Alexander Plushev is an active citizen. How Active Citizens Make Millions from Active Citizen. Video about the Active Citizen project

The Internet project "Active Citizen" is a useful service for Moscow residents. It gives each citizen the opportunity to participate in the life of the capital by voting for or against the issues raised for discussion. The subject of voting, as a rule, is the feasibility of current innovations: improvements and changes in urban infrastructure, information services and other areas of urban recreation and life. With the help of the project, it is also possible to evaluate the events held in Moscow and even find missing people.

You can find out how to implement all this in practice and complain about the current problems of the city by studying and analyzing the capabilities of the site, or simply read the instructions below.

More about the project

Active Citizen was first launched on May 21, 2014. The project was initiated by the Government of Moscow, and the Department of information technologies cities. In less than a year, the number of registered users on the site exceeded 1 million (currently their number is twice that).

In order to monitor the implementation of the decisions made by the citizens, the city authorities announced the creation of a specialized association of volunteers.

The principle of the portal is as follows:

1. The executive authority of Moscow takes out the list of significant issues from the sphere of its competence.
2. The site user participates in active voting and receives a fixed number of points for this, which can later be exchanged in the "Rewards Store".
3. The result of the electronic referendum is taken into account by the Government of Moscow.

The subject of voting is mainly the issues put forward by the Moscow City Duma. Polls of citizens can be considered by the Active Citizen only after they gain at least 5% of the votes of Moscow residents on the website of the Russian Public Initiative roi.ru.

Voting order

The project portal periodically posts topical questions or surveys in which its registered users are invited to participate. In addition to the opportunity to influence the decisions of the city administration and assess their implementation, participants in electronic referendums are offered pleasant bonuses in the form of free parking hours, visits to cultural events in the capital and useful souvenirs.

To use these privileges, a citizen must follow the instructions:

1. Register on the portal.
2. Go to the "Voting" section.
3. Select the question of interest.
4. Get to know the gist of it.
5. Leave your vote by choosing one of the options provided.
6. Click "End Voting".
7. Obtain the required number of points and associated Active Citizen status.
8. Go to the "Rewards Store" and select your preferred option.
9. Get a promotion at the center of public services (addresses at the link - shop.ag.mos.ru/rules/stores/).

registration

Every active citizen must go through the registration procedure on the site. Without this access to voting will be closed.

To do this, you must perform the following steps:

• Step 1. Follow the link ag.mos.ru/site/index and click "Register".
• Step 2. Enter your mobile phone number.
• Step 3. Enter the code received by SMS.
• Step 4. Agree to the terms of the offer.
• Step 5. Login.

This item is optional, but brings additional benefits to the account owner:

• + 20 bonus points (subject to filling in all the proposed fields);
• the opportunity to participate not only in citywide, but also in territorial voting (at the place of residence and work);
• the right to vote in areas of school and preschool topics (if the user indicates the presence and age of children).

The procedure can also be done through a mobile application available for download on Google Play, App Store and Windows Phone Store. The algorithm of actions in this case will be identical to registration through the site.

One of the main conditions for registration is the presence of a SIM card from a Russian mobile operator, while the phone number does not have to be Moscow.

Vote

To participate in the survey, you must click on one of the active offers. An e-referendum participant will see an explanation of the essence of the question posed and a list of available answers. Among them, you must select one (unless otherwise specified by the rules of a particular voting) and be sure to click "Finish voting". Otherwise, the vote will not be counted.

The answer options are selected in such a way that every active citizen can participate in the survey, regardless of their interest in this topic and the presence of their own competent opinion (in most votings, the answers are “Difficult to answer”, “I’m not interested”, “Specialists should participate in the assessment " etc.).

Such a position is useful for identifying the range of interests of residents and helps the Government to analyze the general mood of citizens regarding the direction under consideration. And for the participants themselves, this is an additional opportunity to receive points on a bonus account.

