Navalny's address to schoolchildren. Alexey Navalny made a special address to schoolchildren
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, not allowed to participate in the presidential elections on March 18 and calling on all adult citizens to boycott them, recorded a separate appeal to schoolchildren.
In it, he calls on students “not to be deceived” - not to go to the so-called school referendums, which regional authorities plan to hold simultaneously with the presidential elections. As expected, at the referendum, schoolchildren will be asked to answer the question that “catches” many: “Do you agree to study six days a week?”
“It is clear that the referendum is a pure fraud. It does not and cannot have any legal consequences. Syllabus not accepted by referendums. Nevertheless, schoolchildren will really want to express their opinion,” Navalny said.
The main goal of these referendums, according to the oppositionist, is to attract adult relatives of schoolchildren to polling stations (which are usually located in schools), thereby increasing turnout in the presidential elections.
“Schoolchildren from the first to the 11th grade can vote; accordingly, at least a third of the total number do not come to school on their own, but are brought by their parents,” Navalny points out. He calls on both children and parents not to succumb to the provocation of the authorities and to participate in the voter strike he announced.
As you know, the authorities of Moscow and the Moscow region, regions with the largest number of voters, announced plans to hold school referendums on March 18. However, Navalny assumes that other federal subjects will soon announce the same.
As reported, the Kremlin expects that the turnout in the 2018 elections will be at least 70% - this would allow Vladimir Putin to win with the support of more than 50% of Russian citizens eligible to vote. However, as sociologists found out in the fall, voluntarily citizens are not ready to show the interest required by the authorities - a record low turnout is expected at the elections in March. As a result, sociologists were forced by the data of new surveys classify.
At the same time, according to press sources, the presidential administration obliged regional officials lure citizens to the polling stations through various competitions, prizes, fairs, and referendums. It was assumed that each region would be able to choose a project at its own discretion.
However, as Kommersant reported earlier in January, regional authorities have already begun refuse en masse from holding “turnout” referendums due to the uncertainty of increasing turnout, as well as due to the fact that government candidates will have to determine their position on pressing issues. In particular, on March 18, the planned referendum on the coat of arms and flag of the city will not take place in Sevastopol, in Komi there will be no referendum on moving the regional capital, and only in the Volgograd region will they vote on changing the clocks.
Meanwhile, supporters of Alexei Navalny are holding a “Voter Strike” on January 28 - a march and rally in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities.
After the release of the FBK film “He’s Not Dimon to You” in March 2017, a number of schoolchildren and students unexpectedly came out to protests organized by supporters of Alexei Navalny. Which immediately turned into repression. Teachers and school principals, teachers and university management, members of commissions on juvenile affairs and police officers began to put pressure on them. They called on them to come to their senses in a variety of ways: from threats to actual expulsion, from fines issued to parents, to their – parents’ – dismissal for their children’s political activity. “Novaya” recalled several of the most striking stories in order, among other things, to find out how the “repressed” now live.
The first news about “political information lessons” taking place in schools began to appear immediately after the March 26 action.
March 30 at Tomsk Vitaly Khovansky, history and social studies teacher at Russian Classical Gymnasium No. 2, gave a peculiar lecture during which he called the students slaves of the Anglo-Saxons. “Liberalism and fascism are two pairs of boots. Have you gone completely crazy?! Liberalism is the freedom of the subhuman! They equated cattle with highly spiritual people! Liberalism is leading humanity to hell! And you support the Anglo-Saxons because of your stupidity... You are the slaves of the Anglo-Saxons! You are traitors, traitors and liberal-fascists!”
Sergei Tchaikovsky. Photo: Nikita Girin / Novaya
The student who asked the question posted the video online. This student was one of the activists of Navalny’s Tomsk headquarters, Sergei Tchaikovsky. After the story spread not only beyond the school, but also the city, the teacher and student made peace. “I don’t want him to get fired. I don’t agree with him, but he’s a good teacher,” said Tchaikovsky. The director announced a disciplinary sanction to the teacher and promised not to touch the student. In June, Sergei graduated from school. I decided not to go to university for now: I’ll work at the headquarters for a year.
Now he is one of the most active volunteers, always among protesters, often among detainees. In October, for example, he was detained in St. Petersburg at an Open Russia seminar; as a result, he was fined.
In April, students Vladimirsky state university They showed a film in which Navalny was compared to Adolf Hitler. The head of the regional law school on the prevention of extremism among young people Alla Byba. When asked why you compare Navalny with Hitler, Byba replied that they did not prepare the video material, but that she simply received an invitation from the university administration and was doing her job.
A month later, in the same city, Deputy Director for educational work School No. 15 Tatyana Ageeva threatened children with removal from their families. The reason was a photo published on the Internet that one of the students took at Navalny’s headquarters. “It’s your expression of will that plays against you. Your parents are at risk: they don’t know where you are, and this is the first poor performance of their duties; you are not ready for school, and this is the second poor performance of duties; you are officially members, and this is officially declared as an extremist group, and this means the third failure to fulfill duties,” she said. As a result, the school management agreed that the head teacher “went too far.”
