"Arrests, Zelenka, Titles." Five years to the first headquarters of Navalny

Five years ago, the first regional headquarters of Alexei Navalny opened in St. Petersburg ( they are all recognized as extremist organizations. - SR ). Three former coordinators of this headquarters told the North to correspondent, as it was and what they see the legacy of the headquarters that were actually defeated now.

From the day of the opening of the first headquarters in Russia, Alexei Navalny, in Russia, recalled the comrade -in -arms of the politician Leonid Volkov on his Facebook page. The organizers were very worried whether at least someone would come to his opening. “Then they saw a huge, for more than two quarters to open the headquarters and exhaled, of course, a little. Our unprecedented political tour began, when from February to June, in spite of arrests, green in the eyes, titles and provocateurs, we traveled 52 cities with Alexei. From Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Kaliningrad, from Biysk to Stavropol to Stavropol to Stavropol. Irkutsk, ”Volkov wrote.

Alexander Shurshev very well remembers a huge queue for the first headquarters of Navalny in St. Petersburg, then he became the coordinator of this headquarters.

- The line stretched to the whole quarter along Voznesensky Prospekt, she even wrapped around the corner at the first intersection. It was a sip of hope. Even people from other cities met in this queue-people came to the opening, because they were waiting that they would open something like that later. And Volkov correctly wrote that then much more people came to the opening of headquarters in other cities, and this did not surprise anyone. Now it’s hard to imagine this - everyone would have dispersed and showed off the autozaks, and the queue was recognized as an illegal mass event.

Navalny’s headquarters opened to his 2018 presidential campaign, which was never allowed for, 81 branches worked at the peak of his existence, where about 200 thousand volunteers were involved. After the election, part of the headquarters closed, but a few weeks before the start of the process, 27 headquarters continued to work as extremist in the country, and five more were planned to open.

The first coordinator of the headquarters of Navalny in St. Petersburg was Polina Kostyleva ( recognized as a foreign agent. - SD).

- When I already ceased to be the coordinator of the first headquarters in the country, Alexey wrote to me - Polina, you are the person who launched this wheel. And I understood my responsibility - the coordinators of the headquarters that were launched after us, asked us for advice, ”Kostyleva recalls. -The headquarters in Moscow did not open for a long time, and we already had some experience, we have a large city, and all the processes were convex. I liked that I could make a contribution to the beautiful Russia of the future - as a coordinator of the headquarters, as a person who tunes the processes and gives others the opportunity to participate in this. It was very important for me that people who want to participate in the construction of a beautiful Russia of the future could realize their skills. It was the presidential campaign - and people who wanted another president could canalize their activities. This is very important in our country where there are no social elevators and many feel their uselessness. That is, at the city level it was important that people could participate in this, and at the country's level it was important to convey our experience to other coordinators.

The regional headquarters of Navalny were engaged in investigations similar to what FBK did (recognized as an extremist organization and the "foreigner"), coordinated the work of volunteers, organized rallies and pickets, streams, worked with the media. In the field, they actively supported people involved in regional problems, supported the so -called “garbage” protests, the efforts of environmental activists, protests against the blocking of telegram, and against persecution for reposts in social networks. The headquarters distributed campaign materials, supported people detained at rallies.

“We saw different things everywhere, and we saw the same thing. Hundreds, thousands of young and not very people with burning eyes, sincerely wanting to make Russia better (and they have not gone anywhere, if that). Destructures and poverty; officials that Moscow resolves millions in exchange for squeezing and sending billions to Moscow. The fussy cowardice of local authorities. It was hope in the eyes of people. A stunning time, I, in general, are probably not proud of in my life as we built our headquarters, ”wrote Leonid Volkov.

Polina Kostyleva says that it was very difficult to manage the Petersburg headquarters of Navalny.

