Alexei Navalny answers questions at a meeting in Yekaterinburg

While Alexei was speaking,

I didn't let the remnants

of my mathematical education in this hall dry out.

17 seats and 20 rows makes 340 people, and they

filled the aisles too, so a little over 400. In the city of

Yekaterinburg, 600 polling sta-

tions.

[music]

There are enough people for every polling station in

Yekaterinburg: one qualified

observer at each polling station, in my

experience—and I’ve been doing election observation for more than

4 years—can work wonders if they

firmly know their rights. If they are

motivated, if they understand why they

came there, if it’s not some granny who

knits a sock for 500 rubles (about $5) or something, I don’t know. But

a real observer, someone whose

eyes are shining, who understands why it’s necessary

to watch and how to watch—they’re afraid of them.

Fear drives them into stupidity. I mean,

that truly epic power switch

that was flipped off 45 seconds before the end got

190,000 views. That’s more than

the monthly audience of all UTV programs

put

together.

That doesn’t come from great intelligence.

These are obvious mistakes. Of course, now they’re

already clutching their heads, but they couldn’t

help making mistakes. When a person

is afraid, they make mistakes, and they will

keep making them again and again. Our observers

will keep pressing them. They’re terrified—terrified of

people who work for an idea,

because they know perfectly well that

there’s no one like that around them. They can

deceive themselves all they want; they can get 30, 40,

50 percent—I don’t know—from state employees, soldiers,

people pressured into it, however they like—but

they themselves know perfectly well

that all those people voted under

coercion. And they also know perfectly well

that for every one of their people at our rally,

somewhere there’s a line in a ledger

showing how much they were paid to go

there. They’re afraid of people who come

for no reason other than to do something, just because,

and spend their own time, their own hours, because

to them that is something absolutely

irrational. They can deceive themselves however they like

in their reports, but around them

there’s nothing like that, and they know it perfectly well.

And what we need to do now, in this

final week before the election, is

exploit that sense of fear, make

them make even more mistakes, more and

more. And in that case, you and I, we

will inevitably arrive at one of two

outcomes: either United Russia’s result

in this election will, at least in

Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region,

be what it really is. And that is

20–25 percent, very unlikely any more. Or, because of

their stupidity, they’ll make so many mistakes and commit so many

violations, create so many problems, that it will be

absolutely obvious, absolutely

documented, and we’ll be able to show

it to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands

of people. Yes, of course.

In their stupidity,

they’re capable right now of exposing themselves

practically without limit. But we

can’t do everything right this second.

We come to a United Russia headquarters where

gifts are being packed up for distribution

to pensioners, and black-market newspapers are lying around.

After that, the city administration

announces that Volkov, with brass knuckles and a crowd of

drunk, stoned aides, burst into

the veterans’ council building. That’s all

fine. But all of this quietly

accumulates, it’s work, and every such

incident—they understand perfectly well that this too

is being collected somewhere, filed away, and

will come in handy in some future, hypothetical Nuremberg (a reference to a future reckoning or tribunal),

which, quite obviously, will take place

fairly soon. So even this

is absolutely not meaningless. I’m

glad to keep smashing them—faith is not the problem here.

That’s it.

So, colleagues, this is why our work

has meaning, and the fact that a huge number of people

came here, and there’s no ledger entry

showing how much anyone was paid for it—that is our

main weapon. And they’re all sitting there

already scared stiff.

[applause]

Right now, this election campaign is

a battle for the big cities—the million-plus cities.

In all the million-plus cities, first of all,

it is much harder to falsify results. This is

not Chechnya, not Tambov Region. Second,

the ratings are extremely low in the central

district of Moscow, and really

in these cities there should be—there really should be—

a real battle. So

I want to understand: is Yekaterinburg ready for

this battle?

Ready? I can’t quite

hear you.

Ready! I believe in victory, I absolutely believe

that this time, at least

in this city, we will not let them steal it. They

stole Volkov’s victory, but it seems to me

that by doing so they made a very big

mistake. That’s where it will begin. Now let’s move on to

questions. Let’s go, let’s start with questions. Yes, you

can moderate then. Yes, as usual at our

meetings with—before that, how does it go again—

I’ll moderate. Just a couple of words.

May I say a few words? Yes, let's.

Let's do questions first, and speeches afterward.

Only if you have time left.

You can see there are a lot of people, so this meeting

can be filled with real substance.

Yes, I just want you to support us.

We can do that there. Let's keep it very brief for now.

The Russian people, the state-forming nation,

have no territory of their own,

no power of their own, no faith of their own, nothing at all.

That's who is in power. So right now we are

specifically deciding as a group to go onto the website

and send Medvedev a telegram, and one to the Duma as well.

that the Russian people need Russian

power, and that they should get out of power, in short.

In practical terms, to state it fully, or

if someone wants to add something more, specifically here.

These elections are invalid.

One second. All right, I understand. Let's, colleagues...

Since there are no microphones, let's

let's

try not to all shout at once.

So, the best telegram you can send them

is the one you'll send on the fourth.

[applause]

of the month.

Make it so that in

Yekaterinburg, United Russia gets 15%.

That will be the best telegram. That's the kind of

telegram that will land with a bang,

straight in the Kremlin. That's what needs to be sent to them.

That will be the best telegram.

So, colleagues, it is perfectly obvious that

without microphones, we cannot have people from the audience

shouting out; instead, please pass up

a note.

No, this is a concrete matter—your proposal.

...

[music]

in writing.

The first question, the very simplest one,

and most straightforward: how do you assess

the political prospects of citizen

Medvedev?

Well, listen, just go

online, please, and type in

"the prospects of Comrade

Medvedev"—there's already, again, that joke

that was going around. Toward the end

of the election campaign, he decided to puff out his cheeks

and show that he was in charge of all

the missiles. And the joke goes like this:

Russia now threatens the whole world

with warheads and 500

badmintons. That's the future of citizen

Medvedev: he has become a laughingstock, and he has become

an embarrassment for the whole country. There really were

a great many people

—I spoke with them—who wanted to believe him.

After all, he said a great deal

about fighting corruption, about how things needed

to be changed. We were ready

to believe him. In fact, in order

to go from low approval ratings to high ones,

they needed to do some very

simple things. Let him jail everyone involved in

the Magnitsky case—those crooks—and his rating

will go up by 5%. Let him jail everyone involved in

the Domodedovo case, and his rating will rise by another 10%.

Let him do at least something. Instead,

all right, all right... Next

question. I usually sort the questions by

topic so they're at least somewhat

grouped together, but this time, technically,

that may not be possible, so we'll do them in random order.

What about Ural separatism, or

a Ural Republic as part of a

confederation—your view?

My view? I held a rally in Moscow

called "Stop Feeding the Caucasus," and my opponents there told me:

"You know, in the Urals

or in Novosibirsk, a more popular idea is

'Stop Feeding'

Moscow." You know, as a Muscovite, I

fully support that idea. What have I

gotten from the fact that we sucked in all the money

from everywhere else? Nothing. I got nothing. I live

next to an oil refinery,

and I don't see any changes. I

get nothing but constant traffic jams and

an insanely expensive life in Moscow. Everything is twice

as expensive as in Europe, and from all that money

I get nothing. So I think this whole

problem of separatism is contrived.

When we say "Ural Republic," I

understand that what is really meant is a very

simple idea: don't stick your nose into other people's business.

Why should anyone here be told how to build a metro

or how to sweep the streets? It's complete

nonsense that all these issues are decided from

Moscow. Power should be where people

live, and in that sense the city administration of

Yekaterinburg should have

more powers than the Kremlin, absolutely.

Well, there is foreign policy, there is the army, and

the notorious 500 badmintons, and that's it.

Everything else, please decide within the framework of

your own authority. So a Ural

Republic is a wonderful idea.

[applause]

Alexei, I fully and completely support

the slogan "Stop Feeding the Caucasus." Do you

think there is

an alternative to the existing

Caucasian sultanates among the peoples

of the North Caucasus? Are there people there

who want to live differently, who share

European values—freedom, human

rights—who want to live

in a democratic Russia?

