"Debates for the Opposition Coordination Council (Final)"

Debates on TV Rain.

>> Good evening. My name is Yury Saprykin, and

we are beginning the final debate on TV Rain.

On December 20 and 21—October 20 and 21,

sorry—the elections to the

Opposition Coordination Council will take place, but already

now events are unfolding rapidly. Today

another defendant was arrested—the eighteenth

in total

person charged in the Bolotnaya case: Sergei

Krivov. The 52-year-old Candidate of Sciences

(roughly equivalent to a PhD holder) is accused of having taken

a baton from an OMON officer (riot police officer) and beating him with that

baton. Also today, one of the candidates for the

Opposition Coordination Council was placed under

arrest:

Konstantin Lebedev. On the basis of

materials from the staged television film

*Anatomy of Protest 2*, he has been arrested for

2 months pending investigation. And we wish

Konstantin Lebedev a speedy

release, and to everyone involved in

these latest arrests we remind you that

there is a higher court as well.

And today, on the list of candidates for the

Coordination Council, there is one more

political prisoner and one fewer

politician. Ilya Ponomaryov has withdrawn

his candidacy from the elections to the

Coordination Council, and in turn we wish him

successful and productive

work on new, useful,

interesting laws, in the increasingly

honorable status of a deputy of the

State Duma of the Russian

Federation.

And let me remind you once again: our elections will take place

very, very soon, on October 20 and 21.

The elections are being held on the website cvk12.org.

I hope you have already managed

to register, because, as they say,

there’s only half an hour before takeoff—the registration

period has passed. Registration is closed. And for everyone

who has not yet completed verification, there are still

a few hours—or you could say, almost a whole

day—to get it done in time.

There are several ways to do this.

Let me quickly remind you of the main ones.

A nominal bank payment for a small

amount, a payment via Yandex.Money,

or a photograph of yourself with your passport open to

the first page, which should be sent to

the address cvk2012.org.

And probably the increasingly relevant method under

current conditions is

verification at regional

election commissions and at polling stations

in Moscow.

The main ones are operating at 19 Pokrovka Street

in the Tsiolkovsky bookstore near Kitay-Gorod. And

on Saturday and Sunday, another polling station will open

in the immediate vicinity of

the TV Rain studio,

at the Dom cafeteria on Red

October. You can also come to

the polling stations on Saturday and

Sunday and complete verification

immediately before the start of

voting. That is also entirely possible and

perfectly acceptable. As of this hour, on the

CEC website,

around 160,000 people have registered.

As for our debates,

today is indeed the final round,

a crucial moment, the last group of five

candidates. Some 200—almost 215 candidates

have passed through several rounds of

our debates over this time. Today you

will have to choose one participant from

this group of five. The name of the winner of this round,

as well as the winners of all the final

rounds, will be announced tomorrow at 10:30 p.m. on

TV Rain’s wrap-up broadcast, where we will

discuss the debates and the elections to the Opposition Coordination Council

with guests in the studio and experts. And once

again we will look at the performances of those who

won the final rounds, and at the most

interesting and memorable moments of

the debates overall. The format of our final

is as follows:

five participants ask each other

questions: 30 seconds for a question, 1 minute

for an answer. And we begin.

So, taking part in the last final round of our

debates are Mikhail

Anshakov, chairman of the Society for the Protection of

Consumer Rights. Good evening.

>> Hello.

>> Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

the RosPil project, and a member of the People's Alliance party.

Good evening.

>> Alexei Navalny, a lawyer and public

and political figure.

>> Hello.

>> Good evening.

>> Andrei Illarionov, economist. And,

>> good evening. And joining us via Skype is

Garry Kasparov, the thirteenth

World Chess Champion, leader of the

United Civil Front, and member of the bureau

of the Solidarnost movement. Good

evening.

>> Good evening.

