The “Full Albats” broadcast, August 7, 2017

(music intro) Full Albats. E. ALBATS: Good evening! It is 8:03 and 32 seconds p.m., and you’re listening to Echo of Moscow radio. I’m Yevgenia Albats, and I’m beginning a program devoted to the key events of the week, the events that will shape politics in the coming weeks and months. Today I have one guest — the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a man about whom the well-known Washington publication Politico recently wrote: “He will beat Putin” — the opposition’s presidential candidate for the Russian Federation, Alexei Navalny, with whom we will be summing up the political season for the opposition. Alexei, hello!

A. NAVALNY: Good evening.

E. ALBATS: Especially since today the seventieth Navalny campaign office opened in the regions. And today the court also refused to satisfy the lawsuit of the influential businessman Mikhailov against Navalny, who had demanded that the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s investigation into the business dealings of the sons of the prosecutor general be removed from the Internet. Congratulations on that, Alexei.

A. NAVALNY: Thank you very much! It’s a rarity for us when we win in a Russian court.

E. ALBATS: Yes, which makes it especially notable. So, when are you going fishing?

A. NAVALNY: Ah, to catch pike?

E. ALBATS: Exactly!

A. NAVALNY: Two hours underwater chasing it? No, well, I think I’d rather... m-m— As I understand it, they turned a fishing trip into a forty-six-minute film and posted it on the presidential administration’s website. Longer than our film about Medvedev or about Chaika. I think I’ll make a film about something else, not, not, not about my fishing trip.

E. ALBATS: Uh-huh. And are you ready to strip for the voters? (laughing)

A. NAVALNY: Zhenya, you’re starting with some provocative questions. I don’t think voters need me to take my clothes off. It seems to me they want something else from a candidate for president of Russia, not stripping. Especially since, with the stripping, I don’t know why they did it a second time. There were so many jokes about the bare-chested horseback photo, but apparently they liked it. It is extremely important for the Kremlin right now to prove that Putin is still all there, that he’s not senile, right? Because judging by the actions of the authorities in recent years, and especially in the last few months, even voters who are quite loyal to Putin and the Kremlin feel like everyone up there has gone mad. So it’s important for them to show that they’re in great physical shape, catching pike and climbing those mountains in Tuva.

E. ALBATS: I see — Navalny won’t be taking his clothes off, folks. Well, that’s always how it is when—

A. NAVALNY: Not planning to anytime soon. (laughs)

E. ALBATS: All right, now to something serious. In your interview with the American channel CBSN, as I understand it, answering every Western journalist’s favorite question — why are you still alive, or aren’t you afraid you’ll be killed? That was basically it, wasn’t it?

A. NAVALNY: It was a lesson for me. Don’t joke in a foreign language.

E. ALBATS: Let me just tell our listeners that you said there was a fifty-percent chance you would be killed and a fifty-percent chance you would not be killed. I specifically listened to the original video. I thought maybe they had twisted your words a bit to promote the broadcast, or that you had said it differently somehow. But no, you said exactly that. You can’t hear the question, but you said exactly fifty percent that you would be killed.

A. NAVALNY: Well, as I already said, it was a lesson: don’t joke in a foreign language. It was the classic situation with a foreign correspondent. You go to him, they ask you some general small talk, and then suddenly he asks: “What do you think, will you be killed or not?” Well yes, he asked: “How likely do you think it is that you’ll be killed?”

E. ALBATS: Uh-huh.

A. NAVALNY: And I remembered this well-known Russian joke about a blonde being asked: “What’s the probability of meeting a dinosaur outside your apartment building?” She says: “Fifty percent: either I will or I won’t.” So I decided to make a joke along those lines and said: “Well, fifty percent — either they’ll kill me or they won’t.” Because what I meant in my answer was that there’s no point in analyzing it. I don’t know, and I’m not even going to think about it, and there’s no point in thinking about it. But they took it with complete seriousness and put it into headlines that look frightening. But that’s not at all what I meant. Of course, I believe that any politician in Russia, any person engaged in independent politics, faces certain risks. But it is absolutely impossible to assess them in percentages or probabilities. And I’ll repeat: it’s pointless even to think too much about it, because if you do, you won’t be able to do anything else.

E. ALBATS: But isn’t that, in Freudian terms, a reflection of an inner fear?

A. NAVALNY: No, I don’t think so. Or rather, I know with complete certainty that it is not a reflection of inner fear. I’m a rational person, I understand the level of danger, but there is no fear in me — neither inner nor outer.

E. ALBATS: All right. It’s just that, you know, many people who—there was this reaction to your statement, and for many people who think very well of you, who are sympathetic to you, it naturally caused a kind of, well, shudder. And right away this remarkable discussion started on the internet about why they would kill you when they could just imprison you instead. Especially since Moscow’s Criminal Corrections Inspectorate recently warned that your suspended sentence could be converted into a real prison term. But the court rejected that proposal from the Moscow Criminal Corrections Inspectorate. By the way, do you have an explanation for why?