In fact, this whole "Stop

Feeding the Caucasus" topic seems to some people there

to be anti-...

because over there it's a complete

nightmare and utterly hopeless trash, uh, yeah.

The negative selection that exists throughout

the rest of Russia, where only

crooks and thieves rise to power, has there

reached some kind of absolute apex.

I mean, over there it's really just

thugs and bandits who go into power.

That is, you can advance in

government only if you are, quite literally,

a murderer and some kind of criminal. So

the republics, despite all that, live in

poverty—most of them, I mean.

That's the paradox, uh.

People keep saying, enough already, nothing

works out, that both Moscow and we

are feeding exactly three

or seven clans; the money goes to

gold bars and the like.

Motorcades roll by there, local ones, like

30 Porsches, with an escort of 40

Mercedeses—that's where all this

money goes. Of course, people are the same everywhere.

There are also huge numbers of people there

who want to live normally, by

normal rules. They want to

work and get decent

money for it. But there, basically, if you want

to achieve anything, then join

some local police force (militsiya, the old-style police),

take part in robberies and pogroms,

be part of some Sharia army that's

being created, and so on. So I

absolutely believe that despite the fact

that the Caucasus has a huge number of

basic problems—a feudal society

and this kind of communal, clan-based structure—still,

there are many people in the Caucasus

who definitely want the same thing

we do: justice, that's all.

Question from the hall: you need to answer while looking

people in the eye—why are human rights activists being targeted, while you

are still alive and

free? That's a question that, honestly,

I frankly don't have

an answer to. I don't know why. I got lucky, well,

I got lucky. Again, there's that saying that the fact you're

still free is not your merit, but our

failure, because the system is

such a mess—such chaos—that probably some

order just never reached the right place. I don't know. I

have never received any threats. Well, a

criminal case has been opened against me.

It was fabricated a year ago, and nothing

has happened. Once I was summoned for

questioning, and that's it—the case is just hanging there, the deadlines

keep getting extended, nothing happens. I mean,

for a while I noticed that a car was

following me, watching me. But now

it seems even that has stopped. I really don't

understand, and I think that actually all

of this is greatly exaggerated. Well,

maybe they're watching me, maybe they're watching

him, but if people focus on

the right things—campaigning against crooks

and thieves and so on—then everyone here

present

is on our side. There are more of us here than there are staff members

in the local FSB (Federal Security Service), so we'll be watching them

rather than them watching

us. You can't kill everyone.

The inevitable question:

will you put forward your candidacy

in the Russian presidential election? Well, after all,

how many times a day, on average,

do I have to answer the question,

will there even be a presidential election

in Russia? I haven't heard that one has been scheduled.

There won't be a presidential election. In March there will be

a procedure for transferring the throne,

which will end in some strange

way. By the way, it's very funny—in Moscow, by the way,

I haven't seen this, but here, on some building,

there's this gigantic poster hanging

up, right, with Putin and Medvedev in some kind of

very suspicious

closeness. I mean, forgive me, maybe this isn't

a very decent joke, but every time

I hear discussion of that poster of yours,

I have only one question: which one of them is holding whom by the butt?

It's very suspicious.

Uh.

As for this handoff—on what date are they

planning to carry out such a

transfer? In reality, the possibility

of participating in it doesn't exist. The procedure

for registration is such that collecting signatures

is impossible. I took part in the procedure

of collecting

signatures—Volkov can confirm that.

[applause]

Who will you personally vote for,

which party? Well, I don't know whether all of you

here use the internet, but right now there's a popular

little sheet going around with a cutout pattern

for a children's cube, and on each

side is the name of a party.

Who should you vote for? Your

cube doesn't matter in the slightest. That is,

if you like one party

more than the others, vote for it. But if you

don't have any particular preference at all,

it really doesn't matter. What matters is

to deprive

the party of crooks and thieves of its monopoly.

The other parties, the opposition parties—I

mean the opposition guys—are

under control.

Their leaders are corrupt, and so on, but

there are still other people there. In any case, when they

get into the Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), when they maybe

start pulling chestnuts out of the fire with our hands—yes, that's exactly what I'm calling for—

they themselves are too cowardly to

do anything. They are absolutely afraid.

So yes, perhaps we can deliver some

victories or better results for them,

since they themselves are incapable of doing it.

Well then, we will make sure they get into

the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), in stronger positions, so that they

at least start—well, so that they crawl out

from under the bed and at least a little begin

to nip at this party, United Russia. That is

the task. So frankly, I don’t care—it makes

no difference at all, not the slightest

difference, who you vote for. Personally, I

literally decided by drawing lots. Whatever—against

any of those little parties of thieves.

Just a second, colleagues.

Let’s take the final question, the one we can’t

do without: why do you need

Russian Marches?

Russian Marches?

As for the Russian Marches—well, they exist.

That means they are needed by a fairly large

number of people. Whether we like it or not,

Russian Marches and the conservative

nationalist movement do exist. That is

a political fact. Whether we dislike it

or like it, it exists.

It exists in any case. There really are

a significant number of people who come,

including some crazy youth and all the rest.

But our task, our responsibility, our

duty, if you like, is to make sure that

more normal people come to the Russian Marches,

because the issues discussed there are, in

principle, ones that are being raised there and are

absolutely valid and appropriate. Do we like

the fact that Russia ranks second in the world

in the number of illegal

migrants? No, we do not. Do we like

the fact that Russia

is in first place...

[music]

...that the Caucasus is effectively not

part of the country? No, we do not. Do we like

the fact that real

Sharia armies are being created there? Look, officially

on television they show all this stuff—

Kadyrov has created some kind of his own—well,

not exactly a gang, not exactly police, just

some bearded men with assault rifles. They

pray three times a day, they are required

to pray—in other words, a Sharia

army has literally been created with our money. Do I like that?

Do a huge number of people like that?

Either we start discussing these issues

ourselves, substantively, or we hand these

questions over to those very young

guys.

So our responsibility

is to make sure all these

nationalist concerns are discussed,

to look for solutions, and not...

How do you feel about the slogan

"Russia for Russians"?

[music]

...just to get a few more votes.

Did you watch it yesterday?

Well, I can forgive him a lot,

for the fact that yesterday he made Shtain

end the debate in epic fashion by saying, "Yes, we are

the party of... therefore for..."

[music]

[applause]

Why is this happening in the London court?

...

In fact, what is happening there

in the London court is where the chronicle

of modern Russia is being written. And it is

astonishing that all these people, all

our officials—when we ask them

questions, send them telegrams, ask them things

during elections—they simply ignore all of us.

But the moment

a London judge said, "Right, witnesses,

come here," they all came running: Abramovich,

Berezovsky,

Voloshin, various officials—a huge

number of people standing there, nodding

their heads, taking the oath, and saying, "The

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and then telling

how they stole and looted here. And what is

astonishing is the way they treat our

country—as some kind of bantustan.

Quite simply, without the slightest embarrassment, there

in front of hundreds of reporters present,

they say: yes, we privatized this, and for it

we didn’t pay a kopeck (a tiny Russian coin). Yes, over here we

seized this, then Badri Patarkatsishvili did something there,

then we moved in, then there were

gangsters, and then they became officials, and they

tell all this as if here, in our country,

there really is some wild frontier of free

hunting—as if we don’t have a country but

some native tribes, and we neither

hear nor know any of it. They see themselves as these sophisticated

guys who come to these native

tribes, give them a little mirror and

a red rag, and in exchange take away

a million tons of oil. What is happening

in London is actually wonderful in the sense that

it shows us

who really runs the country.

It really shows...

All our elite, which accuses

the opposition of being agents of Western

influence—well, they themselves are exactly the ones who,

the moment the governments of

the United Kingdom or the United States decide to lean on these people,

for any reason whatsoever, they will give up absolutely

everything here—I don’t know, nuclear missiles and

air defense systems, whatever. These people will surrender it all

just to be allowed to keep

what they have in London, in Switzerland, in the United States. And there it’s all

very simple: behave yourself properly, all right,

and you can go on pretending to be some native little tsar here.

and drive around in some Mercedes too, and

buy football clubs. But the moment

you misbehave, the police will come for you

and say: money laundering. We’ll take everything from you,

they’ll confiscate it.

