Putin Must Go

A demonstrator urges to sign the appeal "Putin Must Go". The photo from the banned rally in Moscow on 20 March 2010, called "The Day of Wrath"

"Putin must go" (Russian: Путин должен уйти) is a website and a public campaign of the same name organised for the collection of signatures under an open letter demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin. The campaign was started on the Internet on 10 March 2010 by Russian opposition activists and several Russian artists.

Contents of the appeal

The text of the appeal, addressed to the “citizens of Russia”, contains a sharply negative assessment of Vladimir Putin's activity. It says in part:

We state that the sociopolitical construction that is killing Russia and has now bound the citizens of our country has one architect, one custodian, and one guardian. His name is Vladimir Putin. We declare that no essential reforms can be carried out in Russia today as long as Putin controls real power in the country. […] Ridding ourselves of Putinism is the first, obligatory step on the path to a new, free Russia.

The appeal lists Putin's failed reforms ("everything that could be ruined has been ruined") and alleged crimes, such as the Second Chechen War and the explosions of apartment buildings.

The appeal also criticises the late president Boris Yeltsin and the circle of his advisers and relatives ("the Family"), who promoted Putin to the presidency in order to guarantee their own security. The appeal calls the current president Dmitry Medvedev "an obedient placeholder", "a modern Simeon Bekbulatovich".

The authors warn law enforcement and security agency officers not to stand against their nation and not to carry out criminal orders.

The actual author of the text was not named, but according to various sources it was a group headed by Garri Kasparov. Later Kasparov said about the work on the text of the appeal:

A key role was played by the text itself, on which our group of authors worked almost two weeks. My main function was to gather comments and get approvals of the text from all the signatories — from Vladimir Bukovsky to Yury Mukhin. This work required meticulous selection of words and positioning semantic assents. It was not easy to formulate the main message of the appeal. At first two variants were examined: "Putin must resign!" and "Down with Putin!". The first variant was brushed away, because it was a clear appeal to Medvedev; the second one smacked of Bolshevism. Two days before the launch of the project I came up with the phrase “Putin must go” (lit. "Putin, to the Exit!"), which suited everybody. Besides, a delicate issue was the characterisation of the 1990s. While expressing a negative attitude to that period, it was necessary not to pass a certain limit and thus cause rejection from such people as, for example, Boris Nemtsov. Our collaboration turned out to be very successful, because we created a text, with which we managed to overcome the atomisation of society.

Signatories

At the time of the publication, the appeal was signed by 34 prominent public figures of various ideological orientation: human rights defenders Yelena Bonner, Vladimir Bukovsky and Lev Ponomarev, politicians Garri Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov and Yuri Mukhin, economist Andrey Illarionov, writers Zakhar Prilepin and Victor Shenderovich, musician Mikhail Borzykin, political thinker Geidar Dzhemal and others. Many of them are members of the opposition organisation - National Assembly of the Russian Federation.

Opposition politicians Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Eduard Limonov have supported the campaign, even though they have not signed the appeal.

Publication of the appeal

On 10 March 2010 the appeal appeared in the online magazine Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal and the collection of signatures started. At the same day the Ezhednevny Zhurnal website was attacked by hackers Later on 10 March the collection of signatures was transferred to the specially created website PutinaVotstavku.ru. On 10 March the appeal was re-published by online publications Grani.ru and Kasparov.ru. Then it was mentioned by the radio Echo Moskvy, Newsru.com and some other mass media.

During the first day of the campaign no confirmation of the e-mail was required by the site Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal. The site PutinaVotstavku.ru did require a confirmation, but signatures were added automatically. This was used by ill-wishers, who left a large number of fake signatures, calling themselves Obama, Timoshenko, Medvedev, Putin etc. . On 11 March theses "signatures" were deleted and the process of addition of signatures became moderated.

Course of the campaign

Since the publication of the appeal the number of signatures has been growing at the average rate of about 1000 per day (higher at the beginning). The dynamics has been as following:

• 16 March: 10,000
• 27 March: 20,000
• 09 April: 30,000
• 28 April: 40,000

However, no reliable way of independent validation by uninvolved people is provided on the "Putin must go" website if the names represent real people who actually approve the campaign. This signature verification is mandatory for collecting official signatures to dismiss prime minister by Russian law and law in many democratic countries including EU and USA. The only information collected on the cite for each signature is the full name, e-mail, optionally city and profession. This makes it impossible to track signatures to contact real people because there is no addres, no phone and it can be multiple people with same family name. For example, there is around 100.000 Ivanovs are in Moscow and around 80.000 Smirnovs. The site claims to send a confirmation email to check intenally that signer email exists, however existence of the email does not warranty that it belongs to same person whose name appear on the petition. The site actually guarantees that gathered e-mails will not be publicly disclosed. There also no residency or age requirements verification, that in many democratic countries can potentialy open door for multiple lawsuites in case when a person signature will appear on the list without of his/her permission.

