The Queue for Democracy
Local authorities in Russia are becoming increasingly disenfranchised: money and authority are moving to the top.
April 21st is Local Self-Government Day in Russia. On this day (according to the old calendar) in 1785, Catherine II issued the Charter Patent to the cities, which laid the foundation for the development of Russian legislation on local self-government.
Ahead of this day, NeMoskva spoke with municipal deputies about what has been happening with the local government system in Russia over the past few years.
Activism or micromanagement?
Olga Podolskaya, a municipal deputy from the city of Yefremov in the Tula region, became famous in Russia after she supported political prisoner Alexei MoskalovPodolskaya was soon designated a foreign agent and forced to leave Russia, but continued to serve as a deputy until her term ended in September 2024.
"I'm still in touch with the regional deputy minister of ecology, for example," says Podolskaya. "The air quality in my city is really bad, and when people call me and complain about the stench, I write to him, and he sends people to take measurements. I'm writing simply as a private individual, Olga Podolskaya, whom they know."
— You are a foreign agent, you left Russia, but they still react?
— Yes. You know, I personally never confronted anyone here. I didn't say: you're so bad, you have a ton of problems there. I came and said: we have a problem, let's think about what we can do.
According to Olga, she ran for parliament primarily because of the environmental agenda. Together with a group of activists, she forced the alleged culprit of the stench—the Zernoprodukt LLC plant—to install an air purification system. The next step was to get the company to stop dumping its waste—a bubbling, foul-smelling mixture—into the waste-storage fields, and to promise to reclaim the fields themselves. To achieve this, Deputy Podolskaya had to picket and demand a meeting with then-Governor Alexei Dyumin. She was fined, but the waste pipe was shut off.
Thus, the problem was moved forward, but it turned out that Zernoprodukt was not the only one to blame – and the fight had to continue.
"We forced them to install a gas analyzer in our city," Podolskaya explains. "Before, we were told no excess levels had been detected. But it turned out they couldn't be detected because the analyzer only detects four substances. The device the Ministry of Ecology purchased detects 28 substances."
In my city I counted about fifty substances, more than a ton of which
Enterprises emit waste every year. Therefore, it's not yet possible to identify them all. But at least I was able to connect people directly with the minister, invite him to report back and find out what's going on.
In a small town, a deputy's activities largely remain the same as activism, albeit with a formal status. According to Vitaly Bovar, a former deputy of the Vladimir Municipal District of St. Petersburg (also an emigrant and foreign agent), in the metropolis, environmental issues are addressed a little differently:
"Everyone who lives in St. Petersburg knows how poorly the city authorities treat green spaces and the urban environment in general. For example, the St. Petersburg of 1991 is a much greener city than the St. Petersburg of 2025. Take photos of the same place anywhere—on Marat Street, on Vasilievsky Island, on Petrogradskaya Storona—and everywhere, the St. Petersburg of 30 years ago, the late Soviet era, the post-war era, is much greener than today. One of the reasons is that the city authorities are good at embezzling money, but not very good at micromanagement. And to maintain the green city in satisfactory condition, you need to hire a large number of gardeners to look after the trees on a daily basis. And in our district, we managed to push the administration and organize such a service—albeit on a small scale in one district."
Klishas + Krasheninnikov = ?
But both small Yefremov and huge Petersburg agree on the main thing.
“Today in Russia, the municipal branch of government is integrated into the political vertical, which categorically contradicts the very idea of municipal government, which was originally conceived as a separate branch,” he believes. Olga Galkina, former deputy of the Morskoy Municipal District, and then of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg.
A month ago, the federal law "On the General Principles of Local Self-Government Organization in a Unified System of Public Authority," also known as the "Klishas-Krasheninnikov Law," was signed. All three NeMoskva interlocutors signed the petition to repeal bill No. 40361-8.
The petition's authors explain the consequences of the law's adoption: administrations will become accountable to higher authorities, heads will be appointed from above rather than elected, the possibility of civilian oversight over local administrative structures will be completely lost, and all budgetary procedures will be transferred to the executive authority of amalgamated municipalities. As a result, residents' influence on government decisions will be reduced to zero, and local self-government will be effectively eliminated.
Many Russian municipal deputies fought against the "Klishas-Krasheninnikov Law" for years. But it didn't work: the law will come into force in two months.
"There's a centralization and consolidation of power happening: powers are being taken away from small towns and cities and transferred to the regions," explains Olga Podolskaya. "For example, in my hometown, new deputies were elected—and a law on the municipal district was immediately passed. There used to be a municipal entity called the city of Yefremov, where I was a deputy, and now it's a faceless municipal district. Our main powers have been transferred higher—to the region, to Tula. What does this mean for the people? It means their representative will now be in the district. But the local representative, a deputy who lives in the city, understands the local problems: where a road needs to be built, what's the situation with water, heating, and so on. And when these powers are diffused and transferred upward, it will be much more difficult to reach them and solve local problems. And then there will be a loss of funding. Money was already being taken away—most of it went upward, and now there won't be any at all."
From agents of change to foreign agents
"Municipal deputies have virtually no power left to influence truly important decisions. In the city where I serve, our authority over key issues has been taken away, handed over to the regional level. These include matters related to public transportation, construction, and so on. Speaking of rural deputies, it's a complete disaster, as there are no budgets, and the real decisions are made by higher-level administrations. Perhaps the only thing a municipal deputy can do is publicize some unflattering fact, a decision that the authorities would prefer to make quietly," says a current city council member in a large regional city. NeMoskva knows this person's full name and place of work, but he agreed to give even such an innocuous comment only anonymously and without specifying the region.
"In Ryazan, deputy Konstantin Smirnov was jailed. And he was jailed precisely because he told residents what a municipal district now means and how people's representation is being eliminated," says Olga Podolskaya. According to her, many deputies who hold positions that conflict with state policy are either jailed on trumped-up charges or declared foreign agents and subjected to pressure to force them out of the country. This is exemplified not only by the stories of Smirnov, but also Ksenia Cherepanova from Veliky Novgorod, Svetlana Kaverzina and Helga Pirogova from Novosibirsk, and many others.
"Boris Vishnevsky is a prime example," says Vitaly Bovar. "It's hard to call him a radical—in fact, many criticize both him and Yabloko for their 'conciliatory' stance. But he's a foreign agent and can't run for office, even though it's clear he represents, to varying degrees, the interests of anti-war Russians. His involvement in real politics is effectively over—well, except perhaps for some journalistic work. Generally speaking, if you have a critical view of Russian society, if you're running for power to change something, you're already an unreliable element, because any agents of change in Russia are unreliable."
So what's left for civil society in Russia? According to Olga Galkina, it's "to explore relatively safe ways to express discontent."
"And I see that one of these formats, oddly enough, is queues," says Galkina. "Queues to see Nadezhdin. Queues at 'Noon Against Putin.' Queues at Navalny's funeral. Queues at the Presidential Administration to file petitions against the bill on euthanasia of stray animals. And our task, those of us living abroad, is to use our media and other resources to help those inside Russia, to maintain contact between those who left and those who remained."
So, who's the last one standing for democracy? We're behind you.
