Limonov vs. Putin Read online

  Does the president of a country, where the minimal salary is less than a thousand rubles, have the moral right to have this sea luxury paid by us? Undoubtedly he does not. The National-Bolsheviks wrote in their leaflet, right in the end:

  “It seems that you imagined you are a tsar, and not a president, elected by the people and responsible before the people. You forgot the words of oath, which you gave at your inauguration: “I swear to respect and to guard human and civil rights and freedoms, to respect and to protect the constitution of the Russian Federation, to protect the sovereignty and independence, safety and integrity of the State, to serve the people loyally.”

  In reality tsars behave more decently than Putin, the son of a housecleaner and a metal worker. The Spanish king Juan Carlos has sold his yacht because of economical difficulties in his country and the mere intention of the tourist companies of the Balearic Islands to give him a new one, worth 20 million dollars, caused a big political scandal in Spain.

  The RF citizens grew used to president Putin wearing a 60 thousand dollars-worth Patek Philippe watch in a country where over 30% of the population live below the poverty line. This is not even corruption anymore; this is tactlessness, lack of good sense. As is the fact that each Putin’s trip to the Kremlin and back, when the streets are entirely blocked and the traffic is paralyzed for a long time, costs Moscow’s budget 220 thousand dollars and is humiliating for the Muscovites.

  As for the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, the president’s “sea residence”, it has cost over 280 million dollars. All the construction works were over by spring 2003, on the threshold of the celebration of Saint Petersburg’s 300th anniversary and the Russia-EU summit, which took place in the restored palace. As we see, moved by vanity, the son of a metal worker and a house cleaner made royal gifts to himself for the 300th anniversary: two yachts – the Storm Petrel and the Pallada and restored a palace for 280 millions. And of course he wanted to impress the foreigners: “I am the king of the Earth’s kings…” Putin… Die from jealousy.

  Officially “the works were financed by sponsor donations.” The companies EAS, Slavneft, Transneft, Rosneft, Moscow’s Bank, Eurofinance and Severnaya Verf took part in the palace’s restoration. The payments were made to a fund called Konstantinovsky palace and park ensemble in Strelna, whose chairman was Vladimir Kozhin, the president’s manager. However the real picture is such that it puts in doubt Putin’s declaration that “the restoration was organized 99% on private companies’ money”. According to the Kommersant on 05.12.04. “A scandal grows around Putin’s residency”: A scandal appeared, the Kommersant writes, around the palace in Strelna (Konstantinovsky Palace) restored on the eve of Saint Petersburg’s 300th anniversary. The Northwestern department of the federal agency on special construction filed a suit on one of the structures of the President’s Administration with the demand to pay for the executed works. … This suit may be followed by others – about 30 million dollars were not paid to the companies working in the palace.”

  Let us return to this department that demands money. The Department on special construction (USTT) is included in the RF defense ministry, these are military constructers. They have built 14 of the 20 cottages of the town where were supposed to live the heads of States who came for the festivities; they have reequipped the former building of Leningrad’s artistic school into the five-stars hotel The Baltic Star and have also restored the Konyushenny building of the palace. The total cost of the works executed by the military constructers amounted to over 2,5 billion dollars. By the middle of April the State’s liabilities made 213, 8 million rubles plus 25,8 million that were the interests for an unjustified use of the money. Notice that the suit was not filed on “the Konstantinovsky ensemble in Strelna” but on the president’s administration. Vladimir Kozhin said through his press secretary Viktor Khrekov that “he is not ready to comment the suit of the constructers but has the intention to deeply clarify all the claims and clarify how was spent the money that entered the fund.”

  The site Grani.ru commented the Kommersant’s article in the following way: “The restoration of the palace in Strelna was supposedly financed not by the State (the taxpayers) but by private companies. However one is allowed to doubt the voluntary character of these donations. The mechanism at work here is apparently the same as in the times of Nikolas I when a petty merchant saw that the gendarme has an old sword and had to immediately offer him a new one. So the difference between the fiscal and the private is rather relative here. Other things are more essential. Let’s say that in the first half of the XIX century (in the end of the 1830s the Winter Palace had to be reconstructed after a violent fire) few people were asking themselves why should a poor country spend huge sums on the construction of luxurious royal palaces. In the beginning of the XXI century such a question appears to be actual. However in today’s’ Russia still nobody asks it. History is powerless against the national tradition.”