For four years — like what happened to Lazarenko, if

you remember, there was once a prime minister

of Ukraine. He strutted around like a big shot, all puffed up,

then the Americans didn’t like something,

and boom — they put him away for six years, and took the money.

The exact same thing could happen at any moment

to Abramovich, with Putin’s

money, with Medvedev’s money. These

people understand that perfectly well, and they trade away

the country’s national interests in exchange

simply for their own

money. Next question. I think it’s entirely

in the spirit of a question from an ordinary shoemaker from

the town of Polevskoy, Leonid Bystrov. You

are calling on people to vote for any party

except United Russia. However, there are known

cases when, in elections, the winners were

Communists who, after some time,

switched over to United Russia. So what is the point

of voting for just any party then? Thank you.

for

Well, that is a big problem. There have indeed been

cases in our Novosibirsk

region where, several times, the winners were

Communists — or rather, not really Communists,

but people who beat United Russia and brought

to power individuals who, the very next day,

joined United Russia. That problem does exist.

But here, you see, my friends,

you have to trust someone. Take Volkov, for example —

theoretically, you could elect him too, and he might

turn around and join United Russia. Is that possible?

Yes,

theoretically. But you have to trust someone; there is

nothing else

you can do. In any case,

you understand, by pushing these people through,

we force United Russia to do at least

something. They at least have to enter into

some kind of negotiation process,

bargain, buy off Zhirinovsky,

persuade Zyuganov, do something with someone,

because right now they simply

don’t care about anything. They just sit there

and keep pumping, latched onto

the oil stream, and do absolutely

nothing. And this whole thing itself,

this holding on to power — for them it is a very

comfortable process.

Let’s at least make it so that this

power becomes like a slippery fish in their hands,

so that they have to do at least something.

You have your own tally of millions saved

from the budget, but at the same time you

admit that no one has been jailed. So that means

the stealing will continue. Then what is the point

of your work, apart from

populism? Well, that is partly

the question with corruption: how many people have you put

in prison? Well, the answer is zero. And in this

system, they can put me in prison; I cannot put them

in prison, because they are the power.

Look, here’s an example close to home for you.

Last time, almost a year ago,

I spoke here and talked about your

interchange costing 7 billion rubles (about 7,000 million rubles).

And then, after I left, your Yekaterinburg city administration

— I kept saying everywhere that

Navalny seemed to have said nothing special,

nothing was happening. Well, here is my report to you:

the bidding had been scheduled for December,

now it has been moved to March of next

year. We had it canceled several times; several

people were fined thanks to our

complaints, administrative penalties were imposed.

The whole city — they are delaying the construction

of a giant interchange that the entire

city needs, only because they want to rig

the tender like that.

I believe that this means our work is not in vain,

because at the very least, once again, we are not letting them

simply open a suitcase full of

money, write in whatever amount they want, and

walk away. So in any case, we are creating

problems for them; in any case, by accumulating

materials, I am absolutely sure, convinced

100 percent — otherwise I would not have been doing this

for even a single day —

that

I believe in it, I am absolutely convinced that

the people

present here will help me do it,

will help themselves do it, because

it cannot be that in a country of millions,

you understand, there are

100,000 people who have stolen

everything, looted everything, robbed everything, while everyone else

just sits there nodding and doing nothing else.

[music]

That will not last forever. Sooner or later, the day

will come. But when that day

comes — I don’t know, in a year, in three years,

or in three years — it is very important for us to remember

one very serious thing: we will not forget, we will not

forgive. That is, it must not happen

that something changes and then again, well,

people say, all right, let’s forget some things — ‘whoever

brings up the past should lose an eye’ (a Russian proverb). No, we

will bring up the past, and each of you will get what

you deserve.

Why, why did you go to London? Who there

cares so much about Russia, and why did you not

want one of the meetings to be filmed?

In fact, you can look online —

I had four meetings there,

and all of them were filmed.

You can watch them online, by the way.

It was a very interesting trip, and I...

The most interesting part there was a meeting, uh...

a meeting with what you might call the London

Russian community. It was really quite simple.

It was amusing to see who these people were, what kind of people they were there.

I don’t know—rich kids, officials’ children, students, who

they are. After all, there are nearly

300,000 Russians living in London, and well, of course I didn’t see

all 300,000 of them. But the people who

came to the hall, in a smaller gathering,

were fairly ordinary people who simply

had moved there for some personal reasons; for some,

a spouse had left, someone had found a job there,

settled in there—ordinary people. But I can tell you

that they are much more painfully affected by what is happening

here than many people living there might think.

For them,

all this talk about children and real estate in some district, if it is

just some abstract figure, some kind of district

where some children live—well, none of us has even been to that district.

But for them, they see

this person every day, they see

all of it in the society pages.

[music]

They see people leading some astonishingly luxurious

life. For them, these court cases that

are taking place in London mean a lot

to them. This humiliating and

demeaning attitude from the local press

and the local elite toward Russians is very

important to them. They say: we want to be normal

citizens, but here we are treated like

some kind of natives who loot their own

country, stay silent back home,

then come here brazenly, not ashamed of anyone,

and people laugh at them and laugh

at the whole country. It really hurts,

it really does, because, well,

they are just ordinary people. Out of those

300,000

people, 290,000 are completely ordinary

people who work there as

managers or in similar jobs, earning ordinary salaries,

struggling to get by, paying off mortgages,

sending part of their money

to relatives, and in fact

a significant number of them would like

to return. And they are simply furious

because they see all this.

People... I

think that if

we move to

Russia

Konstantin’s book

about Alexei—did you take part in creating it?

[music]

There isn’t really anything substantial I could write

in those memoirs. When we finally achieve something,

then we’ll write them. Rankov did indeed write

a book. My role

consisted of the fact that he spent

several hours interviewing me there,

asking all sorts of questions, starting with

whether I had pets in childhood

and ending with various

questions about children. He wrote the book. To be honest,

I myself still haven’t even held it in my hands,

haven’t seen it, haven’t read it, don’t know anything about it.

I don’t feel very comfortable about it

because the title is rather pompous.

Navalny... crooks and thieves—we can see that in

essence they are crooks and thieves, and they don’t like me.

They are wary, but for now I wouldn’t

say that they are outright panicking because of me

or running away, unfortunately. But they will run—and when they do,

that’s when it will be time to write memoirs.

The classic question—read it with expression:

“And where do you get your money?”

Excellent, I know I may look suspicious,

but in fact I don’t need that much money.

I have an office where

10 people work, and my task

is to earn enough money to pay these

people their salaries. Moreover, a significant part

of them are paid through the project

RosPil—that is, everyone chips in together

money. So you’ve already paid them?

I have to pay salaries

to everyone else, cover the office rent, and earn

enough for my own living expenses and my family, so my legal

practice—that’s it.

[applause]

It’s less difficult to answer that

because, you know, a famous lawyer—

for many people, hiring one is like

inviting a celebrity performer

to

a corporate party, and

that’s why many simply pay, because

he’s a well-known lawyer.

[music]

...

Look, if you vote for a party that won’t make it into parliament,

your vote gets redistributed among the winners.

First and foremost, it strengthens the ruling party’s

monopoly on power. So does that mean you should vote

for absolutely any party that has a real chance?

Well, look, if we approach it

mathematically, we understand that voting for

a party that is guaranteed to get through means

giving 100% of your vote. If

you vote for a party that may not

get through, that means that, what, about

30% of your vote will go to United Russia.

But I’m against turning this into something where everyone is told what to do—everyone decides for themselves.

I’m against having any kind of discussion on this topic

at all, because

one of the advantages of our campaign is that when we say

“vote for any party against the crooks

and thieves,” everyone supports us. This is hugely

appealing to the Patriots of Russia,

A Just Russia, Yabloko, the Communists—

everyone. But when we say, well,

it would be better to vote for the Communist Party, that appeals

to the Communist Party, but not to everyone else.

Accordingly, we deprive ourselves of a huge number

of essentially volunteer campaigners.

our company. So there’s no need for that.

to discuss it—everyone studied math at school,

everyone went through it, everyone did; everyone can

speak for themselves, but nevertheless I believe

that the best path, after all, is

simply to cut it out.

