“Full Albaс” episode aired on December 26, 2011

E. ALBATS: Good evening. It’s 9:07 p.m. You’re listening to Echo of Moscow radio and watching RTVi. I’m Yevgenia Albats. As always on Mondays, we begin our program devoted to the key events of the week—events that will affect politics in the coming weeks and months.

One such event was the opposition rally held this past Saturday in Moscow on Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov Avenue, where, by various estimates, between 70,000 and 80,000 people gathered. Protests also took place in other Russian cities. And whereas two weeks ago, at Bolotnaya Square, the theme of the rally was “For Fair Elections,” against the falsifications of December 4, this time the theme was “Not a Single Vote for Vladimir Putin in the March 4 Election,” meaning the rally was now aimed at the presidential campaign.

Today I have one guest in the Echo of Moscow studio. I’ll explain later why there is only one. We’ll be on the air on Echo of Moscow for two hours, and live on RTVi for one hour. My guest is Alexei Navalny, a well-known politician. More than 66,000 people read his LiveJournal blog, and 166,000 follow him on Twitter. Alexei, hello.

A. NAVALNY: Good evening.

E. ALBATS: Thank you for coming. I should also say that the day before the rally, outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev delivered what was effectively his final address, in which he announced political reform. So far it is all very vague: apparently the signature threshold for presidential candidates will be lowered, registration of opposition parties will be made easier, and there was talk of the possibility of direct gubernatorial elections—though, as I understood it, based on nominations by political parties. That was the outgoing president speaking.

Meanwhile, the incoming president, Vladimir Putin, was making personnel changes, and they were quite telling as well. Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s former KGB colleague and a former deputy prime minister, has been appointed head of the presidential administration—the administration that, if the people of Russia vote for Putin on March 4, will become Putin’s administration. This is the most important political post in the country. Sergei Naryshkin, another of Putin’s former KGB colleagues, who served in the Brussels rezidentura (KGB foreign intelligence station), became speaker of the State Duma. Dmitry Rogozin, a fairly well-known politician in Russia, was appointed deputy prime minister in charge of defense and the military-industrial complex. Until recently he was Russia’s representative to NATO; before that he headed the nationalist Rodina party. As I understand it, he is also not exactly far removed from the силовой clan—the security and law-enforcement elite. So the authorities seem to be playing with both hands, and so far in a rather strange way. I hope Alexei Navalny and I will also have a chance to talk about that. Alexei, you spoke at the rally on Bolotnaya…

A. NAVALNY: Unfortunately, I didn’t get to speak at Bolotnaya.

E. ALBATS: You were in jail at the time. In fact, Alexei Navalny was supposed to be on my program on December 5. But just as I was already waiting for him to come on air, I got a text from him: “Zhenya, sorry, unfortunately I can’t make it, I’ve been detained.” As you know, he later got 15 days from the same Judge Borovkova.

A. NAVALNY: And from the same Judge Krivoruchko, who tomorrow will hear Udaltsov’s appeal.

E. ALBATS: And yesterday Borovkova sentenced Sergei Udaltsov to another 10 days. It seems to me he practically never leaves detention. By various estimates, he has spent around 260 days locked up this year. By the way, you were outside the court yesterday when Seryozha was sentenced yet again. Do you understand why they’re putting so much pressure on him?

A. NAVALNY: I understand that they’re pressuring him for nothing. Apparently they’re doing it as a warning, to demonstrate what they can do, to show that in order to jail someone for 15 days—or 15 years—you don’t need anything at all. What’s characteristic now is that there is video of his detention, and we can see the exact moment he was detained, the very episode he’s accused over. He’s not accused of fighting with riot police in the bus afterward or anything like that.

He’s accused over an episode that is now on video, and hundreds of thousands of people have already seen it. It clearly shows Udaltsov getting out of a car and saying: “A one-person picket is about to take place here, and no permit is required for that.” After those words, the police take him by the arms and lead him to the bus. They say nothing to him, he says nothing, he does not resist. And for that he gets 10 days. It’s unimaginable. In full view of the entire country, a man is arrested for nothing and deprived of his freedom. It’s such a demonstratively lawless ruling. It’s meant to show everyone: we’ll take you away, it doesn’t matter how many cameras are filming, it doesn’t matter how many witnesses there are—if we want to jail you, we will. And we won’t be embarrassed, we won’t be ashamed, the judge won’t blush, and we’ll do it anyway.

E. ALBATS: Why?

A. NAVALNY: Everyone is asking that question now. As I’ve said more than once, if anyone ends up provoking a revolution in Russia in some ugly, violent format, it will be that very Judge Borovkova, who has taken on the role of a standard executioner. She could have called in sick or something. But Borovkova shows up—even on weekends—and jails people. And Udaltsov, who has already been on a dry hunger strike for several days and whose life is in danger, could, God forbid, actually die in prison. I saw him in detention, in the special holding facility, when I myself was there. I’d sometimes run into him in the corridor when they were taking me to my lawyer. He looks like a man whose life is in danger; his health is in very bad shape. This is a demonstration of: we’re tough. You demonstrate on Bolotnaya and on Sakharov Avenue, and we demonstrate at Tverskoy Court.

E. ALBATS: I see. Before we move on to the main topic, I wanted to ask about your detention on December 5 and your release on the night of the 21st to the 22nd. You were released at 2:30 a.m. Then you marched in a column toward Lubyanka. Why did you do that?

A. NAVALNY: We didn’t go to Lubyanka. We went to the Central Election Commission, so that outside the Central Election Commission we could say everything we wanted to say to the Central Election Commission. The core of that December 5 rally was actually election observers. Of the 75 detainees in that special detention center, about 80% were observers. At one point, in my cell, 16 out of 18 people were so-called political detainees, and almost all of them were observers.

These were people who had suffered a personal, direct insult. For them, election fraud was not some abstract thing—something Churov did, some vague falsifications. They had been thrown out of polling stations, the police had removed them on made-up pretexts, they had protocols in their hands showing one number, while the GAS Vybory online system showed another.

They had run into outright lawlessness. They personally felt rage and outrage—entirely justified and legitimate. We were going to the Central Election Commission to say: hello, Central Election Commission, we exist, we are here, and you will not get away with this, you will not make this just blow over and be forgotten. We will not forget, and we will not forgive. That’s why we went.

E. ALBATS: Were you expecting to be detained?

A. NAVALNY: I assumed it was possible. When I came out of the metro and saw the unprecedented number of police—even refusing to let people onto the square on the pretext that capacity had already been reached—I thought yes, there would be detentions. It was obvious the authorities would defend their falsifications. That is exactly why the OMON riot police were there: to protect Churov personally, to protect those forged protocols, and to detain anyone protesting against them. So yes, the likelihood was very high. But it didn’t matter in the slightest, because it still had to be done. And when everyone sat out those 15 days in the detention center, not one person said it had been pointless. None of it was in vain. Because it had to be said. We are different from those so-called “banderlogs” or mute animals. How can they rob us like this? How can United Russia be awarded 90% in Zamoskvorechye, in central Moscow? How can one polling station show 20% and the neighboring one 80%? You can put up with some things, you can endure some things, but not insults like that.

E. ALBATS: Alexei, everyone now acknowledges that your campaign—launched on your blog and on LiveJournal—against the “party of crooks and thieves” is what led to United Russia getting less than 50% even with all the fraud, and failing to win a constitutional majority in the State Duma. When you started that campaign, did you expect people to respond so strongly? What’s interesting is that even the so-called systemic opposition—the Communists and A Just Russia—used your slogan. Even United Russia members themselves managed to produce a slogan using that phrase: “the party of crooks and thieves.”

A. NAVALNY: First of all, my role shouldn’t be exaggerated here. Of course I believed I could do a lot in that direction. There was a clear, cynical, rational calculation that this campaign would benefit everyone else. Why was I categorically against a boycott campaign and against the so-called “Nakh-Nakh” campaign of spoiling ballots? Because I understood that a boycott and “Nakh-Nakh” mostly hurt the smaller parties, and then you end up arguing not with United Russia but with the smaller parties. The political space had to be structured so that everyone was together against United Russia.

I have my complaints about Yabloko and the Communists, but within that election campaign it was pointless even to discuss them. We were all together against United Russia. The slogan itself caught on easily because it was simply true. Just a well-phrased truth. My calculation that hundreds of thousands of activists from various parties would start using it and that it would spread so actively among the public proved correct. It really did become a unifying campaign. Of course, United Russia, Putin, and Medvedev did a tremendous amount of work promoting that slogan. After all, how was the slogan born? United Russia started threatening to sue me, actually filing lawsuits. Everything they did was enormous help to me in my campaign against crooks and thieves.

E. ALBATS: Thank you. I should also tell our listeners and those watching us on RTVi that those who are not watching on RTVi can watch us on Setevizor; there is a live video stream on the website. You can watch us on your computers, iPads, and iPhones. And one more question, Alexei, before we move on to the rally on Sakharov Avenue. In an interview with *The New Times*, you describe how, when you were supposed to be released after 15 days, at Simferopolsky Boulevard—where your wife Yulia was waiting, where journalists had arrived, where people supporting you had gathered—you were forced into a car in a T-shirt, some kind of pants, and slippers, through the snow. You even tried to grab, or did grab, the handbrake and stop the car. All of this was caught on video. Tell me, are you planning to sue over this? And how possible is it to obtain that video?

