Debate: “Where Is Kondopoga?” — Transcript

Political Debates — VII September 19 “Club on Brestskaya” Anton Nosik VS Nikolai Kuryanovich Topic: “Where Is Kondopoga?” Round I Alexei Navalny, moderator: nobody really knows how to pronounce the word Kondopoga correctly, but for the last three weeks everyone has been saying it anyway. Following the events in that city, a wave of similar incidents swept through other Russian cities. Or maybe they had happened there before too, and we simply knew nothing about them. These events have been judged in very different ways: some speak of a revival of Russian national consciousness, others say quite literally that things like this bring Russia’s breakup closer. That’s what we’re going to talk about. We’ll talk about who the rioters are, who is to blame for everything, and what happens next. As usual, our esteemed jury will help judge today’s dispute, and I’m pleased to introduce them and ask you to welcome them. amalgin — Andrei Malgin, writer, author of the book The President’s Adviser, http://amalgin.ru ellustrator — Sergei Yelkin, independent cartoonist, http://www.elkin.ru/ ivand — Ivan Davydov, editor-in-chief of the Expert Online project — http://www.expert.ru/ taranoff — Pavel Taranov, designer for a youth magazine, veteran of the Second Chechen War, moshkow — Maxim Moshkow, creator of Runet’s best-known online library — www.lib.ru And of course I present today’s participants. Please welcome: Nikolai Kuryanovich, State Duma deputy from the LDPR faction (noise and applause) And Anton Nosik, a well-known internet figure (applause), welcome! Dear colleagues, dear guests, as is customary in our debates, I ask you to briefly — perhaps in two minutes — outline your positions on the issue, and in your remarks answer two questions. Looking at the situation over the past three or four weeks, who is the chief villain, the most despicable scoundrel in all of this? And what are we going to do, and what will happen to all of us, if this situation spreads to other small and large cities in Russia? Please, Nikolai! K: Good evening, dear friends! Unfortunately, of course, we started 15 minutes late. As Yuri Konstantinovich Zhukov used to say, “Anyone who is more than five minutes late for a post is unfit for that post.” M: Thank you!. K: Before Kondopoga there was Kharabun in the Volzhsky district of Chita Region. That’s actually near where I was born. There was the city of Salsk in Rostov Region, where we went with a group of our comrades. Bryansk, and then finally Syktyvkar and Kondopoga. And who is to blame, and what should be done? Obviously, the main culprit, the instigator, is a kind of collective image, I would say, a political chimera — and that is, of course, our authorities. For many years they have turned a blind eye, and in the State Duma — I am a witness to this — they pass monstrous anti-people, anti-national laws, such as the law on the legal status of foreign citizens, on the registration of foreigners and stateless persons, and of course the law on countering extremist activity. That is why all these ethnic criminal groups have flourished, operating freely in the traditional geopolitical space inhabited above all by the Russian state-forming people and all other indigenous peoples. They feel at ease here, violate our laws, try to impose their alien mountain mentality on our cultural sphere. They buy off our authorities, and accordingly the authorities protect and cover for them in all their very bad and disgraceful deeds. They come to Russia not to work in factories and plants and be conscientious taxpayers. They come to rob us, to expand the criminal sphere. And if we are to believe the news agencies… I’m finishing now, because the pace of our event should be very strict, as I see it! — the people who jumped out of the buses in Kondopoga were shouting “Allahu Akbar” and adding, “Do you Russian pigs really think we came here to work for you? We came here to kill you,” and they killed brutally, mercilessly, with special cynicism; they chased one man for several minutes over a distance of 500 meters. And as a result, two were killed, a third died later… their ears were cut off. So they were not acting like ordinary hooligans, and this monstrous crime cannot be written off as an everyday quarrel. They acted the way hardened bandits and militants act in the mountains. You’ve seen examples of that in Afghanistan and in Chechnya. Therefore the state must declare a real, merciless war on ethnic criminal groups, make our migration laws more orderly and comprehensible, and ensure that they reflect the interests of the overwhelming majority — all of us here, regardless of political orientation! Thank you! M: Thank you. Anton, please. (applause) N: I completely agree with the previous speaker on the main points he raised. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, many of us here work. We work, taxes are collected from us, and those taxes go to maintain a large state apparatus, including law enforcement agencies, including the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. And one would like all those structures sitting in expensive offices and riding around in expensive cars to do their job and protect the population from banditry, from crimes committed on any grounds — ethnic, бытовой, economic. And one would like the executive branch to do its job, and the legislative branch to do its job. I would like, and here I fully agree with the previous speaker, for migration laws to reflect the interests of the majority of the country’s residents. I would like any legislation in the country to reflect the interests of the majority of its residents; that seems normal to me. So it’s hard to expect much disagreement here. I would only like to point out that we can argue all we want about where the stress falls in the word Kondopoga, but let us agree that the place where we are gathered right now is called Moscow! In the city of Moscow, ethnic — non-ethnic — I don’t know what to call them — these shaved-head gang formations with swastikas carried out a pogrom at the Yasenevo market, a pogrom at the Tsaritsyno market, rampaged and burned things on Tverskaya Street on June 9, 2002; shaved-head men marched with various slogans like “Russia for Russians,” among other things they smashed the Moskva bookstore, burned kiosks, burned trolleybuses, killed two people, including one police officer. I believe that here in Moscow, that pogrom, or the pogrom at the Tsaritsyno market, or the pogrom at the Yasenevo market, or what Mr. Koptsev did on Bolshaya Bronnaya, cannot concern us any less than the events in Kondopoga. I believe that we, law-abiding citizens, must be protected equally from crime of any kind. Protection from crime of any kind does not consist in pouring oil on the fire of interethnic tensions in a multinational country. Protection consists in punishing criminals. In catching them, exposing them, and punishing them. If, because of the people who killed those guys in Kondopoga, the moratorium on the death penalty were lifted, I would honestly be all for it — but only if they were caught, not if 150 people who weren’t even there were found and beaten up. That does not seem like a solution to me. Thank you. (applause) M: All right, thank you. And now we move to the first round, where I’ll ask the participants to answer my questions. Nikolai, please tell us: at your press conference, correct me if I’m wrong, you said that in Russia we should carry out a total purge of criminal newcomers from the south. Please describe how that could work in practice. K: Very simply. This problem can only be solved in Comrade Stalin’s style (laughter in the hall): at night, vehicles marked “bread” arrive, and on the basis of pre-verified information they arrest (laughter and applause) all the leaders of criminal organizations. And I am sure that. M: Are you serious right now? K: Of course. (laughter and noise) And I will quote Stalin again: “Asians understand only force; I am one of them myself, so I know what I’m talking about.” Therefore those who committed these monstrous fascist crimes in Kondopoga understand only the language of force. I myself am from Siberia, and I see that lately ethnic crime there has begun to lower its head a little, because the masculine principle is more developed there than in Moscow. Muscovites are a great Babylon, so there are many people of non-traditional sexual orientation here (laughter in the hall), transvestites… and they sense that, they sense that the masculine principle is weakened here, and that is why they behave especially outrageously in Moscow. Whereas in other cities — in Irkutsk, in Chita — they already know their place. And they should know their place: their place is in the mountains. And if they come here, they must live by our laws and follow the rules of interpersonal relations that traditionally exist in our mental space. (applause) M: Thank you very much. Anton, tell me please: are you going to dispute the claim that a huge number of arrivals from the Caucasus — from the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia first and foremost — behave outrageously, not very nicely, let’s say? In other words, this thesis. K: There was a student rally here two days ago, when students from many Moscow universities — let’s not say which ones — all gathered specifically to express their protest against the dominance of these unrestrained Caucasian hotheads! M: I see. I’m not even talking about them killing or robbing anyone. Just that their norms of behavior don’t quite fit with ours. So the question is: what should the residents of Kondopoga and other small towns do if they encounter this, while the authorities, as you quite rightly said, are doing absolutely nothing, and so on? What should those people in small towns do, the ones being terrorized — and let’s be honest, there are indeed large communities that later turn into ethnic criminal groups. What should these people do? N: The law contains the concept of permissible self-defense. K: Like Alexandra Ivannikova, whom you defended… N: As you remember, the prosecutor’s office itself asked… K: But if the authorities won’t defend us, we must defend ourselves! …(inaudible.) M: Anton, can one say that the Russian residents of Kondopoga — or let’s say the non-Caucasians — acted entirely appropriately there, that is, defended themselves? N: What are you even talking about? On the fourth floor of my building there lived Sveta. A girl named Sveta was walking from the bus stop called Lavochkina Street–Universam to our building when a man named Vladimir Belov came out — perhaps known to some here as the Khovrino Maniac. He came out, hit her on the head with a metal rod, killed her, and took 500 rubles. Sveta was gone. The Khovrino Maniac, Vladimir Belov, was a Russian guy who had served in the army; we are not talking about any ethnic crime here. He killed nine people that way and maimed seven more. The question is: is it productive to accuse any representatives of the Russian people on the grounds that they belong to the same ethnicity as Belov? Or is it productive to grab that bastard Belov, try him, and give him the harshest punishment imaginable? Society needs to be rid of Belov, regardless of his nationality. Of Chikatilo, of a Caucasian Chikatilo, of a Russian Chikatilo, of a Jewish Chikatilo. It doesn’t matter! M: So in Kondopoga it was simply an organized group of teenagers acting, who were not Chechens? N: Do we even have statistics on the number of criminals of one nationality or another? M: I’m not sure… N: If you’re not sure, then why use rhetoric that implies such statistics either exist or don’t… K: They do. N: Well then, let’s hear them. M: Dear colleagues, I ask you to respect our participants regardless of which group you belong to. Please, we’ll have a final round where you can ask questions from the audience. K: Well, let’s, so to speak, make the trend a bit more specific. As Shukshin said, let’s not spread ourselves so thinly over the tree, or get lost in the thickets of Russian verbosity. This is the stock argument of all those with anti-Russian views: that there are bad Russians and good Russians alike. But! What matters is scale. If among Russians it’s 2–3%, then among representatives of other peoples the pyramid is inverted — 90% of them, I would say, require constant social, strict legal supervision, because without state control they cannot live normally without causing inconvenience to others. N: Could you list those peoples specifically? K: I think people know! (shouts from the audience: No! We don’t know!) N: Well, I don’t know. K: So the people are hungry for figures? M: So please, if you can, say it outright… K: I think you can already extrapolate that to all the other peoples who are unfriendly and non-complementary toward us… (No, we can’t!) Specifically? When perestroika began, the issue began to be revisited of how the Crimean Tatars had supposedly been unlawfully repressed. A commission was created, headed at the time by Foreign Minister Gromyko… and then, when the archives were opened at the beginning of perestroika, reports surfaced showing that 70% of the able-bodied male Crimean Tatar population had not merely assisted the Nazi occupiers but actively collaborated with them. So what can you say against that figure? And when the Germans came, those same Chechens fled to the mountains, did not report to military commissariats, and actively resisted. If you’ve read Stalin’s Adviser, there is documentary evidence there — speaking of cut-off ears, by the way — that they attacked not combat-ready Red Army units; the Chechens attacked medical convoys, attacked defenseless people, orderlies, cut off their ears, abused them… The same with the Kalmyks, who tried to greet the Germans on a white horse with bread and salt. The same with the Balkars. M: What is that connected with? Is it greed, loot, or some… K: And why is it that the Russian peoples, the Russian people, despite suffering no fewer losses under Stalin… still served as the main instrument of our victory? In honor of the Russian people, in June 1945, Comrade Stalin raised his toast to their health. And even Pogromyan, not Russian by nationality, a marshal, quoted the following literally in his memoirs: he said that I would ask the commander of a unit stationed nearby, how many Russians are there? If Russians made up less than 50%, the unit was not combat-capable. And even when, at the start of the war, they tried to form Kalmyk or Uzbek units on a national basis, they simply ran from the enemy and scattered. That is a hard argument in support of the idea that the Russian people are the state-forming and core people. N: I’m not disputing that…. M: All right. Let’s take one last question and move to the next round. Nikolai, there is a famous video of you circulating widely on the internet, where you are standing with (?