With Alexei Navalny disqualified, long-time reformer Grigory Yavlinsky has become most well-known figure running against Russian leader

JTA

The barring of Russia’s main opposition leader from the presidential race there may be bad for democracy, but it’s a boon for Grigory Yavlinsky, a Jewish liberal politician who is now emerging as the main challenger against the powerful Vladimir Putin.

Yavlinsky is an economist and former deputy prime minister whose mother, Vera Naumovna, was Jewish. On Wednesday, he collected and submitted to the central elections board the 100,000 signatures required to enter the presidential race in March.

That makes him the only widely recognized opposition figure in the race following the barring last month of Alexei Navalny, a nationalist challenger who was disqualified over his 2014 fraud conviction — a conviction that the top human rights court in Europe said was trumped up by the Russian judiciary under Putin.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Yavlinsky, a co-founder of the Yabloko party, actually has a shot at becoming president.

Elections are widely considered to be rigged in Russia, a country that was ranked more restrictive than Iran and Yemen in the Freedom House “Freedom in the World 2017” index.

But Navalny’s elimination does mean that Yavlinsky, 65, whose best electoral result was 7.4 percent of the vote in the 1996 presidential elections, now has a chance of rallying the fractious opposition behind him. And that may allow Yavlinsky to at least put a dent in Putin’s near-certain victory, according to Roman Bronfman, a prominent Russia analyst from Israel who, like Yavlinsky, grew up in what today is Ukraine.

‘If Navalny endorses Yavlinsky, he may well reach an important achievement in the elections because opposition to Putin is strong, albeit suppressed,’ Bronfman told JTA.

Navalny reached such an achievement in the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, finishing second to the ruling party’s candidate with 27% of the vote. It may well have been the reason he was marked for political elimination.

Boris Nemtsov, another Jewish opposition leader who used to be deputy prime minister, was killed near the Kremlin in 2015 after saying he would run against Putin in 2018.

But without Navalny, Yavlinsky is not likely to attract many votes, according to Bronfman.

‘He’s too liberal,’ Bronfman said of Yavlinsky, who opposed Russia’s war in Chechnya and even traveled to that predominantly Muslim area of Russia to negotiate a truce in the 1990s — offering himself to rebels as a hostage in exchange for the release of others. ‘And he’s not charismatic; he has none of the energies that Navalny has going for him.’

Like Nemtsov, Yavlinsky has been a consistent opponent of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — a position that has earned him death threats from nationalists who revile him as a traitor. It also makes it hard for a nationalist like Navalny to endorse Yavlinsky.

Navalny has shown no intention of backing Yavlinsky. In fact, the disqualified opposition leader is calling for a protest boycott of the election – a move that is unlikely to shake Putin’s absolute hold on power but has a very real potential of crippling the Yavlinsky bid.

The boycott call is dividing the opposition, according to Andrey Kalikh, a Russian political and human rights activist and journalist.

‘On one side of the barricades, there’s the forces who unite around Navalny’s call’ for a boycott, he wrote in an op-ed published Thursday on the website Open Democracy. On the other side, ‘there’s the ruling party as well as the liberal party Yabloko and Ksenia Sobchak,’ an independent candidate and television presenter who also has Jewish roots.

Sobchak is among the dozens of individuals who have announced their intention to run for president but have yet to submit the required 100,000 signatures. They have until January 31 to do so.

All of the registered candidates challenging Putin in the elections — including Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has inveighed frequently against Jews — have said they have Jewish roots.

If Yavlinsky’s participation in the vote is approved, he will become the third registered candidate in the March election after the Communist Party’s Pavel Grudinin — an unlikely choice for many Russians with bitter memories of communism — and Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist provocateur who is equally unlikely to appeal to freedom-seeking voters fed up with Putin.

Which is part of the reason that Bronfman believes that Yavlinsky’s origins won’t hurt him electorally.

‘Although he’s of Ukrainian descent, although he’s of Jewish origin, so are many others, on the opposition and on Putin’s side, so it’s not really a factor,’ Bronfman said.

That may explain why Yavlinsky is among many Jewish politicians in Russia – figures like Yevgeny Roizman, Nemtsov and Sobchak — who speak openly of their Jewish roots.

‘I never concealed the fact that my mother is a Jew,’ Yavlinsky said in an interview 2001. ‘How can anyone renounce their mother?’