A. NAVALNY: Without any doubt, we will sue. The documents are already prepared—against the management of the detention center and against the officers of the Maryino police station, who in a completely unlawful manner effectively kidnapped me. There is video surveillance everywhere there. We will request those recordings. I hope we’ll be able to get them. Looking at them now would probably be funny: me in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and slippers, being lured into the corridor, then a policeman starts dragging me, I resist, they haul me into the car. Then somewhere in the car I yank the handbrake and stop it from moving, because I’m hoping the people standing outside will see and block the car. It’s funny to remember now, but at the time…

And there were huge numbers of people there: the entire duty unit, some high-ranking Moscow police officials. I kept shouting: “What are you doing?!” I hadn’t taken any of my things, nothing. “You have no right to take me away.” My lawyer had specifically written a statement saying that I categorically refused to go anywhere. They all just turned away and looked embarrassedly at the floor. And the police dragged me off. It wasn’t funny then—I was absolutely furious. It doesn’t matter that Judge Borovkova and Judge Krivoruchko and the whole judicial system will stand up for these people. We will do everything possible to hold them formally accountable now. And if that doesn’t work now, at least we will prepare all the documents so that one day, when the time comes, we can pull them out and present them to everyone.

E. ALBATS: I keep trying to understand the authorities’ logic. What were they afraid of?

A. NAVALNY: It’s some kind of unimaginable stupidity. It’s as if there’s some little scriptwriter sitting somewhere, thinking up ways to boost Navalny’s profile, to give him more publicity. Really, if I had just come out, people had greeted me, and then everyone had gone home… But no, they had to drive me around, deceive everyone, send people racing across Moscow from Simferopolsky Boulevard to Maryino, nobody understanding anything, deputies looking for me, a whole secret intrigue. Everyone was in an uproar. What for? In the end, when I come out of the Maryino police station, everyone is delighted that I’ve been found, they applaud, they say what a great guy and hero I am. Even though I did nothing heroic. It’s just pure police stupidity that turns every person into a hero—because they grab him and start hauling him around illegally from place to place.

E. ALBATS: When you came out of the Maryino police station, I heard what people in the crowd were saying. They said that when Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in August 1991, he became president of Russia; now Navalny climbed onto a stepladder and gave interviews, and now he is president of Russia.

A. NAVALNY: First of all, I think that’s a very grand comparison and not entirely appropriate. Second, there were 70 people like me. Yashin was being carted around just as strangely. Yesterday Udaltsov was taken away in exactly the same deceptive way, in some mysterious car. So it would be wrong and unfair for me to say: I served 15 days, became some kind of dissident, and now I’m president. No—I was just one of those 70 people, though perhaps the police drew more attention to me.

E. ALBATS: Our modest one.

A. NAVALNY: That’s how it is. It’s nice when people support you, but it’s unpleasant when they say “Navalny has been detained, freedom for Navalny,” while there are 16 people in your cell just like you, detained right next to you. That’s not right.

E. ALBATS: When you were detained on the night of December 5 to 6, people were looking for you in various police stations. And you said that at one point, when Deputy Gudkov arrived at the Izmailovo police station, you and Yashin were taken out through some back door, then each put into a separate car driven by a masked man, and taken beyond the MKAD ring road to the Vostochnoye police station.

A. NAVALNY: The police station in the settlement of Vostochny.

E. ALBATS: Why was that?

A. NAVALNY: Again, it was all in the format of strange, inexplicable police stupidity.

E. ALBATS: Were you scared?

A. NAVALNY: I wasn’t scared. It was just very unclear and strange. They take all your belongings, but don’t draw up a report. Fine, if a person is detained, things can be taken from him. But when there is no report and they confiscate everything, even take the laces out of your shoes… Then suddenly, for some reason, in a panic they lead you out through a back door, put you in a car, and a masked man drives you, and you see that you’re passing the MKAD… And once we had crossed the MKAD but hadn’t yet reached the sign for Vostochny, it all looked very strange.

E. ALBATS: What did you think?

A. NAVALNY: I thought it was unlikely they were about to drive me into a forest and shoot me, or that something like a Chilean scenario or something else would happen. To be honest, I didn’t have time to think much. But I did think: interesting, where could they be taking me?

E. ALBATS: Did they explain why they were taking you there?

A. NAVALNY: Not at all. When they brought us to the police station in Vostochny, the duty officer ran out and said: “I’m not taking him, you brought him without documents.” Looking back, it’s very funny: the police bring you in, but each individual officer doesn’t want to take responsibility. They’ve brought a man, he’s already without shoelaces, so clearly he’s supposed to be under arrest or detention. Where are his papers? Naturally I immediately shout: give me a sheet of paper and a pen, I’m filing a complaint against you. I hand over the complaint and demand a receipt slip. As a lawyer, I know my rights. I say: “Log me in the delivery register.” Everyone brought in is supposed to be entered there. And they say: “We’re not logging you, we’re not taking you.” I say: “Then I’m going home.” But they don’t let you go home. So it’s a paradoxical situation.

Some bosses immediately start arriving, everyone is whispering, something is going on somewhere. It was even funnier when Yashin and I were brought to the Kitay-Gorod police station and held there. They weren’t even letting into the station people who came to file complaints. It’s right by Red Square, lots of commerce there—someone gets beaten up, something gets stolen, a person comes in, and they won’t let him in because they’re afraid some journalist-spies will come and film Yashin and me sitting in the holding cell at the Kitay-Gorod police station.

E. ALBATS: When you were brought before Judge Borovkova, it was obvious that you hadn’t eaten for a long time, and you looked pretty bad. At the same time, whether you knew it or not, quite a lot of people had come to Kitay-Gorod, and some of them had brought food for you and Yashin.

A. NAVALNY: We knew it very well. First, whenever the door opened, we could hear the shouting. Second, at one point a policeman came in with a huge number of bags and said: “This is a delivery.” At which point the other policemen started yelling at him: “Are you crazy? Why did you take it?” Their official version was that I had been taken away, that I wasn’t there. So they confiscated all those food parcels. They did give us a bottle of water, though.

E. ALBATS: But no food.

A. NAVALNY: Later, toward morning, they gave us some bagels. So really, we weren’t so much hungry as simply exhausted by all of it—which was nothing compared with the people who were kept in police stations for four days. I can say that being in the special detention center is much more comfortable. If we put “more comfortable” in quotation marks, it’s still much more comfortable than a police station, where it’s cold and much harder to sleep. People were held there for four days.

E. ALBATS: You’ve probably also read online the accusations that Navalny deliberately got himself jailed so he could acquire the aura of someone who had already “done time.” In Soviet times it was very fashionable when dissidents came back from the camps: prison bunks, a stretch inside, screws (slang for prison guards)… It became the language of the intelligentsia.

A. NAVALNY: That kind of thing catches on very quickly, by the way. There were programmers in there, all people with higher education, but after two days they all start saying: the cell is the crib, the bunk is the plank bed, and all the rest. It sticks very fast—everyone starts talking like that.

E. ALBATS: So what do you say to those who claim you got yourself jailed on purpose so you’d have a prison stint behind you?

A. NAVALNY: I absolutely did not want to go to jail. There were lots of journalists at the hearing. I had three lawyers. We called witnesses, we demanded that video evidence be admitted. There is also video of my detention showing that I did not resist and certainly did nothing deserving 15 days in jail. So it’s complete nonsense.

E. ALBATS: But Judge Borovkova did not accept the video evidence.

A. NAVALNY: Judge Borovkova accepted nothing at all. We still call her Judge Borovkova, but of course she is no judge. Calling that person a judge is simply an insult to the entire legal profession. She discredits absolutely everything. Unfortunately, she is someone who voluntarily took on the role of executioner. Someone had to chop off heads, after all. And Borovkova acts like a little machine stamping out 15-day sentences for everyone. It may have been a small problem when it happened to me. But it is a real threat to life when it happens to Udaltsov. She is the kind of person who takes on the dirty work.

E. ALBATS: Thank you. We now have to break for news and commercials, and then we’ll return to the Echo of Moscow and RTVi studio.

NEWS

E. ALBATS: Good evening once again. It’s 9:35 p.m. This is Echo of Moscow radio and RTVi television. I’m Yevgenia Albats. And here in the Echo of Moscow studio I have one guest—Alexei Navalny. And now we turn to the rally that took place on Saturday on Sakharov Avenue, where, according to various estimates, there were between 70,000 and 80,000 people. By the way, I should say that all of these are questions sent to the Echo of Moscow website. There are about six hundred of them. I’ll use some of them, and Alexei Navalny and I agreed that I’ll give them to him, and if he feels able to answer them in some grouped form, then perhaps we’ll be able to post that on Echo’s website. You understand that it’s impossible to answer everything. But thank you very much for sending your questions.