  The National-Bolsheviks, the young and therefore brave generation asked this question and gave an answer to it: “You seem to imagine you are a tsar,” president Putin? Otherwise why would you need five yachts and fourteen residences, including the Kremlin?

  The fact that V. V. Putin has imagined he is a tsar is eloquently demonstrated, besides by the luxury that surrounds him, by the atmosphere of servility reigning in the country under the regime of total autocracy. It is demonstrated by the president’s two inaugurations. I watched the first in 2000 and the second in 2004, on the TV screen of course. Both inaugurations were vulgar sights. Sights from an operetta. I pitied the poor soldiers and officers of the Kremlin’s garrison, dressed up in outrageous hats with high “hussar” shakos and short boots, like a crowd scene from Kalman’s Mariza. I felt burning shame for my country, humiliated by this outrageous show in the Kremlin, for the amusement of foreign diplomats. I remember my ears and cheeks were burning. The soldiers were visibly ashamed too; many of them drew their shoulders in. Apart from the Austro-Hungarian operettas of Kalman both inaugurations recalled Nikita Mikhalkov’s “The Barber of Siberia” by their kitsch esthetics. In the conclusion of the second 2004 inauguration the president received the parade of Kremlin’s regiment. A bellied colonel marched, shaking his fat; the orchestra blew in plastic trumpets (they were made out of plastic so that it would be easier for the orchestra to move during the ballet). The mounted division dropped horse shit on the paving stones. Oh, exultant triteness! These sights make clear that the president emulates tsarism. What can you expect from a KGB colonel from the reserve? He refused the communist worldview and ideology following the spirit of his time and the conjuncture (it became disadvantageous to be a communist), following the epidemic of desertion that fell upon the functionaries then. What could he rely on then? After all there was only one truly Russian, mass consumed ideology beside the communist one, the ideology common before 1917 – the Russian absolutism. It is the one Russia’s president is persistently imitating. He imitates the tsars in their worst manifestations.

  THE PASSAGE FROM THE ELECTION TO THE APPOINTMENT OF GOVERNORS

  “ The deprivation of the citizens of Russia of their electoral rights : passage from the election to the appointment of governors. This is a State coup, the destruction of the federative state,” the nazbols accuse Putin in their leaflet.

  The National-Bolsheviks entered the reception room of the president’s administration with their peaceful petition calling for president Putin to resign on December 14th 2004 and on December 3rd, 11 days before the nazbols’ action, the State Duma adopted a law introduced by the president about the new order of electing the governors. The law was voted by 358 deputies (with the necessary minimum of 226 votes), 62 were against and two abstained.

  According to the new law the governor’s elections were replaced by the confirmation of the regions’ heads by the local legislative assemblies according to the president’s presentation. The RF president Putin introduced the law bill into the state Duma himself at the end of Se
ptember. It is a part of an anti-terrorism package, about which Putin told right after the hostage taking in Beslan and the two airplanes crashes in August. From now on the candidacy of a head of region is introduced by the president 35 days before the expiration of the actual governor’s mandate and during 14 days the regional parliament must take a decision. In case the regional parliament rejects a candidacy twice the president has the right to introduce the candidacy again and in case it is rejected he has the right to dissolve the regional parliament and appoint a provisional governor. (The governors elected directly by the people before this law comes into force can call for a vote of confidence before the president.) President Putin promised not to overstep the constitution. However if the elected provincial princes had the right to occupy their post during two mandates at most, the appointed ones will govern until they are called off. Actually, “the president’s loss of confidence” is sufficient to call them off.

  On December 11th, three days before the nazbols entered the administration’s reception room, Putin signed the law and it came into force. In real fact this law comes down to a constitutional amendment: the heads of the 89 Russian regions directly elected until now are appointed by the Kremlin and only confirmed by the regional parliaments. The independent deputy Vladimir Rizhkov has called the law “extremely disgusting”. He made a parallel with the law that granted extraordinary powers to Hitler in 1933. According to Rizhkov, the new law is “an offense to the electors”.

