Alexei Navalny on the program "Perekhvat" on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station)

dear

radio listeners, today before you

quite unusually for a host’s role

and my

guest is Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny

who has come to me for this

duel. Good evening. Good

evening. Now, Alexander Gelyevich, in your

constant pre-election lists

you talk about corruption and theft. Your

opponent talks about tunnels,

traffic jams, playgrounds, and both he and you, you both

are, in general, striving for the Moscow throne. You

want to seize Moscow. But Moscow is not just

traffic jams, it is not only

thieving officials. Moscow has always for

Russia been an icon. Moscow for Russia

has always been a mysterious, magnificent

beloved place for which Russian

people laid down their lives. 28

died near

Moscow. Minin and Pozharsky came here

to fight. So tell us, what is

Moscow to you, and why has Moscow today ceased

to be an icon for Russians? Why is it that from Moscow

these dark poisons are pouring out, and all

the rest of Russia is recoiling from Moscow?

I would like to know: you,

seeking to come to City Hall and become Moscow’s

grand prince, how will you restore to

Moscow its mysterious messianic

significance? First of all, I would like

to note that if we now asked the citizens of

Russia what they think of Moscow,

I assure you, we would hear all sorts of

epithets, but certainly not “icon,” and certainly not

some holy place that everyone

is rushing toward. The epithets would not be very flattering. And

my campaign for the post of mayor of Moscow is precisely

a struggle against the idea that someone—

some officials or some people

who claim to be great

statesmen—should treat the post of

mayor of Moscow as a throne. These

people now think they are princes. They

now think they are sitting on some kind of

throne and disposing of Moscow’s immense

wealth. But Moscow’s wealth is

the wealth of all Russia, and they simply use it

at their own discretion. I want to become mayor

of a city that, with the large sums of money

we currently have, will provide

Muscovites with a normal European

quality of life. Moscow is very rich, after all. Unlike

the rest of Russia, the budget of

Moscow is surpassed only by the budgets of New York

and Shanghai. Our average salary in Moscow

is comparable to the income level of residents

of Spain, almost comparable to the income

of residents of Italy. But the quality of life,

you must agree, in Spain and Italy is much,

much higher than in Moscow. Therefore I

will probably, perhaps, disappoint you:

I am not setting myself any metaphysical goals.

I am setting myself

one goal only: to come to the city and

make its wealth work

for Muscovites. Yes, well, and they now

work for Muscovites against all of Russia.

Today, today Russia looks at this

fat

gilded city and its rotten dwellings. I am simply saying

that you are going to Moscow in order

to make life for Muscovites even better, but

that life as such will leave

the rest of Russia’s citizens with their slums and

rotting roads, houses, and dim lightbulbs in

their entryways. Not exactly. What we now

see—something bloated, fat, and

gleaming with gold, as you put it—is

precisely the Moscow budget, but it works

not for Muscovites. Take note:

despite the fact that Moscow attracts

citizens from all over Russia here, and even

citizens from neighboring countries, the quality

of life of Muscovites does not improve because of this.

Muscovites only suffer from the fact that everyone

comes to Moscow. Moscow is very expensive.

It is practically impossible to live in Moscow. Food

is twice as expensive as in any

European country. Clothes are twice

as expensive. Gasoline is expensive. The cost of living in

Moscow is very high. The environment

is dreadful. You were indeed right to say

that there is a bloated budget, but

unfortunately this bloated budget is now

being used in the interests of a certain

group of people. If we look at

the cost of any transport interchange,

it is twice as high. But that is not

a show

of force; it is an indicator that yet another

person sent from the Kremlin to the mayor’s office

will become a billionaire from that interchange and

take that billion off somewhere to Switzerland.

And both Muscovites and the residents of Ryazan, in such

an old Russian melancholy, will

watch this and understand that something

is not right. You did not hear me,

because I was talking about things not

connected with road junctions. It seemed to me that

Moscow is valuable to Russia and to all

humanity because of its unique

Moscow mystery. Fine, I’ll come at you

from another altitude, from

a different angle. You spoke about the billions being taken out of

Moscow. Those billions

are, generally speaking, not being taken out of Moscow; they

are being taken out of Russia. Moscow is a pump,

a terrible vacuum cleaner by means of which

all the valuables extracted in

Russia are siphoned away. Here in Moscow there are these

banks, offices, corporations that

channel every Russian kopeck

earned somewhere in Siberia, in

Norilsk or in the oil fields of Tyumen,

they channel it abroad, invest it

in another civilization. Therefore Moscow itself

In itself, it is, broadly speaking,

the womb from which, in ninety-

one, this terrible, monstrous

oligarchic order emerged, and you will come here

again to repair roads, and you will come

here to slap the hands of thieving officials,

to improve life in Moscow. Why Moscow here?

This, this is Moscow, this is not Moscow. Well,

first of all, this is simply a system of power.

Then one could say that they emerged

in their time from Yekaterinburg in the form of

Yeltsin, then they emerged in the form of

Putin. In fact, the cities have nothing to do with it here.

It is simply that a certain group of people

seized and usurped it.

- This is national rent. It works for

their enrichment. You are absolutely right

when you say that Moscow sucks everything dry,

but in this sense Moscow is

a transit point. Over the last 15

years we have sold $3 trillion worth of oil and gas,

dollars' worth—colossal sums of money. With

comparable sums, Brezhnev built

factories and plants and developed the whole country.

What have we gotten over the last 15 years?

