In the interview, Alexei Navalny comments on the criminal case opened against him, emphasizing that the risk of prosecution is inevitable for anyone engaged in genuine political and anti-corruption activity in Russia. In his view, however, such actions by the authorities only increase public support for his RosPil project. He argues that fighting corruption is impossible outside the sphere of public politics, criticizes the Popular Front as a weak political-technological attempt to rebrand United Russia, and rejects the idea of Dmitry Medvedev as an alternative to Vladimir Putin, calling them part of the same system. Navalny is also skeptical of official human rights institutions and believes that the authorities will either be forced to share power or face a crisis scenario caused by their own inefficiency and inability to control the system they created.
Text version
0:03
On the air is the program Face to Face at the Microphone.
0:05
Danila Galperovich
0:14
The guest on this edition of our program
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is the well-known blogger and creator of the website
0:19
RosPil, Alexei Navalny, and he is being interviewed by
0:23
him
0:30
Russian journalist Olga Romanova.
0:33
Alexei, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Welcome
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to the Radio Svoboda studio.
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Of course, we will be talking about the latest
0:39
developments, namely the confirmation
0:41
that a criminal case has been opened
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against Alexei Navalny. And also,
0:47
naturally, about his RosPil project.
0:49
[music]
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We will also discuss some real, perhaps practical, ways
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to fight corruption, the relationship
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with the current authorities, and so on. Please.
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Well, freedom is a very important
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thing.
1:04
And you know better than most that you can lose it
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quite soon, and with
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a high degree of probability. So tell me, RosPil,
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Transneft (Russia's state oil pipeline company), oil,
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protocols for minority shareholders—is that more important
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than freedom? Freedom is, of course, more important than anything, but
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freedom must be for everyone, so there is no point
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in engaging in any kind of
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activity if you are not demanding freedom
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for everyone.
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So I do not want to say that I am sitting here
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getting some masochistic
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pleasure from the fact that there is a threat
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that tomorrow I could be thrown into
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a pretrial detention center. But any person
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who engages in politics in our
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country, if he does so sincerely,
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understands that such a threat potentially
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exists. You simply have to be aware of it and
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work with that threat intelligently.
1:56
The question has come up historically:
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the number of people who, when faced with reasoning like
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what you have just expressed, can be counted
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on the fingers of one hand, and who choose
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action. What is the reason? Why is that?
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Why do so few people, let us say, understand that something
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has to change and that, yes, of course, they will have to
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pay for it? With that awareness—sensible
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people—why are there so few
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of them?
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In principle, I believe all historical
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allusions to what happened before are
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useful and important, and one should know them. But in
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practice they are inapplicable. We live here and
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now, in an information-driven
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post-industrial society, and so
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on. It is pointless to discuss, and I never
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analyze why there are so few of these people.
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One must try—first of all,
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to be one of them, and one must
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try to make sure that such people appear. I
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hope that, and probably this would be
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the most gratifying and important result
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of my work—well, an intermediate
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result, since I have not finished yet—that
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such people are appearing, and I can see that
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someone, looking at me—and people from the regions write
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to me—and they are conducting their own
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small investigations, achieving results,
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defending their rights in the town of
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Uryupinsk, where in fact this is
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often far more dangerous than doing
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what I do in Moscow, because no one
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writes about you, no one invites you onto
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Radio Svoboda. In Uryupinsk, the media do not
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write about you. If
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you are jailed tomorrow, not a single journalist
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will write about it. But such people
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are appearing. I can see that, well, some of my
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limited actions—I have fairly
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modest organizational resources—
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are already leading to the emergence of such people. Well,
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that is wonderful. That means this is what we need to
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do, and not reflect on whether it would be nice
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if there were not 15 of them, but 25 or
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125. Greg White, please. And the fact that a criminal case has been opened—
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can we say that this somehow
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either
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frightens off supporters, or—what
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are you hearing through your networks? Are people getting scared, or is it
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having the opposite effect on everyone?