  It is interesting to note that article 83 of the Constitution clearly states the president’s powers and according to the actual constitution the president does not have the right to appoint or remove governors, there are no such powers in article 83. Thus, the law adopted on December 3rd and that came into force on December 11th 2004 contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The law adopted by the State Duma on December 3rd also violates Russia’s federative system. After all in our federative system with 89 federation subjects the population elects the head of the federation subject. The appointment of governors is the prerogative of a unitary State. In all, according to experts, the law about the appointment of governors violates not one but over ten articles of the Constitution.

  Naturally, Putin’s group welcomed its new law and adopted it in the State Duma. The deputy head of the president’s administration V. Surkov explained, “the new order of appointing governors will increase the solidity reserve of our political system.” And adapts “the State mechanism to the extreme conditions of an undeclared war.” What he means is of course the fight with terrorism; under the pretext of this “war” they have deftly palmed off an authoritarian law on the confused society, easily violating the Constitution. What concerns the qualification of the law about the appointment of governors as an anti-terrorist law, of course it is a provocative lie. After all terrorism is exported in the Russian regions right from where the heads of administration are presently appointed by the Kremlin. This is the Chechen republic, where first Akhmad Kadirov was “elected” and now the general Alu Alkhanov, a Putin protйgй governs there. This is Ingushetia where Putin, by hook or by crook, by pressuring other candidates, has put the FSB general Murat Zyazikov at the head of the republic.

  Finally, I should remind that article 11 of the Constitution states: “The State power in the subjects of the Russian Federation is executed by the bodies of State power they have created.” They, i.e. the subjects, and not president Putin, who thus has broke up with the Constitution.

  The same day, on December 3rd 2004 the State Duma did another shameful action: it adopted a law that pursues the reform of the political system in Russia, – according to its authors, but in reality – that definitely destroys politics in Russia. They have adopted the law about increasing the minimal number of party members from 10 to 50 thousand people. According to the new law, in over a half of the RF subjects a political party has to have 500 or more members in its regional departments. In the rest of its regional departments there has to be 250 people and more.

  Without any doubt these demands are the excessive demands of a police regime for making it impossible for the RF citizens to realize their constitutional rights, precisely: they violate the rights guaranteed to the RF citizens by part 1 of article 30 of the RF Constitution.

  Together with the already existing laws limiting the electoral rights of the citizens, including the law “On political parties”, “The law on public associations”, the law on the complete transfer to a proportional electoral system, when only parties have the right to participate in the elections and also the fixed 7% barrier to pass into the State Duma, Putin’s group has executed the complete destruction of politics in Russia. Such a malicious control of the State over politics does not exist anywhere in the world, in the West or in the East. Nowhere in the world do we find a law that demands that a party has 50 thousand members to be registered. I will give only two examples to illustrate the crude violation of the citizens’ rights. From 104 to 108 millions voters are registered for each election in the RF. 7% percent of this number makes over 8 million voters. And now, by the Kremlin’s will a political party that has received, for example, 7,5 million votes will not be represented in the country’s parliament. 7,5 million citizens will not be represented. But many European countries have a much smaller population! A second example: a voter has lost his deputy. He will not be able anymore to vote for a candidate non-affiliated to a party. He is proposed to vote for a party list, of which he will know three names at best. And the conditions of registering a party were so harshened by the law adopted by the State Duma on December 3rd that the number of political parties who got into the State Duma, already small enough (on the 2003 elections four parties got into the State Duma: United Russia, Rodina, CPRF and LDPR) will decrease to three, two or one on the 2007 elections. Thus, the law adopted on December 3rd 2004 about the minimal number of party members is simply crossing out politics in Russia. It’s over. It does not exist anymore. The national-bolsheviks have felt right: what happened on December 3rd practically removes the electoral rights of Russia’s citizens.