Name for me at least one major

enterprise that was built in

Russia. Therefore, I can probably speak about

some lofty matters only second, tenth, or even twenty-fifth

in line, but right now I would like to talk

this way:

so

about some down-to-earth processes that

need to be put in order in Moscow. If we in Moscow

reduce the level of corruption by at least

25%—which can easily be done, and which I

know exactly how to do—then colossal

wealth will go to Muscovites. Let us suppose

I allow for the possibility that we reduce the level of

corruption. But the system that was

created pumps Russian wealth

abroad even without corruption; it pumps it

out legally as well. That is how this system is built, that is how

the laws are built, that is how

the corporations are built. As you prepare, well, to become the leader

of Moscow, do you want, more broadly, later on—not

at the level of Moscow, of course, but later on,

because your career may continue further and

you may go beyond the Kremlin walls—do you want

to change this damned system,

this terrible damned system that

has shoved us into a black hole? Absolutely

right, that is the main task of my

political activity. I want

Russia's national wealth to work

for the people of Russia. This pump

that you describe so wonderfully

in artistic terms—I observe it

in very concrete terms when I

investigate corruption in all these

Gazproms, Rosnefts, and so on. And these are

completely concrete things. I would not

call it a system. It is simply, well,

a fairly primitive, crude financial

scheme. You know that our main

trader of Russian oil is a friend

of Vladimir Putin, Gennady Timchenko. He

even gave up his Russian

citizenship; he is a citizen of Finland,

living in Switzerland, and through his

Swiss offshore company he sells

most of Russia's oil, and now

he is also building the metro and roads in Moscow.

This is not a system; it is three specific

people who said: come on, you

take over all the oil, and we will

sell all the oil through your company; you will

become a billionaire from this. And he did become

a billionaire. So what is there to say about a system?

No one agrees with this; 99% of Russia's residents

simply do not agree with it, and I

am building my political

activity around how to transform it—not by cutting off heads,

not by pushing people away from this feeding trough, not by staging

a revolution. We are talking about changing, I repeat,

the system, about changing the gigantic

complex of relationships that has taken shape since

ninety-one in Russia. We are talking about replacing

the elites. How do you change elites, and through what? My

answer is: through the concentration

of will that now exists among the citizens of

Russia, who have understood everything that

is happening. We must concentrate this political

will and express it, including

at the elections on the eighth. Good.

Political will is wonderful; moreover,

there is no point in engaging in politics without political will.

You are entering

politics, you are entering politics sharply, you

are entering politics like

a battering ram there, steel-like—

I am going like a soft little cat. No, no, there is no iron here. I

am talking about completely normal, obvious

things. I speak to young people, to

businessmen, to pensioners. These are

very simple things. Why do we need

a

battering ram? It is wrong to sell citizens'

oil through an offshore company; oil

and gas should work for the citizens of Russia.

Everyone agrees with this. The task is not even

to break down any wall. The task is simply

to gather, now at the elections in Moscow, 2

million people who will come to vote and

say: that's it, we do not want this anymore. We do not

want any Moscow road

to cost three times more than in Europe. We do not

want this. Stop.

Ale

That is naive, because they gathered

I don't know, a million Muscovites in the ninetieth year and said: We

do not want to live like this. And after they

said, We do not want to live like this, there appeared

Timchenko, or somewhere there in

Solidarity they came, they broke

the Russian backbone. And after that there arose

an unhappy, dispossessed country, deprived of

prospects strategically, unfortunately.

It so happened that they came out in those years.

They were told that they wanted to get out, but they were...

deceived — they were deceived by people

who made promises and lied. Try...

Try not to deceive Muscovites once again.

Explain this: if you are going into power, then surely

you are not going into power simply

to win. You are going into power, apparently, with

some greater purpose. I want to change

life for the better. I want to remain the same

person who lives the same

life, with the same family, the same

way of life, and who is capable of

demonstrating to everyone that power is not

necessarily enrichment, that power is not

working for yourself and your own interests, because power

— if you mean power — is

the concentrated will of the people, who

through power realize their historical

path. You have a major project; you are going

into power in order to transform

Russia, to move it from

one civilizational level to another, or are you

going in order to seize power

because in your speeches, which

really do great damage

to the authorities — they wound the authorities painfully — but I

still do not see the breath of great concepts,

great projects. A Russian, a Russian

president, a Russian tsar — without this

great project he is nothing. Alexandr

Andreyevich, you are a writer and a poet, so

probably, if one takes you as a target, as

history, as your target

audience — probably I have not yet found the right

words that would inspire you

sufficiently. However, I believe

that the simple idea that national wealth

should not belong to a narrow group of people but

should belong to everyone and work for everyone — this is

exactly what

will pull Russia to a new, including

civilizational, level, because what is

happening to us now? We really have

become a raw-material appendage; we are

ruled by some strange, accidental leaders

who

are looting and taking things off somewhere to Switzerland. We

are not really any kind of civilization at all; we are simply

a failed state. Are you a communist, then?

Because after all, it was precisely in Soviet times that all

wealth belonged to everyone, to the state;

it was concentrated in the hands of a powerful,

strong, centralized state and

directed into development, into education, into

universities, into rockets, into defense. Do you

adhere to that grand project? And

I believe there should be other systems

of distribution. Socialism and communism

did not work, and that economic system

that existed in the Soviet Union led

to the fact that yes, we had rockets, yes, we

had factories, but for the most part we had

an impoverished population. I spent my whole life living in

military towns. Excuse me, I remember

how I stood for hours in line for milk.

