Photo: TASS

The Moscow City Election Commission has registered an initiative group to collect signatures in support of a referendum on the return of the Dzerzhinsky monument to Lubyanka. The initiative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was carried out with the help of United Russia members and lawyers close to the mayor’s office.

On Thursday, the Moscow City Election Commission registered an initiative group of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to collect signatures from Muscovites to hold a referendum on the return of the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky to Lubyanka Square. The results of their work and the subsequent decision of the city election commission determine whether a referendum will be held in Moscow for the first time in 22 years. The initiative group must collect signatures from 2% of Moscow voters in 30 days - 146,315, according to the election commission. The law allows them to resort to the help of signature collectors by concluding an agreement with them. The initiative group must collect at least 5 thousand signatures per day with the expectation that some of them will be rejected, Andrei Klychkov, leader of the Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma, explained to RBC.

He is counting on help from opposition political forces, including liberal ones. “The mayor’s office staged a provocation,” says Klychkov about the events of the last two days. “If we want to build a rule of law state, we must learn to use our rights, including the right to a referendum.” The party sued the Moscow City Election Commission for five years for the possibility of holding a referendum on housing and communal services issues and achieved it, but the issues lost their relevance. Since last year, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has been seeking a referendum on health care and education reform; the question of returning the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky was only the third. But this particular issue passed through the Moscow City Duma with the support of United Russia, as well as the Moscow City Election Commission with the support of commission members who work in the mayor’s office or sometimes represent it in the courts.

Moscow City Election Commission

On Wednesday evening, official representative of the city election commission Dmitry Reut told Interfax that the initiators of the referendum on the monument to Dzerzhinsky would be denied registration. On Thursday afternoon, eight out of fourteen commission members voted to register the initiative group. Overnight, the application of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to the Moscow City Election Commission did not change, and the law did not change, but the decision is made by members of the commission, Reut explained the contradiction to RBC.

The Moscow City Election Commission refuses to register an initiative group if at least one of the issues proposed for the referendum was declared illegal by the Moscow City Duma, this is evidenced by the practice of the commission, and it is confirmed by Reut. The Moscow City Duma rejected two of the three questions proposed by the communists.

Two members of the commission, Galina Nilus and Andrei Paramonov, insisted on supporting the initiative group, commission member from Yabloko Mikhail Petrov tells RBC. It was they who pointed out that the law on referendums does not stipulate how the city election commission should act in such cases. Nilus and Paramonov are lawyers who often represent the mayor's office in courts. Paramonov represented the interests of Sergei Sobyanin in court in the lawsuit filed by Alexei Navalny, who demanded the cancellation of the Moscow mayoral elections in 2013.

Another unexpected supporter of the referendum on the issue of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the director of the State Autonomous Institution “Poklonnaya Gora”, the representative of “A Just Russia” in the Moscow City Election Commission, Vyacheslav Dunaev, who said at the meeting that he, as a representative of the department of culture, supports the return of the monuments.

The leadership of the Moscow City Election Commission - chairman Valentin Gorbunov, his deputy Alexey Shlenov and commission secretary Yuri Ermolaev - assumed neutrality and abstained from voting.

Mosgordum

In the Moscow City Duma on Wednesday, the issue of a monument to Dzerzhinsky was passed thanks to the deputy from the Rodina party Andrei Shibaev and deputies from United Russia. Moscow parliamentarians first completely rejected the bill introduced by the communists, recognizing all three proposed issues as not complying with the law. Then the communist faction, as planned in advance, left the meeting room in full force. The communists learned from the news how events developed further, says Klychkov. Shibaev proposed an amendment to recognize the issue of the monument to Dzerzhinsky as complying with the law. In this form, Moscow deputies supported the Communists’ proposal.

In the Moscow branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the issue of the monument to Dzerzhinsky was treated more like a ritual than as a real possibility of its return, a party interlocutor tells RBC on condition of anonymity. He believes that the Moscow government, having corrected the initiative of the communists, is working to anti-rating the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and distracting attention from elections in the regions, he believes. Press secretary of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin Gulnara Penkova told RBC that the mayor's office was not involved in the referendum issue, since it was under the jurisdiction of the Moscow City Duma, and therefore refused to comment.

“Of course, the initiative for a referendum, especially on the issue of Dzerzhinsky, could not pass without the intervention of the mayor’s office,” says political scientist Yuri Zagrebnoy. Any discussions about the return to Lubyanka of the creator of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), like discussions about the return of the death penalty, serve perfectly as a distraction, the expert notes. Mentioning the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in connection with the issue of Dzerzhinsky, and not in connection with truly important issues about education and health care reform, may irritate voters before the single voting day, the political scientist notes. Chairman of the Moscow City Election Commission Gorbunov has already stated that the costs of organizing the referendum alone could amount to 450 million rubles. At the same time, according to Zagrebny, collecting signatures will be a failure for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, since collecting more than 100 thousand signatures in the summer is almost impossible. Last year, A Just Russia unsuccessfully tried to collect signatures in support of a referendum on expanding the paid parking zone.

Many countries have monuments to bloody figures, for example, Oliver Cromwell in London, and these countries carry the burden of their history, says an interlocutor close to the presidential administration. A discussion on the topic is possible, but the communist initiative is unlikely to be implemented, adds another RBC interlocutor close to the Kremlin.

Dzerzhinsky let down the Communist Party of the Russian Federation