The Yves Rocher Case. Alexei Navalny’s Final Statement

How many times in your life

can a person who is not

involved in anything criminal

or illegal say

their final

word? None, zero times—or maybe,

if they are unlucky, it might happen once

in a lifetime. Over the

past

years—well, this must be my sixth or seventh

or maybe even tenth final statement. This

phrase, “The defendant Navalny (Alexei Navalny) is given the floor for his final statement,”

I have already heard

many times, and all of this somehow gives

the impression that if there are final words,

then for someone, somewhere,

the final days must be approaching, and that is why they demand

that you say your final

word. I say it, and in fact I see that

those final days are not coming. And the main

thing

that convinces me of this is the following: if I were

to photograph you like this, the three of you—and

better yet, all of you together, along with the representatives

of the so-called victims—these are the

people I have been dealing with lately—

people looking down at the table. You understand, all of you

constantly look at the table. I speak to all

of you, and you look at the table

all the time. None of you has anything

to say.

Officials, anyone at all,

investigators, judges in civil cases,

judges in criminal cases—you all tell me the same thing, most often:

“Alexei Anatolyevich, well, you understand everything.”

I understand everything, yes. But there is one thing I do not understand:

why do you, for what reason, keep endlessly

looking at the table?

Why doesn’t someone flip this table over and say,

“I’ve had enough. I’m leaving right now, and I’m not—I'm not—”

And the representatives won’t suddenly say,

“Navalny has persuaded us with his

eloquent words.” Human beings are built

differently. Human consciousness

compensates for guilt; otherwise people

would constantly be throwing themselves somewhere—like

dolphins. It is simply impossible to come

home and keep thinking all the time—come home and

tell your children, your husband,

“You know, today I took part in

putting someone we knew was innocent in prison. Now I

am suffering and will suffer constantly.” People

do not do that. They do it differently. They either

say, “Well, Alexei Anatolyevich, you understand everything,” or

they say, “There’s no smoke without

fire.” Or they say, “Well, you shouldn’t have gone after

Putin,” just as

was quoted by the committee: “If he hadn’t

drawn attention to himself, hadn’t waved

his arms around, hadn’t obstructed citizens’ passage,”

then probably everything would have

been fine.” But nevertheless, for

me, they will read out my final statement.

It is fairly pointless, and yet—here is the thing:

these people looking at the table are, in the larger sense,

the battlefield on which the struggle

between the crooks who have

seized power and normal people

who want to change that power is taking place. We are

fighting for those people looking at the table, for those

who just shrug their shoulders and do

nothing, and in circumstances where they could

simply refrain from doing something vile,

they do it anyway. There is that well-known quote—everyone

is quoting someone today—about how

everyone was taught... from the famous book/play

To Kill a Dragon: “Everyone was taught bad things. But

why, you swine, did you turn out to be the first

student?” This is not addressed specifically to

the court. It is addressed simply to the enormous

number of people looking at the table,

who are either simply forced to do

something vile, or—more often than not—

when no one is forcing them to do that

vile thing and no one is even asking them to, they simply

look at the table, turn away, and

try to ignore everything

that is happening. And our

battle for the people looking at the table is to

explain to you once again, so that you would not

just look down, but admit to yourselves that everything

in our beautiful country, unfortunately,

all power, everything that happens, is based

on endless lies. I am standing here and

I am ready to

put up with anything,

but I will not tolerate lies. Everything here is, in the

literal sense, lies about everything, from

the first word to the last. You understand,

they tell me

that the interests of Russians in

Turkmenistan do not exist. But for the sake of

the interests of Russians in Ukraine, they say, one must start

a war. They tell me that Russians in Chechnya

are not being

wronged. They tell me

that corruption does not exist.

I bring documents showing that these

specific officials have

undeclared property, they have

companies, and I am told that none of this

exists. I say that we are ready to go to

the elections and defeat you there; we

register a party, we do many

things, and I am told: “That is all nonsense. We win

elections, and you do not

take part in them—not because

we do not allow you to, but because you

filled out your documents incorrectly.” Everything

is built on lies, on hourly lies,

you understand? And the more convincing

the evidence any one of us brings of anything,

the

greater the lies he

runs into. And these lies—they are simply not

they have ceased to be a mechanism that

it uses the state; that has become its very essence

of state power, its essence, we

watch speeches by the top officials, and there too

there are lies from the first word to the last, in

big things and small. Yesterday Putin speaks and says

Putin says, “We have no palaces.” Right, and yet we

photograph these palaces, three a month

at a time, post them, show them—and still, “We have no

palaces.” “So we don’t have some kind of

oligarchs feeding off

the state?” But there they are, right in front of you.

