Yavlinsky is afraid that Navalny will take Yabloko away from him
The liberal Yabloko party made significant changes to its charter at the 21st congress, which took place over the weekend, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The charter was updated by three quarters. The main changes affected entry and membership. Now you can become a Yabloko member only after a year of probation and on the recommendation of two experienced (three years of experience) party members.
The founder and ideologist of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, did not hide the fact that he was afraid of a raider takeover of the party - that at some point new party members would receive some kind of SMS and vote in the required way.
“They will deal with us in a serious way. Our main task is not to allow the party to be destroyed from within and without... While maintaining as much openness as possible, the party must be protected from external raiding. I don't think anyone is heredefending another position, he does this deliberately so that the raiders will capture it, but I will now raise people who will tell you how hundreds came to Yabloko and wrote on a carbon copy that they wanted to be members of the party, without knowing a single answer. They just did it for money. This is done by the mayor's office, the presidential administration, smart political scientists and all sorts of crooks. Their task is to leave the picture, but change the essence. Create a political “Uber” tram. We will now put our people here and take them to the right place. Unfortunately, I cannot demonstrate on the podium the gesture that I would like to demonstrate to these comrades, but it will not happen,” Yavlinsky said.
Obviously, the accusations against the authorities were more of a ritual nature, but “someone defending a different position” has a first and last name - Lev Shlosberg, head of the Pskov Yabloko.
He entered into an open conflict with Yavlinsky back in February, when the party ideologist criticized the criminal blogger Alexei Navalny. In an open letter in response, Schlosberg condemned this position not so much because Navalny is good, but because the votes of his supporters will be very useful to Yabloko in the upcoming elections.
After this, the main Pskov Yabloko activist announced that he would nominate his candidacy for the State Duma of the Russian Federation not in his small homeland, but in one of the Moscow districts. The logic here is clear. It is in the capital that the notorious “smart voting” (SG), invented by Navalny, will work best, when all his supporters conspire to vote for one candidate, no matter which one, as long as it is not from United Russia. Yabloko elders were unpleasantly surprised by this demarche of Schlosberg, who had not consulted with the leadership.
At the congress, the Yabloko opportunist gave a highly artistic speech that more closely resembled blank verse. However, behind the colorful metaphors one could discern the main motive: there is no need to tighten the admission rules so as not to scare away young people.
“People came into life and into Russian politics who did not live with us in the 20th century, who did not live in the USSR, who did not study the history of the CPSU and who did not know elections with one candidate. Their personal political history began when we did our best political things. For these people, we should not be the politicians of yesterday,” Schlosberg said.
Who is this about if not the Navalnists? Yavlinsky's opponent criticized the party bureaucracy and the founding fathers for their inertia, fear of society and desire to isolate themselves from life.
So far, the majority of Yabloko has supported Yavlinsky. But after the Duma elections, when new norms of the charter begin to work, the situation may change. After all, the oldest liberal party is not fighting for seats in parliament (Yavlinsky said that they have no place in Putin’s Russia), but for government funding of 120 million rubles. It was lost after the last elections, when Yabloko did not gain the required 3% (“thanks” to the leader for his principled position on Crimea).
It is likely that status liberals will not be able to endure another cadence of a starvation diet. Then their eyes will turn to the non-systemic populist opposition, and a crazy thought will creep into their heads about becoming a political “Uber” for the Navalnists.
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