Edit the question to fit today’s atmosphere

in the United States.

How do you feel about it? And in general, what is your

assessment of the group... I love the state, I love...

the state. And in general, what is your assessment

of political themes in rock

music? I haven’t heard it, but it’s funny that

when I was walking in here to the hall, I was stopped by

your very famous local singer. I don’t

know—some people like him, some don’t

like him. But he’s definitely well-known: Alexander

Novikov. You know him? He stopped me there,

grabbed me by the hand and said, “I wrote

a song against United Russia (the ruling political party),”

“it’s going to blow up—get a million views,” something like that.

“It’ll just explode.” So, that

shows that, well, the mood is changing,

and we’ve seen how the mood is changing

quite recently at Olimpiysky (a major Moscow indoor arena), yes, when a very

simple reaction from the audience, yes, followed for this

guy, and we saw how such a mighty tyrant

instantly deflated into some very

small, frightened person, because

the next day he no longer went to

Olimpiysky—he got scared, just in case. And

a day later, when he came to the State Duma,

there was whistling at his appearance. So

the mood is changing, and Putin did have

real popularity—genuine

popularity—but he squandered it, he wasted it.

He converted it into money, he

made billions out of it for

his inner circle. For everyone else, he could have used that

popularity to do something good

for the country, to do something useful for it and for

the Ozero dacha cooperative (a well-known group tied to Putin’s inner circle)—all these people,

all of them official billionaires, and a huge

number of unofficial billionaires as well.

So what, is he supposed to be offended at us now

because we whistle when he appears? Therefore,

this rock music and all these things—

they’re indicators. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard

that song, but I think that various kinds of

folklore, creativity, and so on,

[music]

anti-Jewish... That is, I don’t need to—we

are in a unique situation. I don’t need

to persuade musicians to write these

songs—they write them themselves, because they

simply hate United

Russia just as much. I’d also like to add that this

this

topic turns out to be very unifying.

This theme—against crooks and thieves—

when I walked in here, I felt a little

pang in my stomach, also because

Alexander Vasilyevich... really

doesn’t like me very much. He was very deeply

offended by me a year and a half ago over the story

around Labor Square, about “smashing someone’s face in,” and

he’s a man who

means it, and so I, with a certain, a certain

apprehension, was hesitating before going in.

Before entering, yes, I was hesitating. But he’s much

taller than me, bigger, you know. And when

he rushed over to me—to me and to Alexei as well—

including to Alexei about the song, and to me

he says, “Come on, let’s go after United

Russia.” So that, basically, put me at ease.

I have a question here: do you consider it

necessary, for a better future for Russia,

to separate from our country’s territory

Chechnya or other territories of the North

Caucasus? Let me disagree—but they have already

separated themselves, in effect. I don’t know,

who here studied law, but everyone reads about

the five characteristics of a state, right? And in

the situation with Chechnya, we have

only one sign of a unified state,

because we have a single currency.

The only thing that represents Russian

authority on the territory of Chechnya, Ingushetia,

Pakistan—are the portraits of these

guys that are hanging here with you,

suspiciously close to one another.

That’s all, nothing else. And so this is the kind of

exchange we get: you hang the portraits

and deliver 10% for United Russia, and we from our side

don’t want anything from you at all—do whatever

you want—and we’ll also give you enormous

amounts of money. So right now the issue is not

separation, but rather, if anything,

bringing Chechnya, Dagestan, and so on back into the fold.

I believe

that the issue is—they don’t want to separate, yes, and

Kadyrov’s words are well known, when he says

that “we will not allow you to separate from us.”

Well,

fine then. No one is allowing anyone anything.

What we are talking about here, what we should be talking about,

is simply budget equality. Guys, you are

subsidized republics, subsidized ones.

You should receive the same amount of subsidies

as Ryazan, as Tambov, as

Smolensk. Here we have Sverdlovsk Region,

a donor region. Sverdlovsk Region

if it decides to give you money, then fine, give it.

If not, then earn it yourselves. That’s

all. This is a more important

and substantive issue than some

questions about, so to speak, Russia. In the next

question, I really liked the

abbreviation.

I'm just curious how many years...

the central office can count any percentage it wants

for the ruling party, do you think?

Well, actually, they do

that bearded official, surname...

Churov. Of course they can, with...

basically, they can do whatever they want, and they

don't even have to do it through manipulation—they can simply

announce on Channel One that United

Russia got

99%. But that's dangerous too, after all

you could get your face smashed for that. So how

do they proceed?

in the Urals, for United Russia

so the task...

...will be an observer who catches a violation

in

...then 20, and then...

...because, well, objectively...

85—there is a high probability

that

the votes still...

[music]

If I blow up the system, that's already

dangerous. It seems a lot depends on the composition

of the precinct election commissions

and district ones. They are

mostly teachers, employees...

[music]

[music]

[music]

an observer who is fearless, an observer who doesn't

get scared

goes up to the chair and says: we will

monitor the documents

all-Russian...

sits on the commission, and it's not a small

salary... in the commission, 5 rubles—would someone, for 5

rubles, get involved in some potentially

criminal case? That's the question

again, this government will fall because there is no one

willing to

defend it. Maybe some of us will come out there

to some square—not many, but for them

so our active position will make it so

that all these bought-off, first of all dishonest

people—they're doing a pretty good job

of nothing; they just move ahead and stay where they are

There are several similar questions ahead here

I'll ask one of them

about who owns the media and power

I can't answer that

question—we Illuminati are forbidden to

[applause]

ask that. Maybe I should have a drink of

water and rest, but for now—what is your

attitude toward Khodorkovsky?

It's complicated. I said publicly after

the first

case: well, in reality they were siphoning off money

just like everyone else. So after

the first case, we...

then Abramovich, Potanin

and, I don't know, Deripaska and all the others should be sitting there with him. That

was the issue then. But after the second case

against Khodorkovsky—well, this is simply

an absolute fabrication, completely

an outrage against justice, against

the legal process, against everything really, especially

after those revelations by

that secretary of the Khamovniki District Court (in Moscow)

who said that it had been prepared in advance

from above. In other words, it's just some kind of

mockery and a spit in everyone's face now

and to say now that

Khodorkovsky is not being excluded for political reasons is

simply ridiculous. Of course he's in prison because

they're afraid. I don't understand what exactly they're afraid of

but, I mean, some kind of

uncontrollable factor might arise—who knows

Maybe he won't do anything. Honestly

speaking, I think they should release him and nothing

would happen. Or maybe he'll start financing a revolution

or get involved in something. And

since they're afraid of everything, just in case

they removed Volkov from

the ballot. Nothing happened. Exactly

the same way they are keeping him there—Khodorkovsky is sitting

for life. I think he understands that he is

in for life—either until he dies or

until the life of this

regime ends. He has served 8 years, yes? So whatever he did

he has already done his time for it. Here, people don't get that much even for murder

No. So of course

Khodorkovsky must be released. But he

can only be released under

a new government

In the current situation, you can't issue

such an ID card? Yes, that's true, which means

I'm no longer a candidate, so I can't send an observer

on my own behalf. We will get out of this situation

in two ways. The first

traditional way is through the newspaper

Civic Voice and a number of friendly

media outlets that will issue credentials

for media representatives whose rights are similar

to those of an observer. Moreover

the right to conduct photo

and video recording at a polling station is explicitly spelled out, and

that's very good. Plus, of course, we are holding

talks with parties—not even with parties

as such, but with individual decent

people. This evening I'll also be meeting with

Andrei Alshevskikh and with

other guys as well. And of course we

will get a certain number of credentials

from them, especially if, as we

hope, we have more than 600

people and we can, so to speak, cover polling stations with double

density—

you can't have two observers from one media outlet at one

polling station, so it would be great if

say, one is from a media outlet and one from

a party or a candidate, so that one could

go to the bathroom while the other continued

to monitor everything. So, while I have the chance

once again

we are constantly recruiting observers

Come on, come on, come on, stop by

78 Krasnoarmeyskaya Street, our campaign headquarters.

It now operates exclusively as follows:

as Golos's office and as the headquarters of the campaign "Not One Vote for United Russia."

