It was announced that the Friday Presidium of the Federal Political Council (FPC) of SPS would be featured with sensational solution of the debt problem by the right who owe money to the Central Elective Commission for TV campaigning opportunities granted to all the parties. The event itself, however, was topped even with more sensational resignation of Nikita Belykh from the post of leader and with his leaving the party.  In accordance with the charter, the “eternal deputy” Leonid Gozman became automatically the acting chair and in that capacity he said to a Novaya correspondent that he had fixed a FPC meeting for 2 October with only one clause on the agenda: “On destinies of SPS”.  

Such are the pure facts. However, it’s not often that the general secretary leaves the party suddenly at the federal party council meeting. 33-year-old Nikita Belykh, who is said to have had a hypertensive crisis at the last convention where he had to resign demonstratively so that to save face after the defeat by the right at the Duma elections of 2007, this person is no neurasthenic. Along with that, a few sources from his entourage have confirmed that during the last year the chair has been the only sponsor of the party and its federal apparatus. He himself wrote in the Live Journal “Many (though not everyone) are not aware that there is no mythical money of Chubais and it’s been about a year that I am the only one to finance the party”. So why has he got browned off exactly now?        

There are different versions explaining that. Leonid Gozman, for example, has let know that in September’s discussion, dedicated to whether SPS should be dissolved, the party’s majority began to incline toward “clever” arrangements with the authority. And the politician Vladimir Milov, who was about to join SPS in October, has concluded about “the death of the last liberal Russian party” and turning it into “another Kremlin’s” one. He noted that “Belykh took his decision as a result of increased pressure, including the financial one”. That is, Nikita Belykh did not want to pay from his own pocket for the alliance with authority, while there was no other sponsor’s money available.    

The rumors in Moscow put it that it’s exactly inability of paying off the debt of 150 million rubles that was the pretext for an attempt, sanctioned by the Kremlin, of uniting SPS, Civil Force of Mikhail Barshchevsky and DPR of Andrei Bogdanov into a “united democratic party” on the basis of SPS. However, answering to the direct question by a Novaya Gazeta correspondent, Leonid Gozman said at once “Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine any of my comrades to be going to have something in common with Bogdanov or Barshchevsky”. Oddly, as soon as the news about Belykh’s resignation was received, the both above mentioned parties expressed their willingness to join SPS. Only the Yabloko’s leader Sergei Mitrokhin said with regret that “the only man in the SPS leadership has left, with whom it was possible to carry out a dialog about making the coalition of democratic forces; now everything has returned to Chubais”.    

Some anonymous confidants have told even more. It turns out that the Kremlin has required that the right remove Nikita Belykh for his “silly” statements about Georgian conflict and it turns out that the informal SPS leader Anatoly Chubais cares better for his good relations with Vladislav Surkov than for his personal disgust towards Mikhail Barshchevsky and Andrei Bogdanov. Those willing to “take to the woods” with Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Boris Nemtsov and other organizers of the united democrats’ convention, planned for 13 December, those people are in minority in SPS comparing it with advocates of agreement to be made with the authority. Possibly, the party will be “strengthened” with such prominent actors as Sergei Ivanenko (though he denies that) from Yabloko and Igor Yurgens from the Institute of modern development (that was informal brain center of Dmitry Medvedev during the elections). Probably, the new “liberal body” would go to the head of the state, if not to United Russia of Vladimir Putin. But all that is just rumors.       

In reality Nikita Belykh told to Novaya Gazeta he cannot continue heading the party the only possible way of salvation for which is coming to arrangements with the Kremlin. This is why he not only leaves his leader’s post, but he leaves the party completely. He only holds the mandate of a deputy of Perm Legislative Assembly, which does not mean, however, the evacuation of the federal politician from capital back to province. He is going to climb up on the right slope.