A. NAVALNY: You know, it wasn’t even quite like that. The situation was much more absurd. The court’s press service said that the inspectorate was demanding that the suspended sentence be turned into a real one. After some time—or rather, the court said it, yes, the court said the inspectorate was demanding it. Then, after a while, the inspectorate denied it. Then the court said that yes, such a filing had existed, but it was unsigned, so they left it without action. And then the whole thing was walked back. A very strange situation. I report to the inspectorate twice a month—I’m required to check in—and once a month they come to my home with the local police officer to check on me. I asked them. I said, “What exactly was that interesting little show you put on there? Tell me.” I was curious myself about what exactly you were demanding. But they blush, turn pale, and won’t admit what’s going on. And here I can only repeat once again: it’s pointless to analyze this. I don’t know what goes on in their heads. I believe there is no strategy at all. These are just crazy people. I mean the Kremlin, the government, the security agencies, which, for some momentary reason and under the influence of some factors, make or do not make certain decisions. Some of them decide, let’s throw him in jail. Others say, no, let’s not turn him into a hero. Or maybe it happens some other way, uh... I don’t understand how it works. To answer that question meaningfully, you would need some actual information about what is going on in Putin’s head. I don’t think a single person has that information.

E. ALBATS: You have no doubt that only Putin makes the decisions concerning you?

A. NAVALNY: I don’t have the slightest doubt about it.

E. ALBATS: Okay. Uh... Your probation period was extended by a year, right, until 2020. What—until December 2020. What does that actually mean? What does it mean in practice?

A. NAVALNY: It means nothing. Well, it means they are once again sending a kind of political signal to the whole country, to me specifically, but mainly to the whole country, to the entire opposition of any kind, that we will not allow you to take part in elections, that the political system will operate without you. There will never be real competition in elections, and anyone who thinks he’s so impressive that he can, uh, build political capital on his own and then come and get elected to something here—that’s not going to happen. And once again, in line with their law that bans people with suspended convictions from running for office, they extended this probation period. From the standpoint of the current election campaign, I’m not interested in that, because I am running in this election on the basis of the Constitution, which plainly states that everyone who is not in prison has the right to participate in elections. I do not recognize their federal law, and it does not comply with the Constitution. So, all in all, this court ruling did not impress me very much. Besides, it was obvious they were going to do it. I think they had already extended it twice by three months. And now another year.

E. ALBATS: I think it had already been extended until 2019. What difference does it make—2019 or 2020?

A. NAVALNY: Well, again, that means they’ve pushed back the possibility of taking part in elections by another year. But we all understand perfectly well that as long as the system remains in its current form, they believe they can keep certain candidates off the ballot. Our task, and the task at this stage of the campaign, is to force them—to compel them—to register me as a candidate by shaping public opinion. They govern by polling; if the polls show them that people—not necessarily my supporters, but even their own supporters—believe political competition is necessary, and that yet another election in the format of Putin, Zyuganov, Yavlinsky, Mironov, Zhirinovsky no longer interests anyone, then they will register me. But if we fail to create enough pressure, then yes, they will probably try to keep me off the ballot.

E. ALBATS: Now that’s an interesting question. You have, what, seventy campaign headquarters open, tens of thousands of volunteers. You’ve gathered, so to speak, secured the support of potential signatories—or whatever the proper term is?

A. NAVALNY: People who will provide signatures when the time comes.

E. ALBATS: When the time comes, and so on. So that’s hundreds of thousands of people already. If they don’t regis—don’t register you, what will you do? And more generally, what kind of reaction do you think that will provoke?

A. NAVALNY: Right now, we’re not making any specific forecasts, because what we do will depend heavily on the work we manage to accomplish. At the moment, we have 135,000 volunteers; that could become 200,000, or 300,000. We’ve already collected more than half a million signatures, and if you include those not yet fully verified, it’s around 800,000 just by email, though we don’t even count those. Everything depends on the specific situation, on what public opinion is like at that moment. But of course, we will never recognize an election from which I am barred. Of course, we will not stay silent. There’s no point in laying out concrete actions or tactical and strategic plans right now, because we don’t know how things will unfold, what exactly will happen, or who the other candidates will be. We understand perfectly well that the Kremlin will probably, as a kind of placebo, if they decide not to let me run, bring in some supposedly democratic but ultimately controlled candidate of their own. What kind of candidate will that be? Will he be superficially respectable, or completely disreputable? Many things will be decided situationally.

E. ALBATS: Do you think that by autumn we’ll know whom they might bring in? I think, well, by autumn— Isn’t it— (speaking simultaneously)

A. NAVALNY: Well, probably, that alone won’t be enough. They’ll need some kind of Prokhorov 2.0 (a reference to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who ran in the 2012 presidential election as a nominally liberal candidate) if they decide not to let me run, because otherwise no one will come to the polls; turnout will collapse. Yes, of course, they can falsify the results. We understand perfectly well that they know how to rig elections. But you see, if turnout is 15 percent, they’ll have to inflate the vote threefold, especially in large cities where simply no one will go vote.

E. ALBATS: They always have Chechnya.

A. NAVALNY: They do have Chechnya. But they all live in Moscow. They all live in Moscow, they vacation in the city of St. Petersburg. In other words, the opinion of the largest cities still cannot be ignored. These are real people; they live in Russia. And besides, there’s no need to think that in Chechnya everyone really goes to the polling stations on command. In Chechnya, what happens is this kind of outright falsification. It’s not even falsification; it’s a complete rewriting of the results, yes, and the same kind of thing happens in Dagestan. But people will still know perfectly well that no one actually went to the polls. And that kind of de facto delegitimization of the authorities also matters.

E. ALBATS: What I don’t quite understand is this: on the one hand, you say they are pursuing insane policies and that the country has a fairly harsh authoritarian regime, but on the other hand, you seem to be counting on the idea that legitimacy matters to them.