Not One Vote for United Russia, and basically

from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, without days off,

someone is always there.

Or, better yet, of course, write to Vladi

by email at g.com — I suppose everyone already knows that address perfectly well.

I suppose everyone already

knows it.

So, let's dream a little.

Let's imagine: the party of crooks and thieves has been defeated.

But that does not mean

an automatic renewal

of democratic institutions, the disappearance

of corruption, or that a new party of power will not emerge.

So what happens then, in your view?

It doesn't work like this: United Russia gets

15%, and suddenly happiness arrives,

officials become smarter and honest, and so on.

There are no fairy tales. But any positive

changes can happen under conditions of

political

competition. Where do we need to begin? It is clear

that Russia can climb out of the pit

it is now in.

There... let's...

[music]

This may be the last such moment in history — this enormous

amount of money that has fallen into our lap.

Something like this may never happen again, and

in 15 years, oil may no longer be needed by anyone.

Needed in

China, by 2020, all public

transport will already have been switched to electricity.

So we still have some

remnants of this historic chance

to grab it by the tail and do something.

But we can see that right now it is being squandered ineptly.

Something can be done, but only if we make

this system at least somehow turn,

real political competition,

the independence of the courts, real change

in the law enforcement system, the return

the emergence, the return

of effective owners instead of oligarchs.

Over the next 10 years, our task,

our responsibility as citizens, is to use this chance.

There will be no fairy tale.

Just because we bring down United Russia does not mean

wonderful, marvelous people will suddenly appear

who will fix everything for us at once.

They will not appear. But at least there is a chance that they

will gradually come to power in a more

free system. A criminal case has been opened against Konstantin Krylov

under Article 282 (the Russian law on incitement of hatred/extremism).

For his chant at a rally: "Stop feeding the Caucasus."

If Krylov gets a prison term, what will that lead to?

Are you not afraid that you might repeat

the fate of Konstantin Krylov and Yuri Shumov,

who received a life sentence?

Well, Volkovs are afraid to go into the forest, as they say.

You understand, any of us, any person, can be

thrown in prison.

And we should not deceive ourselves. Yes,

these people may seem ridiculous,

playing badminton and all that, but in a situation where

there is a real threat to them — to their money,

their freedom, and so on — these people will resort to

any

crimes, and they will look

very different. Of course, right now they're all smiles and niceties,

but then they will no longer look so funny.

We need to be fully aware of that, and any

person engaged in any kind of

independent activity

takes certain risks. The only thing that can offset those risks is you.

If you

take on

part of them. There is no other way here.

When Volkov is alone, he is afraid; but when there are

already 500 people with Volkov, he is less

afraid. When 50,000 people are with Volkov,

then it is already the authorities who are afraid, and Volkov is not afraid at all.

And there is no other way.

Krylov may be imprisoned because they do not

want

there to be any real

legal

and normal forms of existence

for nationalist movements. They want

nationalism in Russia to

exist in the form of some kind of thug ghettos,

so they can say to the West, "See?

Of course, we are...

[music]

...

I think that if they imprison him,

the consequences will be unpredictable.

It will simply break out one way or another.

[music]

Otherwise, they will start handing out weapons.

Yes, everything I say here, I write about openly.

Completely freely, without any doubt.

We just had a meeting

with volunteers, and when we

arrived, we found Mr. Kayan there,

from the Center for Combating Extremism, waiting for us.

So, well, there are these little barriers in place.

In fact, I wanted to say — I've come to realize

that for making clips/excerpts,

we already have ready-made material.

I said that it can be done, and I have...

even among those who are in this hall right now,

among those

What methods will you use

to rouse the people, to broaden this?

[music]

At Olimpiyskiy (a major Moscow arena), they are not indifferent, because

what is indifference? Yes, maybe they

will not engage in some kind of

normal civic activism, but they will simply

vote against United Russia. So because of

that supposed indifference, something may still happen.

In any

case, we can see that the era of that kind of cynicism

of the 1990s is passing, in various ways.

For a reason: people are fed up, because

people feel that this really is

their last chance, because they feel

that if these two clowns stay for another 12

years, then it won’t just be a matter of, well,

them sitting around a bit longer. You start thinking like this:

in 12 years I’ll already be, like,

47, and then you think: by then

your children will have grown up. My daughter was born

under Putin, and she’ll go to university under

Putin. I’ll have grandchildren under Putin, and all of this

will just fall apart, crumble. We have 150,000

people leaving the country every year, so

this apathy is coming to an end, because that

apathy will simply lead to the destruction of the

country.

And politics based on

political manipulation, simply on deceit and

everything else—it no longer works, and

all of that is no longer effective, and people are now simply

saying simple things: what is

good, what is bad. It seems to me that

there is less and less apathy. Today I saw

I was with Leonid at a meeting with his

activists, and you know, I’ve seen a great many

party campaigners

campaigners who work during elections,

and the people sitting there with him

were fundamentally

different.

Usually, they’re middle-aged women

who are being paid. But there, sitting with him,

were all these young guys who

weren’t being paid anything at all, but

even so, there wasn’t the slightest trace of apathy there.

These are very serious changes,

very serious changes. I’m not sure

that

five years ago anyone would have come

to this hall to listen to some

I don’t know, two obscure people who

are saying fairly banal

political things. I mean, we’re not singing, we’re not

dancing, we’re not performers, not comedians, we’re not doing

anything like that. Yet people still came to listen.

Why? Because apathy really is becoming

less common. People understand that apathy

will lead to the point where everyone will have to flee the country.

How do you feel about the Nakh-Nakh movement

that calls for spoiling ballots?

Well, I view it negatively. It is a

completely pointless movement, and it is

somewhat irrational and strange. That is,

I mean,

I disagree with those people who

talk about a boycott, although I can understand

their position: we believe the system

is fraudulent, built on lies. We

don’t believe in it, so we won’t go to the polls.

That I understand. I don’t agree with it, but I

myself once held that position. I think

it’s ineffective, but at least it makes sense to me.

But when people tell me, “We’ll go to the elections,”

thereby half-recognizing the legitimacy of these elections,

we’ll help boost turnout,

and we’ll send our own observers

to observe things there, but at the same time we’ll

spoil our ballot because we don’t

believe in the system”—so you’re participating in it

but don’t believe in it. And on top of that,

in regional elections we’ll vote

for Volkov, meaning that at the regional

level we do trust the system, but at the very same

polling station, in the federal

elections, we’ll spoil the ballot because

we don’t believe in the system. Well, that’s such nonsense and

such absurdity, and it seems to me that, overall,

this idea, this ideology, has received no

support at all. The best proof of that

is that. So, questions from Twitter

are our priority, so we’ll skip ahead.

Why do you

so fiercely, I know many people

know

Arkady Dvorkovich, a presidential adviser, while Mikhail Prokhorov’s brother

swears—but I

prefer to know that he exists

because he says all sorts of unpleasant things.

There are many people who say such things; I can’t

control that.

Please, another question as well: in short, how

can you recognize political provocateurs

of the kind that have existed in Russian history?

It’s impossible.

There’s

no

way

to know. Anyone can turn out to be a provocateur,

or sell everyone out for money and

turn out to be that kind of person. Anyone can.

You can’t live that way; it’s impossible to proceed as if everyone

around you is bad, corrupt, and for sale.

[music]

Provocateurs? I believe in myself. I believe in the people

who are doing all sorts of good

things right now. And, you see, to sit there analyzing

this hall and think: yes, there are 300 people here, and among them

surely five are plants, four are

FSB officers, and seven are provocateurs—well, what would that

get me? I proceed from the assumption that there are definitely

normal, decent people present who will

do the right things. There’s no need

to try to

sort anyone out; you just need to do something

right yourself. That is, every time you make a

decision, you simply need to consult

your conscience.

[music]

Do you feel that

this was a takeover? And unfortunately he began

to act in such a way that, well, he created

all the preconditions for that takeover. I, in

general, welcomed his appearance because

any new person who enters

politics is, in any case, a good thing.

Whether he's Kremlin-backed or not,

honest or dishonest, in any case he

is doing something, creating something new.

He's creating problems for the authorities.

He created those problems, and they came after him.