When Navalny announced the rallies on June 12, educational institutions across the country began to take preventive measures. Schoolchildren and students had to listen to lectures and threats. Pupils complained about pressure educational institutions St. Petersburg, Samara, Kaliningrad, Vladimir, Izhevsk, Murmansk, Cheboksary, Veliky Novgorod, Belgorod, Yakutsk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Salavat, Omsk, Novokuznetsk and Blagoveshchensk.
IN Samara teachers at schools and secondary educational institutions then received recommendations from the local Ministry of Education “to strengthen anti-extremist and patriotic agitation among students.” Teachers were required to tell children about the sabotage activities of Alexei Navalny’s party, claiming that the opposition is criminal and destroys the foundations of the state.
“It is especially important to prevent young people from participating in the opposition rally on June 12. We need to draw the children's attention to the fact that protest activity is temporary. Khodorkovsky announced his support for Navalny. On April 27, 2017, the Prosecutor General’s Office recognized the Open Russia organization founded by Khodorkovsky as a structure engaged in “inspiring protests and destabilizing the internal political situation in the Russian Federation.” It is necessary to discuss with students the forms of countering extremism. First of all, support Russian President V. Putin,” the recommendations said.
Almaz Imamov. Photos from social networks
Happy new beginning academic year News of such conversations began to appear more often. In September, a first year student Neftekamsk Mechanical Engineering College Almaz Imamov was summoned to the leadership three times for participating in rallies. During a conversation between Deputy Director for Educational Work Zinfira Salimyanova and the student’s mother, a college representative said: “Because we live in a country... and we have no right to say that against the current government. In past times they were shot for it! They set it up and shot, do you understand?!” However, the incident did not develop: Imamov himself said that in college they did not tell him anything else.
In mid-September, a 16-year-old eleventh grader at Lyceum No. 41 Vladivostok Semyon Golubovsky posted an audio recording of his conversation with the administration and the juvenile affairs inspector. The essence of the claims was that the student disgraced the school and that if they could, they would have expelled him long ago.
As Semyon told Novaya, now the pressure from the school management has subsided, his classmates support him or are neutral. “I can say that that conversation did not affect my worldview in any way, it only strengthened my positions on some issues. There were no more conversations of this kind. Now the teachers don’t show their attitude towards me. I continue to feel a certain amount of pressure, but no longer from the school. I have been told more than once that I am on the list of active politicized citizens who are being monitored. A couple of times the police scared me with arrests. But now even this is gone.”
In October in Kemerovo it finally came down to expulsion. True, the student had nothing to do directly with Navalny’s headquarters. From Kuzbass State technical university Master's student Alexander Stepantsov was kicked out due to “accumulated academic debt.” At that time, Alexander was an excellent student and received an increased academic scholarship. Alexander himself is sure: this is how they wanted to put pressure on his girlfriend, the coordinator of Navalny’s local headquarters, Ksenia Pakhomova. A day after the story became public, he was reinstated at the university. Now, he says, training is taking place as usual.
November 28 at social group In the Kaliningrad branch of Navalny’s headquarters, a recording appeared in which the director of school No. 50, Valentina Gulidova, explains to 8th grade student Alina (in the presence of her mother) that it is not her “job to fight corruption at the age of fourteen.” At the same time, the director prophesies: the girl has ruined her career, and all her actions will subsequently lead to rebellion and murder. The recording was made on November 9th.
“This is the first such conversation that was held with me at school,” Alina told Novaya. “I think the director didn’t know before that that I supported Navalny.” Alina says that after watching the film “He’s Not Dimon for You,” “I came to the headquarters, where I am now a volunteer and do door-to-door visits.”
In order to convince the eighth-grader not to do this again, the director promises to “report to the authorities” and says that the student was on the FSB list. “If you didn’t hear me, you will ruin your life, and you have already ruined your career, because you are now ending up in the FSB. You’re blacklisted,” raged Valentina Gulidova.
The director did not listen to the girl who tried to explain that her actions had nothing to do with an armed uprising: “It will be a riot. These will be murders. And maybe you will get hurt. It will all be with fire bottles. You will be dragged by both hands into this crater. You will resist, you will shout: “I am a free man!” We all know this and have been through it,” the director continued.
Alina’s mother did not support: “After talking with the director, she believed that we would have big problems and panicked. And dad took it calmly,” says Alina.
After the publication of the video, no sanctions have yet been applied to the schoolgirl. The regional Ministry of Education told Novaya that schools are municipal institutions, so you should contact the Kaliningrad Education Committee with questions. But his leader was not there.
“Only educated citizens can change the country for the better, so the task of our children is to strive to acquire new knowledge. As for the conversation, it is necessary to take into account that 14 years is the age of crisis for a teenager who ceases to be a child and becomes an adult and independent, and demands from others that he be perceived as such, hence the internal protest. And the director of an educational institution, when talking with his students, must always remember about ethical standards communication and about psychological characteristics children of different ages,” Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Kaliningrad Region Ilya Barinov commented to Novaya.