Also, in some questions, users are invited to express their personal opinion, which is different from the standard answers offered by the administration.

Users of the site "Active Citizen" have the opportunity to participate in the discussion of issues of high legal significance. But for this they will need to go through an authorization through a profile on the public services portal (gosuslugi.ru). An important condition is the presence in this profile of passport data, information on registration of residence and SNILS.

Points

The bonus points required to receive the promotion can be accumulated as follows:

1. Participate in the maximum number of available polls (on average, a user is awarded 20 points per poll).
2. Fill in all the proposed fields of the personal profile.
3. Regularly visit the site or mobile application (+ 3 points daily).
4. Invite friends using the mobile app. For each registered friend, the user will receive 5 bonuses (no more than 10 invited per month are paid).
5. Share current issues and/or the fact of your voting on them on social networks (available after linking your VK, OK, Facebook, or Twitter account). For the publication of one post, an active citizen will receive 5 points, for a maximum of 4 posts per month.

How to report a problem

Internet service "Active Citizen" is not intended for filing complaints. To do this, there is a portal "Our city of Moscow". With its help, caring citizens can report a problem within the competence of the city authorities and receive a report on its resolution within 8 days.

The site has 27 categories for requests, which are periodically supplemented and updated.

Complaining through Our City is easy. For this you need:

1. Complete the registration procedure* or access the site through your VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, or Gosuslugi website.
2. Click "Report a problem" (red button in the center of the main page).
3. Select the category of the problematic object.
4. Specify a problematic topic.
5. Specify the location of the object where the violation or malfunction was noted.
6. Specify the problem.
7. Give a brief explanation (no more than 700 characters).
8. Upload photos (no more than 5 and a total size of up to 10 MB).
9. Click "Send Message".

* - in order to register on the portal, the user needs to follow the link gorod.mos.ru/index.php, enter information about himself in the electronic form, indicate his agreement with the terms of use of the portal and the Uniform Moderation Rules.

• information that does not correspond to the selected category and topic;
• duplication of information about an unresolved problem;
• requests of a personal nature;
• a description of several problems classified under different categories and topics;
• extra information that does not relate to the essence of the problem;
• appeals to officials of the Moscow Government, executive bodies, employees of the portal or other persons/organizations;
• a photograph that is presented as a single evidence (explanation) of the subject of the appeal, and at the same time does not meet the established requirements (more than 10 MB, does not allow recognizing the problem, contains confidential, advertising or other information that is different from the goals of the portal).

The results of the moderation process become known within 24 hours after the complaint is filed. Notifications of rejection, as well as messages about the results of the consideration, are sent to the applicant's email address specified during registration.

If the portal user has any questions or finds system failures, he can contact technical support via the feedback form.

Wishes and recommendations for improving the work of GOROD.MOS.RU are sent to the site administration in the same way.

In addition to the web portal, you can complain using GOROD.MOS.RU through a mobile application available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Download links are located at the bottom of the site.

Video about the Active Citizen project

The legislative framework

Working with state Internet resources, filing complaints and appeals to authorities is regulated by the following regulatory legal acts:

1. Federal Law of the Russian Federation "On the organization of the provision of state and municipal services" dated July 27, 2010 No. 210-FZ
2. Federal Law of the Russian Federation "On information, information technologies and information protection" dated July 27, 2006 No. 149-FZ.
3. RF GD "On a unified system of interdepartmental electronic interaction" dated September 8, 2010 No. 697.
4. Order of the Government of the Russian Federation "On the state program Russian Federation"Information Society (2011 - 2020)" dated October 20, 2010 No. 1815-r.

A few hours after the rally of opponents of the demolition of five-story buildings in Moscow, the mayor's office launched a vote on the inclusion of houses in the "renovation program". The power of premature start is an effort to avoid increased load on servers in the first hour of operation. Owners or tenants of apartments can vote at the My Documents public service centers or on the Internet on the Active Citizen portal. The second option caused the most controversy. Critics pointed to an opaque user verification system, and after the launch of voting, they began to complain that it was possible to vote by specifying non-existent data.

