Alexei Navalny on the program “Full Albats” from September 10, 2012

Guys, turn on the air conditioners, I’m begging you.

There’s no air to breathe in here.

Why is it such a sauna in here?

Right now.

No need.

Well, I think it’s a positive conversation.

Super, excellent. Very positive.

Since winter I’ve had Friday meetings, unfortunately.

with which—but I’ll try to make it before then.

As I understand it, we’re already now

being broadcast somewhere.

The TV is already on, guys.

you can already consider my live broadcast to have started.

Masuda, Igor Butman, and others.

The festival’s artistic director is

Mikhail Pletnev. Information by phone: 200.

A wonderful fight from him. A good start. I

haven’t read anything like that. Good

progutkova

New developments in transport and on the roads. Now

there’s someone to ask about everything and someone

to ask. Echo of Moscow, together with

the Department of Transport, presents

we just put it together, you know, we made

these posters, guys.

Preferably don’t touch the microphone, okay.

Now.

The internet there too, when the flight happened

there the internet... Mother of God, Putin, fly away.

The winner of each round

receives a prize from the Bakhmetyev company.

The Bakhmetyev company creates reproductions

of crystal works by outstanding Russian masters

from the 10th to 12th centuries, from September 10 to 17, part

two: Borodino.

Walk along the siege fortifications

of the famous La Rochelle. Try to find

the very place where Athos had breakfast,

Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan. Take a look at

the dam that secured the royal

army’s victory, and don’t miss the chronicle

of the siege. A tour of La Rochelle in the age of the musketeers

on the pages of the latest issue

of Diletant magazine. Also in this issue—it's hot in here, guys.

How do you even work

in here? How Soviet

footballers were punished,

an interview with the grandson of Hetman Skoropadsky,

and a historical cartoon by Andrei Bilzho.

Look for it on the shelves of bookstores and

online at teletan.ru.

This program is broadcast by the company CV.

In short, the radio station is extreme.

RTVI television and Echo of Moscow radio

present the program Full Albats.

Good evening. 20:07. On the air are the radio station

Echo of Moscow and RTV television. I’m Yevgenia

Albats. And as always on Monday, I

begin our weekly program,

devoted to the key events of the week,

the events that will have

an impact on politics in the coming weeks

and months. On September 15, Moscow is supposed to host

the March of Millions. It is not yet known

where, because

between the organizers and the Moscow

mayor’s office, as I understand it, there are

negotiations underway, but in any case, the date

has been announced, and it is already being widely discussed on

social media. At the same time,

today

registration of voters for the

Coordinating Council began. And this is an idea that

belongs to Alexei Navalny and his

colleagues: that the internet public

could

hold proper elections to the

Coordinating Council, which,

in fact, would thereby gain a certain legitimacy

for coordinating opposition activity,

especially in the coming autumn. Although I

understand that this is a matter of several

months, a long game. So all of this

is what we’ll be discussing today in the Echo of Moscow

studio. And here in the studio is Garry

Kasparov, the 13th world chess champion,

a well-known politician. Garry

Kimovich, hello.

Good evening.

Recently, to everyone’s delight, the court acquitted him.

It turned out that he hadn’t bitten anyone

and hadn’t done anything wrong. And Alexei

Navalny, a public figure,

founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF).

Well, Alexei hardly needs

much introduction. Alexei, hello.

Thank you for coming.

Good evening.

So, the first question. Today we

titled our program

“The Opposition: What Should We Expect”

from this autumn? I’ll tell you, yesterday on

a Russian TV channel, on Vladimir

Solovyov’s program devoted to the opening of the

political season, in fact, one

of the questions under discussion was

what will happen on September 15. And that

the course of events

this autumn depends, as one of the political analysts there said,

on how many people come out into the streets on September 15.

events

So what do you expect from September 15?

What is the current situation with the location

for the March of Millions? And

will the development of events this autumn

really depend on September 15?

September 15 is a very important date, and

it is important that it truly be a

large mass demonstration, but it is completely

wrong to frame the question as though

everything depends on how many people

come out on September 15, because before every rally

we hear exactly the same thing.

Before May 6 they said everything depended on

how many would come out on May 6. Before June 12,

it was the same, before December 10,

before December 24. In fact, this does not

matter all that much. Of course, it is important.

to demonstrate that a huge

number of people, tens of thousands, are ready

to keep taking to the streets and

demand

to defend their rights, to declare

that they exist. But this is

a multi-front struggle. Right now we have

and we are also taking part in electoral

campaigns, what we are seeing in

Khimki, and in some other regions

there is a major campaigning effort underway.

So to expect that as a result of the rally

on September 15 something will happen, some

magic bell will ring and Putin will come out,

raising his hands from the Kremlin, is impossible.

What we must do, the main thing that must

happen, is that we must once again

demonstrate that Russian citizens

are ready for a hard, routine political

struggle against these people, who under no

circumstances will give up their right

to enrich themselves without oversight and usurp

power in the country. But yesterday on this program

figures were mentioned: if, say, there are

20,000 people, then that

means the protest, the protest wave,

has started to shrink, to decline. If

somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 people turn out.

We all understand that these numbers

mean absolutely nothing. Of course,

the Moscow mayor's office is now doing everything

possible to reduce the number

of participants. There is still no authorization.

Until the very last moment there was not even

any clear answer: authorization

or no authorization. They are simply trying

to slow things down technically; they know there will be

a problem with setting up the stage, there is a problem

with notifying people, because people have heard about

the 15th, but do not understand where

to go. As usual, everyone is on edge about

the question of whether the rally is authorized

or unauthorized, whether they will detain people or not,

and so on. So, of course,

all these obstacles may somehow

affect the number of people, but this

is, you know, a kind of

fortune-telling by the flight of birds. If there are

19,900, does that mean anything? It does not

mean anything, because, uh, this is

a dynamic process of this kind.

Sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer. I

am absolutely sure that on May 15, on September 15

enough people will come out

for us to say: "No,

the protest wave has not subsided." But all this

arithmetic is very conditional.

Today Sergey Uitsov—or maybe it was yesterday—

said that he thinks that before

September 15 there will be detentions, there will be

arrests, opposition leaders will be locked up,

five or six people.

Have you heard anything about this? Is there

anything real to it?

That sounds very much like what happened last time, at the

last rally on June 12, when they used

a softer version. Uh, most

of the people were summoned for questioning. And

for that reason, among others,

for example, I could not take part in

the rally. We can see that there is now

an active process of bringing charges

against various people; they are summoning, well, questioning

different people who previously had not been

dragged into the May 6 case. So, of course,

they will try to take some

measures to isolate one person or another.

But, as I already said, this is a

difficult, painstaking political

process. I think that over the course of this year,

unfortunately,

some people, perhaps many people,

will end up behind bars. That possibility

is very high, it exists, and we simply need

to be clear-eyed about it. But otherwise we

will achieve nothing. We must understand

that yes, these are people who are ready to throw

people in prison so that no one interferes with

their seizing power in the country and

profiting from that power. They are ready

to do that.

Well, they have already seized power. Alexei,

to wrap up this topic, at what

stage are the negotiations with

the mayor's office now? Will there actually be a march on September 15

of millions, or will there not be one

on that date? In any case, in September there

will be a mass protest. It will be

authorized or unauthorized—it does not

matter. We do not need any

authorization. Tens and hundreds of thousands

of Muscovites have the right to express their

protest peacefully and without weapons. That is written

in the Constitution. As for the Moscow mayor's office,

as usual, it is tossing around

papers, proposing different routes and

so on. As of today, we

are proceeding on the basis that we have our

application to hold a march along Tverskaya Street

from Belorussky Station downward. And we

regard this as the priority

route. Further, if the Moscow mayor's office

is able to find one of the many

squares inside the Garden Ring,

we may agree to some

other location. But attempts to move

it, I don't know, somewhere out to Beskudnikovo

or under my apartment building in Maryino—such

attempts, of course, will not

No. There was the proposal of Frunzenskaya

Embankment. And, as I understand it,

the organizing committee rejected that option.

The organizing committee rejected it because

the organizing committee has consistently been offering

the Moscow mayor's office what seems to me a very comfortable

option for everyone. Namely,

any large square inside the Garden

Ring—there are squares inside the Garden Ring,

the sea, the streets, the sea, a day off.

So there is no reason why we

should limit ourselves.

So are Bolotnaya and Sakharovo already

reserved by someone?

Well, there are some formal applications for

these locations, these routes. This is, once again,

the traditional strategy of Moscow City Hall.

They find some random, obscure people,

and file notices for 50,000 people

in the name of people who have never managed to gather even five

participants. And under that pretext, someone

gets turned down. Thank you, Garry Kasparov.

How serious do you think

the effect of a large turnout will be

on September 15?

It seems to me that we still should not

underestimate the impact of mass participation on both

sides of the process. And I think that

in the case of an authorized

rally, that number will be at least

comparable to May 6. And today

the task of the march organizers, in my

view, is to prove that we

remain committed to peaceful and

nonviolent protest. That is,

it is very important not to allow the provocations

that led to May 6. It is absolutely

obvious that the authorities will do everything they can to

provoke

a similar clash, in order once again

to prove that those in the streets are

marginals from whom nothing can be expected except, uh,

these kinds of radical actions,

which were actively attributed to the participants in

the May 6 protest march—nothing else

should be expected from them. They have nothing to offer,

so they are only capable of staging

a clash with the heavily armed

OMON riot police. But holding a mass rally,

a nonviolent, peaceful rally that

would end with a meeting, right in

the center of Moscow—I think that is

the priority today, because we

really are playing the long game. Alexei

is right when he says this government is not

going anywhere. By now it is already

completely obvious that a number like,

say, 100,000 people is

unpleasant for this government, but not yet

critical. Back when the

Marches of the Dissenters were drawing 4,000 or 5,000

people, we all said: "Well,

20,000 is one thing, 50,000 to 100,000—we already

know the effect. 100,000 is very unpleasant.

The authorities get jumpy, the authorities wobble,

the authorities grow more brutal. But that number is still not

critical. It seems to me that we need to consolidate

at this threshold. The threshold is 100,000,

and it shows that protest activity

remains at a very high level. And

to consolidate at this threshold means

preparing a new springboard, because,

in my view, an increase

in numbers from 100,000 upward could

lead to an entirely new alignment of forces,

because we can already see what

is happening in the Duma, the Gudkov affair.

In general, the system is clearly

unstable. Some processes are underway there

that have not yet produced any visible

effect, so to speak, but nevertheless

the authorities, of course, feel far less

comfortable than they did a year

ago. And it is clear that the number of options

they can use for

manipulating the protest movement is,

of course, already much smaller than it

was before. And that is why more and more often,

practically everywhere now, the authorities

resort to the last remaining

instrument: overt violence.

Thank you. And now, the elections to the coordination

council. So, today the registration

on

the website—the voter registration has begun

for voters. Candidate registration ends on September 15.

On October 18,

voter registration ends, and

on October 20–21, the

elections to the Coordination

Council are supposed to take place. A lot is being written about this online.

But since some of our listeners

may not be following

so closely the

discussion taking place on the internet,

could you explain what this

Coordination Council is for, how many people will be elected to it,

and how you are ensuring,

uh, how you guarantee that there will be no

bots during registration, well, and the other issues

connected with it. Alexei Navalny,

The idea underlying all of this

is very simple. We want popular rule.

There is this protest movement,

in which tens of

thousands of people participate in person in Moscow, and millions

support them across the country. And all

these people are saying: "We want to take

part in something, we want to influence

the authorities, but we also want to influence

the opposition too." We want those

people who stand on the stage, who

make decisions, who speak

on behalf of the opposition, to be somehow

under our control, accountable to us, and to have

feedback from us. So this idea is not really

something that belongs to me; it is

obvious and was supported by everyone.