  One should realize that during Yeltsin’s era, especially in the last 1996-1999 years, Russian politics were squeezed and swallowed by the State. Thus, for example, the participation or the non-participation of political parties in the elections depended from two State institutions: from the ministry of justice and the central electoral commission. Both institutions were and are the instruments of a gang that took the power and were never neutral; they were always engaged on the side of the party in power. The justice ministry used every trick and device in order to avoid registering a different party. However only the absence of such a registration did not allow the party to participate in the elections to the country’s parliament. A clear example of that is the NBP. The National-Bolshevik Party tried to register (because it has spread nationally and had organizations in 47 RF regions) already in October 1998. However we were denied registration five times since then, on the base of a “moral judgment”, made in 1998 by the justice minister Krashennikov. The judgment was not at all caused by our deeds and actions, but by the suspicions, which the political organization caused by its young members. The suspicions of the parties in power – the owners of the “Justice ministry” company – were best expressed by their representative – an old alcoholic with a red face. After he exhausted his argumentation he finally said: “Well, look at them, there are lots of them, over five thousand, all young; we don’t know what to expect from them”.

  The NBP did not manage to get over the bastions of the justice ministry. All these years we lived with the status of the inter-regional public association “National-Bolshevik Party”. From 2001 the FSB tried to take this status away from us. Finally they succeeded. On 06.29.05 Moscow’s district court ruled positively about the liquidation of NBP and its exclusion from the United State Registry of juridical persons. We addressed the Supreme Court. Suddenly the Supreme Court canceled the decision of Moscow’s district court. Su
rprise! It seemed that justice would finally triumph.

  Actually, our joy did not last. The Prosecutor General immediately protested the decision. On October 5th the Supreme Court held a session. I described it in the article “Who are the judges?” in our party’s newspaper. I will cite here most of the article: “The guards in galloons warned the audience to stand up and one after another, eleven judges appeared from the back door, all in black gowns. They sat along a long table. Then they let the press: four TV cameras, many photographers; 20-25 people in all and almost immediately told them to go. The reporting judge started his report. One got the impression that he doesn’t know the material of the case. Lebedev interrupted him several times, telling him to shorten his speech. Then the prosecutor started to criticize the NBP, repeating the old lie: they were not reporting about their activities, did not register the amendments to their code and also mentioned that many Party members were condemned for protests, although this did not figure in the case’s materials. After he finished barking the prosecutor sat down.

  Then our lawyer Vitaly Varivod spoke. Vitaly’s speech was short and clear. Then I spoke. I got up and read out a text I have written the night before. I cite it, omitting the beginning: ‘The prosecution’s demand should not be satisfied for the following motives: 1. From 2001 the Prosecutor General made several attempts to liquidate the NBP. It was the head of FSB’s department of investigation, general-lieutenant S. D. Balashov who gave the first impulse to these attempts. His letter, addressed to the first deputy Prosecutor General U. S. Biryukov with a demand to organize the liquidation of the National Bolshevik Party is contained in the criminal case Number 171 (accusing me and five of my comrades on four articles of the criminal code: 205th, 208th, 222nd and 280th), volume 1, pages 76-78, document number 6/3-2770 on 07.23.01. It is significant that the liquidation demand was declared on the first stage of the investigation. The trial over case Number 171 began only a year later – on 07.04.02, while the sentence was made only on 04.15.03. The court’s sentence freed my comrades and me from the accusations on the articles completely and thus completely refuted the accusations made by Balashov, when he demanded the liquidation of the NBP. However, despite the fact that the investigation was only beginning then, the Prosecutor General obediently made a report to the FSB. I cite page 79 of the first volume of this criminal case. V. Y. Golishev, deputy chief of the Prosecutor General’s surveillance department is answering Balashov. The date is 09.03.01. the document’s number is 7/2-2053-01: ‘Your message about the illegal activities of the NBP was examined. Moscow’s department of the justice ministry has filed a suit against this association on 07.11.01. demanding to exclude this association from the state registry of juridical persons. The civil case is in the production of the Moscow district court and a hearing is fixed for 09.18.01. Moscow’s prosecutor has to direct a demand about the liquidation of the NBP to the court before 09.11.01. The execution is taken under control.’