My mother, an officer’s wife, at five in the morning

would get in line for meat, so that

is not an ideal for me. However,

I see that now we are much poorer than

we ought to be living. Russia is very rich, and if

even returning to those times, back then

at least we had a gigantic army

that we were feeding; back then at least there were

enterprises in countries of socialist

orientation that we were feeding with those same

petrodollars, whereas now we have

nothing at all. Everything that you and I have,

everything that 140 million citizens of the country have, is

simply the data on the number of billionaires. In

2000 there were six of them, and now

there are 131, and then they tell us: dear citizens,

Navalny and Prokhanov, be satisfied with the fact that

Russia has many dollar billionaires. I

am not prepared to be satisfied with that either.

I am not a propagandist, just as I do not want to

propagandize you. We are talking about an election

campaign; every voter matters to me. I

understand, but Moscow... you will go... come on...

a new dialogue will change approaches, wishes, for

this. Please try, for now, not

very successfully.

the common good for all — that is a concept. Now

look, Alexandr, this is very, this is really

a very clear concept, listen.

This is an absolutely clear concept for me.

For me these are both philosophical and conceptual things.

If I know that in Moscow public procurement

150 billion rubles are stolen every year — 30,000

for each Muscovite — then for me the concept is

to return this money to Muscovites; for me

that is the point. I know that this will improve life. I

know that this works for the good

of Russian civilization, if we

restore order. Law and order is

very much a concept. Now, if I were

in your place, and you were Prokhanov, I would

try to answer my question in this way:

yes, I believe that

the national wealth is being plundered. Yes,

I believe that this immense wealth

could be directed into

development. Today’s Russia is not

developing; it is standing still. I am offering you

a development project, a mobilization project. I

propose directing all these resources

into defense, into

the conditions of growing military threats, into

universities, because knowledge

is collapsing. I

propose demonstrating a concept

of a common cause that will unite all

Russians, Jews, Tatars, Tajiks into one

huge society under construction.

I have read a great deal of literature

on this subject, and I am absolutely convinced that

yes, we must invest national

wealth, but first and foremost not in

Defense—we absolutely must invest in it.

But investing in building institutions

—for example, investing now in the judicial

system in Russia—is 100 times more important, 100

times more beneficial from every point of view, than

any defense spending or any nanotechnology.

The judicial system, the political system—

these are the things on which the country will stand.

It will stand for 300 years if we

properly establish jury trials,

if in Moscow I manage to secure the election of

justices of the peace, that will be simply

a tremendous pillar that will become one

of the foundations of Russian civilization. These are

the things I believe in. As for the idea that I should

churn out 300,000 tanks right now, 300—

churn out even one modern one—look,

America has everything you are talking about, and

America has a gigantic national debt.

Here is the important thing, the most important thing.

The key point, perhaps, in our dispute: I

maintain that it is impossible to build a

modern tank until we defeat

corruption. We have now allocated for defense

20 trillion rubles for several years.

That money will be stolen, and you and I know it, and the whole

country knows that money will be stolen or

simply squandered.

Corruption—first we must make sure

that military institutes, design

institutes, are not rented out

by their directors, but actually work, and

then we will build a tank. But a tank—

you cannot just say, “Let’s build

one.” It is pointless to defeat corruption and

take money away from these thieves if that

money will serve to create a

hedonistic way of life, as if you were talking

about development. That money must be

directed toward development. What is

development? You see, development means

people should live better. It is not

necessarily some kind of hedonism. If I

want finally to sort out the housing and utilities system

(ZhKKh—public housing and коммунal services), which affects everyone every day,

you understand, no less than any tank. We have

nearly 20% of households that still

carry water—excuse me—not with a shoulder yoke, but in

buckets; 17% of households have no sewage system.

That is what we need to be doing. And I want

that money to be invested, among

other things, in this, so that people gain

additional time—perhaps so that

they can design your tank.

Right now he cannot design a tank;

he has no sewage system. I assure

you, and I believe that sewage and

tank construction are very closely

connected. Fine, when I become

president of Russia, I will make you

minister for housing and utilities, because—

damn.

I will not join you, because if you do not

believe that Russia needs institutions,

that it needs a fight against corruption, needs

a judicial system, needs normal

political will, then we will never fix housing and utilities,

and the money you allocate

for housing and utilities will be stolen too, unfortunately. So when

I become president, my minister, my

minister for housing and utilities, will carefully study your

campaign speeches and will act according

to your model. Fine, I will have a different

minister. Fine. You have spoken several times

about Russian civilization.

Yes, these are, generally speaking, well, rather precious

references, and many people present you

as a Russian nationalist, or at least

as a Russian patriot, and for me

this is very important, because I believe that

the Russian factor in Russia today is

no less significant than the factor of the degradation of all

institutions.

Whom do you consider yourself to be, and

what does Russianness mean to you? A Russian—

what is that? Someone who lives at the level of

European standards? A Russian is someone

who has a warm water closet? A Russian—

is that someone who has a kosovorotka (traditional Russian shirt) from Arkhangelsk?

For me it is all simpler, much

simpler. For me, a Russian is

a matter of self-identification.

A Russian is a person who speaks

Russian, considers Russian

their native language, and considers themselves Russian. For

me, that makes them Russian. Please—

a huge number of Russians now live abroad,

having fled Russia; a huge

number of them are Russian in the first

generation, and then they become half-Japanese, half-

French. Our task, our task is to make sure

they do not flee. Most importantly. By the way,

those criteria you are

talking about do not describe Russianness.