Because you remember what huge

debates there were during the December

rallies—there were Facebook

votes, various organizing committees,

splits, arguments over who should speak and who should not.

There is only one way

to resolve all these delicate issues

properly: to vote, and

to make sure that everyone votes, not just some

delegates. That is why we made the decision and

consistently carried it out: namely,

that any bodies that, uh, are supposed to

speak on behalf of the opposition, that are supposed to

address the pressing issues facing

the opposition movement, starting

with which candidates to support

in elections in Khimki, Balashikha, or

any other city, and ending with when

to hold a rally and under what

slogans, that body must be elected

by all the people. It must be formed

by those very people. That is why we announced

elections. And, naturally, the most important

thing that had to be resolved was

to make sure the elections were free of fraud. There had to be

fair elections, which means elections

that are, after all, verified. One person,

one vote. Despite the fact that the elections

are taking place online, we had to

make sure that everyone was convinced:

one person, one vote, and we managed

to achieve that. Of course, this led to the fact

that the registration system is not the

simplest. And even now it is still being

fine-tuned, although the registration process,

I would say, is moving along quite briskly. We

made it so that a person who

manages to register by October 18

will be able to take part in the elections to

this Coordinating Council and thereby personally

shape the opposition as he

sees it. He votes not

only for people, but also for ideas and for

the ideologies these people represent. And

we are confident that in the latter part of

October there will be formed

that very Coordinating Council. The

voting process itself will allow people,

among other things—and this is important—to declare

that I am this kind of person, not

anonymous, and I am joining this

large movement; by registering, I am

thereby proclaiming certain values

shared together with all these people,

the demands for political reform,

early elections, and so on. A

Coordinating Council will be formed as a

result of fair elections. And this will also be,

among other things, an answer to the demand for

unity.

These endless conversations about how

the opposition must unite have been going on

for a very, very long time.

I believe there is no other format

for unification other than creating, on the

basis of direct elections, a single

body. Obviously, we will not be able

to create some kind of party—an

ideological party—in which both

Boris Nemtsov and Sergei

Udaltsov would be members. These are people with diametrically

opposed views, but they can

meet regularly in some kind of

political body that makes

important decisions. So by uniting

through elections, we will be able to form

such a body.

A few technical questions. I

went to your website again today,

and it says there that there will be

regional election commissions

where one can come with a passport, or

this can be done electronically.

I do not understand. So how exactly are you

going to set up these regional election

commissions?

Let me explain. Look, in order to

verify a person, there is a very

simple basic rule: we look at

their passport.

Either we look at the passport ourselves at a

regional election commission, which

is formed by local

activists whom we are confident are

genuine activists from different

organizations; there is a certain

conflict of interests among them, and therefore everything there will be

objective. Or we trust an organization that

has already checked your

passport—for example, a bank. That is

why the simplest way to register

for these elections is simply to pay

some amount like 3 rubles or 5 rubles

for

and it will be arbitrary numbers,

chosen by the computer—it could be

96 kopecks, or it could be a text message with

the number 345, which means that you should

pay 3 rubles 45 kopecks. So we

trust the bank, which has already checked your

passport. But this is an important point. There are

people, of course, who

want to take part in all this and

influence it, but they do not use

online banking and do not want to

register over the internet. This mainly

concerns the regions. They

can physically come to a regional polling

station. So far, how many of these regional

election

commissions will there be?

There are already several of them across the

country. Their number is growing. We have made this

procedure as, well, let us say,

as accommodating as possible, and we have tried to make it

as fair as possible. It is a

lengthy process; it will only be completed

in October.

the European part (of Russia).

It will be everywhere, absolutely everywhere

where there are people ready to form this

regional election commission. They

write to us, they register, and if

they have sufficient technical

resources—internet access, video cameras, and so

on—they can set up such a commission

even in their own small town. To

Unfortunately, alas, we do not have such

organizational capabilities as the

state does. We cannot open a commission in

every locality. If there are activists there,

they are the ones who open it. If

there are no activists there, then everyone can

vote using a bank

transfer. We have a month and a half left.

I think that every person who

wants to influence something and wants to show

their civic stance will find within themselves

a little energy over the next month and a half

to go to a Sberkassa (a savings bank branch), even if they do not

use online banking, and transfer

3 rubles and confirm their surname. That is

all.

Thank you, Garry Kasparov. So, game theory

is your life, right? In practice.

So from that point of view,

how realistic is it to ensure an honest

vote

in the format that

Alexei is talking about now?

Well, as far as I know,

the probability of fraud is extremely

small, because we did not start discussing these plans

yesterday. A huge amount of

work was done by Leonid Volkov in

Yekaterinburg with his team. This

Democracy 2 portal, where

many things were tested. And these summer discussions

will make it possible to form

a fairly coherent concept.

I can add to what

Alexeich said that there are citizens of our

country who already have an electronic

signature, an electronic digital

signature, right? So, in principle, this means

automatic registration. That is, we

understand that, probably, there may be

some kind of

intrusions, but so far we do not see how

these numbers could change the real

picture of the vote, and what is very

important is that you will be able to track your

vote. Very important. You

will be registered, and you will be able to see

in the final vote, you will be able to look at

it. That is,

How does that work, exactly?

You will log into the system and see, you

will log in specifically to

see exactly how your vote was counted. At the end

of October 21, as soon as the elections

end, you will immediately see all the results

on the screen, because all of this is entered

into the computer, and you will be able

to see how your vote was used.

In other words, we are trying to create the exact

opposite of what exists today

under Churov's agency. That is,

there must be absolute transparency. We,

of course, understand that the number of

people voting will not be

astronomical. It will not be millions of

people.

And how many are you counting on?

