Alexei Navalny: “Razvozzhayev was abducted and thrown into a basement — so what, are we now supposed to sit around discussing whether we’re nationalists, liberals, or leftists?”

— As a candidate, are you satisfied with the results of the CC elections — I mean, with your victory? — I’m grateful to the people who voted for me. That matters to me. Many said first place was guaranteed for me, that these were Navalny’s elections, but I took them very seriously. The result was by no means obvious to me. — Oh, come on. Surely you expected to win? — I was aiming for one of the top spots, and I got it. But in various polls held on different platforms since December, people like Bykov or Parfyonov were periodically ahead of me. I think every candidate had a responsibility to run a campaign — and I did, without missing a single event. And by the way, when I voted myself, as a voter it mattered to me how actively a given candidate campaigned, and whether they campaigned at all. Of course, there are different ways to do that. One person’s single post can carry more weight than another person’s ten debate appearances. — Many said these elections would legitimize you as the leader of the protest movement. And that’s basically what happened. — Strange thing to say. Logically, it’s a much more comfortable situation when journalists write about me as the “informal leader of the protest,” while I bear no responsibility at all. Circumstances have simply evolved in such a way that “Navalny is the leader of the protest” has become a newspaper cliché. Convenient: you don’t have to do anything, just keep threatening Putin in interviews. From that point of view, no one needed legitimization. My work and the work of my colleagues is legitimized through concrete projects — RosPil and RosYama. I definitely don’t need any titles, and I’m not going to seek the post of CC chairman or pin cardboard medals on my chest. All this talk about my legitimization is complete nonsense. In reality, what needed legitimizing was the whole group of people claiming a role in decision-making. Because frankly, the last rally organizing committee I saw looked like the painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey (a famous Russian title for Repin’s painting). Fifty people sitting there, most of whom I didn’t even recognize by sight, everyone shouting... It couldn’t go on like that. It’s very important that we’ve now adopted a statement on the Razvozzhayev case, and it bears the signatures of people each of whom can say: “I represent someone,” “This many people voted for me.” I’m a busy person, I have a lot to do, and I’m not going to sit in groups and organizing committees whose legitimacy everyone questions. Obviously, what comes next will be a very difficult process, and conflicts are inevitable, but I know for sure that the people at the table are people who were elected — and that’s the main thing. “The last rally organizing committee I saw looked like the painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey. Fifty people sitting there, most of whom I didn’t even recognize by sight, everyone shouting...” — To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about the list of those elected. People always say that here, voters choose whoever they see on TV. And it turns out the CC elections confirm that rule. In the end, people simply voted for familiar faces who appear on a kind of alternative TV — Facebook, LiveJournal, and the TV Rain channel. Many of these people didn’t bother to publish a program, and some didn’t even take part in the debates. Do you think that’s normal? — That’s a rather twisted way of looking at it. Obviously, there is a media space, there is “big television,” “small television.” There is the internet, which carries news about certain people. But that news gets carried because there is an event, a news hook — those people create that hook, they do things. It amuses me when I’m classified as a so-called media candidate. Let’s go down the list. Is Yashin a media figure? As for Sobchak, I agree — she has another line of work, and by virtue of her profession she ends up on magazine covers. But is Gelfand really a media figure? — I had somewhat different people in mind. Bykov, for example. — Bykov also has some additional activity. But excuse me, he writes excellent poetry, he writes articles for Novaya Gazeta, and in doing so he is in fact engaged in major political activity. Citizen Poet was one of the most effective political projects of recent years, and it had a huge impact on the overall situation. Yes, Bykov is a media figure — so what are we supposed to do about that? He absolutely earned his place regardless of that media visibility. Of course, the people on this list are discussed on Facebook, but they’re discussed because of what they do. — Or simply because they’re in public-facing professions. — For example? In fact, they’re a minority. — My friend and colleague Filipp Dzyadko. — Filipp Dzyadko is a wonderful person. He has a media profession, but... I understand, of course, that by saying this I may provoke outrage among some journalists, but the activity