The leaders of the Yabloko party. The party program

The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, widely known as the LDPR, and the democratic Yabloko party, whose characteristic is usually reduced to the definition of "social liberal", in fact, should have been similar. Just based on the "species identity". Meanwhile, it is difficult to find more unlike platforms, programs, and conceptual political positions in general. Of course, the liberal-democratic party in the form in which it exists is not very liberal and not too democratic. But the paradox is still curious. Even Kozma Prutkov argued that if a "buffalo" is written on the elephant's cage, then most likely the eyes are lying. True, did not specify, with respect to the inscription or in relation to the inhabitant of the cell. The same problem is with the modern political arena.

Political views of the party

The leaders of the Yabloko party traditionally position it as democratic, liberal and socially oriented. Such a strange cocktail of definitions is explained by the historical context and peculiarities of the national mentality. In many countries of the world, especially in conservative Europe, liberal and social parties strive for maximum socialization of the state, limiting the role of capital and private property in the country.

In Russia, the situation is reversed. Here, in contrast to Europe, there is a reverse bias - the excessive regulatory function of the state, the lack of true freedom of entrepreneurship, the lack of an effective budget distribution practice with a sufficiently high level of taxes. That is why the liberal party of Russia should advocate a reduction in the tax burden and maximum support for entrepreneurs, while within the framework of the European political tradition these goals are precisely characteristic of conservative parties. The leaders of the Yabloko party are well aware of the duality of this position. And they explain it with a historical and cultural context. High taxes of Europe are distributed effectively. It is thanks to them that a high level of social protection of citizens is achieved. If at a high tax rate it is not possible to organize decent work of the social sphere, then why bleed the business? Is it not more logical to direct these funds to support it? Then, by increasing the number of taxable objects, the total amount of budget revenues will also increase. In Europe, this position is meaningless - everything is fine with private business there. In Russia, alas, not yet.

Liberalism in Russian

The leader of the Yabloko party, Sergei Mitrokhin, links the Party's political activity with pre-revolutionary democratic traditions. The traditions of the Constituent Assembly, in his opinion, were an island of European democratic legality in a series of different types of dictatorships, from monarchical to proletarian. It is the Constituent Assembly that is the first and only legitimate representative of the rule of law and liberalism in Russian political life. Alas, the attempt to replace the monarchic government with a democratic one ended in failure. The Constituent Assembly did not last long, its activities were ineffective, and fate - sad. The Yabloko Party, which claims to be a cultural successor to the traditions of Russian democracy, has also not achieved much success in the political arena. Does this mean that Russia is alien to democratic traditions or that Russian democrats tend to make mistakes that lead to tragic results for them and for the country? The question is controversial, but in the context of time it is extremely urgent.

The pre-election program of the party

Now, probably, few already remember that the name of the party, in fact, is an abbreviation composed by journalists from the names of the founders of Yabloko. Yavlinsky, Boldyrev, Lukin. These people for a long time already have no relation to the party, the average person, most likely, can only identify Yavlinsky from this list, but the accidentally born media, the comic nickname of the party really became her name.

Originally it was not a party, but a bloc. It included a republican, social-democratic party and the bloc was Christian-democratic, which now sounds even funny. In the 1993 elections, this association received almost 8% of the vote and, accordingly, a place in the Duma. After that, "Yabloko" consistently entered into the composition of the Duma, although a large number of votes could not boast. And only in 2001 the party "Yabloko" was officially created. The party program, of course, has changed many times since then, but the basic postulates have remained the same:

• Inviolability of the person;
• Civil rights and freedoms;
• Reform of the judiciary;
• Reform of special services and security agencies: a professional army, the possibility of public control of the activities of state bodies and various law enforcement agencies;
• Expansion of powers of subjects of the federation, easing of the centralized power vertical in favor of local self-government;
• Inviolability of private property;
• Free competition, simplification of legislative mechanisms regulating entrepreneurial activity, guarantee of consumers' rights;
• Modernization of industry and agrarian sphere;
• Rationalization of the country's infrastructure;
• Taking measures aimed at reducing the social disunity of the population, reducing the income gap between the richest and poorest sections of the population;
• Development of education, medicine and culture;
• State support of science;
• Increase the level of environmental safety of production, support for environmentally friendly methods of energy production.