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It has energized people. There are subjective things
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and objective ones. The objective fact
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is that, as far as
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the RosPil project is concerned, people have started donating
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more money to it. It seems to me
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that this is not because
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after this criminal case was opened
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the main motive for people became the fact that
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this simply infuriates and irritates them. They
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do not understand what they can do to
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help, so they simply send
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their 400 rubles (about $13 at the time) simply as a sign
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of protest. Mm-hmm.
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And even the fact that the FSB (Russia's security service) knows who
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is sending how much, where, and when—
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shortly before that, the FSB requested data
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about RosPil. I am sure that was
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illegal, and Yandex disclosed this fact. That
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also led to a surge in money
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transfers. In this way, people
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were showing: yes, to hell with the fact that
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you know our names—we are still going to
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do this. So I think that, as
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usual, all these stupid and clumsy
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actions by the authorities, which obviously
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demonstrate their corruption,
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incompetence, and stupidity, lead
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to our ranks growing—the real
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front, not the one they are trying to manufacture, but
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the real one. By the way, then your...
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the attitude toward the initiative launched by Putin
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the Popular Front, because of course this is
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the very same
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phrase, “Popular Front.” I remember
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popular fronts in the USSR and Russia, that is,
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popular fronts were movements that
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at one time helped the Baltic states
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gain
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independence. And in Moscow there was even a
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Moscow Popular Front. We even remember
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someone like Sergei Stankevich
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who—well, yes. But I’m speaking here, as it were,
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about more recent history: even in Russia, in
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my lifetime, these fronts have been created
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countless times, that is, fronts of national
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salvation, all sorts of regional fronts
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and so on. So what is your attitude? Why is that?
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This is quite obviously a political technology stunt
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and, to my surprise, a political technology stunt
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of rather low quality. Over the last
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several years, after all, the administration
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of the president had been doing things somewhat
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well, a little more
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sophisticatedly. It is perfectly obvious that the brand
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of United Russia no longer works. Any
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single-mandate candidate running
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somewhere in the regions hides his affiliation
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with United Russia, because when he
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says, “I’m from United Russia,” in most
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cases it costs him votes. That
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has become the main reason
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for this—well, they call it rebranding. I’m not
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sure it will work, because
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first, they will still run under the
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name of United Russia; the ballots will say
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United Russia. Second, why did I say
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it was low-quality political technology? If we
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look at all those people who declared
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they were joining the Front, we see all the same
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people, just in profile. Yes, Shokhin is a member of the Gen-
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eral Council. Who else did they show us? Klintsevich,
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he is a member
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of the party. Shmakov from the trade unions—well,
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he is effectively a member of United Russia. They
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signed an agreement with it many years
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ago. The only person I noticed there
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who is not a member of United Russia and not
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affiliated with it is Losakov from the
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motorists’ movement, who somehow
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ended up there. Well, whether he stays there
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forever and ruins his reputation, or maybe
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he leaves—but at any rate, we do not see anyone new
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there. It is perfectly obvious that they
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will say tomorrow that a million
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public associations have joined us, but everyone will
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know that these public associations are
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the usual groups—
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Chernobyl veterans, disabled people, Afghan war veterans,
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those formal organizations that exist alongside the authorities
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and in practice have nothing to do
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with Afghan veterans or with
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Chernobyl survivors or with disabled people. Olga
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Romanova, please. I want to talk about
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exactly that—about the authorities. Is Navalny
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a Kremlin project? Well, I don’t want to discuss what
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trolls write. About something
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else: there once was a man named Seredenko
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who for many years headed the Moscow
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Arbitration Court, the Moscow Arbitration
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Court. A few months ago he showed up
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on Alexei Navalny’s blog when he was having
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coffee with Larisa Kalanda, who is the head
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of a department
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at Rosneft, the wife of Kalanda, who at one time was responsible for
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judicial appointments. Well,
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it was an interesting story. And so
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during Navalny’s time
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in the Moscow Arbitration Court, he mostly
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kept losing, losing his cases
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against Rosneft and Transneft; somehow
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things were not going well. And then in April Anton
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Ivanov, the head of the Supreme Arbitration Court,
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removes this comrade and sends him
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to work in the city of Bryansk, and in his place
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appoints some fellow we do not yet know
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there. And suddenly I
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see
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the names from the Moscow
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court, as well as Kalanda, and suddenly I see that
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immediately after that, at that very moment,
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Rosneft—bang, Transneft—and Navalny
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suddenly starts winning in the Moscow
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Arbitration Court. At that point I think: no, I don’t believe
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of course that Navalny is a Kremlin project,
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but either I congratulate everyone on the triumph of
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justice, or this is a Kremlin
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project. Well, first of all, I want to say that
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it was not Anton Ivanov who appointed and removed everyone, but
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me personally. And before that it was all
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thought up by Churchill in 1917.