How Active Citizen works

The Active Citizen system was launched in May 2014. The media called Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova the author of the project. "Active Citizen" was regularly accused of non-transparent verification of users. The portal operates a “one SIM card - one vote” system, in which one person from different phone numbers can vote an unlimited number of times.

Rakova argued that it was impossible to wind up votes in this way. “With the volume of users of more than a million people, it is impossible to provide cheating. How much do you need to buy to wind up? 300 thousand SIM cards?” she said. Blogger and journalist Alexander Plyushchev calculated that the creation of 250,000 virtual SIM cards would cost a million rubles. In the case of the vote on the demolition of houses, the mayor's office changed the verification system.

Is it possible to cheat in voting on five-story buildings

For the demolition vote, which the mayor's office called "extremely important," authorities introduced a new vote counting mechanism. In addition to the phone number, you must enter your full name, date of birth, passport details, SNILS and financial account number.

After the launch of voting, users in social started complain that you can register in the system by entering any data. Rain managed to vote "against" the demolition of the house by registering under the name Ivanov Ivan Ivanovich and entering random numbers instead of passport data, SNILS and financial account number:

Answer after voting on the Active Citizen portal

After that, a message was sent to the specified number stating that the vote would be verified within four working days. The mayor's office explains that in fact such votes will not be counted. In four days, all data will pass a "three-step verification by the federal authorities," and the vote will be taken into account only if all the entered data match, follows from the certificate on the mayor's website.

The statement of fraud against Sobyanin and Rakova for their fraud with the Active Citizen, filed by Volkov, is an absolutely correct and necessary thing.

Today, the Moscow City Duma adopted in the first reading amendments to the City Planning Code of Moscow, which actually abolish public hearings in the city. A detailed analysis of these amendments can be read. In a nutshell, the mandatory procedure for holding hearings on any urban planning projects is cancelled. They are proposed to be carried out at the discretion of the mayor's office, providing residents with projects to the extent that the officials themselves deem necessary. Mandatory norms for green areas are canceled - that is, in fact, the total development of parks and squares is sanctioned. Also, construction expertise on projects is actually abolished, and any construction that is contrary to the General Plan for the development of the city is legalized.

These ugly amendments were made in the regime of a special operation, just a day before the meeting. All so that the deputies do not have the opportunity to fully get acquainted with them, and the residents of the city - time to express their protest. All Sobyanin's deputies present voted for the bill, only the Communists voted against it.
http://5dec.ru/blog/konstantin...

The cancellation of public hearings and the substitution of public opinion with fake Active Citizen results are two parts of one operation.

- You do not like the development of the park? Well, excuse me, you are in the minority, the Active Citizen voting showed that Muscovites love to build up their parks with compensatory landscaping in the area of ​​the 20th kilometer of the Kaluga highway. Do you want to gather residents? No, you can't - there are no public hearings, vote on Active Citizen .

It already works like this Muscovites supported the installation of a monument to Vladimir at the Borovitsky Gate”) and will be expanded many times over unless we all declare a decisive war on both the machinations on the “AG” and the cancellation of public hearings.

So Volkov - well done, he began the process that is important for all of us, let's support it. .

Active Citizen is a project of the Moscow government. It combines a website and a mobile application, through which surveys are conducted. As journalist Ilya Rozhdestvensky made sure, voting in AG is in no way protected from cheating, you can vote as many times as you like, and a person from anywhere in the world can do it.

Ilya Rozhdestvensky wrote this article for the Anti-Corruption Foundation before he became a correspondent for RBC.

The authorities do not allow anyone to monitor the voting process and spend on "AG", according to various estimates, from 20 to 185 million rubles. In addition, decisions on some issues put to the vote, in some cases, have already been taken by the officials themselves, so that polls often do not affect anything.