Unfortunately, he stepped back, that's how it is.

He took a step back; I hope he'll return.

As the saying goes, people have long memories, and

since he said ten times that there would be

persecution there—well, fine, good.

It would be good if he actually pursued it. Well,

if he's afraid, that'll be a pity. We'll see. So, I

found a question for me here so that Alexei could

take a break.

And listen, with your permission, here

there are about seven questions about the Khaganate and the Masons.

Since I am, as it were, a representative of the Khaganate,

I'll step in so that everything is clear to Alexei about who is behind

what, and then we'll finish with this, because

it's impossible not to mention it, especially since

I studied for a while at Yale University,

which is, in fact, known for the fact that

it has these secret societies there—

lots of films have been made about them, Skull and Bones and so on.

So yes, they really do exist,

these secret societies. It's very

funny: for example, there are buildings there

that nobody has seen inside; someone goes in there,

I don't know, maybe through some side entrance, they slip in,

and so on. So secret societies do exist—

that's a fact. As for the Khaganate, I don't know.

Well, you can believe me or not,

but I am a member of these secret

societies, and in fact it's impossible to join them

if you arrive as an adult to study there.

They have some kind of elaborate system there,

I don't know, maybe they drink blood or

sacrifice someone or something like that at an early age.

So I was already

too old to take part in the ritual

sacrifice. Here's another very important

question: were you involved in the construction of

the resort complex? Thirty-five percent of the budget

was being sent off.

There is, in fact, a well-known story connected with

this so-called 'Putin's palace'; I looked into the issue.

I studied it and spoke with Kolesnikov, who

was involved. It's a real fact, absolutely

a confirmed fact.

The documents are all there.

There was a scheme under which

medical equipment was purchased, and 30% of

the cost of that medical equipment went

into a literal common slush fund.

They set up an offshore company as that slush fund,

to which they transferred 30% of the value

of the medical equipment. It amounted to nearly

more than a billion dollars,

that was transferred. That's a fact, not some

made-up story. All the documents exist; I've seen them.

And they were collecting money there, telling each

other that it was supposedly for some kind of

good cause, but in the end that money

built

a grand palace that was built by

an Italian; all the materials came from Italy.

What's especially funny is that they didn't even pay customs duties.

I spoke with

Kolesnikov: a ship would arrive at the port of Novorossiysk

with marble from Italy, and it had to be

cleared through customs—you can't just

bring it in like that. Officials would come,

and that was the way all these people operated.

That's how it all worked. And actually,

this is one of those cases that

will absolutely, sooner or later, be

examined in some kind of our own

version of a RICO-style trial, because there

is all the evidence there. All the papers are there,

and there is a real, living

witness who is now living abroad.

He exists, and he's ready to pursue this.

It's simply an illustration of how

the organized criminal group led by

citizen Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

organized this very

criminal scheme for stealing money,

laundering that money, and investing it

into some kind of personal

real estate. It's a very interesting case. I

think that sooner or later someone very

serious will be punished for it. And by the way,

as a follow-up: do you think our

Constitution is so bad that it can be

within the existing constitutional

order? The Constitution is just words

written on paper. It's not that the Constitution is bad,

it's just that unfortunately we are not organized enough

to put all these people

in their place. They don't operate by the Constitution,

they ignore the laws completely.

They just act by brute fact, that is,

like, 'I'll take everything,' said greed; 'everything, everything,

I'll buy,' said evil; 'I'll take it all,' said force.

They simply came and, as a matter of fact, took everything from everyone.

In reality, they don't even have such a

large corporation—there are literally about

30 people who run everything. They

usurped and seized power. But there aren't

that many of them, and they don't rely on any Constitution.

They rely simply on their own

brazen audacity, or I don't know, boldness,

and this kind of smash-and-grab approach.

They rely on anything at all; they rely on the fact that we

sit here and nod along. But there are fewer and fewer people nodding,

and more and more who are ready to object.

A couple of related questions to move on to next.

Two related questions. How many followers altogether

do these kinds of publications bring in, and why?

Why are the Nashi activists (pro-Kremlin youth movement) so

stupid? That’s another thing I just can’t explain.

Because really, Nashi and all the rest of them—

they have, of course, greatly

added to my popularity. I mean,

I would probably be much less well known

on the internet, and I’d have fewer

followers, if they didn’t keep

doing things like

making these pointless,

crazy, ridiculous

accusations, caricatures, and so on.

So even people who may

not like me very much, or don’t like

some of my ideas and so on,

say, “Damn, you people are so

disgusting to us that we might even

be ready to support Navalny—we’re against

you.” And yes, they really do.

There are two options here: either believe in some conspiracy

that exists within their own ranks

against themselves, or proceed from the assumption

that they’re idiots. I’m more inclined to think

they’re idiots.

So, the question about Nashi was asked on

a little slip of paper like this. I ask you to

note

pay attention: we’ll have some of these after

the event. So, while Alexei is taking a break: what is

the wording of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike it down?

So, we still don’t know what

the exact wording of the Supreme Court’s decision is,

because the reasoning section has not yet

been prepared, hasn’t arrived yet, and certainly hasn’t yet

reached Yekaterinburg. So we can

only guess, based on the fact that

it was clear that the foundation would be

the logic of the Central Election Commission,

that is, it was no accident that at the appellate hearing

a representative of the Central

Election Commission showed up—he wasn’t too lazy

to come, even though he had no right to,

because he had not been present at the court of first instance.

So.

And

well, anyone who knows the case understands they have to squeeze through

between two, so to speak,

walls: on the one hand, they need to

remove me, but on the other hand they can’t, in doing so,

accuse all those people who came to court of being false witnesses

and so on, and so on.

Because then they would have to open

criminal cases against them under Article 307

for knowingly false testimony, and that

would not look very good. Now, the key point is this:

I’ll post it on my blog soon, by the way—we made a full

full

transcript of the proceedings. The key moment

that the representative of the Central

Election Commission emphasized was this: yes, you brought in some

number of people, but not

all 66—slightly fewer, perhaps. So in

these specific points, the experts

were mistaken, but on the rest they were right.

That’s an interesting logic, right?

Out of 66, in fact, we more or less established

through witness testimony that

the experts were wrong 49 times, but

for the remaining 17 times there is no reason not to

trust them. I think it is precisely this logic that

will ultimately form the basis of the

Supreme Court’s decision. That’s a guess—we haven’t yet

seen it—but it allows them to do everything

very neatly, to slip through, so to speak.

That is, on the one hand, remove me, and on the

other hand, not offend the people—and offending people

is something they’re already afraid of. Now, two more

related questions: one for Alexei, one

for me. Have you read the book Cloud

Democracy, written by your friends, one

of whom is standing on this stage? And a question for me

that came in by text message: will you

be talking about the volunteer

movement and about democracy? Well, of course.

I’ve read it. I posted that book on my

blog.

I have tried, and will keep trying,

to spread these ideas as widely as possible. I

absolutely believe that society is now

at a stage of development where

issues can already be decided by a fairly

broad circle of voters. That is,

everyone here, every person in this room, has in their pocket

a mobile phone; everyone has

a computer, and so a significant

number of issues that 100 years ago

were resolved through

representative democracy can now

simply be decided directly by popular

vote. Not every issue,

of course—you can’t decide questions like how much

tax to pay that way, because everyone will say

as little as possible—but a large number of issues

can be decided that way. I more or less

agree with that.

