Yabloko
   Dignity, Honesty, Justice

Founded: December 22-23, 2001
Leader: Sergei Mitrokhin
Membership: 85,000 members in 69 regions

Address: 31/2 Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa, building 1
                Moscow 119017
Telephone: +7 (095) 292 50 34, +7 (095) 363 91 40
Email: info@yabloko.ru
Website: http://www.yabloko.ru

Major Party Figures
Sergei Mitrokhin, Party Chairman
Maksim Zavelin, Press secretary
Vladimir Lukin
Grigory Yavlinsky
 

Party History

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yuri Boldyrev and Vladimir Lukin founded the Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin bloc (Yabloko) in November 1993, shortly before the parliamentary elections. (The bloc’s name came from the first letters of their three names Ya, B, and L; Yabloko means "apple" in Russian.) Three other small parties joined the Yabloko bloc: the Republican Party of Russia headed by Vladimir Lysenko and Vyacheslav Shostakovsky, the Social Democratic Party of Russia headed by Anatoly Golov, and the Christian Democratic Union headed by Valery Borshchov. In return for agreeing to gather signatures to register the bloc, each of these parties received a few places on the Yabloko party list.

In the 1993 parliamentary elections, the Yabloko bloc received 7.9 percent of the vote to finish in sixth place. Yabloko secured 20 seats in the Duma through party-list voting, and five in single-mandate electoral districts.

The Yabloko party was registered in January 1995 and formed its own Duma faction. Following Yuri Boldyrev’s departure from the party in the 1995 parliamentary elections, Yabloko received 6.9 percent of the vote, most of which came from the Moscow, St.Petersburg, Rostov, and Yaroslavl regions. In most of the provinces, Yabloko actually failed to clear the 5 percent barrier, thus revealing the inefficiency of its regional structures. In the 1995 balloting, Yabloko secured 31 deputy mandates in party list voting, and 15 Yabloko candidates won in single-mandate electoral districts.

In the first round of the 1996 presidential elections, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky finished in fourth place, with 7.3 percent of the vote.

In 2003, Yabloko again failed to clear the 5 percent barrier and was shut out of the state Duma.  In an attempt to prepare for the 2007 Duma elections, Yabloko submitted a joint list with the Union of Right Forces (SPS) for Moscow City Duma elections in December 2005.

Yabloko, for the most part, is a party of urban voters. As compared to rural and mixed territories, the "city" vote secured by Yabloko in the 1995 elections was 2.5 times higher, with Grigory Yavlinsky gaining in cities nearly twice as many votes as in rural areas in the 1996 presidential elections. Notably, election and survey results show that both in cities and in rural townships the Yabloko electorate’s core is comprised of highly educated people. In the past two years, Yabloko has been increasingly supported by small- and medium-sized businesses.

Recognizing the losses the party had suffered over the past five years and that splitting the liberal vote with the Union of Right Forces (SPS) was only damaging to both, Yabloko decided to run a joint ticket with SPS under the Yabloko banner for the Moscow City Duma elections in December 2005. This move allowed the liberals to win three seats and remain solvent. In addition, this success was seen by Yabloko leaders as a hopeful sign for the 2007 Russian parliamentary election, and reinforced the view that Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces need to unite in order to be elected to the State Duma in 2007.

In early 2006 the Green Party joined Yabloko, allowing the party to appeal to those with environmental interests. The Greens will have their own faction within the party.

In the 2007 Russian parliamentary election, Yabloko lost its representation in the State Duma.

On June 21, 2008 Yavlinsky stepped down as leader of the Yabloko Party. Subsequently the Yabloko party held a congress on 21-22 June to reinforce the need to reform the party's governing bodies to give more independence to leaders and deter a split facing the party. Yavlinsky's resignation comes in the midst of a rift between himself and his allies and the head of the party's St. Petersburg branch, Maxim Reznik, who has long campaigned for creating a strong coalition with other opposition forces, notably the umbrella coaltion The Other Russia, to counter the dominance of pro-Kremlin parties on the political landscape. Yavlinsky believed that such an arrangement contradicts Yabloko's program and would be damaging for the party's public image.

Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the Moscow branch of Yabloko and one of Yavlinsky's allies, was elected as the new leader of the party, having received about 60% of the delegates' votes.

Party Objectives and Programs

Objectives
- to create a democratic, law-based, social state, civilised market and strong civil society in Russia.

- to build civil society and a law-based state in Russia on the principles of freedom, responsibility, equal opportunities, social justice, tolerance, the supremacy of law and constitutional democracy;

- to guarantee the rights and freedoms of man and citizen;

- to create a system of state authority capable of guaranteeing the protection of citizens' life and freedom, their security, and the implementation of laws;

- to create an efficient socially-oriented market economy.

Program
Was adopted by the party's 10th (reorganisation) congress held on December 22-23, 2001.

Social policy:
- to form a socially-oriented European-type market economy meaning that a social state proclaimed by the Russian Constitution should be filled with a real substance and the state should ensure equal possibilities for its citizens;

- to increase budget financing of education and carry out radical modernisation of the system of education;

- to increase spending on health care (as a share of GDP);

- to ensure effective protection of working people's rights to earn a living by freely chosen work, which presupposes the elimination of discrimination in the sphere of labour and a ban on forced labour, and

- to ensure citizens' constitutional rights for a worthy pension.

Economic policy:
- to ensure economic growth rates exceeding growth rates of the world economy in a long-term perspective;

- to grant citizens possibilities for professional and creative growth and for the realization of their potential, including entrepreneurial talents;

- to ensure international competitiveness of Russian goods and services;

- to ensure favourable conditions for investments in production;

- to alter monetary and currency policies directing them towards achieving maximum production growth rates, and

- to abolish a considerable part of ungrounded tax benefits.

State policy:
- to create a modern, well-equipped and materially provided professional army;

- to maintain sufficient defence capability in conditions of new challenges to world security;

- to make the army professional and resolve servicemen's social problems;

- to create favourable conditions for carrying out domestic reforms and steadily raising people's living standards, while ensuring a worthy place for Russia in the world;

- to promote cooperation with all peace-loving states observing norms of international law and respecting their own citizens' rights, and

- to strengthen Russia's position in the world through reforming its foreign policy mechanisms and revising foreign policy priorities.

Ecological policy:
- to ensure ecologically safe conditions for people's life;

- to rationally use and protect natural resources;

- to ensure ecological and radiation safety;

- to take due account of ecological factors in the process of industrial and territorial development;

- to enhance society's ecological culture and knowledge of ecological laws, and

last updated June 23, 2008