Openness is a trademark of Yavlinsky, who unusually for a Russian politician speaks candidly about his childhood and other aspects of his life.

He is unapologetic about the fact that both of his sons live in the United Kingdom – a fact that opponents sometimes cite as a sign he lacks patriotism.

In a 2016 interview, Yavlinsky said they left for security reasons after his older son was abducted in 1994. The abductors cut off part of the son’s finger and mailed it to Yavlinsky with a note reading ‘Unless you leave politics we’ll cut off your son’s head.’ But they released the captive, who had the severed part reattached.

Yavlinsky also likes to talk about boxing, a sport he excelled in as a youth, when he was a junior champion of Ukraine in 1968.

Still, Yavlinsky’s Jewish origins have been used against him in the course of his long political career.

At one election rally — Yavlinsky ran for president in 1996 and 2000, and attempted to run in 2012 but was rejected over alleged irregularities in his list of 100,000 signatures – a heckler asked him: ‘How does a Jew dare to even think about becoming the president of Russia?’

A reference to persistent anti-Semitic sentiments centered on the outsized role of Jews in the communist revolution and regimes that followed. It prompted a response from Yavlinsky that he said was intended as an attempt at humor.

‘Jews have done so much harm in Russia that it is they who are obliged to take an active role in correcting the consequences,’ Yavlinsky recalled telling the heckler in the 2001 interview. ‘Of course, it was a joke and the audience laughed and the atmosphere immediately became lighter.’

Despite this exchange, Yavlinsky insists that Russian society is not anti-Semitic and that his popularity among some voters proves it.

‘After the destruction of the Bolshevik system, it becomes clear that anti-Semitism in Russia was mainly of a state nature’ and not part of society, he said in a 1999 interview with CNN. And to the degree that it does exist, ‘the creation of a new strong democratic state will stop anti-Semitism.’