Project history

Active Citizen began work on May 21, 2014. Sources from the Iodine, Gazety.ru and Medialeaks publications agree that the project is the brainchild of Moscow Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova. “There is no order on the number of questions put to the vote. According to a source in AG, the department of trade and services, the department of culture, at least while they were headed by Sergey Kapkov, the construction complex, the department of education and the housing and communal services complex, are most active, mainly on the issues of the My Street program, ”writes "Gazeta.ru". The interlocutor of Medialeaks specifies the mechanism: “First, the metropolitan departments submit topics to the control department of the mayor's office. They select “important urban problems for Muscovites”, according to the official version, but in fact, those questions, the answers to which are either likely to coincide with the interests of the authorities, or the option of solving which officials are not particularly worried about. For example, at the end of last year, a survey was completed on the schedule of school holidays. Obviously, this is not a matter of principle for the city authorities - by and large, they do not care how exactly the schoolchildren will have a rest. In turn, the head of the information technology department of the capital, Artem Ermolaev, admits that the freedom of choice of citizens is deliberately limited: “We submit (to vote) only what we can really fully implement.”

Financing

According to Anastasia Rakova, about 20 million rubles were spent on the development of Active Citizen. Obviously, these are not all expenses: for example, the Electronic Moscow portal posted information about tenders for “the provision of services for the development and implementation of an information campaign in support of an electronic system for receiving feedback and researching public opinion of Moscow residents” and for “the provision of a range of services for the development and production of a logo, corporate identity, the concept of an advertising campaign, advertising and prizes for users of an electronic system for receiving feedback and researching public opinion of Moscow residents ”for a total amount of just under 30 million rubles. Medialeaks, citing an anonymous source in AG, claims that the authorities spent 50 million rubles on prizes and gifts last year, and plan to increase the amount to 150 million in 2016. About 50 million is supposed to be received from sponsors (Sberbank, Russian Railways, Rostelecom, MGTS, Russian Post, etc.), the rest - through subsidies from the city. The interlocutor of Medialeaks insists that the total cost of the Active Citizen in 2014 amounted to almost 185 million rubles.

Questions

For example, questions are put to the vote that the townspeople obviously do not have the right to decide: for example, in the "AG" there was a poll about the construction of the Dreamworks entertainment park on a 24-hectare site in the Nagatinskaya floodplain, although this is a specially protected area. In November-December 2014, 92.43% supported the floodplain development project. The voting results were approved by a decree of the city government. It is noteworthy that 300 thousand people took part in the electronic voting, and only 551 local residents came to the hearings. As a result, the interests of those who live in the area were dissolved in the number of those who voted for the "AG".
It is extremely rare in Active Citizen to offer your own answer: for example, in the poll regarding the monument to Prince Vladimir, it was impossible to vote against the installation of a monument in the capital, such an option simply was not provided. Similarly, it will not be possible to submit a question in the spirit of “Do you support the resignation of Maxim Liksutov?” for consideration: it is also impossible to submit your own questions.
In addition to the selectivity of the answer options and the questions themselves that get to the vote, there is a claim to the quality of the voters: according to the Moscow City Duma deputy from the Communist Party faction Elena Shuvalova, those who do not have smartphones and access to the Internet cannot vote, that is, a “property , age and educational qualification”. The mayor's office disagrees with this: the deputy head of the apparatus of the capital's mayor, Yevgeny Kozlov, insists that 12% of AG users are over 45 years old, and 77% of Moscow pensioners have the Internet. How Kozlov calculated the number of AG users of a certain age category is unknown: when registering, it is not necessary to indicate the date of birth; even if the user wants to fill in the appropriate column, then the reliability of this information cannot be verified. The figure of 77% of Moscow pensioners who have access to the network also raises questions: according to the head of the city's information technology department, Artem Ermolaev, in February there were about 40% of such people.
Finally, the wording of the votes themselves is not perfect. Thus, in connection with the possible renaming of the Voykovskaya metro station, the authorities used the following explanation: “According to the supporters of the renaming, Voikov is not the person whose name the station should be named after. Their opponents argue that there is nothing wrong with that, besides, everyone is used to the name.” As Elena Shinkaruk, curator of the Active Citizen project, said on the air of the Govorit Moskva radio station, officials deliberately did not mention the role of Pyotr Voikov in the execution of the royal family: “Firstly, the topic is quite debatable, arguments for and against have long been discussed. Secondly, we tried not to put any pressure on the choice of Muscovites who vote.” In many ways, this is cunning: neither for the director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, Sergei Mironenko, nor for the senior investigator-criminalist of the main department of criminology of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Solovyov, who has been involved in the case of the execution of the royal family for more than 20 years, this issue is not debatable. Moreover, the information about Petr Voikov, prepared by the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is cited on his website by Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky: “P.L. Voikov, being a member of the Ural Regional Council, participated in the decision to execute Nicholas II, his wife, son, daughters and their companions. A participant in the execution of the royal family, Yekaterinburg Chekist M.A. Medvedev (Kudrin) indicates Voikov among those who made the decision to destroy the family of Nicholas II. His detailed memoirs about the execution and burial of the royal family were addressed to N.S. Khrushchev."

