The People's Will Army (AVN; ; Armiya voli naroda, AVN) was a Russian public organization that advocated the adoption of legislative acts establishing the direct responsibility of the President and the Federal Assembly of Russia for their activities.
According to the position of the participants in this movement, the voters of Russia do not have real levers of control over politicians, which must be corrected by amending the constitution and adopting a law on the responsibility of the authorities to the people to ensure the amendment. The founder, theorist and leader of the AVN was the publicist Yury Mukhin. One of the leaders of the AVN was a former member of the Politburo of the CPSU Oleg Shenin.
AVN representatives were delegates to the National Assembly of the Russian Federation.
Print organ — the newspaper "Duel" (banned), since 2009 - "To the barrier!" (banned), since 2010 - "In their own names".
On October 19, 2010, the Moscow City Court recognized the activities of the People's Will Army as extremist and prohibited its further activities on the territory of Russia. After the AVN was recognized as an extremist organization, some of its members ceased their activities, and some moved to the Initiative Group for Conducting a Referendum “For Responsible Power”, previously created by the Interregional Public Movement “For Responsible Power”.
Ideology The theoretical AVN platform was developed by Yuri Mukhin in the 1990s.
Purpose of AVN The main goal of the AVN was to organize a referendum for the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Article 138) and the Law "On the Trial of the People of Russia over the President and Members of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation."
According to the proposed law, each of the voters during the next presidential and Duma elections will have to, in addition to the elections themselves, assess the quality of their life during the reign of the previous president and parliament according to the simplest criterion: the life of the given voter has improved or worsened. Depending on the popular verdict, the President and the Federal Assembly either receive the highest awards of the Russian Federation for the successful administration of the country, or are imprisoned for a period equal to their tenure in power. A “no consequences” option is also possible, when the president and / or parliament receive neither awards nor penalties.
It is also envisaged to introduce a norm according to which officials who are not approved by the people could be punished up to the death penalty.
AVN proposed to introduce direct responsibility of Russian politicians for ineffective government of the country. Illustrative examples were the responsibility of a bus driver whose passengers were injured, or prison sentences that were served by the leaders of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident at the power plant.Мосгорсуд запретил АВН — Рабкор.ру
AVN considered it necessary to introduce Article 138 into the Constitution of the Russian Federation. In accordance with its text, the Federal Assembly and the President of the Russian Federation are elected with the aim of «organizing the population (living capable citizens) by laws and decrees to protect the people (population and future generations) from the spiritual and material deterioration of life». According to the position of the AVN, «the poor organization of the protection of the people of the Russian Federation by the Federal Assembly and the President is a crime against the people that has no statute of limitations». At the same time, «in considering this crime, every citizen of the Russian Federation is a member of the people's court over the Federal Assembly and the president».Мосгорсуд запретил АВН — Рабкор.ру
To achieve this goal, it was planned to attract from 20 to 50 thousand people to the ranks of the AVN and collect 2 million votes, sufficient to hold a national referendum. At the referendum, according to the plan of AVN, the population should adopt an amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and a new federal law.Мосгорсуд запретил АВН — Рабкор.ру
Draft law "On the responsibility of the authorities to the people" Russian opposition politician and publicist Yuri Mukhin, based on the "theory of delocratic governance", the idea of the responsibility of power was first proposed in 1993, and a few years later it was formulated in the form of a draft amendment to the Constitution and the Law "On the Trial of the People over the President and Deputies of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation." Subsequently, it underwent wide public discussion by lawyers and public figures and has been improved for over 18 years. The implementation of this law provides for the introduction of a mechanism for the court (assessment) of the people over the highest elected authorities - the president and the deputies. According to the draft, during each regular election, each voter will receive an additional ballot with options for the verdict to the president or the State Duma who have completed their term. The draft verdict contains three options for assessing the results of the work of the replaced authority: "Worthy of encouragement", "Without consequences" and "Deserves punishment".
According to the results of the vote held on October 22–24, 2008 within the framework of the National Assembly, the majority of the non-systemic opposition supported this bill (for - 182, against - 63, abstained - 35).
Famous patriotic and opposition figures also expressed support for the project: Oleg Shenin; Alfrēds Rubiks; Maxim Kalashnikov; Joseph Stalin's great-grandson Yakov Dzhugashvili; Sergey Kara-Murza; Andrei Parshev; Boris Mironov; presenters of the Internet program "Actually" Alexander Krasnov and Valery Smirnov; former State Duma deputy Andrey Savelyev and others.
