Hello, this is Verstka’s politics desk. And we’re already used to the fact that in every, even o...

Hello, this is Verstka’s politics desk. And we’ve already gotten used to the fact that in every, even an obviously hopeless political event in Russia, people look for a “window of opportunity” for change in the country. Now it’s time to look for one in the autumn State Duma elections.

And it even seems like there is some basis: according to official ratings, New People has become the second party in the country. Maybe this is it? We all vote for them together now and life will change?

After all, New People doesn’t look like an opposition party and doesn’t swim like an opposition party, but sometimes it quacks enough like an opposition party. Especially for those who have long since grown unaccustomed to hearing any critical words about the authorities on the “permitted” airwaves. And the temptation is great: here is a legal party, with a platform, with percentages, with moderately critical rhetoric.

Everyone has somehow forgotten that there has already been an attempt to believe in them. Remember the lines at the embassies in March 2024? Back then, Russians came out at noon simply to show an act of opposition. But many went to vote for Davankov: out of spite, with hope, on the principle of “at least something.” It was the most obvious way to register disagreement and not become a terrorist-extremist.

And after the election, Davankov met with Putin and supported the war in the style not of a moderate opposition politician but of a TV propagandist. As it turned out, the “window of opportunity” had never opened in the first place.

This is not an accident and not the betrayal of one particular person, it is the logic of the system. A party that exists in Russia’s legal political field exists by its rules. One can assume that with sufficiently large support, something might change.

But the supported one is unlikely to like that. Former Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal, sentenced to two decades in prison for organizing a contract killing, is the clearest example of that.

When a candidate started to seem like too real an alternative, the system found ways to correct that. Either the candidate himself starts spewing such things that any desire to vote for him disappears. And if voters spit on even that, the administrative system will finish him off. Just to be safe.

We do not claim that participating in elections is always meaningless. But it is worth understanding the price of the tool before using it, not after. That protects against dashed hopes.

Read the text about New People on Verstka’s website (with VPN):

Link not working? Read here.

😘 Subscribe to @svobodnieslova and support Verstka — it matters

Verstka

“They’re scared of everything. But that may not stop voters.” How New People became the Kremlin’s most successful political project of the 2020s

The rise in New People’s ratings is not welcomed either in the party itself or in the Kremlin