What polls do

"Active Citizen" appeared in several major RBC investigations related to Moscow. For example, as stated in the department's response overhaul(included in the complex of the city economy of the Moscow government, which is headed by Vice Mayor Pyotr Biryukov), at the request of Muscovites, the tiles were replaced again: “The list of streets to be improved in 2015 was determined based on the results of voting by citizens in the Active Citizen project.” By the will of the inhabitants of the city, the curbs were also changed. Perhaps the most significant moment is associated with the improvement of Bolshaya and Malaya Bronnye, Spiridonovka and Malaya Nikitskaya streets. Local residents were asked to choose how to improve the area. The voting results in AG were made public on June 2, 2015. But the results of the competition for the work were summed up a little earlier: “The tender for the design of Malaya and Bolshaya Bronny was won by the BalticStroyCompany (BSK), close to the youngest son of the Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Chaika - Igor. According to the state contract, the projects must be completed and undergo an examination two months before the end of voting in the Active Citizen - by April 6. And the contract for the repair of Bolshaya Bronnaya itself was signed on the day the voting results were summed up - June 2. The representative of the DKR left without comment the question of how the results of the vote were taken into account two months after the completion of the project. Contact with the company BSK failed. “We were just lucky that the choice of townspeople and designers completely coincided,” says Dmitry Kudryakov, general director of the Eurodom company, which won the contract for the improvement of Bolshaya Bronnaya.” And this is far from the only example when voting is still underway, and a tender for certain works has already been announced.
In addition, at the end of December 2014, Muscovites voted in favor of authorization by mobile phone number when connecting to a public Wi-Fi network. A few months before that, just such a method was introduced in the metropolitan metro. Finally, as noted by the Yod publication, voting on school holidays directly contradicted the law "On Education" and was carried out with pressure on the parents of students.

