Alexei Navalny: Why am I alive? Well, somebody has to be alive...
Alexei Navalny seems to be the only contemporary politician in Russia people genuinely care about—apart from Putin, of course. And by “care about,” I mean, above all, that he attracts real interest. People keep asking about Navalny: so, what’s he like, how is he? No matter how much his detractors insist that his time has passed, people still want to see him and hear him. His arrival in any Russian city becomes an event; he provokes strong, polarized feelings; and if you go interview him, absolutely everyone wants to know what his plans are and what impression he made on you. Everyone understands that their own personal future depends on him to a large extent. I don’t know which other Russian politician—including, incidentally, Putin—produces that same feeling. As for impressions, comrades, I can report that he looks well, though he has lost a lot of weight after nearly two months in detention. He still speaks quickly and densely. He reacts instantly, even ahead of the question, so there’s no need to clarify what you mean. And if you trust my instincts even a little, then believe me: Navalny is serious. Especially now, after the last two years, when a great deal has happened both to him and to all of us. Prigozhin as a body part of the regime – What do you think the consequences will be of Novaya Gazeta’s recent publication about the secret dealings of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the “Kremlin chef”? Could they throw him to the wolves? – They can’t give up Prigozhin. He’s too big for them, too important, and privy to too many major secrets. Our lawyer Lyubov Sobol, whose husband was actually poisoned—or an attempt was made—because of her investigation, looked into his cartels—not even the biggest part of his business. From those schemes, he apparently doesn’t just steal some of the money; he redistributes part of it, the way it happened in the famous 1986 American Iran-Contra scandal. A large number of people are involved in these operations, and it’s perfectly obvious that Putin himself comes up with them. He’s very fond of that sort of thing. – So if they did hand Prigozhin over, he would start talking? – That’s not even the point. He’s simply part of them, like an arm or a leg... I don’t know which body part he is, exactly, but an important one. Did they hand over Petrov and Boshirov? – Well, they punished them, at least, by making them pretend to be gay. – Sure, but they didn’t hand them over! Where are they? Who’s seen them? They’re well protected. Prigozhin, let’s say, has recently screwed up a bit by entrusting delicate matters to criminals. But they knew whom they were entrusting them to: he runs criminal operations himself. Robbery, fraud, involving minors in criminal activity. Zhenya knows how to arrange things so someone gets hit over the head outside their apartment building. Novaya identified the guy who injected poison into Sobol’s husband. And where is that guy? Gone. So everything gets done—and by whatever methods... whatever methods he knows best. Putin apparently likes that. This story is one hundred percent not going anywhere. – Alexei, why are you still alive? – Well, somebody has to be... Maybe the monks on Mount Athos told him that if a person’s initials are A.N., it’s better not to touch him. Who can make sense of his logic? – Maybe they decided it’s better to keep you around? After all, you did promise him immunity in the event of a peaceful transition... – Well, I didn’t promise him immunity out of friendship. It’s immunity in exchange for a normal life for 145 million Russians. In exchange for him not imposing a military dictatorship, not shouting, “Cardinal’s guards, come out and shoot the people!” In exchange for his leaving before we all die of old age. Yes, we’ll have to grant immunity to him and his family members. I get a lot of criticism for that proposal: wherever I go, someone always stands up and starts berating me. Or they don’t believe me: what fairy tales are you telling? You denounce corruption, and yet you want to grant immunity to the chief corrupter, the chief jailer of political prisoners, the man you yourself call the head of the mafia? Yes—but in exchange for peace. I think you understand that I have no warm feelings toward him whatsoever. But here we have to think about things more serious than personal revenge. Zolotov would never have thought up the duel on his own – When Zolotov challenged you to a duel, was he acting on Putin’s orders? – I think so, yes. Not that Putin literally told him, “Do this,” but Zolotov probably promised: “Oh, Vladimir Vladimirovich, I’ll answer him like no one ever has! I’ll make him look like a clown and distract everyone from everything, sternly, man to man, all this stuff about butts and livers, a show for the troops! Everyone else is dragging their feet, but