A. NAVALNY: I don’t see a contradiction there. They are not interested in legitimacy as such; they are interested in holding on to power. Yes, they really are pursuing insane policies. But within those insane policies there is one rational point. They want to hold on to power in order to enrich themselves. Personal enrichment and personal comfort. A lot gets written about all sorts of motivations and complicated constructs around this. From my point of view, it’s all quite simple. A relatively small group of people specifically wants to enjoy this unimaginable wealth and the insane power they have seized in the country. Everything else is secondary. It’s just that, in order to hold on to power more effectively, it is of course preferable not to raise the actual level of public anger too high. That’s all. So if they see that barring a candidate from the election would genuinely increase public anger, then they may decide to allow that candidate to run.

E. ALBATS: Going back to the original question—oh, before I ask you about what this season has meant for the opposition, tell me: how is your eye?

A. NAVALNY: Much better. I can see you perfectly well, Yevgenia, with both eyes. Well, that is, it still sees worse. My right eye still sees worse than the left. I still have to use drops in it, and I have to fuss with it, which is rather unpleasant because, well, a normal person in a normal life doesn’t even remember that they have eyes. Unfortunately, right now I do remember that I have an eye, and that it needs drops and so on, but everything has become much better. And thanks to the doctors, both ours and foreign ones.

E. ALBATS: Excellent! In that same CNBC interview, you repeated once again that you are absolutely convinced that the person who splashed you with that liquid, which caused a chemical burn to the cornea, was acting on orders from Putin’s administration. And that you have sufficient grounds to say so. What grounds do you have for that—

A. NAVALNY: There is not the slightest doubt. I can confirm that. I gave the CNBC interview probably two months ago. They took a long time preparing it, and since then even more concrete facts have emerged. The fact is that the criminal case has been closed. To this day, I myself have not even been questioned in it. Both the organizers and the direct attackers have all been identified online. Their faces, surnames, passport details, and addresses are all available. And not one of them—not a single one—has been bothered in the slightest. There is online testimony and footage showing the police driving these people around in their own vehicle or picking them up from somewhere. In other words, they— And the man who directly splashed me with that liquid is effectively fabricating witness testimony in the cases of June 12 and March 26 (dates of major anti-corruption protests in Russia in 2017). In other words, these are people working directly with law enforcement agencies. They could only have received information about my whereabouts and movements from the security services. So I have no doubt whatsoever. And taken together, the evidence shows that not only have they not been punished—there hasn’t even been an investigation, despite all the statements, remember, about how all this would be investigated. United Russia (the ruling political party) said it was unhappy. United Russia was saying then that any attacks must be investigated. And what happened? We receive replies from the police saying the case has been closed because the attackers could not be identified. Go to my blog and look at their photos and addresses.

E. ALBATS: Do you have anything else, or any other information that you—

A. NAVALNY: Well, we don’t have any special, secret, or—information that we’re holding onto, but what we can see, what is happening, clearly indicates that these people are being shielded and supported by the security services. And of course, this is a political order that came from the presidential administration, directly or indirectly through some political consultants, or however this works—I don’t know exactly—but it’s exactly the same as what’s happening with our headquarters across the country. Yes, the endless confiscation of leaflets, arrests and detentions, intimidation, beatings, attacks—this is a systematic nationwide campaign involving, without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands—tens of thousands of police officers who are doing almost nothing else now except, say, seizing our leaflets. A huge number of employees from the prosecutor’s office, the Investigative Committee, and the FSB (Russia’s security service), which goes around to the landlords of all our headquarters in seventy regions. Everywhere, FSB officers show up and try to evict our headquarters. This has happened to some extent

E. ALBATS: How many have been evicted?

A. NAVALNY: Well, evicted in— in Moscow we were evicted several times. We’ve had, well, a lot; I find it hard to say right now, but probably in more than thirty regions we changed locations repeatedly, because FSB officers simply came to the landlords and forced them to terminate their leases with us.

E. ALBATS: That’s an expensive business. How much money have you raised for the campaign so far?

A. NAVALNY: More than 100 million rubles. We-we broke the fundraising record from my mayoral campaign. Back then we raised 104 million rubles in three months. Now, well, admittedly over a longer period, we’ve raised more than 104 million.

E. ALBATS: And what’s the average donation?

A. NAVALNY: The median? 500 rubles. It’s holding steady. These are fairly small donations, but they’re made by about seventy thousand people. Yes. So it’s a huge number of people, it’s a very major achievement for us, and in fact the main reason why the Kremlin cannot paralyze our campaign despite all these efforts involving the силовики (security and law-enforcement agencies). As long as these seventy thousand people support us, and each can send 500 rubles, it can’t be stopped. I mean, if there were a single sponsor sending tens of millions, someone could go to him and say: don’t do that anymore. Or just arrest him. But when it’s seventy thousand people, what can you do about it?

E. ALBATS: So what exactly do they say, I wonder, to the tenants— to the landlords who provide you with office space for your headquarters?