*) saying that skinheads are perfectly normal guys. But still, in the public mind, skinheads… (inaudible) K: Yes, in the public mind, because of this propaganda. M: But still… K: I myself look like a skinhead, but I do not consider myself one. M: All right, but those people who consider themselves skinheads, who catch people in underpasses and beat them — that is K: That is not good… no, one must act systematically and consistently! (applause) One must, so to speak, on a high methodological level, put all enemies of the Russian people — as artillerymen say — onto the loading angle from the reverse side. N: Do you have a list of whom to put there? Methodologically. K: But I already published a list of one hundred enemies of the Russian people; I myself was included in a list of one hundred neo-fascists. N: Am I on it? K: I think you were removed from the list, since you are a citizen of Russia and even deserted from the Israeli army, as far as I know. (applause) M: Anton, a lot of people asked this online, and I’d like to hear your answer. It’s no secret that on Middle Eastern issues you hold quite far-right views — correct me if I’m wrong. So: terrorists and scoundrels kidnapped two soldiers, a war began, one in which artillery and aviation were used. And here, please, some people terrorized a town, cut off ears, killed people. And the local population, the local community, defended itself. And this is happening in other towns too. So the question is: why is it allowed there but not here? Why can’t we apply the same system of action against such enemies, murderers, and so on? Why is it allowed for Israel, but not for Kuryanovich and DPNI? K: A fair question! Praise to our moderator! N: Well, the moderator does not understand that there is such a thing as a state border, there are relations between states, between a state and an army opposing it, right? These are different stories. No civil war has been declared in Russia. And people interested in starting one here are free to pour oil on the fire as much as they like. K: Anton, I understand. May I add an interesting example, by the way? Anton is getting at what? That there, supposedly, it is a war between states. In principle his point of view has a right to exist, but unfortunately it is not sufficiently grounded. Supposedly Chechens are our fellow citizens of Russia. But, dear voters and citizens of Russia, let me give you some figures: in 2003, 50% of additional transfers from the federal budget went to three constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and this trend continues from year to year, from one budget to the next. This Friday we will be adopting the 2007 budget… 50% goes to Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Chechnya. The remaining 50% goes to the other 86 regions… they enjoy benefits as participants who suffered there from Russians, from the federal side. They have more favorable conditions for admission to our universities, where again they do not observe our cultural traditions. They are in a privileged position, and that should not be the case. All peoples living in Russia should have a non-discriminatory legal basis… N: No, but then let’s clarify this. When the First Chechen War ended, there was exactly what you are talking about: enormous billions of dollars were spent on rebuilding Chechnya, and looking at Chechnya it is impossible to understand where they went. Well, when they found out where they went, it turned out two people had stolen them. They were imprisoned for stealing them. One was called Beslan Gantamirov, as you remember, and the other was Arkady Golts, and he was a citizen of Israel… K: Then deal with him… (laughter and applause) N: No, he’s here now. K: Him, Berezovsky, and Nevzlin. You cooperate with them. Bring them in! N: Fine, I’ll bring them in! I’ll pass on your request! So then: the international fraternity of people who steal money allocated for war in Chechnya, or for rebuilding Chechnya, or for other needs, has no nationality — they are embezzlers. Embezzlers existed in the British Empire, they existed in the Ottoman Empire, they existed in Soviet Russia, they exist in the Russian Federation. Embezzlement has no nationality. The budgets that are allocated and disappear along the way, the oil siphoned from the pipeline — there you have absolute cooperation between Chechen bandits and those who supply them with Russian-made, not Israeli-made, weapons. The people who sell them are not Chechens wishing Russia harm, but people who love money. Yes, they are our enemies! K: Here I am forced to agree. So we will fight them together, whatever views we may hold here. My advisers and assistants, of whom I am very proud, have just written me some figures: 63% of crimes in Moscow are committed by newcomers, according to the head of the Moscow police department, and 90% of drugs are brought in by Tajiks, according to the Federal Drug Control Service. M: In that connection I’ll ask one final short question and then move on to questions between the participants. Nikolai, please tell me: all right, I can still understand how you would drive out Azerbaijanis. But Chechens, Dagestanis, Kalmyks — they are citizens of Russia. That is simply impossible. Your faction, incidentally, signed the anti-fascist pact. K: I did not take part in that. I modestly stepped aside (laughter and applause). The whole framing of fascism/anti-fascism is incorrect. How can I, just like Vladimir Volfovich, be put on a list of neo-fascists when my grandfather fought here near Moscow? And now some outsiders who deal drugs and commit countless crimes here are, in essence, occupying my space, my apartment, and so on — that outrages me! M: I see. Thank you very much. We