These are the goals that the Yabloko party traditionally states in its pre-election manifestos. The program of the party presupposes the fight against corruption, oligarchy and civil lawlessness. The principal moments for the Yabloko party are the national, religious, racial tolerance raised to the level of the civil idea and the official censure of Stalinist and Bolshevik repressions. They consider the USSR to be a state that has arisen illegitimately, and believe that it is possible to restore the continuity of official power only by recognizing the coup of 1917 as illegal.

Real goals or next promises?

Of course, all the items declared in the election program sound just fine. The leaders of the "Yabloko" party say the right things and the right things, as, indeed, the representatives of any other party taken by surprise. The question is, with what methods and at the expense of what such promises should be realized. In this respect, the Yabloko party is no exception. The program of the party, summarized, sounds like another list of populist slogans. Alas, it is impossible to know whether this is so. The only way to assess the quality of the pre-election program is to give the party the opportunity to realize it. Since the "Yabloko" remained a not very popular opposition trend, it is impossible to talk about its ability or inability to implement the promised. The party does not offer effective mechanisms for implementing all the miraculous things promised in the election program. But, perhaps, they have them. Who knows…

The achieved practical results of party activities

At the moment, the evaluation of the political activities of the Yabloko party is possible only on the mathematical principle "from the opposite". That is, to say that it was she who did the good, you can not just because the party did not have such an opportunity. But we can say against which dubious initiatives of the government the leaders of the Yabloko party consistently objected. Actually, this can also be considered a "quality criterion", especially for a traditionally opposition party.

Thus, the leader of the Yabloko party, Yavlinsky, spoke highly of the privatization of the 1990s. He believed that in the form in which this action was carried out, it was not only useless, but also harmful. Such a scheme of privatization precluded the possibility of a fair redistribution of state property. The only thing that could be achieved by such economic reforms is to concentrate a controlling stake in the hands of business leaders and people engaged in privatization at a level that can be called professional. As practice showed, Yavlinsky was right. It was the privatization of the 1990s that served as a launching pad for the emergence of the largest oligarchic structures of modern Russia. Many of the billion-dollar capitals of people whose names are now heard by everyone come from the privatization boom of those times.

The voice of reason

There are a few very significant points in which the "Yabloko" party has shown its sanity and principledness. The organization's leader advocated an alternative, mild form of post-perestroika economic reforms. The party considered the option of "shock therapy" unacceptable. Also, Yabloko did not share the authorities' position on the conflict in Chechnya. They considered the force method of solving the problem unsuccessful. Party representatives even tried to negotiate with militants, seeking to find peaceful solutions to the problem, but the initiative ended in failure. Direct criticism of the military leadership of that time was particularly criticized. Yavlinsky even demanded the resignation of Grachev, the Minister of Defense, and Barsukov, the director of the FSB. Again, given that many decisions of the country's leadership regarding the military conflict in Chechnya were later found to be erroneous, the Yabloko party was once again right.

In May 1999, one of the forces that spoke for impeachment to the president, was the Yabloko party. The leader of the party, Yavlinsky, supported the initiative of Yeltsin's dismissal. Apart from Chechnya and economic reforms, Yavlinsky categorically disagreed with the armed dispersal of the Supreme Council in 1993.

Rapid decline in popularity

If in 1999 the Yabloko party, led by Yavlinsky himself, approved Putin's coming to power, then by 2003 the position on this issue had radically changed. Whether the new head of the country did not justify the expectations, or the usual "opposition reflex" has worked, but one of the parties that voted for a vote of no confidence in the government was the Yabloko party. The leader of the 1990s, the permanent Yavlinsky, once again clearly marked the party's position, but, alas, it was already 2000's. Tough political opposition led to the loss of the votes of the electorate, already in the 2007 elections the Yabloko party did not receive seats in the Duma.