A. NAVALNY: Well, they come and say: “Listen, tomorrow the tax authorities will come to you and seize all your documents. And the police will come and say: we need all your computers for forensic examination.” That’s what happens to our headquarters. Police officers just walk in and say: “Hmm! Looks like you’re engaged in extremist activity. We’re taking all the computers for examination.” Under Russia’s monstrous laws, this can be done without any court order at all. And it happens constantly. But imagine: you have an office, you have accounting, they take away two computers and that’s it—you can’t conduct any business at all. So, uh, very often tenants—landlords really are frightened by these serious consequences. But I’m very proud that we still manage to find enough people in all these seventy regions; we have headquarters everywhere, and in Moscow we’ve now found a place after a long series of ordeals, when meetings of our Moscow headquarters were being held in archways and practically in apartment building entrances. Now we’re at 50 Gilyarovsky Street, Muscovites, come by. It’s a wonderful space, with a huge number of volunteers; as I already said, 135,000 volunteers—that’s an enormous number of people. There are volunteers in every populated locality in Russia. And our main problem right now is that we simply can’t raise money fast enough to supply these people with newspapers and leaflets, especially given that thirty percent of those leaflets are stolen en route by the police.

E. ALBATS: And why do you need newspapers and leaflets if you’re drawing audiences of millions online? How many views did “He Is Not Dimon to You” get—twenty-eight million?

A. NAVALNY: Yes, but there are 145 million people living in this country. That’s why I’m running in the presidential election—and I really am running in the presidential election—and I’m fighting for the votes of the majority, and I will get the votes of the majority. But I need a way to get our thoughts and ideas across. The internet gives us broad reach, but it’s still not enough. Seventy million people in Russia use the internet every day—actually even more. So when a video gets twenty-four million views, that’s very good, but it’s still not enough. There are people who do not use the internet at all. There are people who believe newspapers. If it’s in the newspaper, they won’t lie there. If it’s printed in the paper, then the paper must be read. There has to be variety. If we had television, we would use television too. They won’t let us buy airtime. If we could buy it, we would use outdoor advertising. They won’t allow that either. So—

E. ALBATS: You can’t buy there--

A. NAVALNY: No, nobody will sell us anything. So we use the methods available to us. We have volunteers. That is our main strength. A volunteer with a leaflet is a terrifying weapon. And the Kremlin is actually terribly afraid of them. They are simply in a panic over this.

E. ALBATS: Why?

A. NAVALNY: Because this 86 percent approval rating for Putin, or whatever it is, can exist only in a political vacuum, when there is no real competition. But when someone knocks on a person’s door and says, “Hello, we’re volunteers for candidate Navalny, here’s a leaflet for you,” and he sees with his own eyes that they really are volunteers, he talks to them and asks, “How much are you being paid, guys?” They explain to him that no one is paying us at all, we’ve never even met Navalny in person. We just do this for the idea—we go around handing these out, and we live here in the building next door. And then he understands that this is all real, that there is a candidate with fairly broad support, who talks about things that seem obvious, but that everyone keeps silent about: corruption, political competition, poverty, injustice, and inequality. And that immediately shatters the whole picture. All of that 86 percent instantly starts to thin out and collapse, because people can see that there is competition. And of course the Kremlin is terribly, panic-stricken afraid of this. They have, well, not exactly come to terms with it, but they are prepared to tolerate the internet—the fact that there are millions of people, mostly residents of the biggest cities, who will never again believe Kremlin propaganda. But the fact that our campaign is moving offline, that we are going to pensioners and giving them a newspaper, that is an attack on the holy of holies. They do not want to tolerate it; they cannot tolerate it. But it does not matter to us that they do not want to and cannot—we are going to keep doing it anyway.

E. ALBATS: How much—how successfully are they managing to intimidate your volunteers?

A. NAVALNY: Well—

E. ALBATS: You constantly hear online—only that they came for this person, they came for that person, someone got punched here, someone got beaten there, and so on. Then people--

A. NAVALNY: Fortunately, most of those stories—about someone being visited, intimidated, or even hit or something else—the person still stayed on and kept working at the campaign office. We do not know how many more there would have been. Or rather, we are sure there would have been many more if we were operating in a normal political environment without intimidation. But right now it is an absolutely astonishing situation. I am very proud of all the volunteers who work with us. But in 95 percent of these stories, people did not get scared and stayed on working at the campaign office.

E. ALBATS: In your view, has the level of fear increased or decreased compared with, say, 2012, with the Bolotnaya case (the criminal prosecutions following the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protests), or on the contrary, has it increased?

A. NAVALNY: It is impossible to compare this with Russia in 2012. We are simply living in a different country, with a different political system. The events of 2014 and 2015, the start of the war, completely changed the system. In 2012, even after the Bolotnaya case, after all that, stories about someone being jailed for a repost or a like would have seemed wild. Yes, mass arrests of people, these arrests over leaflets. And yet after the Bolotnaya case, in 2013 in Moscow, we ran a campaign relatively freely. Access to television was closed to us. We were constantly being restricted in one way or another, but people were not being detained simply for walking around in a T-shirt. Today I read an astonishing excerpt from a police report. It said that a person was campaigning while in a public place in a white T-shirt with the words “Navalny 2018,” and therefore needed to be detained. That—from the perspective of 2012—would have looked insane. So yes, of course the level of fear has risen, as has the level of anxiety among all kinds of people—advertisers, landlords, any businessmen. It is, fundamentally, a different country: a country where having an independent political opinion is not merely discouraged or seen as some potential threat; everyone now understands that the authorities perceive it as hostile and act with hostility.

E. ALBATS: You have your own polling service. What does it show—what is the profile of the people who support you, at least among the volunteers?

A. NAVALNY: Volunteers. Volunteers, by definition, in any election campaign—Russian or even foreign—are most often young people. So for us, young people with a high level of education have always been volunteers.

