Broadcast of "Albats in Full" from August 26, 2019

Good evening. It’s 8:04 p.m. You’re listening to Echo of Moscow radio. This is Yevgenia Albats, and I’m beginning our program devoted to the key events of the week — the events that will shape politics in the coming weeks and months. The protests, the Moscow case, and the September 8 elections. What strategy people should choose when they vote. That is exactly what we’ll be discussing today with Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny, who was released a few days ago after serving a 30-day administrative detention in a special detention center. Alexei, hello.

Good evening. It’s much nicer here in your studio than in Special Detention Center No. 1. Not a pretrial detention center, after all, but a special detention center. Still, it’s much better here.

Yes. But you look well. I even thought maybe you can sunbathe on the roof there.

Cold and hunger are good for everyone. That detention center is very disciplining — you end up living a healthy lifestyle there. Three meals a day on schedule. You sleep a lot. Or lie down a lot. The only problem is the cigarettes, the endless cigarette smoke around the clock. That’s not great. Otherwise, I recommend it to everyone. Citizens, take part in rallies…

And then you can get some rest.

And then you’ll come on Echo of Moscow and they’ll tell you: you look wonderful after your arrest.

How are you feeling?

Fine.

What was that allergy, after all? We saw the photo — swollen face, swollen brow ridges.

You saw the photo when it had almost all gone away. If you’d seen the photo the next morning, when my cellmate saw me and, with a horrified look on his face, said I needed a doctor immediately... By the time they brought me back from the hospital to the cell, I had methodically tried every small bit of toiletries available there. Wet wipes. This soap, that soap. In other words, I tried everything I could touch in the cell and found not the slightest reaction. I am absolutely convinced that someone applied something — some kind of substance — either to the pillowcase or to the towel in order to trigger what they called an allergic reaction. Contact dermatitis. The doctors said: you touched something that caused these consequences. I have never had allergies in my life. I don’t know what I could have touched there, especially considering that I had already spent a 10-day arrest in that same cell two weeks before the latest arrest. After that I was there again for four days. As you understand, there aren’t that many things in a cell that you can touch. If you’re out in the world, you can say, who knows what you touched. But not there. So I have no doubt whatsoever that this was a malicious act. The only thing is, I have no explanation as to why they would do it, because when something happens to you in a place of confinement, it’s obvious the state is involved — it doesn’t point to anyone else.

Why is clear enough.

Explain it to me.

To scare you.

I wasn’t all that scared. It was pretty unpleasant, of course, and that night, when I realized my whole face was burning, I did think of a possible Yushchenko-like scenario (a reference to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who was disfigured after poisoning), and I got a bit depressed. But what is there to be afraid of? They should have tried to scare me earlier.

You want to stay handsome, Navalny, don’t you?

No, I just want to look normal, frankly speaking. At the very least, normal.

You mentioned Yushchenko. Are your doctors planning to conduct any kind of investigation?

And what means do they have to investigate? We filed a request to open a criminal case. We demanded an official investigation. There’s nothing more we can do. And what’s astonishing is that a month has already passed since we filed it, demanding the video footage too. Because this would actually be easy to establish. You just need to see who entered the cell. There are cameras there. Everything is recorded. But they haven’t even questioned me in the case. You can file any complaint, even the most absurd one, and the first thing they do is at least question you. But in this case, even that hasn’t happened.

I see. Yashin, Gudkov, Galyamina have all been given additional jail terms. You were released after 30 days of administrative detention. Do you have an explanation? To be honest, everyone thought they’d meet you outside the detention center and send you right back...

I thought so too. I was the first one to think that.

I remember, I read your tweet. Do you have any explanation for what game the authorities are playing?

I don’t think it lends itself to any rational interpretation. Just like this poisoning. Or the other poisonings. Kara-Murza, Verzilov, anyone. These are absurd steps. There are some people sitting there who think they have a cunning plan. And this cunning plan is that Yashin should be jailed four times, Milov one and a half times, me once, and Galyamina — poor Galyamina. I saw her when they brought her to our detention center. First of all, they brought her with a huge convoy, several special forces officers on a bus. And she was dragging her bags. I said to her through the little window...

There’s a certain male condescension in that. The way you said it: poor Galyamina. She has, by the way, become a national-level politician.

She’s unfortunate in the sense that any detainee is unfortunate to some extent. She doesn’t belong there, she has no business there at all. But her courage and bravery in this situation are certainly admirable. It’s just that you see this person — they bring in this barred-up bus, all the special forces officers get out, and I’m watching, thinking: are they here for me? And then after a while Galyamina comes out, dragging plastic bags with all her belongings, because they were transferring her from one detention center to another.

They brought her to yours.

Of course, because before that she’d been in the Moscow region. And it looked wild. So how do you interpret the fact that some idiots in the presidential administration, in coordination with idiots in city hall — not idiots, villains — for some reason decided that the right thing was to jail Galyamina for such-and-such a term? There are basic explanations. They’re just trying to intimidate everyone. To spread fear. So that every person sees: if they jailed Galyamina — a woman, a PhD, with the academic community speaking up for her — then of course they’ll jail me too. That’s the main idea.

They even transported Ilya Yashin with a dog. He explained on Facebook that they said it was because he was considered an escape risk.

Any of these unregistered candidates is treated like a highly dangerous criminal, judging by the precautions. But again, this is what you might call rubbing it in. You see? Not just refusing to register them, but jailing them too. It’s a demonstrative gesture. That’s exactly why in my video today — and in general now — I’m saying that when you look at all this, of course you feel a whole range of emotions. But that range of emotions should still lead to political action. From going to rallies and taking part in protests to going to the polls and taking part in Smart Voting, so as not to let Sobyanin, Kiriyenko, whoever, or Sergunina win in this way. Because they’ve said: we’ll win by jailing the hell out of all of you. We need to show them that won’t work.

We will definitely talk about Smart Voting, but I wanted to ask you about something else. I watched your new video today, where you introduced us to the properties of Deputy Mayor Gorbenko. Estates covering several hectares, nine houses, a lake, a sports ground, and all the rest of that oligarchic luxury. Where does a deputy mayor get that kind of money for an estate like that? And the most remarkable thing, of course, is that one of the houses is registered to some fictional person — Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov.

Exactly right.

Absolutely fascinating. Tell me, please: we’ve seen several raids on the ACF. You were already jailed, then there were several raids on the ACF, equipment was seized. Then they came to one studio, then to a backup studio from which Lyubov Sobol was broadcasting, forced ten people face down on the floor, and so on. How do you do it? Explain. Is it some kind of renewable resource? Cameras, editing equipment — because I looked, and the only thing you didn’t have today was a chroma key. Otherwise everything else was there. How do you do it?

First of all, there really are powerful people behind us. There are tens of thousands of people behind us who send us money. And, by the way, every time the authorities stage these raids, they send us even more money. Though right now even newly sent money is still blocked.

How so? Volkov told me they had blocked 24 million rubles, but that people could still send money.

Yes, they corrected that mistake, so now all the accounts... That’s why we’re not fundraising at the moment. There’s basically nowhere to send it. On top of that, many employees have simply had their bank cards blocked. They can’t go buy bread, they can’t pay rent, because all their accounts are blocked. Completely illegal and outrageous. But the value and strength of the ACF are not in computers or cameras. They’re in people. The people are there, working — people who, after running into yet another act of lawlessness, including against their colleagues... I got out, and they told me: we’re going to do an investigation every day. I said: are you out of your minds? First of all, recording, editing, assembling an evidentiary base — that’s very hard. No, they said, investigations are our job. And I said in today’s video that we’re going to release investigations every day. And we will, because we have employees — wonderful people — who can do these investigations. We’ll figure out the technical side somehow.

How many of your people are in jail right now? Has your Navalny штаб chief been released yet?

Zhdanov.

No, Ivan Zhdanov — that’s an amazing story.

It’s a very funny story. They simply forgot to escort him from one place to another.

That says — I always think, what is the word... Svetlana Rostovtseva, what is the word for the law enforcement agencies — let’s skip the word, everyone can insert their own. That will surely save us.

Yes. The level of degradation and absurdity is obvious, because they literally forgot to transfer a person from one place to another. Right now no one from the ACF itself is under arrest. But there’s a criminal case, frozen accounts, and so on.

That’s what they call “money laundering.” Plus there are lawsuits from Mosgortrans...

From all these organizations. On my way here I read an amazing news item saying that the metro explained its lawsuit against me — among others — by saying they had to call in eight extra employees to work that day. In that case, of course, for any Moscow holiday, any mass celebration, or especially a hockey or football match, the metro should definitely sue the organizers. Every time.

What is the total amount of claims against you now?

I don’t know, honestly.

How are you planning to wriggle out of this, Alyosha?

Well, we’ll somehow work our way through it as we go. Look, they...

Lyuba Sobol alone has, I think, 900,000 rubles in claims.

That’s just in fines for the announced rallies. It’s clear why they’re doing this. First, to take everyone’s money, freeze all the accounts — obviously no one has sums like that. They’ll seize all the money of all these 12 people. Mainly me and the independent candidates. They’ll probably want to force everyone into personal bankruptcy. They’ll ban everyone from leaving the country. As I understand it, that’s the plan: debt, bailiffs, and you can’t travel abroad.