of Filipp’s that I observed over the past year was entirely political. However much you keep telling each other that you’re journalists and not involved in politics, in reality you’re all involved in politics. Which is a good thing. That’s what people elected Filipp for. If people do something and get likes and retweets for it, they’re being elected precisely for what they do. “No matter how often you tell each other that you’re journalists and not involved in politics, in reality you’re all involved in politics.” — But that’s not quite my point. You yourself said you looked at how a person ran their campaign. Well, many of these media personalities either didn’t campaign at all or did it terribly. Almost none of them published a program. Almost none of them bothered to write a 4,000-character essay — including you, by the way. Some didn’t even take part in the debates — Rustem Adagamov, for example. So it turns out the campaign itself had nothing to do with it, and people voted based on entirely different criteria. For a pretty face and a famous name. — An election campaign is about managing a set of resources. And resources come in different forms. Chirikova, for example, has neither a well-developed LiveJournal nor Facebook nor other social media, but she ran an election campaign in Khimki that worked here indirectly. Adagamov, on the other hand, has a colossal resource — LiveJournal. And there’s also the reputation of being a good, decent person, which is no less important a resource. He didn’t campaign in his LiveJournal for people to vote for him, but his reputation produced a result even without that. People win elections precisely because they know how to use their resources — and those resources will also work in our future political activity. And if a person is wonderful but ended up near the bottom of the list, that means they failed to use their opportunities effectively. A typical example is the “Progressive Bloc,” Pryanikhov and Smirnov. — Yes, they were my favorites. — They ran a very good campaign in substantive terms, wrote a program and so on, but they couldn’t make use of their resources. They focused on convincing 200 journalists on Twitter how good they were. And they succeeded. But all the other voters never even learned that Smirnov, Pryanikov and Co. existed. That’s why they didn’t get in. — Well, they didn’t have the kind of resource Adagamov had to begin with. — Let’s leave Adagamov alone already... — No, I don’t want to leave him alone, I think it matters. You said he’s a good, decent person. But excuse me, that’s not a political position. I see Adagamov on this list and I don’t understand — what does he actually stand for? The same goes, say, for Lazareva and Shats. Good people, no argument. But I don’t understand their position. — I’ve never heard that Adagamov got his LiveJournal through a loans-for-shares auction. Anyone can run a LiveJournal and become popular. Here’s a practical example. While we were adopting the statement and the action plan, there was complete chaos. Shats and Lazareva were among the initiators of that statement; they spent the whole previous night discussing it. Then they got to work organizing and thinking through the format of Saturday’s action. And naturally, their media resources and public profile will be used to draw people’s attention to the event. In other words, the CC has a concrete task: to hold a good action on the 27th. That requires a set of resources. Someone has to write about it on LiveJournal so that 100,000 people hear about it — Adagamov, for example, can do that; he reaches an audience I definitely do not. If someone sees Shats standing with a placard at a picket, they may join the pickets out of solidarity. I see concrete action from these “media” people, practical work, and in that sense I don’t understand the snide comments about their position. — So what matters is not so much ideology as the practice of concrete action? — Exactly. Let’s get specific. We have an action plan, and it shows very clearly why we need the CC at all. For example, I can compile a list of people involved in organizing torture, Lyuba Sobol can do it, we can do it together with Agora. But to draft an appeal to the relevant EU and U.S. bodies, you need Kasparov, Nemtsov, Kara-Murza. I, for example, don’t know how to do that: I don’t talk to ambassadors, I don’t have connections in the European Parliament. For fundraising, it makes sense to involve Vinokurov, Ashurkov, Olga Romanova. Besides, if Sobchak persuades several well-known people to publicly donate 1,000 rubles, that will obviously boost donations further. And if the wonderful Pryanikov tweets 127 times that we’re raising money, we won’t raise anything. But if Adagamov tweets it, we will. In organizing a mass information campaign, in informing citizens about the “May 6 case,” Bykov is unquestionably needed. I can write a hundred posts and print a mountain of leaflets, but Bykov can write one poem and a million people will watch it on YouTube. Lazareva, Shats, and Adagamov are a million times more effective than everyone else when it comes to running a mass