E. ALBATS: Higher education?

A. NAVALNY: Most often, yes. In other words, they’re young people. Besides, they have more time. In general, all over the world, they are more inclined to take an active part in campaigns. But the core voter we are counting on is precisely older people. That is how we want to operate, and how we plan to operate, and how we are operating. We use young volunteers for canvassing.

E. ALBATS: What age group is your support base?

A. NAVALNY: We expect to get--

E. ALBATS: thirty-nine thousand. Those are the people ready to sign in support of you. That’s an enormous base.

A. NAVALNY: These are people who use the Internet. Right now, right now this analysis does not make much sense. But even so, we understand that the people who signed did so online. That means they are people who most likely use the Internet every day—certainly on a daily basis. These are people with a high level of education. And of course they are, first and foremost, residents of the biggest cities. But as the election campaign approaches, we will of course change the demographic sample quite significantly, because right now we have a very strong skew toward the Internet. And that is exactly why we are running our offline campaign: to correct it. I just want to remind you once again that—

E. ALBATS: Alexei, I’m sorry, I have to interrupt you, because we’ve reached exactly the half-hour mark and we have to go to the news and commercials; then we’ll come back to the studio and continue with you.

(musical interlude) E. ALBATS: Good evening once again. It is now 8:35 p.m. here in the studio. Today I have just one guest, Alexei Navalny. I’m asking him all sorts of questions, including about his recent interviews that stirred up the whole world, where he said there was a fifty percent chance he would be killed. It turns out that was a joke. And about many other things, including his election campaign. Alexei, now, if we may, let’s turn to the results of the spring-summer political season for the opposition. In July, after all, everyone sums up what happened in the spring and summer. How do you assess the situation in the opposition right now?

A. NAVALNY: I don’t really understand what “the situation in the opposition” means. There are various structures; there are me and my colleagues, my associates, our headquarters, many people working with us, volunteers. We are engaged in an election campaign. Our election campaign has been going on for eight months, one and a half of which I spent under arrest. But nevertheless, it is moving forward, and we are satisfied—satisfied with how it is going. We are managing to organize rallies, we have many volunteers, and we are raising money. Despite the enormous pressure, which is increasing, everything is developing for us. Most importantly, we see people’s desire to work; we see people’s desire to make change happen or to achieve change. We see that this sense of hopelessness that you encounter in the regions has-- turned from depression into a kind of political engine. People understand that there are no prospects with this regime, and they want change. They want the government, after eighteen years, to change at least once. So we are very satisfied, and I am satisfied, with how our campaign is going. As for talking about the opposition in general—well, some people think, for example, that the elections should be boycotted. They do not like what I am doing—

E. ALBATS: It seemed to me that March 26 came as a surprise, a shock to many people, much as December 10, 2011, did with Bolotnaya (the mass protest on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow), when suddenly so many young people, and people aged thirty-five and older, and so on, came out in more than seventy cities across Russia. It was unexpected for everyone.

A. NAVALNY: Not for me, not for me, and not for our headquarters. We simply work with the whole country. And because we went beyond, long ago, and were never exclusively part of that Facebook-centered life, we saw these groups on VKontakte (a Russian social network). We saw people joining them, we saw the number of views on the videos, we saw the actual requests people were writing from the regions, even from small towns, sending them to our lawyers for advice. So we understood perfectly well that all this would happen. The scale of it was somewhat bigger than we had assumed. And later, on June 12, it was a pleasant surprise for us that the geography of the protest expanded even a little more than we had expected. But it was certainly not unexpected for us. We worked toward it, we knew it would happen, and in that sense we were not acting at random. It wasn’t a case of calling people out and then being surprised ourselves at how well it turned out. We are still people from real life. And all these trips of mine to the headquarters, the opening of headquarters, they immerse us in what is happening in the regions. We understand very well what we are doing.

E. ALBATS: Do you maintain any ties with PARNAS and with Solidarnost (the Solidarity movement)?

A. NAVALNY: Well, with Solidarnost, yes, I do. Yashin is running a wonderful campaign right now, for example, in the Krasnoselsky District—

E. ALBATS: In Moscow.

A. NAVALNY: Yes, in Moscow, in the municipal elections. And what I really like is that his is a genuinely political campaign. That is, of course it is also about the local agenda, but it has an absolutely political character. He is acting against this government, against the corrupt authorities in that specific district. And when he campaigns, that is exactly what he says. So we support certain people in the regions who are running in elections. Our own candidates, however, are being barred in Novosibirsk and Vladivostok.

E. ALBATS: You seem to avoid mentioning Dmitry Gudkov by name. Why?

A. NAVALNY: I avoid mentioning Dmitry Gudkov because he is focused on a mayoral campaign that is still a long way off. That is the first point. And second, I really dislike—and consider extremely harmful and wrong—this political alliance of his with Yabloko. And this utterly pernicious political practice whereby Yabloko nominates candidates but makes them sign some paper saying they will vote and act in accordance with the party’s decisions. It is a kind of political serfdom. That is what is happening now in the municipal elections. Besides, I categorically dislike, for example, the same kind of actions—we mentioned Yashin earlier. Yabloko and Gudkov are putting forward a slate together. Well, I think Gudkov probably was not personally involved in this, but they put up two candidates against Yashin’s candidates in every district. That is absolutely spoiler work on behalf of City Hall, though it may be some kind of aberration. And I do not think Yavlinsky personally wants to hurt Yashin—though who knows. But I categorically dislike the very idea of binding candidates in this way. And I would like Gudkov, whom I like, uh, well, not to take part in it. In the municipal elections, you can run as an independent candidate, and one absolutely should protest the practice of some party making future political activity conditional on support for its own line. “However the plenum of our party decided, that is how you will vote later in your municipal council.” That is completely unacceptable.