So, Alexei, you gave a speech on Sakharov Avenue. We had six correspondents working at different points around the square. You were practically the only person the crowd accepted without reservation. Although today I watched one video where a group of masked people were shouting at you, “Go away, go away.” But here’s what’s interesting. When I was listening to your speech in the crowd, people started coming up to me afterward—mostly businessmen—and asking me the same question: “Tell me, wasn’t it frightening to listen to Navalny?” There was one moment in your speech when many people visibly flinched: when you said there were enough people here right now to take the White House and the Kremlin. True, you immediately added: we are a peaceful country, we won’t do that. So what do you say to people who say it was frightening to listen to you?

A. NAVALNY: First of all, to those businessmen who say they’re very frightened, I’d ask them: why are they hiding in their holes, why are these fine businessmen afraid of everything? There is absolutely nothing left to be afraid of. There is definitely nothing to fear in a situation where hundreds of thousands of people are coming out into the streets. I don’t understand why speaking up for my rights, for our freedom and yours, is supposed to be frightening. There is nothing frightening about it. We need to understand that the people sitting in the Kremlin and the White House are usurpers, people who are there illegally. They are the ones who should be afraid.

If someone breaks the law and commits a crime, that person should be arrested, charged, put in the dock, and then sent to prison. That is exactly what should happen. In a sense, those 100,000 people who gathered were law enforcers of a kind: they came out for the dictatorship of law, for law and order. So the idea that these people should, one way or another, come to the Kremlin and drive out those who are there illegally is a perfectly normal idea. I was not calling for an assault. I was saying that yes, we must take the Kremlin. And we must. I am sure that sooner or later we will.

E. ALBATS: How?

A. NAVALNY: Through peaceful protest, through organizing people, through coordination, through uniting everyone and everything. You saw it yourself: every kind of creature was represented at that rally. It was a very painful process to agree on all of it. But it worked. And I am very proud of the people who ultimately managed to reach that compromise. The people who gathered there were not political activists, not members of one party, but they were united by one very simple idea: fighting for their rights, for their vote, for elections. So we will hold fair elections and take the Kremlin and the White House in the sense that the people sitting there will be people who were elected. Maybe Putin will be sitting there, or United Russia will be sitting on Okhotny Ryad—it’s entirely possible—but only after fair elections. First win fair elections, and then go sit in those offices. Only that way. And we will take the Kremlin in the sense that the people there will have a popular mandate.

E. ALBATS: There were many posts online saying it was a leader-style speech.

A. NAVALNY: I’ve already heard a lot of jokes today about my “yes or no.”

E. ALBATS: Navalny proposing marriage to his wife…

A. NAVALNY: Will you marry me, yes or no? I came into work today and all my staff roasted me with jokes about it.

E. ALBATS: Yes or no.

A. NAVALNY: Yes. Alexei Venediktov, who was here in the previous hour on *Special Opinion*—I was driving to the studio and listening to him—said it was obvious you had studied public speaking. You asked the crowd that question, the crowd answered you, and it really was a fantastic feeling, the way you led the whole square and how it answered you. Did you actually study rhetoric?

A. NAVALNY: I’ve never studied any kind of public speaking. I’ve already seen a lot of ironic comments about my speech. I don’t think there was any total consensus that it was wonderful. There were plenty of accusations that it lacked substance. But that’s the format of a rally. Of course I could have come out and read a 25-point declaration. I have a very clear idea of what needs to be done next. But if I had started droning through what needs to be done next, it probably wouldn’t have been very interesting to listen to in the cold. So I tried to speak emotionally. I said exactly what I think. I imagined what I would want to say emotionally, angrily, with feeling, to a person. So I asked them—yes or no, am I right or not? And I heard an answer.

E. ALBATS: Did you write the speech at home? Did you rehearse it, maybe with your wife Yulia?

A. NAVALNY: I had a few theses in my head that I wanted to talk about. I tried to get them across. Probably only someone very cool-headed or very experienced can walk out there… From the stage you could see that Sakharov Avenue was packed, this enormous mass of people disappearing somewhere around the bend. So of course when I stepped up to the microphone, I mostly forgot what I had wanted to say. That’s probably where the whole “yes or no” thing came from. I knew what I wanted to say, what main idea I wanted to convey. I think I conveyed it—or at least I tried to.

E. ALBATS: And when you were at Yale University, you didn’t take a rhetoric course?

A. NAVALNY: No. It was a year-long course. I was only there for half a year, and I didn’t take it. Besides, my English isn’t good enough to take a rhetoric course in English. The rhythm and everything else are completely different there. My conviction is this: you go out and say, loudly, the key thing—just shout into the microphone what you really think, and don’t try too hard to impress anyone. Just say it as it is.

E. ALBATS: Your face is changing. I’ve known you a long time. It’s getting much harder.

A. NAVALNY: I’m nervous, I’m scared. It’s responsibility. You go out there, a hundred thousand people are looking at you and waiting for you to say something. And you speak. Naturally there’s tension.

E. ALBATS: Levada Center has just published the results of its survey on Sakharov Avenue. There’s a lot of interesting data. They surveyed the people who came. Of course the sample was enormous—70,000 to 80,000 people, maybe even 100,000. The main age group was 18 to 39, that was 56% of those who came. An absolute majority had higher education—62%. Ideologically: democrats 38%, liberals 31%, communists 13%, social democrats 10%.

A. NAVALNY: How did they separate democrats from liberals?

E. ALBATS: They’re actually different things.

A. NAVALNY: I know they’re different things. I just don’t understand how they did that in a street survey.

E. ALBATS: They used a questionnaire. Liberals are people who primarily defend minority rights against what’s called the rule of the thumb—that is, mob rule, as in the ancient Colosseum, when the crowd turned its thumb. Caesar would ask whether to kill those who had fought or not. If the crowd turned its thumb this way… In political science that became known as the rule of the thumb. That fear of the crowd deciding who lives and who dies. Why am I bringing this up? Because they also asked this question… An overwhelming majority, of course, supports the need for new elections, honest elections. But the most interesting question was: “If all opposition parties and movements were allowed to take part in State Duma elections, which party would you vote for?” Nineteen percent said: Alexei Navalny’s new party. I’ll say right away, the highest result was for Yabloko—24%—the party you once belonged to. Are you going to create Alexei Navalny’s party? Nineteen percent are ready to support it.

A. NAVALNY: Once party registration becomes notification-based—and I hope we achieve that—I will absolutely take part in the process. I’m a politician, I’m involved in politics, I will take part in elections, I want to compete honestly for power through elections. I will fight for it, including in some party format, once we finally achieve a situation where the Justice Ministry registers everyone who wants to take part in elections, not just those who wrote the right thing into their charter or made some kind of deal.

E. ALBATS: Medvedev did say in his address that party registration would be simplified.

A. NAVALNY: We’ve already tested this empirically and we have an answer to the question of whether President Medvedev can be trusted. He already promised affordable housing, healthcare, an anti-corruption drive, judicial reform—which brings us back to Judge Borovkova and Judge Krivoruchko. So what President Medvedev promised is, of course, wonderful, but first of all, as I understand it, this is proposed for 2013, whereas the rules need to be changed now and new elections need to be announced now. First we change the rules and register everyone who wants to run, introduce an unconditional ban on removing parties from the ballot, as happened to Yabloko in the Moscow Region. They just didn’t allow them, and that was that.

And before that, in St. Petersburg, they didn’t allow them into the legislative assembly elections. Deputy Volkov in Yekaterinburg collected signatures, had them notarized, and they removed him from the ballot—that was it. There must be a complete, total ban on removing candidates or parties from registration, after which we announce elections. Only that way. Besides, this is inseparable from the judicial system. We have absolute, total judicial arbitrariness. You can write whatever you want into the law, and then Judge Borovkova says: your party doesn’t seem quite right somehow, we’re removing it from the ballot. So that issue has to be resolved.

I read Limonov’s article about this today. He said quite rightly that there will be a million little tricks… Yes, you have 500 people, you register a party. But then when you submit the documents, they’ll tell you your signatures are wrong, your signature sheets are wrong, the paper doesn’t have watermarks, or something else. All of that has to go. Any group of people that is reasonably stable and reasonably large—500 people is quite enough—should be able to register a party and take part in elections. And there’s no need to be afraid that we’ll end up registering a thousand parties. Let them register—and good.

E. ALBATS: Among the people surveyed on Sakharov Avenue, when asked which public figures and opposition leaders they trusted most… you got one of the highest percentages, 36%. No, sorry, Leonid Parfyonov had 41%, you were second with 36%, Boris Akunin had 35%.

A. NAVALNY: Then the question for Leonid Parfyonov is whether he’ll be creating his own party.

E. ALBATS: Yes, a good question. But when asked which public figure or leader they saw as President of Russia, then… What’s your patronymic?

A. NAVALNY: Anatolyevich.

E. ALBATS: Well then, Alexei Anatolyevich, here you had the clear lead: 22% of the protest-minded crowd said they wanted to see you as their president.

A. NAVALNY: I thought you were going to say 80. But it’s 22.

E. ALBATS: The spread is very wide. It’s a very high figure. Somewhere I saw data for Vladimir Putin—it was 1%. You had 22%, Mikhail Prokhorov 15%, Boris Akunin 11%, Vladimir Ryzhkov 9%. Now, the next question about Putin: “Do you plan to vote in the Russian presidential election on March 4? If so, for whom?” One percent of the protest crowd is ready to vote for Vladimir Putin.