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And it should also be said that all of this happened
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because someone was pulling the strings. Yes, pulling the strings.
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So I was the puppet master behind it all; everything happened
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not by accident. All these
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um, court proceedings in arbitration over
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the disclosure of information—we pursued them for 3 years, 3
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years of continuous losses, but we were weaving
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our web. That is, every lost
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case gave us some formal
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well, certain things, decisions from which it was already
10:03
impossible to retreat, and we did everything
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In the end, we built the legal strategy
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in such a way that we brought all
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the cases to a point after which, if
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we had lost, then all of it would have gone down the drain
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and all of President
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Medvedev’s
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initiatives to attract investors and so on would have collapsed
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Because if the shareholder had lost
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Navalny, Rosneft, Transneft, and so
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on. This means that
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any minority shareholder would not
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receive any information at all,
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that is absolutely guaranteed by law. Which means
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well, no investors could be brought here,
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by any means whatsoever.
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It seems that the Human Rights Council
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under the President of Russia will discuss
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your situation in a broad sense, like
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how a criminal case is being opened against you, how
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the names of your donors
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Ravat Vokhma
10:59
to what extent a structure like the council
11:02
for human rights under the
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president can perhaps do anything as
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I don't know, an ally, a person there,
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or rather a community, a body that is on the same
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field. And in general, what do you think, how does
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Dmitry
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Medvedev view your activities? I think Dmitry Medvedev
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views my activities negatively
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because I view
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Dmitry Medvedev's activities negatively. I am the one who
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promotes the theory of the bad and the good
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cop. Dmitry Medvedev is the same kind of
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bad and corrupt cop
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that Vladimir Putin is. This is
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completely one
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and the same power; they are doing the same thing, the same
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crooks, thieves, and from time to time
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murderers work for them. So here we should not
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in any way fall into this
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trap and think
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that Medvedev is the good one and Putin is the bad one.
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Let's support the good Medvedev
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against the bad one.
12:00
A large part of our liberal
12:02
opposition plays this game with great pleasure,
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though not all of it, only part.
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But it is a game, and it is absolute self-deception.
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As for
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the Human Rights Council, on the one hand I am
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grateful to the people there
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for paying attention to this. On the
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other hand, the president's Human Rights Council is, of course, an absolutely fake
12:21
structure.
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It is needed, and it should not
12:25
exist in a normal situation.
