Alexei Navalny is quite a suitable

candidate for president of the Russian

Federation. That is my personal view,

which I am not imposing on anyone.

>> Yes, thank you very much. So it turns out that

all of this was started in order to

nominate me for president. But first of all, I would

of course, like to, uh,

congratulate Vladimir Milov and his new,

his new organization on the fact that they

have organized such a fairly

representative conference, and

it is wonderful that it has truly been

created for discussion, rather than immediately for

turning all our registration lists

into registration lists

for some new

public movement. Such a, uh,

conversation about what to do next,

a substantive conversation, is indeed

necessary. Although, of course, the very question,

of what the democratic opposition should do,

well, is already one of those questions in the same category as

whether there is life on Mars, or

what really happened with Alina

Kabaeva? In other words, it is roughly the same

kind of thing in the media space.

However, uh,

I believe that, I repeat, such a conversation

is genuinely necessary in the sense that

quite recently we

were facing roughly the same

problem in 2007, and we all

remember that it was some kind of, well, I

cannot call it anything other than

hellish chaos, and we remember

that The Other Russia (an opposition coalition) was being formed, and one of

the main messages of The Other Russia

what was it, who remembers, in the elections?

A boycott, right? I actively supported that boycott as well.

Then it turned out

that there would be no boycott, and instead we would

write the name of our party ourselves on

the ballot. And then it turned out that we

would hold primaries, and we would have three

candidates whom we would select in

the primaries. If anyone remembers, there was

Gulyaev, there was Kasparov, and there was, remind

me, Mikhai—

>> Yes, and there was Kasyanov. Then, it seems, we

dropped all of that and nominated someone ourselves there,

then something else. And the problem is

that I am not exactly criticizing

my colleagues there; in a certain sense,

although I was not a participant in The Other Russia,

I was a participant in this whole process. It

was extremely chaotic and unclear. And

therefore, already now, uh, well,

having discussed all these issues, we should at least

try

to outline some relatively unified

strategy of action so that later

we do not lurch literally from one week to

the next. We remember that this is exactly how it

was. This is not, uh, some kind of

political flexibility. A week-to-week

change of decisions, it seems to me, is, in

fact, an indicator of political

inconsistency.

And continuing this discussion, I would

like to draw attention to the fact that we

need to take these recent mistakes into account,

which happened quite recently, and internalize

for ourselves

a number of very important axioms that

periodically come up, but for some reason we

keep moving away from them. First, I would

like to say that, it seems to me, we can

state this, and we must proceed from

this. There will be no unifying

project. That is, there will be no

united movement

of democrats or anything of the sort. We all

understand this perfectly well. There are a number

of objective reasons, personal reasons,

all kinds of reasons. There are also a number of subjective

reasons. We all understand perfectly well that

part of this unifying

democratic and liberal movement

would instantly be bought off,

outbid, and so on. That is the first point.

Second. In any case, there is

Yabloko, and there is Right Cause. Of course,

I also

quite believe that these are not at present

democratic

opposition forces, but here sits Boris

Borisovich Nadezhdin—so is he a servant of the

bloody regime or a democrat? It is fairly hard

to say. He could now

come out and say: "I support

Khodorkovsky, well, and at the same time I support

the grapes of Skolkovo." And then it is unclear

where to place him. And, uh, in

practical terms it will be quite

difficult, so we would also have to

campaign to him about something, shame him,

so that he leaves Right Cause and joins

well, and so on and so forth. Therefore,

it seems to me that there is no need to engage in this

at all. There will be no

unifying project. This needs to be

remembered.

And second,

probably the most important thing I wanted

to say—and this will probably be a kind of

criticism of the respected Vladimir Milov,

Vladimir Shkova, and so on. Forget

this fetish of yours about the "window of opportunity."

There is no such window of opportunity. Either

there are opportunities, or there are none.

All of this already resembles, you know, the way it is

in Lara Croft movies: once every nine years

the planets align, and then

they line up, and a magical

crystal has to be carried to the center of the

election commission and placed into a special slot, and

then the fifth element will appear—nothing of the sort.

That will not happen; it makes absolutely

no practical sense.

the eleventh year, the twelfth year, the 145th year

Either, uh, a situation will arise in which we all

will be able to take part in the elections, or such a

situation will not arise. That means it does not exist now;

we need to work on creating it, and in that

sense

to busy ourselves with organizations, parties, or

anything else just in order to make it by

a certain deadline—I think that is

absolutely pointless and unnecessary. Again, we

can see the experience of the seventh year. And we

can see that even now the worst

possible scenario is that

some of our respected people will

spend a huge amount of time and money on

collecting signatures, setting up founding

organizations in the regions, and so on. All

of this in a great rush and confusion, just to

make it by hour X, and in the end

nothing will come of it anyway. Therefore, uh, a window

of opportunity—either we create it, or rather,

not a window of opportunity: either we create

these opportunities, or we do not create them.