Look at the documents showing how the head of

Russian Railways transferred half of a state corporation to Cypriot and Panamanian offshore

companies—half of a state corporation, already

registered away. “None of this exists.” No. Why

put up with it?

this

life is too short to keep staring down at the desk

when all is said and done. Really, what is there in

this life? Before we know it—I haven’t even

had time to look around, and I’m already almost 40. I won’t

have time to look around again, and there will be grandchildren. And then

before any of us know it, we’ll already be

lying in bed, with

relatives standing around us, thinking only

“If only he’d hurry up and die and free up

the apartment space,” and at some point we’ll

understand that none of it made any sense at all—

nothing we did, none of the things we did for

which we looked down and stayed silent. And the only thing that

has meaning is

those moments in our lives, that time when

we do something right. When we don’t

have to stare at the desk, but can honestly

look each other in the eye, simply

raise our eyes. That is what has meaning, and

everything else has no meaning. That is exactly

why

And yes, for me this is, of course—I won’t hide it—

a fairly painful situation

and

a cunning, painful method that the Kremlin chose

to fight me, when they don’t

just try to imprison me, but

also drag in innocent

people—officers, men with five children. I

have to look his wife in the eye, and so

on. I’m sure many people in the

Bolotnaya case were imprisoned for nothing, simply

in order to intimidate me and people like me,

so-called opposition leaders. Now my brother—

you understand—he also has a wife

and two children, and now I somehow have to

deal with my parents—you understand, everyone, everyone

understands and supports me. I’m very

grateful to my family. But this is one thing I

admit—pass this on to them all: yes, they

do get to me with this, of course, by

dragging innocent people along with me,

like train cars coupled behind a locomotive.

But maybe I’ll say something harsh, yes, but

even taking hostages won’t

stop me, because in this life there is meaning

only if you reject lies, if you refuse to be

in agreement with everything, and for no reason at all

just to agree because, well, we

agree. I will never agree with the

system that has now been built in

this country, because that system is designed

to rob everyone who is sitting in

this hall. Everything here is arranged in such

a way that there is, in fact,

a junta—literally a junta—of 20

people who

have seized everything, from state procurement to the sale

There are people who are on

some major feeding trough of this junta,

but in reality there are no more than a few hundred thousand of them.

The deputies, the main

crooks—there are a few percent

of the active population who don’t like this. There are millions who, by

looking down at the desk,

I will not stop

the theft

by those very people who stare at the desk—

you included, all of you. I will never stop this

otherwise. And I can say that I do not regret

calling people then to an

unauthorized protest. By the way, it

was quite unsuccessful—that

protest at Lubyanka that started it all

was, frankly speaking, basically

a failure. But I do not regret for a single

second

doing it.

The path I chose toward fighting

corruption through investigations and so

on—lawyer Kobzev once, several

years ago, when we were working through one

of the cases—I don’t remember now whether it was Gazprom or

VTB—told me something that I

remember. He said, “Alexei, they will definitely

put you in prison. They’ll

put you

away.”

Again, human consciousness

compensates for all this—you can’t live

all the time thinking, “Oh, they’ll imprison me.” It

gets pushed out of your mind. But nevertheless, I

was fully aware of all of it. I can

say that I do not regret a single one of my

actions. I can say that I will

continue to call on people to take part in

collective action, including

exercising their right to freedom of

assembly. And once again I want

to say, in this courtroom, into this camera, I don’t know,

and anywhere else: yes, I believe that people

have a lawful right to rise up

against this unjust

corrupt government, against the junta

that has stolen everything, that has seized everything,

that has siphoned trillions of dollars

out of our country through the sale of oil and

gas—and what have we received from all of that?

Nothing. In this part, I am repeating what

I said in my final statement in the Kirovles case:

nothing at all.

Things changed because we let them — we ourselves let them.

We let them, staring down at the table, we let them.

We let them rob us; we let them take all this

stolen money and invest it somewhere

in Europe. We allowed them to turn us into

some kind of

cattle, so that we accepted what they

paid us off with. And what did they pay

you with, staring down at the table? Nothing.

Healthcare? Do you have it? No, you don’t.

You don’t.

Healthcare, education — do you have them?

No, you don’t have education. Did they give you roads?

Good ones? No, they didn’t give you good roads.

Bailiffs? Let’s ask: what is

the salary of a court clerk — 8,000 or

9,000 rubles? Well, fine, I don’t know, maybe with

all the bonuses it might be 15,000 rubles.

A bailiff — I’d be very surprised if they

make more than 35,000–40,000 rubles

a month. You see, it’s a paradoxical

situation, when in fact a dozen

crooks, just a dozen crooks, rob all of us — you,

me, anyone at all — every

day, and we put up with it. I will not put up with it.

I’ll say it again: for as long as necessary

I will stand here, a meter away from this

cage — a meter away, or already inside this cage, I

will stand here. There are things more important. And I wanted

to say once again, in closing,

that the trick worked with my family, with

my loved ones. But even so, we need

to remember that

they support me in everything, but

my brother, in fact, was never planning

to become a political activist.

So there is absolutely no need to imprison my

brother for 8 years, or at all

to imprison him. He was not going to engage in

political activity.

Our family has already been made to endure enough

pain and suffering in connection

with this. There is no need to make it

all worse. As I already said, taking

hostages will not stop me, but even so

I do not see why the authorities need to

kill these hostages.

Now I call on everyone

absolutely — and you know, this may sound naive,

and people may laugh at these words,

the title of that famous article ("Live Not by Lies"),

to adopt it in our country. In this

situation, there is no other solution.

I want to thank everyone for

their support. I want to call on everyone to live not

by lies. I want to say that I am absolutely

certain that they will isolate me, imprison me, and

so on. But, as they say, someone else will

take my place. There is nothing unique or

difficult about what I have ever done. Everything I

do can be done by anyone. I am

sure that in the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF)

and elsewhere there will be people who will

continue doing the same thing, regardless

of the decisions of these courts,

whose only purpose is to give

an appearance of legality. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead.