A series of protests across Russia, triggered by procedural violations during the 2011 parliamentary elections and results of the 2012 presidential elections, culminated on 6 May 2012 with a demonstration at Bolotnaia Square in Moscow. That demonstration led to violent clashes between protesters and the police. The dispersal of this demonstration and the subsequent criminal and administrative trials conducted against some of the protesters, as well as the controversy regarding the severity of some of the penalties imposed by the courts, became known as the Bolotnoe Affair. The Bolotnoe Affair is analyzed from the perspective of implementing the right to freedom of assembly in Russia. The main goal is to conduct a contextual legal analysis clarifying whether the right to freedom of assembly is adequately implemented in the legal order of the Russian Federation, in order to illustrate whether the protesters in the Bolotnoe Affair were able to express their opinions with regard to the procedure and results of the elections. The leading court cases relevant to the participatory rights of the protesters as exemplified by the appellate decisions of the Moscow City Court will also be examined. In particular, twelve decisions of the Moscow City Court during the period 2012–2014 (full texts of which are reproduced in publicly available legal databases) are reviewed, as well as two recent judgments in European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cases closely related to these earlier cases. Analyzing the Moscow City Court decisions vis-a-vis the judgments of the ECtHR, the author concludes that the Moscow City Court’s rulings did not conform with the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the right to freedom of assembly and the right to liberty.

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“博洛特诺事件”与俄罗斯联邦集会自由权的落实

2011 年议会选举期间的程序违规和 2012 年总统选举的结果引发了俄罗斯各地的一系列抗议活动，并于 2012 年 5 月 6 日在莫斯科博洛特纳广场举行示威活动达到高潮。那次示威导致抗议者和警察之间发生暴力冲突。这场示威的散布以及随后对一些抗议者进行的刑事和行政审判，以及关于法院所施加的一些处罚的严重性的争议，被称为博洛特诺事件。从俄罗斯落实集会自由权的角度分析博洛特诺事件。主要目标是进行背景法律分析，澄清集会自由权是否在俄罗斯联邦的法律秩序中得到充分落实，以说明博洛特诺事件中的抗议者是否能够表达他们的意见选举的程序和结果。还将审查以莫斯科市法院的上诉裁决为例的与抗议者参与权有关的主要法院案件。特别是审查了莫斯科市法院在 2012 年至 2014 年期间的 12 项裁决（全文转载于公开的法律数据库中），以及欧洲人权法院（ECtHR）最近对案件密切相关的两项判决对这些较早的案例。