E. ALBATS: Listen, but you were in Yabloko—you know what Yavlinsky is like, you know, uh, what things are like there—

A. NAVALNY: Which is exactly why I am now protesting so strongly. I think it is completely wrong. Again, it is political bondage. They preserve Yabloko’s license, and this is what they do—the Kremlin, for example, does not give us a license, but gives one to them precisely in exchange for—

E. ALBATS: You mean registration?

A. NAVALNY: Registration of the Party of Progress, in exchange for Yabloko and, unfortunately, Gudkov, who has entered into a coalition with them, trying to limit the political freedom of future deputies. It is dangerous, unpleasant, and unacceptable. Besides, it will also lead to, well, defeat. It will lead to worse results. It is very, uhh, bad.

E. ALBATS: Have you spoken to Gudkov about this directly?

A. NAVALNY: I have not spoken to Gudkov about this directly, but right now I am focused on the federal campaign. For understandable reasons, he has to support Yavlinsky in the presidential election. He supports him in the municipal campaign; Yavlinsky supports him in the presidential one. And that is, uh, quite a remarkable tandem. But for obvious reasons, it does not suit me. I would like Gudkov to support me directly in the presidential election. I would like Yabloko to support me directly in the presidential election as well. I believe I can and will fight for the support of all representatives of the democratic forces, the democratic parties. Even though there are, naturally, some frictions and policy disagreements, overall, uh, I will fight to be the single candidate for everyone, including the democrats. Their line is going a little in another direction. They want to support Grigory Alexeyevich (Grigory Yavlinsky). Well then, I will appeal directly to the people, to the party members. And I will argue that this is wrong. But there is political struggle in that, and I take it calmly.

E. ALBATS: But I remember very well how, when there was the famous rally on Sakharov Avenue in February 2012, you were standing behind the stage, and I watched as Grigory Alexeyevich Yavlinsky came up there. You shook hands, and Grigory Alexeyevich said something innocuous. It was all quite visible—you seemed very pleased that you had managed to make peace with Yavlinsky.

A. NAVALNY: I will tell you even more: we met just before the federal State Duma elections and had a very good conversation, and apologized to each other for various things we had said about one another. I think very highly of him. He is an excellent, talented politician, but that does not mean I will not compete with him for the leading position. I am competing with him. I believe his tactics are wrong, mistaken, and I will say so openly, despite the fact that I think well of him.

E. ALBATS: Okay, that’s clear enough. What about Kasyanov and PARNAS?

A. NAVALNY: Kasyanov and PARNAS still exist and are engaged in some political activity of their own.

E. ALBATS: But you no longer maintain ties after the coalition fell apart?

A. NAVALNY: What does “maintain ties” even mean? We didn’t really before either. I mean, hello, hello, how are you? Everything going well.

E. ALBATS: Alexei Anatolyevich, don’t be disingenuous.

A. NAVALNY: Zhenya, what does “maintain ties” mean? I work every day. I don’t want to be the kind of candidate we’ve seen so often in recent Russian history, the kind who is constantly holding round tables, meetings, trying to organize some congress of democrats. Would you rather I went off to Perm and spoke there to volunteers, or organized a round table of democrats in Moscow? I’d rather travel around the regions, build committees, and so on. That doesn’t interest me. There are concrete issues. Roizman was running in the election, he was running from Yabloko, which is not close to me in terms of its current political approach. But we were planning to actively support Roizman in the campaign. Then he’s removed from the race, and we protest that and call for a boycott of the election in Sverdlovsk Region. That’s something concrete. There’s something to discuss there. But just sitting around with fairly pleasant people, just sitting there in meetings and listening to speeches—that doesn’t interest me at all, it simply doesn’t.

E. ALBATS: Fair enough. But admit it, Alyosha, we both remember very well how Yabloko and SPS (Union of Right Forces), and then Yabloko and Right Cause, were constantly at each other’s throats. It had already become completely absurd. And the youth wings of those parties were always fighting with each other too.

A. NAVALNY: That is exactly why I’m no longer interested in it. That’s why you’re asking me about Yabloko, about Gudkov.

E. ALBATS: And yet you say you’re not prepared to support Gudkov in that scenario.

A. NAVALNY: No, no, Zhenya. That just shows that you’re still captive to our old democratic mindset, like many others. I follow the process too. I understand that what is happening in the liberal camp, unfortunately, has no political significance. Having traveled around the country, opened seventy headquarters, having coordinators in every region and a huge number of volunteers, I can say firmly that it has no political significance whatsoever. I still follow it, I know what’s going on there, but when you asked me that question, I needed a couple of seconds to think because I hadn’t even formed an opinion on all of it. I’m not interested in what Yabloko or PARNAS are doing. Yabloko got less than two percent in the election, despite receiving colossal state funding—hundreds of millions of rubles. The same thing happened to PARNAS. They’re nice people, I like them very much. Politically, that’s where I come from, but I’m running a real election campaign with a large number of people. I’m not going to get bogged down in some squabble over this liberal electorate—whether I can get three or four percent of it. In Russia, unfortunately, politics works in such a way that people do not confine themselves within these ideological boundaries. In that sense, we have a kind of political chaos. I’m simply a normal candidate for normal people, offering a sensible and logical program. That’s what I’m focused on. So yes, ask me and I’ll answer, but I’m not going to spend my energy on these so-called democrats and liberals—who is more democratic, who is less democratic, who should support whom, who liked what online. I won’t lie: I do follow it sometimes, I do read unpleasant posts. But I understand how utterly insignificant it all is. I’m sorry that I keep repeating the same thing about traveling to the regions and so on, but every time I open a headquarters, I answer any questions people have—and they don’t ask me about this at all. They don’t ask me about Yabloko, or PARNAS, or Khodorkovsky, or any of these people, who are all very dear and close to me. Ordinary people simply do not care about that.