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Because either cases are resolved in accordance
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with the law and written rules—the criminal
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procedure, the Criminal Code, and so on—
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or they are not resolved at all. With all due
12:40
respect to the people, to some of the people
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who sit on this council, all their
12:45
wonderful statements that they will
12:47
take up the Magnitsky case (Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who died in custody), that they will
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take up the Khodorkovsky case (Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic), I don't know, they have announced many
12:50
different cases that they said they would
12:52
take up, but so far it has led nowhere. And
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this too is
12:55
self-deception: they are supposedly doing something
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and supposedly resolving
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police mistakes, but nothing
13:03
happens. Therefore, such a structure should not
13:05
exist; it is unnecessary. And the fact that it
13:07
does exist shows that there is no law, which means
13:09
written rules do not exist. And on a larger
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scale, what are you counting on? Do you
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think that at some point the authorities
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will be forced to open up space for
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real critics, for a real
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opposition? Or
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are you heading toward the fate of other
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opposition figures who are either outside
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the country or outside
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the political field? I do not believe in the power
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of the vertical of power, and I see that there is no
13:42
such powerful
13:45
vertical, and there does not even exist
13:47
any particularly powerful systemic
13:49
machine of repression. They can jail
13:52
specific individuals selectively, but overall they are not even
13:55
capable of more or less seriously
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repressing the non-systemic opposition
13:59
they are completely not in a
14:01
position to do that. What is called the
14:03
vertical of power is such chaos and disorder
14:05
and
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a system of reacting to external
14:09
stimuli, like Pavlov's dog
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sitting there: the light comes on, it
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starts barking, and they begin solving some, some
14:15
problem.
14:17
So there are two possible
14:20
ways events can unfold. Overall, I see it like
14:23
this: either they do eventually
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realize what edge they have come to and
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voluntarily delegate power in the
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broad sense of the word, namely
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share power with the regions,
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municipalities, the opposition, with
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whoever, because the fact that they have
14:40
concentrated all power there in
14:41
the Kremlin at the highest level—they have
14:44
concentrated it formally, but
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they cannot use it; they cannot
14:47
carry this burden. So in order
14:49
to make things easier for themselves, and in order
14:52
to
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preserve their physical freedom,
14:56
their lives, and so on, they will have to
14:58
do it sooner or later. Or, if after all
15:01
they keep going to the end, then it will be
15:03
some kind of scenario—well, I have said many times
15:06
that we are forced to call it
15:09
the Tunisian scenario
15:10
because there is simply no other
15:13
name for it. Olya ironically said here
15:16
that you might be a Kremlin project.
15:18
And I will go
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further: that you might be an absolute PR
15:24
project, and especially people who
15:26
base their views on your biography say this.
15:28
This is what that person did after
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receiving an education in economics and law:
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he did nothing but
15:37
try to get among the people, sometimes even in
15:39
the literal sense of the word, and by creating
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a movement of the same name. And then to be
15:45
popular on the street, and then to derive
15:48
certain dividends from that. And all of his
15:50
activity in politics, just like his
15:52
anti-corruption activity,
15:53
is aimed at gaining
15:56
recognition and popularity, and through that
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money.
16:00
Well,
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if a person really wants to solve
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substantive problems, then public
16:10
politics, which takes various forms,
16:11
is the only path. You can
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deceive yourself as much as you like, join
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all these human rights councils,
16:19
do small-scale work there, and say,
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"I’m not getting into politics. I’m just
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dealing with corruption, investigating corruption,"
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or, "I’m not getting into politics. I’m working on
16:26
the problem of public procurement" — that is deception and a lie.
16:29
It cannot be done that way. If you want to solve
16:31
the problem of corruption or the problem
16:32
of public procurement, you have to engage in
16:34
public politics, which means that
16:37
you go to the people, that you fight for
16:39
the sympathy of those people, that you want
16:41
those people to support you so that
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you can use that support
16:45
for real change. From my point
16:47
of view, that is what is called normal
16:49
honest public politics. From the point
16:51
of view of some crooks, this is PR. Well,
16:55
it seems to me that this is a completely
16:56
perverted logic. Everything they
16:58
do — what they are engaged in — is just
17:00
an endless Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel), where they
17:03
show: when they need to talk
17:05
about technological development, there they are in
17:08
white lab coats; when they need to talk
17:10
about industrialization, the white lab coats
17:12
come off and blue coveralls go on. That
17:14
seems like PR to me. But the fact that I
17:16
appeal to people and try to persuade them of something
17:19
and ask for their support — that is normal.