But what’s the point? Their tactic used to be precisely to push people out of the country.

That used to be the tactic. But after recent events, when they realized we would beat them in Moscow and that people, instead of ignoring things, are ready to come out to rallies and protests, their tactic changed. There are clever people sitting there, after all. They have flexible tactics.

About fifteen people are now jailed in the so-called Moscow case. It’s obvious that more than one or two of them will end up being sent away to prison camps. Do you have any strategy for how you’re going to save these people?

I wrote a long post about this: there is no strategy in the sense of, we know exactly what sequence of actions to start, carry out, and then they’ll be freed — no. And I can repeat what I wrote. For them to be released, 300,000 people need to come out to Manezhnaya Square and refuse to leave. Then they’ll be released immediately. What we can and must do now is simply any action that increases pressure on this government. First, just try to ease the burden as much as possible. Meaning, bluntly, raising money for these people. Because being in jail is expensive. It’s very hard on their relatives, especially if the people aren’t from Moscow. So first, we need to raise money for them; second, we need to run information campaigns, come and support them. Political prisoners in Russia are here to stay until the end of Putin’s regime. Since 2012, when this began, Russia has always had several dozen political prisoners. And it will only increase, even without any rallies. As we’ve seen from completely fabricated, idiotic, absurd cases. The Network case (an organization banned in Russia), New Greatness — those are the famous ones, but how many such cases are there in the regions? And in the Caucasus? They churn out these so-called extremist organizations like pies. They just take random people and declare them terrorists. In that sense, there will unfortunately be quite a lot of political prisoners, and our task is simply to do something for them every day to help secure their release. To ease their burden. But without building illusions that we’ll do something and they’ll immediately be freed. Because this is part of Putin’s mechanism of rule. Putin needs political prisoners. Otherwise he can’t intimidate more people.

In your post today you said that Russia has an electoral regime. A book by Professor Golosov of the European University, an excellent Russian political scientist, has just come out — about authoritarianism.

I hope he’s not angry with me, because I do, of course, borrow many of my formulations directly from him. That’s pretty obvious.

Of course. Still, as you quite rightly wrote in your post, the point of electoral authoritarianism is that you don’t have to use violence — you can legitimize your power through elections. As you correctly explained, people say: but they were elected. Elected by whom, and how? Because unfortunately many people don’t understand that elections are not just dropping a ballot in a box — they are a procedure stretched out over time. Do you understand why they have switched back to the tactic of violence?

Because it stopped working. Their election machine had always worked before. The system is set up so that they announce elections in a format convenient for them, and then they win those elections. Because if you don’t let anyone onto the ballot, set short deadlines, create terrible legislation, and you have money while everyone else doesn’t, you always win. But this time they hit a wall. In part because we came up with Smart Voting. They did the math, just as we did, and saw that these independent candidates would simply crush United Russia. And even if there are no independent deputies now — candidates, rather — there are still ways, if not to crush them, then at least to sharply reduce the number of seats United Russia gets. They got scared. And what else could they do? Resort to these demonstrative acts of terror. Arrest people, because they have no other option. They realized that their main mechanism for preserving power is under threat.

Let’s talk about these September 8 strategies. Four strategies have now emerged. First: vote for those who will demand that the authorities release political prisoners. This is, in particular, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s position. He argued it in his video message. He said the following: “Attitudes toward political repression and political prisoners are my red line.” His central argument — and honestly, Alyosha, it matters a lot to me — is that the opposition must differ from the authorities in its moral stance. That the opposition must have a moral imperative, because we are often dealing with scoundrels. We cannot, it seems to me, take the same position. The second strategy is to offer voters blacklists and whitelists. Dmitry Gudkov, who is now serving a cumulative term of nearly 40 days, the leader of the Party of Change, is basically expressing the same position as Khodorkovsky. But he says perhaps such lists should be drawn up: who to vote for, and who under no circumstances to vote for. The third position is an election boycott. This is what old Soviet dissidents are saying. In particular, Alexander Podrabinek, who served five and a half years under Soviet rule. He says: “There must be distance between decent people and the authorities. We must cleanse ourselves of it like gangrene. Of course, boycott.” And finally, your position, which you have long argued for: Smart Voting. Vote for the candidate capable of defeating the open or hidden United Russia candidate, thereby breaking United Russia’s monopoly. If possible, let’s go through them one by one. Explain why you reject the first, second, and third strategies proposed by your fellow opposition figures.

