How Putin’s Russia uses the ‘Rodina method’ to stamp out dissent

The sham trials in Russia have reached new heights of ‘authoritarian situationism’. The latest example came during the electoral process for the registration of lists and candidates for the elections to renew the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. As Putin’s own spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, candidly admitted on the eve of the 2024 presidential elections, Russia “is not a democracy, but an expensive bureaucracy” and keeping it running – that is, ensuring that the outcome always matches the authorities’ expectations – requires immense effort and a huge expenditure of resources. Perhaps this is why Nicaragua – not coincidentally an ally of Moscow – recently decided to abolish them altogether. In an authoritarian state, in fact, elections represent a cost that risks outweighing the benefits; benefits which the Kremlin, however, still considers to prevail, given that they serve to lubricate a highly complex system of power, in which economic and financial elites and local power brokers must be kept in balance.

The incident involving Yabloko – Russian for ‘apple’ – the only party in favour of an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine (and not pro-Ukrainian, as it has been simplistically described) – can be attributed to the way this system operates. The initial admission of the party’s list for the proportional representation segment, followed by its dramatic exclusion by the Supreme Court, reflect a differing assessment of the risks by the authorities involved in the electoral process and, in particular, as can be gathered from the accounts of the Russian media in exile, the presidential administration on the one hand, and the security services on the other. Whilst initially the participation of a party that has always been marginal, such as Yabloko, served the need to demonstrate to the world the unity of the Russian people regarding the validity of the objectives of the ‘special operation’, subsequently, the movement’s rising approval ratings (the government-backed daily "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" reported a figure of 9.38 per cent as recently as the end of July) necessitated a rapid course correction.

And this, one might say, is where the ‘Rodina method’ comes into play. To justify the list’s exclusion whilst maintaining the appearance of due process, the authorities staged an appeal, making use of the complicity of a list linked to a small ultra-nationalist party, Rodina (Motherland). The party is led by Alexei Zhuravlev, a portly Duma deputy and a militant within the ranks of another, better-known party of the so-called ‘systemic opposition’, the LDPR – the national-liberal party founded in the 1990s by Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

But what exactly does the ‘Rodina method’ entail? It involves lodging a flood of appeals, structured around a multitude of grounds concerning a dense succession of formal irregularities, mostly specious, if not downright grotesque. A first strand concerned copyright infringement. According to the complainants, Yabloko allegedly used copyright-protected material without authorisation as part of its election campaign, specifically: emblems of other parties; photographs of public figures; texts generated by ChatGPT (deemed to be the property of OpenAI); stills from Sergey Bondarchuk’s film "War and Peace"; and the lyrics of the famous Soviet song "May the Sun Always Shine!". This is such a surreal stretch that it suggests the authorities who enlisted Rodina’s services genuinely sought to push their prosecutorial zeal to the limits of the absurd, thereby demonstrating the inevitability of decisions imposed from above.

The attempt to take the grounds of appeal seriously was therefore to no avail, despite highlighting, for example, that the son of the song’s composer, Lev Oshanin, had stated in writing that he was actually pleased that Yabloko was reusing the chorus of that children’s song. The Court, even at the appeal hearing held on 17 August, refused to take into consideration any of the objections raised by Yabloko’s lawyers. These included objections relating to another strand of the case, concerning foreign funding. Here, the accusation was not simply that the party had received illegal donations – something that would have been impossible to prove, given that Yabloko’s leadership carefully monitors its sources of funding. Instead, it was sufficient that the party had received funds from individuals who, in turn, had received money from non-Russian entities (simply their employers abroad) to constitute foreign interference in the electoral process. In response, the ‘apple’ party promptly released an amusing infographic to highlight that, if this is truly the criterion for proving illegal funding, then all ten parties registered for the elections should be excluded, as each has received ‘money from abroad’, including United Russia.

As for the allegations of extremism – linked to the slogan ‘for peace and freedom’, the call for negotiations with Ukraine, or support for LGBTQ+ organisations – the Supreme Court surprisingly chose not to address them. The allegations that were simplest to articulate and, ultimately, the most predictable were dismissed. However, the Court did not rule out the possibility that these might be discussed in future proceedings; ominous words that suggest some future action to declare Yabloko an undesirable organisation, just as suggested by Leonid Slutsky, the new leader of the LDPR and one of the key members of the Russian delegation that has met with its Ukrainian counterpart over the past four and a half years of war.

But the ‘Rodina method’ has not been applied solely to the Liberal Democrats of Yabloko. Across the Federation, there are numerous candidates capable of derailing the presidential administration’s plans, including activists within the so-called ‘systemic opposition’ parties. Among them is, for example, the outgoing Communist MP Mikhail Matveyev, who is very popular in his home region, the Samara Oblast. Matveyev was among the few MPs to express reservations about the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (“By voting to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, I voted for peace, not for war; so that Russia could act as a shield, to stop them from bombing the Donbas any longer, not so that we could bomb Kyiv”, he wrote on Twitter), only to later fall in line with the war narrative and focus his criticism solely on migration policy.

Today, however, when it comes to regaining the authorities’ approval, Matveyev has been ruthlessly cast aside and subjected to the ‘Rodina method’. A rival candidate for the same single-member constituency, this time from the Pensioners’ Party, lodged an appeal, citing alleged formal irregularities, including the use of Microsoft fonts in the election campaign without having duly purchased a licence; something which, quite apart from the absurdity of the allegation, is now impossible following the American giant’s withdrawal from the Russian market. On 14 August, the Samara City Court upheld the appeal, revoking Matveyev’s previous registration. Matveyev, who is now awaiting the appeal, has tried in vain to organise rallies in protest: the city administration refused to grant authorisation, citing public safety concerns linked to the threat of drone attacks.

This case demonstrates that the ‘Rodina method’ is by no means a technique reserved solely for anti-establishment parties, but rather a tool for the systematic management of political dissent, aimed at eliminating from the electoral contest those lists or candidates who have become an obstacle to the presidential administration’s plans, even after the initial screening carried out by the Electoral Commission. It is interesting to note that the president’s party, United Russia – already experiencing a sharp decline in popularity – does not resort to staging spurious appeals itself, but instead pushes its proxies to do the dirty work. This is why the secretaries of the Communist Party and Fair Russia in the Vladimir Oblast have publicly criticised the decision to exclude Yabloko from the elections. What happens to one may, sooner or later, happen to the other too.

Even Rodina, which led the way, cannot consider itself immune to similar treatment. In the context of the elections in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, the region of Yekaterinburg, whilst Yabloko succeeded in submitting its list, Rodina’s registration remained pending until 13 August, when the Electoral Commission finally found that the necessary signatures were missing. Whilst it certainly cannot be said that Rodina fell victim to its own methods, it is equally true that the party, like all the others, remains a mere pawn in the hands of those who control the elections.