A. NAVALNY: Strange where they came from. They probably surveyed police officers. Though after talking to police officers in the detention center… they cursed him so much I’m not even sure he gets 1% there.

E. ALBATS: So, Alexei Anatolyevich, are you ready to be President of Russia?

A. NAVALNY: I’m ready to fight to have honest elections announced. When there is an opportunity to take part in elections, I’m ready to fight for leadership positions, including in a presidential election. I’m extremely grateful to the people who supported me. That means they supported my work investigating corruption, they support me and the people who work with me in this fight. Thank you very much. Our task now is to make sure everyone can take part in the presidential election. Once we achieve that, I think more normal politicians will appear who want to do it. Normal, not normal—different ones. I’ll be among them, fighting for people’s support, trying to convince them that I’m better, my program is better, my team is better. Yes, I will fight for leadership positions.

E. ALBATS: Alexei, on March 4 there will be what they call a presidential election. The choice there will be between Putin, Zyuganov, and Prokhorov. It’s clear that in that situation Vladimir Putin will most likely once again be declared President of Russia.

A. NAVALNY: Zhenya, you yourself just said the key phrase—“what they call.” They can call it whatever they want. They invented this procedure and used it to squeeze out absolutely everyone, both dangerous and harmless. Only those who got special permission and coordinated things in advance can register. It’s a prohibitive procedure. It’s impossible to collect two million signatures in that time.

E. ALBATS: They now seem to be reducing it. Medvedev is proposing 100,000 signatures.

A. NAVALNY: First reduce it, then hold new elections. These elections that are about to take place are not elections. In any case they will be recognized as illegitimate. We will never recognize them. The only question is the degree of their illegitimacy. In any case we will demand normal presidential elections, in which—and maybe everyone here will scold me for saying this—Putin may very well win. But let him win honestly in a second round with 30 percent.

E. ALBATS: You mean in 2018?

A. NAVALNY: What 2018? This should happen… The question is whether we achieve it or not. We can achieve it this year. Let them appoint whoever they want in March. Or maybe nothing will happen in March, and we’ll achieve the adoption of a new law, and in September we’ll hold a normal presidential election. It’s a question of our activity, our participation. Maybe this is too simplistic, but we need to gather a million people in the streets—people who say: no, we do not agree that the president of our huge country should be some guy whose legitimacy comes not from us, the people of Russia, but from the bearded Churov. If we gather that million—then that’s it, nothing can be done to us. And all our demands will be met. Because those people understand there’s no other way. They can’t ignore it. Those people will come to the Kremlin and say: “Thank you, goodbye.”

E. ALBATS: Twenty-two percent of those surveyed on Sakharov Avenue want to see Alexei Navalny as their president. So what kind of president would that be? Alexei, I don’t know whether this is still on your blog, but you once described your ideological platform as national-democratic. Is that still the case?

A. NAVALNY: Yes, absolutely. I think these exercises in applied political science, these definitions—national-democrat, liberal, and so on—don’t matter all that much in Russian reality. But if we’re going to go into those weeds, then yes, I identify more as a national democrat.

E. ALBATS: “National” means you’re a nationalist.

A. NAVALNY: It means I’m a national democrat, that I support a democratic form of government, but I believe Russia has national specificities. We really do differ significantly from European countries, even though we absolutely should choose a European path of development. Russia is not the Netherlands, after all. Obviously we have our own specifics, our own specific problems; the country as a whole has them, Russians as the largest people have them, and so on. None of these issues should be hushed up—they need to be addressed, and they absolutely can be addressed, without any clashes and without the word “national” frightening anyone or causing problems. When the President of the United States addresses the nation, no one is frightened by that at all.

E. ALBATS: On Sakharov Avenue, the most aggressive group were precisely the nationalists, although according to Levada Center only 6% of the people there held nationalist views. *The New Times* correspondents stood in that crowd. Every time someone with a non-Russian surname spoke—or a surname they thought was non-Russian—the response was “get lost.” In fact the chant was much ruder than that. Very aggressive, very harsh. At one point they started breaking the barriers. It was very unpleasant to stand there. Still, I want to ask you: is Russia only for Russians?

A. NAVALNY: Russia is for the citizens of Russia, naturally.

E. ALBATS: One of the leaders of the nationalist movement, Vladimir Tor, came out and said: “Russia for Russians.”

A. NAVALNY: I didn’t hear Tor say that. I’ll repeat that I am deeply convinced that this small aggressive core—without a doubt they were there, you could even see them from the stage—were people specially hired to create discord: look, some fascists showed up. So there would be something to make reports about. Not reports about a hundred thousand people coming out to demand free elections, but reports saying that a hundred thousand people came out, but there’s discord among them, and the fascists started fighting with the liberals, and they can’t even agree among themselves, they boo one another. That was done for exactly that purpose. Most of that core were simply hired. There are also people who are misguided and mistaken; with them, explanatory work needs to be done.

E. ALBATS: Would President Navalny make any decisions connected with national representation?

A. NAVALNY: Zhenya, talking in terms of “President Navalny” right now is completely pointless, because we are very far from that. Right now we’re in a system where Borovkova gives Udaltsov 15 days…

E. ALBATS: Are you saying I won’t live to see it?

A. NAVALNY: We’ll all live to see it. We’ll achieve it. I don’t know whether you’ll live to see President Navalny, whether I will, or whether anyone will. But we will absolutely live to see the moment when there is a president whom we all elected. Whether it’s Navalny or Petrov doesn’t matter at all. I’d be perfectly happy with President Petrov, Ivanov, or Rabinovich—anyone at all, as long as it’s a lawful president. As I said in my speech, I want to respect the authorities. I may not support that president, but I want to respect him, to understand that he is genuinely a legitimate president. Talking now about some kind of presidential program of mine is pointless, because we haven’t achieved free elections. Once there are elections and different people are running, I’ll gladly present my presidential program. Though of course I do have my own view on all these issues.

E. ALBATS: You say Russia should be a European country. But all the democracies of Western Europe are parliamentary republics. That has to do with the history of those countries, and also with the fact that…

A. NAVALNY: When I say European, I mean the vector of development. The United States is a super-presidential republic.

E. ALBATS: The only successful super-presidential republic. The only one. All the others, exactly as Aristotle described, begin with admirable monarchs who inevitably evolve into dictators.

A. NAVALNY: I think Russia’s specifics—its size, the composition of its population—dictate that the president should be a more influential figure than in most European countries, but that doesn’t mean he should be given some kind of super- or mega-powers. Look: in the United States, on the one hand, it’s a super-presidential republic; on the other hand, we see how difficult things are for President Obama with the Republicans, how difficult it is not even just with Republicans but with lobbying groups that may not seem that significant, like the National Rifle Association, and yet they still force dialogue and he has to interact with all of them. We need something similar. Yes, the president has powers, but everyone else is not crushed—they exist.

E. ALBATS: So you support constitutional reform under which Russia would become a parliamentary republic, where parties gain special weight and the government is formed from the parliamentary majority, as in the United Kingdom.

A. NAVALNY: I think the question of forming a government from the parliamentary majority is extremely urgent right now. At this stage, it’s the path to national consensus. At this stage of Russia’s development, yes, of course, we need…

E. ALBATS: You mean after free elections.

A. NAVALNY: It seems to me that if we announce free elections now, it’s unlikely there will be any party that wins outright with 70%, 60%, or 55% and can form a government on its own. But so that we don’t end up with chaos where not a single law gets through the Duma, we need to build parliamentary coalitions: let one party get 30%, another 25%, they form a majority, they guarantee the whole population that by discussing things they can pass laws, that the Duma works. And if a law is needed, it is passed after debate. They form the government, yes.

E. ALBATS: Unfortunately, we only have 30 seconds left. The next question I want to ask you is this. Those who won’t be able to watch us on RTVi can switch right now to Setevizor and continue listening to our conversation on Echo of Moscow. And the question is this. A week ago I had a long conversation with professors from American universities who were visiting here, and they asked a lot about you. One of them quoted your words, in which you supposedly called migrant workers… I’ll formulate that question in the next hour.

A. NAVALNY: Quite a cliffhanger—what exactly did I call migrant workers?

E. ALBATS: Yes. Thank you to RTVi viewers and Echo of Moscow listeners. We’ll continue our conversation in just a few minutes.

NEWS

E. ALBATS: So, it’s 10:06 p.m., you’re listening to Echo of Moscow. Those of you who were watching us in the previous hour on RTVi, switch over to the Echo of Moscow website—the Setevizor stream is running there, so you can keep watching our conversation, or listening to it. We’re getting text messages—there are 600 questions here already, and we’ll also try to open the phone lines. The questions coming in are: Alexei, are new elections possible?

A. NAVALNY: Absolutely—we will achieve that. The question is whether we ourselves achieve it or not. I say yes.

E. ALBATS: Evgenia asks: “Ask Alexei about his photo with Hitler on his torso.”

A. NAVALNY: Hitler on my torso? I’ve never taken a photo with Hitler. Or did I take a photo somewhere bare-chested with Hitler tattooed on my torso?

E. ALBATS: I think that has to do with the fact that your speech was described as Führer-like, and people started comparing you to Hitler.

A. NAVALNY: Zhenya, I’m not going to risk undressing live on Echo of Moscow’s Setevizor, but I assure you I do not have a Hitler tattoo on my torso. Only Lenin and Stalin in profile.

E. ALBATS: There was another question: “Decisions need to be made very quickly. What are the concrete steps?”

A. NAVALNY: Very quickly in relation to what? The steps are very simple: we clearly understand what we’re trying to achieve. We are trying to achieve honest parliamentary and presidential elections. We held a rally, the rally adopted a resolution and demands. Those demands have been voiced. We demanded that they be met, and we are waiting for them to be met. If they aren’t, then we’ll hold an even bigger rally, a march, and so on; if they still aren’t, then we’ll do it again, we’ll go out into the street and this time we won’t leave.

E. ALBATS: Won’t leave? When do you mean? We live in a country with a cold climate.

A. NAVALNY: The question of the next rally or march is something to be discussed. I can give you my own view—I think it should be held a week before the presidential election, in February; not a rally but a march, with a serious emphasis on holding it in all the country’s major cities, bringing no fewer than a million people into the streets across Russia.

E. ALBATS: So, to begin a nationwide protest campaign?

A. NAVALNY: Of course. These falsifications happened in all the major cities and million-plus cities. In fact, in rural areas they were even harsher and more disgusting, but we understand that in the big cities people know about these falsifications, so they are ready to come out into the streets, and we will do it—we have to gather these people and demand change. And keep demanding it until they comply. Of course we must use peaceful protest. But our peaceful protest also has to be firm. It’s not just “we came out, thought about it, and went home.” What’s the Kremlin’s strategy? “They’ll get tired of it.” Not even because it’s cold, but because they’ll get tired, they’ll become disillusioned. We won’t get tired and we won’t become disillusioned. In the Levada Center poll, which I really liked, when people were asked whether they had taken part in the protest against the falsifications of December 4, whether they had taken part in the previous ones—at Chistye Prudy, at Bolotnaya—37% said they had not. So we can see turnover: 40% of the people came out for the first time. And I’m sure the process will keep growing, new people will keep coming, people will replace one another, and we will achieve our goal.

E. ALBATS: “Ask Navalny whether he’s a Kremlin project or a CIA project, a Kremlin or State Department project?”

A. NAVALNY: At this point I don’t even know whose project I am myself—I’m at a loss on that one.

E. ALBATS: Has the Kremlin ever reached out to you?

A. NAVALNY: I have never in my life spoken with—well, I’ve seen Kudrin. I stood on stage with him. But to be honest, mostly I was asking him about VTB, because I’m a VTB shareholder and I investigate corruption at that wonderful bank. And as for Kudrin—I did stand on the same stage with him, of course, but I’ve accumulated some questions for Mr. Kudrin. Because he was chairman of the board of VTB at the time when utterly revolting fraudulent corruption schemes were going on there. So politics is politics, but I’m continuing my main work.

E. ALBATS: And what did Kudrin answer?

A. NAVALNY: He sort of smiled gently. We didn’t manage to have a substantive conversation about it.

E. ALBATS: And the CIA? The State Department?

A. NAVALNY: The CIA has forbidden me to answer that question directly.

E. ALBATS: Let me return to where we left off in the previous hour. So, I was quoted something—I couldn’t find it online—that you somewhere called migrant workers cockroaches. Yes or no?

A. NAVALNY: First of all, no. Second, as for those professors of yours—if that question had come from someone like Kurginyan, Vladimir Solovyov, or any of those characters, it would be from the same category—some kind of nonsense, that I called someone cockroaches, or yellow fish, or earthworms. I don’t know—either those professors have problems with Russian, or with something else in general.

E. ALBATS: So you’re convinced that in no video clip…

A. NAVALNY: Let’s strip those professors of their professorships if they use sources like that.

E. ALBATS: You can’t do that, because in the U.S. a professorship is a lifetime position.

A. NAVALNY: With our mass actions we’ll achieve anything we want. The next resolution will include a point about stripping Harvard professors of their titles.

E. ALBATS: That’s impossible. You took part in the “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” rally, which also caused a lot of criticism.

A. NAVALNY: I did. And I’m absolutely convinced I was right to do so, and I absolutely stand by my position that these insane cash infusions into the North Caucasus go only to the corrupt elite, which pays back with those very same 99.9% votes for Putin and United Russia. All that money goes to the establishment, to specific families that are becoming fantastically rich, while the impoverished population looks at them and, finding no justice, heads for the mountains. The money the rest of Russia pours into the Caucasus is, in effect, funding the civil war there. And nothing good will come of it. So “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” means, first and foremost, stop feeding the corrupt elite of the North Caucasus. Secondly, it is a demand for equality in budget transfers between regions.

If we are developing resorts in the North Caucasus, I don’t understand why we aren’t developing resorts at Lake Baikal, resorts in Kamchatka, or the Golden Ring around Moscow. Isn’t that a reasonable way to frame the issue? It is. That’s what I’m talking about.

My critics say: let’s not talk about this at all, it’s such a slippery, heated subject, better to keep quiet. And supposedly it will go away on its own. It won’t go away on its own. It has to be discussed honestly. Let’s take it head-on: the republics of the North Caucasus should receive money as subsidized subjects of the Russian Federation—should they? Yes, they should, they have that right. But why should they receive more than Smolensk Region? If there were a civil war—okay, there was a civil war and military action in Chechnya. There wasn’t one in Ingushetia or Dagestan.

The next question: we’ve already poured in huge amounts of money—what have we gotten for it? Where is any return? We get nothing. What we get is that the population there mostly becomes poorer, while the crooks become richer. They give each other gold bars as gifts, drive around in insanely expensive cars, videos of motorcades with Porsche Cayennes, Maybachs, and so on are all over the internet. Obviously all of that irritates everyone, both in the Caucasus and in the rest of Russia. And all of this, of course, leads to discord and problems.

E. ALBATS: You were at the Russian March, which caused a great deal of criticism, after which—as you probably saw online—you were called every name under the sun: fascist, Nazi, everything imaginable.

A. NAVALNY: They did. In fact, you devoted an entire program to it. I’ll never get tired of explaining this to people: if you’ve taken something on, you have to see it through. I took it upon myself to defend this point of view, and I will defend it. I will keep explaining and saying that people with conservative, nationalist views do exist. Among them, we need to single out the reasonable ones; those who are unreasonable need to be persuaded and talked to; and those who are complete thugs, who call for violence, need to be dealt with in accordance with the law. Everyone else—people are different. Some take a hard line on migrants, some a softer one, but they all have the right to speak. Our task, the task of politicians, is to identify the reasonable demands among them and implement them. The example I always give is this: Obama and the Democrats in the U.S. Congress voted to build a wall with Mexico. Nothing terrible happened, and nobody called them fascists. So why is it that when I say we should introduce a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia, that’s somehow fascism? It’s a normal, civilized measure.

E. ALBATS: I see. “Alexei, please clarify your future relations with Kasyanov and Kudrin—they’re former members of the ‘party of crooks and thieves.’ Though in this business there are no real ‘former’ people, so why deal with them at all?”

A. NAVALNY: I don’t have any special relationship with them. I still think it was a great idea to hold a vote on who should speak at the rally. Those people should speak because people themselves chose them. If someone now says that I represent Bolotnaya or Sakharov Avenue, that person is an impostor. It doesn’t matter what percentage they got in a poll. There is no one person who can decide such things. That’s why we need a different level of legitimacy—a vote in which people themselves say: let’s make a list of those we want to see. As far as I understand, Kudrin was on that list. Kasyanov—I don’t remember.

E. ALBATS: He was.

A. NAVALNY: If he was, then he was. That’s how it was decided. There were liberals there, nationalists too. Did people vote for the nationalists? Then they stand there. And it doesn’t matter if someone says... what really irritates me is this attitude: “I won’t stand on the same stage with him.” Nobody’s asking you who you want or don’t want to stand with. The people decided. There was a vote, so they decide who stands on that stage. If you don’t like it, then this format isn’t for you. Then you can’t take part in a united civic rally. You can go home, to your kitchen, and sort through people there—that’s your domain, and there you decide whom to invite and whom not to invite. Here, the people invite—the assembled crowd invites whomever they want to the rally. So the fact that I spoke alongside them does not mean I’m engaged with them in some kind of party-building or organizational project. If I need to talk to Kudrin about something, the first thing I’ll talk to him about is the fraud at VTB, and so on.

E. ALBATS: Alexei Kudrin, in a statement published on the Kommersant website on the eve of the Sakharov rally, and later when I spoke to him after his speech there, said that he was ready to act as a mediator between the opposition and the authorities. True, when I asked him directly whether he had a mandate from Putin, he said no. And yet he believes he can try to establish a dialogue between the two sides—the opposition and the authorities. So if you got a call saying Prime Minister Putin wants to meet with you, would you go?