move on to the second round: questions for each other. Anton, please, your question to Nikolai. Round II N: Nikolai, your grandfather fought near Moscow; mine also fought near Moscow, near Yelnya, and he made it all the way to Berlin. If I were filmed giving a Nazi salute next to a man in a uniform with a swastika, my grandfather, who reached Berlin, would be so ashamed he’d sink into the ground. How do you reconcile that? (applause) K: My parents and relatives fully support my nationalist views. And as for my making that gesture — the same propaganda, not without the participation of citizens of Israel, has imposed on us the idea that this gesture belongs exclusively to such bad people. But it is the greeting of Roman legionaries, and there was even the phrase “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant” — “Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.” Right? And fascism too, from the Italian word fascio, means a bundle of arrows that cannot be broken. Therefore, from a legal point of view, not from the standpoint of widespread public propaganda, fascists are any group of people defending some social interest. This was deliberately invented in such a rotten way so that it could be pinned on all patriots. M: But surely you agree that the swastika is perceived very negatively, and you… K: Well, it is also an ancient Indian, Vedic symbol. And I used to… Friends, I’ll confess honestly, I was stupefied and intoxicated by that ideological propaganda of proletarian internationalism, which I hate. All states, including Israel, firmly defend their national interests. Is there even one Russian or Tajik or your beloved Chechen or Uzbek in Israel’s leadership… M: Your question to Anton. Is that your question? K: Yes. Why are there no Russians in Israel’s leadership, while there are many representatives of Israel in Russia’s leadership, and in the State Duma? It is a crying injustice. Therefore there should be national proportional representation in the highest organs of state power. Glory to Russia! (applause, shouts: Glory to Russia) N: I agree with “Glory to Russia.” But shouldn’t we begin the question of the disproportionate representation of Israeli citizens in the State Duma with the leader of your faction, whose father is buried in the cemetery of the city of Holon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv? Why… it is very strange to me: your grandfather fought against fascists, yet you give a heil under a swastika; you advocate nationally proportional representation while representing a party led by a Jew named Edelstein. Don’t you feel any internal contradiction about that? K: But we are liberal democrats, so we have different points of view (noise and applause). If Vladimir Adolfovich were here, you would ask him that question… N: No, but what, there is no unity of thought in your faction at all? Is everyone really pulling in completely different directions? K: Like Saltykov-Shchedrin, you want unanimity in Russia. That won’t do. N: All right then. How do you feel about your party’s historic victory over Rodina and Rogozin, when, following your denunciation, it was removed from the elections over the ad “Let’s Clean Moscow of Filth”? K: I’ll be frank: I did not put my signature under that note. And in general I did not agree with it, and did not sign it. Just as I would not have signed the anti-fascist pact. N: So you… K: I take, as they say in the Constitutional Court, a special position on matters of principle. N: Yes, except judges, you see, do not cash in electorally on one decision or another; they are not elected, they sit for life. But you gained from that. You got an electoral dividend by removing competitors. And you didn’t sign it — you just stepped out at that moment. A very convenient position! (applause) K: You didn’t answer the question. You didn’t answer why there are no Russian ministers in Israel. N: I can say that, since there are a great many Arabs in Israel, there are Arab ministers, Arab members of the Knesset, Arab wives. K: A likely story, but hard to believe… N: Then study the list — there are only 120 names. Go to the website. K: Let’s not stray from the main topic. I think perhaps we should move on to questions from the audience, given our limited time, in the interest of saving it. M: We have an established format; this is our seventh debate. So please ask your final question to Anton, and then we’ll move to questions from the jury, and after that we’ll have questions from the audience. K: Anton, what explains that rather strange creative pseudonym you use on that LiveJournal site? (laughter, applause) Perhaps you’d prefer it if I addressed you by that name instead, no? N: You see, it’s written in Latin letters. I checked — there is no such word written in Latin letters in any language. K: There is, you know, another slang term for it, one that sounds a bit less insulting: landokh. N: Nice one. Thank you, I’ll think about it. M: Thank you very much to our guests for taking part in the second round. We move on to the next stage — questions from our esteemed jury. Please, you have the microphone. In any order, just introduce yourselves, please. Round