As the head of Navalny’s headquarters in Kaliningrad, Yegor Chernyuk, said, this is not the first case in the region when educational institutions are trying to put pressure on students: “Oleg Alekseev, an employee of the headquarters, was expelled from the Baltic federal university named after Immanuel Kant.
This happened in July. The expulsion order states that he ceased to be a university student “due to unlawful behavior, expressed in disrespect for the law and the court in the public space, disregard for the accepted procedure of behavior at the Kant IKBFU.” As university staff then explained, the behavior and neglect stemmed from Alekseev’s post on social networks commenting on the court’s decision to refuse approval for the June 12 procession and the transfer to the media of an audio recording of a conversation with the director.
Simply - a critique of pure reason. I feel sorry for Kant.
It is dedicated to a referendum among students, which is planned to be held on March 18 in some regions, including Moscow. The initiative was taken by the Interdistrict Council of Directors of the capital educational institutions. Navalny is confident that schoolchildren and their parents are “brazenly and cynically used as extras in Putin’s re-election.”
The idea of a school referendum is supported in the Moscow City Duma. Deputy Anton Molev says that holding a school referendum on the day of the presidential election is convenient for everyone.
Related materials
The initiative to hold “school referendums” appeared at the end of 2017 and comes from the governing councils of schools. Combining the date of such referendums with the day of election of the President of the Russian Federation will only help attract public attention to controversial school issues. This was reported live on the radio station “Echo of Moscow” by a Moscow City Duma deputy, scientific supervisor Lyceum of the Presidential Academy Anton Molev. “This initiative is not purely mine; it was put forward by representatives of the interdistrict board of directors themselves, essentially the governing councils of schools. The initiative was discussed back in November-December last year, and now only the mechanisms and materials that this time we were prepared working group. Taking into account the fact that presidential elections are the most popular among the population and cause the greatest response, the largest number of people who came to the polling stations, we must use this chance, this rare opportunity to ask all the questions that are a field of dialogue for the school administration and the parent community," he said. According to him, the elections of municipal deputies held in September 2017 were not used as a similar opportunity, since the initiative to hold school referendums on a single voting day appeared later. A. Molev emphasized that turnout for municipal elections is usual. “substantially lower than for the presidential elections.” According to the Moscow City Duma deputy, the range of issues and the current agenda of school referendums is “purely the prerogative of the school itself.” “There was no talk of increasing the working or school week... Schools themselves will determine what issues they want.” want to ask the public,” he emphasized. A. Molev also noted that the format of school referendums is not new for Moscow. “The words that this has not happened before are not confirmed in Moscow practice. In Moscow there was a question about choosing the most optimal holidays, choosing a school uniform and any others that go beyond the purely professional competence. There are different mechanisms for obtaining information, for example, “Active Citizen,” but it only gives a general overview of the city,” he explained.
Chairman of the Moscow City Election Commission Valentin Gorbunov said that he supports this idea not only as the head of the city election commission, but also as a grandfather whose grandchildren go to school.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin doubts that school referendums are being held on the day of the presidential election in order to increase turnout. Rather, on the contrary, it was school activists who took advantage of the turnout in the presidential elections because no one goes to their referendums,” Sobyanin said.
School referendums are undoubtedly a tool for putting pressure on voters, says politician Dmitry Gudkov. Gudkov recalled that under the current law, holding referendums is very difficult and it is virtually impossible to hold them.
The regions are taking ever new measures to increase turnout in the presidential elections. Often they are associated with administrative resources.
In Nizhny Tagil, officials from the mayor's office suddenly wanted to make friends with informals. They are invited for a cup of coffee. True, by order. Local social media users published a letter from the city administration to the directors of educational institutions. The author of the letter confirmed its authenticity. In it, heads of educational institutions are asked from each technical school, college, and university to send two or three students who have authority among young people to the meeting. The letter emphasizes that prefects, student council chairmen and “positive leaders” do not need to be sent. We only need those who can lead “youth groups, hackers, rockers.” The purpose of the meeting is to highlight the initiative of the city administration to raise young people to vote at any cost, the letter says.
Earlier, the head of the Central Election Commission, Ellam Pamfilova, called on the regions not to increase turnout using administrative resources.
Meanwhile, in Saratov, a student of one of medical colleges published photographs of a sample questionnaire from “ United Russia”, which are distributed at his faculty. The questionnaire asks for passport details, address, contacts, social media profile and political party affiliation. The document contains a request to come to the polls. And on Sakhalin, as local media report, grocery stores began printing “Everyone for the elections on March 18.”
As for referendums, a number of regions abandoned them so that government candidates would not have to determine their position on sensitive issues, the Kommersant newspaper wrote about this. But the authorities came up with an alternative. As BBC journalists found out, in many regions there will be surveys of residents on landscaping issues - where to put a garage or set up a park. In addition, as RBC wrote, people will also be lured to the elections with a selfie competition at polling stations.
VTsIOM claims that up to 80% of Russians are ready to go to the polls.