A. NAVALNY: In what capacity? As a representative of Sakharov Avenue, or simply as Russian citizen Navalny? I would absolutely go to a meeting with Putin, but if it happened right now, I would tell him: I do not represent Bolotnaya, I am not any kind of negotiator. I’m coming to you with a stack of documents on Gunvor, the Ozero cooperative, the Rotenbergs, the Kovalchuks, and all the other wonderful guys whose corrupt activities I investigate. And I’d be ready to discuss all of that with you. I’d present the evidence—please, send it to the prosecutor’s office.

E. ALBATS: Alexei, you’re being disingenuous.

A. NAVALNY: I’m not being disingenuous when it comes to representing Bolotnaya or anything like that...

E. ALBATS: Sakharov Avenue. You’re one of Russia’s most popular politicians.

A. NAVALNY: Great. If I want to remain one—and I do want to remain one—I must not lie to anyone. And I must not appropriate powers that aren’t mine. I’ve already said that there is currently no representative of Sakharov Avenue. We need a different level of legitimacy. We have to be better than the authorities. What’s our complaint against the authorities? We don’t understand who all these people are. We don’t understand on what basis they’re sitting there. So those who can take part in negotiations must have some level of legitimacy. A vote—and ideally, I’m absolutely in favor of verified, open voting—answers those questions. If 100,000 people came and stood there for three hours listening to political speeches, they can surely spare 15 minutes to register on a special website, verify their identity, and through an open vote give, say, me or Ivan Petrov a mandate. Once that person is given a mandate, and it is formulated that “we, 100,000 people, want these five people to go and negotiate,” then those five should go. All other formats create suspicion that someone went off to bargain for something for themselves, to conduct some kind of separate backroom talks. Preliminary conversations—fine, let anyone have them. People meet and talk to each other—by all means. If tomorrow someone tells me that person X met with person Y, I’m not going to shout that he’s a traitor. But if they tell me he met and spoke as some kind of representative of the opposition and the angry masses, I don’t think that will find support from anyone at all. I certainly won’t do that, because the people who gathered are a huge and powerful force, but they are also extremely wary and vulnerable when it comes to traitors and people who want to use them for their own political ends—I definitely am not going to do that. We must use our strength to achieve the main goal: free elections. Not so that I or someone else can go and cut a deal with Putin for some post in some murky arrangement.

These negotiations are already underway. Our demands are so simple that the negotiations are taking place openly. We didn’t issue a 100-point resolution—there are six points, and they are very simple. And the main demand is free elections. This is not a very flexible negotiating position; we can’t move away from it. We can’t say: there won’t be elections, but you’ll hand out sandwiches and hot tea to everyone. Or: there won’t be elections, but Churov and Borovkova will go to jail—no, that’s not negotiation. The position we cannot retreat from is free elections. That means access for everyone to those elections and a ban on removing candidates from the ballot. Everyone who wants to compete for power must be able to do so legally, in free elections and within a competitive system.

E. ALBATS: So you won’t demand new elections to the State Duma?

A. NAVALNY: We are demanding new elections to the State Duma.

E. ALBATS: That demand still stands?

A. NAVALNY: Of course. We demand: a) a notification-based procedure for registering political parties, and b) new elections. Let a law come into force now that allows everyone to form parties, including me. Once we have that opportunity, all of us—including me—will go into new elections for a new, legitimate Duma. All of this could be done next year. Naturally, we have the same question regarding the presidential election.

E. ALBATS: What will your party be called?

A. NAVALNY: I don’t know. Again, that’s a matter for discussion and voting, but it’s a purely technical issue.

E. ALBATS: So, as I understand it, you won’t go into separate negotiations with Putin. That’s why I like you—you’re a man of principle. Yes, that’s exactly what I said. Still, suppose you are elected as one of those who should go negotiate with the man who is effectively the head of the country, Putin. You come in—what kind of conversation is that? He says: pleased to meet you, I don’t read the internet myself, that’s where the bandar-logs live (a mocking reference Putin once used, borrowed from *The Jungle Book*), but everyone tells me you’re a popular man. What are your demands? What do you say to Putin?

A. NAVALNY: We say what these people have already formulated in their resolution.

E. ALBATS: And you, Navalny?

A. NAVALNY: I would try to выяснить his actual position. Either he wants to remain president, or he needs guarantees—he’s running for president because he needs security guarantees, specifically for himself and the people close to him. On the whole, he understands that he has been head of the country for 12 years, and unfortunately everything comes to an end—his level of support, and even his relative legitimacy; in fact, his legitimacy has already been completely exhausted.

E. ALBATS: Alyosha, do you really think he’ll tell you: I’m running to protect my property and the property of my clan?

A. NAVALNY: But it would be a frank conversation. If these are negotiations, then it has to be a frank conversation in which each side explains its vision for how the situation should develop.

E. ALBATS: He tells you: the country is on the brink of an economic crisis—Medvedev said that today—so there will be a depression, a nightmare is coming, and I am the only one capable of holding the country together. I provided stability; you, Alexei, are from the generation that rose when I was president.

A. NAVALNY: We’ve heard all that many times. And we would tell him: yes, we’ve heard it for 12 years. But now behind us stand people who have given us a mandate to negotiate, and they do not believe it; they know it’s a lie, they will not believe it, and they will campaign, dear Mr. Putin, for your removal. So either you are effectively telling us now that you are steering the country toward civil conflict and instability, or we begin talking about how elections must be conducted so that both the people who came to the rally and the people who support Putin—and there are quite a lot of them—can take part. As I’ve already said, it is entirely possible that Putin would win in free elections. It is entirely possible that even now United Russia, the “party of crooks and thieves,” would still come out ahead in elections—quite possible. That’s why, incidentally, I’m not sure they’ll cling on quite so desperately. Even in a free system they have enough support to remain in power in some form, to retain influence. But they would not have absolute power. That power would no longer mean one billion for this guy, two billion for that guy—and everyone disposing of it as if it were grandma’s piggy bank rather than the country and its national wealth.

E. ALBATS: Kasyanov believes the presidential election should be postponed by at least a month. Because if we’re talking about more or less fair elections, then of course no candidate can build momentum the way Putin can, given that he’s on the news non-stop. And yet—Putin is sitting in front of you.

A. NAVALNY: No, why a month? The issue isn’t postponing it by a month. The issue is allowing those who want to run and have sufficient support to take part. I would have liked to run in the presidential election—they didn’t let me. Not only did they lock me up in that detention center, but the signature-gathering procedure itself makes participation impossible. I can’t create a party to support me in the election, because as we know, over the past several years there have been nine or twelve attempts to register parties, and not a single one succeeded—they were all blocked on completely bogus grounds. Everyone from Limonov to Nemtsov and Kasyanov himself in the last election—they were all barred from running. Because Putin decides who gets to compete with him. But the people should decide that. So please, let’s announce a new candidate registration system: collect 100,000 signatures, and off you go—registered and running. Right now it’s 2 million across 50 regions. And you have to gather them over the New Year holidays by January 15, plus there’s the procedure for formally registering signature collectors with a notary involved. As someone who has collected signatures, I can tell you—and every political consultant will agree with me—that it is impossible. And everyone who brings signatures to the Central Election Commission will have fabricated them. It’s just that some people’s fabricated signatures will be accepted, and others’ won’t. They made those arrangements in advance. I’m not going to criticize Yavlinsky or Prokhorov right now—that’s a separate conversation. But if they are registered, they will be registered by prior arrangement, illegally and illegitimately, on the basis of a deal: we register you, but not them. We bring you in for competition, to highlight our greatness; we don’t let them in because they won’t highlight our greatness properly. Is my position really unclear? I’m not seeing much confidence here. It seems to me you’re disappearing into that 22% who support me.

E. ALBATS: Let me play devil’s advocate—I’m curious. Putin says to you: guys, people are going to support me anyway. Let’s not rock the boat right now. Navalny, I’m offering you the post of minister of social development, or something else—which post in the government would you like?

A. NAVALNY: I don’t like any post that would be offered to me in that format. It is absolutely out of the question. Everything I’ve done over many years—I want to feel like a decent person, I want people to support me because I’m doing the right things. And then to walk out and say: you know, guys, you gathered somewhere, good for you, thanks—and now I’m minister of such-and-such development. First, the next time I showed up anywhere, I’d simply get beaten up. Second, everything I’ve built would collapse, and for the rest of my life I’d be regarded not as a decent person but as God knows what. I don’t want that, and I don’t want to be a minister in such a system. I understand that it would be a very short-lived ministership anyway. Because people still won’t disperse.

E. ALBATS: We’re going to the news and then we’ll come back to the studio and open the phone lines.

NEWS

E. ALBATS: In the studio—Alexei Navalny. We have 32,000 people watching us on the online stream, so it’s lagging—sorry, folks. But when Alexei Navalny is invited onto Channel One, Channel Two, Channel Four...

A. NAVALNY: And the Kultura channel.

E. ALBATS: Then things will be much easier. People are asking you: where will you get money for the party, who will finance you?

A. NAVALNY: Party members will finance me. We already have that experience: for RosPil, we raised 7 million rubles (about 7 million RUB) to fund the lawyers fighting corruption in public procurement. And I’m absolutely sure that the simplest way to raise money for a party and not depend on anyone is to get it from the party members themselves. We’ll do the math and tell everyone: your party membership costs 1,000 rubles a year, so pay 80 rubles a month if you want our party to be independent, and you’ll get a full report on where your 80 rubles a month went.

E. ALBATS: But 7 million rubles is nothing for a party campaign.

A. NAVALNY: We raised 7 million in a month from 20,000 people. We’ll raise 77,177 if we need to.

E. ALBATS: Let’s try opening the phone lines. I’ll warn everyone right away: formulate your questions clearly, we don’t have much time. All right, I’m turning them on. Where are you calling from?

LISTENER: My name is Dmitry, I’m from St. Petersburg. My question is this—Alexei, Yevgenia Markovna asked you whether you’d accept the post of health minister or finance minister. My question is: Putin’s only way to secure himself is to guarantee the safety of himself and the members of the FSB criminal group. If you were offered the presidency of Russia on condition that you guarantee his safety and the safety of the whole gang of crooks and thieves...

A. NAVALNY: I understand the question. First of all, the illegitimate authorities currently in the Kremlin cannot offer me any post I would accept, because that post would itself be illegitimate, and I’d be driven out of it together with the illegitimate authorities. As for guarantees for some entire criminal group, of course that cannot even be on the table—these are all people who broke the law, and they should end up in the dock. As for guarantees for Putin, naturally that can be discussed, but only within legal formats as well. We need to arrive at a compromise that allows the country to develop, that allows for a smooth political transition without harming the country, rather than pushing everyone into confrontation.

E. ALBATS: Another question.

LISTENER: Stanislav from Omsk. I’ll just say briefly—I have the feeling I’m talking to the future president of Russia, but that’s just a comment. My question is: what needs to be done first, what are the first things that need to happen once Putin is gone? I think I’m not the only one interested in that.

A. NAVALNY: Stanislav, thank you very much. What needs to be done is very simple: power must become legitimate, and we must create a system in which we elect a legitimate president who will not be able to usurp power.

E. ALBATS: Concrete steps, Alexei? Putin leaves—I don’t know—emigrates, or something else happens to him.

A. NAVALNY: I understand the question: Putin leaves, emigrates. We announce elections, we compete in those elections, and a new president emerges.

E. ALBATS: Who governs the country in the meantime?

A. NAVALNY: In the meantime, the government governs the country. We can create a transitional government, an interim government—we do have some legitimate institutions, and there definitely won’t be chaos. There is still a system for governing the country, and it has been built up over a long time. Hot water won’t stop running from the taps, and trolleybuses will keep operating. There won’t be a vacuum. He’s not going to run away—but even if he did run off with suitcases, dressed in women’s clothes, people would still show up for work at the ministries the next morning and keep the basic systems running. Firefighters would go to work, the police would go to work, and it would turn out: Putin is gone, Putin has disappeared. So there’s an acting official. Even if two people disappear, there are acting replacements for them—those people would announce new elections, the government would run things in the meantime, the elections would take place, a new government would be formed, and so on. These scenarios have happened hundreds of times in different countries. There is nothing new or extraordinary about it. It would be a difficult period, but we would manage.

E. ALBATS: In an interview in April, you said that people who had served in previous governments would not be needed by you, because the experience they gained under the old authorities would not be useful. Where would you recruit people from?

A. NAVALNY: We have 140 million people. In my team, and among the people I work with, there are absolutely outstanding people whose moral, ethical, professional, and every other quality I trust completely. And again, if we hold normal elections, then the formation of a government becomes a matter of coalition-building and agreements. There will be a coalition in the Duma, a governing coalition, and it will appoint ministers and form the government. I’m absolutely sure that by now... we had problems in the 1990s—a transition, everyone had been communists yesterday and democrats today, and nobody understood what needed to be done. Yesterday they supported state planning, today they supported a market economy. But now, in 2012, we have enough people who can govern—they have sufficient education, and so on.

E. ALBATS: Another call.

LISTENER: Irina, Tolyatti. I really want to ask him how his wife felt about it, how she behaved while he was in jail.

A. NAVALNY: I can’t say with 100% certainty how she behaved—I hope she behaved well. She supported me, my whole family supported me, and she worked with the lawyers.

E. ALBATS: What do you mean you can’t say with 100% certainty? What a bastard you are, just like all men.

A. NAVALNY: I can say 99.9%.

E. ALBATS: I spoke to her three times a day. She was preoccupied with the problem of what you were eating and how to get food to you.

A. NAVALNY: Excellent. Then now I can say 100%, since you were exercising constant supervision. But I have absolute confidence in my wife. Unfortunately, we are forced to live in a system where everyone engaged in the kind of work I do has to have a plan—what to do in situations like this, what to do if you’re arrested. We had a plan, she carried it out, and everything went well.

E. ALBATS: Not to mention that you have two children that Yulia had to take care of.

A. NAVALNY: And she did—she did a great job, I’m very grateful to her, she handled everything well.

E. ALBATS: Another question.

LISTENER: My name is Ivan, I’m from Kostroma. My question is: what’s your forecast for the Kremlin’s political activity over at least the next six months?

A. NAVALNY: All of the Kremlin’s political activity depends on our political activity. They have completely lost the initiative, and everything they do—they operate like Pavlov’s dog, reacting reflexively to external stimuli. If we insist on our demands, if we increase our lawful and peaceful protest, they will react one way. If tomorrow we all get tired of it and go home, they will react in a completely different way. It’s us who determine both our own reactions and the Kremlin’s.

E. ALBATS: Alexei, who are your allies? Suppose the authorities begin a negotiation process with the opposition—I understand your position: people must choose who will negotiate, hopefully with an outgoing government. But whom do you see as your allies, which parties, which political leaders?

A. NAVALNY: All politicians who take a reasonable approach to all this, who agree with the basic principles.

E. ALBATS: What is a “reasonable approach”?

A. NAVALNY: A reasonable approach means not starting to pull the blanket over yourself—we see that all the time—and not starting to scheme just to put yourself in the spotlight. It means understanding that right now we need, first, to ensure a normal transfer of power, and second, to organize fair elections in which we can all compete, debate, and so on. Those are the people. Those who will work toward the common goal, who will demand legitimacy, who will agree to voting and to mandates being granted through direct voting by the people—they are my allies. Those who start scheming and saying “we’ve already made a deal”—they will be acting badly. Right now I see everyone as my allies. They are my allies, and I am theirs, because we understand that we need to preserve this protest, we need to justify the trust of the people who gathered, we need to get a mandate from them and first do something for them, and only then scatter back to our separate political apartments and start competing with and criticizing one another.

E. ALBATS: Let’s take another question.

LISTENER: Tatyana, Moscow. I’d like to know whether it’s possible for the opposition to unite and put forward a single presidential candidate for March 4.

A. NAVALNY: By March 4 it’s already impossible to nominate anyone new—those who were nominated have been nominated, and we more or less understand who will be registered.

LISTENER: What about supporting a single candidate among those already nominated?

A. NAVALNY: Tell me, which of the candidates can you see as a single consensus candidate?

LISTENER: For example, Yavlinsky.

A. NAVALNY: From your pause before answering, I gathered that you’re not sure. I think Yavlinsky is a fine man, Prokhorov is a fine man, Zyuganov is a fine man—but we still do not consider this an election. And we must use this procedure to create stress for the illegitimate authorities and continue our campaign: “Vote for anyone except the party of crooks and thieves.” I’m sure that strategy should be continued in the presidential election as well. We must prepare and deploy a huge number of observers to polling stations, we must work toward forcing a second round, we must prevent falsification, and we must use this mass of people as a propaganda machine, if you like, to explain and tell the public everything: about the Ozero cooperative, about the Rotenbergs, about Gunvor, about all the theft, about Udaltsov, about Judge Borovkova. We must do that and use this strange process they call elections for that purpose. But to take it seriously in the sense of a single candidate who will then become president—we cannot treat it that way, because a large number of other people who want to become president are simply not allowed to take part in these elections.

E. ALBATS: You mentioned Rotenberg, and recently a knowledgeable person told me that Putin had recently thrown Arkady Rotenberg out of his office because he was very tired of the excessive appetites of this old friend from St. Petersburg. All right, if the second round is between Zyuganov and Putin—what’s the strategy then?

A. NAVALNY: We’ll decide what the strategy is; I’m not ready to say right now. That too has to be a collective decision, and it needs to be thought through very carefully, taking into account how the first part of our strategy plays out. But in any case, if there is a second round, if we achieve the point where they can’t rig it so that he wins in the first round—and we understand that this is possible—then that in itself will already be excellent.

E. ALBATS: Thank you. Another question.

LISTENER: Stanislav, Moscow. I didn’t hear the whole program from the beginning, and I wanted to ask this: the party you may be planning to create—where on the spectrum would it be? Center-right, centrist, right-wing? What ideology would it have?

A. NAVALNY: Again, I’m not ready right now to debate applied political science—which part of the spectrum we’ll occupy. Because then we’d have to answer what our position will be on abortion, the death penalty, gay pride parades, and so on. Roughly speaking, I suppose it would probably be center-right, though that sounds strange to me. We need to form the party, determine who is in it, and hold internal debates on a large number of issues. I do not want to create a Führer-style party where whatever I say goes. This is a matter for discussion. And if within my own party—if it exists at all—I end up in the minority on some issues, then I’ll end up in the minority on some issues that are not central for me. It’s a matter of dialogue and discussion.