Well, it seems to me that a figure between 50,000 and

100,000 is more than likely. There may

even be more. We hope for an

increase in the number of people, because

the more people vote, in fact,

the

clearer the message that will be

formed. This will be a demonstration

that protest sentiment is

taking on a more organized form. I

think that the number of people voting in the

system is even more important than

the number of people who come out to

rallies. Because many people, you know, are still

afraid to go out to rallies.

Whether they are authorized or unauthorized,

OMON (Russian riot police) or not, you get filmed on camera somewhere

and then there may be problems later, they may summon you

to court as a witness at the very least, if not

something worse. But here you have the opportunity,

by registering, to record your

civic position.

100,000 is 1%

of the population.

That does not matter at all, in fact.

We are talking about

representation of the protest movement.

We are not electing the country's parliament; we are

electing a body that, as Alexei correctly said,

represents the interests of the

protest movement. In this case

that is a very large number. And again,

given the limited resources at our

disposal—technological,

material—this could be a huge

success. It seems to me that focusing

specifically on the number of voters—

50,000 is one story, 100,000 is another

story, half a million and we may

wake up in a different country altogether. And

all the talk that even

half a million is still

an insignificant number out of the total number of

voters is completely

irrelevant, because half a million

people voting in a transparent system—that is,

people who have genuinely given a mandate of trust,

granting that mandate of trust to these members

of the coordinating council—is far more important

than those falsified elections to the

Duma. It does not matter how many votes they fabricate there,

because we understand: for Churov, a million

here, a million there. There have already been so many

interesting materials; there were brilliant

blog posts by Sergei Parkhomenko just now, where it was simply

shown what really happened

on December 4 and March 4. Those were not

elections; we are holding elections, and that is why we

are calling this precisely

the formation of

the voters of a free Russia, its citizens.

In other words, people are emerging who want

to take part in a normal political

process. And it seems to me that it is even impossible

to overestimate the importance of this whole

process for the opposition and for its future

role in the political process

in Russia. Because for many years now we have

been going around in this kind of vicious circle, I would

say, this kind of Garden Ring (Moscow's central ring road). But now

respected people gather in different

configurations, and they agree on

some new document that

reflects political reality, as

they see it, and allows us to once again

challenge the authorities. It all began

with, say, Committee 2008,

which was exclusively liberal.

Then all of this was, so to speak, broadened. There

was The Other Russia, there were various

political associations that included

people with left-wing and

national-patriotic views, but it

still remained the prerogative

of the Garden Ring. Now we are trying

to break this, this enchanted circle

and give all kinds of people

across the country, any citizens

of Russia aged 18 and over, the chance to speak out about

what kind of

opposition they want to see and what mandate they are ready to give that

opposition. At the same time, and this is very

important, we do not believe that the participation of

Russian citizens who want to become

voters in this free, this

free vote, is limited

only to taking part in the October 20-21 elections.

This is a permanent opportunity to have influence. You

have a forum, you have the opportunity, as

a citizen of Russia, to write about it. And moreover,

this is an electoral process that

will become permanent. And it is obvious that at

some critical moment, using

the experience that we are now accumulating over

September and October, the opposition may again

propose a broader version

of the vote.

We now have to break for news and commercials

and then we will return to the discussion in

the Moscow studios.

Nine o'clock in Moscow. Yakov

Shirokov in the studio. This is the news. Talks on

the upcoming March of Millions in Moscow

are due to resume tomorrow at the capital's

city hall. Officials want to meet with

the organizers of the opposition rally in the second

half of the day. First of all, as

noted by the city's Department of Regional

Security, the discussion will concern

the route of the planned march.

The organizers had planned to hold the march

this Saturday along Tverskaya Street from

Belorussky Station and end it

with a rally on Borovitskaya Square, but city hall

refused to approve that route.

So far, the sides have been unable to reach a compromise.

.

Two residents of Krymsk are suspected of

trying to steal humanitarian aid.

This happened last week, but

the police only reported it now.

The suspects were detained near a warehouse with

humanitarian aid. In their cars

officers found goods that were not listed in

the waybill. The question of opening

a criminal case on fraud charges is being decided.

The Krymsk district of Kuban was hit during

the flooding last summer. No charges have

been filed.

They even physically deposited them into

the account, that is, they

as evidence. International supervision over

Kosovo's independence; the corresponding

decision was made by the international...

10,000 rubles I return, but not a million euros

return...

It would have been terribly surprising if it had been

the other way around.

of the international representative will pass to

the regional authorities. The only basis for

legal

it was formalized, everything was formalized...

He even said that the Basmanny District Court's decision

in fact completely ignored the

complaint itself.

Both court rulings speak to the lawfulness

of the search. They say nothing about the fact that

it was conducted... France and Europe is preparing

to sue the newspaper

computers.

They have now returned everything to me except the phones,

the computers,

ah, and the data storage devices. Well,

okay. At least they told me there: "We

sent them for examination. The examination

can last an unlimited amount of

time. What are they doing with the money?"

No, they have already deposited the money into an account.

That means the money no longer physically exists in the form of banknotes.

It is now only an entry in

the accounts. As I understand it, she no longer has

any cash.

They simply have to withdraw it and return it.

So there is nothing to examine there

in the forensic examination. Russian party investments

were on the ex...

on the exchange, the red... red

at the London Paralympics...

I think that is exactly what influenced...

In Moscow tomorrow afternoon, cloudy

weather is expected, with no precipitation... Yakov Shirokov

Moscow Information Service.

RTVI television and Echo of Moscow radio

present the program

Albats.

