There is a choice

We reprint as a sign document of modern political history published by the New Gazeta in support of the nomination of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for a second term. The source of publication is the site of the publication.

“Russian intellectuals strangely hate those at whom they can only survive,” the great poet Korzhavin said in the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta. And he added something like that: they understand everything by separateness, and having gathered together, they stupid sharply. Judging by this letter, something has changed. Maybe for the first time in the personal history of these signatures, and the newspapers, too, is printed in support of the current president. Discussion is on www.novayagazeta.ru , on our Facebook page and on the "New" blog

In today's Russia, they often repeat:

“So nothing depends on us!”

And yet:

- Choose without us!

But ten to fifteen years ago, it depended. There was a place for discussions in parliament. The parties were real - and the competition between them too. The state was forced to reckon with a citizen and his voice.

What happened? Very simple - we were deceived. With the help of political technologies, they carefully led to this: nothing depends on you. Choose without you. Yes, and there is no choice. Who cares…

Not true. There is a choice. And there is a difference too. You are free to choose or refuse to choose.

The first option creates some problems for the authorities. The second does not create any problems. If you have decided to turn out proudly in advance, then your choice is the self -election of V.V. Putin.

Yes, we still know little D.A. Medvedev. But they managed to understand well “Who is mr. Putin ". We do not like what he did in two presidential terms with Russia. And we do not see the grounds for his complaints for two more.

In his First Presidential Epistle, it was correctly stated that "the arbitrariness of officials, the rampant crime" impede economic growth. To eliminate them, the state and power should be strengthened.

11 years have passed. The personal power of the current prime minister intensified unusually, becoming the power of the collective Putin. The number of officials doubled. Corruption rose an order of magnitude. Crime has grown together with security forces and entered law enforcement agencies. The state apparatus feels wonderful, which can not be said about the population. Springs necessary for the development of economic competition are trampled - they were replaced by the struggle for access to the administrative resource. Simply put, for access to the table of the right official with the right amount in his hands.

We do not like that when organizing public procurement, trillion rubles are plundered - about as much as the government spends on three most important articles of the federal budget: education, healthcare and social policy. Why does the government of the government not use the power of his state to shut up the thieves' hole?

We did not like how the President of the zero years, looking from the TV with honest eyes, talked about the “harmless gas” in the theater center on Dubrovka, because of which 130 people were killed-and there are many children among them. I don’t like that the Beslan attack was not completely investigated, and we still do not know who, after all, and for what kind of money a car stuffed with weapons and militants missed the school for the whole city. But we know that immediately after Maskhadov’s proposal to come to negotiations, a storm began, as a result of which hundreds of children were killed. The president with his state could not or did not want to protect them. But I did not forget to react to children's death with the abolition of the governor’s elections - that is, concern for his own political strengthening. There are no elections, the attacks continue.

We do not like that in the parliament of Russia and even among the heads of the subjects of the federation there are citizens officially suspected of the border in organizing custom -made murders, while they are holding people whose real faults are that they crossed the road to the St. Petersburg team.

We do not like that in the Putin years, federalism collapsed and the regions lost their incentive to growth, because they selected most of the taxes. In the skinny 90s in Russia there were 20-25 donor regions, in fat zero-half as much. The Russian province is degrading. At the same time, people, known for their personal proximity to the prime minister, control the largest raw materials, infrastructure and media assets of the country.

We do not like the construction of a luxurious palace in Praskoveevka on the Black Sea, at the cost of a comparable with the Burey Hydroelectric Power Station. I do not like that it is financed from opaque sources not related to the budget, but is protected by state structures.

We do not like that over the years of Putin’s “stability” - and high oil prices - there were no natural steps to reform the pension system, the healthcare system, education and science. Not a single new competitive industry arose. At the beginning of the mentioned era, the share of oil and gas revenues in the country's budget was less than a third. By her end, she approached half. The dependence of the economy on the game of world prices for energy resources has grown to dangerous sizes.

We categorically do not like that the prime minister under the noise of patriotic rhetoric monopolized the vertical as private or corporate property. It is immoral, ineffective, but also dangerous for the country. The owner always protects his property. Therefore, the elections are perceived at the top not as a natural procedure for redistributing power, but as an illegal attempt to wrest from the new nomenclature that it has been de facto belonging to it for 12 years.

The authorities became the best, most profitable and least risky type of business in Russia. And polls indicate that Russian teenagers do not want to do business, science - they want to be deputies or officials.