I’d say there are really only two strategies. There is the boycott position — I don’t agree with it now. But I accept it, and when you talk about morality, I understand that this position has certain moral arguments behind it. I’ve been arguing about this with Garry Kasparov since 2011; he consistently advocates a boycott. This position is very popular abroad, including among our opposition figures who live abroad. Their general view is that legal political struggle is impossible in Russia, all elections are equally disgusting, and therefore we boycott them. I believe, and I argue, that the world is much more complicated, and elections differ. Candidates differ too: some are disgusting, some are good. And there are still good, very good candidates in the Moscow City Duma elections. I’m not going to name them now, because there’s still time for them to be kicked off the ballot. I don’t want to harm them. But I acknowledge that the boycott position exists. And if you reject all elections in principle — then boycott them. Everything else — those first two strategies you mentioned — and I don’t want to offend either Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Dmitry Gudkov — is just muddle-headed nonsense.

How so?

I’ll explain.

Khodorkovsky is specifically saying there must be a moral and ethical position.

Excellent. I didn’t want to say this, but I will: let’s at least have a somewhat longer time gap between Khodorkovsky supporting Ksenia Sobchak in the election — all of his regional organizations worked in Sobchak’s campaign offices — and now making statements about moral principles. It doesn’t sound very convincing coming from him. That’s first. Second, I read carefully what everyone is writing, including Khodorkovsky, about the election position, and in his main programmatic post he literally says: let’s come to the polls, take our ballots, and write “down with autocracy” on them. Fine, let’s do that if we want to amuse the people working on election commissions. That’s not how it works. There is no mega-complicated election system here. It’s impossible, as Dmitry Gudkov suggests, to make some kind of blacklists and whitelists. Our task is to persuade a million people. To give them a strategy that an ordinary person can use. When we say: we have four people in Moscow, they’re good, they spoke out for political prisoners — fine, but what about the other districts? A person lives in Maryino, or Chertanovo, or Lianozovo, and there is no such candidate there. What do we tell them then? Boycott? Spoil the ballot? All of that immediately becomes, first, complicated; second, ineffective; and third, it makes the whole thing meaningless. Because the only way to beat United Russia is if we all adopt one common strategy, which of course is not ideal. Of course it isn’t ideal, and in many districts there are candidates we are, frankly, only forced to vote for. They’re not very pleasant, but we are forced to vote for them as the anti–United Russia option. But it is one unified strategy. Then you can beat them. If we do it your way — there are 45 districts now — I’d have to run around to 45 candidates and tell them: guys, sign some declaration. But they’re candidates. They have other things to do, first of all, and second, they’re all swollen with self-importance. And that’s normal — candidates should be swollen with self-importance. They don’t want to sign anything. They don’t want to deal with it. And those among them who now, for example, speak out in support of political prisoners — and there are many such people — they’ll all be removed tomorrow. They’ll all be kicked off the ballot tomorrow, either by City Hall and the Central Election Commission, or by their own party. Why would I want to harm them? Let’s elect them first, and then some of them — the brave ones — once elected, will say something on behalf of political prisoners.

People will object that at one time you advanced the slogan in the State Duma elections: vote for any party except the party of crooks and thieves. You meant United Russia. A great many people voted for A Just Russia. By the way, the thesis that the people we vote for should declare support for political prisoners — Mironov did that then, and did it publicly.

He even wore a white ribbon.

Yes, A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov. And your opponents say: well, look what came of that.

My opponents are wrong. Because what happened in 2011 actually shows that our strategy was correct. We just didn’t get enough votes, first of all, and second, as we remember, they falsified the results in Moscow. And United Russia still got more than 50 percent, got full control of the Duma thanks to fraud in Moscow. Which then led to that very protest movement. Which would not have existed without the strategy of voting for any party against United Russia. But there was that moment, remember, for a couple of weeks, when they were all walking around with white ribbons, when they wanted to go to rallies. When everything was good. But we achieved that with too narrow a margin.

But you yourself saw in the Moscow City Duma how representatives of a certain party — let’s not name it, though you know it well, and you were once deputy chief of staff there — voted for decisions of the executive branch represented at the time by Luzhkov. Why are you so sure that the Communists who come into the Moscow City Duma now will even try to demand to see the budget?

It’s not about the Communists. The point is that Putin relies on this electoral authoritarianism because what he is really holding are not elections of people, but plebiscites. Referendums of confidence. What is happening in Moscow now is not a choice between Communist Ivanov, Petrov, and Vasechkin. It is a basic referendum on trust. Will United Russia keep its majority or not? Do we trust the party of power or not? Right now the party of power controls 90 percent of the seats. The question is whether it will continue to control them. My idea is that we should all come and vote against the party of power in this referendum. Against Putin, against Sobyanin, against the arrests of candidates, against political prisoners, and so on. It’s a plebiscite. There is no point in parsing individual deputies. Of course they’ll buy some of them off. Or intimidate them. If we want good candidates — they’re all sitting in jail right now.

