Translated material
Hurry of despair
Report from Astrakhan
Hurry of despair. On the 30th day of the hunger strike Oleg Shein, April 14, in Astrakhan, a large-scale rally was held, which many people of the Moscow protest flew from, from Alexei Navalny to Ksenia Sobchak, and dozens of sympathetic from other regions of the country. Politics has not yet been able to achieve re -election of the mayor of the city, but he attracted the attention of the whole country to the situation in Astrakhan. The New Times watched the Astrakhan protest on the spot
Svetlana Lezhneva is starving with Oleg Shein from the first day, March 16. Of the 50 years lived, she has been in the Dynamo sports society for 43 years, and 30 years of teaching experience are behind her shoulders. Svetlana is talking with the New Times correspondent in the Sheinsky headquarters, which is located in an administrative building next to the Urban Planning Committee. House No. 8 on Sovetskaya Street over the past month has become one of the most popular places in Astrakhan, and taxi drivers, at the words “we are going to the center”, even asking for: “To the neck?”
Along the walls are inflatable mattresses on which the starving are sleeping, on the tables - twigs with white ribbons. Lezhneva is dressed in a blue T -shirt, she has glasses on her nose, and she carefully draws the table: the name of the starving how much he weighed to the hunger strike and how much he weighs now. She is interrupted by the priest's call. “I lost 13 kilograms, Father Dmitry,” Lezhnev reports. “And from the beginning of the post - at 16.” Oleg Shein “threw off” more than ten kilograms for the same period: the shirt is hanging on it, the trousers on the belt seem to be held barely, the skin is peeling, but he paces the headquarters and gives out comments in a loud voice, showing all his associates confidence and willingness to fight further. “Until 2009, I was not interested in politics at all,” says Lezhnev The New Times. “Close, of course, and I replied: I do not participate in what I do not understand.” And she understood Lezhnev in sports and children: she arranged charitable holidays and competitions for orphans, popular in the city of Christmas Games and Easter tournament. “We even fought in table tennis,” she boasts. - When I arranged tournaments for children, I turned to everyone for help. She also came to United Russia, but they were ready to help only design the hall with his flags, and Shein never refused. ”
Sheena Lezhnev speaks like this: “If it can, it will help without question, if it cannot, will reduce with those who will help.” Gifts to children, the organization of a new charitable competition or a trip of pilgrims to the Abkhaz New Athos - for everything she went to Shein, a deputy of the State Duma. In 2009, Svetlana first came to the polling station when Shein ran for mayor. “I, all my relatives, close and distant acquaintances - everyone then voted for Shein, and Sergey Bozhenov won,” she recalls. “The obvious nonsense came out.” When three years later, the “Brekhnya” repeated, Lezhneva thought, thought and joined the hunger strike. 
Arguments for Shein
The December elections to the State Duma in Astrakhan ended with a scandal: “Fair Russia” did not recognize the results of voting here, Shein, without re -electing the State Duma, received a mandate of the regional legislative assembly, and the mayor of the city of Bozhenov, whom the opposition accused of total falsifications in favor of the party power, increased by the Governor of the Volgograd region, where in favor of EAS On the contrary, they painted too uncertainly. As a result, on March 4, in Astrakhan, in parallel with the presidential, early elections of the head of the city were held, at which unanorous Mikhail Stolyarov, who gained 60% of the vote, won for many. Shein counted 30% of the vote. True, in three days in Astrakhan, the New Times correspondent managed to find only one person who openly stated that he had voted for Stolyarov, and not for Shein. This person was the governor of the Astrakhan region Alexander Zhilkin. Everyone else had their own arguments in favor of Shein. Mikhail Anisenko, who joined the hunger strike at the end of March, did this because the politician helped him when Anisenko lost his job in 1995. Individual entrepreneur Sergey voted for Shein, because he helped him in the unsuccessful litigation with the mayor for permission to install a trading stall. Housewife Elena, who entered the spontaneous rally in support of Shein on April 10, claims: “You need to knock out the apartment from officials, defend the market that they want to demolish, or just need a legal consultation - everyone goes to him. I’m not a politician, I’m not going to starve in any parties and I’m not going to starve, but I voted for him and I don’t understand why our mayor was stolen from us. ”
Pensioner Alexander Vasilyevich has his own arguments: “Shein and I participated in the strikes in the early 90s, but I don’t know this Stolyarov and I don’t know the official results of the elections: I myself was a member of the commission in section No. 398, and there the voices were divided about 50 to 50 with a small advantage in favor of Shein.”
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To cancel the results of the elections in Astrakhan means to create a precedent dangerous for power, according to State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev. But even in order to bring Shein to the point that he calls a “unfavorable outcome”, the authorities are also hardly interested
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The dissatisfaction of the inhabitants with the current government is easily explainable - it is enough to take a walk in the center of Astrakhan. Most of the low, two-, three-story buildings of dusty-sand color are in disrepair. Roads, if only this can be called roads, are broken. When on April 11, speaking in the State Duma, Vladimir Putin said: “In 2010-2011, with the support of the federal budget, a road repair project in all capitals of the Russian regions was implemented,” he said definitely not about Astrakhan.
Over the past ten years, the so -called “commercial arson” has become ordinary practice, when wooden houses “unexpectedly” lit up in profitable plots of land, and after the fire it turned out that the land has already been sold to new owners. It was more than 60 such fires in the city. A year ago, a luxurious building of the new State Opera and Ballet Theater was opened in the city with Pompa - investments in the project amounted to 4 billion rubles. A park broken in a swamp was cut down under the theater, and the result of construction was the flooding of a whole quarter adjacent to the Makhin of the theater. The cellars of the surrounding buildings are filled with water, the courtyards turned into an impenetrable swamp.
So the foundation for protest here has been laid by the power itself for many years. However, the small number of performances in support of Shein surprised many Moscow journalists. The teacher of Astrakhan State University Oksana explains this by non -information of the population. “Unfortunately, social networks that have become the main source of information for dissatisfied in the same Moscow are not developed at all,” she says. “I conducted a survey among my students: out of a hundred people, only five know what Facebook and“ Living Journal ”are, two - who is Alexei Navalny.”
The situation with the media is even worse: independent newspapers or Internet resources, according to citizens, are simply not in Astrakhan. The New Times correspondent looked at the editorial office of the local newspaper Gorozhanyan - they explained to him from the threshold that the publication was on friendly relations with the city mayor, and the correspondent of the policy department wrote a note on the protests of Shein's supporters with the working heading “Extremism”. “Even I did not know that there would be some kind of rally in the city, otherwise I would have come,” Nikolai Grishin, one of the few local political scientists, told reporters the day after the spontaneous speeches of Shein's supporters, which happened on April 10. 
People went to the rally after the arrival of the landing from Moscow: on April 9, the lawyer and creator of the Rospil project Alexei Navalny urged all those who are indifferent to fly to Astrakhan to support Shein. That same evening, a crowd of “nurses” with iPades met him at the Astrakhan airport, accusing him of the fact that he flew to swing the boat in their region with the money of the State Department. Following Navalny, the State Duma deputies from “Fair Russia” Dmitry Gudkov and Ilya Ponomarev, one of the leaders of “Solidarity” Ilya Yashin, flew to the city, and the TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak (she purchased tickets for about 60 people who wanted to fly to protests in April 14, got to Astrakhan. Astrakhan) And almost all deputies of the Socialist Revolutionary faction in the Duma. The most ordinary citizens responded to the call. Entrepreneur Igor Berdi, having read the post of Navalny, bought a train ticket and arrived in Astrakhan. “I, like many, first went out into the streets in December,, unfortunately, missed a trip to the elections to Yaroslavl, and then I immediately decided: it is necessary to be there,” he told The New Times. Throughout the last week, sympathetic came from Volgograd, Samara, Ufa, two people arrived from the town of Lermontov of the Krasnodar Territory, where in February after a hunger strike unregistered candidates for elections to the city council, voting was canceled and transferred to May.