Good evening once again. 20:33. Here in

the Echo of Moscow studio, Alexei Navalny,

Garry Kasparov. We are talking about what kind of

autumn the opposition sees for itself. In

In particular, we’re talking in great detail about

the elections to the Coordinating Council, because

it is, in itself, a very intriguing

idea—an attempt to create a sense of normalcy,

some kind of normal process in a situation

that is completely abnormal, which is what we have

when it comes to the electoral process. Alexei

Navalny, you were saying,

I wanted to add something about the number

of people taking part in the vote. We understand

that all change is made by the active 1%

of the population. And for us, it is very important that

the vanguard of that 1% take part in

the voting. Just look—today,

shortly before the broadcast, Leonid Volkov,

who heads the election commission,

told me that initial registration had been completed by

4,000 people. Considering that

this is the very first time this has

been discussed in a major media outlet, and no

advertising campaign has even begun yet,

4,000 people in total. Is that a lot or a little?

You mean voters? Th-

Voters. Voters.

But on the other hand, if we look

at absolutely any political congress

that has taken place—opposition or not

in Moscow—it’s 50 people.

Fifty people who were chosen by some kind of

delegates somewhere in the regions. And more often

than not, it’s mostly just paperwork, with all due

respect to our party structures.

So in fact, this is already

a breakthrough: we are making

some decisions not with ten

people, not with a presidium in a cigar

room where we say, "Vasya,

vote for me and I’ll vote for you, Kolya."

But with thousands of people. We are appealing to

voters over the heads of this

tiresome party nomenklatura. This is

very good. And people in the regions—take

Kaliningrad, for example, a wonderful

city with a huge protest movement.

I remember rallies of 20,000 people there,

when Moscow had nothing even close to that.

Could people in Kaliningrad ever

influence the face of the opposition in Moscow? No

never, not in any way. Not once in all that time. But

now they can choose for themselves. They

can nominate one of their own and support them

with their regional votes. They can

say, "Well, we don’t like your

faces, Muscovites, or we like you, we don’t

like you." At last, they can

have influence. People really want that. If we

say, "Putin, you sit in the Kremlin,

and we don’t like you, we didn’t

elect you, yet you’re still sitting there." But

isn’t it the same with the opposition? People say:

"Who are you all, sitting there, holding meetings with

such solemn faces, writing

some declarations?"

Who are you, anyway? We want some way to

elect you, maybe support you, maybe

re-elect you, maybe watch you for now,

see that you’re working well, and then

re-elect you if you make mistakes. It is

very important for us to be able to do that. This

dynamic voting system

will also make it possible to show how

people react to the mistakes or successes

of particular politicians. Well, you won’t want to, and

you’ll be afraid to make a mistake, if you know

that you can be voted out. But if you know

that the party organization you control

will hold a congress anyway, at which

you will remain the leader, then

you have no incentive to be an effective

politician.

How many people will be elected to the

Coordinating Council?

45 people.

And are there, do there exist some kind of quotas there?

I was looking at the website again today.

There are quotas for nationalists, for left-wing forces,

for liberal forces. What I didn’t understand at all was:

what other quotas do you have?

It was the result of a major compromise. I

spoke out against these quotas, but

nevertheless it was decided to keep them. Thirty

people are elected from the general list. And

then it was decided to give, uh,

some representation to

the ideological currents—

liberal, nationalist, and

left-wing. Everyone understands that this is very,

of course, conditional, but nevertheless

a fairly well-founded concern was raised

that, you see, in this first

vote, and now when people are being elected to this

Coordinating Council, well, well-known people,

well-known bloggers, well-known artists,

well-known writers, are being chosen. But some

political activists who make a major

contribution to the movement and who do the

practical work may be left

out. And we’ll end up with some number

of famous people, each of whom

will miss every other meeting,

while the people who actually do the work will not

be represented there. That is why

the decision was ultimately made—very

not an easy one, of course—to introduce these

quotas. But again, the quotas do not guarantee

that the five people nominated

under the quotas will be automatically

elected. More people will be competing there

for those five seats

than there are seats. And every person, regardless

of their ideological preferences, will

be able to vote. A liberal can come,

look at the list of nationalists and

say, "Well, these three there

I more or less like, but against the rest

I’ll vote," and vice versa. In other words,

this is also competition, but here it simply

gives lesser-known political

for activists to compete on equal terms with

some people who, with Muscovites,

roughly speaking.

Gar, you have to pay 10,000 rubles to

register as a candidate. Why

this amount? Why was it decided at all that this

should cost any money?

Well, 10,000 for the general civic list, 5,000 for the

quota. Well, basically, the Central

Election Commission needs some

money to do its work. And it makes sense

that a candidate who wants

to register should pay—well, it's a fairly

small fee.

I think it's some kind of protection against

nonsense.

No, in this case it isn't. No, it's

money that goes into forming

today, well, in addition to voluntary

donations, the fund of this Central

Election Commission. In fact, tomorrow

Leonid Volkov will present a report,

showing the income and the expenses. So

in fact, once again, everything will be

transparent, everything will be documented. We

are striving to make sure that every smallest

detail is recorded so that

you can look it up.

Is any of this happening by email?

I mean, are you somehow— No, all of this

will be, it will all be, it will all be

published by the Central Election Commission,

absolutely everything. We are aiming

for this to be a mirror image

of that Churov-style

circus.

Well, look. Leonid Volkov, on his

blog,

published notes that he called

"The Martsinkevich Cases." This is connected with the fact

that at a meeting of the Central Election

Commission, which consists of seven

people, uh, four members of the commission

voted against registering

Martsinkevich. He is better known as

Tesak, one of the leaders

of the ultranationalists, right? And so

a dispute broke out. On what grounds

can a candidate be registered or denied registration?

Which of you is ready

to explain what this was about?

No, I'll add something later. Let Garry

start.

So, look, the point is that there are

minimum conditions for registration.

Clause O says that

a person may register as a candidate

if they share the main goals

of the protest movement. That's a very

vague wording. It does not mention

Putin by name, and it doesn't even mention the demands

of Bolotnaya and Sakharov (the protest rallies on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue). It simply says

sharing the goals

of the protest movement. It is absolutely

obvious that the aforementioned Tesak, if

you just google the things he says—not to

mention the fact that his registration

was paid for by Nashi activists, and he was pushed through, as it were,

through registration, yes, through

promotion by Life News and the Gabrielyanovs. So

it is completely obvious that Tesak has

nothing to do with the protest movement.