And by December 4, we are preparing to launch a series

of major votes and elections on various

issues. So get involved,

join us. And one more thing—I wrote about this

recently on my blog, but I’ll repeat it because

it’s important: we have a public organization registered with

the Ministry of Justice called

the Volunteer Movement, and its

registered charter sets out the same

logic that is implemented in the electronic

democracy system: people themselves

pool money to implement projects

they propose project ideas and discuss them

today we are fully ready to

organizationally, this is a volunteer

movement based on a technological

platform of electronic democracy; there will

be more publications about this, please

follow closely and

join. Not a question, but a suggestion: take

me on as an intern in my second

year. If you study well, then we will, of course,

of course

only we won’t be able to provide you with

housing, and in general we get a lot of these

kinds of proposals, quite a lot of them come in

but our work is very

specific

it’s the classic problem of a small

organization: the organization is small

there are many projects, and administering them is

difficult. Everything is fairly expensive, so

unfortunately, I’ll say right away that I

don’t have the capacity to, well, run around there

with students and so on. I love them all

very much. But if a person is inexperienced and doesn’t

know how and can’t work, we simply

don’t have the capacity to deal with that, because

that simply means I’ll spend

one fewer day in court, write fewer complaints

to the prosecutor’s office and so on. We need

people who are ready with a high degree of

self-sufficiency. From here, from Yekaterinburg, there’s no need to go

to

to Moscow. What is your attitude toward

the 2012 conference in which you

participated? I have a positive attitude toward all

new initiatives. I don’t know whether Milov

will create some new party. Yes, he

expressed such an

idea. My opinion hasn’t changed: I believe that

taking part in organizing a party according to

their system and spending

time and money on it is fairly pointless. What is a

party? They suggest building for yourself a

little wheel: jump into that wheel and run

like a squirrel, and it will

keep spinning. I do not claim that my

way of opposition struggle

is the most effective. Let a hundred

flowers bloom. Yes, Vladimir Milov created a party

and spent some time on it; none of that

was wasted. Different things need to be done

but I don’t think that trying to create

systemic parties is, right now, the most

effective approach. So I wish Milov and his colleagues

well. What is modern Russian

liberalism for you?

I immediately think of The Twelve Chairs and Ippolit Vorobyaninov’s line about the

“tragedy of Russian liberalism.” May I not

answer that question? Then another

good question: leave the country or

not? Emigration is capitulation, that is,

to leave means to surrender. It means

that everything here—nothing

will work out, everything will collapse, and then

the crooks and thieves will keep running wild.

I can’t do that. I lived abroad for half a year while

I was studying, and I can’t live there. I mean, it irritates me that

Americans there

are constantly smiling and asking, “How are you

this week?” All of that—I just can’t

handle it. I’m very uncomfortable. I can’t

live without the Russian language; I suffer. So, well,

I really have no option at all. Not

because things there are somehow terribly

bad—people get used to everything

and the quality of life there is much better. But I

want to be here. Generally speaking, I quite

like everything in Moscow except the terrible

traffic jams. So I believe that, I don’t know,

out of 140 million, sooner or later 100,000 will come out

Okay, so two questions for me and then

we’ll move on to questions from the audience so I can take a break. What will you

do about Forkons? He constantly

insults me beyond the bounds of the law. He

insults me beyond the bounds of the law. I don’t care

that means. And the second question, from a

note: will you put forward your candidacy in

the elections?

[applause]

Then here’s the proposal: let’s take a couple of

questions from the floor, and then, so that no one feels

slighted, I’ll shuffle these written questions

and Alexei will draw them. Otherwise I’ll again

be accused of

feeding him questions. Pass the microphone

Listen, let me repeat

the questions. Please line up

Suppose your campaigning worked one hundred

percent and United Russia suffered

a crushing defeat on December 14.

The majority in the Duma would then belong to the Communist Party and the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), or to

A Just Russia. We won—but what would that give us? Why are Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky

better than Putin and Medvedev? Everyone heard

the question.

We won tactically, we won

because these people are forced

to negotiate with Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov, and that in itself is already

a victory. You understand? The Duma in the 2000s

when Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces were there

was not very good, but there

was variety; different things happened. That is,

it is impossible to imagine that in

today’s politics the kinds of things

that happened then could happen now. The task is

to finish off this government until we

achieve free elections

and squeeze its real support ratings. On what

is Putin’s power based? It is based

not on this and that, but on a real

support rating. He does have a real rating, and on

that real rating he built his

the main instrument of its power

that instrument is essentially United Russia

using this instrument, they wage...

this is the most effective instrument

This instrument must be destroyed, and thereby

make life easier for ourselves. That does not mean that

tomorrow, as you put it, the Communist Party and the LDPR...

will build us a bright future. It

means that we will still have a lot of

work ahead of us. But at least

there will be an opportunity to do it. So, uh, yes.

please

Right now, before the elections, a great many

different demonstrations are being held, and at the same time

at the same time

even lawful demonstrations are usually

broken up. Here are some examples, for instance

the demonstration last Saturday, for example, uh

there is also another one — that is, I know that

on December 3, several parties, for example

the Communist Party and the LDPR are planning to gather at 1905 Square

to hold a joint demonstration. According to

my sources, there will be deployed there

no fewer than ten police units. What do you think

about that — police, excuse me. How do you

feel about it, and what should be done to

fight it? Well, do you mean how I feel about the fact that

the police have been deployed, or how I feel about the fact that

the rally

has been organized? And the only way to fight this

is with one thing: more people at the rally. Well,

it is impossible to disperse it if

50,000 people have gathered — in Yekaterinburg’s conditions

even 5,000 people would be impossible; they...

they can disperse anyone. Moscow’s

police say quite openly

that if there are 500 of you, we’ll disperse you;

if there are 10,000 of you, we’ll just stand there;

if there are 100,000 of you, we’ll follow you, and that’s it.

There is no other way — only mass participation. These

people understand nothing else, and they

are very, very afraid of it. Everything there

will collapse instantly when not

100 people gather, but thousands. So that means we

must do everything so that people

demand their rights, including by going out

into the streets

So how do you feel about Strategy-31?

Eduard

Limonov? I view it positively. I think

it is the right strategy. For a number of reasons, it

is stalling right now because

the authorities are cunning enough not to

simply disperse them, but rather to

[laughter]

split them apart

without a microphone

Yes, I think highly of Strategy-31. The idea

the concept was absolutely brilliant in terms of

the fact that everyone knows when and where

to go. There is no need to spend time, effort,

or energy informing people — everyone knows

that on the 31st, at a certain time,

you come to a certain place. But as I already

said, these crooks are not just crooks — they are

quite cunning crooks, and

smart enough, so they split the organizing committee

and turned it into Alexei in one place

and Limonov in another. Right now it is not

working, unfortunately. But as an idea, it

was absolutely correct, and Strategy-31 is a

good thing

One more Ural-related question: do you know

about Anton Bakov’s project, the Russian

Empire? I know Anton himself; as for the

Empire, not really. He did call me once,

to be honest, it was

interesting. I mean, Bakov is a very

interesting person, and I think he

may well come up with something quite interesting

So, another question from the audience

please. Well, to begin with, allow me

to introduce myself: Vladislav Zatrapil. As you understand,

that is a pseudonym; I cannot give my real name

I am the editor-in-chief of an unregistered

online publication

Monarchist

Truth. Do you think you will remain

in the pack after...

[music]

[applause]

I cannot name it for the simple reason that I am afraid

they will seize on it, because they will start smearing

its pages, so to speak. Let me put the question bluntly: if we

that is, if the monarchist movement supports

you, will you support

the monarchist movement if it supports you?

So, are you crowning me here with your

— you know, putting some kind of

thing with gold sparkles on me

and off I go? No, this is all-Russian, for now

for now

Let us put it this way, the question is this: if we

join the strategy of voting against

everyone, as a united group of 4,500 people,

would that be a weighty argument in organizational terms

for you to provide us with some

I — as for those conditions, I offer you anything

you want. But the important point is that

even though you are a monarchist movement, you

should of course support this strategy

because in fact there is already a monarch, but this

monarch is a very bad one. So let us

make use of the monarchist movement as well. I

just remembered a joke

Look, our time has naturally

become limited now by the absence of a

microphone, and we have four minutes. I have two

organizational

announcements. The first organizational

announcement is that our

staunch supporters downstairs

have identified a group of our...

numbering... and a huge request not to

not

trample them. Please leave carefully, do not

go ahead with provocations and so on, there you go

the second announcement is that

someone lost a hat; that's more important

news for the world—well, if

this—sorry, if that was, if that was

a note with a question

then

[music]

so, let's be honest: the last three

questions, because our time has really

run out, basically, and up to now all of these

questions that came from the audience, they

were repeating what was already on the

notes; that is, it's kind of—once again, are there

any questions from the audience that aren't on the

notes? All right, you in the back are waving your hand

go ahead with the question. Well, more about

the professional sphere in the Sverdlovsk region

and as is well known, the Chairman of the Government

but there is a very

interesting organization here called

the Development of Education. That is, it's the

structure through which practically

most of the funding for

the development of education in the region passes, and

this institution is headed by Ms. Gre

that is, the wife of the Chairman of the Government

and in this connection the question arises

whether this can somehow be addressed

in connection with the federal law on

civil service, since this constitutes a

conflict of interest. But there's another nuance

when this body was transferred from the jurisdiction of the

Ministry

of Education to the government, it changed its

status, and previously Ms. Grena was

the director, and now she has become the rector. So

is there anything that can be done? Well, I

can answer for Alexei here, since I just

know this situation well, and not even

because my wife's last name is Redina

but simply because

so to speak—well, they just happen to be namesakes, yes, and

because people wrote to me many times about

the conflict involving this body and about this whole situation

it's pointless. This morning we

were at the office; people came to see Alexei

and said, here you go, a 70-page file where

it is clearly proven that I

should have been fined for crossing the street

in the wrong place 100 rubles

but was fined 200, so please stop this

lawlessness

it's still impossible to treat all this

this situation—I can explain it to Alexei in detail

because I know these kinds of

situations very well; there are hundreds, thousands of them, and while they may

seem very huge to those who are

involved in them

the truth is, my friends, the problem

with Gridino I cannot solve for you from Moscow

no one but you will solve it here, and

today some guys came to see me who want to

organize a RosPil (anti-corruption project) branch here in

Yekaterinburg—some local branch. Excellent

we organize it ourselves, we fight everything ourselves

the rescue of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves

if someone thinks there is

some magical guy in Moscow who

can do something that no one else

can do—that's not true. Neither my

qualifications nor anything else are actually

somehow

significantly better, or even better at all, than

your local lawyers'. We unite ourselves

we poke into everything ourselves with a sharp stick at

the level of our own region

any other hands? Yes, the person in

yellow, simply because you look very

frozen. Here's a question: Alexei, do you follow

the development of the economic situation in

the world? I mean, regularly

the news says, among other things, that

for example there

Greece will go bankrupt; it's part of the global

government. It

will organize—Spain will go bankrupt too

and as for us, everything used to be

fine, and they told us: look, we have no

crisis at all. And now, roughly speaking, we're again facing

the prospect that

in general—well, I think we've been through this

once before, when Putin, if you remember, said

there's a crisis everywhere, but here we have some kind of

quiet lagoon and so on. And then a month later

it hit so hard that it really hurt

naturally, we are part of the global economy, and

we depend on it more than almost any

other country. If production falls in

China, they need our oil and metals there

30% less, and that's it—everything will be a disaster

for everything. So, well, I am not inclined toward

overly apocalyptic scenarios, I don't

tend to build them, because nothing like that

is really going to collapse outright, even if Greece

or Spain declares default, which I

doubt. I don't think that, uh, something

so terrible for Russia

will happen. What we have is this terrible

situation already happening; it has simply turned into

an ongoing routine, and even without

Spain and without Greece, things will be

quite bad for us

in the near future, if nothing

changes. Here's a question from

the media, apparently. The question is this, so, about

your case involving RFS and what you wrote

on social media about how they aren't sending you

a summons—what happens next there, generally speaking?

What's the progress? The progress is this: we won

two court cases. Well, that is, there are a bunch of things there

As for the procedural aspects, this case

was opened by the Main Investigative

Directorate of the Investigative Committee. That

is, the highest-ranking body that can

initiate criminal cases opened a case under the article

for the first time ever in history, because, well,

normally such cases are opened by the police

at a low level, but they opened it and sent it

straight to Kirov. Right now we have this kind of

procedural mess going on: we say that

it should be heard in Moscow, and they

say in Kirov. We’ve already won twice there,

in the court of first instance and in

cassation. So really, everyone

basically doesn’t care. In Kirov, a special investigative

team has been created,

two police colonels, both

investigators for especially important cases. When

I came to see them once, they said,

“Damn, we’ve got a murder here, and instead they’ve

dumped you on us.” But just in case, they

set up an investigative team. Nothing

is happening, and nobody can close the case

because it’s apparently scary — after all, it was

opened in Moscow. If they opened it, then there must have been a reason,

right? But there’s nothing there to

investigate further, there are no materials, so everyone

is just sitting and waiting. So, young man

in red — yes, that gentleman stood up, well, his

question is well known, he asks it every

time at meetings.

Question.

No one else? Let him ask his question. So,

why did you have one of our Yabloko people thrown in jail on purpose

right before the elections? I’m saying, this question

comes up every time. Please, why don’t you

express any

support? I

have repeatedly, repeatedly written publicly

and spoken publicly about the fact that I believe Petlin

is being held in pre-trial detention wrongly, but at the same time, so to speak,

I’m not going to grovel or curry favor over it — I’ve

spoken publicly on this issue many times.

Pre-trial detention is wrong, but at the same time

his actions were absolutely unacceptable.

They’re building there on anthrax-contaminated land,

please, and they were calling on

people in the style of, “Let’s all say together,”

“Down with the party of crooks.” Now, you say that

you believe in people, that is, you believe in us.

We’ll understand you. How from this

collective rallying cry — what was the point of it? Excellent

question. Actually, maybe I should

answer it this way: at first I was calling on you,

let’s do something together, all of us united.

Why am I doing this at all? Because you already

understand all of this anyway. What’s the point of me standing here

and just shaking the air? It’s an absolutely fair question. I’m

exactly the same as you. I don’t

have any special new information. I

won’t tell you anything that you don’t already know

without me, and I think your will for

change

may very well be no less than mine,

maybe even greater. But I do what I can do,

what I must do. So if there is

an opportunity to come here and somehow, I don’t know,

put some pressure on your minds — well,

even if it seems pointless, I do it. I believe

that you are the same as I am, and I am the same as

you. But together we’ll do it. If I can inspire you

even by a milligram, then

it wasn’t in vain. And if I couldn’t, then I couldn’t.

But I was obliged to do it. And I

will leave here partly with a sense of

duty fulfilled. And you, I hope, with a

sense of duty,

a sense of duty that in your struggle

for

the city you will not give up your position and will give this

our common enemy a worthy response.

[applause]

A brief question, after the question about

rallies: do you know about what

happened in Belarus? Do you think that in the

worst case, could this threaten

us as well?

Do you think

so? I think the so-called Belarusian scenario

is the priority scenario

that our party of crooks is now considering.

They see that everything is falling apart and

they have no other way to maintain control

except to crack down on everyone and

throw people in jail. You know, there was a situation there when

the head of a polling company

published approval ratings, and Lukashenko’s rating

according to his data had dropped sharply, and that same

evening

he was arrested. So their only

method of silencing people is exactly this kind of thing.

And I think they are considering this

as their priority option. But whether we allow

them to do that depends on us after all.

Lukashenko tightened the screws on everyone when he had

there

75%. I have a feeling that we

are already ready to tell these guys

no — that option is impossible. And the

booing at Olimpiyskiy (a major Moscow arena) and Putin’s fear of appearing,

and the deputies in the Duma not standing up, and

15 or 20% for United Russia in the city of Yekaterinburg

will not allow them to carry out a

Belarusian scenario. I represent the Chechen diaspora

in the Sverdlovsk Region. If you have time,

I’d like to speak with you. Let’s

do it after the event. We need your support

need

We need the support of absolutely everyone,

of all people. If the Chechen diaspora that

lives here consists of decent

I am absolutely certain that reasonable people

their attitude toward this government is no different

from that of Russians, Tatars, I don't know,

or people from Venus. We are all more or less

the same, and we all live in this world, all of us

understand what is good and what is

bad, and when we see that in the Magnitsky case

there is all the evidence and

photographs showing that the man, on the day of his death,

was tortured—photos of his hands torn

by handcuffs, there is testimony from the detention facility

staff that they

used batons, and then Medvedev speaks to us, and

the head of the Investigative Committee

says that no special means

were used—Russians and Chechens alike

feel the same way about this. I am sure that

everyone will say exactly the same thing to these

people, everything that needs to be said. Thank you.

[applause]