By allowing Yabloko to participate in the State Duma elections and failing to anticipate its rise in popularity, Vladimir Putin's administration has confirmed that it does not understand the people it governs, writes Anton Aleksejev.
A legend says that when Yuri Andropov came to power in 1982 after Leonid Brezhnev's death, he told a Politburo meeting: "We do not know the people among whom we live."
More than forty years later, Vladimir Putin — also with a KGB background — has clearly ended up in the same situation. He prefers to believe that people who oppose the war are marginal in number and that the overwhelming majority is actually pleased about it.
In early August, Putin quoted volunteers he had previously met. They asked the president: "When the 'special military operation'"— the official term for the war in Russia — "eventually ends, what will we do then?" Putin did not say what he answered. He likely does not know himself.
Life goes on, however, and since — unlike in Ukraine — martial law has not been declared in Russia, State Duma elections will be held on September 20. "Elections" is a conditional term, because in such cases the Kremlin has long been simply appointing the next composition of parliament.
On July 30, the Central Election Commission registered 11 parties to participate. All share unconditional loyalty to the Kremlin, but as usual only four or five will actually enter parliament. United Russia will get the majority. The Communists, Liberal Democrats, A Just Russia, and the supposedly liberal New People will divide the remaining seats the Kremlin leaves for them.
Among those who have never had access to parliamentary mandates is Yabloko, founded in 1993 and considered democratic and liberal.
They last entered the Duma almost 20 years ago. Since then, their chances have steadily declined — partly because the party refused cooperation with potential allies (including the then‑alive Alexei Navalny), and partly because the Kremlin decided once and for all that the Duma podium would not be given to "odd characters." Even so, Yabloko was regarded as an "old party," one Putin treated with a certain respect, and they never skipped an election.
As befits a marginal party, Yabloko entered the elections with a slogan marginal in today's Russia: "For peace and freedom!"
Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration responsible for elections, reasoned that Yabloko would again get its two to three percent, fail to enter parliament, and prove to all anti‑war citizens that they are vanishingly few.
But within a week of registration, support for the party rose from three percent to seven — with a month and a half still to go. The outsider and marginal force was becoming a poorly controllable threat right before the presidential administration's eyes.
Of course, according to Stalin's principle — "it doesn't matter how people vote, but how the votes are counted" — no level of public support would have changed anything. No one intended to let Yabloko into the Duma.
Still, the mere fact that during the fifth year of the war, the slogan "For peace and freedom!" would appear on television and in newspapers for six weeks could have unpredictable consequences.
Yabloko did not speak about who Crimea belongs to, did not oppose holding elections in occupied Ukrainian territories, and so on. Two words were enough to signal clearly: if you want the war to end as soon as possible, here are people who share your view. And voting would show how many of you there are.
The FSB's 2nd Service — responsible for protecting constitutional order — understood the problem first. Action had to be swift and decisive. On August 7, it filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to remove Yabloko from the elections.
As usual, the FSB chose a suitable executor. Official parties — Communists, Liberal Democrats — rushed to accuse Yabloko of extremism and near‑treason, but none dared go to court demanding a ban.
The role fit perfectly for State Duma deputy Alexei Zhuravlyov of the Rodina party. The party itself is not represented in the Duma, but Zhuravlyov was allowed in during the previous elections, presumably in hopes he might be useful.
So far, his usefulness has consisted mainly of appearances on propaganda TV shows, where he has called for killing at least two million Ukrainians and claimed that Europe has special zoophile zoos where perverts can pay to have sex with animals, even turtles.
Zhuravlyov did not disappoint his superiors. In his lawsuit, he accused Yabloko of extremism, foreign funding, and even copyright infringement. One Yabloko poster depicted a nuclear explosion as a symbol of war. Zhuravlyov claimed the photo showed the 1945 Hiroshima bombing and that the rights belonged to the U.S. Army.
Even the judge was surprised and asked whether Zhuravlyov could prove his claims. He was unfazed: the photo could not exist without the bombing, and since the bomb belonged to the United States, the image of its explosion must also be U.S. property.
By that logic, anyone wishing to use a photo of a nuclear explosion in the future must build a nuclear bomb, detonate it themselves, and photograph the blast — otherwise they risk being crushed by the Russian legal system.
Despite the absurdity, on August 10 the Supreme Court removed Yabloko from the elections — the first time in Russian history that a party was banned just ten days after being allowed to run.
As the murdered Boris Nemtsov said, in the absence of fair elections and fair polling, the only way to understand a political force's popularity in Russia is through the authorities' reaction.
Everything happened exactly in line with Andropov's words. By allowing Yabloko to run and failing to foresee its rise, the presidential administration confirmed it does not know the people it lives among. The FSB, by removing Yabloko with Zhuravlyov and the Supreme Court, clarified: we do not know them and do not want to know them.
Meanwhile, such unwillingness to know the governed is characteristic of many governments. Volodymyr Zelenskyy likely did not expect that his July decision to dismiss former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov would bring thousands of young people into the streets in protest.
Last Monday, several hundred young Yabloko supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court in Moscow. For a city of millions, that is not many, but in a country where all unsanctioned street gatherings are effectively banned, it is a significant number.
The motivation of young Russians who do not want to go to war and fear mobilization coincides strikingly with the motivation of at least two million Ukrainians trying to avoid mobilization.
And if Yabloko's slogan "For peace!" is interpreted as a call to freeze fighting along the front line immediately and begin negotiations, then nearly 60 percent of Ukrainians today share that view.
How many Russians share it, we will not know — but judging by the authorities' reaction, enough to cast doubt on the continuation of the war. And as Vladimir Putin said: "When the war ends, what will we do then?"
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Editor: Kaupo Meiel, Argo Ideon