Party of growth

Main article: Internal policy of Russia

2017: Boris Titov - candidate in the presidential elections in Russia

On December 21, 2017, the Growth Party nominated its chairman Boris Titov as a candidate in the 2018 presidential election

In April 2017, Boris Titov took the initiative to introduce electronic voting. According to him, the use of this technology is possible in federal elections by March 2018, when the presidential elections should be held. According to Titov, by this time the blockchain voting technology can be tested in a couple of regions.

The "Growth Party" domestically tests electronic voting systems based on the Reconciled Register of Operations (DLT) technology. The question is how, subject to the constitutional right of citizens to secret ballot, to certify each individual vote of the voter. This approach to the electoral system in the future could save people from voting at their place of residence and eliminate the problem of electoral fraud. The party planned to submit all its developments for consideration to the Central Election Commission (CEC). Read more here.

2016: Boris Titov - party chairman. "Just Cause" renamed "Party of Growth"

On February 29, 2016, at the VII Congress of the Right Cause party, he was elected its chairman, announcing the change in the party's political course to the "business party" and its rebranding. On March 26, the party was renamed the "Party of Growth." The company's website was previously located at pravoedelo.ru. After renaming, it ceased to be used.

The third in the federal list of the party in the elections to the State Duma was a media expert Potapenko Dmitry Valerievich.

2011: Mikhail Prokhorov sole party chairman for three months

In February 2011, due to disagreements with other leaders of the Right Cause party, Boris Titov left the post of its co-chairman.

Back in the fall of 2010, the Kremlin's entourage discussed who would represent the liberals in the 2011 parliamentary elections, and then Valentin Yumashev, the head of the presidential administration under Boris Yeltsin, remembered his friend Mikhail Prokhorov.

By 2011, Dmitry Medvedev, who was then president of Russia, was actively interested in the party. According to sources from his administration, Medvedev at that time was on good terms with Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin - it was he who was offered by the president to lead the project. Kudrin nevertheless refused a political career, and Medvedev was put on the table a new draft of the "leadership troika" of the right-wing party: the owner of the Respublika stores Vadim Dymov, actress Chulpan Khamatova and Andrei Sharonov, who then worked as vice mayor of Moscow. But Medvedev did not like this list.

"There is a crisis in the country. I need a person who will pay for everything, "the Meduza source quotes the former president, who apparently meant that the Kremlin was not ready to invest in a new project and unwind it at the expense of its resources.

As Prokhorov himself told in private conversations, Valentin and Tatyana Yumashev offered him to head the "Right Cause." Prokhorov treated this idea as "another super task." "It lit like a sparkler," a close associate of the entrepreneur tells Meduza.

In June 2011, the institution of co-chairmanship was liquidated in the party. Mikhail Prokhorov was elected the sole leader of the party.

At the party congress held on June 25, 2011, Prokhorov made a splash. The entrepreneur said that he would invest $100 million in the project, he promised to take another $100 million for the development of the party from fellow entrepreneurs Alexander Mamut (owner of SUP Media) and Suleyman Kerimov (owner of Uralkali), who, as Prokhorov hoped, would also join the party.

Kerimov and Mamut did not join the party, but many media people agreed to participate in Prokhorov's political project, including Alla Pugacheva, Andrei Makarevich and Yevgeny Mironov. At the same time, the Kremlin almost immediately began to advise Prokhorov to include outsiders and people not close to the entrepreneur in the election list. "They offered [TV presenter] Yulia Bordovskikh to include almost [singer and actress] Zhanna Friske," says a source from Prokhorov's entourage who worked in Pravaya Delo. The entrepreneur responded to this with a tough refusal.

Prokhorov's political image was taken up by technologists Iskander Valitov, Dmitry Kulikov and Timofey Sergeitsov. Prior to that, they promoted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk in the presidential election: billboards were posted throughout Ukraine, on which the intelligent and subtille Yatsenyuk posed in camouflage (Yatsenyuk gained about 7%, taking fourth place in 2010).

Political strategists also decided to add masculinity to Prokhorov - to make him a sharp, independent politician who can do without advice from the Kremlin. Many of their decisions, however, turned out to be wrong.

