Russia: Election Fraud and Blogging

Global Voices Online
Monday, October 19, 2009

Reports of vote-rigging in the local elections, which took place in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions on Oct. 11, spurred protests by citizens and politicians in the Russian capital - and quite an outrage among some of the country's bloggers.

In Moscow, the United Russia party, led by PM Vladimir Putin, took 32 of 35 seats in the city legislature; the only other party to make it to the Moscow Duma is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. There are documents and reports that have been circling the Russian blogosphere this past week, however, which suggest that the results of the election could have been different.

One day after the election, LJ user yakovlev_igor - Igor Yakovlev, press secretary of the Yabloko party, which did not pass the 7 percent threshold of votes necessary to win a seat - performed a simple math exercise on his blog, comparing the numbers (RUS) entered on one polling station's vote returns protocol (RUS) and on the summary table (RUS) posted on the Moscow City Election Commission's website later. Here's what he found (translation of the post and of the tables' content - from the English-language section of Yabloko's site):

[...] Electoral district No 1702, Danilovsky district, Moscow.

All who has seen election campaigns of the recent years mark an unbelievable scope of fraud at yesterday’s election (Moscow City Duma election on October 11, 2009).

Here comes only one example of election fraud:

Protocol of the local electoral commission published at the web-site of the Moscow Electoral Commission


[...] 14 3. Moscow regional branch of the UNITED RUSSIA party 742 [...]

Protocol of the local electoral commission given by the commission to YABLOKO’s observer

[...] 14 3. Moscow regional branch of the UNITED RUSSIA party 192 [...]

United Russia simply “got” 550 additional votes from nowhere. 550 is a beautiful figure. [...]

On Oct. 16, things turned even more "beautiful": the protocol and the summary table from another polling station in Moscow showed that Yabloko did not receive a single vote there - even though Yabloko's leader Sergei Mitrokhin and his family cast their votes at that very location, polling station #192. LJ user yakovlev_igor reported on this development (RUS), too, posting both the voting data and photos of Mitrokhin inside and outside the polling station. Two days later, the Moscow City Election Commission ordered an investigation into this episode, and LJ user yakovlev_igor wrote (RUS):

[...] Not all the mass media wrote about it, but on blogs this has been one of the most discussed topics of the past three days.

Long live the bloggers!

LJ user avmalgin wrote (RUS) about the impact of bloggers, too:

In the Soviet times, there used to be the so-called [Samizdat]. Bulletins on human rights violations were being issued - a certain number of copies printed on a typewriter and distributed mainly among foreign correspondents. Of course, the bulletins were quoted on Radio Liberty, which increased the number of consumers of this info to the maximum. But let us not forget that Radio Liberty was being jammed. And the authors of the bulletins were severely persecuted. [Natalya Gorbanevskaya] - [LJ user] ng68, the first editor of the [Chronicle of Current Events] - would be better at telling this story. [Sergei Kovalyov], who had edited exactly seven issues of the bulletin, was imprisoned for exactly seven years - a year for each issue; [Ilya Gabay] was sentenced to three years; [Gabriel Superfin] [was imprisoned] for five years; [Aleksandr Lavut] - for three years. Et cetera. [LJ user] ng68 herself was dragged away from her typewriter, dressed in a straitjacket and taken to a mental asylum, after which [Joan Baez] wrote a song about her, [Natalia].

What was the Chronicle's circulation? Thirty copies. Well, maybe 50.

Right now in the LiveJournal our, so to say, Chronicle of Current Events has a circulation that the [anti-Soviet dissidents] of the 1970s couldn't dream about. I don't know the general statistics, but my posts are sometimes read by 10,000 people a day. The post about cheating in favor of the United Russia has been read by 45,000 people. Not bad. And this is not the only "chronicle" out there - not one, not two, but thousands. Of course, they are dreaming of plugging this fountain. Not my blog, of course, but LJ in general. I'm sure that they are thinking about it.