I believe that we, uh, have everything

necessary in order to

do all of this ourselves right now.

We must not deceive ourselves. And it seems to me

that as one of our basic axioms we

must finally determine for ourselves that

the regime’s real support lies not in

some so-called vertical of

power, nor even in the machinery of coercion, in

some mythical siloviki (security-service hardliners), but in the fact

that Putin—Putin personally, specifically—

enjoys the support of roughly 40–45%

of the population, real support. And that

real support of 40–45%, plus the 25%

they fabricate for him, is,

in fact, the foundation from which

they all proceed. But I would like to draw

attention to the fact that he earned that 45% at the

beginning of his electoral term through

things of which nothing

remains anymore. Yes. And Putin’s achievement, to this day,

even many of us in private conversations

still credit him with having overcome

disorganized crime by replacing it

with organized crime in the form of the militsiya (police) and the FSB (Federal Security Service). And

and, uh, well, he imposed some kind of order in

the regions, at least he built a system.

It became clear whom the governors answered to

and whom they did not. At present

absolutely nothing remains of those achievements

anymore. And to say that

governors answer to someone, or that

he replaced crooked governors,

is simply ridiculous. And who do we have there?

Remind me, please—the governor

of Primorye (Russia’s Pacific coastal region). Some guy nicknamed

Seryoga Lisp, right? And the governor

of Kalmykia

has for many years been accused of

organizing a contract killing, among

other things, and so on and so forth.

And at present, we can state with full

responsibility and prove that

Putin personally, and his inner circle personally,

are directly implicated in

corruption scandals and

are directly working for their own personal

enrichment. I am absolutely certain, certain

that if we were to engage in this work systematically,

and I would not want

this to sound like a call to go out to the people and

explain things to them. Uh, but nevertheless

it has to be something along those

lines. There must be direct

work to expose and debunk all these people.

Direct work in order,

if you like, to hammer and wreck

United Russia’s ratings. Participation in

the elections should simply be,

forgive me, one nonstop battering of

United Russia, which we are fully capable of

doing hard, forcefully, with solid arguments, and

successfully. I am absolutely certain of that. This

will be the correct line of participation in

the elections, which, broadly speaking,

will unite, uh, together with us in some

sense A Just Russia and the respected

Boris Borisovich from Right Cause and

the communists, and so on. There is no need

to fear that we will end up playing into

Nadezhdin’s hands. Yes, we will crush United Russia,

and Nadezhdin will slip into the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). Well,

let him slip in, good Lord—so much the better.

He’ll walk around with his little badge. There he

goes, crossing himself. Look, we’ll give

the man some joy.

I already

>> Yes, one, one thought to add. In fact,

for us this has absolutely no

significance. We, uh, are now ready for

practical measures to expose all

these people, to discredit them.

Discrediting them not in the sense that we

will tell lies about them, but in the sense

that we will tell the truth about them.

The public is already ready to hear us

right now. In Primorye, partisans are roaming about

who are shooting, shooting

police officers. They are shooting them not

because they are actually bandits, but

because, uh, whatever one’s attitude toward them,

they are, in a certain sense, ideologically

motivated. And, uh, when we explain

to everyone that, in the end, these Primorye

partisans are no better than Seryoga

Lisp, who stands at the head of the

region, I am sure that a significant

number of people will

listen to us. I am sure that this

can change

the political situation fairly quickly. And from this

support, broadly speaking, within

a short period of time, well, not that not

there will be no trace left; it will become

low enough that every

governor would no longer see—or everyone who

runs for any office would no longer see in

their dream a portrait of themselves next

to a portrait of Putin. As for me, for a long time

I was a member of the Yabloko party (a Russian liberal opposition party). And I can—I

remember very well that even in opposition

parties they always said: "Well, let's

criticize the regime, but let's not criticize

Putin personally, because he is just too

popular. And over and over again we see

opinion polls showing that even among

so-called liberals, Putin's popularity

is very high. So let's criticize everyone

else, but we won't criticize him personally".

But I am absolutely convinced that

six months or a year of proper, competent

work directly aimed at debunking

Putin personally—him personally, and his

close friends—would leave nothing of this,

would leave not a trace of it. And all these

governors, who may now

look like a monolith, and the siloviki (security and law-enforcement elites), all

that support—they will scatter like rats

when a photograph of this

man no longer gives them, in an election,

an extra 25–30%.

I am sure that we can do this, and we

can start doing it tomorrow and keep doing it

until an opportunity appears

for real, and not just a window of opportunity. Thank you.

>> Thank you.