E. ALBATS: This is important to me. In the European sense, a right-wing party is always nationalist. Politically right-wing, economically right-wing?

A. NAVALNY: Don’t go any further. It’s a pointless conversation, because we don’t understand where the right is and where the left is. For us, “right” means one thing, and in Europe it means another—first we need to agree on the terms.

E. ALBATS: Exactly right. Let’s hear another question.

LISTENER: Daniil, St. Petersburg. I want to suggest that Alexei record a New Year’s address and put it somewhere on YouTube on New Year’s Eve. I don’t want to listen to Medvedev and ruin my appetite. What does Alexei think of that idea?

A. NAVALNY: Thank you very much for the vote of confidence. I’m afraid that if I start recording addresses, it will look ridiculous, and grandiosity would be out of place here. This isn’t even counting your chickens before they hatch—it’s like the bear’s skin is somewhere on Mars, and we’ve only just climbed a tree and are already acting as if we’ve caught the bear. So I’m afraid I’d look ridiculous in that role. I’ll gladly send everyone my New Year’s greetings on my blog.

E. ALBATS: Hello?

LISTENER: Yuri, from Switzerland.

A. NAVALNY: And here I thought it was Gennady Timchenko from Gunvor.

LISTENER: Am I on the air already? I watched the events leading up to the Bolotnaya rally, and I have the impression that Alexei is a short-sighted person. He made an elementary mistake—he allowed himself a hooligan stunt. I understand that this is a struggle, but in the end he lost what might have allowed him to get registered. And as a result he just came off as a hooligan who got 15 days in jail. And today I have the feeling that he is trying to...

E. ALBATS: Yura, where does this overfamiliarity come from?

A. NAVALNY: I understand the question and I’m ready to answer it. Yura, first of all, let’s not be naive—whether I was in that detention center or not, the question of registration would be decided one way or the other because a man named Vladimir Putin writes down on a piece of paper whom he wants to see among his competitors in the presidential election, and I’m not on that list. That’s first. And second, I shouldn’t be on that list anyway, because everyone should be on that list; it shouldn’t be Putin drawing it up, but, as I said, all citizens. Second, on the 5th I did what every normal person should have done. I went to defend my rights, I said what I thought needed to be said, and I did what I thought needed to be done—not what the prefect of the Central District had decided. People were gathering peacefully and unarmed; they had the right to do so. And I’m sure none of it was in vain.

E. ALBATS: Another call.

LISTENER: Alexander, from Yekaterinburg. I think the question of releasing Khodorkovsky after the election—let’s say, in the hypothetical event that you are elected president—is a settled one. But what then? What would his rehabilitation look like? Would he be paid compensation for property unjustly taken from him? Would Yukos be returned to him? And if we consider him a prototype of a victim of this system—though he’s not the only one—what would the rehabilitation of victims of Putin’s regime look like in general?

A. NAVALNY: First of all, by the way, on the presidential election: all candidates are being asked this question now, and they say, “I’ll pardon Khodorkovsky.” That seems like nonsense to me. Even those who didn’t follow the Khodorkovsky case closely understand that in the second trial he does not need a pardon. The second Khodorkovsky trial was simply a mockery of justice. We may like him or not—there were tax violations there—he served time for them, and a lot of time; in our country people don’t serve that long even for murder. The second trial was an absolute sham. So the issue is that we need to investigate why he was unlawfully imprisoned, who put him there, who gave those instructions to the judge, and we already know there is testimony that the verdict was dictated to the court. So Khodorkovsky does not need a pardon. What is needed is an investigation into how that trial was conducted, punishment for those responsible, and his release as a person unlawfully convicted. As for Yukos, that’s something we would need to examine separately—that’s a matter for a future government. Yes, there were violations—but if Khodorkovsky went to prison for them, why wasn’t Abramovich sitting next to him? Why wasn’t Deripaska? And why were all the others who committed exactly the same tax violations not punished?

E. ALBATS: Are you planning to jail oligarchs?

A. NAVALNY: I’m planning to make sure that courts and law enforcement hold accountable those who violated the law. If the statute of limitations has not expired, then of course this is a matter of law, a matter of social justice—of course everyone who broke the law should be punished. Khodorkovsky broke the law—he served time. Others continue doing exactly the same thing with all these raw-materials schemes, and meanwhile they buy yachts, football clubs, and everything else—and nobody touches them. The law is the same for everyone. That’s a complete banality, but for some reason in our country it becomes a political decision. What political decision can there be here? That’s simply how it should be.

E. ALBATS: Though privatization took place within a specific system, under specific laws.

A. NAVALNY: Exactly. There are mechanisms for solving those problems too. In Britain there was the so-called “windfall tax”—a tax on excess profits. That doesn’t mean taking everything away. But if you bought Norilsk Nickel, say, for $100 million and now it’s worth $8 billion, you can bring in consultants, calculate it all properly, justify it, and say that this should be taxed at 65%—and then legally collect those taxes from everyone. Let some people have not $16 billion but $1 billion—but let it be a completely legal $1 billion. Because right now all the fortunes of our oligarchs are completely virtual: today you have it, tomorrow it can be taken away—with the full support of 100% of the population. Because all these fortunes are illegitimate; they too need to be legitimized. Let them be smaller, but absolutely legal, and then property will become sacred.

E. ALBATS: Very interesting questions. Let’s hear another one.

LISTENER: Anna, from St. Petersburg. What do you think of the idea of a nationwide referendum on Putin’s resignation—he promised to leave if people didn’t support him. Shall we test that? And another question: what do you think of the LDPR, their presence at the rallies, and the homophobic law?

A. NAVALNY: As for a referendum: the procedure for holding a referendum is the most prohibitive in the entire body of legislation—local, regional, and especially federal referendums are practically impossible to hold. There have been a million attempts. The only referendums that were actually held were on merging federal subjects, and those were organized by the authorities themselves. It is impossible to gather the signatures required—it’s out of the question, unfortunately. The Communists keep trying to hold a referendum, and unfortunately it’s impossible. Bolotnaya and Sakharov are our referendum. It is taking place in that form.

E. ALBATS: What do you think of the homophobic laws, the law against gays and lesbians passed in St. Petersburg?

A. NAVALNY: The law passed in St. Petersburg isn’t even homophobic so much as idiotic. It talks about some kind of propaganda of homosexuality, pedophilia—they mixed everything together. Frankly, it’s strange that the legal department let it through at all, because laws like that simply should not be passed—they lumped homosexuality, pedophilia, and everything else into one pile. That too is a separate subject for discussion, but of course the law should never have been passed, because lawyers should have blocked it before politicians ever got involved.

E. ALBATS: Let’s try to take one more question.

LISTENER: Irina. Tolyatti. Alexei, I forgot to say the most important thing—Tolyatti is for you.

A. NAVALNY: Thank you.

LISTENER: We love you very much.

E. ALBATS: Let’s not spend time on that. Sorry, Alexei—women are definitely in love with you. Let’s take the next call.

LISTENER: Dmitry, Rostov. I have two questions. First: will there be any lustration for those who have already been in power? And second: Putin has already been president twice, so in principle he has no right to run again. And what about restoring the presidential term limit to four years?

A. NAVALNY: I completely agree. Through a trick like that, Putin complied with the letter of the constitution but violated its spirit. I believe he legally violated the spirit of the constitution, because the spirit of the law is also a legal concept. He violated it—without any doubt, he has no right to run for another term, that’s not even up for discussion. On that point I fully agree—it cannot be allowed.

As for lustration, first of all we should be talking not so much about lustration as about enforcing the law. Take Judge Borovkova, Judge Krivoruchko, Moscow City Court Judge Yegorova—lustration is not what’s needed in their case. Judge Borovkova issues unlawful verdicts, obstructs justice, bans media activity, and so on. The current criminal code contains more than enough articles under which, in an honest and fair trial, we could try Judge Borovkova. We would allow the media in—which she did not allow today. We would allow lawyers in—which she did not allow before. We would allow witnesses in—which she did not allow at my trial. There would be an honest trial of Judge Borovkova, and she would bear responsibility for it. That’s not even a question of lustration; it’s a question of routine application of the law.

E. ALBATS: Suppose you are the leader of a party in parliament. Would you introduce a lustration law—in the sense of barring former KGB officers...

A. NAVALNY: I think such a law is necessary. The specific selection criteria are a matter for discussion. I support the idea that the leadership of the political party United Russia—the “party of crooks and thieves”—and those who held senior posts in election commissions and were obviously involved in violating the law and trampling it daily, should undergo a lustration procedure and should be deprived of the right to hold certain posts for a certain period of time—absolutely.

E. ALBATS: Do you realize how many enemies you’ve just made for yourself?

A. NAVALNY: I realize that very well, but I’m still going to keep saying what I think needs to be said. Fine then—and Churov? Let’s not forget: we will not forget, we will not forgive. Zhenya. We will not forget, we will not forgive.

E. ALBATS: Unfortunately, that’s where we have to end our broadcast. My thanks to Alexei Navalny for enduring all this—I hope not for the last time. And I’ll be back with you on January 9—I’m going on vacation. Happy New Year, be happy, and stay alive.