And here is what the same blogger wrote (RUS) about the results of the election:

[...] But United Russia doesn't want any competition, it is not used to discussions ("Duma isn't a place for discussions"), it does not understand what a multi-party system is about. United Russia wants to be the only party out there, it want to be the new [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]. By now, even a fool understands that the strategic goal of the current regime has been the restoration of the Soviet regime. And so it is nothing but surprising that Russian parliamentary delegations are welcomed abroad, that the impostors are getting invited to international forums, etc. [...]

Russia: “Renat+Ainara=Love”

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

IZO translates from Russian LJ user avmalgin's observation (RUS) on Moscow's changing ethnic composition:

The benches on Tsvetnoi Boulevard are covered with inscriptions: "I love you, Rustamchik. Gyuzel." "Renat+Ainara=Love", everything in the same vein. Not a single Russian name. I went through them all, from one end to the other. Early on a Sunday morning the place was empty, but in the evenings it's a real Central Asian settlement. Why there? Or is it the same everywhere?

Below are a few responses (RUS) from LJ user avmalgin's readers.

LJ user dmitrivrubel:

Normal assimilation. Please note that everything is written in Russian, and Renat and Gyuzel are writing about their love for one another rather than declaring their faithfulness to Allah. It will get alarming when inscriptions in Arabic appear, which will feature quotes from the Quran or fatwas of Khomeini or Nasrallah.

LJ user ja_mayka:

Three weeks ago, also on Tsvetnoi Boulevard, I caught myself thinking that they were building Moscow on weekdays and spending their time off there on weekends )

LJ user sted_ats_02:

Perhaps not everything is as straightforward, though there's definitely a tendency. And Moscow, of course, isn't just the Russian people's capital, but also the capital of an empire (the former and the present one), with all the consequences inherent in this status.

LJ user avdoshin:

I think it's a totally normal situation for a multi-million city, whose government and business are acutely interested in the influx of cheap labor. It would be worse if all our gastarbeiters lived in some reservations and ghettos, as in New York or Paris. [...]

Russia: "Help Svetlana Bakhmina" Petition

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

As of now, 71,250 people have signed an online petition appealing to the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to pardon Svetlana Bakhmina, a former senior lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil company Yukos, who was arrested in December 2004 and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for embezzlement and tax evasion in April 2006. Bakhmina, 39, is serving her sentence in Mordovia; she has two sons whom she hasn't seen since the time of her arrest (Fyodor, 7, and Grigory, 11) and is expecting her third child to be born in December; all her appeals for a postponement of her prison term and for an early conditional release have so far been rejected by the Russian courts.

Below is the English-language text of the online petition, which is also available in Russian, Italian, Spanish, and French:

Dear Mr. President,

Please attend to the case of Svetlana Bakhmina, a Russian citizen sentenced to a 6.5 years' imprisonment term. In May 2008, she served half of her term. According to Russian laws, she may be released on parole.

Svetlana has two sons, aged seven and eleven. Moreover, now she is expecting her third child, which is due in December. Now Svetlana is in prison hospital. Nonetheless, the court has twice refused to release her on parole.

Mister President, we know that under the Constitution of Russian Federation, you may pardon Svetlana Bakhmina.

We, the undersigned, urge you to pardon her.

We believe that by doing so you will demonstrate to the people of Russian Federation and to the whole world that mercy and respect of human rights are the corner stones of a strong civilized state.

The online petition seems like a truly international effort: those who have signed it appear to be based not just in Russia, but in Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Poland, the United States, Canada, Israel and other countries as well. Many of the signees have chosen to use the Comments option on the petition to voice their views on the issue; below are some of the latest messages (RUS):

71143. Yablochkin Sergei Victorovich, St. Petersburg, a pensioner:

I think that keeping Ms. Bakhmina jailed in her condition isn't just cruel and extremely pointless - as long as we are still insisting that the goal of our penitentiary system is to CORRECT an individual. I'm afraid that in this situation the result will not be just another miserable mother and a child with a crippled future, but also tens of thousands people to whom no one will be able to prove from now on that they live in a civilized country.

***

71192. Lomov Aleksandr Igorevich, Moscow region, Chernogolovka, an entrepreneur:

It does not matter where a person used to work: Yukos or not. The law has to be stronger than this!