information campaign. That is simply an undeniable fact. In general, I think that when 80,000 people vote, the aggregate result is very rational. People sensibly assess each candidate’s chances of bringing some resource to our struggle. That doesn’t mean a person with fewer resources should be excluded from it, but priorities still exist. “When 80,000 people vote, the aggregate result is very rational. People sensibly assess each candidate’s chances of bringing some resource to our struggle.” — Fine. But then how is what the CC is doing now different from what was done in similar — not literally similar, of course, but still — situations before? I don’t know, when Kashin was beaten, for example... — Excellent example. Tell me, please, what actions were taken in Kashin’s case? — There were pickets, there were publications... — There were pickets, then Agora helped Kashin get a lawyer, and that was it. — What do you mean, that was it? There was a rally too, I went to it. — Yes, that’s right. I was at Yale then, so I didn’t take part. We all should have done an order of magnitude more in Kashin’s case. The CC is needed to do the same things as before, only better. There’s no sacred knowledge here. If there were someone with that knowledge, they would already have defeated Putin. There’s nothing new in the methods of struggle; humanity has known them for hundreds of years. When a rally organizing committee looks like Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey, the rally itself doesn’t turn out very well either. Rallies need to be held because the authorities fear them — they fear nothing else except the physical presence of people in the street. But technologically these rallies look like something from 1989: there’s no script, no dramaturgy. And if people are already going there as if it were a job, then let’s at least make it look decent. So they’re not standing there gritting their teeth and thinking, all right, I’ll stand here another hour because I have to, but I really hate looking at the stage. At the very least, that shouldn’t happen. And part of the task of the people you call media figures — Dzyadko, Lazareva, Shats, Parkhomenko — is to come up with the script for these events. I understand that not everyone may like the word “show,” but one way or another a rally needs a plot and development. — Do you really think these methods work? Over the last 10 months we’ve seen the protest movement rise and fade, but overall things are getting worse. — The methods undoubtedly work, and the preconditions for protest growth definitely exist. Read, for example, Dmitriev’s latest report from the CSR. We can see that people vote against United Russia, that hundreds of thousands hate it. In Moscow its rating is 23% and still falling. In Spain, 300,000 people take to the streets over the slightest pretext. In Moscow, a city of 15 million, our maximum was 150,000. That means we still haven’t managed to do everything right, to reach people, to explain things. Partly because the opposition, in the broad sense of the word, looks just as bad as the authorities. People are sick of it; everyone is fed up with it. You go to people and say: “Putin is an idiot.” — “Sure.” — “And the opposition?” — “They’re the same idiots and impostors.” — Didn’t you see the video that Pryanikov shot at Rot Front before the CC elections? The workers there say roughly the same thing. Like, I’d even go to a rally, but Ksenia Sobchak is there. — I didn’t see the video. I wonder how many people there said, “We’ll go to the rally because Pryanikov is there”? I’m tired of this amateur sociology. Some say they don’t go to rallies because Sobchak is there, others because nationalists are there, still others because there isn’t a slogan in favor of occupying Mongolia. There is only one objective way to answer such questions — vote. And that’s what we did. All these years we’ve had negative selection. Go to any congress of any opposition party — it’s a horror show! If the opposition is pathetic, people won’t support it. The CC is a step toward forming a real popular front. — But why would it be? It’s the same people who’ve been in the opposition all year. Everyone’s already seen them. — I’d never seen Gelfand before. — What do you mean? He spoke at the February 24 rally. — Fine, but he had never been part of any governing body. Bykov is a telling example in that sense too — I’d never seen him involved in organizational processes either, even though he was shaping the political agenda. You see, formalization is very important. We can go to a café at Red October and say: everyone sitting here is the opposition, they all went to rallies. But that’s not it. There has to be a body that bears responsibility, that tells everyone else what needs to be done. Here is our statement, here is our position, here is what needs to be done. Putin turns his head and says: who exactly is demanding things from me? Show me these people. Well, here they are — they were elected. The opposition must be formalized and personalized — and that personalization happened through the elections. That is our main victory, because no one ever