4 thoughts on “Liberal Jewish politician emerging as main opposition challenger to Putin”
  1. “After the destruction of the Bolshevik system, it becomes clear that anti-Semitism in Russia was mainly of a state nature’”
    We can see what sort of President of the Russian Federation he would make when he makes big lies like this from the very start.
    The Jews like to distance themselves from the horrors of the Jewish terrorist takeover of Russia by saying that they themselves (6 million again when the newspaper articles of that period are examined) were actually the victims throughout.
    The first Russian ‘revolution’ (terrorist takeover) of Russia was attempted in 1905, that failed, and that had been intended to go alongside WWI, before the second attempt of 1917 succeeded, so that a Jewish-dominated Russia could more easily smash through an already-defeated Germany and thus take all of Europe.
    The European people were to be liquidated just as the Kulak peasants and other Christians had been, exactly the same as had happened in Russia already, that genocidal slaughter actually being the Noahide Laws in effect there already, albeit, without being officially declared (such is the way of war), just as the Noahide Laws are behind the liquidation of those in the ME Arab and Muslim countries are today, using subjugated NATO armies to do the dirty work, just as rabbis can be seen on YouTube video fotage openly stating that NATO armies will be used to enforce the Noahide Laws and do the killings.
    And of course, WWII was merely a direct continuation of WWI, the task being to smash Germany, that being the only nation powerful enough to stop any invasion from the East by Russia, Stalin had everything worked out nicely to protect the Jews, being one of three leaders named by an eminent Jew as ‘sons of Israel’ who would destroy Germany for the Jews.
    Over 2 million Jews left Germany and the other countries that would become occupied by German forces, and sat out the war in Russia, and Stalin knew what was coming, and had pre-planned the creation of the semi-autonomous oblast within Russia, known today as Birobidzhan, the size of Switzerland, just for the mass influx of Jews he knew would soon be coming, and it still exists today. In the 1920’s Stalin created Birobidzhan, making it officially recognized by the state in the 1930’s, specifically for the safety of the Jews in their own homeland, protected by Russia.
    The Bolshevik Jews in Russia took all the land from the so-called ‘landowners’ (gentile Christians, many of whom were Kulak peasants recently liberated by the Tsar, real working men, hardly capitalist bourgoisie rich who had been enslaving the poor and oppressing them, as these peasants had just been given smallholdings of land and a couple of cows by the Tsar, but the Jews wanted EVERYTHING in the name of the state, themselves in fact, as the private bank accounts of Lenin and Trotsky in the West held hundreds of millions of dollars filched from the Russian people, that was never reinvested in Russia for the benefit of all of the Russian people after the ‘revolution’. See the works of Juri Lina for all the research on that.
    Trotsky and Lenin were the scum of the Earth, mass-murderers and robbers of the nastiest sort.
    After the war, well over 4.25 million Jews went to West Germany and then claimed financial compensation according to the statement of the West German Finance Minister, I read the exact figure years ago, and it was right down to individual numbers, and that was around 1974 I think, for having been held in the camps, a very impressive feat, since a maximum of 4.5 million Jews had lived in all the territories that Germany eventually occupied, and 500,000 of those Jews lived in France, from which they were never deported even during the war, though around 13,000 heavily active Communist Jews were deported to the camps at that time, so take away 500,000 from 4.5 million and you have 4 million, yet more demanded compensation for having been held in ‘extermination’ (labour) camps than could possibly have been in the camps. Most Jews left Europe well before the war that started in 1939 anyway, with Germany encouraging Jews to leave Germany since 1933, so most of those 4.5 million Jews in Europe, getting wind of that, would have been well gone by the start of the war, those within closest proximity to Germany anyway, though as mentioned, over 500,000 Jews chose to stay in France anyway, likely because France was on the Allied side.
    60,000 Jews were deported to Palestine by the Germans themselves, 150,000 Jews served in the German armed forces, and of course many Jews were liberated from the camps at the end of the war, and the total death toll of all groups of people held in the camps, mainly Russians due to the fact Germany had 3 million Russian POW’s, was initially established at 271,304, later revised very slightly higher by the International Red Cross, of which no more than 50,000 or so were likely actually Jewish, though some have calculated an absolute maximum of 180,000 dead Jews, which is highly unlikely, given the predominance of Russians and other POW’s and other groups, like petty criminals, who would come and go, serving short sentences in Auschwitz for example throughout the war, for crimes such as black-marketeering, petty theft, etc.
    No bodies examined in the camps demonstrated any signs of having been poisoned by gas when any bodies remaining were examined, nor were any homicidal gas chambers found, and the two American forensic officers who established this tried to place their evidence before the courts at the Nuremberg trials and their testimonies were refused to be allowed as admissible.
    But of course, the Jews are always crafty lying manipulative bastards, and even when the Bolshevik Jews were committing the most apalling atrocities as they tortured Christians to death in Russia, their controlled press throughout the western nations was publishing the most harrowing story of JEWS being persecuted, starved, etc., at that same time in Russia, so that it was the Jews who were made to appear the victims, in danger of dying, as usual, whilst in fact, they themselves were the actual murderers and terrorists, and the Jews appealed to the west for financial and other aid to help the Jews in their supposed terrrible plight, even as they literally butchered entire Christian families with seething bloodlust.
    The Jews also lied over the Katyn Fort massacre of course, and over Babi Yar near Kiev, where 15,000 to 20,000 and 100,000 Polish Christians were all massacred, and then the Jews claimed that the Germans had killed those at Katyn, and those at Babi Yar.
    Jews always make out that Stalin et al really persecuted them, stating that they, the Jews, have been the victims of Communist persecution all along. Their ability to lie is nothing short of stunning,
    The Jews do this so that they can publicly distance themselves from the real truth in the eyes of all others, that the terrible crimes by those Communist agents of the Jewish bankers and rabbis were actually committed on their behalf, and they do this so that people will be deceived into allowing Jews to continue to run the the affairs of other peoples whom they continue to infiltrate.
    This, of course, is why anti-holocaust denial laws have been brought in by Putin in Russia, and he has even encouraged all other nations in the world to bring in legislation that would make it an imprisonable offence for anyone in their country to deny the fake, 6 million Jewish holocaust figure, and several other nations so far have recently introduced such legislation. This they must do, because if they do not, rational discussion of the evidence available would demolish the entire holocaust pretence extremely quickly.
    There is no excuse for this, as any leader could let the generations of today know the real truth and the depth of the deception that hid the real truth from previous generations, that no holocaust of 6 million Jews occurred, no riots or loss of control or other problems would occur in any state in the world if the real truth were revealed, but there might be one problem, for Jews that is, that people might the question the validity of the reasons used as justification for the creation of the state of Israel. And that is the big issue, the only real issue in the consideration of all these crooked and traitorous politicians.
    They maintain these lies today only to preserve Jewish power, to preserve Israel, and for no other reason, yet as Russians, they have no genuine reason to do this. Grigory Yavlinsky, a Jew, would no doubt do even more to maintain this pernicious web of lies of the holocaust, and thus hold the Russian people in the darkness of living under Jewish control.