***

71199. Jarzabek Kazimierz Honoratowicz, Toruń, Poland, engineer, lawyer:

[...] Here's a question: Will President Medvedev manage to act as a knight towards a woman or not? To Russia and to all of you/us, I'm wishing for the answer to be positive. I graduated from a Russian [technical university], then worked in Volgograd and Bratsk for six years. I am always interested in what's going on in Russia, though don't always understand it. Respectfully, KJ.

***

71201. Sukhoverkh Yevgeniy Anatolyevich, Belarus, Molodechno, correspondence student and worker:

Dear Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] and Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]! Prove that you have hearts and souls in addition to political ambitions!

***

71214. Dobrynina Yelena Pavlovna, Moscow, financial employee:

I think that the law has to be the same for everyone. Both when it comes to enforcing punishment and [deciding in favor of] a release. Svetlana Bakhmina has the legal right [to be released], even if her circumstances (pregnancy and two underage children) are not taken into account.

Quite a few Russian bloggers have mentioned the online petition on their blogs; some have signed it, others haven't. LJ user bearshitsky is one of the latter; in this post (RUS), he explains why he believes that Svetlana Bakhmina should be freed, but nevertheless prefers an individualist approach to supporting her plight:

[...] I am for Bakhmina's pardon. Even if what she's done [is in violation of some laws], the person who was making decisions and giving orders in Yukos - Khodorkovsky - is in jail and [it's not clear] when he is going to be released.

And three kids, and two, and even one - it's [a big deal]. Children do not live well without their mamas. And in any case, I think that four years of [penal] colony is a sufficient punishment for any non-violent crime.

But I won't leave my signature at any site. In general, I don't sign collective letter and don't take part in any [collective - kolkhoz - initiatives], regardless of who is pushing me into them. That's why my signature is here:

Bershidsky Leonid from Moscow. [...]

And here are some views from LJ user bearshitsky's readers:

magda2004:

No, I've signed my name in "kolkhoz." It's one of those occasions when it's important to "have myself counted."

bearshitsky:

To have yourself counted by whom?

magda2004:

By a counter :)

Actually, the whole Bakhmina story is slowly turning into a referendum. For a referendum, however, 40,000 signatures is too little. Small numbers is an argument not only against Bakhmina. That's why I want the numbers to grow.

***

polya_yu:

I support pardon, but am afraid to sign. I'm not that firmly established to be appealing for people who have stood up against the regime.

***

gmj:

I think this is right. Leonid has intuitively (or as a media person:) ) realized the following - a letter with 40,000 signatures will have no effect on the regime, because the people [in this regime] have been successfully creating such letters for the past 80 years. But 40,000 individual letters will confound [the regime] - are there really 40,000 people who have [just think of it] an opinion of their own!

LJ user leosat is one of those who signed the petition early on; he's not very optimistic, though (RUS):

[...] Needless to say, petitions have no practical meaning. They couldn't care less about our opinions.

In [Bakhmina's] case, [...] what's outrageous is the lack of unbiased approach to the circumstances that could facilitate the person's release. She has mastered a trade [in accordance with a requirement for inmates], something that [Mikhail Khodorkovsky has failed to do], her records are excellent and she has no outstanding penalties. According to our laws, this qualifies her almost automatically for [early conditional release]. That she has two children and is also pregnant shouldn't be counted against her, at the minimum. And yet. [...]

In the same post, LJ user leosat mentions another online petition, which is available only in Russian and urges president Medvedev not to have leniency on Svetlana Bakhmina:

A site gathering signatures for non-release of Bakhmina has appeared on the web. They've collected slightly more than a thousand signatures. People have different attitudes towards signing petitions and towards the regime that these petitions address. Taking all this into account, as well as the time that [both sites] have exited for [the anti-Bakhmina site is much younger than its pro-Bakhmina counterpart] [...], I've made an assessment and concluded that compassionate people on the web outnumber the actively callous ones by five or so. [...]

The copycat anti-Bakhmina initiative has so far gathered around 1,650 signatures, and at least some of them are fake. For example, LJ user avmalgin - who considers Bakhmina's imprisonment "a shame for Russia's current regime" - has discovered his own name on it (RUS).