ON A brisk Monday evening early this month, Yulia Scherbakova watched her two young children walk to a park with their grandmother. Instead of joining them to play, she picked up a blue clipboard and set off to knock on doors in an unlikely campaign to become a Moscow district councillor. The canvassing can be dispiriting—of the 72 flats she approached in her first building that evening, only 16 opened their doors; many more told her to get lost. The unpaid post offers limited powers and a five-year commitment. But Ms Scherbakova sees such street-level politics as a rare chance to influence Russian civic life. “This is where you can change something in our country,” she says. “At the upper levels it’s not possible.”
She is not alone. Russians will take to the polls on September 10th to elect over a dozen governors and fill thousands of seats in regional and municipal parliaments. For the most part, the vote will be an exercise in stage-managed democracy, with...Continue reading
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