Mr Kovalev’s letter to Mr Putin

28/02/2008
Press release

Serguei Kovalev Serguei Kovalev is a
Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and
political prisoner. He is the president of the Human Rights Institute
(Moscow).

Open letter to: Vladimir Putin, President of
Russian Federation

Vladimir Churov, Chairman of Central Election Commission of
Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Russian Federation

Gentlemen, I have no doubt that you are well aware that the free expression
of the will of free citizens via free democratic elections can never result in
99.4% of the votes being cast for one party with a turnout of 99.5% of the
voters.

For further information about Human rights in Russia, see :

Memorial website

FIDH
website

Open letter to: Vladimir Putin, President of
Russian Federation Vladimir Churov, Chairman of Central
Election Commission of Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov,
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation

Gentlemen, I have no doubt that you are well aware that the free expression
of the will of free citizens via free democratic elections can never result in
99.4% of the votes being cast for one party with a turnout of 99.5% of the
voters.

Now obviously that is only impossible where there is open, transparent
political competition between electoral candidates, with equal opportunities
for public campaigning, where there is no administrative pressure on
individuals and where one finds impeccable honesty and scrupulous accuracy from
the election commissions.

Yet all these are surely the crucial conditions for democratic electoral
procedure?

No need to prove to you that these very 99.4% votes “for” provide
incontrovertible evidence of vote-rigging. You know that as well as I do, and
as well as any remotely literate citizen with at least commonsense, not to
mention a basic awareness of the nature and possibilities of the popular vote.
You of course also know that such results far above 90% (i.e. the same fraud)
did not happen in isolated polling stations, no, in several subjects of the
Russian, if one may use the term, “Federation”. This unfortunate circumstance
is more than sufficient to correctly assess the tasteless farce being played
out by untalented directors on the entire boundless Russian stage on 2
December, and for good measure in the coming event on 2 March.

It is entirely redundant to tediously collect up the electoral commission
protocols rewritten in retrospect, or evidence of shenanigans with ballot
papers etc – it’s all clear enough anyway. The authorities (who by the way you
represent, Gentlemen), mangled electoral legislation and then wantonly, with no
finesse, came up with some kind of imitation of elections. In doing so they
sneered at the Constitution and armed themselves with administrative resources.
The simulation was not for us but for the West you so dislike.

I am not in the slightest claiming that “United Russia” would not have got
into the State Duma without the rigging. For goodness sake, obviously they
would have been in first place anyway. That’s quite another, also painful
problem for the country.

However on another subject now. Through your deliberate efforts, Gentlemen,
in a country where the democracy was only budding forth, we once again have no
elections – the main criterion for a democracy. And for a long time. Not even
Stalin could have dreamed of the Chechen record. In his “elections”, that sort
of percentage was gained by a single candidate with no alternative. While in
the present case this pathetic 0.1% was supposedly shared by virtually 10
parties.

It’s not by hearsay that we know what’s happening to a country which
receives a sycophantic puppet parliament, a decorative Constitution, a justice
system working to order and an uncontrolled leadership reappointing itself
(like the profoundly expressive word “successor” which has sullied our
political lexicon for a good 10 years). Details are hardly appropriate. It
would seem that that does not frighten you and you have decided to try it yet
another. Or maybe you simply don’t know anything else.

Well, the choice – conscious and well-thought-out - has undoubtedly been
made –, and long ago, and I am quite well aware that I can’t stop it.

I do have a question, however: will you be able to stop if at some stage you
don’t wish to follow things through to the all too familiar end?

It’s clear that the lies exuding from all your lackey screens, are powerless
to hide the electoral shame. Yet despite that, you are forced to lie
shamelessly and hopelessly, with arrogance and anger jumping down on any doubts
(like “… let them teach their wives …”). You don’t have another choice, I mean
you can’t say: “Well, we took over here, slightly corrected the results, and
there they went overboard. Well don’t be too critical, it’s all though their
enthusiasm and uncontrollable functionary zeal.

And in your step there are the adepts hurriedly bustling to get themselves
onto the patriot register. Earlier our leaders quite often had to lie tediously
and brazenly for decades, denying the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or the Katyn
Massacre of Polish prisoners of war, or the arrest of Wallenberg. In a word,
what was obvious to all around them and now it’s you. History is unfortunately
repeating itself.