We need to take a break now. We’re going to the news and commercials, and then we’ll return to the Echo of Moscow studio.

Good evening again. It’s 8:33 p.m. In the studio is Alexei Navalny, founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Today’s sound engineer is Svetlana Rostovtseva. I’m Yevgenia Albats, and we’re now going to continue talking — we’ve already begun talking — about Smart Voting. And here is my question for you. The overwhelming majority of candidates who can offer any competition to United Russia are Communists. Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, has now said that the protests — the ones you were jailed for calling for, the ones I worked at, the ones many of our friends are now sitting in various detention centers over, and over which a criminal case has been opened — were supposedly instigated by the United States and the West. And they created a commission in the State Duma where they’re now going to look for who pushed us into this...

Very good. Well, listen, Gennady Zyuganov has also said, for example, that all our footage of dachas published by the ACF comes from American spy satellites. That’s what systemic politics is like. That’s the price of admission. If you want to have a party, a license, and so on, then you have to be like that. That’s exactly why our party has already been denied registration nine times. And returning to the beginning of our conversation: if in principle we don’t want to use the legal system — these elections, parties — then our choice is boycott. We just wave them all away and say we don’t care, we’re boycotting. But if we want to create stress for the authorities and win this referendum now, where the only question is whether United Russia will keep 90 percent of the seats, whether the authorities will show overwhelming support in Moscow — if we want to take part in that, then we have to deal with the Communist Party. Yes, it has Zyuganov, who says astonishing things. But among those running now there are amazing, wonderful people, many of whom I’ve known for years. They took part in protest actions, they still do. They openly called for them. They are brave and wonderful people. They are not the majority, but there are quite a few of them. They are not isolated cases.

Let’s be specific, Alyosha. I come to the polling station. Within your Smart Voting framework — I’m going to boycott, of course, but never mind.

No, you won’t boycott. I’ll be able to convince you by September 8 to take part in Smart Voting. You’re in the Tverskoy district. Why would you boycott? You live in a district where the incumbent deputy is a Communist — Shuvalova. She’s an excellent deputy. Just look at how she tears into United Russia members. She’s not at all afraid to argue with Shaposhnikov. She argues with Sobyanin.

The speaker of the Moscow City Duma.

Exactly. In that sense, Shuvalova is an excellent deputy. Despite being a Communist, there’s not a second of shame in her behavior in the Moscow City Duma. So why boycott?

All right. You can send me an SMS. But how are people in Moscow supposed to understand this? They come to the polling station. Then what? How do they know?

People should...

United Russia isn’t listed anymore. They’re all running as independents now.

That’s exactly why we’ve thought it all through. There are two ways. Right now the best thing is to go to the Smart Voting website. Just type “Smart Voting” into Google and register. In a few days you simply tell us — we don’t even need your full name — you write that you live in such-and-such building. We don’t need the apartment number. We determine your polling station and simply send you the name of the person who is best to vote for in your district, the one with the best chances. Or closer to the election we’ll make a bot in Telegram, and I think on Facebook too, and it will work very simply. You send it your address, your building address, and it tells you the same thing: you are in such-and-such electoral district, your polling station is located here, and this is the name you should vote for. That’s all.

Okay. Got it. Our colleague Mikhail Fishman, the host of the weekly roundup program on TV Rain, published a post today in open access, so I can quote it. He writes that he ran into a VTsIOM interviewer — from the state polling service — on the street somewhere beyond the Moscow Ring Road in a poor neighborhood. The survey was, naturally, about the Moscow City Duma. Quote: “Recognition of the candidates in this district is absolutely zero, except for the surname hanging on every apartment entrance. And the only thing that, judging by the poll, worries City Hall and the Kremlin today is Smart Voting. Moreover, this concern seems justified, at least according to this interviewer, by the fact that every second person had heard of Navalny’s project. And this is beyond the Ring Road, in an area of old Soviet housing.” Can you explain to me why the Kremlin is really afraid of Smart Voting?

Because they know how to use a calculator. Because it’s very easy for them to count...

There’s... a calculator...