What's very interesting, actually, is that

we also created, well,

within each quota there is

a representative who can

decide whether a person fits

that quota or not. And it's very interesting that

the nationalists refused to include Tesak

in their quota. That means he could only get in

through the general civic list. That, by the way,

also shows, generally speaking, a fairly

high level of

awareness,

Yes. This is probably something our, uh,

RTV listeners and viewers should hear: that

Martsinkevich's account on the website of the

Central Election Commission was

registered from an email address,

and the details of that email address follow,

a gmail.com address,

which surfaced in the winter leak of

the Nashi activists' emails and belongs to activist

of the Nashi movement, Viktoria Chukhray. This is

really astonishing. Why on earth

did the Nashi movement suddenly decide to promote him?

And here's the important point: you said, a leader

of radical nationalists. If he were simply a leader

of radical nationalists, that would be one

situation. But when he is the leader of this kind of

cartoonish Kremlin-backed movement, that is

a completely different situation, because

we are not forming some kind of state

authority; we are forming a kind of collegium

of like-minded people. If it is completely

obvious that people are running

who are being directed by the Nashi movement,

which is paying for everything, when all these

trashy media outlets—Life and, well, all

that huge number of them—are directly

providing media, PR, and

financial support for all of this. Yes,

yes, it says here that the payment was made from her bank

account,

when the nationalists hold, uh,

a special meeting of their own and when

they consider this candidacy, they say:

"This is a provocateur working for

the police and the FSB." Well, naturally, this

person cannot be registered.

That is, of course, your value judgment,

as we like to say. It is my

value judgment, but why would Nashi

Why would Nashi

They want to turn it into a circus. No, in

fact, in fact, we were actually

discussing this back when the process

of drafting the rules was still underway

in the organizing committee, it was precisely these names

that kept coming up: Tesak, Yakimenko, Mavrodi.

Right. In other words, the point was that the authorities

might try to turn the process into

a circus. And,

well, essentially, just as they are doing now in

Khimki.

No, of course, actually, well,

it is simply that in Khimki they can control this process.

We are doing everything openly.

We believe that everyone should be registered

who is ready to fit into this

formula: sharing the main goals

of the protest movement. That is a very,

very minimal requirement, but it is obvious that no

Tesak would fall into that category.

It's a tricky issue. We debated a lot

about whether a candidate should

have to sign some document, and so on.

In the end, we settled on a very lenient

wording: simply sharing the values

of the protest movement. That is the first point. And

second, in fact, not a single other

person was removed. Even those people

who wanted to run under the left-wing

quota but were not recognized by the left,

are all running on the general civic list.

So this is a very open system, I would

say a very fair system and,

well, a very democratic one.

But the fact that it is democratic does not

mean that we will simply put ourselves

in harm's way and play along with some

Kremlin game of ridiculous PR and

disrupting these elections. We are going to see a huge

number of attempts to sabotage these

elections. There will be attempts to register

fake accounts. Naturally, the authorities, and

the example of Tesak himself

shows that they hate what

we are already trying to create. And they

will use all their media and financial resources

to

discredit this entire system. And we will see

a great many attempts in this direction over

the next month. Absolutely.

Well, you know, it is not only the authorities. For example,

yesterday again, on the same

Vladimir Solovyov talk show on Channel One

late at night, there was an appearance by

Grigory Yavlinsky. And, well,

Grigory Alexeyevich is a man

of talent, a vivid speaker, but one of

the points he made in that speech was

that there is no need to unite, that people

with different, so to speak, views cannot unite,

and so on.

As I understand it, I wanted to ask you

to what extent the conventional

parties, such as Yabloko, and parties

that are now going through registration or

have already been registered—the Republican

Party of Ryzhkov, PARNAS, and

that's the same thing,

yes,

it's called RPR-PARNAS now,

yes, PARNAS now, sorry, I am not sure there, but

to what extent these party

organizations are taking part,

they are all very welcome, and their activists

at the grassroots, middle level, and indeed

the active members they really have are participating

both as people who will vote and

as people who

are registering. In PARNAS itself

we can see that two prominent leaders,

Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin,

are taking part, and very actively. They are

among the ideologues of this system and

among its main advocates in

this part of the movement. Well, unfortunately,

unfortunately, some people, well,

are wary, as I understand it.

Is Sergei Udaltsov taking part,

of course. Sergei Udaltsov is taking part.

Vladimir Ushkov.

Vladimir Ushkov is saying for now that he

will not take part.

Mikhail Kasyanov.

No.

No? Why?

Well, it is hard for me to say, uh, what exactly is going on in

their heads. Let us put it this way:

PARNAS made a public statement saying

that competition would lead to a split.

That is, competition would lead not to unity,

but rather that competitive

procedures are harmful to the current opposition

politics.

It seems to me that this is exactly where we need

to focus attention, because you

mentioned Yavlinsky's speech. Right.

But this is simply a substitution of concepts. Well, in

general, it is, let us say, a kind of

intellectual shell game, because

no one is talking about unification. We

are talking about creating a coordinating

council backed by the people. It clearly

sets out a left curia,

nationalists, liberals, and a general

civic list. Decisions need to be made jointly.

This is not even

a parliament, because we understand that

it will represent specifically the protest

movement, but some level of

legitimacy is needed, rather than just gathering 50 or 100

people who will keep choosing the same

people over and over again. And none of this talk of past

merits—'we have been here a long time,'

'therefore we have the right.' No, everything should

in a sense start anew, because

a great many new people are joining.

In fact, the demand for unity

is very strong. The polls show that correctly.

Naturally, of course, but again it is easy

to substitute one concept for another—you know, to say,

how can one unite with nationalists, with the left?

But no one is uniting. In this case, it is

in that case, solving the task without which

the functioning of normal

political life in Russia is impossible.

So Metrokhin, Reznik, Pitersky, then,

is not taking part in this. Please participate,

please, as they say, everything is absolutely

open and transparent. And again, the problem is,

you've mentioned several times already

the program on Solovyov's show yesterday,

Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky, Yavlinsky—they have been in the

political space of Russia, so to speak, for 20

years. It is precisely on stagnation in the opposition that

Putin's power vertical rests. Because

how can one talk about replacing Putin

when he has been sitting there for a very long time, though less

than these leaders of the so-called systemic

opposition have.

Leave the old-timers alone.

But

no one needs to touch them.

No one is touching the old-timers.

We are waiting for these people, we are trying to persuade them.

The candidate registration process has not

ended. I would very much like Sergei

Metrokhin to take part this Saturday.

It ends this Saturday. There is still

plenty of time left. Unfortunately,

some people are literally trembling over

their place. And you understand, for many, unfortunately,

ending up not in first place but in

fifteenth place is a personal

political tragedy. That is what they

seem to fear most of all.

To find out that, as a result of

an objective vote—because

a vote by 100,000 people is still

far more objective. It's easy for you to

say that. You're being disingenuous here,

it's obvious that you will take first place. And

where does that come from? Come on, let's, let's,

let's ask. I definitely will not take

first place. Nor second,

probably not third either. And that

doesn't interest me at all.

Kari, you're a world champion.

No, wait, no, this is very important,

you understand, so you don't need to... he

is here present. There are simply a lot of people

who hate him,

who are working against him. But he

is ready to go into these elections.

It is perfectly obvious that if you compare

Nemtsov and Ryzhkov, Nemtsov has a much

higher negative rating, especially among the left and

nationalists, who will also

be voting and who, generally speaking, may

see him as, well, part

of the system much more than Ryzhkov. Well,

Borya understands the risk, but he believes that

it is necessary.

Well, that just means he has fewer hang-ups

that's all. So, excuse me. So, how much longer

will the opposition remain dependent on

the hang-ups of several Moscow

leaders who are used to

a comfortable life inside these

self-proclaimed, self-appointed committees?

First place for anyone is

anyone's guess. Even in

Facebook votes and so on,

there were Akunin, Parfyonov, Bykov, who

regularly placed higher than I did.

Akunin, Parfyonov, Bykov

they all support this idea. The question of

direct participation and the degree

of participation is still being discussed. But

the idea of elections in general is, of course, something everyone

likes. Everyone believes that competition

is better than no competition.

Right, right, right—let's agree

that any elections are better. We are

proposing elections. And when we hear

in response, you know, 'well, you'll form

something after the elections, and then you'll have to unite again'

—unite with whom? Elections

are the final stage of any

political campaign. It is astonishing that

those who demand early elections to the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament) are, for some reason, panic-stricken by

the prospect of holding normal, honest,

transparent elections within the opposition. By the way,

both Gudkov Jr. and Gudkov Sr. are taking part.

They are taking part,

taking part.

And Ilya Ponomarev is taking part too.

All right. We don't have much time left.

I can't help asking you about the elections in

October—municipal, gubernatorial, and

so on, right? To what extent

is the opposition participating? What are you

actually managing to do? What should we expect?

Well, today we saw the statistics that came out

on candidate registration for

the gubernatorial elections. And even

political analysts close to the Kremlin

acknowledge the failure of this whole idea.

The so-called municipal filter

lets no one through except those whom

the governor directly points to. Therefore, uh,

I think that participation, and any hope of participation,

in gubernatorial elections

is completely hopeless. This situation should be

ignored. These are not

elections. It seems to me that the most interesting

developments are taking place at the municipal level.

Khimki is what everyone is talking about,

naturally, it's being discussed because it's close

to Moscow. But various elections are taking place in

other municipalities as well, and those are the ones where

the fight is needed. As I understand it, PARNAS is actively

participating in Saratov and Barnaul.

So as I understand it, 85% of the candidates

who have been registered,

who are planning to run in

the municipal elections, are from United

Russia.

Of course, because through signature collection they can register

Chirikova, because

not registering her, the most popular

candidate, would cause a huge scandal,

and that is very close to Moscow. But somewhere

they can crush everyone in a region where there are no

federal media outlets and not much

attention, they do that gladly. They

simply do not register people. And in that

sense, the situation has not changed from what

we had a year ago. They simply do not

register anyone.

No, actually, it has gotten worse. In

fact, it has gotten worse, because

now they are genuinely afraid that there will be

an electoral defeat. That is, if even

a year ago they were willing to go along with it, understanding

that they would rig things afterward, now

they understand that rigging triggers

very strong resistance and then

subsequent protests. That is why they

prefer to cut things off before they even begin. And

now the number of registered

candidates, if you look at it, is

simply objectively decreasing.

Well, an interesting thing is happening in

large cities and in places where there is

a high level of protest activity.

United Russia is not nominating candidates;

they are running as independents. Sha, by the way, is doing that in Khimki.

After all, he is planning to run not not from United

Russia. What a cowardly person. We

tried to get a comment from him. I

was not only thieves, but also

what an incredibly cowardly

person he is.

This started back in the elections, on the fourth—at

the elections held simultaneously with the presidential

election there were municipal elections in Moscow, and out of

several thousand candidates there was not a single

candidate from United Russia. They

understand that the very label 'United

Russia' immediately costs you

80% of the people who might

vote for you. So that is why they

run as independents, while everyone

else is simply knocked out over signatures.

Uh-huh. So you are not especially expecting any

results for the opposition in th- in these

elections?

The elections were a year ago, two years ago. These are so-called

elections. Therefore, if participation in these

so-called elections

could have led to any

results, that would already have happened a year

ago, two years ago. Now everyone is discussing it

as if it were something new.