Vote

Now in the "Active Citizen", according to the head of the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow Artem Ermolaev, 1.2 million people are registered. “Registration in the project takes place using a mobile phone number, to which a password is sent via SMS. The project authorization system cannot be hacked, for example, by guessing a password or using known vulnerabilities software", - writes Ermolaev. However, there is no need to crack the password: not only a resident of Moscow, but also anyone who has a mobile phone with a Russian number can register on the portal, since it is with its help that the account is verified. Thus, one person can vote on the same issue several times, simply by using different SIM cards. The system also allows residents of other regions to vote, that is, "AG" does not pay attention to the location of the voter. This feature drew the attention of the host of the radio station "Echo of Moscow" Alexander Plushev. Later, the curator of the Active Citizen project, the chairman of the Moscow State Services Committee, Elena Shinkaruk, confirmed this information on the air of the radio station Moscow Speaks. At the same time, she said that the city authorities do not see any problem in this.
This is not the only “hole” in the system: you can vote not only armed with several mobile phones and connecting all your friends from the regions to the process, but simply using the “virtual SIM card” service. Finally, you can literally “drive” people to vote: for example, at a hearing in the Moscow City Duma, programmer Boris Valagin said that he had recruited several dozen people on the Internet who wanted to vote for a certain answer. All these shortcomings allowed Andrey Babitsky, editor-in-chief of Inliberty, to call Active Citizen the most opaque city site. There are all the more grounds for such an assessment, since the mayor's office did not invite anyone to monitor the voting process, that is, there is no external audit.
It would be possible to conduct voting on the website of the Russian Public Initiative. As Alexander Plyushchev notes, the system does not allow Moscow to resolve the issue, for example, of renaming a street in Nizhny Novgorod. In addition, the ROI mechanism is not very effective, but at least legally formalized, while the Active Citizen surveys have no legal force, and their results may be ignored by the city authorities.
In the mayor's office, they answer that there can be no falsifications in the AG. “With the volume of users of more than a million people, it is impossible to provide cheating. How much do you need to buy to wind up? 300 thousand SIM cards? Because it is impossible to vote a second time from one SIM card. On the issues that we are now putting to the vote, there is no point in buying 300,000 SIM cards in order to replay this or that issue. Therefore, there have not even been any attempts to date, ”Deputy Moscow Mayor Anastasia Rakova insists.

Bribe

Active Citizen has implemented a system of incentives, that is, exactly what the authorities propose to introduce from time to time in ordinary voting - for example, to provide an additional day off for expressing will at polling stations. AG accrues bonus points to users for participating in voting, for filling out a profile, for linking an account with a city services portal, etc. As a result, solving issues related to city life begins to resemble a simple online game with the ability to convert Points: “Achieve 1,000 points to become an Active Citizen and purchase various goods or services. You can exchange the accumulated points for city services (parking hours, theaters, museums) or useful little things. To get even more bonus points, visit the app more often, invite friends and share information about completed surveys on social networks.” For 833 points you can go to the zoo, for 2250 points you can get a green sweatshirt, for 267 - at the Museum of Russian Harmonica.
“Nikita Sedykh from the Preobrazhenskoye district can be called an old-timer of the Active Citizen project. Nikita has been registered with the project almost from the first day of its existence. And from the moment he registered, he has not missed a single vote... Now Nikita has almost 14 thousand points, but he is not going to spend them.
- Much more important than the points earned is that they hear me, my opinion is considered. Together with other users, I can influence the development of the capital, - says Nikita. Thanks to his active position, Nikita managed to attend the dress rehearsal of the Victory Parade on Red Square, which took place on May 7th. On the Day of the City, having handed tickets to the concert to Nikita, he was photographed for the poster "Active Citizen". The young man then saw his photo at a bus stop near the DEPO them. Rusakov. And a few days ago, active citizen Nikita Sedykh was invited to a tasting of the Moscow cake.” What does the green sweatshirt and cake "Moscow" have to do with e-democracy remains a mystery. Elena Rusakova, a municipal deputy of the Gagarinsky district, believes that the accrual of points can be regarded as bribery.

Voting for Voykovskaya

The issue of renaming "Voikovskaya" is perhaps the most resonant in the history of the AG. At the end of August, officials were not going to put it to a vote and planned to rename the transport hub to Koptevo. And in mid-October, Sergei Sobyanin decided to determine the fate of Voykovskaya with the help of AG.
The start of the poll turned out to be vigorous: 15 thousand people voted in the first two hours, and “AG” hung. At the time of writing, over a quarter of a million people have taken part in the survey. The distribution of votes was fixed from the very beginning and then almost did not change: 33-34% for renaming, 53-54% against. It is noteworthy that in the first days the sum of votes did not give 100%.