Organizational structure
The Army of the People's Will was a militarized organization in name only, its methods of work were peaceful propaganda and agitation within the framework of the current legislation. However, according to the participants, the names "Army" (for the movement) and "fighters" (for the participants in the movement) served as an important disciplining factor, and also emphasized the difference between AVN and traditional parties. The AVN could include members of any other organization adhering to any ideology: the criterion for participation was only the recognition of the AVN's goal and assistance in achieving it. The politician who supported the proposed AVN law was Oleg Shenin, a former member of the Politburo of the CPSU, who headed one of the political organizations in Russia called the CPSU.
AVN was not registered with the Russian justice authorities, therefore it did not enjoy the rights of a legal entity. Certain members of the movement (soldiers of the Army) considered it useful to personally participate in the elections in order to promote the draft AVN Law both during the elections and, if successful, directly in the authorities. Since 2010, the movement has participated in the work of the new political party "Russian United Labour Front".Новая Газета | Лента событий | Представители партии РОТ ФРОНТ сдали в Минюст документы на регистрацию
Among the allies of the organization was the public movement Para Bellum, one of the organizers of which is Vladimir Kvachkov.
Leadership The acting leader of the AVN was Yury Ignatievich Mukhin.
Activities Members of the organization took part in rallies and pickets, where they distributed leaflets and newspapers, spoke at various meetings, announced their ideas on Internet resources, conducted public opinion polls in order to clarify the attitude of citizens to the bill.
In addition to Moscow, the movement had branches in the following cities: Volgograd, Vologda, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kostroma, Krasnoyarsk, Kursk, Kurgan, Nizhny Novgorod, Novokuznetsk, Norilsk, Omsk, Orsk, Perm, Ryazan, Samara, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Tula, Tyumen, Ufa, Khabarovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chita, Yaroslavl.
The first public action organized by the AVN itself was a picket outside the building of the polish embassy in Moscow on November 4, 2005, demanding that the allegations that the execution of several thousand Polish officers in 1940 in Katyn were carried out by the forces of the NKVD USSR be falsified. State Duma deputy from the Rodina faction Andrey Savelyev spoke to the picket participants. Several Russian TV channels were filming at the event, but none of them showed a story about the action.
Later AVN held a number of other public events, and also participated in various political actions, including - according to press reports - in St. Petersburg, Tatarstan. Participated in the 2010 protest action "Day of Wrath".
On July 30, 2007, in Moscow, AVN activists, together with other political associations, held a sanctioned picket near the building of the Government of the Russian Federation in protest against the raider seizures of enterprises of the military-industrial complex. In February 2009, AVN activists took part in an all-Russian action of workers in the automotive industry. About 20 activists of the Army of the People's Will were detained before the start of the May Day procession at the Oktyabrsky Big Concert Hall in St. Petersburg in 2009. Representatives of the Army of the People's Will were holding a portrait of Vladimir Vysotsky in the role of Gleb Zheglov and a slogan with the inscription: "A thief should be in prison, not in the Kremlin."On October 9, 2010, AVN activists took part in the “March for the Preservation of St. Petersburg” in St. Petersburg, as well as in the rallies of the “Russian March” and May Day, pickets against the reform of the social sphere.
AVN Media The Moscow Prosecutor's Office emphasized the active propaganda work of AVN in the media, within which, according to representatives of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, extremist ideas are being promoted.
Video By order of AVN, documentaries and publicistic films and video clips were shot, which were distributed on the Internet in blogs, social networks, as well as through the specialized online store “Delokrat. Ru".
Печать The Duel newspaper, published by Yuri Mukhin, was not called the official press organ of the AVN, but it was in fact. After the “Duel” was banned, the AVN members began to publish the newspaper “Towards the Barrier!”. AVN had a regional organ - "Birch Porridge"..
Internet AVN had its own official website. Also, the official and unofficial sites of the AVN leader, Yury Mukhin, work.
Opinions about AVN Representatives of the Russian public and the press spoke ambiguously about the activities of the movement.
The Russian media attributed the movement to the radical left, stalinist, and socialist associations.
According to the version reported by the Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Viktor Grin, the General Prosecutor's Office attributed the "People's Will Army" to the most active extremist associations in Russia along with the organizations: "National Socialist Society", "Movement Against Illegal Immigration", "Slavic Union", "Northern Brotherhood". To this, the leader of the Army of Will of the People replied with a statement to the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation about the slanderous nature of such a message from Grin, since the court did not recognize the activities of the AVN as extremist and in relation to the AVN the court did not decide to prohibit the activities or liquidate.