Sharapov was imprisoned for 10 years when Vladimir Putin came to power.

Prior to this, in 1993, President Yeltsin confessed to him and his teacher, Vladimir Gomelskyi, that he cannot remove communists even around him in the Kremlin.

Sharapov was an assistant to the deputy of the Commission the Legislative Assembly of the city, where Putin comes from (Saint Petersburg). He was one of the initiators of the procedure for liquidating the District Committee of the Communist Party in the city, and transferring the building to the House of Freedom. Together with Gomelskyi, he was an initiator of dismantling Lenin’s monument at the central station in St. Petersburg.

Starting from 1989 until his arrest in 2000, he was creating anti-communist trade unions without employers and their agents on the basis of the Charter of the Polish group “Solidarity”. These unions were members of the Association of Free Trade Unions “Justice”.

Sharapov won a number of court trials while protecting employee trade unions, but lost his own criminal trial. The court passed the verdict without the presence of a jury in a remote northern region of Russia, where prisoners were tortured. The court’s decision contained Sharapov’s accusation in killing of a previously convicted person with two blows into the stomach, however, the man was killed by the two policemen. In reality, the authorities could not forgive him for the organization of anti-communist trade unions independent of the government in the largest Russian port, on the main railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and in St. Petersburg’s subway, as well as for the organization of victorious workers’ strikes.

After his release, he was seen among the defenders of the Euromaidan barricades in Ukraine.

Links:

Russia’s thorny road to democracy – Part I – Hold the Trend

Russia’s thorny road to democracy – Part II – Hold the Trend

Russia’s thorny road to democracy – Part III – Hold the Trend

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