Translated material
The day before
“This power had the last chance to replace the elected way, but it faded it,” wrote Leonid Volkov, an independent candidate for the Sverdlovsk Region, after the Russian Supreme Court decided to remove him from the election race. On the eve of December 4, The New Times went to Yekaterinburg to see with his own eyes how a loner can resist the system; in the Atyashevsky district of the Republic of Mordovia, where United Russia usually has to collect, as it was in 2007, almost 100% (p. 13); In Tver, where the Antiputine Popular Front was formed (p. 16), and to Ulyanovsk, where even a fabulous bun (p. 19) was agitated by the party in power
On December 4, the premiere of the play “The King dies” at the Drama Theater of Yekaterinburg. On one of the posters a few hundred meters from the theater, an unknown activist crossed out the word “king” and inscribed “United Russia” instead. In the Sverdlovsk region, as a whole in the country, the party’s rating of the power in the last before the day of the vote was only falling: local sociologists in a conversation with The New Times claimed that in an honest election the party could count on 11-12% of the vote in the region. In the attempts of EP, most streets of the city were sealed with billboards with the image of the tandem - “For Medvedev! For Putin! For "United Russia"! " - And the governor Alexander Misharin, who called to the heap to vote "for the Unified Urals!" On the night of December 1 to 2, the governor, returning from a meeting with voters, got to the accident: his motorcade went into the oncoming lane, the “Mercedes” of the head of the region collided with the Volga Yuri Dudorov. Dudorov died on the spot, his daughter Natalya is looking for witnesses of the tragedy, Misharin himself, who heads the list of United Russia in the Sverdlovsk region, is in serious condition in the hospital of Yekaterinburg. Prior to this, the head of the region was also noted in a scandal with a parody cartoon, which was released by the famous chansonnier Alexander Novikov: the governor called the singer and expressed his bewilderment that he undermines the positions of United Russia in the last days before voting. Leonid Volkov, a candidate for the Unicorn Most, became a victim of the Unicorn majority for the Unicorn, at first he tried to withdraw him from the distance by a local election, he recovered through the regional court, but on November 23, the Supreme Court decided that there was nothing to do in the election to the election. “An agreement between power and society: we are stealing, but the country is developing - it can arrange people. Treaty: We steal, and you get in the face - can no longer arrange, ” - so the filmed candidate explained why he continued to the last campaign, albeit not his own, but against United Russia.
The loner-mathematician of The New Times, Volkov met in the office of his company "Projector", converted into the election headquarters in recent months. The visitor meets a sticker against the “Party of Crooks and Thieves” on the doors, along the walls - stacks of campaign newspapers, which activists did not have time to distribute, now they will have to be put into waste paper. Periodically, random passers -by look at the headquarters: “Hello, my name is Lesha, I want to ask: why are you doing all this at all?” The candidate himself, by the last day of the campaign, seems already pretty exhausted and disheveled, he takes turns distributing an interview in English, then in German, then in Russian and tells how he fell asleep on the eve of fatigue, drowning his iPhone. Volkova’s company creates and develops Internet startups, the last of them, the Domosite project is a social network on housing and communal services, where residents of each house, streets, district are discussing their specific problems. “Potentially, such a project is very profitable,” Volkov is sure. - Now the advertiser can target his advertisement either throughout the region or all of Yekaterinburg. But some cafe or hairdresser does not need coverage of the whole city, they need to work with a potential client living at a well-defined point of this metropolis. ”
At the time of the election, Volkov had to move from his office, which was occupied by agitators and stacks of leaflets, to the negotiation, here he, pacing from corner to corner, tries to answer the question of why he needs all this at all: “I work in the IT field, where there are no borders, and unlike everyone else I can leave the country at least tomorrow, but I don’t want to do this yet. In the end, out of all our compatriots, emigrants in another cultural code were realized only by Nabokov and Brodsky. The rest there were no better than in Russia. So, you need to be implemented here, and in order to do this, you need to change the atmosphere in the country. ”
The 31-year-old Volkov has been changing the atmosphere in Yekaterinburg for several years: in 2009, he had been elected to the City Duma with 36% of the vote. At this point, he graduated from the Mathematical and Mechanical Department of URGU, in 2006 he defended his thesis. In the year of the election to the City Duma, Volkov and his wife Natalia, with whom they are developing a “spotlight”, the son of Boris was born.
The campaign in the Gordum, according to Volkov’s memory, cost him about 2 million rubles. The current costs were much less. For a chair in the Legislative Assembly, Volkov decided to fight according to Western samples: he attracted volunteers-activists, announced a fundraiser, acted by the method “from door to door”, methodically bypassing all potential voters. Even the signatures gathered in support of his nomination, Volkov considered it necessary to notarize notarized, but it was in them that the graphological examination of the October Territorial Electoral Commission saw 10% of the marriage and the first time removed Volkova from the elections. On November 8, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court restored the candidate, after which, according to him, a whole wave of volunteers went to the headquarters, who believed that their votes were mean. Through the efforts of more than 400 victims of wolves, he raised 1.1 million rubles to his campaign and is sure that he would not intervene the Supreme Court - he would have won the election.