I’ll hit back.” Well, he hit back... and cut short the march... – Did you really find out about it in your cell over tea? – I nearly choked on my tea. Seriously: I’m sitting in my cell, Russian Radio is playing, and suddenly it announces that Zolotov has challenged Navalny to a duel and promised to turn him into a chop! My cellmates’ eyes were huge. The next day one of my lawyers—or maybe Kira Yarmysh—comes in and asks, “Are you even aware of this?” Aware, yes. It was obvious they wanted carnivalization—turning it into a circus. Something that would distract from the substance. I wasn’t going to fall into that trap: we were going to discuss substantive things. How was he going to explain, on air, his stay at Mikoyan’s dacha and how he privatized it? – Is all of that from open sources? – Absolutely. We attached extracts from Rosreestr, the state property registry, for all 12 properties belonging to the Zolotov family. Total value: 3.5 billion rubles. That’s about the kind of generals we have—billionaire generals. And they’re not embarrassed in the slightest. And that’s only what we managed to find; I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s foreign real estate too. If the relatives live abroad, surely they’re not homeless there? We’re dealing with a kind of economic bulimia... And that’s only the tip of the iceberg—can you imagine how much is underneath? And not just real estate: your own Sobesednik did a brilliant investigation into how the National Guard doesn’t hesitate to cheat even on insignia and sleeve patches. Even during a major war, they’d still be able to eat pastries – Why has Putin’s approval rating become so shaky now? Is it really just the pension reform? – It was the trigger, the starting gun. After that, it became clear that things were not going to get better. Under Putin, people are not going to see an improvement in their lives; they’re not going to achieve it. Before, everyone believed the sanctions would pass or the government would come up with something... Now it’s clear nothing will pass, nothing will be invented, and a working person in the regions will earn at most 40,000 rubles a month. And even that is very good, if they’re getting it. There’s no way to increase it, but it’s easy to lose it. A university graduate in Ulyanovsk knows that the salary ceiling in that city is 40,000 rubles. No matter how talented, persistent, or driven he is, he won’t jump higher than that. He can go into business—but only 2 percent of people are prepared to do that. For everyone else there are two options: move either to Moscow or abroad. As a result, the rating started wobbling and fell back to its pre-Crimea level. – So war, then? What else can they do? – What other mechanisms do they have for tweaking that rating? Either an external enemy or an internal one. In 2013—incidentally, against a backdrop of high oil prices and relatively minor economic problems—the rating fell sharply for the first time. And back then I said in an interview: in 2008, under similar circumstances, they started a war with Georgia, but who are they going to fight now? “Ukraine? Ha-ha-ha!” Well, we had our laugh. And now again I don’t know: who are they supposed to fight? – Conquer Belarus... – I’d sooner bet on Transnistria or some kind of tensions with the Baltics, but the people in the Kremlin are very inventive. – Is a major war likely? – The probability is low. It would seriously reduce the quality of life of the Putin elite itself. What they need is a hybrid war, a quasi-war, a proxy war, because then people get killed in Ukraine and Syria, while at the same time you can still fly your dogs to shows on a private jet, as former deputy prime minister and now state banker Shuvalov does. Yes, they understand that even during a major war they’d still be able to eat pastries, but when there are corpses outside the window, it does somewhat reduce the appetite... – But against the backdrop of all this talk about how “we’ll all go to heaven”... – Well, that’s already a certain kind of derangement. A country’s leader shouldn’t say things like that. We’ve already seen a degree of madness in Putin’s entourage from Zolotov, but the leader of a superpower cannot allow himself that. When the subject of nuclear war comes up, his eyes should glaze over and peaceful rhetoric should come out automatically: “Peace to the world!” Still, they are not ready for a major war: it would worsen their lives more than any change of power would. Notice, too, that the Syrian war has already completely failed to boost Putin’s rating: first, it’s far away; second, war is only a short-term drug anyway. – Annex the DPR and LPR? – I can’t really imagine who would rejoice over that. – It seems to me we should at least thank the “Novorossiya” project for making the rise of right-wing nationalists after Putin less likely now: nothing worked out for them there. – What