>> Over the past week, you have already gotten used to

seeing these people in the studio. But before

we begin this cross-questioning,

we decided to look at what these

people do in their ordinary lives outside

the TV Rain studio, and talk with them about

how their lives will change after the elections to the

Coordination Council, and how the country’s life will change if the Council

achieves its goals. Our first

segment is about the life of Mikhail Anshakov.

For the last five or six years of my life, I have

hardly gone beyond not only the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road), but

even the Garden Ring. I

live in the center and work in the center as well.

This is quite a quiet place. Here

quite a cozy and comfortable place to work.

The Coordinating Council can and should

become a professional coordinating and

guiding body for the Russian

opposition, a kind of shadow government,

and a professional one at that. The main task

of the protest movement is to broaden

the social base of the protest.

The Coordinating Council needs practical people,

people who really know how to get things done,

who have successful experience in various

forms of civic action, perhaps

human rights work, and it also needs

representatives from the regions. The Constitutional

Council must first and foremost help build

civil society in Russia. As soon as

a developed civil society emerges in Russia,

it will be able to

set its own program against that of the authorities

and, accordingly, win the trust

of a great many people. We will, I

hope, fight for our bright

future.

>> Mikhail Anshakov, chairman of the Society

for the Protection of Consumer Rights, is the first

to answer questions from his fellow debaters. And

the question for Mikhail comes from Lyubov Sobol.

Please. Mikhail, I have looked through

your political compass, and on the question

about lustration you answered,

you answered categorically in the negative

that is, that you are against

carrying out lustration with regard to

party functionaries of United Russia.

So, as I understand it, you

believe that people such as Churov,

Bastrykin, Zheleznyak, and others may

be allowed to take part in elections

and hold the highest offices.

in Putin's Russia. And

if power changes hands, then I

have the following question for you. Do you not think

that the fact Putin is now in

power is the result of the fact that neither in

the 1990s nor in the 2000s was there

any lustration carried out, nor were

any lustration laws adopted? Lyubov,

forgive me, of course, but I don't understand. Either

I made a mistake when filling out the political

compass, or you confused someone else's compass

with mine, because I am in fact

a consistent supporter of lustration. I

already said this during the debate. I am precisely

in favor of the authorities being held

responsible for their actions.

The big mistake, specifically

after our communist

government, was that lustration was not

carried out. Because

indeed, if the authorities feel

their responsibility, then they

will treat

their duties, and the rights and freedoms

of the citizen, of the individual in the Russian

Federation, quite differently. And crimes must be

punished, in my view, and that is very

important. Therefore, one of the first tasks

of a new legitimate government in Russia will be

to carry out lustration. I am a passionate

supporter of these measures.

>> Tell me this: for a week now we've all been talking about

lustration, lustration,

lustration. But what, exactly, should

the form of this lustration be? For example,

say, in 1992, I

remember there was a trial of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) that was never

finished and, as people say nowadays,

was quietly dropped. But even so,

some kind of attempt was made. So,

what exactly do you mean by the word

lustration? Well, it's quite clear:

certain restrictions on the right

to engage in

certain kinds of activity, including

holding public office,

working as an official in certain

institutions, in law enforcement

agencies, or in the judicial system. These are

absolutely necessary measures, and without them we

simply cannot manage.

>> Thank you, Alexei Navalny. Your question

for Mikhail Anshakov.

>> Thank you very much. Mikhail, today I read

your blog. Let me try to reconstruct, in

order,

your latest posts and, apparently, some of your ac-

actions as well. You nominated

the Patriarch for the Nobel Prize. That

was an official, formal letter.

Then you turned yourself in, saying that

you should be prosecuted for

extremism because you had nominated

the Patriarch for the Nobel Prize. Then

you wrote an official letter

demanding that the Patriarch be excommunicated from

the Church. And the last official,

formal letter that you

sent said that you, as the

consumer rights protection society,

were demanding the replacement of

a president of inadequate quality. I

laughed a lot; it really was

wonderful. But the question is,

in the Coordinating Council, where exactly is the

line between this kind of trolling, joking,

and serious work? And won't it turn out

that behind these

jokes and wisecracks we will somewhat blur

the substantive work, because

people are sitting in prison while we seem to be

amusing ourselves by demanding that the Patriarch

be excommunicated from the Church.