- Alexey is a Moscow man, and here is a strong Petersburg separatism, his own democratic party, his own traditions. And we came with our federal structure - here it was not very encouraged. The headquarters is the idea of the "collective Navalny", in contrast to elitism, that everyone can become local bulk and bring the beautiful Russia of the future. Therefore, a real opposition is in my understanding not the deputies who, unfortunately, are under house arrest today, and not those who left: this is only part of the opposition. And its main mass is ordinary people, voters, and there are more these people, ”she argues. - Here my child fell ill, the doctor came - and after a while she says to me: you know, we have such difficult conditions, I need to go around 25 people, then still a reception and a bunch of reporting, and I do not like it. And there are more and more such people, they are the opposition. Navalny is in vain of Vodzhdism, because, judging by his affairs, he allows him to be realized by everyone. The same smart vote, which supported the candidates from the Communist Party and other parties, if they enjoyed the real support of people in the field, offered people participation in various forms. I do not think that the opposition is defeated. Yes, we are here in stress, but the people who have left work efficiently, not fearing that they will come to them and carry out all the equipment, so Putin achieved little, squeezing people out of the country. Yes, street events are impossible now, but there are no reasons for them, and when they are, then we will see. And there are more and more people who see this power, which can be joined.

Alexander Shurshev believes that, despite the fact that Navalny was not allowed to register his party, the work of the headquarters was a real policy.

- Completely new people came there, who had never done anything like that before, their eyes were burning, I had never seen such a thing before, it was great. I began my work with legal support for the investigations of the headquarters, helped return the equipment after searches. And then work began on the elected municipal campaign of 2019. We managed to take a lot of people in the municipalities - of those who came to our lectures before the elections, who supported the "smart vote". Many of them became deputies, there are municipal advice, where there are most of these people, in some places they even headed municipalities. Previously, we did not know anything about the municipalities at all about what they were doing, and after our campaign we had a municipal policy.

Although opposition municipal deputies are actively depriving mandates under the pretext of malfunctions with income declarations, Shurshev notes, some of these deputies successfully appealed the deprivation of the mandate in court, part, even having lost the mandate, still effectively continues municipal activities, monitoring the work of municipalities, attracting attention to municipal councils. But nevertheless, the main result of the activities of Navalny’s headquarters, in his opinion, are not municipal elections, but involving people in the political activity of people who believed that something depends on their participation: people who went through the work of the headquarters have not gone anywhere. Repressions, on the other hand, were not so much frightened by people as angry.

Another former coordinator of the St. Petersburg headquarters of Navalny Denis Mikhailov agrees with this.

- Everything that we did then was new, no one did anything like this before us. Before the nomination of Alexei Navalny, we had to collect signatures for him, this is a difficult bureaucratic work, but we found a sufficient number of collectors, we were engaged in the verification of passport data. And after the presidential campaign, it was also interesting - we organized rallies, made investigations, we had one very cool one - about Rotenberg, we found his house, it was absolutely federal history. And they were engaged in local problems - landfills, illegal state procurement and other things. We had a lot of volunteers, including several hundred active, ready to quickly gather, distribute leaflets, stand in pickets, and all this is absolutely free.

According to Mikhailov, thanks to the work at Navalny headquarters, many saw what a real election campaign was, and now they will be able to distinguish pseudo -use from the present.

- It was shown to people how to do it - and not depict an election campaign, playing gawing with United Russia.

Subsequently, the so -called “lawn case” was initiated against Denis Mikhailov, as a result of which he and Bogdan Litvin were obliged to pay 7 million rubles for damage to lawns during the “He NOT TAVICE” campaign, which took place on May 5, 2018. But Denis still does not regret his participation in the work of the headquarters.

- I assumed that something similar could be, but, of course, I did not think that they would go so far. I do not regret anything, I do not think that everything is lost. Now Russia is in the zone of political hibernation, but it can be interrupted at any time. Just during this time you need to develop, read books, communicate with people, do projects that are safe today, and most importantly - do not stand still and not be silent.

The pressure at the headquarters increased after the January rallies in support of Alexei Navalny. At the end of April 2021, Leonid Volkov announced the dissolution of Navalny's headquarters. "Preservation of the work of the Navalny headquarters in the current form is impossible: it will immediately be brought under an article on extremism and will entail criminal terms for those who work in headquarters, who cooperate with them, who helps them," - Volkov said. In May 2021, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service included the headquarters of Navalny in the list of extremists and terrorists. This was done before the court examined the claim of the prosecutor's office on the recognition of organizations related to Navalny, extremist.

Now Navalny’s headquarters in Russia are actually defeated , some of the associates emigrated, some are under investigation of various accusations, including the organization of the extremist community. On January 14, Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov was included in the list of terrorists and extremists. All 2021, the year in Russia only intensified: organizations and citizens, including the media and journalists, were declared foreign agents, and opposition activists went to bars.