Russianness—what, in your view, should it be?

Should he know how to play the balalaika? I am

saying maybe it is the balalaika, or

maybe, I repeat, the hopak (a folk dance), or

the quadrille, or maybe, I repeat,

some kind of collar or something. Look,

there are Russians who left, for example, for

Latin America.

Between them and us, for example,

there is even a different cultural code.

If we mention the cartoon “Nu, Pogodi!” (a classic Soviet animated series), we may not find

common topics of conversation with them. But they are

undoubtedly Russian. They have preserved the Russian

language, they speak Russian, they consider

themselves Russian. For me they are, of course,

Russian, even despite the fact that they

may not be imbued with lofty ideas, and

even despite the fact that they will never

return to Russia and do not want

to return to Russia. If they consider

themselves Russian, then for me they are unquestionably

Russian.

Those who left Russia because of the shame of its

lack of sewage—they are exotic Russians, but

It seems to me that Russianness—just like, say, Germanness or Jewishness—

is explained through certain designs, certain purposes

for which these peoples were created

on earth. After all, it wasn’t as if one

single huge global people was created.

Although humanity does seem to be mixing in this cauldron,

and there are philosophers who say that the future

belongs to humanity

as one earthly people. But after all, all peoples—they

were created for some great

special task of their own. So what I want to understand is:

do you feel that Russians were created for

some special Russian task, that

Russian messianism is not nonsense, not

absurdity—that if Jews call themselves

a messianic people, then Russians too, through the words

of their great thinkers, call themselves

messianic—

is it possible not to feel that, at least

to feel that such a discussion exists? Yes, if

we look at the main

subject of Russian philosophy—Russian

philosophy studies what? Precisely the special

position of the Russian people,

their particular tasks, the special mission of the Russian

people. One can argue about this a great deal. But

still, when I run in elections, I would rather

act as an administrator. When

I say Russian or non-Russian, for me

that means: should this person be granted citizenship

through a simplified procedure, or should they not

be granted citizenship through a simplified procedure? These

are, I agree, very down-to-earth categories.

But a person who is an official, from

my point of view, is obliged, in some

sense, to keep themselves grounded. Yes, and for example, I

introduced a bill—

Come on, soar a little. Talk to me. Why

keep grounding yourself all the time? Soar, take flight—why shouldn’t

a person who seeks power

rise above things? Why shouldn’t he soar into

certain directions—well, not into directions

where one shouldn’t get carried away, of course. But there are things

an official must do, and there are things

philosophers must do, things thinkers

must do, and so on. In this

case, I’m not hiring you. I’m

simply interested in you as a person, as

an individual. I want to understand what

your inner spiritual monad is made of. So

what, I repeat, in your view, is Russian

messianism—or is there no such thing at all? Are a Russian and

a Luxembourger one and the same, so to

speak, anthropological phenomenon? Or

is there, after all, such a thing as a Russian sky,

a Russian mystery, a Russian

question—something over which

both Russian philosophers and world philosophers struggle?

Or is all this, I repeat, complete nonsense? There are,

without a doubt, questions that trouble

the Russian people specifically. That is a separate,

specific issue. Look, perhaps

again—I apologize—I’m too

down-to-earth, but this is the largest

divided people in the world, or at least

the largest divided people in Europe.

That is a major problem. There is the problem

of degradation, there is the problem of alcoholism,

there is the problem of villages, there are problems with

the birth rate. These are the questions that stand

before Russians as a people, and we must

solve them. And probably right now the task is not

some super-task, but simply this: if we speak of

such things, then it consists in

not degrading, in

preserving ourselves, in making our

lives better through the same national

wealth that we possess, and making

this life better both for Russians and for those

peoples who live on the territory

of Russia. Yes, you are right that the Russian people

are a divided people, and that

in essence a monstrous blow has been dealt

to Russians by forces that

divided them. Perhaps it was not the Revolution

of 1917 that divided them so terribly,

but this counterrevolution of 1991

did. And in that, in that

sense, in that sense, we are a tragic

people, we are a wounded people. And after

the break, after the news, when they start

messing with our heads again with these

Syrian missiles, let’s talk about this

Russian drama, this Russian

problematic. Our passionate conversation—

I am Alexander Prokhanov, who by some misunderstanding

has found himself in the role of host, and opposite

me is Alexander Ivanovich Navalny. So, we

were interrupted, it seems, on the word Russian, on

the phrase ‘Russian wounded one,’ I think

I said. Indeed, the Russian is not simply

a divided people, but an unemployed

people—a people from whom they took away not

just jobs in factories or in

workshops or in sewing or

haberdashery shops. From Russians they took away

a gigantic imperial labor, which

Russians carried out throughout the tension of

their entire history. They were deprived of empire;

the Russian people were told that they are a people

of a nation-state, and therefore

the Russian

is so embittered, so

rebellious against injustice, because we

live in one of the most unjust

states in the world. Russians have had taken away from them—or

people are trying to take away—their dream of earthly

absolute beauty, of the good, of

justice. So I want to understand whether your

consciousness, which impels you to seek

power, has these kind of

deep motivations, or whether you are

again talking only about housing and utilities. Well, I would say:

you call these deep motivations; I

would call them, forgive me, somewhat

invented motivations. With great

interest, when I was preparing for this broadcast,

I read up on it with great interest.