III Malgin: A question for Kuryanovich. In your opening remarks you repeatedly talked about Kondopoga, about migration law, and you said — I even wrote it down — “they come to us, to Russia,” and so on. As far as I know, Chechens are citizens of Russia. Strictly speaking, they should have nothing to do with migration matters. That is a completely different subject of discussion. So perhaps you should consider taking Shamil Basayev’s place and beginning a struggle to separate Chechnya from Russia, so that migration law could then be applied to them? After all, they are entitled to live wherever they want, just like residents of Ryazan or other Russian regions. K: You know, those are just words with nothing behind them. In reality, residents of Ryazan and other regions cannot live normally in Chechnya. During the well-known events in Chechnya, around three hundred thousand were expelled, killed, torn apart there — and of course that figure is inexact. And there are girls sitting here — now imagine that all women there from age six to infinity were brutally raped. I think that says something. And my idea, which I voiced even before becoming a deputy, in the Column Hall of the House of Unions at one of our party congresses, went largely unheard. It was literally this: if I had the authority, I would lease Chechnya to China for 50 years, on production-sharing terms. And build a Chinese wall. And all representatives of ethnic groupings, including this… (applause) That is the only solution to the issue, and no democratic principles can be applied to these representatives. M: Thank you. Next question from the jury. Ivan Davydov: Anton Borisovich, if someone had told me six years ago that we would be discussing Russian fascism, with you sitting on stage and me judging you, I would have been impressed. But never mind. My question is this: yesterday a fairly prominent official from the United Russia party, whose activities you dislike so much, one of the people responsible for nationality issues, promised that United Russia would initiate a ban for the media on mentioning a criminal’s nationality, religious affiliation, and place of birth. We all understand perfectly well that there is an 80% chance that if United Russia promises something, only Staraya Square (the Presidential Administration) can stop it. Since it seems to me that Sultygov’s position in a certain sense repeats what you’ve been saying here now — about the absence of a national group, about reducing all problems either to migration or to crime — I’d like you to assess this as a journalist, or as a prominent specialist in Moscow propaganda, if we use the terms proposed here. N: Well, I think here my opponent and I can join forces in fighting barbarism. Because there is a certain difference: on the basis of facts known to me, I do not believe that the Kalmyks act against Russia as an ethnic group hostile to it and should therefore be subjected to collective punishment. But that does not mean I support banning the dissemination of truthful information about who killed whom and when. In fact, many problems — including the aggravation of the ethnic situation — are connected precisely with concealing this information, precisely with the fact that in the absence of truthful information, any rumors can be supplied. For example, we heard a wonderful quote here from the head of the Moscow police: “90% of crimes in Moscow are committed by newcomers.” Thunderous prolonged applause. That quote would not be used in racist and xenophobic propaganda if that, to put it mildly, scoundrel had not forgotten to say that under Moscow policing rules, these enemies, these illegal immigrants, include residents of the Moscow Region, Ryazan, Vladimir, St. Petersburg… (applause) honest people from whom they extort bribes for lacking Moscow registration. M: Thank you. Next question. Moshkow: I assume that Nikolai, as a member of the Duma, has some information from Kondopoga. But I’d like to hear whether he knows — because I’m interested myself — how many people were actually killed there? That’s the first question. K: Three. Moshkow: But some say four… K: That’s not the point — even one would be enough. M: How many people were arrested among those involved in the fight? That is, in the first one, where people were killed. Just the killer, or everyone who took part? K: Information has just come in. Six police officers who criminally failed to act when they saw what was beginning there have been arrested, and the corresponding preventive measure has been chosen. In addition, more than one hundred people have been subjected to administrative liability. I can tell you even more, taking into account the duplicity and pharisaism of our Duma: when a commission was being formed to go to Kondopoga, once again, as everything is done here, it happened secretly. I, for example, was eager to go to Kondopoga; I was eager to go to Transnistria for the referendum. But for some reason they don’t let me. They send these amorphous deputies whose purpose there is unclear. They are absolutely unworthy of their status. M: Did you ever try simply buying a ticket? Just buying a ticket