>> Alexei, well, without jokes and banter it's hard even to look at

our reality at all.

It's my personal blog, and there I really do

allow myself certain liberties and

consider that entirely justified. Besides,

these blog posts, they

attract a great deal of public attention.

My task, precisely in this format,

perhaps a joking, playful one,

is to draw attention, in fact, to

serious problems.

As for our demand

to excommunicate the patriarch from the Church in connection with

canonical violations, and also

in connection with the patriarch’s nomination for

the Nobel Prize, all of this is connected with

the fact that, in my view, and right now

the Russian Orthodox Church

is in need of reform, is in need of

renewal, and this is a very important institution

for society as well. After all, the Russian

Orthodox Church, ever since the time of

perestroika (the late-Soviet reform period), carried great hopes

for society, in the sense that it could

become a kind of moral authority,

could have a positive influence on society,

but unfortunately, that did not happen.

>> You know, Mikhail, you should just get

a Twitter account. Jokes work better there.

>> I do have one, though I don’t post there very often.

write.

>> Andrei Larionov, please, your question

for Mikhail Anshakov.

>> Mm-hmm. Ah, Mikhail Genadyevich, perhaps I, too,

perhaps,

didn’t immediately understand all your jokes.

Maybe they are jokes, or maybe

not. Uh, in your first essay,

which is posted on the CVK website,

you said that one of the tasks of the KAS, from

your point of view, is

one of the primary goals: achieving consensus

among all opposition forces on

the fundamental questions of the future

structure of the state. You even

wrote “State” with a capital S.

The fundamental questions of the structure of the

state are reflected in the constitution. And

in your second essay, you simply reproduced

the first 10 articles of Russia’s current constitution

and then wrote, “the rest follows the text of”

constitution.ru,

that is, the entire text of the constitution, and

added that the efforts of other authors

to write better, broader, and deeper should

be considered graphomania, and their evil

should be punished to the fullest extent of the law,

except for the terms of office of the president

and the Duma. So here is the question

that arises for me: do you believe that consensus

among all opposition forces should

be reached regarding the current

text of the constitution, which does not need

to be changed, and that any attempt to introduce any

change, except for the length of the

terms of office of the president and the Duma, should

be considered evil graphomania and punished

to the fullest extent of the law?

>> Mm-hmm. Let me explain. First of all, I believe that

the constitution is far from exhausted.

It is quite a remarkable document in

every respect. These constant

attempts to rewrite the constitution, personally, I

do not like, because, in my view,

one can get completely absorbed in that work and

do nothing else. Especially

if this issue is taken up in the

coordination council, where various

political forces are represented, we will not find consensus

any time soon. Therefore,

the constitution, probably, like any

document, does need improvement,

but that is not the first-order or main

task for the Russian opposition right now.

to propose revising the constitution,

changing it, or putting forward similar

proposals. Within the framework of the current

constitution, in my view, it is possible

to build a civil society, it is possible

to build a democratic state, and

later on to think about its

improvement,

>> So, on the basis of the constitution that

brought us to the political

regime we have now.

>> And at this stage, to revise

the constitution, to rewrite the constitution, I

consider absolutely wrong. Well,

with the exception of those articles that

concern the terms of office of the president and

the deputies of the State Duma.

>> At the same time, the actual powers of the

president and the State Duma

would remain in the same state as

they are now.

>> This text, in my view,

is quite sufficient as a basis on which

to build a normal civil

society.

>> Thank you. Garry Kasparov, please, your

question for Mikhail Anshakov.

Probably, following up on the question

that Andrei

Larionov just asked you, I would still like to clarify. You

are, after all, a supporter of a parliamentary republic,

that is what you wrote in your essay.

