Red sensitivity

On March 7, the media reported that politician Alexei Navalny admits the possibility of supporting a candidate from the Communist Party in the Moscow mayoral elections

In fact, Navalny voiced this idea back on March 4 in an interview on the air of Echo of Moscow in Ufa after the opening of his campaign headquarters in the capital of Bashkiria. The interview was mainly about the film of the Anti-Corruption Foundation “He is not Dimon to you”, dedicated to the “secret empire” of Dmitry Medvedev (at the time of signing the issue for print, 7 million 800 thousand people had already watched it on YouTube alone), but in the end, the host turned the conversation to the elections in general, the elections of the mayor of Moscow (to be held in the autumn of 2018), in particular, and whether Navalny is ready to support Dmitry Gudkov, a potential candidate from Yabloko.

Navalny long and diligently avoided a direct answer. He also referred to the fact that the elections are still far away and even the exact date has not yet been set. And the fact that Sergei Mitrokhin also claims to be a candidate from Yabloko, which means it's too early to talk about Gudkov's participation in the elections. But in the end, he could not stand it and, mentioning the “ideological differences”, answered clearly: the task of defeating the United Russia candidate is more important than all others, and to solve it, one can unite with the communists as well. He also said that he considers Andrey Klychkov, the Moscow City Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who easily won the elections to the city parliament, defeating not just anyone, but the whole prefect, as the most promising of the candidates announced at the moment. Fans of the politician in social networks, realizing that really weighty words were uttered, rushed to the defense - “we need to check what exactly he said!” Navalny later insisted in private conversations that his main idea was that it was too early to talk about elections. But, alas, he said just that, the full interview is available on YouTube.

Klychkov is already in his second term in the Moscow State Duma, he is really quite bold (and for obvious reasons not very successful) fighting against the pro-Sobyanin United Russia members in the City Duma. And he is also the secretary of the CPRF MGK, and on the website of his committee there are the expected texts of the press service: “The name of the generalissimo has become the feature that distinguishes and separates a statesman and creator from a thief and a scoundrel, a hard worker and a patriot from a parasite and a bandit. Even a dead Stalin gives them fits of terror, and even a dead Stalin defeats them!” It's about the last coven with carnations at the cannibal's grave on his birthday last December. By the way, the most famous of the achievements of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Moscow is a successful attempt to obtain permission for a referendum on the restoration of a monument to another red executioner, Felix Dzerzhinsky, on the Lubyanka. The referendum has been postponed for the time being, but the idea has not been abandoned.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has long been fundamentalists in the square, combining fundamentalist Stalinism with the most obscurantist versions of Orthodoxy. Successfully making a party career, Klychkov, who was noted even in the Crimea with a speech about the “Stalinist banner of victory,” does not stand out in any way from among other functionaries of the Communist Party.

Perhaps, behind Navalny's words is just an old dislike for the once-native Yabloko party, in which he worked as a functionary for many years and from which he was expelled as soon as he gained fame. Or is it all said in earnest, and the politician is guided by purely practical considerations? That is, the task of "defeating United Russia" really, according to Navalny, relegates ideology to the background. This is at least strange - who better than Navalny to know that this task in modern Russia is unsolvable in principle. Or did he forget how miraculously there was no second round in the previous mayoral elections, where after a brilliant campaign he showed a result unprecedented for the opposition before?

Personal resentment or strange pragmatism is behind Navalny's words - it's not so important. It is important that he, a precise political tactician, demonstrates complete indifference, insensitivity to ideological questions, to the symbolic sphere in politics. Potential supporters of Navalny among the businessmen, the urban middle class, and just people of liberal convictions are unlikely to accept this progressive idea - "to team up with scrofula to defeat diarrhea," as one wit has already managed to joke on Facebook. Today's communists do not hesitate to demonstrate a tender passion for the Soviet executioners who exterminated millions of our fellow citizens. And this is more significant than any calculations about who, where and by what percentage bypassed the faceless "prefect" from the bureaucratic "United Russia".

And if you ignore this, you see, and there will be no one to “defeat United Russia” with, despite all the past merits and fascinating films about palaces and sneakers.