believed that internal кадровые вопросы could be resolved this way. Everyone believed only in intrigue and backroom deals. Even when there were primaries in The Other Russia, they were completely scripted; everyone knew who would win. — But everyone knew here too! — What did you know? That Kasparov would come third? That Yashin would come fifth, Nemtsov sixteenth? I didn’t know that. — Well, I could assume they’d all get in one way or another. — And what about Kara-Murza — could you have assumed that? In any case, people from nowhere are not going to get elected. You’re a journalist, you follow politics closely — naturally you could predict these election results with 70% accuracy. That’s always how it works. — Can you comment on this whole MMM story? (Several tens of thousands of participants in the MMM scheme registered to vote in the CC elections; many of their votes were later annulled. — Ed.) I just didn’t understand what the problem was, why their votes were taken away. In free elections, Mavrodi could just as easily come out and say: “My dear followers, vote for so-and-so.” I understand this is more a question for Volkov, but still. — It really would be better to clarify that with Volkov. As I understand it, this is what happened. First Mavrodi said, basically, guys, let’s register and show how cool we are. Then it turned out that despite all his bluster, only 400 of them had registered. So he did something very simple. When you went to the MMM website, a banner appeared: “Have you registered on the Central Election Committee website?” And if you clicked “No,” your personal account was blocked and your balance was frozen until you registered. That’s called coerced voting. If, say, Krasilshchik at the Afisha editorial office says, let’s all vote for Gelfand — okay. But if Krasilshchik says you won’t get your salary until you register and vote for Gelfand — that’s not okay. Fortunately, the MMM people were so stupid they didn’t realize how easy they were to identify. Volkov simply made a bot, and as I understand it, the annulled votes were precisely those of the people who registered after this coercion began. “I know for certain that no one associates this government with any expectation of positive change anymore. Huge numbers of people hate it.” — You said that the fact we haven’t yet managed anything like Spain is your own shortcoming. Do you really think that? The problem isn’t the people? You know, the theory that the Russian people don’t want anything... — It’s banal, but we don’t have any other Russian people. I know for certain that no one associates this government with any expectation of positive change anymore. Huge numbers of people hate it. The polling shows that. Inspiring millions to take an active part in a peaceful anti-criminal revolution is our task — one we haven’t yet accomplished, but undoubtedly will. I firmly believe that only competitive procedures and positive internal selection will produce people who inspire trust. Incidentally, the responsibility the CC carries is already producing interesting results. Formally, the CC meeting wasn’t supposed to happen until Saturday. So why were Lazareva, Shats, and Vinokurov up all night creating a Facebook group? Because everyone was writing on Twitter about the CC, saying: how is it possible, we elected you and you’re doing nothing. And that was it — the rules were forgotten. Responsibility matters enormously. And if I decide to switch off my phone when a decision has to be made, everyone will know about it, and next time no one will vote for me. — It just seems to me that Russia’s global problem is total distrust of everyone by everyone. And that’s not just about politicians. — I agree. — So what do you do about that? — Overcome the distrust. The people elected now enjoy the trust of 86,000 people who took part in the vote. It may not sound like much, but it’s already a colossal step forward. The first step. — So you admit that it isn’t many people. — Compared with Russia’s population, no, it isn’t many. But how many real political activists do you think PARNAS or Yabloko have across the whole country? Two thousand. The 100,000 people registered on the Central Election Committee website is genuinely more than the entire political activist base of all existing parties combined, including United Russia. — But the people registering weren’t activists. — We demanded a high level of involvement. Take a photo of yourself with your passport, send a bank transfer. There are almost no people in parties willing to do even that much. I held meetings in Yabloko, I know that it’s impossible to get a quorum there, simply impossible. And that’s not Yabloko’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem. Those hundred thousand are people who want to actively influence what’s happening, who are willing to spend their time on it. There are many more who simply support the protest in general. The most active among them are often opinion leaders in their local communities. Those were the people we needed to rely on first and foremost. And after that, trust has to be earned through active work. If the