There is indeed a “calculator deputy,” as we know — one of the spoiler candidates is a calculator by profession. But this is easy to calculate. They can see how many votes United Russia got last time, and they can see how many all the other candidates got. And if you add up the votes of all the other candidates — not even all of them, just half of them — then the United Russia candidate loses, at least in most districts. An ordinary person who comes to the polling station, as the polls show, has no idea whom they are going to vote for. They look at what’s called the information sheet, where there’s some woman, some man. One looks nicer, one looks worse. And very often they just vote at random. A normal Muscovite most often votes for someone who is not from United Russia. But now it’s impossible to tell who is from United Russia and who isn’t. They’re all independents. And our message is very simple. We tell people: don’t go up to the information stand, you won’t understand anything from it. It’s all confusing. We will give you the name of the person with the best chance, and that is calculated based on previous elections. In other words, this is a real thing, not some arbitrary decision of ours. It’s not that I appoint the people I personally like. We really do look at who has the best chance. And City Hall understands that if 15 percent of voters use Smart Voting, then United Russia will lose in every district. Can you imagine what that would mean? Even if the next day they run out and buy them all off, pay each deputy a billion dollars and buy every one of them — the main political fact will still have happened: United Russia lost. And the consequences of that political fact cannot be underestimated. In only four regions, United Russia governors failed to get elected in the first round. They lost in four. The whole country went crazy. Remember what they did in Primorye. These are crucial political facts showing that Putin no longer has support. And in Moscow, 15 million people will know that Putin lost here, and the rest of the country will know that Putin lost here. That’s why City Hall believes in Smart Voting much more than anyone else does. Because it understands that it works — elementary math shows that.

There will also be voting in other regions of the country.

Exactly.

Are you proposing it there too?

There will be elections in 22 regions. And we are proposing this strategy in all of them. Of course, it will work differently in different regions. We are sure that in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in some regions like Irkutsk, it can work very well. In places like Bashkortostan, where we are also using Smart Voting, they simply rewrite the results entirely. How people actually voted has nothing to do with what’s in the ballots. Naturally, it will work much worse there. But this is, by and large, our first experience. The first experiment in electoral coordination aimed at striking a blow against United Russia. This is a much more complicated strategy than the 2011 strategy. Vote for any party against United Russia — that was simple. Here it’s specific names, in specific districts. It’s an enormous amount of painstaking work. Just imagine: right now we have people who are already going out of their minds because in 20 regions there are all these city legislative assemblies across all the districts. You have to contact everyone, look at the results of previous elections, talk to political analysts, to competent regional experts who understand all this, in order to propose voting lists. Obviously we won’t go all the way down to the municipal level everywhere except St. Petersburg, but at the level of legislative assemblies and major cities we will give recommendations.

Interesting. One of the most remarkable achievements of this hot summer of 2019, it seems to me, has been the unification of independent candidates who tried to register to run for the Moscow City Duma. Quite unexpectedly, your Lyubov Sobol from the ACF and Alexander Solovyov from the Party of Change suddenly became national politicians.

Unexpectedly? That’s quite something to hear. Since 2011 she’s been working nonstop. She canceled corrupt procurement contracts worth billions of rubles. She never got scared once. She carried out the investigation into Prigozhin. She’s been under surveillance for a year. Her parents are now under surveillance. Her husband was attacked. This is someone who has been fighting for years. And you say “unexpectedly.” Not unexpectedly. It’s a закономерный result — a natural one.

Now she really has become a popular national politician.

As she deserves.

While you were in jail, Alyosha, instead of filming you, all the foreign correspondents rushed to film Sobol, because they were absolutely stunned. Everyone was used to thinking there was just one Navalny. This handsome man walking around, the only one who spends half his time in jail — how much time have you served already?

This summer I served 40 days. Over the course of a year, I spend about 20 percent of it in jail. Thirty percent.

So when you’re not in jail, you draw all the attention to yourself. And then suddenly this beautiful Lyuba Sobol appears, who suddenly — I’m serious, I’ve known her for years, as long as she’s worked with you — has grown tremendously... But not only Lyuba Sobol.

That’s great.

I had Alexander Solovyov here...

I listened to your programs while sitting in the detention center.

I sent you greetings, by the way.

Yes. I heard, of course, everything. I listened to Echo of Moscow — I have a little radio.

Then this amazing young man Yegor Zhukov from the Higher School of Economics appeared. Yulia Galyamina, Dmitry Gudkov, Ilya Yashin. I mean that before, people kept saying that your opposition had no one besides Navalny. And I’ll tell you honestly, Alyosha: in the minds of opposition-minded people, several others have now appeared alongside you.

That’s excellent. If anyone thinks I’m nervous or jealous or upset — that’s absolutely not the case. Because first of all, I have excellent relations with most of these people; in fact, I have excellent relations with all of them, and with 99 percent of them I am ideologically in complete agreement. They are my allies, friends, comrades.