>> Well, a parliamentary republic, in my

view,

not in its pure form, but with a strong

parliament and a president who is rather

somewhat limited in his

powers compared with what exists

now. That is the most acceptable form.

Excellent. You often write that

the opposition, for many years now, has, in

general, been going around in circles,

unable to achieve results,

because it lacks this kind of

broad social base, has nothing

substantial to appeal with. And you also, in a way, note

that over these years the opposition has done nothing

particularly significant. But it seems to me

that there is nevertheless a very important

point for a person who, like you,

is now joining the opposition current,

but to be consistent, because

the current constitution, it is

super-presidential. So if your

main idea of political reform

is connected with limiting the powers

of the president, how can one then claim

that the constitution in its current form is

untouchable, and that reforms can be carried out

without touching this very essence

of the Yeltsin-era constitution, which Putin,

incidentally, while hardly violating it at all, managed

to turn to his own advantage?

I am only saying that we need

to set priorities. What should be done

first, and what second? First of all,

I believe that in Russia we need

to build civil society; we need

political reform. Here the opposition

must play a decisive role, and only later

should the constitution be revised,

limiting the powers of the president or

other bodies. But if, first and foremost, we

focus specifically on

revising the constitution, rewriting

the constitution, it will lead to nothing good.

The energy of the protest

movement will simply be diverted in the wrong direction, not

the one where it is needed, whereas that energy could be applied

precisely to

developing the protest movement,

bringing new social groups into it,

groups that, although they now in fact

sympathize with the protest movement, are not

involved.

>> All right, the point is clear. We’ll deal with the constitution

later. Excuse me, but under today’s

constitution, without the president, no

political reform is possible.

>> Well, let’s proceed consistently,

step by step. Let’s work out

a certain step-by-step strategy, perhaps

within the Coordination Council, and then

act consistently.

>> If we’re talking about a step-by-step strategy,

fine, we’ll deal with the constitution later.

But take the Criminal Code, for example—is there

any provision, even just one, that you

would change first of all? Well, of course,

first and foremost, the articles punishing

extremism and leading to criminal

liability, because this is fertile ground

for serious abuse on the part of

the authorities.

In general, quite a lot could be

revised in the Criminal Code.

>> Mikhail Anshakov, chairman of the Society

for Consumer Rights Protection. Thank you. Your

answers have been heard; your questions are still

ahead. And now we move on to the next

participant in our debate. This is Lyubov

Sobol, a lawyer for the society—uh, sorry,

a lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

the RosPil project, and the People’s Alliance party.

Let’s watch a short clip about how

Lyubov Sobol lives, works, and

operates outside this studio.

This is the Federal Antimonopoly Service. And

in this building I spent practically

half a year of my life. At one time

I worked at the Presnensky District Court,

on the other side of the barricades.

The Coordination Council, at first, will

be engaged in some day-to-day operational work,

in principle, but in the future, I hope that

the Coordination Council will be able to become,

a body that offers a real alternative

to the current system.

The Coordination Council is a new

stage in the opposition’s activity. It is precisely about

coordinating and uniting the efforts of different

people. The Coordination Council should

bring together people who want to

change something. One of the goals of the Coordination

Council must certainly be the development of

citizens’ self-awareness, the development of

the institutions of civil society.

I believe that all of us together must

unite and start acting. And one

good joint effort shows that

there are people who can replace

those in the system.

They cut out the most important thing. I probably

spent practically the entire recording of this clip

talking about political

prisoners and about how the Coordination Council

should, first and foremost,

be engaged in defending political prisoners. It’s a great pity that

this was cut, because I thought

on the contrary that the whole clip would be devoted

precisely to that.

>> One thing that was not cut out caught my attention.

In what capacity did you

work on the other side of the barricades? Well, I

worked as a court session secretary

and also as a judge’s assistant

at the Presnensky District Court, which is notoriously

known for the Kozlov case and other

cases,

>> which gained notoriety as a

kind of zoological,

>> yes, a branch of the zoo.