and going? K: No, I was not in Kondopoga; at that time I was in Serbia and did not have the technical possibility. But we promptly got in touch with Alexander Belov, the leader of DPNI, and I asked him, as a deputy and as a comrade with whom we communicate, to go there and gather first-hand information. To calm people down, and if there were statements or appeals addressed to me, he was to pass them on. And in the end we held the press conference you all know about. But our so-called оперативные media did not disseminate this information about Kondopoga anywhere. So all hope rests on you journalists present here; I express full confidence in the objectivity and impartiality of the information you will provide about today’s event. M: And one last question, now to Anton. Anton, do you yourself get information from Kondopoga from sources other than newspapers? Or only from newspapers? Like Komsomolskaya Pravda or the local bulletin? N: No, I don’t know anyone in Kondopoga. There is various information I receive from there, more or less, and as far as I understand, my opponent and I have very similar information. About the authorities’ inaction, about the defenselessness of the defenseless population in the face of armed people, about the sharpness of the conflict. As far as I understand, my opponent and I have lived in this country for the same number of years — we’re both forty, yes. K: I’m three weeks older than Anton. N: You can understand some things from the information. The picture is more or less the same. M: So neither of you was there, but you can still discuss it. K: No, well, one shouldn’t draw such harsh analogies. Like the famous phrase: “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it.” I was in Karagul, in Bryansk; I just didn’t get around to Kondopoga. And where am I to… N: None of us was at the Second World War, nobody in this building was. That is not a reason for us not to have an opinion about that war. M: Thank you. Next question from the jury. Taranov: I have a question for Mr. Nosik. I was very interested in the question of whether it is possible, in general, for a person who is not a representative of a given country to hold office, occupy posts, govern the country. Is that possible at all? N: No, that is prohibited by the laws of any country. Well, if. K: Well, for example, deputies with dual citizenship, or even triple citizenship… N: No. They are required to give it up. In Israel this is even more common. Because in Israel only a quarter are native-born, and three quarters are immigrants. And every time it turns out that a person sought public office and did not renounce another citizenship beforehand — there is a procedure for renouncing previous citizenship. I cannot be elected in Russia because I have Israeli citizenship. If I wanted to run in Russia, I would have to surrender my Israeli passport; or if I wanted to run in Israel, I would have to renounce Russian citizenship. That is a normal law in force in any country. T: I also have a question for Mr. Kuryanovich. You mentioned cut-off ears several times. Do you know the figures for Chechen ears cut off by Russian soldiers and Russian ears cut off by Chechens in general? I, for one, am hearing about ears for the first time now, in connection with Kondopoga. But believe me, a great many souvenirs were brought back to Russia by conscripts. K: Well then. That is exactly what I was saying: evil breeds evil. I would actually suggest that every Russian, if — God forbid — something happens to his relatives, should have, as in the Caucasus, blood revenge. Two or three… think about it, be men! (applause) M: In short, just meet two or three Caucasians on the street? K: No, the relatives of those who raised a hand against your relative. These people understand nothing but force. Only force — merciless, total force — when they lick boots, cringe, and fawn. And I, as a deputy who has visited various Eastern countries as an observer, can testify to this. N: I just remembered a living example from life. A man who acted on exactly that recommendation. Several members of his family were killed. He walked all the way in Switzerland to that house, found that dispatcher, and stabbed him with a knife. His name was Vitaly Kaloyev. His family died. K: Cruel, but just! Because your democratic court… N: Absolutely just. And I hope Kaloyev gets out of the Swiss prison as soon as possible, and I fully approve of and support him. But if Vitaly Kaloyev had gone up to the Swiss embassy in Moscow and slaughtered several people standing in line for a Swiss visa or consular service, then I would consider that bastard a disgrace to Russia. (applause) T: One more question, the last one? I’m also interested in this vendetta system. Maybe the people who cut off ears in Kondopoga had their ears cut off near Zama-Yurt? (applause) Which came first here, the chicken or the egg? K: You know, you’re formulating the question too complicatedly (laughter in the hall). Just say it more simply: you’re shifting things from a healthy head to a sick one, and your question is completely illogical. M: Thank you. Any more questions from the jury? No questions…