SRZP opened courses for participants of the party project on elections to the Moscow City Duma

“A Just Russia – For Truth” (SRZP) held the first “seminar-meeting” over the weekend for participants in the project, within which the party selects candidates for the fall elections to the Moscow City Duma. The listeners turned out to be mostly middle-aged, but accomplished people, and some could even boast of considerable political experience (like, for example, ex-State Duma deputy from the LDPR Vasily Vlasov). In addition to curators from the party, artificial intelligence was contracted to help the candidates, but they immediately honestly warned that it would be extremely difficult to win.

The Socialist Revolutionaries, who were not participating in the presidential campaign, launched the “Fair Candidate” project in mid-January (see Kommersant, January 18, 2024). Potential nominees are invited to register on the website and begin performing various political tasks: holding meetings with voters, collecting signatures, etc. The activity of participants will be assessed by party curators. The organizers intend to sum up the results of the competition and hold primaries by June.

At the same time, political technology master classes are organized for the contestants. The first of them took place on February 3 in Sokolniki. According to Kommersant’s estimates, about a hundred people came to listen to the “seminar-meeting” – less than half of those whose applications the Socialist-Revolutionaries managed to verify by the beginning of February. There are currently 237 people in the special chat for participants, and over 400 have signed up.

For the first lesson, SRZP Chairman Sergei Mironov recorded a video for activists, in which, among other things, he emphasized that the experience they would gain as part of the project would allow them to adequately participate in elections as candidates. “But even if you don’t get a mandate, this experience will be useful in your future political and civil work,” the politician said.

The remark turned out to be all the more valuable because those gathered were frankly warned about the difficulty of the upcoming struggle. Thus, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary faction in the Moscow City Duma (MGD), Magomed Yandiev, immediately admitted that his election experience was “absolutely of no use,” since his mandate was secured by “a chain of random, unpredictable events.” Now, in his opinion, success will be based on three pillars: “You need to have political power behind you, so that the mayor’s office is not terrified of you, and so that you have money.”

Municipal deputy Ilya Sviridov, who twice lost elections to the Moscow City Duma, also noted the uniqueness of the current political situation: “The elections will be very different from the previous ones, and the previous ones were very different from 2014.” Mr. Sviridov listed the features of the current cycle – SVO and internal mobilization of society, the factor of remote electronic voting and the connection with the presidential campaign: “Could something happen between March and September, a “black swan”? This may be the case.”

In addition to purely practical knowledge, future candidates should be helped by discipline (for example, the secretary of the presidium of the Central Council of the SRZP, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, called on participants to be very strict about formalities and deadlines) and the “neuropolitical strategist” developed by the party. “We haven’t figured out what to call it yet,” admitted the head of the Moscow branch, State Duma deputy Dmitry Gusev. “Or maybe it’s her: what if it’s a ‘neuro-political technologist’?” The technology is a chat bot in Telegram using GigaChat neural network algorithms. Upon request, the virtual assistant gives advice, develops action plans, and even writes simple posts for social networks. “He won’t replace your real political strategist, don’t expect it,” political scientist Dmitry Elovsky honestly warned. “But he can cover about 70% of routine work.”

The audience liked the novelty, and the gloomy forecasts of the senior comrades who gathered were not particularly bothered by it. The potential candidates interviewed by Kommersant, mostly mature people of average income, made it clear that they soberly assessed their prospects, although they counted on certain results. Thus, social activist Ekaterina intends to fight for women’s rights, military officer Svetlana intends to protect the interests of her colleagues and comrades, builder Sergei simply “helps people,” since “as it turns out, there is still an opportunity.”

The most experienced participant turned out to be ex-State Duma deputy Vasily Vlasov, who in the fall of 2023, not without a scandal, was deprived of his mandate for absenteeism and left the LDPR. “A Just Russia has a strong team, I know many of them personally, and even when I was deprived of my mandate, this party did not turn away and did not vote, unlike the LDPR, which voted in favor,” he explained to Kommersant. Mr. Vlasov expects that his political experience and the support of professionals from the SRZP “will help him show a worthy result.” “They said on the sidelines that some were just waiting for me,” the ex-deputy smiled. “I don’t feel any negativity towards myself, on the contrary, only respect, as a person who is not afraid to tell the truth.”

The Socialist Revolutionaries themselves are quite pleased with the selected composition. Judging by the reaction to the speakers’ questions, at least half of those present already had experience in political activity (most of them are party members). Dmitry Gusev called them, like the others, people “active, involved, looking for something”: “We will give the final schedule a little later, we didn’t have time to process everything, since there were several more applications than we expected.”

The SRZP project “is not striking in its novelty,” since such party schools have already operated in Moscow, recalls political scientist Pyotr Miloserdov. In his assessment, the competition will not bring any serious benefits to either the party or the participants: “The Social Revolutionaries in Moscow are a party with a bad horoscope: there were a lot of ideas, but nothing to take off successfully. And Yandiev’s speech confirms this: he honestly said that he became a deputy as a result of a chain of accidents.” Mr. Miloserdov predicts that SRZP will be able to really compete for victory in “two, maximum three” constituencies: “They were good in 2011, when it was the party of second choice for the majority of voters. SRZP is not the favorite right now.”

Grigory Leiba