E. ALBATS: What do they ask about?

A. NAVALNY: They ask about corruption, they ask about the low standard of living, they ask, naturally, what we are supposed to do about these judges and police officers. Everywhere they ask about lustration.

E. ALBATS: Everywhere about lustration?

A. NAVALNY: They ask about lustration everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. They actually use the word “lustration.” They use the word “lustration” and understand quite well how lustration differs from simply prosecuting people criminally. In absolutely every region now, they ask about the role of the Russian Orthodox Church and these repressive proceedings against atheists. Well, understandably, it’s a younger audience.

E. ALBATS: What do you say? You’re a deeply religious man.

A. NAVALNY: I am a believer. But I believe that precisely as a believer I cannot under any circumstances support what is happening now, when some part of the Russian Orthodox Church has taken it upon itself to direct the Investigative Committee and initiate criminal cases against people because it didn’t like something. There was some monstrous court ruling today, I think in Sochi. A person posted caricatures of Jesus Christ and was fined for it, or subjected to some other form of administrative penalty. It’s absurd, monstrous, and absolutely contrary to Christianity, I’m convinced of that. That’s what I talk about. That’s what people ask about. They ask about governors, they ask what’s happening in the Far East, they ask about demographics. And nobody asks about uniting the democrats. Nobody. No one is interested in that. Well, outside our little circle.

E. ALBATS: And do they ask about Putin?

A. NAVALNY: Of course they do. The question I get most often concerns my position that if he agrees to a peaceful transfer of power, he should be given security guarantees. A lot of people dislike that position of mine—very many, even some of my own supporters.

E. ALBATS: Seriously?

A. NAVALNY: Yes, I get heavily criticized for it. So I have to keep answering questions about it.

E. ALBATS: And what do they think should happen?

A. NAVALNY: They believe that Putin is directly responsible for everything that is happening, which is absolutely true. That Putin personally bears responsibility for the crimes, the corruption, and the unjust imprisonment of people. Also absolutely true. And that, therefore, Putin should go to prison for it, or be executed publicly on Red Square (a reference to the historic execution site known as Lobnoye Mesto). A great many people think that and insist on it. For them, it is a key point of the program. I say that for the sake of a peaceful transfer of power, for the sake of the country’s interests overall, we need to forget about that kind of sweet revenge. I have personal reasons too—including reasons connected with my family—why I feel a great deal of personal negativity toward these people. But for the sake of the country as a whole, for the sake of a peaceful transfer of power, we have to swallow that and agree to give security guarantees specifically to him and his family. That should not extend to people like Medvedev or the Rotenbergs. But to Putin, yes. A great many people do not like that. There is constant debate about it. And of course there is also the constant discussion, somewhat imposed by the Kremlin, that if not Putin, then who? Without Putin everything will collapse. What will happen to the North Caucasus? Without Ramzan Kadyrov, won’t war break out there too?

E. ALBATS: What do you say to that?

A. NAVALNY: I say that nothing will happen. There was Said Amirov, the mayor of Makhachkala, and people said the same things about him. If anything happens to him, war will begin, Dagestan will rise up, tanks will be driving through Makhachkala and shooting. But he got a life sentence, and nothing happened. Nothing will happen if Ramzan Kadyrov is gone tomorrow. He can easily be replaced by another equally authoritative Chechen leader. These questions are very interesting to everyone, and everyone discusses them with pleasure. This is the country’s real agenda. I’ll repeat: it is definitely not about uniting the democrats. And I have no intention of doing that. The moment it turns into “uniting the democrats,” I turn around and walk the other way, because democrats can unite through elections, through primaries. I am ready to take part in debates, I am ready to take part in primaries, and I am ready to win those primaries. That is how democratic unity can happen—not through roundtables or endless discussion.

E. ALBATS: Going back to your meetings at campaign offices with volunteers: are people more interested in the local agenda or the federal one?

A. NAVALNY: The federal one.

E. ALBATS: The federal one?

A. NAVALNY: Mostly, of course, the federal agenda.

E. ALBATS: Even though we know that all politics is local. Politics is always local.

A. NAVALNY: Yes, naturally. And every time people ask, will there be an investigation into our governor? What do you think about the mayor? I always prepare and talk about local corruption of some kind. People always respond very well to that. But everyone has a very clear understanding that the cause of the poverty, injustice, and inequality we see—put simply, these extremely low wages, which really are shockingly low—is, of course, the Kremlin. It is this group of people that has clung to power, has sat there for eighteen years, and has bent the law enforcement system and the judicial system to suit itself, not allowing anyone to move, not allowing the country to develop. In other words, the connection is direct: poverty equals Putin. Many people already understand that. And let me say briefly on that point: many people think—and you mentioned this as a kind of logical cross-section—that our volunteers, our groups, our supporters are the best educated and the most prosperous. But even those who come to us, even if they are among the most prosperous in their regions, are earning salaries of 20,000, 18,000, or 15,000 rubles a month (roughly $250, $225, or $190, depending on the exchange rate). It is hard for me even to imagine how everyone else is living. So the appalling poverty of the majority of Russia’s residents is, in fact, now the main— the main cause of political discontent. That is exactly what it is.