And yet you are known as a politician not inclined toward coalition-building. I remember how in this studio you told me there was no demand...

Zhenya, today you’ve simply decided to slander me. What do you mean, not inclined? When nobody was even thinking about the Moscow City Duma elections, who was helping Yashin, Jankauskas, Milov get nominated? We organized a signature collection center that worked for all 45 districts. We collected signatures for people who had built their political careers on constantly criticizing me. In that sense, we have always helped everyone, and my consistent position is to support everyone. The only thing is that, probably because I’m the one doing these publications and investigations, and because we have a large organization and a large media resource, I’m much more visible than the others.

Okay. Agreed. I’m to blame for everything, and you’re pure as driven snow.

You and Putin are to blame for everything. And Sergunina a little bit too.

Sergunina a little bit too. So here’s what I want to ask you. This is still an important resource. The September 8 elections happen — then what? Many analysts accuse you of not having a strategy for that. So tell me, please: what comes after September 8?

We do have a strategy. Smart Voting itself was devised a year ago, and we prepared it for a year. It’s a lot of painstaking work. But this strategy is not some kind of rigid plan or railroad track written down on paper. The September 8 elections will happen, and we’ll see how successful our experiment was. Maybe nothing will come of it at all. Maybe we won’t be able to convince anyone. You want to boycott the elections. Maybe I won’t be able to convince you, and Garry Kasparov will convince everyone instead. We’ll look at the results of Smart Voting, and then we’ll either adopt a strategy of expanding it in every possible way to the regions, because there will be new elections in a year, or we’ll understand what strategy the Kremlin adopts against Smart Voting. And we’ll adjust and understand what to do next.

That’s actually my next question. Everyone understands that what is happening now is a rehearsal for 2021. That’s where all this Kremlin anxiety comes from, it seems to me. Everyone is preparing for the State Duma elections in 2021. The authorities are not confident they’ll be able to get a majority, let alone a constitutional majority. Do you have any idea what the opposition should be doing, what it should be preparing for? There’s only a year left.

That is exactly what we are doing. We don’t have only a year left, because a year ago we decided, calculated, analyzed, talked to a lot of smart people, and concluded that Smart Voting, under conditions where they most likely won’t let us onto the ballot and won’t let any decent candidates on either — or will let them on only with enormous difficulty — meant we should use these weak systemic parties, where there are still decent people at the lower levels. We decided to support them and, in a sense, encourage them. So they would feel bolder when they are in the Duma, because there will be more of them.

But will you try to prepare your own candidates for 2021?

These people who took part in the elections now — some of them I support very actively, not just me, we at the ACF; some to a lesser degree. But we supported everyone. What is there to prepare? They’re all ready. Do we need to prepare Yashin? Or Sobol? Or Zhdanov? Or Milov, who, by the way, was just released from the detention center.

Yes, has he been released already?

Today, a couple of hours ago.

Still, 2021 could become a bifurcation point. A lot of people are focused on that now. By the way, once again — I love this tug-of-war and measuring contest you always have with Khodorkovsky; it’s exactly the same from both sides. How jealous you are of each other.

I’m not jealous at all. I look with understanding at the fact that different strategies are being proposed. Today on Facebook, I think, I read a wonderful line from Medvedev at the Higher School of Economics...

Sergei Medvedev.

“Every fool has his own method.” And here too, everyone has their own method. I propose Smart Voting; Khodorkovsky proposes spoiling ballots.

You mentioned that he supported Ksenia Sobchak, but...

In the context that he is now talking about moral choice.

Since you read Golosov, you have probably also read that the collapse of authoritarian regimes, statistically speaking, usually happens as a result of coups. I just specifically read a new book on this. In the 21st century there have been significantly fewer coups, but old elites still play a very important role. And in fact, the disintegration of an authoritarian regime is achieved by a coalition of old and new elites. That was the case, for example, in the most successful transition from Francoist Spain to democratic Spain, where the old elite itself essentially solved the problem. In that sense, Khodorkovsky’s tactic makes sense. Don’t you think so, Alexei?

No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. Not only do I not think so — I can see that he tested it empirically and it doesn’t work. At one point he hired various crooks like Timur Valeev, people from state television, and said that now we’ll buy them off and re-educate them. And what did that lead to? They became even bigger crooks and went back to RT and so on. It doesn’t work. Besides, I generally disagree with your reading of Golosov — forgive me — whom I respect very much. He writes that one of the main tasks is the formation of a powerful democratic center. That is what I see as the main task. As for old elites — well, in Russia, I wasn’t at that remarkable rally on Sakharov Avenue, but it seems to me that one of the inspiring things about it was that there were no old elites there. I’m the oldest one there, by the way. Have you noticed that now, among all opposition figures, I’m simply the oldest person? And that’s wonderful.