could possibly have worked out there? What did they even want? Some kind of Frankenstein, or maybe Leviathan. What they got instead was another squad of Putin critics—only this time from the side of Strelkov-Girkin. During our debate, there was essentially no disagreement: we were both criticizing Putin, just from different directions. The imperialists whom Putin summoned under his banners want more. They enthusiastically want to restore the empire—but in the direction of Kazakhstan. – Yes. Kazakhstan somehow isn’t happening. – Right now we’re in a situation where nothing works to boost popularity. So they’ll stomp on internal enemies... Or remember the suspicious apartment bombings in 1999? What remains is playing with questions of life and death; they’ve already tried everything else. – Listen, he himself once said to Vladimir Solovyov about the population under his control: “a shitty mix.” Do you share that assessment? Because, as you can see, nothing seems to shake people awake; they swallow everything... – I actually like our people very much. All of them, including the part of them I know from detention centers for administrative arrests: those places aren’t very pleasant, admittedly, but the best thing about them is the people inside. They understand everything, they trust no authority, and in that sense I have reliable sociology. They work all kinds of jobs, they’re very funny, and they’re all spontaneous oppositionists. They are, so to speak, my natural supporters. – And all of them are there for nothing? – Why? Ninety-nine percent are there for something. But this is not how they imagined a court would work. They watch TV, they see courtroom procedure—in series, say... But in reality it’s nothing like that: in practice the judicial system looks like some woman who asks you nothing and gives you ten days. They stop you for drunk driving. If you don’t have cash on hand—the standard rate is 30,000 rubles for migrants and 50,000 for Russians—you get 10 days. In other words, you’re jailed not for drunk driving but for not having 50,000 rubles. People are willing to serve time if it’s deserved, but they’re not willing to accept a procedure where everything can be bought off. Within the system, there is an understanding of just how bad things are – An important question. You’ve been asked this before, by the way, but somewhat differently. In the Harry Potter–Voldemort confrontation, an important figure is Snape—a secret agent who switches to the side of good. So who in the Kremlin, in your view, is ready to defect? – Secretly, I think all of them are. Not now. But as soon as things start trembling a little, like in 2012... when everyone wanted to meet me, get acquainted, when Kudrin was simply attending rallies... though it’s unclear whether on his own initiative or because Putin asked him to... As soon as things start smelling of kerosene, they’ll all run, they’ll all start saying they wrote letters to political prisoners from fake addresses... Everyone in the system has, first, an understanding of how bad everything is. And second, an understanding of how wrongly everything is arranged. They have this constant inner feeling, like the customs officer Vereshchagin in White Sun of the Desert (a classic Soviet film): “It hurts for the state.” They understand that they are engaged in meaningless work. They see that they can’t go abroad. And that they’ll be the ones made scapegoats. No one wants to spend their life that way. They’re all irritated, dissatisfied, they have less money, more restrictions, and on top of that the lower and middle ranks are terrorized by this performative anti-corruption campaign. It is not a real anti-corruption campaign under any circumstances, because no one will touch the real big shots. But the small and medium ones... First the Accounts Chamber comes, then the prosecutor’s office, and people become afraid to sign any piece of paper... They are all potential allies. They’re all on the starting blocks. – And which of them would you prefer to deal with? It seems to me Surkov is the one who resembles Snape the most... – You want names? The minute I name someone, he’ll immediately be jailed or at least kicked out. But by the way, I’m not a big fan of the “systemic liberals.” These are people who have read a few books, can speak Russian properly, and possess minimal competence. But if, with that competence, they are still in this system... like people such as Shuvalov with his dogs... if, understanding all this, they still remain there, that is such a level of cynicism and hypocrisy that I’m not prepared to deal with any of them. The smarter they are, the more sophisticated their schemes, the more corrupting their effect on the public. Their whole manner says: “Look, guys, I’m normal, I understand everything, and I still get my business done! My children go to School No. 57, I’m supposedly