“On average, the most votes are given at noon and around 18-19, the least, which is logical, late at night,” writes Artem Yermolaev, head of the Moscow Department of Information Technologies. His words are refuted by bloggers from the initiative group Let's Save Voykovskaya.

Petr Sarukhanov / "New"

The renovation program of Moscow's housing stock, better known as the Great Settlement of Khrushchevs, inevitably becomes a major factor in Moscow's political life. If only because of the scale: judging by the plans of the government, it will directly affect the lives of more than one and a half million people, and if we add to them those who do not move themselves, but will live surrounded by neighborhoods being demolished and under construction, then it will probably be up to a third the population of the city. And absolutely everyone will talk about renovation.

Moscow is a metropolis with a high level of social mobility, but this hustle and bustle is created mainly by visitors. The population of the sleeping areas - not those who rent apartments and rooms there, but who rent them out or live on their own meters - is very conservative and paternalistic. These are people who will not challenge the strategic decisions of the authorities: once you decide to demolish and resettle, demolish and resettle. But as for the particulars: the number of meters, the exact address, the layout, the neighbors on the landing and the view from the window (in the sense of the road or the courtyard), here the Muscovite is experienced, meticulous and adamant.

The Moscow government, of course, is aware of this specificity, so the draft law on renovation - in the version that is currently in the Duma in the first reading - turns the situation on its head. The government announced that it intends not just to consult with citizens, but to give them the decision of the fundamental question: whether to include the house in the renovation program or not. But in particular, the room for maneuver is sharply narrowing: neither the usual three options for new housing to choose from, nor the opportunity to sue on this matter.

One option, two months to think and move out, again, regardless of your desire or unwillingness to move - as the majority decides.

To identify the opinion of the majority, the Moscow government proposed modernist methods: a telephone survey and voting on the Active Citizen portal, and all this in an extremely short time right before the May holidays. But the political passivity of Muscovites turned out to be considerably overestimated. Routine events: meetings of heads of administrations with residents caused a stir, people not only came to them in hundreds, but also asked tough, sharp questions, sometimes it was clear that they had studied the draft law better than officials. They even mentioned the right to a referendum...

So the renovation approval campaign no longer promises to be a cakewalk, especially in the Central Administrative District and its border areas. Khamovniki and Arbat, for example, completely abandoned it, and this was achieved by the municipal deputies, who wrote a request to the prefecture. It turns out that this can be done. The response to the actual start of the program before the adoption of the law and the application of the norms of "telephone law" to ordinary citizens is the lively creativity of the masses.

It does not follow from this, of course, that it is necessary to launch a big city campaign against renovation as such. For most residents of residential areas, moving to new apartments is desirable. Much more promising and more important is the reverse process - the return of urban politics to the grassroots level, where people live. The renovation approval mechanism opens up tremendous opportunities for this. Here are the same municipal deputies: before, most citizens recalled their existence once every five years, receiving a long sheet with a list of unknown names in the voting booth. But it turns out that it is these Mundeps, and not officials from the council, who can protect your rights.

In this context, the campaign for the election of municipal deputies, which will be held in Moscow in September, turns from a dull ritual into a serious challenge. Moreover, every house becomes a cell of political life. After all, the only, in fact, way to keep it for those who do not want to move is to agitate the neighbors, to convince them to vote against inclusion in the renovation program. By the way, those houses where the real, and not the fake HOA, are in a winning position. And in both cases: when you want to defend the house, and, on the contrary, when there is a desire to quickly include it in the program.

Such grassroots self-organization is much more useful and promising than a city-wide protest campaign timed, for example, to coincide with the federal agenda — the presidential election. Because thousands of rallies will not solve the problems of a particular building, and the renovation program, due to the huge, including financial inertia, will still be implemented. But pressure from below will help to use this momentum to a greater extent in the interests of residents, rather than politicians or city officials.