>> Thank you. Lyubov Sobol is answering

questions from our candidates. Mikhail Shakov,

your question, please. Lyubov, you are running

in the election as part of a large group of

Alexei Navalny supporters, and in many

ways, you probably owe this stage

of your political career to him. So

tell me: in the clip you were drinking tea, and there

I believe that everything should be

in moderation. If, for example, into that same tea

you put 10 spoonfuls of sugar instead of two or three,

which is what you did, then you can

overdo it, and the drink will no longer be

as tasty. There’s no shortage of things

you can put into tea.

So what do you think: is there some

an acceptable dose,

a non-toxic dose, I would say.

of Alexei Navalny’s supporters in the

Coordination Council—couldn’t there be

a larger number of his supporters

making use of this remarkable body

that we are trying to create?

>> My question is this: do you consider yourself

a supporter of Alexei Navalny? Well,

partly, yes, I partly share his

views.

>> Ah, well, if we’re talking about that,

>> Well, I do not owe Alexei Navalny my

political or public

career, you understand? I still

consider myself an independent person.

>> Yes, I made the decision myself

to run for the Coordination Council

of the Russian opposition. And if we’re talking

about Alexei Navalny’s supporters, then I

believe that those people who

share the ideas of fair elections, yes,

rotation of power, fighting corruption, and

so on, can also be counted among

Alexei Navalny’s supporters. I

am an independent person and

independently handle civil cases in

court on behalf of RosPil (Navalny’s anti-corruption procurement project), and independently

make certain decisions within the

RosPil project. And my work is fairly

independent of the decisions that

Alexei makes in the political sphere—

Navalny. So I think that

if I were to answer the question, then

whether it’s 10 or 11, or 30 people—it’s very hard

to say how many people there are, for example,

in the Coordination Council who share

Alexei’s views. But I believe that, in

principle, all of us who are standing

here now are supporters of common ideas,

such as fair elections and honest

government.

>> In a sense, we really are all

supporters of one another,

despite the fact that here we have to

choose a winner in each round.

>> Ah, well, in any case, we have not established any toxic dose.

Ah,

>> yes,

>> let’s assume it can be any amount.

Alexei Navalny, and everything you wanted

to know about Lyubov Sobol, but were always

afraid to ask. Thank you very much.

First of all, Mikhail, if you had seen

the arguments Lyubov and I have in our foundation,

you would doubt that she is such a great

supporter of mine. Lyuba, just last

Sunday, you started a fight

at polling station No. 308 in

Khimki.

>> And you and the other

observers took part in that fight. And we all watched it,

and by then the whole country had seen it in videos on

YouTube. Nevertheless, all 19 observers

who were at your polling station were

removed. Nevertheless, the election

commission still carried out the

manipulations and fraud involving the voter

list that it wanted. And roughly

the same kinds of manipulations were carried out at

many thousands of other polling stations. And

on the 14th, elections were held in 4,000

municipalities. So here is my question.

After your fight, after you were

escorted out by OMON (Russian riot police), after, in

the end, the election commission got

what it wanted, do you still believe in

municipal elections in Russia?

>> First of all, yes, I believe in the institution of elections

in Russia; there is no other way.

A democratic society cannot do without

elections. Then, step by step—well, as for the

fight, I did not take part in it; I stood with

the other observers and we were preventing

the unlawful actions of the commission

chairman. We stood in the passageway and did not

allow him to carry the lists outside

the polling premises. In other words, we

were obstructing his illegal actions.

We did not take part in a fight; rather, the fight

was provoked by the chairman himself, and the

unidentified person who was shoving

the observers and preventing them from acting.

