Even deputies who had already resigned voted to change the law on rallies.

The opposition was able to stretch out the discussion of the law tightening the legislation on rallies for almost ten hours. United Russia tried to cope with the “Italian strike” as best they could, including by cutting the time for speeches of deputies to 15 seconds, and as a result they managed to adopt amendments yesterday. Voting on them took place ten minutes before midnight. But in connection with the adoption of the law, another scandal may occur. As it turned out, in the third reading the amendments were “supported” by the votes of two United Russia members who had already surrendered their parliamentary mandates. Among them is Oleg Morozov, who at the end of May headed the internal policy department of the presidential administration.

Yesterday, a group of opposition deputies tried to delay the adoption of changes to the Code of Administrative Offenses and the law on rallies, which would significantly complicate the organization of protests. To do this, they prepared over 400 amendments, which one after another were put to a separate vote. According to Duma regulations, a deputy can spend up to three minutes justifying each amendment. In extreme cases, this time can be reduced to one minute. But yesterday, United Russia did not stand on ceremony, hastening to reject the amendments, and soon after the start of consideration of the bill, the time for the deputy to speak on the amendment was reduced, first to one minute, and then to 30 seconds. In violation of the regulations, as pointed out by Right Russia's Gennady Gudkov.

The State Duma began considering the amendments at about 1 p.m. By 11 p.m., United Russia had managed to reject the first table with 358 opposition amendments (see today’s Kommersant). “We still have a very small table 2a,” State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin immediately consoled. The table really turned out to be small - there were 53 amendments, and there was only one speaker on them - Gennady Gudkov.

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Here, the chairman of the relevant committee, Vladimir Pligin, proposed to further speed up the consideration of the bill, reducing the time for deputies to speak to 15 seconds. The House supported the proposal by a simple majority, so Gennady Gudkov had time only for short remarks, and not always related to his own amendments. “Do you want everyone to be afraid of you?” - he began. “Do you want labor camps?” - he reacted to the introduction of compulsory work. “By your reluctance to communicate with the opposition and society, you are only supporting the radicals,” Mr. Gudkov admonished.

“We are working on social peace,” retorted Vladimir Pligin and, one after another, proposed rejecting the opposition amendments.

- If you want civil peace, prepare for civil war? - Deputy Mr. Gudkov tried to understand the logic. “You will bore the entire population with these fines!.. The law proposes the creation of reservations for rallies, like for the Indians!”

The deputy continued to actively criticize United Russia, while recalling the Novocherkassk execution of 1962 and remembering the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov: thanks to his “colossal work,” as Mr. Gudkov said, it became possible for such laws to be adopted by such a Duma. Vladimir Pligin continued to insist that the amendments would preserve the health of citizens. But he also could not ignore political remarks. “No one has any doubts about the results of the presidential elections and the elections of State Duma deputies,” he suddenly told his listeners. He did not fail to note that “United Russia saved the country”...

Well, have you thought about it?

All this did not affect the outcome of the vote: at 23:37 the opposition amendments ended, and the speaker put the bill up for voting in the second reading. 239 people voted for its adoption, 207 against.

Immediately after this, the third reading was announced. It does not involve amendments, but allows short speeches by representatives of factions. The communists were the first to criticize.

— Protest sentiments cannot be prevented by such methods. This bill destroys social peace and creates a fat administrative cudgel,” MP Anatoly Lokot was indignant.

— Vladimir Pligin says: there is no evidence that the elections were rigged. There is a corpse with signs of unnatural death, but the killer has not been found. So, he fell himself: he slipped on a watermelon rind! — Sergei Ivanov from the LDPR made an analogy. “This is the worst day in the history of the State Duma for the three convocations that I’ve been here...

“We did a good job, and we did everything right,” the leader of the United Russia faction, Andrei Vorobyov, did not back down.

According to him, the discussion was more “open” than ever. A little later, he announced to reporters that the law was adopted as part of the ongoing “democratic transformations”, and United Russia always “firmly adheres” to the rules of the Duma.

The final speech from the factions was left to the leader of the Right Russia Sergei Mironov:

— Pushkin regretted that he was not on Senate Square with the Decembrists. “Today he would be with the people, not with you,” he said and announced that the Right Russia members were leaving the meeting.

After this, Alexei Mitrofanov, expelled from A Just Russia for supporting the party in power, took the floor and joked about the violence of some deputies against others.

“Some kind of breakthrough in the development of the protest movement occurred today”

Already at 23:50, the State Duma adopted the new version of the Code of Administrative Offenses and the law on rallies in the third reading with the votes of 241 out of 450 deputies (147 voted against, 0 abstained). It is noteworthy that the list of United Russia deputies who supported the bill included Oleg Morozov and Ekaterina Semenova, who had already resigned their parliamentary powers. Even before the adoption of amendments to the law on rallies, at five in the evening, the lower house prematurely terminated their powers by voting. At the same time, former Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Oleg Morozov was appointed head of the internal policy department of the presidential administration at the end of May. Although their votes did not seriously influence the balance of power (United Russia, even without them, has 236 votes, which is enough to pass the law), due to a violation of the procedure, the Duma opposition may demand that the law be withdrawn from the Federation Council, where it should be approved today's meeting.

Ex-Minister of Finance, Chairman of the Committee of Civil Initiatives (KGI) Alexei Kudrin also expressed dissatisfaction with the adopted bill last night. He issued a statement that the adopted law “grossly violates a number of principles of the rule of law and, as a result, the very constitutional right of citizens to hold peaceful assemblies.” Mr. Kudrin called for “an early revision of the norms adopted by the State Duma” and consideration of an alternative bill developed by experts from KGI and the Institute of Contemporary Development (see Kommersant on May 30). True, this morning the Federation Council must approve the law, after which the document in the version adopted yesterday will go to President Putin for signature.

It is worth noting that late yesterday evening, when the State Duma was finishing its work, several dozen opposition activists, dissatisfied with the adoption of the amendments, gathered near it, near the entrance to the Okhotny Ryad metro station. They could not approach the Duma itself: the building was cordoned off by police until nightfall, and they were not allowed in, although the young people behaved peacefully. Therefore, the deputies themselves, the initiators of the “Italian strike,” came out to talk to the citizens. And when ordinary oppositionists complained to the deputies that they were not allowed to move freely around the city, Dmitry Gudkov announced: they were going to a meeting with the deputy. Only then did the police allow people to walk along the street past the main entrance to the State Duma. But law enforcement officers were still in no hurry to remove the fence.

“Hurray, we can walk down the street,” the young activists sneered.

And many of them, inspired by the peaceful “victory” over the police cordon, took photographs of themselves and each other and the State Duma. Oppositionists joked: “It’s as if we’re seeing the Duma for the first time!” And one of the activists stood in front of the entrance to the dark building of the lower chamber and unfurled a small poster “What are you doing?”

Maxim Ivanov

United Russia made it before midnight