ABSTRACT
When meeting Viktor by the metro station, I was surprised to learn that he had not voted online and was not planning to vote in the park either. He explained that he was not used to voting since voting usually does not solve anything in Russia, because the elections have been rigged for so long. However, when he saw people lining up to vote, and probably after my questioning his reasons not to vote, he decided to cast his vote anyway. While standing in line, I asked Viktor for whom he was going to vote. He said that he did not know yet, but was just going to look through the list and mark the familiar names in it. I was again taken by surprise that he was not very interested in the political programmes of the candidates. However, on the previous day, I had met with another activist who complained
that this was the usual case among the voters; no one was willing or even able to read through the 200 individual programmes of the candidates. She gave this as the reason that she herself did not vote in these elections that she did not even support wholeheartedly. She told me that some of the candidates had ‘stupid’ claims in their programme, such as ‘it’s my birthday, you should vote for me’. These elections seemed to divide the ex-Oborontsy even further: some of them took part in organizing the elections, some of them boycotted the elections entirely and some were trying to decide whether to vote or not.