I read your interview with Lukashenko, and you

asked him roughly the same question

about the Empire, about how the Sovie-

Union collapsed, and whether Russia can now be

an empire, to which Lukashenko—as I understand it,

a politician you find very appealing—

said, "Excuse me, Alexander

Andreyevich, Russia can no longer be

any kind of empire; it simply doesn't have the capacity anymore,

neither financially nor morally, to be an empire.

The Soviet Union, as an empire, was brought down not

simply by some villains, but by that very

disgusting Soviet

nomenklatura that no longer had any idea

except how to place their

children in MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations), how to place their children in

the KGB so that they could work abroad

and bring back Yugoslav boots and vouchers

that could be spent at Beryozka stores (hard-currency Soviet shops).

Those were exactly the people who destroyed everything,

in effect, and the Soviet Union could not withstand

various disasters and upheavals such as

the Afghan war and Chernobyl; it collapsed, to

great regret, to enormous regret.

And it is a tragedy for the Russian people that

millions of Russians ended up abroad. Unfortunately,

certain steps by the authorities, including

the current authorities, have led to

our betraying millions of citizens.

For example, Putin effectively simply sold off

for gas hundreds of thousands of Russians who lived

in

Turkmenistan. These are not deep, abstract issues; these are

entirely concrete problems that

we must solve. If we still have Russians

living, for example, in

Uzbekistan, and they cannot get

Russian citizenship—they simply cannot—

and they struggle, you understand: a person who

runs from one passport office to

another trying to obtain citizenship,

an ordinary Russian person who was born

in Tashkent, he is not talking about any

deep issues. He is simply desperate

to become a citizen of Russia. I, for example,

drafted a bill under which any

person belonging to an indigenous nationality—Russian,

Tatar, Chechen, Ossetian—living in

the territory of Russia should

receive Russian citizenship

by simple notification. Our United

Russia party does not want to pass this law.

There is a similar law in Ukraine,

there is such a law in Georgia, in Israel, and so

on. We ourselves do not want to accept our own citizens.

Here we tell them, come,

but at the same time we put up a huge number of

obstacles. Maybe you'll say again,

"There you go again, Navalny, talking about housing and utilities," but I

am saying: let's solve

people's concrete problems. A person

who

somewhere out there in a village in the Vologda region, it seems to me,

does not long for an empire. He

longs because there is no work, and

he longs because we have

colossal inequality. As you rightly

said, he longs because

85% of the national wealth

belongs to three families or so. That is what

he longs over, and that is what we must change.

The drinking peasant in the village no longer even longs for that;

perhaps he longs for an axe. But do you want to bring all Russians

living outside Russia back into the country? I want

to give them the opportunity, I want to give them the opportunity.

The Russians from the Baltics already won't come. How

are you going to reunite a divided

people? How are you going to reunite this

divided people? How are you going to heal

this wound, this fracture? What is the remedy?

Citizenship is laughable. The Germans after

1945 patiently waited

until 1991. They did not reconcile themselves

to the loss of East Germany; they waited.

They knew that

German destiny would be bound up with

a single territory. Uh-huh, they... I think that

...

... and therefore—look. They did not

just wait; they built a state, they

increased the power of their state, they

grew GDP, they built a real

country one could be proud of, a country in which

citizens grow richer, and all the other Germans

from other countries looked at West Germany (FRG) and

said, yes, probably we want to live there.

What is Russia doing now? We are robbing our

people—Russians and non-Russians alike, everyone

living here, we are robbing them. We see that

a small group of people is simply, before

all our eyes, pulling everything out into their own

endless Switzerland, endless Monaco,

and so on. So I would heal all

this by giving those who want it the opportunity

to return to Russia—that is the first thing.

And the second way to heal it

is to show that we are building

a just society. Russian society

craves justice; it craves not even equal distribution

of wealth, but simply...

The United States has more billionaires, yes, but

why on earth should we? We seem to produce

nothing, do nothing, we simply pump oil and gas

out of the ground, and yet

in an amazing way people first spend their whole

lives in public service, and then when they leave public service

they become billionaires. This

is what prevents Russian civilization from

getting back on its feet.

There were times, for example, after

the revolution, after the February Revolution

of 1917, after October

1917, when Russia was terribly

poor, it was dreadfully impoverished and destitute. But

that did not prevent the leaders of the country

from formulating a grand idea and carrying it out.

and to carry it out, indeed to carry it out

not on the idea of equal distribution

of the product. This idea was formulated

as the idea of a gigantic dream, a gigantic

kind of striving toward the unattainable, toward

paradise. What I would like to hear from you is

You’re asking me again—there was a lot going on then,

many different things, but I would like to draw your

attention to the fact that such colossal

injustice and inequality and

wealth and opportunity did not exist

I have a very hard time imagining

Soviet Russia in Stalin’s time

the Soviet Union, that Stalin, excuse

me, had opened a Swiss bank

numbered account. And all his closest

associates were buying villas in Monaco. And

everyone, and from time to time all of them, with their whole

merry company, would go flying off

to London on planes they had borrowed

for a while from the Red Army in order

to watch football. I simply cannot imagine

anything like that at all. Whereas now that is exactly what

is happening. Back then, different energies

were driving people, but back then it definitely was not

the energy of enrichment; back then it definitely

was not the energy of, let’s grab

something here, haul it off to Switzerland, and then

dispose of it. What distinguishes Stalin from modern leaders

is not only that. What distinguishes Stalin from

modern leaders is precisely

the presence in Stalin of a huge, gigantic

project and a sense of colossal disasters

that were bearing down on Russia, and

an understanding that in the context of those disasters

it was necessary to undertake an enormous,

concentrated, backbreaking effort. I just—

all these possible

historical parallels and allusions are, in

general, fairly meaningless, I think.