The local authorities were completely not ready for the emergence of Moscow politicians: a helicopter was lifted into the sky, a quarter around Shein’s office on Sovetskaya Street and Kirov Square, in which something like an unlimited picket in the support of the ex-radiates was held daily, cordoned off riot police. Astrakhan switched to the peninsula.
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Of the hundred Astrakhan students surveyed, only five know what Facebook and “Living Journal” are, two - who is Alexey Navalny
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“I have always been sympathetic to the activities of Navalny, but why does he now offer to smash the offices of United Russia? - the deputy head of the YP faction and the head of the health committee in the regional Duma, Alexander Kozlov, was indignant at cameras, although Navalny never called for any pogroms.
Absolutely all representatives of the Astrakhan authorities, with whom the New Times met, emphasized that they are extremely good about Oleg Shein. “We are even friends with him on Facebook,” the deputy Kozlov cited the last argument. “He is a wonderful person, and I respect him with respect, but you can’t replay a hunger strike,” said Igor Korovin, chairman of the election commission of the Astrakhan region. According to the head of the election commission, the elections in Astrakhan each time turn around with loud scandals precisely because of the personality of Shein. “In 2009, when I only headed the commission, Shein was trying to become the mayor for the first time, those elections also ended with a scandal and accusations of fraud, but in court he lost with a bang,” Korovin says. On April 11, speaking in the State Duma, Vladimir Putin also brought the same argument. “Neither the Prime Minister nor the president has the right to cancel the election results,” he said in response to the deputy from Fair Russia, Elena Drapeko. - Your colleague Shein began a hunger strike, but has not yet appealed to the court. Even strange somehow. Why starve, maybe the court will also figure it out. ”
Putin left the building on Okhotnaya Ryad, and the governor of the Astrakhan region, Alexander Zhilkin, immediately invited the journalists to his administration: “As the governor, the current situation, of course, is straining, but I don’t understand why Shein does not sue? Only the court can put an end to this issue. ” The governor also hinted that he would be ready to offer Shein any post in his administration in exchange for the cessation of a hunger strike.
The oppositionist, however, rejected the proposal: “I am not sold for posts. People are not starving in order to employ me, I can work out without Zhilkin. The homeland is more important than its own skin for any normal person. ” “A hunger strike is not a gesture of despair,” Shein explained to his supporters, “and as for the court: in 2009 we already had such experience. They refused to attach audio and video evidence to the materials of the case, out of 77 witnesses that we said, only six agreed to hear the court. ”
According to a similar script, the stories of observers developed, who, on the advice of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, went to the courts after the Duma elections on December 4: more than two thousand cases of violations in the elections, the courts sided with the plaintiffs only in two cases * * Details about this The New Times wrote in No. 4 of February 6, 2012.
Prospects
In the coming days, as soon as all video materials from the sites are at his disposal, Shein will still go to court. The verdict on his complaint will most likely be adopted as soon as possible. “In 2009, they were enough for five hours to refuse us all the requirements, I think that at the same five hours they could meet our rightness,” the ex-candidate himself does not lose optimism. After a visit to the city of Sergei Mironov and the consent of the head of the CEC, Vladimir Churov, to watch each video with violations, Shein agreed to weaken the hunger strike, drinking a glass of orange juice, but by the evening of April 12 he wrote in his blog: “In the morning, believing that Vladimir Churov’s statement about the readiness to watch a video is a gesture of power for reconciliation, I made a statement about our readiness to mitigate mitigation hunger strikes. I was mistaken. Our gesture is not perceived as a gesture of openness, but as a sign of weakness. Throughout the city, police patrols are delayed by leaflet distributors, and Churov told me on the phone that the video, of course, would watch, but so far he shared the position of Mr. Ivlev (a member of the CEC from United Russia, who said that he did not see the grounds for the abolition of voting results.-The New Times) ""
Objectively the chances that the trial will sides Shein is extremely few. “To cancel the results of the elections in Astrakhan means to create a precedent dangerous for power,” said State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev. But even in the point of bringing Shein to the point that he himself calls a “unfavorable outcome”, the authorities are also hardly interested. “And it’s impossible to fulfill your requirements for a revision of the results of the elections, and I don’t really want to fulfill them,” said Alexei Navalny to the state of power to the participants of the hunger strike.
