Political Memes

Wow. I had no idea that was even a thing. It looks like there's barely any English-speaking news about it, and not even an English Wikipedia page. Scary— Should be scary, but also utterly unsurprising on some level… Almost feels inconsequential next to everything else, tiring.

I forgot to mention three-days voting! When city falls asleep mafia wakes up. Nobody knows what happens to baloots during night.

Story time. It was introduced in few districts of Moscow during elections in local parlament. During voting everything seemd fine(as in everyone knew that administrative resource - teachers, public sector workers - were heavily "recommended" to vote remotely), but when voting ended there were no results. Hour passed - no results. Day ended, every physical station uploaded final protocols - no results. Results came only next day at 14 or 16 MSK. In most districts ДЭГ turned results from opposition win, to UR win. I still remember refreshing CEC website and then after dinner seeing as Yuneman(opposition, strong campaign) hundreds of votes ahead of Rusetskaya(UR, expensive campaign) and communist(weak campaign, but on par with Rusetskaya) was turned into Rusetskaya 18 votes ahead. Not surprising, considering system was managed by city hall(mayor). Oh, and mental alysium voted 100% UR.

During 2021 federal parlament voting two systems worked at same time: Moscow and federal. Moscow(one of most protest voting city) same as before, except result was overturned in every single district. In federal a lot of "dead souls" and Donbass refugees. New feature of 2021 was hard voting during Sunday with launch break(it seems voting was someone's day job).

2022 elections were boring in Moscow, but few opposition candidates were so good at voting stations, that even ДЭГ couldn't overturn results. At least without going full Chechnya or Kemerovo.

In 2023 Sobyanin and Pamfilova just can pull any number they want, Moscow is officially electoral sultanat. I think record this year was 108 or more years old dead voter. In Omsk Yabloko won on party list voting and lost on FPTP voting AFAIK UR got majority. On Omsk governor UR candidate was painted to have over 70%, but in trenches(I'm not kidding, there was voting in occupied Ukraine) he got below 50%. Around 30 as I remember. It is scary to paint protocol and ignore men with rifles. In Hakasia communist with strong anti-war position won for governor, UR won parlament. In Yakutia local communists were banned on elections, so UR won governor and 22/35.

Not our responsibility to fix Russia, but a missed opportunity for everyone.

Double correct.

but part of me thinks "publishing of everything in archives without exception" would just be ignored

Documents from 50-ies are still classified. If not everything, then until 2010 sounds reasonable. After ГКЧП there was declassification comittie, it indeed declassified few documebts and helped to reabilitate many people after death, but after Putin came to power comittie was dissolved and documents were reclassified. It came to the point where for Russian it is easier to ask Ukraine for document than russian archive.

You sound like you're personally familiar with this stuff. Sorry about it, I guess.

You personally did nothing wrong.

Oh, and I'm curious what do you think about "Vlad Vexler Chat" channel on Youtube?

Didn't watch, don't have opinion, maybe will watch. I think Ekaterina Shulman has few lectures in English.