in 1938, began in 1989, when he was elected people's deputy of the USSR. Over the course of five years - from 1989 to 1993 - his views changed so much that from membership in the “Yeltsin” Interregional Deputy Group (by the way, in the company of the same Avaliani) he came to membership in the editorial board of the newspaper Den. Being a classic leavened patriot, he advocates the “de-ideologization of the patriotic movement”, he calls himself an opponent of any nationalism, for which, as stated in one of the “objectives” on Alksnis, “he was declared a Jew by radical national patriots.” In addition to the already mentioned Averin and Kara, Viktor Imantovich confidently beat Yabloko leader Evgeniy Sobakin, who was elected from this district to the last Duma.

Once again popular journalist Alexander Nevzorov received a mandate. Most of his fellow legislators usually try to run in the same - “their” - district (for example, Evgeny Zyablitsev, an ex-EndEer member, and now the president of the Zyablitsev-Fund, was re-elected in his native Verkh-Isetsky district # 162 of the Sverdlovsk region - in December he was deregistered for violating the rules of campaigning), while Alexander Glebovich is forced to change his place of parliamentary “registration” for the fourth time. In 1995, he “escaped” from St. Petersburg to the Pskov region, in December last year he tried to return to his native St. Petersburg land, but his fellow countrymen did not forgive him for his record-breaking idleness even for the Duma - for four years, Mr. Nevzorov appeared in the lower house of parliament from power a couple of times, did not come up with a single initiative, did not sign a single request - and he was “taken for a ride” with the wind. But on the second attempt, he got into the Duma again, this time through Vsevolozhsk district # 99, in the Leningrad region.

When it became known that the former mayor of the capital of Primorye, Viktor Cherepkov, won in Vladivostok constituency #50, one prominent journalist remarked: “This is just the beginning, re-elections will have to be held at least a couple more times.” The prediction came true the very next day after the announcement of the voting results: the decision of the Primorsky Regional Court, which declared illegal the removal from the race of one of the candidates - director of the Ussuri publishing house Orysia Bondarenko - became the reason for declaring the elections invalid. Cherepkov (who, by the way, was himself deregistered on the eve of the December Duma elections) immediately declared that the whole story with Bondarenko was a conspiracy against him by the regional authorities. But be that as it may, re-elections cannot be avoided.

So the joyful statement of the Chairman of the Central Election Commission Alexander Veshnyakov that “the process of forming the State Duma is finally completed” is proposed to be considered premature.