This time – the Trans-Baikal Territory, in the Pskov and Oryol regions.
Party “Just Russia – For the truth!” (SRZP), in fact, refused to fight in the elections in three more important regions for him: the Trans-Baikal Territory, as well as in the Pskov and Orel regions. In the first case, in full preparation for the elections to the Legislative Assembly, the leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionaries dissolved the regional branch, in the other two, it refused to nominate its candidates for governorships.
For many years, the SRZP was considered the Russian “Party of Regions” – the result of all major elections was not given by unpopular federal leaders like Sergei Mironov, but by local leaders. At this rate, this, and the significance of the party, will soon be over.
“The Raider Capture of the Branch”
The most outrageous outcome of the struggle was the actions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Transbaikal territory, where elections to the Legislative Assembly will be held in two months. By decision of the central leadership of the SRZP, the regional branch of the party was completely dissolved and the approximately 1,400 local Socialist-Revolutionaries were expelled from the party. In return, Sergei Mironov sent to Chita at the head of a renegade – a senator from the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Bezdenezhnykh. He came to the SRZP after his ‘boss’, former Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal, ended up in a remand center on charges of ordering several murders and was removed from his position as leader of the region. Bezdenezhnykh went around idly for some time, then he held various public posts in the SRZP, and now he found a point of application of his forces in Chita. Bezdenezhnykh will nominate its candidates for the Legislative Assembly. And for that, at least, he will have to find at least a few dozen people who will simply agree to join the party and hold a nomination conference.
That could be a problem. Today, the former Socialist-Revolutionary leader of Transbaikalia, Nikolai Seleznev, told federal media that a ‘raider takeover’ had occurred in the party branch. They say that in Chita they learned about the reshuffle only on June 29, and the next day Seleznev handed over the cases to the senator from Khabarovsk. Seleznev was even more surprised by the accusations leveled against members of the Chita party by the authorities in Moscow: they say they badly supported the SVO. Seleznev himself thinks they were very active.
Nikolai Seleznev. Photo: chita.spravedlivo.ru The Trans-Baikal branch was indeed one of the most successful in the country. In 2022, residents of Chita were second in the country after Dagestanis in terms of the number of deputy mandates they won in local councils. And in the last elections to the Legislative Assembly, the party became only the fourth, but at the same time won almost 9% of the vote and even won a single-mandate constituency. The leader of the list of Socialist-Revolutionaries was then Dmitry Ionin, a former State Duma deputy and now deputy governor of the Sverdlovsk region. “The local party members are used to the Varangians and would certainly have calmly accepted the Bezdenezhny. Why they had to be dispersed is a mystery,” a Far Eastern Embassy interlocutor told Notepad.
“We cannot cooperate with corrupt officials”
Not without scandal, the SRZP withdrew from the struggle in Orel. Local party leader Ruslan Perelygin, seen in the region as one of the main opponents of communist governor Andrey Klychkov, suddenly announced that the party would not appoint anyone to lead the region. They say that in this way the Socialist-Revolutionaries will be forced to cooperate with the Klychkov team, whose work has been “accompanied by corruption scandals”, and the governor himself and his team “discredit and undermine trust in the power of the state”. As an example, Perelygin cited the mayor of Orel, Yuri Parakhin, who was repeatedly involved in criminal cases, but “enjoyed the protection” of Klychkov.
Ruslan Perelygin. Photo: spravedlivo.ru/ Corruption as a reason for refusing to fight corrupt officials in elections seems strange, if you forget the municipal filter. After all, neither Perelygin nor Klychkov himself can run for governor without the support of city deputies of United Russia. And even earlier they supported Klychkov’s candidacy and refused to nominate their candidate against him. In such conditions, the signatures of local deputies were unlikely to shine for Perelygin, and he clearly did not want to become a “fluffy” candidate just to participate in the elections.
However, as Bloknot sources within the party say, there are much stronger arguments. “Klychkov’s positions in the region, frankly, are not the strongest. There are no economic successes, there is corruption and the people are slowly getting tired of their “pioneer-governor”. And it’s only four years in Orel. At the federal level, a “red” governor in Gennady Zyuganov’s homeland, and even a governor whose Communist Party leader himself has vouched for the Kremlin, is deemed necessary. Therefore, under Klychkov’s victory, the clearing is cleared. Even spoilers, ”Blonkot’s interlocutor told SRZP. He pointed out that in Orel, “even the softest” Russian Pensioners’ Party, which was not going to “fight hard with Klychkov”, was not allowed to vote.
Neither the first nor the last
The refusal to fight in the SRZP is also expected in another once promising region for the party – the Pskov region. There, United Russia sends the outgoing governor, the “young technocrat” Mikhail Vedernikov, to the elections. His competitor, theoretically, could be the main and richest local socialist-revolutionary Oleg Bryachak. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. “Bryachak’s business was ‘related’ to trade with the Baltic countries. He was engaged in customs terminals and other issues related to the proximity of the border with the European Union. What happened to this trade now – no need to explain. Yes, and the competitors got smarter,” said a political strategist who worked with the Socialist-Revolutionaries in an interview with Bloknot.
Oleg Briachak. Photo: spravedlivo.ru If in Pskov the SRZP also refuses to fight, this will be the fourth case in a short time when Mironov and his associates actually give up promising territories for themselves. Previously, the party shamefully refused to fight for the seat of governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Sergei Mironov then explained the decision with personal gratitude to the region’s leader, United Russia Gleb Nikitin, for his help in rehabilitating Zakhar Prilepin, co-chairman of the NWRP, who had suffered from Ukrainian terrorists.
But even where the party nominates candidates, they often obviously have no serious chance even of forcing a struggle. For example, in Voronezh, a simple activist of the former party of Zakhar Prilepin “For the truth!” became a candidate for governor of the SRZP. Yaroslav Tarasov. Having neither popularity nor money.
Yaroslav Tarasov. Photo: voronezh.spravedlivo.ru At the same time, the Voronezh SRZP department is headed by State Duma deputy Dmitry Kuznetsov, who once managed to disgrace himself there, and such status entrepreneurs as financier and developer Anatoly Shmygalev and his top executives are in on the fun.
In addition to these regions, candidates for the leadership of the SRZP regions may not wait for voters from the Krasnoyarsk complex (newcomer Mikhail Kotyukov is barely getting used to being the first there) and Altai (the communist Marina Prusakova is already actively rustling against the weak leader of Tomenko) territories, as well as Smolensk ( with a weak “United Russia”), Omsk (where Governor Alexander Burkov is still fresh in the memory of the Socialist-Revolutionaries) regions and in Yakutia, where the diamond king-SR Fedot Tumusov retired from politics.
“The Socialist-Revolutionaries have been precisely the Party of Regions since 2006 throughout their existence. They surprised almost all the campaigns in one or two constituent entities with excellent results, and in the federal elections it was the regions, and not Moscow or Mironov’s homeland, St. Petersburg, that “brought” the result of the party at a good level. It seems that this story is coming to an end. And with that, interest in the SDSR as a political force. But a holy place is never empty,” a political strategist close to the Kremlin told Bloknot.
Author: Nikolai Troinin
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