We do not like the appearance in our country of various kinds of fronts and militias. We are not children and remember why and why popular fronts and other lines of social demarcation were created in pre -war Europe. We are against the transformation of Russia into a front -line zone and corruption of society with the promise of a preferential rise of “entering the ranks” on a social elevator. We remember too well how it looked in the USSR and how it ended.

If the collective Putin receives power for another 6 or 12 years, Russia is doomed to the status of peripheral raw material despotism, where the nomenclature is not embarrassed to use repressions to preserve itself in power. Who wants it?

Our country paid dearly for freedom. Freedom does not guarantee prosperity. However, she is an indispensable condition. The authors of this appeal are convinced that the imposition of the Putin rule for an indefinite period simultaneously with the irremovability of the ruling party is dangerous for the country and the people.

Alternativeness is necessary as a principle. In the current situation, we have no other choice but to provide public support to the current president D.A. Medvedev in his desire to go for a second term. Our support is not unconditional - we leave unconditional devotion to state patriots. It is about keeping the mechanism of legal rotation of power under public control.

I am ashamed to put your country and your people in front of myself and the whole world: to recognize “in full front”, that in Russia there is only one-divided indispensable person in Russia for 100 million adult population to whom we must entrust power over ourselves. And preferably forever - making sure that nothing depends on ourselves, and should not depend, right?

We, the authors of this appeal, have direct grounds for our choice. Over the past one and a half to two years, President Medvedev took many important steps that were not seen or almost not seen by society (and this is very typical for its current state, for media policy).

First of all, the humanization and improvement of the quality of the judicial system. Russian courts practically could not pass the sentences with a period of less than a year and a half. The President canceled the lower bar of the sentence under 68 articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The judge can now determine the punishment of imprisonment for at least a month. This is significant for those who know what a Russian prison is.

The president proposed to cancel the criminal article for slander, which was eagerly used in the zero years to shut up the mouth to critics of power. And there is already a result - human rights activist O. Orlov is justified by the claim of the head of the Chechen Republic R. Kadyrov. Few people expected this. Here - the abolition of the preliminary imprisonment for economic crimes and much more, which is mostly ignored by judicial practice - precisely because, we believe that the judges feel like a part of the Putin's vertical and do not see public support for the beginnings of President Medvedev.

The President has repeatedly gifted attempts to limit the right of journalists and bloggers to the free search and dissemination of information guaranteed by the Constitution. And that these cute people are always ready to have a famously at his reputation and thus raise their own - as steep and freedom -loving progressists - well, for that she is freedom of speech.

Care D.A. Medvedeva will cancel and turn back these and many other long -term initiatives. Such a turn cannot be allowed. It is necessary to help him move in the intended direction. Otherwise, it will be too Russian: what we have, do not store, losing-weeping.

We have a choice. But the right to dismissively refuse him is not. You won’t get it back later.

July 15, 2011, Moscow

Marietta Chudakova , member of the European Academy, professor of the Literary Institute (Moscow), Dmitry Oreshkin , leading researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Igor Kharichev , Secretary of the Union of Writers of Moscow, General Director of Knowledge-Strength magazine, Sergey Filatov , President of the Fund of Socio-Economic and Intellectual Programs, Chairman of the Moscow Union, Andrei Mosin , Chairman the boards of the interregional public organization of war veterans and intelligentsia (screw), Afghanistan veteran, Evgeny Solonovich , literary translator, member of the guild “Master of Literary Translation”, professor of the Literary Institute, Valery Evseev , journalist, laureate of the Prizes of the USSR Journalists, Moscow, Oleg Lekmanov , Doctor of Philology sciences, professor of Moscow State University, Natalya Mavelvich , literary translator, associate professor of the Literary Institute, Vyacheslav Kuzmin , Colonel of the Marine Corps in reserve, participant in hostilities in Chechnya, Sergey Mikhailov , journalist, deputy of the Republican Legislative Assembly, Vitaliy Bochkarev , journalist, journalism 56 years old, Dmitry Gorbunov , Airborne Forces Colonel, veteran in resources. hostilities in Afghanistan, Abkhazia and Chechnya, Nikolai Mikhailov , journalist, doctor of philosophical sciences, editor -in -chief of the journal "journalist. Social communications ”, Svetlana Engova , People's Artist of Russia, chief director and artistic director of the Modern theater, Semyon Vilensky , chairman of the Moscow Historical and Literary Society“ Return ”, uniting the prisoners of the Gulag, Andrei Gorschechnikov , Chairman of the St. Petersburg Public Organization of Persons with Disabilities and Families of the Disabilities in the Republic of Afghanistan, Victor Podkolzin , Veteran of hostilities in Afghanistan, employee of a private security company