The lie which you so decisively have again established in government use and
which you are incapable of rejecting has an important and extremely dangerous
quality - I would say a particularly corrupting force. The point is that the
majority of your listeners don’t believe you, and that includes your convinced
supporters. That is, they are of course pleased with “United Russia’s” victory,
but they understand very well whatever you say how the mould for such a victory
was set.

We have a paradoxical change – you lie, your listeners know this and you
know that they don’t believe you, only pretend to believe, and yet they also
know that you know they don’t believe you. Everybody knows everything. The very
lie no longer aspires to deceive anyone, from being a means of fooling people
it has for some reason turned into an everyday way of life, a customary and
obligatory rule for living. You have a Mr Markov, supposedly a professor,
supposedly a political expert, and in fact a hardened and dense cynic. Speaking
with him about our “politics”, a journalist said: “lies have short legs”.
“Human memory is even shorter”, was Markov’s response. Horrible, yet it would
seem that this is in fact the case. Of course they’ll forget a lot about the
two grubby spectacles in succession in a couple of months after 2 March.
However they’ll never forget something else – that the top figures of the state
lie through their teeth. And how could they forget when lying is your natural
element?

This memory is catastrophic and its results irreparable because the
customary lies of leaders always generate and cultivate cynicism in society and
cannot achieve anything else. Whatever your people now say about freedom being
better than lack of freedom, about the right to self-expression and so forth,
these pompous speeches are fixedly (and fairly, by the way) perceived as a
continuation of your untruth. They’re mere words. There is exactly the same
attitude to the bombastic ambitiousness of your utterances about the guaranteed
phenomenal and swiftest successes in all conceivable areas, matters and
issues.

It would seem, however strange this may be, that for us, coming from the
Stalin era, those in power also need public support. So you want to rely on
cynicism? Yet cynicism is cowardice, the flight from burning problems and
hard-hitting discussion. It is the lowest pragmatism, petty timeserving
teetering on the verge of baseness, or having toppled over that edge. It is
intrigue, preferred to competition, and a rejection of moral taboos.

Can any serious political force really base itself on such social
tendencies? Well, yes, cynicism does not scorn obsequious enthusiasm. We all
remember well enough the paid mobs of your “nashy”, 150 per body. So what do
you expect - they’re your prop in the flamboyantly announced “innovations” and
other achievements? Enough, after all you, Mr President, openly shared with us
your devastating assessments of your main people – the party of power “United
Russia”. What other “innovations”?

What then, do you expect with pitiful charms about “four and “to turn a mob
into a creative force? Now that is foolish! From dishonesty, Gentlemen, nothing
grows barring new dishonesty. On that road you have already achieved your real
main goal. Publicly you name it ponderously as stability, whereas in fact its
total power. Simply speaking, modernizing and improving (cynically, yet
reasonably subtly one must say) Soviet ideology and political practice, you
have built a political construction in Russia within which it’s impossible to
win the elections.

Not even squeeze them in any way in parliament. Not even exert any
noticeable political pressure. This is a blind alley that can no way lead to
democracy. And gradually going back by the same path we came on is almost
impossible since you are doomed to lie. As I said before, you can’t renounce
the lies once spoken, or your whole system will come tumbling down.

What you are to do in this situation is of no interest to me. Most probably
you’ll continue your course, perhaps on the way filling your pockets (those in
the know say that you’ve long being doing this – I don’t know, I’m not an
expert in this area). What the country is to do, having ended up under you, now
that is the question. It is immoral and very dangerous to put up with you
indefinitely. Since your present shameless “elections” are absolutely useless,
we therefore need an entirely different instrument in other hands.

We don’t need “political experts” and “political technology specialists”,
not economists and not politicians in the traditional sense of the word. We
need intelligent, daring and extremely well-meaning leaders who instead of loud
opposition noises, can create a decisive, calm, persistent and unwavering
protest and not allow it to slip out from the tradition of the great peaceful
Eastern European victories over despotism, to not allow bloodshed and the
brown-shirt plague. This is incredibly difficult. It is much harder in Russia
than it was in Poland or Czechoslovakia, harder even than in Ukraine.

Yet who promised that our life would be easy? I believe that these people
will at some stage come. I see no other possibility for overcoming our shameful
moral crisis.

However it’s not with you that these problems need to be discussed.

With the most sincere and unwavering lack of respect, Sergei Kovalev

Read more