Yabloko had the opportunity to participate in

elections all the time. SPS, while

SPS existed, did as well. Many people could

get onto the lists of A Just Russia and

so on. This is not something new. These are the

same so-called elections in

which, as a result, only United Russia members

end up taking the seats, just as they did a year ago,

two years ago, and so on.

I see. And a quick word, uh, Alexei,

since there are probably a lot of

questions about this. What is happening with your

criminal case? What are you expecting? With

Which one?

Kirovles or May 6? Ah,

well, let's look at them one by one.

In the May 6 case, I am still listed as a

witness. They returned part of the

items seized during the search. There, judging by

everything, in the May 6 case they are planning to

arrest some more people, but

for now I remain in witness status. As

for the Kirovles case, recently

there were searches at my parents' home. Right now there is

a kind of, let's say, campaign of petty

terror against some of my

relatives and people connected to them.

That Kobyakov factory there, where

only a few people work, maybe 6 to 10

people, and the accountant has already been

interrogated for the second time—six-hour interrogations

and so on—they are seizing all documents

connected with me. In other words, they

are looking for something. Everywhere my surname

Navalny appears, everything is seized,

examined under a microscope. All

related names are being studied, all these

people are being summoned for questioning, and so on

without end.

And as I understand it, your case is already being handled

by four investigators for especially important

cases, with operational support from the FSB.

बिल्कुल correct.

What on earth did you do, Alyosh? Four

investigators

and all of Lubyanka (the FSB headquarters).

It flatters my ego that

this case is being handled at the very

highest level. The Main Investigative

Directorate, the Investigative Committee, the FSB.

The investigative team has unlimited

resources, and so on. Well, when I think about

it, I realize I must be kind of important.

And

Garry Kasparov? Garry, you are good at

calculating scenarios, aren't you? So let's count out

what is still awaiting us this autumn,

because the range runs from relatively mild to

apocalyptic.

Well, it seems to me that

the authorities have already weaned everyone off

anything vegetarian. So it seems to me that

there are simply

different possible scenarios, but all of them are connected,

of course, with further escalation. And it

depends first and foremost on the actions

of the authorities, who, it seems, are

determining for themselves the degree

of permissible violence that needs

to be applied. And it is clear that this threshold

keeps dropping.

Well, if they expel them from the Duma, as I understand it,

that is already practically a settled matter at

Gennady Gudkov. Well, they’ll expel him

will they stop there, or will they go after

others as well? No, well, first of all, there

they’ll expel him, open a criminal case. In

fact, there are always, always

some, some kind of

levels of persecution. That is, it seems to me

that this slippery slope

like any other, has

only one direction of movement. And

the speed will increase. And,

of course, certain factors will affect

the authorities, that is, an increase

in the number of protesters, the success

of holding elections to the Coordinating

Council, and the opposition’s ability

to organize and put forward

coordinated demands. All of this

can additionally influence the authorities.

And again, in different ways, because this

could provoke a very harsh retaliatory

reaction, but we still do not understand to

what extent the authorities can tighten

the screws, because something is already

happening inside the system as well. And this

Gudkov story, it seems to me,

will have consequences. And we will see, in

fact, some kind of surge, a kind of

flare, like solar flares

that can lead to

completely unpredictable consequences.

It seems to me that the status q-, which

that exists at this moment,

right now, this status quo, it

has been shattered. That is, it is obvious that Putin

will continue further down the path of, so to speak,

intensifying repression. The question is how far

he will manage to go, and whether he will encounter

a certain, perhaps quite

strong resistance from the system itself.

Garry, thank you. You have 20 seconds. Alexei

Navalny.

On September 15, come out into the streets. You are needed there.

You are needed there in order to

assert your rights. Take part in

the elections to the Coordinating

Council—as voters, as candidates, however

you like, because your voice is needed,

your influence is needed, your thoughts are needed,

your ideas are needed. Act in some

way. September 15, the streets of Moscow.

Thank you, everyone. That’s all for now. We’ll talk again

in a week. Goodbye.

Excellent. Very interesting, specifically

on our website.

I’d be very interested in discussing it.

Although I already know quite a lot about it,

since we wrote about all of it. But I’m still

interested anyway.

We’re going to actively promote this now.

In fact, what’s important, very important

is

the nationalists didn’t let Saka through.

Kurya had him removed as a provocateur. This

they’re writing here that Sak challenged Navalny to

a debate. Lyokha, don’t ignore it, respond.

Well, they want all this, this whole

endless nonsense in order to

drag everyone somewhere down below

the baseboard. There. Uh,

it’s interesting that the demand

to remove him came, first and foremost,

from there, because the organizers could not

have removed him if the nationalists

had said—if they had at least

expressed themselves neutrally. They directly

said:

"Why are our people like this?" I was surprised,

why they were acting so brazenly

?

be shy. Look, these are people

who are on the internet—they already know

everything.

They’re doing all this so there will be

something to write about in Komsomolskaya Pravda (a Russian tabloid newspaper),

to broadcast on LifeNews (a Russian TV/news outlet), and so that

Solovyov can talk about it. And to those people, well, they’ll

say that he wasn’t registered there

afterward. And it really is very funny,

that they’re pushing such a caricatured fascist.

Gabrielyanov,

Simonyan, all those people. It’s

just

And do you know who came out in support, by the way?

In general? Democratic Choice.

What do you mean?

Choice also came out in

support? Artega wrote a fiery

article.

I see. Well, there they all are, all of them

all exposed, so to speak,

all these stooges dragged out into the open.

No, it’s good. A very, very good result.

Excellent, guys.

Doesn’t poison it.

It’s always hard to go against the current.

Well, yes. But it’s interesting,

as Stanisław Jerzy Lec used to say,

if you want, if you want to swim

to the source, you have to swim against the current.

But it’s very dangerous.

Who’s joking?

The support has to be substantial.

Any support, after all, does not arise

instantaneously; it arises, well,

there must be pebbles and crabs too, of course. So

let’s

four rounds a year, the winner

of each round.