  2. great comment, mothman, only little caveat is that putin doesn’t have the simultaneous luxury of both the truth about fake 6m dead jews and successful prosecution of the global war where care must be taken to keep the powder dry and not alienate potential allies by openly identifying them as antagonistic to jews – winning those who unwillingly play the shabbo game for the sake of survival is a very important milestone in the war.
    exactly the same principle applies to trump’s game.
    reading this, i taste the stomach acids rising up my esophagus, trying to hold the lunch down.

    Of course, that doesn’t mean that Yavlinsky, a co-founder of the Yabloko party, actually has a shot at becoming president.
    Elections are widely considered to be rigged in Russia, a country that was ranked more restrictive than Iran and Yemen in the Freedom House “Freedom in the World 2017” index.

    obviously, had they not been rigged, says the shining chabad freedom house, yavlinsky would win hands down, no need for putin to even bother campaigning.
    At any rate, iran’s elections are more fair and transparent than anything jjew could possibly imagine, fairer than any of his colonies since 1932.
    i don’t get it, could it be that jew is lying? noooo, what a thought …

  3. Hi Lobro, thank you for your comment. My apologies for the errata in my comment, especially in the bit about the Katyn Forest massacre in Poland, and the 100,000 other Christians who were slaughtered by the Jewish-controlled Bolsheviks some 20 years before WWII at Babi Yar near Kiev.
    You are entirely correct about the Putin Chabad Lubavitcher involvement. Putin could not have chosen a more pernicious Jewish group, hell-bent on world domination and physical annihilation of members of all other religions that they deem to be ‘idolatrous’, a very odd choice for a ‘Christian’ like Putin, who some state actually has a Jewish mother.
    Of course, the Chabad Lubavitchers are screaming insane and genocidally megalomaniac.
    ‘Why Is The US Honoring A Racist Rabbi’ by Alison Weir, Counterpunch.
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/07/why-is-the-us-honoring-a-racist-rabbi/
    ‘Putin’s Jews’
    http://www.momentmag.com/putins-jews/
    ‘The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin’
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/the-happy-go-lucky-jewish-group-that-connects-trump-and-putin-215007
    “Starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”…
    “In late January, Sater met with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss a proposed Ukraine peace deal that would end U.S. sanctions on Russia, which Cohen then delivered to Trump’s then-national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House, according to the Times. Cohen has given varying accounts of the episode.
    “According to one Jewish Republican who said he sees Cohen “all the time” there, Cohen himself is a regular presence at the Midtown Chabad on Fifth Avenue, a dozen blocks south of Trump Tower and a half-dozen blocks south of his current office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
    “Cohen disputed this, saying, “I’ve never been to a Chabad and I’ve never been to one in New York City either.” Cohen then said he last stepped foot in a Chabad over 15 years ago to attend a bris. He said the last Chabad-related event he attended was on March 16 at a hotel in Newark when he spoke at a dinner honoring Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs, David Shulkin. The dinner was hosted by the Rabbinical College of America, a Chabad organization.
    “To those unfamiliar with Russian politics, Trump’s world and Hasidic Judaism, all these Chabad links can appear confounding. Others simply greet them with a shrug.
    ““The interconnectedness of the Jewish world through Chabad is not surprising insofar as it’s one of the main Jewish players,” said Boteach. “I would assume that the world of New York real estate isn’t that huge either.””
    And look at the staggering dishonesty of Trump’s Jewish personal lawyer shown in the quote above, a Chabad Lubavitcher, and to think that he holds such senior legal position, very naughty indeed, the Kol Nidre comes to mind, as the Jewish lawyer, who states he never attends Chabad meetings, is regularly seen there, and Trump himself has openly stated in his autobiographical book, ‘Way To The Top’ that he attends Kabbalah (Chabad) meetings.
    ‘Proof: Trump is a kabbalist.’
    https://www.conspiracyoutpost.com/topic/34313-proof-trump-is-a-kabbalist/

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