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*Yabloko is the Russian for “apple”
The members of Yabloko who lost in the inter-party struggle recently
gathered at the Izvestia press centre. They think that the party
has been transformed into a team “serving the bankrupt ambitions
of one person” – its leader. Grigory Yavlinsky himself is now
busy installing order in the Moscow branch of the organisation.
Last week-end the leader of Yabloko Yavlinsky assumed leadership
of the Moscow branch of the party. Such a combination of two posts
will last for several months, as, according to the Ideology Secretary
of the Yabloko party Sergei Mitrokhin, “the previous leader failed
in management and this situation requires a crisis manager”. This
leader Vyacheslav Igrunov, together with several members of Yabloko’s
Central Council, has broken off and sums up the essence of the
crisis in the personality and policies of the party leader. Yabloko’s
“dissidents” are sure that their leader actively resisted any
attempts to make the party a real political force.
According to Professor Alexei Kuzmin, the organisation performed
“class betrayal of its own class” – the party set up to protect
the interests of science and education did not make any real steps
in this area in the State Duma. This is an erroneous statement,
as last week the Yabloko faction together with the Union of Right-Wing
Forces (SPS) proposed that the government increase expenditure
on education in the state budget for 2002 by 4.5 billion roubles.
There were also other actions, as for example, the law on deferral
of military conscription for teachers. The “dissidents” think
that owing to the efforts of its leader Yabloko has been driven
into the “electoral ghetto” and that the only goal of the party
is to obtain as in the past five per cent of the vote and about
15 seats in parliament.
Mitrokhin called the accusations of Igrunov and other “dissidents”
“a painful reaction to party reform” when Igrunov had to change
into “a member of the team” instead of the main “party-builder”.
All attempts of the “plaintiff” to break up the party led to the
decision of Yabloko’s members to part with Igrunov and several
other people.
The Ideology Secretary of the Yabloko party is convinced that
Igrunov’s offense “was used by Kremlin’s political technologists
who dream of liquidating Yabloko for its unwillingness to play
according to the rules of a “manageable democracy”. “All his (Igrunov’s
– M.V.) accusations are a lie. And I can prove this,” says Mitrokhin.
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