Dictatorship
Despite being known as a dictatorship, Russia is officially a democracy.
The trick is to have 11 parties in the ballot: the first is Putin, which always "wins" 50% of the vote. The next nine are also Putin, but under different names: Communist Putin, Liberal Putin, Nationalist Putin. The name is the only difference between them—the politics are completely the same.
There is only one opposition party: Yabloko (Apple). Every five years they run for the State Duma (parlament), but always get around 1% of the vote—not enough to be in the Duma, which requires 5%.
But next month, the first Duma election since the start of the war will take place. Yabloko ran with the shortest campaign slogan in their history; only 43 words long, it boiled down to "STOP THE WAR". A vote for Yabloko, no matter whether you agree with the rest of their politics, was the only way to vote against the war. The party was getting more and more popular, with the polls showing their support at a whopping 18%. Even more surprisingly, the party was not immediately designated an illegal organization and was actually allowed to run in the election. It was clear to everyone: the vote will still be rigged, and Putin will still win, but Yabloko has the full chance of getting 5% of the vote and winning a few seats at the Duma. A glimmer of hope for the country was spreading among the anti-war citizens.
Until today.
A hearing was just held by the Supreme Court on a lawsuit filed by one of the smaller Putin parties, demanding for Yabloko to be banned from the election. They won. Yabloko is no longer running.
The most infuriating thing is the cited reason for their removal. There lawsuit had some usual arguments: the party is extremist, the party receives illegal foreign funding; those arguments were quickly disproven and dismissed. Instead, the court focused on an interview with Yabloko's founder, in which the interviewer quoted a children's song and a popular line from a book without the permission of their authors. Yep, you read that right. It was a copyright lawsuit: since the interview was promotional material and violated copyright, that means the party engaged in illegal promotion and shouldn't be allowed to run. All because of two small quotes (which are so common they're basically proverbs) and some picture from the internet they put in the interview.
I'm so fucking done with this country.
That's so petty. It feels actively malicious and intentionally demoralizing.
It seems like their tactic was to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. One of the accusations was that Yabloko posted an AI-generated image somewhere, and that image apparently violates copyright because it's owned by ChatGPT. They also claimed that Yabloko's logo violates the copyright of this painting, which is over 100 years old and has long been in the public domain. They said that the party illegally spent 80 million ₽ on advertisement, a number which they just made up and gave no source for. The entire court case was full of bullshit claims like that and Yabloko was defending against them for hours.
That's a very generous way to put it.
I appreciate your post, because after Rocky V and Hunt for Red October, Russians and Americans can be great friends. I also sympathize with what you wrote. I see democracy and justice and the values we once stood for arrogantly dissolved in our face. The best solution is learned from Rocky V: hang on, do your best, and it isn't over till the bell.
How much of this is top-down directed and how much is self-directed borne out of a culture of compliance and yea-men, I wonder. In other words, from whence did the decision originate? Did someone high up order ways to get Yabloko off the ballot via legal means, and cronies executed, or did the cronies decide that attacking Yabloko was part of a strategy to curry favor and reap rewards?
Because I think a small cadre of powerful people directing subordinates to be evil is ultimately more manageable and recoervable than a culture where a majority of people are actively seeking ways to be evil in the hopes of reward.
No clue, honestly. A representative of the Central Election Commission (the body responsible for registering parties and holding elections) was at the court hearing, and they sided with the plaintiff and supported the removal of Yabloko, so it's definitely not some completely independent decision of cronies that higher ups had no idea about. However, if the government just wanted to get rid of them after seeing the support they got, they have much easier and quicker ways for that.
There's also definitely an incentive for the party that filed the lawsuit. Out of all the Putin parties, there are only 4 big ones that consistently hold Duma seats, and this one is not one of them. It's possible that by doing this court case they hoped to get some of the anti-Yabloko voters to support them instead of one of the bigger parties.
So maybe the lawsuit was just a convenient opportunity for the government to get rid of opposition, or maybe it's entirely directed by them and they thought a court case is the best way to do it for whatever reason.