Coordinating Council repeats the fate of The Other Russia, the National Assembly, Committee-2008... that will hit all of us and set the opposition movement back by years. — So the liberals’ notional “constitutional majority” in the CC doesn’t bother you? Does that reflect the real ideological spectrum of the protest? Are there really so few leftists? — Obviously, yes. At any rate, it fully corresponds to all the preliminary polling. There are few leftists. Few right-wingers too. In fact, the right is much more realistic in this sense — they all went through the quota, knowing they had their own audience to rely on. They have their own events, like the Russian March and so on. But the left doesn’t have its own events. How many people came to the last Anticapitalism march? Four and a half cripples. There was a lot of loud talk about the protest movement shifting left — it turned out nothing of the sort was true. A big mistake by people like Smirnov was not to run through the left quota, because what we really do need is sane representation on the left. They have major кадровые problems in general; they need new leaders. So maybe the protest is shifting left, but right now there are no people who genuinely represent that leftward-moving part of it. On the other hand, to say the protest is liberal... Well, am I liberal or not? “People with a European orientation may, for Russia, be a clearer ideological identity than ‘right’ and ‘left.’” — God knows with you. — Exactly. I’d say the protest is oriented more toward practical politics; it supports people who actually do things. And for various reasons it so happens that these people tend to hold conventionally liberal views. Though again — ask everyone on the CC about migration policy, and every second person will support introducing visas for Central Asia. I’d rather say these are people of a European orientation. For Russia, that may be a clearer ideological identity than “right” and “left.” — So you don’t see a problem in the fact that the hundreds of thousands you want to bring into the streets are supposedly allergic to the word “liberal” and to the name “Sobchak”? — What’s so wonderful about these elections? There were lots of hypotheses about who was allergic to which names and who wasn’t. The elections showed everything. Sobchak was booed at rallies, but she has come a long political way over the past year, and now there’s no particular allergy anymore. People said the same about Nemtsov, but he finished fairly high. It seems to me that people simply dislike overt ideological coloring. If someone declares, I’m a liberal, I’m a leftist, I’m a nationalist, they immediately put a lot in the minus column for themselves. That also relates to the question of programs. — Is that a healthy situation? — It’s unhealthy in a normal political system. In a political system where the main political question is whether election observers will be thrown out of polling stations by the commissions themselves or whether they’ll call in OMON riot police to do it — it’s a healthy situation. Look, Razvozzhayev was abducted and thrown into a basement — and now what, shall we discuss whether we’re nationalists, liberals, or leftists? That’s ridiculous. That question simply isn’t on the agenda. — Then let’s go back to methods of struggle and how effective they are. You have your “Good Machine of Truth,” and it’s been operating for several months now. Do you see any results? I mean, I see people reposting things, I occasionally see leaflets, but is there any actual payoff? — A lot of things are impossible to measure. We’re doing the “Krasnodar” project, sending messages on VKontakte. Objectively, you can observe that people are beginning to hate Tkachev more. Do they hate him more because we’re doing the “Krasnodar” project, or because Tkachev is a crook and friends with Tsapok and Tsepovyaz? You can’t verify that. We’re throwing wood into the boiler; we don’t know the efficiency of that wood, but the temperature of the boiler is rising. The Levada Center regularly shows figures for how many people consider United Russia the party of crooks and thieves. There we see positive dynamics. How much of that is our contribution, and how much is United Russia’s own doing, is impossible to verify. “When a person sees a leaflet, they feel that resistance exists. Someone in their building shares their views. There are supporters. It’s like in funny films such as V for Vendetta.” — The trend may be positive, but don’t you get the sense that most people already know about all these grim realities anyway? — True. Dmitriev himself told me: even in a village outside Voronezh they already know Putin is a thief. But what matters about the “Machine”? First, when a person sees that leaflet, they feel that resistance exists. Someone in their building shares their views. There are supporters. It’s like in funny films such as V for Vendetta. It’s a sign, and that matters a lot, even if it sounds naive. Broad masses of people need to see signs that resistance groups exist. Second — why did we include in our statement the point “Organizing a mass information campaign to inform citizens about the May 6 case”? Everyone in a village near Voronezh knows Putin is a thief. But I’m not sure they know this specific fact: people are being jailed for nothing in the May 6 case, while Tsepovyaz in the Kushchyovskaya case got a fine of 150,000 rubles. Judging by the authorities’ hysterical reaction to our leaflets, what we’re doing is right. Of course, it’s always a method of trial and error. But we know for certain that we need the Machine. I believe that agitation and propaganda are the key task right now, and that’s what we need to focus on first. — It just seems that you’re improving a propaganda machine while the authorities are improving a machine of terror. Before, people were detained overnight — now they’re jailed for months and years. Before, they just filed lawsuits — now they kidnap and torture people. Don’t you think you’re falling behind in terms of methods? — Well, if we wanted to catch up with them in methods, then at this stage we’d already have to move to individual terror. We are absolutely not calling for that, but it is, incidentally, already happening. The Primorsky Partisans, for example. Or the civil war going on in the Caucasus. In reality, that is no more than 20% Islamist jihad in essence; the other 80% is a civil war of an impoverished population against the governors who pay formal tribute to the Kremlin and use it for insane personal enrichment. But we cannot match the authorities in escalating the conflict. Because otherwise it will be like before: “You killed Kirov, and we’ll kill all of you.” The authorities’ illegal use of force is a reaction to the obvious decline in governability. Governability is based first and foremost on Putin’s popularity. And we see that he gets booed, that a stadium in St. Petersburg chants, “The governor is a boor.” For the authorities, that’s terrifying — they think that today people are booing, and tomorrow the Bryansk city administration will stop obeying orders. So they compensate for the loss of control by intensifying repression. They are implementing the Belarusian scenario — and only millions of people taking to the streets will stop them. — However you look at it, the elections to the CC were held among an audience already loyal to you. Have you thought about taking part in, so to speak, real political struggle? Running as a candidate in some region? Sure, they’ll put obstacles in your way and falsify the vote — but at least trying? — Here I’d refer you again to Dmitriev’s report. It says that among the possible scenarios for a peaceful revolution, the electoral one is the least likely. It is simply impossible to change power through elections at the local level. It’s ineffective in terms of cost versus result. For example, Ryzhkov invested a lot of money in those elections in Barnaul, fought hard and honorably, even Kudrin went there to campaign — and what came of it? One seat. You can make as many conscientious efforts as you like, and they’ll just rewrite the protocol. Or take the elections in Saratov. Everyone who advocates local elections invested in that, from Milov and Kasyanov to Yabloko. Everyone wrote: “We’ll make our last stand!” A lot of money was spent. Now they’ve all gone sharply silent: victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is always an orphan. One percent. And no one even remembers Saratov now. Why do that? I don’t see the point. Probably it makes sense to take part in certain mayoral elections — this gives you propaganda resources and creates a large zone of tension for the authorities, which fits our strategy. As in Khimki. At the same time, I’m not claiming that my strategy is the only correct one, but from my point of view, the strategy of running in local self-government elections is far from the most effective. — So what is effective? Yes, there were rallies, there will be rallies, but in the end — Pussy Riot are in prison, people in the May 6 case are in prison, and as for Razvozzhayev, you yourself understand perfectly well that they won’t release him. — They’re in prison because we have not demonstrated the level of mass participation and determination that would make the authorities afraid. They’re people too. Putin is sitting there — why should he release Razvozzhayev if ten people came out for a picket? For what reason? He has two million police officers alone. Then another million Interior Ministry troops, half a million FSB officers, and television on top of that. When a hundred thousand of us came out, they got a little scared. When a million come out, then they’ll release Razvozzhayev. — But for now, fewer people are coming out than before. — That means we have to try to get a million out. What are the alternatives? To say nothing will work, that the Russian people are bad — and emigrate. Or go into internal emigration. Meaning: I’ll sit here, read books, and not care what’s happening around me. But if, at your own personal strategic crossroads, you’ve decided that you’re staying in Russia and want to live here with basic human dignity, then just do what any decent person is supposed to do when they hear about theft or torture.