The visit of an uncomfortable lady

Why did Tatyana Lazareva work as an observer in Berdsk and how scared the city officials

In the regional elections last year in Novosibirsk, opposition candidates representing different parties and views united in a coalition against the United Russia and Communists. And watching the elections was interesting, the result - in the City Council of Novosibirsk there are now six deputies who openly criticize the authorities. In these elections, they decided to repeat success in a small town near Novosibirsk - Berdsk. TV presenter Tatyana Lazareva arrived there, in three elected days, having traveled almost all polling stations.

And Novosibirsk himself clearly surrendered - in the lists not a single real candidate from the opposition. In polling stations, some pensioners who came to save the current government from the “invasion of foreign agents”, and state employees brought by buses. And it seems that the entire Siberian protest moved for forty kilometers - to the provincial town on the shore of the Ob reservoir.

In Berdsk, passions were in full swing from the very beginning of the election campaign: the removal and detention of opposition candidates, the threats of the coalition members and their relatives, including the funeral wreath to the house of the parents of 19-year-old Daria Artamonova.

And here - Lazarev. Journalists of three large news publications of Novosibirsk were banned from writing about the arrival of a TV presenter. Installation - pretend that it is not in the city.

In response, Tatyana joked on Instagram hashtag #Lazavavagorod. Then observers from United Russia were banned from being photographed with Lazareva in polling stations.

... headquarters of the Berd Coalition. A small modest room, the only “luxury” - murals with the inscription “Coalition of Berdsk 2021”. A couple of hours ago, the castle was finally replaced here-only yesterday the unknown poured it with some strange liquid.

- The largest agitation for the action is its own example. It is one thing when you say: "We must go to the polls, you need to somehow make the elections honest." This is one level of trust. And quite another when a person takes and does. Because, as for me, such a system has been brought up in Russia that elections and politics are something so cool, for marginals. People, when they want to show something that they are some kind of initiates, say: "I am out of politics." And when a popular person shows by his example that politics is important, they are already different in a different way,-the deputy Helga Pirogov tries to explain to me why the coalition needs Lazarev. All these days, Helga transported Tatyana in sites.

The guard at the polling station shakes his eyes. He rides a few seconds, then it suits an “interrogation” with addiction: is it true from Moscow? And how much do they pay for it? And from which party? He listens to the answers, and the eyes are expanding completely in a maneuver. For some reason, he shakes his head-as a sign of condemnation, or mistrust to what was said.

Tatyana has a miraculous-miracle effect on members of the election commission. They run up to her to hug, take pictures, tell to herself, one woman complains of an observer who gets along with the light, and could close her eyes to such a minor violation. People clearly sympathize with Lazareva, forgetting that it seems like she supports the “fifth column”.

Tatyana asks to count honestly, she is oathly assured that it will be so.

“Everyone promises me like that, and then it turns out that they were quiet here, there ... And at what stage this is happening is incomprehensible, but I really count on you,” Lazareva says goodbye.

Already in the car, Tatyana and Helga argue whether, after such a meeting, these cute aunts can engage in falsification of the results. They come to the conclusion that just those who are engaged in this sincerely believe that they will throw the ballots are normal, and this is the worst.

But Lazareva is sure: now people begin to see that something is happening in our country.

- So yesterday we sat with classmates, mentally discussed politics. And it was not me forced them. No, people are just tired. Where did we have the habit that the elections do not decide anything? Because in the Soviet Union there was a single voting day, everyone came, voted for the Council of People's Deputies. You had no choice. All the same, you had a line of these old grandfathers who became old with you. But still - they came, put a checkmark and left.

At the same time, Lazareva believes that in Russia there will be a very long process of transition to normal policy.

“What I do is not an attempt to change everything right now,” she continues.

- I just do what it seems to me important and necessary. Therefore, I do not care about what others will write about me, how they will look at me, what they will think. This is my choice.

In each area where we go, there are always several people who do not go to Tatyana at all. Such people either stealthily take her on the phone, while making a strict face, or simply turn away. Someone whispered to the journalist "New": to contact Lazareva "not ordered."

- I always watch you on TV! - enthusiastically shouts in the back of a Lazareva man in a strict gray suit.

“I have been gone for nine years there, but look, look,” she laughs.

When we leave, Tatyana is noticeably gloomy. The ban on the profession is still a sore subject for her. Then, in 2011, no one stood up for them with Mikhail Shaza at all. They learned to fight "for their own" recently.

-Everything is in the past, I have long just a housewife, I live in Russia, leading my YouTube channel . You ask the editor to refer to my channel in the article, I need subscribers, ”Lazareva honestly asks.

... None of the candidates of the coalition went to the City Council. Although not a single case of the stuffing was recorded in any of the polling stations in Berdsk. The competitors went wa-bank. And while Lazareva traveled around the polling stations and appealed to the honesty of members of the commission, buyers of votes were spinning near the sites. One vote - 500 rubles voted and 1,500 the buyer himself, a wonderful business. To win in such a small city as Berdsk, 30 bought voices may be enough. And the case was not in the members of the election commission, but in the voters themselves.