smart, I’m just like you—and I have a house in Austria... Do as I do!” No, people like that are far more dangerous. And they’ll run first. And they’ll get no understanding from me. Because they’re more dangerous than Zolotov, who is, generally speaking, a fairly simple sort of guy. – How do you explain the country’s inertia, if everything is already clear to everyone? – Two reasons. First, fear. In 2012 there was no fear, no sense that they were completely unwilling to engage in dialogue and intended simply to crush people bluntly. To intimidate ordinary people, they keep opening absurd criminal cases nonstop, and there will be no fight against this. People are genuinely afraid to repost my video or even like it. They’re being told: Navalny, with all his criminal cases, will walk free—but they’ll come for you! And second, learned helplessness. There is a history of reformism, and it was extremely unsuccessful. Have you read the dialogue between Aven and Chubais in the book The Time of Berezovsky? – Yes, of course. – I was tearing my hair out: the level of cynicism. Yes, there is absolutely no faith in reformers, because there is a firm inner conviction: whoever gets there will start behaving the same way, will degenerate in exactly the same way. People have enormous experience of betrayal. I’m afraid no one has ever had to start under this level of disillusionment. We really are going to have to start not even from zero, but from below floor level. – By the way, I don’t remember anyone asking you about your ideal politician... – Oh, they ask, and I ask myself too, and honestly I don’t know what to say. Russian politicians have two standard answers: liberals say “Churchill,” statists say “Stolypin.” What kind of person do you have to be to name Stolypin as your ideal? A man who crushed political freedom altogether and introduced field courts-martial? – But here we are talking at the ACF office, on Leninskaya Sloboda Street. So what about... – Lenin? In any Russian city there’s a Leninskaya Sloboda like this, with a tiny sign saying “formerly Nobility Street,” so you have to define your attitude toward him every day. I feel badly about him. Very badly. How can you feel otherwise about a man who starved your people on such a scale? The tsar and his entourage bear responsibility for the revolution, but what the Bolsheviks did afterward turned out even worse than tsarism. There is enough corruption for all who want to fight it – Do you consider a palace coup possible? – Why not? Their nerves are at the breaking point; someone could вполне start delivering apoplectic blows with snuffboxes. Someone looked at someone the wrong way, said the wrong thing, one word leads to another... They’ve all intermarried and become intertwined there as well—in clans like that, the atmosphere is usually tense. But no palace coup will change the system, so replacing the leader alone won’t solve anything. – And yet you’re constantly accused of leaderism: whom among today’s opposition would you name as leaders equal to yourself, people you’re ready to work with? – Quite a lot of people. Roizman, who has acted quite successfully not only as a mayor or anti-drug campaigner, but also in the forced position of a non-systemic politician. Ilya Yashin, who works excellently in Moscow. And anyway, it’s not as if there’s huge competition in our sandbox. There’s a lot of work, zero advantages, enormous risks... I’m ready to be friends with anyone who is doing something useful and is genuinely prepared to challenge this regime. – So what could an opposition campaign be built around? You’ve basically monopolized the corruption issue... – First, at its current level there is enough corruption for everyone; second, my own biography and my profession as a lawyer led me to that subject, and it’s far from the most advantageous one. Healthcare—that’s the issue. Because it affects 2 million doctors, 4 million of their close relatives, and 20 million patients, by conservative estimates. Or education: 20 million children and 40 million parents. – And what do you yourself live on? – I continue, as a lawyer, to handle cases at the ECHR. I also still have old clients in ordinary cases—though I think they want not so much to use my legal help as to support me and the foundation. – What did you eat in detention? – There are two options there: either you eat the food parcels—mostly cookies are allowed—and then you put on 15 kilos in a month, or you eat what they give you. I chose the second. You’re always a little hungry, but as you can see, it keeps you slim. – And your brother Oleg—what is he doing after publishing his book? – He wants to work in logistics. He understands they won’t allow him to. He’s not especially drawn to human rights work, so for now he’s resting. It’s possible he’ll write something else. He’s good at it.
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