“Yabloko” has not reached the elections

Moscow City Duma deputy from Yabloko Sergei Mitrokhin refused to participate in the autumn elections of the mayor of Moscow, despite the decision of the party cell to nominate him. He explained his decision at the Yabloko conference held on Friday by the fact that, given the anti-war position of the party, he will not be able to collect the required number of signatures to overcome the municipal filter. The leaders of the department and the founder of the party, Grigory Yavlinsky, supported the choice of a comrade-in-arms.

The conference to nominate a candidate for mayor of Moscow was held on June 16 in the metropolitan office of Yabloko. The party’s position on the conflict in Ukraine was reminded to the delegates literally from the doorway: the walls of the flights of stairs were hung with posters with anti-war statements of the classics (the reproduction of Vasily Vereshchagin’s “Apotheosis of War” looked the most obvious), and the booth at the entrance was supplied with excerpts from the articles of Grigory Yavlinsky. “This is extremely dangerous from a military and political point of view, and extremely tragic from a human point of view,” one of his quotes said.

The secret that Sergei Mitrokhin should become a candidate for mayor was not made in the party.

The department made a consolidated decision on this issue even earlier, so only formal procedures were scheduled for Friday. “The honor is high,” Mr. Mitrokhin told the delegates. “But I would like to talk about the situation without any pathos and discuss the situation that has developed.”

According to the deputy, the “Saving Moscow” program, prepared by him and Yabloko during the past campaigns, does not need to be adjusted, since its theses are still relevant: “This is a program about Moscow, which does not exist now. Some prerequisites arose 30 years ago – there was a movement towards democracy, freedoms, dynamic development. All these potencies and intentions are currently stifled, none of this exists anymore. A different, paternalistic system has been built.” In this system, Sergei Mitrokhin believes, there is no feedback between the mayor and Muscovites, and the townspeople are actually deprived of the right to political initiative. At the moment, Yabloko is unable to conduct an effective election campaign in Moscow, at least in theory, Mr. Mitrokhin stated, explaining that the party had received “a lot of signals” in this regard from the authorities.

The hypothetical possibility to integrate into the systemic field, according to him, is directly hindered by the pacifist position of Yabloko. “What I said about the program loses all meaning in this context,” Sergei Mitrokhin continued. “The most important thing, of course, is what is happening (in Ukraine.— “b”), and how the party evaluates it. Saving human lives in our party position is put at the forefront. If we are talking about elections in the capital of our country, this position should be at the forefront, the candidate who is nominated by the party should broadcast this position first of all.” Going for signatures to overcome the filter to those who hold a different position is pointless, since these people are rarely capable of independent decisions, Mr. Mitrokhin emphasized.

“On the one hand, to declare something, and on the other hand, to beg them for signatures? This is no longer a theater, this is a circus of the absurd. To work as an artist is still an honor, I might have agreed. But I don’t want to work as a clown!” – Sergei Mitrokhin summed up and asked not to consider his candidacy for the autumn elections.

Some delegates, however, took this position with hostility, emphasizing that even the signature collection procedure could become a legal platform for advancing the party’s position both on the issue of the municipal filter itself and on the topic of the special operation. To this, Mr. Mitrokhin and representatives of the leadership of the branch objected that the position of Yabloko had not changed for a long time, and everyone who wanted (and even those who did not want) to get to know her had already done so. “This time the situation is different,” said the leader of the party faction in the Moscow City Duma, Maxim Kruglov. “People are dying. Under such conditions, it is impossible for city politicians to deal with shops, major repairs, participatory design, any serious and respectable topics and significant problems that our capital faces … The mayor will head the draft board, the mobilization commission, but the very function of the mayor does not provide for the slightest independence . A man from Yabloko cannot send people to the front in such a situation.”

The decision of Sergei Mitrokhin was supported by party chairman Nikolai Rybakov and its founder Grigory Yavlinsky. “This is a very dramatic decision,” Mr. Yavlinsky admitted. “We love our homeland, and we are not indifferent to its future. The act of Sergei Mitrokhin is an appeal to the future of our country. And if the future comes, he will be told that you acted with dignity and nobility, did not start clownery. You all know that the mayor of Moscow is an official of the presidential administration. And if in 2013 it was one thing to get signatures from the presidential administration, now it is completely different. Since a human-saving campaign is impossible under these conditions, Sergei Mitrokhin’s position is absolutely understandable. I express my respect and support to him.”

After that, the party members had only to take into account the position of the failed mayoral candidate, for which 27 out of 30 delegates voted.

Grigory Leiba