Just a grandpa.

Because everyone is already sick of all those old elites.

Many heartfelt thanks. I’ll take that personally.

Well, Zhenya, I’m already in the same league as you somewhere — among the old-timers.

And still, if we’re talking specifically about tactics after September 8 — creating a powerful democratic center, preparing for 2021 — do you have any clear plan?

Yes, we do have a clear plan. On September 8 we carry out Smart Voting; on September 9 we find out the results of Smart Voting; based on that, we adjust the next plan...

The Communists are not going to help you form a democratic...

What difference does that make? Let them not form anything. Look, this is actually a very clear KPI. Right now, out of 45 seats, 40 belong to United Russia. It controls 40 seats. Will it still have 40, or will that number shrink, and by how much? That’s the main question. Because if we carry out Smart Voting and they controlled 40 seats before and then control 45 — well, then Smart Voting didn’t work.

What result would you consider effective?

A reduction, obviously. A huge, super victory would be if United Russia lost its majority. That may be a difficult target to aim for, but that is exactly what we are fighting for. But any reduction in the number of seats, any loss of support — that is already good. Anything below 40 is already very good.

And you’ve calculated that this is really possible?

Yes, of course. I wouldn’t be doing all this otherwise. It’s colossal work. People see Smart Voting and they don’t need to know what’s inside it. They only see the front end. But inside it’s an enormous, colossal amount of work. I would never have tried to persuade my colleagues that we need to do this if I didn’t believe we could win. We can win, and City Hall — as we’ve already said, through these opinion polls — proves that they’re afraid, that they understand they can be beaten. We only need to bring 15 percent of Muscovites to the polls. We definitely have them. Echo of Moscow has an audience of one million people a day. If the Echo of Moscow audience comes to vote, that’s it — United Russia loses. Well, if they take part in Smart Voting. So on September 9 a lot of things will become clear. How it worked in Moscow. How it worked in St. Petersburg, where they also removed a large number of candidates arbitrarily. How it worked in high-protest regions like Irkutsk. Or in low-protest regions, or regions with low levels of information, because in Moscow and St. Petersburg we work well through the internet. But not everywhere can you attract a lot of people to Smart Voting simply through the internet. There you need other methods. We’ll analyze all of that. Because our entire further work plan, given our very limited resources, given that everyone is being jailed and there is constant pressure, must of course focus only on what we are confident is effective.

God willing, you’ll turn out to be right. I have one more question for you about the regions. We understand that revolutions are made in the center, in the capitals. But Russia is a colossal country, and several centers can emerge here. You have 20 headquarters left now.

More. We have more than 40 headquarters.

But do you see protest unfolding in the regions somehow, or after your presidential campaign, when a lot of young people got involved, has it all gone into decline?

Protest is definitely developing, just in a different way. When we say protest is developing, we most likely mean rallies — people standing near an administration building waving flags. In that form, it’s not developing in many places, though we do see Arkhangelsk region, Shiyes. It’s just taking other forms.

Shiyes has been holding out for a year already, by the way.

Absolutely. In that sense, people’s resilience is extraordinary. Very few people pay attention to it. There should be much more. There is simply a dull discontent there that is hard to channel. People are getting poorer. That is exactly why the Kremlin is now panicking over the gubernatorial election results in Sakhalin, in Astrakhan region, in Volgograd region, and in some other regions. There are poor people there who don’t really understand what can be done. Politicians aren’t offering much in the way of what can be done. We aren’t either, for that matter. So their dull discontent expresses itself in protest voting. We’ll see how that works this September. But there is no organized protest there. What we do see is this low rumble of discontent, and it undoubtedly reaches us. And it reaches the Kremlin.

Well then. I wish you a successful September 8.

Yevgenia, you should take part in Smart Voting too. For all our sakes.

That concludes the program. And I want to tell the hundreds of thousands listening to us live, and the hundreds of thousands watching this program on YouTube, that I won’t be on the air for a couple of weeks. I’m going to lecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in the state of Michigan. To put it simply, I’m going away to earn some money. Otherwise I can’t both keep the magazine going and pay for my own life. But every Monday at 8 p.m., God willing, I’ll be going live on Echo of Moscow. In the end, in today’s global world, it doesn’t matter so much where, in what geographic point, you happen to be. I’ll give my lectures, write a book, and I will definitely come back. Oh, and by the way, you may be curious to know: I got a speeding ticket from New Zealand. For going 117 kilometers per hour. The fine was 128 New Zealand dollars. A little message from the end of the world. And I’m happy. Bye, stay well.