Different times, different people. But I simply

urge you to understand that to speak now of

some kind of

imperial idea against the backdrop of, excuse me, this

public utilities mess and the fact that the Kremlin is now filled

with, well, simply low-grade

crooks—it’s just laughable. There can be no

great overarching idea when they all have

numbered accounts in Switzerland. It simply cannot

exist, and in principle it cannot be born.

Only when power changes in Russia and

a government comes that truly

serves the people, that says:

Guys, we are building a just society

for everyone who lives in this country, in Moscow, in

any city—when people understand that there are

glimmers of hope, that there is social

mobility, that the higher

idea of a good life is not

to get a job at Gazprom and steal

a million dollars there, is not

to get into the FSB (Russia’s security service) and

provide protection for someone, or become a customs officer and take

bribes, but that the higher idea is that I

will work for myself, for my family, for

society; I will build a super-tank. Right now

no one is going to build the super-tanks that you

so badly need—no one is going to build super-tanks.

Everyone wants to get a job at Gazprom. I

hear you, I hear you. I’m even ready to sign on to your

answer, to subscribe to your theses, but just a little more and you’ll say

that I should run for office, and you imagine me

as some kind of preliminary leader

for a transition, after whom, once he clears

the ground, there should come a

strategic leader. Well, that’s nothing, that’s not

offensive. Of course, right now in Russia there are simply

no strategic leaders at all. And you are, as it were,

clearing, clearing the road for the one

who will come next. I would like power to change hands. I

do not want any kind of lifelong rule. I

would like to come in, serve my

legally prescribed term, and leave

as a person of whom they will say: yes, he was

the first honest mayor in Russia. He was

the first honest president in Russia

who did what the people wanted from him

and who did not amass immense wealth; he

received his salary and was satisfied with that.

He was satisfied that he had served the people.

Maybe that sounds very lofty, but

that is exactly how it is. No, it does not sound lofty;

it sounds right, fair. It seems to me

that now, of course, you are consumed by

this struggle

this struggle that you are waging. You are

a passionate fighter, and I can see that you are giving

this struggle all your strength—physical,

moral, and spiritual. But I remember you during

the period of Bolotnaya Square (the Moscow protest movement), during

those vast Bolotnaya gatherings, and then

I spoke out against you, against Bolotnaya. I

was on Poklonnaya (Poklonnaya Hill, site of a pro-government rally); I fought on the other

side, forgiving the authorities many of their failings,

forgiving the authorities many flaws and holes,

because it seemed to me—not only

seemed; I am convinced—that Bolotnaya Square

was not seeking a change of leader; it was capable

of cutting down power as such. From Bolotnaya

Square, for many Russian people, there breathed

that orange revolution

that sweeps away regimes together with the state

as a whole. And when you were

at Bolotnaya, when you saw how the

human mass filling those squares was growing,

when you saw the excitement, when you compared

the situation unfolding in Moscow with what

had happened in Egypt, in Serbia, and elsewhere,

did you really not feel that this

orange whirlwind would not merely scorch

the vile elite, but would burn

Moscow to the ground? Let me simply tell you and explain

why I ended up at Bolotnaya, why it

arose at all: because I was one of

the people who pushed this

concept—United Russia is the party of crooks

and thieves. Vote for anyone but United Russia.

Vote for anyone but United Russia.

In Russia, I was probably the person who

came up with it, who created this movement,

but at a certain point I simply became part

of this movement. I don’t want to exaggerate

my personal role, and I was fighting the

party that, for me, precisely

embodies corruption, for me

embodies national defeat, for

me embodies the country’s degradation, and

when in Moscow, in my city, they simply

brazenly, this United Russia party,

added 20% of the vote to their own total, I, together

with all the election observers, went out on December 5

to the square. I absolutely didn’t care

about Egypt,

Tunisia, Yugoslavia, or Ukraine. I went there

to defend my votes. I went there

to express my outrage, because these people are thieves, they

steal oil, gas, the nation’s wealth,

and on top of that they stole my votes, and together with

me people came out; they dispersed them, 100 people,

as you remember, were then thrown into

a special detention center, myself included. In response

to that, 100,000 people came out to Bolotnaya Square

(a major protest site in Moscow). I assure you, there were no reflections

or whirlwinds of an Orange Revolution there

— there was simply, perhaps, fury, there was

anger at what you were doing.

How can this be? How is this possible? We

understood that they hadn’t just stolen votes

from us for appearances’ sake,

not just to show, “Look, we

got 50%,” but in order to pass

any laws they wanted, and any laws they want

to pass are passed, again, in order to

enrich themselves at our expense. So for me

this was and remains a very normal,

proper, rational struggle for my

country and for my children’s future, obviously.

By the way, all the crowds that came out into

the squares, whether it was Tahrir or the squares

of Belgrade, they all felt roughly the

same thing you did. But every time there appeared

some mysterious force that

threw them against machine guns, others against— No,

there is no such mysterious force. That’s how

these orange explosions arose. Well, I think

that, again, without exaggerating my role

in all this, it is nevertheless necessary

to admit that it was one of the key ones.

Right, no mysterious forces

exist. Unfortunately, both in the government

and, to a large extent, in the opposition, there is simply

chaos and a lack of understanding of what needs to be done.

Well, no one knows how to organize

revolutions; no one has much experience

organizing them. So what we see is: people

go out into the streets, people want to go into the streets,

people are burning with it, people all go out into the streets together, and

any conspiracy theories

about how this can somehow be

controlled — it cannot be controlled.

If people want to go, they go, and that’s

all. Yes, well, of course I feel completely

differently. I think that crowds are controlled,

chaos is controlled, and historical

processes are controlled too. Oddly enough, who

controls them? Who could have controlled me, or

is controlling me now? I know someone

is controlling— Just suppose it. No, just

understand—

just a minute—

Yes, you create a certain political

meaning, you operate

within this field. And this field can be controlled, or

created, by entire institutions, entire

groups, entire huge

political formations. You create your own poli-

tics here and now over the course of 45 minutes.

Indeed, you are controlling the situation

— that’s true, you are the host. However, if

you try to extend this field of yours

and control the political process,

not even me, but the political process,

that’s impossible to control, because it

is objective. Quite simply, objectively, hundreds of thousands

of Muscovites are dissatisfied. Look,

Alexei, then there is no politics. What you’re

talking about is simply spontaneous

behavior by certain human masses.

Politics is the management of the political

process. Politics is the management

of the masses. Politics is the most complex

technology that drives this billiard ball

into precisely this pocket. Not exactly.

There are simply catalysts. There was

dissatisfaction with United Russia; someone

came up with the concept “vote for anyone

but United Russia,” it worked, and this is

just that from time to time there appear

people who slightly adjust

the whole movement. But look, why in

Moscow would everyone speak out against United

Russia? Because, for example, if we

look at the Moscow City Duma, 95% of it is

United Russia. We understand perfectly well that

this in no way corresponds

to Muscovites’ political preferences.

Such a disproportion is created, such a

weight hanging over things, which sooner or later will collapse,

because Muscovites do not want to see 95%

United Russia. 25% — yes, 30% — yes, but not 95%.

So there’s your precondition: if someone

finds the right place where they need to

strike, this overhang will collapse. Of course I

will do everything to find that

place and make that overhang collapse. Because

these people should not be sitting in the Mos-

cow City Duma; they are sitting on stolen mandates.

Of course, that overhang could

turn out to be the dome of the Russian state. No,

nothing of the sort. That’s exactly the point: as I

keep saying, major politicians understand perfectly well

and calculate their moves. They

understand the detonation of any social

explosion. Major politicians,

they go ahead and create these

huge explosions.

would go down in history in a positive light

and not negatively, like Yeltsin. Well, here I

categorically disagree with you. And

the role of each of them will of course be

assessed, and I think that Putin, as the father

of Russian corruption, will

be perceived very negatively by posterity.

However, I want to tell you that Putin

is undoubtedly a major politician, but

nevertheless it does not look like he is managing

any processes. He is simply

in chaos. He is a man who reads

an opinion poll and comes up with what

to do today, what kind of

law to invent in order to shift the agenda.

He cannot do anything. Look, we have

oil prices above $100 per

barrel, and yet there is no economic growth. Where

are we pumping and pumping? We ought to be

happy. Russia is now living through a period

when it could have the maximum

amount of national wealth.

Money is pouring in like a river, yet we simply

cannot do anything with it, nothing at all. And

Putin controls nothing; he is incapable

of doing anything. He is incapable of

doing it. Oil, oil brings income

to Russia not because of corruption, but because

the economic bloc and the

oligarchic system are such that

Russian oil belongs to non-Russian

people. Interesting. Then explain this

to me, please: Putin has been in power for 13 years,

so why is it that he is not fighting this

oligarchic system? That is the problem, his huge

problem and his guilt. When I spoke about

Putin’s positive significance, I was talking

about the fact that in 2000 he stopped

the disintegration of the state. But his guilt is that

he did not launch development and did not break

the back of this.

It is not that he does not want to break its back—

he creates these oligarchs. Look:

the oligarchs who emerged, the likes of

Timchenko, the Rotenbergs, that whole dacha

cooperative Ozero (a well-known group of Putin associates), all his St. Petersburg

friends—they became billionaires. He

creates oligarchs; he bases

his power on oligarchs. I understand how to

fight them. One can of course say

that if a cow had horns, God would have given them to it, but nevertheless

I understand very clearly what needs to be done

so that wealth is distributed

more fairly, and everyone understands this.

Putin bases his power on something

entirely different, which is why he too is

in a state of major political chaos, simply

in this chaos and in these murky waters. Unfortunately,

from these murky waters he pulls out things when you

turn away from him, yes? In order to

talk to me, he takes out a little

fishing rod and catches goldfish from

these murky waters. By the way, Bolotnaya (the 2011–2012 protest movement) has always

struck me—and still does—how many of your

allies from that time, those who were

beside you either at Bolotnaya or in the media

or... I have the feeling that no one

has recoiled from me. Whom do you mean?

Well, the liberal elites, some

liberals who turned out to be

your, so to speak, troubadours—they

are condemning you now, they are going after you

like bulldogs. In other words, you are in the

position of a person whom very many

have betrayed, and that inspires, let us say, in me

disgust toward the entire liberal

community. Frankly, first of all I do not

understand what the liberal elite is—that is

the first thing. With many people I

really do have major disagreements.