E. ALBATS: I see, thank you. But you understand perfectly well that you need the support of the elites. There is no other option, right? Precisely for a peaceful transition, because all research on authoritarian regimes shows that you have to form some kind of alliances with part of the old elite. Is anyone reaching out to you, is anyone trying to talk to you?

A. NAVALNY: Can you imagine if someone comes out— Let me tell you what would happen now: say these and these people come out, and tomorrow there are show trials against them.

E. ALBATS: But that’s not the point, I wasn’t asking you to name names, identities, or addresses.

A. NAVALNY: I would say that a huge part of the elite wants change, is inclined toward it, is looking in our direction, and is waiting. But the elites, especially in Russia, are monstrously cowardly right now. They’re waiting for the moment to betray Putin; at some point they’ll do it with great pleasure, almost with relish, but for now they’re simply afraid. They sit there weighing things up. The moment they sense weakness in him— that vibration, like in 2012— they’ll immediately run in the other direction in droves, toward me and toward various other opposition figures. So when you meet with any officials, I’m sure you’ve noticed the same thing I have: the more senior the official, the more he curses this government, the more he talks. It’s monstrously inefficient, they won’t let anyone work. Some kind of horror, nightmare, and total trash is going on in the country. Well, yes.

E. ALBATS: And how do you manage to meet with them if you’re under constant surveillance?

A. NAVALNY: In the corridors of Echo of Moscow, that’s where I meet them. The only place. Well, Zhenya, I understand that—

E. ALBATS: Or are you not under constant surveillance?

A. NAVALNY: I am under constant surveillance. And in order to have opinions or messages or whatever, I don’t necessarily have to meet with anyone. Besides, I’m not alone. Quite a lot of people support me in different— spheres of activity, so to speak, in different social strata, including among those elites you’re so fond of. But I’m not looking for any meetings myself. Why would I need that? I already know what they think, and I don’t need to sit down with anyone and negotiate. And some so-called liberal tower, non-liberal tower— Kremlin faction, liberal or otherwise. Why negotiate with them about anything? What for? There’s no point in it.

E. ALBATS: You’ll still have to, Alyosha, you’ll have to give some kind of guarantee.

A. NAVALNY: I’m ready to do that. I’m just not seeking out such meetings. Especially since I understand perfectly well that, first of all, it’s unsafe for all of them to meet with me right now. That’s the first thing. And second, I have plenty of other things to do. All these elites will switch sides when the political situation changes. My task is to work on changing the political situation, as much as I can.

E. ALBATS: Okay. And what about the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation)? There are always, so to speak, investigations being launched. As I understand it, that’s not going to stop anytime soon.

A. NAVALNY: I was waiting for you to ask, “Who are you meeting with? Give me a few names.” Ask me that. So now I’m supposed to tell you, “Well, you know, we’re preparing investigations into these people.” And I could practically feel them running off somewhere to shut down their Cypriot offshore accounts. No, of course I can’t disclose that kind of information.

E. ALBATS: Well, on that I agree with you. That was a stupid question, I admit it. And what about the equipment that was taken from you on March 26?

A. NAVALNY: Well, it’s somewhere—

E. ALBATS: So they still haven’t returned anything?

A. NAVALNY: —in the secret basements of the FSB (Federal Security Service). We know not only that nothing was returned, we knew— we know that the equipment was seized by the FSB. But all our court complaints were thrown out on the grounds that, well, you don’t know who you’re complaining about. So it turned out that unidentified men in plain clothes came in, without any concern about the video cameras, carried out absolutely all the equipment, and the police, the courts, and everyone else say: We don’t even know who that was. How is that possible? If you want to appeal the actions of these people, then tell us his name, his rank, what unit he belongs to.

E. ALBATS: File a theft report.

A. NAVALNY: We filed a theft report. And? It went nowhere. In legal terms, it wasn’t even theft, because theft is the secret taking of property. This was robbery, since it was the open taking of property. But fortunately, our supporters and just the broader public really understood the situation. Over the course of two days then, I’m afraid to get the number wrong, I think we received around 12 million rubles in donations, and we bought everything again.

E. ALBATS: Wonderful. And your plans for the fall— what are they?

A. NAVALNY: We’re going to expand our election campaign.

E. ALBATS: Will there be some kind of nationwide action like there was on June 12?

A. NAVALNY: There’s no specific date. But of course we’ll be using the rally format very actively. That doesn’t mean we’ll do it mechanically— say, once every two months we hold a big rally. But rallies are, of course, extremely important. People want to hold these rallies; they can be more successful or less successful. We’ll be working in a whole range of formats. For example, in Moscow. We understand perfectly well that we’ll never again be given permission. So right now, holding a rally in Moscow automatically means, one hundred percent, an unauthorized rally. But that too is entirely acceptable and proper, and we will do it. At the same time, you have to understand how to organize it, at least from the standpoint of tactical work.

E. ALBATS: Okay, good luck to you. Unfortunately, we have to go off the air. Thank you very much. This is the Echo of Moscow studio. Alexei Navalny was with us. And we’ll see you again in a week. Bye.