March

On 15 March the site PutinaVotstavku.ru began to inform about the progress of the campaign. The first message said that the number of signatures could have been larger, if confirmations from the site had not been blocked by some popular e-mail services. However, the organisers expressed a belief that no counteraction would stop people and the appeal would be signed by millions of citizens. The signature of Valeria Novodvorskaya was added only a week later, after her two video-addresses to the organisers. Valeria Novodvorskaya blamed the campaign organizers for delays and accused them of removing real people signatures instead of the fake ones.

Konstantin Borovoi's signature was added only on 5 April. In his blog entry of 16 March the politician attributed this delay to the fact that he and Novodvorskaya were not allowed to join the Solidarity movement. He expressed a hope that it was a misunderstanding and asked Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov to settle the issue with the Solidarity membership.

From 17 March members of the United Civil Front have held pickets in Moscow, some of them in dormitory districts, to collect signatures under the appeal.

Signatures were collected on paper also in the course of the protest actions in Russia on 20 March 2010 (the "Day of Wrath"). In particular, members of the Solidarity collected signatures at rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg..

On 22 March the organisers published the second message about the course of the campaign. They informed about the creation of two online communities for those who signed the appeal — in LiveJournal (putinvotstavku.livejournal.com) and Twitter (twitter.com/putinavotstavku/). They also proposed to discuss the creation of a separate social network, in which every signatory would automatically get an account.

On 26 March the editorial board of the site organised a press-conference, in which Garry Kasparov said that the appeal had been signed by about 30 thousand people. At the moment the moderators had approved about 19 thousand.

During March the website was developing rapidly. It got a banner of the campaign (with a counter), banners of media partners (Grani.ru, Novaya Gazeta, Kasparov.ru, etc), links to campaign communities in social networks, as well as a form for filling in signatures offline.. The sections News, Publications, Selected (signatures), Video and FAQ were added as well.

April

In April the already created sections of the site were being filled in. Also a Facebook group was added.

On 13 April the signatories received an e-mail message, in which the organisers informed about the creation of a social network. The message contained a web link, on which those interested in joining the internet community “Putin must go” and getting a newsletter were asked to click.

On 28 April the organisers informed that 1/3 of the signatories had confirmed the interest in joining the social network. They also told about plans of making groups for participants on the site and visiting cities with at least several dozens of participants.

May

At the May Day rally in Moscow Garri Kasparov declared that the campaign would go on until Putin leaves and Russia becomes free.

Media coverage

The campaign was covered in a number of Russian and foreign media, including

• Russian media: Echo Moskvy, Novaya gazeta, Polit.ru, Izvestia, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Pravda, Delovoy Petersburg, Sobesednik, Expert

• foreign media: Radio Liberty, Deutsche Welle, AFP , American Thinker , Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany), Courrier International (France), First Caucasian (Georgia), Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden), Adevarul (Romania)

On 11 March Radio Liberty published an English translation of the entire text of the appeal.

Statistical analyses of signatories

15 March 2010 the magazine NewTimes.ru published a statistical analysis of signatories according to their places of residence and professions, concluding that the appeal was signed mostly by the middle class.

On 22 March the magazine published its second analysis, on a larger base of signatures (7500). The article said that signatures had come from all over the country. The exceptions were ethnic republics, especially in the North Caucasus. The most active were Moscow 28.8% and St. Petersburg 11.3%. A relatively large number of signatures had been provided by residents of Siberian and Urals federal districts, where the recession-hit industries concentrated. The Russian diaspora had given 11%. As to signatories' professions, the leading segment are white collars (jurists, economists, IT-specialist, managers) — 21%. Most of the signatories were men — 83%.

A counter campaign "Putin must not go"

Russian writer and opinion journalist Nikolai Starikov organized a vote in the Internet with a plea that Putin must stay. He motivated his move with the suggestion that everybody must have a choice, while the website "Putin must go" did not provide an option to vote for Putin's staying. Starikov's website "Putin must not go" gathered 6,616 signatures in five days (1,648 more could not be confirmed because of technical troubles). After that, that website was hacked and defaced by unknown hackers.

At the "Putin must not go" website Starikov explained:

Democracy is a choice. The choice of a point of view. Democracy is a possibility to say "yes" along with a possibility to say "no". But those who speak so much about freedom and democracy act in all the contrary way. They wrote an address, organized gathering of signatures "for" Putin to leave the politics. But why at that same resource you do not allow citizens of Russia to say "no" to Putin's leaving the politics? What sort of democracy is that, which allows no choice? When there is only a single point of view — the one that's exclusively yours.

Links

• The website of the campaign "Putin Must Go"
• A full English translation of the appeal
• The LiveJournal community of the campaign