This is connected with the fact that I do, after all,

I am an adult. I have

a certain system of views, and I am not

going to adjust my views to

please this or that person. If I, for

example, among the candidates for mayor of Moscow,

have the toughest program on migration,

for example, I am not going to

adjust it, because I simply believe

in what I am saying. That

provokes criticism from certain people who

hold much more radical or

left-liberal views than I do. But that is

a normal political process. Well,

it is one thing to disagree, another

thing to throw stones at yesterday’s ally.

People are different. The political

process is characterized by ambitious

people pursuing their own ambitions. Unfortunately,

sometimes ugly things happen.

However, on the whole I would

like to say that I see people behaving

decently on the whole.

So this is a kind of tolerance toward

your opponents? Or perhaps even toward

those who are ready to lead you to crucifixion?

That is a good trait. I would say it is simply

a philosophical attitude: people are people.

Man is weak. I cannot expect people

each and every one of them to be some kind of

rock. They are in different

circumstances; they depend on many different

factors—people, money, and so on.

One has to treat that with understanding. And

suppose, for example, you won the

election and became mayor of Moscow—would you begin

removing Lenin

and dismantling the Kremlin necropolis? That is a typical

question, probably even the most

striking question on which a mayor cannot and

has no right to make any

decision, because we have, for example,

a huge Orthodox Christian community and a huge

demand within the Orthodox community—I am

Orthodox myself—for the removal, for example,

and burial of Lenin. And there is a huge

number of people—I think millions in

Moscow—who are categorically against it.

This issue can be resolved only

through a referendum, and I think that is exactly

the point. It is not an issue of primary importance; it simply

splits society. And this cannot be

a decision made by Moscow alone—that is out of the question. Only

a referendum. And probably the struggle between two groups,

a struggle, for example, between Orthodox believers

and—I don’t know what to call them,

the opposite group—well, Soviet-minded

people. Though an Orthodox person can also be Soviet-minded. I myself

am also Soviet, you understand. I am simultaneously

both Soviet and Orthodox, let’s put it that way. But

nevertheless, this is a struggle between two groups,

a public struggle between two groups for, well, for

the middle ground of public opinion. In this

struggle, sooner or later someone will probably

win, but neither the president nor the mayor

has the right to make such a

unilateral decision. That is a good answer. I

think time will of course show. It is true,

the struggle between the Reds and the Whites, as we

call it, has already lasted almost a whole century

and there is no end to it, none at all. It happens everywhere.

There is a struggle between the right and the left,

a struggle between liberals and conservatives.

It is a struggle over different approaches; it is a struggle

between the scarlet and the white, a struggle between

supporters of Nicholas II and Stalin. This

struggle fills us with this, well, this

division, and ending this struggle is

of course an enormous ideological

task. And the technology for ending this

struggle is still not fully known to me. But

it is very important. I think this is not

of course these wounds and the consequences of this

struggle, we

the Russian people, the people of Russia,

will feel for a very long time. But here

our task is simply to relate normally

to the study of history, to

a normal analysis of historical

processes, and to making life-and-death

political decisions about Lenin in the mausoleum

simply without hysteria, on the basis

of some genuinely basic

public opinion. All right, Alexei, I

am satisfied with our conversation. In

conclusion, I would like to give you a present.

A few days ago my

new novel came out, called The Golden Time.

It is a novel—it is a metaphor about

the Bolotnaya events (the 2011–2012 anti-government protests in Moscow), about the Orange

movements, and among the prototypes you will find yourself. But of course this is

a blurred image; it is not a literal

portrait of you, because we are practically

strangers. I imagined and edited you onto

a matrix that I invented in the novel. But

I would like it if perhaps you, well,

if not before the election, then after the election,

would read this novel, and I very much hope

that perhaps it might, in a way, warn you

about the dangers or perhaps the mistakes

that lie in wait for you. Thank you very much.

I am very grateful for this gift. I accept it with

some apprehension, because

who knows how you have written me there, but I will

read it with pleasure. Dangers and mistakes

lie in wait for every politician. I

try to check myself against a certain

inner compass, and perhaps I can even

say this categorically: the imperative

of Alexei Navalny that lives within

every person—and I have it too. I

am sure that if I orient myself

toward moral and ethical values there, and

remain faithful to my main political

principle—not to lie and not to steal—then everything

will work out and everything will be fine, both for me and

for those people who follow me. I

am sure that everything will be fine in Moscow and

in Russia, because ours is the just cause and

we will definitely win. By the way, speaking of

aesthetics, we still have one more minute before

we finish. You see, there is Moscow in the Empire

style, there is Moscow

in the Art Nouveau style, there is Moscow

in the Constructivist style. So one might

suppose that if, say, you become

mayor, a Navalny Moscow style will emerge.

Do you think about aesthetics? Because

you are filled with the excitement of battle. I

think a lot about aesthetics, and my main

conclusion from these reflections

is that it definitely should not

be some kind of Moscow shaped by

a despot’s whim. I am not going to impose this

or that style, like Luzhkov, who

would personally sketch little turrets onto finished

buildings. I am definitely not going to

do that. Of course I would like to become the

mayor who leaves a legacy for

decades, perhaps for hundreds of years, in

Moscow’s architectural appearance. But let

those be decisions that are

associated with me, but adopted

by the professional community, and not simply

‘Navalny drew something here,’

and now we have this little monstrosity. We

I want—I want you truly not

to sketch little turrets, but God save you from

knocking down those towers that are called

the Kremlin towers. Thank you for our meeting.

Thank you.