Comment by lambdadmitry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lambdadmitry | Hacker News Reader

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Hi there! Actual Russian here.

Aleksei Navalny is indeed a de-facto leader of Russian opposition.

>- He isn't coming second in any polls

Not true. [1] is the only major election in which Aleksei personally participated. He came second with huge gap between him and the third one (despite state-organized media campaign against him).

Moreover, it seems you misunderstand Russian political climate. There are no real political parties here except those loyal to Putin. Most "candidates" in that wiki list are sock puppets with the exceptions of Navalny and Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky is not really a politician at this point, so your ironic assessment of

> journalists act as if there are only two politicians in Russia, Putin and this other guy

…is actually true.

Here are a couple of other data points for ya:

- Navalny's NGO called FBK (Фонд Борьбы с Коррупцией, Anti-Corruption Fund) made two biggest investigations to date: on Chayka (Russian's Prosecutor General) [2] and on Medvedev (our prime minister) [3] ([4]). They have more than 20M views between them on Youtube alone (there are countless copies on other social networks) and the latter triggered biggest demonstrations in 5 years.

- FBK voluntarily publishes financial reports which you can find here [5]. According to them, FBK got 40 million rubles in donations during 2015. This alone makes them most-donated-to political NGO in Russia by far.

All in all, I believe this particular fact check lead you astray.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_mayoral_election,_2013

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYQbgvzxdM

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g

[4]: I strongly recommend you to check those out, they have English subs

[5]: https://fbk.info/about/reports/

Hi there! You being an actual Russian doesn't change anything about my argument, which is about the reliability of western media and not Russia specifically, that just happened to be a convenient example.

Your rebuttal is that:

- The other higher polling and more well known politicians aren't "real" opposition politicians, they are just sock puppets.

- Navalny did well, once, in one city, in a race which Putin didn't participate in.

The first is your opinion only. You don't have data to support that, just your own political viewpoints. You being actually Russian doesn't make any difference; you can find people in the UK who think Tim Farron is the "real" leader of the UK opposition because he's actually trying to overturn brexit, but that isn't based on any hard data either.

The latter is irrelevant: I knew about that election and when the west says Navalny is "leader of the opposition" they don't mean against Sergey Sobyanin, obviously, as nobody in the west knows who that is. They mean against Putin. And regardless of what you may believe about the other politicians in Russia, "opposition leader" has a clear factual definition which he does not meet.

This political opinion is invariably phrased as if it were inarguably scientific fact in the New York Times and elsewhere. Your personal belief that it "feels" true doesn't change the facts: the media is lying.

Wonderful. He presented you the facts... and you've dissmissed them since they didn't fit your agenda.

No: I presented polling data. He said that the other politicians named in the polls aren't "real" but offered no data to support that, it's just his opinion.

If facts are defined by anything, they're defined by data. The data shows that Navalny simply isn't a major player in Russian politics, yet western media constantly and consistently claims that he is. Fact.

You see, it's quite hard to show to a person on the outside the absence of real political contention between the "official opposition" here and Putin's regime. It's the thing about showing an absence: I would need to provide you with a ton of context for you to appreciate the glaring complacency of the "official opposition".

Here are some examples, though:

- we had presidential elections in 2012. Per Russian law, there are only two entities who can sue for electoral fraud: a candidate whose score was harmed and a state prosecutor. The fraud was widespread during that voting, with dozens of filmed cases (see [1], [2], etc. One of fraud cases I witnessed myself). Guess which candidate stood for themselves in court? Not a single one.

- can you please name a single "opposition party" which participated in the recent (26th of March) protest?

- can you please name a single "opposition leader" (including 2012 candidates) who debated against Putin or demanded debates? In fact, can you please provide an example of any sort of pointed critique of Putin (like the curious source of wealth of his friends) from any candidate in the 2012 election campaign?

I should also note that you are very dismissive of my "opinion", and yet I'm definitely more knowledgeable of the intricacies of the political process here. I don't think that sounds like a desire for "facts"; on the contrary, you are trying to dismiss counterarguments to your (wrong) accusation.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEf9YSxobTE

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwwlBzmM8qs

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