And as for observers, yes, I

wanted to say that I have extensive

experience as an observer. I have seen and taken part

as an observer in various election

campaigns. I want to say that what really pleases me now

is this trend of growth

not only in the number of observers, but also in the

quality

of the observers who take part in

elections. And we have not only learned

to detect falsifications, but have also learned

to stop them. At our polling station, we

did not manage to do that effectively, although

both candidate Chirikova and

the Communist Party candidate, as well as the head of the

Moscow Regional Election Commission, came there. We could do nothing about that crook,

the commission chairman.

But I believe that we must

move in this direction, we must

develop the observer movement in

Russia, train them better together with

Sonar, RosVybory, Citizen Observer,

and specifically improve the quality

of election monitoring for fair elections in Russia,

because this is a good thing, including

for the development of civic awareness.

>> I go as an observer to every

election that takes place, probably, in

Moscow and the Moscow region,

and have been doing so for several years now. And I

understand that a person who comes

just once and sees falsifications at a polling

station will never again

believe Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel). And, well,

Election observers are a very good thing

for the development of civil society and

people’s civic awareness. And this brings us

to the question of what the

Coordination Council should be doing. Excuse me, I’m

going to use my official position here,

but I’d like to draw attention to the

appeal posted online today

by election observers from St. Petersburg

>> about precinct election commissions.

The point is that, caught up in everything we’re doing,

we may fail to notice that

right now

precinct election commissions are being formed,

and they will continue working for the next five years,

including, accordingly, during

the next elections to the State

Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). And in my view, one of the

most urgent tasks right now is

to somehow get the observer movement

into these precinct election commissions

starting now.

>> Yes, Yuri, I completely agree with you. It’s

a very important issue to get independent

people onto precinct commissions so

that from within they can make

decisions, handle complaints,

and also fight from within the system

against vote-riggers and against commission chairs

who are often the very ones breaking the rules. In fact,

the greatest number of violations

are committed by the chairs of precinct

election commissions themselves. We need to fight

them in different ways.

>> Lyubov, here is my instruction to you as a deputy.

Please take this under your personal supervision.

Please.

>> Thank you. I’ll take care of it. Andrei Larionov,

please, your question for Lyubov Sobol.

>> Lyubov Eduardovna, I looked through the

materials you presented for

voters’ attention, and I noticed that

you are one of the few candidates who

draws attention to the importance of legal

reforms, reforms in the legal sphere and

the judicial system, as well as law enforcement

agencies. Well, presumably that reflects the fact that you are

a professional lawyer. So tell me,

please, in your view,

what are the priorities

from your point of view? What is more important

at the initial stage: political

reform or legal reform? That’s

the first question. And second, what do you think

could be done within the framework of the

emerging Coordination Council

in order to begin

carrying out

reform specifically in the legal

sphere?

Well, first of all, to carry out any reforms

you need to have power. So the opposition’s Coordination

Council, as long as we do not have governmental powers,

cannot implement them, and we do not

possess the political will in office needed

to carry out binding decisions. So the

Coordination Council can only

propose draft future reforms

that

>> to whom?

>> Ah, propose them to society, put them forward for

discussion, for adoption, and

offer an alternative. Accordingly, reforms

should first and foremost concern

the judicial sphere—judicial reform,

reform of law enforcement agencies,

and of course political reform must also

not be forgotten. Constitutional

reform as well. I believe that

I support the idea that there should be

limits on the president’s powers, and there should

be a clear constitutional limit on the term of office

in the Constitution: two terms

over a lifetime. Moreover, I believe there should be limits

not only on time in office

as president, but also

as prime minister, because

Russia has the sad experience of a person

not leaving power after finishing

their presidential term.

>> Do you mean Dmitry Anatolyevich?

>> Ah, yes, I mean Dmitry, I mean

both Dmitry Anatolyevich and Vladimir

Vladimirovich. Judges should be elected.

>> Right? I believe that, first of all, if

we speak briefly about judicial reform,

the first thing is the election of judges. First,

elected judges—or at least some form of selection,

that is open for discussion. But in any case, they should not

be appointed by the president, as

they are now. They should not

be subject to recommendations from the FSB (Federal Security Service). They should not

depend on law enforcement agencies or

on this system, as they do now.

