2018 11/29 Leonid Volkov

LEONID VOLKOV

Russian Politics and the Strategy for Russian Opposition

Leonid Volkov is a Russian politician of the Russia’s Future Party founded and presided by one of the most consistent and influential leaders of oppositional movement to the current political regime, Alexei Navalny. Leonid was campaign manager and chief of staff for Alexei Navalny’s 2013 Moscow mayoral election, as well as Alexei Navalny’s attempt to get registered for the 2018 presidential election. During this campaign he was arrested five times and spent 95 days in jail. After the sabotage of the campaign by the authorities, Volkov became the chief of staff of the “voters’ strike”. On June 12, 2017 together with his colleagues from another NGO associated with Navalny, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Volkov run the ten-hour Internet broadcasting of the all-Russian protest rallies against corruption organized by their movement. Currently, Leonid Volkov oversees all regional political operations of the Russia’s Future Party, across Russia’s 11 time zones. He is a former deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma and the head of the central election committee of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council (2012). Leonid has over twenty years of experience as an IT professional, running and consulting several of Russia’s largest software companies. He is coauthor with Fyodor Krasheninnikov of The Cloud Democracy, a book on how modern technology could re-shape and re-define democracy and elections. Leonid is also founder of the Internet Protection Society, a NGO focused on the Internet freedom and digital rights in Russia.

Summary

In his talk, Leonid Volkov reflects on the current political situation in Russia and on the strategy of the anti-Putin oppositional movement. He will answer questions from the audience about current Russian politics and possible parallels with the situation in the United States.

A UIC Institute for the Humanities Working Group

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