First, the party rebranded, its symbolism becoming similar to the imperial flag used by nationalists; the slogan "Our cause is right" also appeared. "And other people worked on that [ultrapatriotic] field, and the administration did not need it. All this Prokhorov did not feel, "says a person from his entourage.

Secondly, Prokhorov provoked a strong internal party conflict by hiring Rifat Shaikhutdinov, a State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party, as the head of the campaign headquarters. He quickly began to get rid of the liberals and give places on the lists to people far from party ideology.

Thirdly, political strategists turned Prokhorov against the main player at that time in the Russian domestic policy market - the first deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov. To demonstrate his independence, Prokhorov had to first of all get rid of the image of the "Kremlin appointee," but he did it ineptly. "They [political strategists] played the mold of a politician and came across a conflict with Surkov," says a source from Prokhorov's entourage. He claims that the advisers constantly told the entrepreneur: "Vladislav Surkov is the enemy, we are not on the way with him." They insisted that Prokhorov is an independent politician who should not focus on anyone.

Finally, fourthly, Mikhail Prokhorov quarreled with President Dmitry Medvedev. Shortly before the start of the 2011 election campaign, the head of the country gathered the leaders of the parties and made a speech that in no case should there be people with a criminal record on the party lists. Medvedev threatened Zhirinovsky, saying that this concerns him personally, but did not even look at Prokhorov, because he was sure of him. At the same time, the entrepreneur planned to include Yekaterinburg politician Yevgeny Roizman in the federal list of "Right Cause," who served time for theft in his youth.

"What can a politician do in such a situation? You can enter into a meaningful dispute, say that there is no such defeat in rights, "says Prokhorov's former associate in the" Right Cause "in an interview with Meduza. - You can wait for the end of the meeting and fall into the legs, to say - the criminal record was 20 years ago, sovereign, have mercy. Prokhorov simply missed Medvedev's words past his ears and almost the next day announced that Roizman was coming with him. "

According to witnesses, Medvedev was simply furious. According to a source (May 2016), familiar with the leadership of the presidential administration, Medvedev and Surkov are still "pounding" from one mention of Prokhorov.

"When Surkov urgently demanded to remove Roizman from the list, the entrepreneur threw up his hands:" Look, I am a public politician, that Roizman is on the lists, everyone already knows how I will explain this to my electorate? "- he says.

As a result, Prokhorov was left without a party: it was technically taken away from him in September 2011. On September 14, the first day of the congress, the delegates were divided into supporters and opponents of Prokhorov. As a result, on September 15, two congresses were already held in Moscow. At one of them - at the Center for International Trade - the delegates removed the party leader from his post, and at the second - at the Russian Academy of Sciences - Prokhorov announced the "raider seizure" of the party, his resignation from it and his intention to create a new political force. At the same time, the billionaire criticized the Kremlin administration, saying, in particular, that he would seek the resignation of its first deputy head Vladislav Surkov.

At the party congress, Prokhorov's opponents received a majority in the mandate commission, and then voted to remove Prokhorov from the post of party leader, which was replaced by the head of the executive committee, Andrei Dunaev.

"The return to our status quo was painful," Dunaev himself says. "Everyone understood that without Prokhorov the party would not gain a passing percentage to the Duma."

Dunaev cannot explain why the delegates committed political suicide. But Prokhorov himself announced that Surkov, whom the businessman-politician called the "puppeteer," was personally responsible for what happened.

After losing his post as leader of the Right Cause party, according to Prokhorov, he has not yet decided whether he will run for president in March 2012. The businessman took a break to analyze the situation. During this time, he planned to discuss with supporters the creation of a new movement and his further actions.

After the incident with the loss of the party at the end of September 2011, by presidential decree, Prokhorov was expelled from the Presidential Commission on Modernization, headed by Dmitry Medvedev.

2008: Creation of the Right Cause party. Co-Chairs: Gozman, Bovt and Titov

In November 2008, the Democratic Party of Russia, Civil Force and the Union of Right Forces were dissolved, and a new party, Right Cause, was established. The congress approved its three co-chairs. They were the former deputy chairman of the Union of Right Forces Leonid Gozman, journalist Georgy Bovt and Boris Titov himself.

As the former and. about. Chairman of the Political Council of the Union of Right Forces Leonid Gozman told Meduza, it was assumed that Right Cause would become the "political force of the liberal part of the country's leadership" and could be headed by one of the first persons.