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It seems to you in Moscow that everything is under control and the country is silent, and we are not afraid of your Putin in the Urals, and we do not like it when someone begins to tighten the nuts
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Leonid Volkov led the campaign against the “Party of Crooks and Thieves” until December 4, despite the fact that the Supreme Court took him from the elections to the region’s leather assembly in 2005 at the age of 18, a young businessman working in the construction sector, Yaroslav Shirshikov joined United Russia. “I wanted to build civil society and a powerful state with the wise Putin,” Yaroslav now recalls. Then the army intervened in the plans of the young man, and when he was demobilized, he worked as a guard for the first months and, according to him, observing the lawlessness of United Russia during the 2007 election campaign, on the night of December 2 to 3, when they considered votes in the country, tore his party party, after which he wrote an exit from the party. “Our governor, I’m talking to you as a builder, is stolen, which everyone has known about about 1998,” said Shirshikov The New Times. - The executive center, which he built in the city for 8 billion rubles, the red price is 2.5 billion. " Recently, Shirshikov accidentally stumbled upon a link to Volkov’s blog, he just read at first, and when the candidate managed to recover through the regional court, he came to the headquarters to help. “Every day after work, we stood in pickets from 6-11 pickets from 6-11 pc, distributed newspapers,” says Shirshikov. - Of course, this does not help business, you get tired, and so on, but a bunch of usurpators infringes my suffrage. It seems to you in Moscow that everything is under control and the country is silent, and we are not afraid of your Putin in the Urals, and we do not like it when someone begins to tighten the nut. ” On December 4, Shirshikov voted according to the method of Alexei Navalny: for the Communists - to the State Duma and for “Fair Russia” - to the regional Legislative Assembly.
“I was given a Volkov newspaper near the entrance, I read at dinner what he was writing, and for the first time in 10 years I did not want to spit the candidate,” says Sergey, who closed his business several years ago. He assures that he can either develop his own business in modern Russia, or crazy, and has been earnings for several years by private car, and also conducts small excursions for the city’s guests: he will take the Yama to Ganina, the last shelter of the Romanov family, then to the city cemetery, where the victims of the gangster wars for Uralmash found their place in the mid-90s. “I would have voted for such as Volkov, he is definitely prettier than our governor, who was lowered to us incomprehensible for what sins,” he argues. “According to housing and communal services, according to point buildings, he explains everything correctly and, most importantly, reports on everything, that is, he will not steal.”
The lack of experience in the City without drugs is a glider: 20 strong men listen to Evgeny Malenkin, the closest assistant to the ex-deputy of the State Duma and the creator of the Foundation Evgeny Roizman. Malenkin sorting out a stack of leaflets, on each - a report on the operation carried out: they opened the drug shade, then they caught the dealer or took a drug addict. "Here it is written by a beaver, a crocodile, the French - what is this?" - boiling Malenkin. One of the men, having pulled his eyes, explains: "Well, Bobrov in the area of isoptic was taken with deomorphine, French journalists were present." "I understand that with a deomorphine, is a criminal case?" - "Don't know". - “And who should know? 10 days have passed. "
For more than 10 years that the Roizman Foundation is fighting with drug trafficking in the Sverdlovsk region, the mortality rate among adults from this plague has fallen 12 times, not a single children's death has been recorded since 2002. The head of the fund finds in the work of the regional authorities and something good: “At least under Misharin, after many years, we finally gave the premises for the fund for free lease.” Roizman explains his non -participation in the current elections to the Legislative Assembly with a reluctance to waste time on an empty business. “They go there for pensions and salaries. But you need to open a deputy reception, take 100 people a day - you can go crazy. I know all this very well for work in the State Duma, ”he says. -And on me, in addition to the fund, the Museum of the Nevyansk Icon, and in a good way you can open the Museum of Artists of the Urals. In recent years, we have gathered the collection in recent years, but there are no premises for it. ” Roizman treats Leonid Volkov with sympathy: young, active, educated, and there is a age supply. “But he has his disadvantages,” Roizman notes. - He often throws him to extremes, he is conflict. Volkov would be a brilliant minister responsible for some direction, not a public politician. He lacks life experience, when you spend for a long time with the same people, build relationships with them. ”
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The system has already swam - the reaction to the September Congress of EP in people was simply terrifying, and only the issue of the time when the vertical collapses and who will catch the falling power
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The times of criminal wars, when local cemeteries adorned the monuments to “authorities” (lower picture), were a thing of the past. Now in Yekaterinburg they are fighting with United Russia or, like Evgeny Roizman (upper picture), with drug mafia 
Against Pzhiv, although the campaign for Volkov ended ahead of schedule, the last days before the vote, he continued the campaign against United Russia: Alexei Navalny flew from the townspeople at his invitation, they held a round table with political scientist Alexander Kynev, volunteers continued to hilt antedino -Russian stickers. “Literally in March in Pervouralsk, the mayor was chosen: for the communist - 45%, for United Russia - 33%. The same picture was then at the pre -election to the Gordum, only there Scher won, - Volkov lists. “This is not because the oppositions are cool, but on Braybie and Z*Pa - Nightingale.” “I always voted for the ATP,” says Volkov. - But I admit that Putin’s first term is the best time for our country. Tax and pension reforms, tax specializers - a lot was done then. ” According to him, from 2003 to 2007, nothing was done, and after April 23, 2007, when Boris Yeltsin died, the authorities finally got rid of the authorities and was engaged only in theft. “The system has already swam,” Volkov is sure, “the reaction to the September Congress of EP of people was just terrifying, and only a matter of time when the vertical collapses and who sees the falling power.” True, Volkov does not see himself with a potential president: “I could be a good minister of information technology and would make an electronic government without any saw. Or the governor. But I would not want to be president, and my wife will not allow, ”the politician jokes.