How to get out of a closed circle of confrontation between the authorities, not ready to recognize his own mistakes, and the opposition, who is not ready to get to his principles, we will find out the answer to this question in the very next days. 
Oleg Shein: "People are waging an endless war with the authorities"
You have been starving for more than 30 days, and observers have serious fears for your health. Do at least some elections in the world are human life?
This is not a topic of elections, this is the topic of freedom of the city. If there were classic elections: one candidate, the other - and hell with them. The question is different: a criminal system has been formed in Astrakhan. There is a power that is an organized criminal group. In our city today, out of 500 thousand people, only 130 thousand people have work. Back in 2006, the deceased Anna Politkovskaya, at my request, who came to Astrakhan, wrote an article “Furning throughout the living”: as 60 houses for commercial development were burned in the city, 28 people were killed. We have a small business is a dairy cow. People are waging an endless war with the authorities for any reason. If we delve into the city, we will walk the streets and I will tell: here we tried to deprive people of housing. The four -story building on the Sovetskaya Police Street, house 1a: under the pretext that the house was emergency, people were evicted without giving anything in return. In another place, under the threat of commercial arson, people were evicted to a military hostel, it fell two years ago, five people were killed, 147 families lost housing, and so far no one has given them anything at all. Only seven families received new apartments, and 140 are waiting. I can give a lot of examples, this is the widest ruler, we are tired of fighting.
But for power, you are one of the few restraining factors. The authorities, maybe, would be happy if you were hunger at a hunger strike.
Of course, I do not want such a price, I think the price will be much less, I am sure that we will not bring to that. Moreover, I am a vegetarian, I am familiar with the first three and a half weeks I stayed very well, my fatigue has occurred for the past 3-4 days ... But I am a marathon, I am familiar with the political marathon ... Because we have no other option. Astrakhan is a really criminal hole.
Why, for example, we call Astrakhan the capital of falsification in Russia. There are koibi: the country is the difference between the results of cars and manual calculation in favor of the party or candidates of the authorities always about 5-6%. There are eight regions in which there is a difference of 10–20%, there is one region in which the difference is over 20%, and specifically 37% - this is with us. That is, a candidate who has real support from 40%of voters receives either 7.7%or 3%.
But we are already tired of this, we want to live normally.Dmitry Gudkov, State Duma deputy from “Fair Russia”: “At any point in the country, it can blame”
В Ярославле и Астрахани люди заявили именно о своих политических требованиях, тогда как раньше протесты в регионах имели зачастую социально-экономическую подоплеку, как это было после монетизации льгот в Калининграде, Владивостоке. Можем ли мы говорить о выходе протестного движения на новый уровень?
Раньше гражданское общество развивалось у нас такими микровзрывами. Бились, бились головой о глухую стену, где-то удавалось ее пробивать, как в случае с Химкинским лесом. Сейчас люди стали техничнее, пришли к пониманию того, что, когда идет незаконная стройка в твоем собственном дворе, виноват не чиновник из префектуры — виноват тот, кто построил всю политическую систему.
С чем сталкиваются люди? Они подают в суд, суд принимает решения в пользу жуликов. Они идут к депутату, тот пишет запрос — никакой реакции. Они идут в правоохранительные органы — им дают дубинкой по башке. Люди поняли: пока не будет политической реформы, ничего изменить невозможно. Ведь что такое Шеин для астраханцев? Это не просто взять и поменять мэра Столярова на другого мэра. Шеин у них ассоциируется с борьбой с коррупцией, с ростом цен на ЖКХ, с борьбой за увеличение пенсий, за наведение порядка… Они понимают, что, если они хотят жить нормально, им нужен Шеин, а не представитель жуликов и воров.
Так что следующие очаги протестов могут быть где угодно — там, где вновь зарвутся чиновники, там, где в следующий раз сфальсифицируют выборы, там, где полицейские позволят себе очередное варварство, как в Казани. В любой точке страны может полыхнуть.