In the 2000s, many bright politicians left the organization - Sergei Popov, Irina Yarovaya, Galina Khovanskaya, Ilya Yashin. Alexander Skobov and Andrei Piontkovsky joined Solidarity, it was another loss that the Yabloko party suffered. The Moscow branch of the organization lost in 2007 Alexei Navalny. He was expelled from the party allegedly for statements of a nationalist character, although he assured himself that the problem was in criticizing the decisions taken by Yabloko's permanent leader Yavlinsky.

Such losses greatly weakened the party.

Authoritarian liberalism

Many of the departed noted that the party leadership of Yabloko always showed intolerance to the personal views of the members of the organization. Oddly enough, one of the most important leaders of the democratic forces, Grigory Yavlinsky, turned out to be a very authoritarian leader. As one of the "apples" who left the party, once bright and promising organization has turned into a way of satisfying the one and not realized ambitions of one person.

It would not seem so paradoxical if the Yabloko adhered to authoritarian political views. But for liberals and democrats, such a position seems very, very unexpected. The very essence of liberalism is respect for the opinions of others. Here the situation is just anecdotal. "We respect your opinion as long as it is correct, but it is correct, while it coincides with the party line."

And such unanimity in following authoritarian methods of leadership was shown by all the leaders of the Yabloko party. Photos of these people are habitually associated with slogans about freedom, equality and the right to self-expression. Do these preferences in the choice of leadership style mean that liberal theses are just a desire to occupy an empty political niche? Or, on the contrary, is this an original form of loyalty to ideals?

Party criticism

In addition to internal authoritarianism, the Yabloko party has also traditionally popular features of critics. So, often the organization is blamed for not being able to work in a team. Back in 1999, it was obvious. A logical ally in the elections for Yabloko was the Union of Right Forces - SPS. And for a while these parties really acted together, especially since Yavlinsky and Nemtsov were connected not only with common interests, but also with rather warm personal relationships. But even this did not save the coalition from collapse.

To be fair, it is worth noting: not everyone believes that the party responsible for the collapse of the political union was Yabloko. The leader of Nemtsov showed himself in this situation as a very unreliable partner. When it became obvious at the elections that the main opponent of the Union of Right Forces in the category of "democrats and liberals" was precisely "Yabloko", Nemtsov launched an active propaganda activity, including using "black" PR. Yavlinsky was accused of cooperation with the Communist Party, there was a movement "Yabloko without Yavlinsky," created solely to delay the vote. But whoever was to blame for the collapse of the temporary union of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, the result was logical. None of the parties to the Duma has passed.

Sunset or just a timeout?

Now it is often heard accusations that the political ambitions of Yabloko boil down to the struggle for the place of the "favorite opposition party of the president." In every country, every government should have an opposition. But only it can be both real and manual, puppet. Of course, the latter option is much more convenient for the authorities. And, alas, for the opposition too. This is exactly what the Yabloko party is reproached for today.

There are fewer and fewer serious statements, this organization is setting less and less important tasks. From a real participant in the political struggle, it turned into an element of decor, confining itself to insignificant statements on minor occasions. The party does not join the pro-government bloc, preserving the image of the opposition, and does not take an active part in the opposition movement proper. Opponents of the party explain such a strategy with the conformist moods of the "apples", and supporters - with common sense, restraint and dislike for radical measures, traditional for this party. Who is right, time will tell.

So far, one of the most significant political actions conducted by the Yabloko party in recent years has been a rally dedicated to the memory of the victims of Chernobyl. It was held in many regions of Russia, from Bashkortostan to Vladivostok. The slogans declared at the rally concerned not only the greatest technogenic catastrophe of the twentieth century. Thus, the leaders of the Yabloko party in Ufa spoke not only about the problems of ecology, but also raised purely political issues. In particular, they emphasized the fact that many victims could be avoided if the authorities informed the population in a timely manner about the incident and took urgent measures to adequately eliminate the disaster. Thus, the accident at the Chernobyl NPP demonstrated the political failure of the authorities, which neglected the lives of citizens to preserve the appearance of well-being.