They should be selected, perhaps,

by bodies including the judicial

community—that is, not necessarily

by the general public. That is open to discussion. The key point is that they should not

be appointed, and there should not be

control by court chairpersons over

the work of every federal judge.

Right now, a court chair can remove

a judge at their own discretion. The role of the court chair

should be reduced to, roughly

speaking, that of a farm manager (sovkhoz manager, i.e. a purely administrative role), so that they

are only checking whether there is soap in

the restroom. In other words, they should not be able to remove judges at

their own discretion, yes. And public

oversight, of course—public

oversight, which I have always supported and

will continue to support.

>> This is a very long conversation. I hope

we’ll have a chance to expand on it

somehow.

>> May I clarify: before the opposition gains

political power,

can anything be done?

>> Naturally, yes. Public oversight,

Just as RosPil is now engaged in

monitoring procurement and budget spending of 5

trillion rubles a year, yes, in this sphere,

RosPil is trying to work on this too and is fairly

effective in fighting it, and we must

monitor the judicial authorities and

exercise judicial oversight. Oh,

carry out public, I mean, public

oversight over compliance with the rules.

Garry Kasparov, your question for Lyubov Sobol.

Ah, Lyuba, well, RosPil’s work,

of course, is admirable. A great deal

has been done. Just to clarify: has even

a single criminal case been opened on the basis of

those facts of de facto multi-billion-ruble

theft that you uncovered?

>> Not yet, but we have not stopped

hoping, and we constantly send requests to the

prosecutor’s office and the investigative authorities,

appealing this. And there have already been reversals of

the investigators’ decisions refusing

to open cases. That is, there have been reversals,

ordering new reviews and new

checks.

>> And now a question. You said

you don’t have the proper powers. Let’s

imagine for a moment. So, that’s it, the Putin

regime has fallen, and Russia has a new

government. You have been put in charge of

corruption—or rather, of eradicating it. And

because, as we know, in Russia, as

Karamzin’s immortal phrase goes, “they steal” (a reference to historian Nikolai Karamzin’s famous remark about Russia), and

nothing really changes, and corruption

is like the Lernaean Hydra. Cut off one head,

and three grow back. So what can

be done, and is it possible to do it in such a way that

this monstrous evil, which

is corroding the entire fabric of the state

in Russia, could be eliminated?

>> Thank you very much, Gorkimovich, for the question.

When it comes to corruption, we need to distinguish,

first of all, between everyday corruption and corruption

at the highest levels of power. To fight

corruption at the highest levels of power, what is needed is

above all political will; what is needed is

turnover in power, because we

saw that when Sarkozy left his

presidential office, three weeks later

his premises were being searched. Accordingly,

if we have turnover in power, we will

have the possibility that one elite will

prosecute and bring criminal charges against the

elite that has left office and

lost its sweeping powers. And at the

everyday level, this again means first and foremost

judicial reform and reform of

law enforcement agencies, which

must be subject to oversight; judicial reform

can correct the mistakes of

the legislative branch and will

oversee the executive authorities. And

I spoke a little earlier here about judicial reform,

yes, and the main thing is

to make the courts independent in

Russia by fully vesting judges with

their powers, and by

eliminating

executive control over

the exercise of these powers

by judges, and through public oversight,

the development of civic institutions,

and the development of transparency and openness in this

system. And since, right now,

for example, there is a gradual increase in

openness and transparency in the commercial courts,

we must bring those same ideas to the courts of

general jurisdiction as well.

>> There. Thank you very much. And I am

extremely pleased that by the end of the debate

our candidates have finally realized that

the bell is not dogma, but simply

a reminder that could be

taken into account. You’ve been indulged.

>> Thank you. Lyubov Sobol, lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

and the RosPil project,

People’s Alliance party. We will return to

our debate right after the commercial break.