An interview with Mikhail Zygar about motivation, fears, and protests

Hello everyone. Usually at this time we

say, “Good evening,” because at this

time TV Rain (Dozhd, an independent Russian TV channel) usually airs

the program “R Knows.” But it’s clearly not evening now,

it’s only daytime, and we’re not in our

studio. Well, many people know that the place

where TV Rain’s studio is located

has had some problems lately,

so we’re in the middle of moving.

And on the way, we stopped by the Anti-Corruption Foundation

where we’re sitting on a windowsill

next to Alexei Navalny. Hi. I’m

very glad—well, I wanted to say that I’m

very glad to be back in your studio again,

but I’m also very glad you dropped by to see me. I

have the opportunity to say that today our

studio is located on this windowsill, yes.

Well.

Alexei, I’d like to talk about something that

people probably discuss with you least often—

that is, not to talk about you at all,

but simply to talk about what

concerns us, the people who are not

involved in

politics, generally speaking.

What concerns us is this: have you had a chance to watch

the film *Leviathan* yet? No, I haven’t seen it, and

I don’t want to watch it at home. I want to see it on

the big screen. After all, in 10 months

of house arrest, I’ll say—perhaps

this is a somewhat illegal thing—I learned

how to use torrents,

because I had no other

way to watch

new films. But I still wanted to watch it

on a big screen, so I’m

putting off the pleasure. And what did I manage

to watch during that time? I watched—

I simply had the opportunity to take

rankings and watch them from number one to

one hundred: the top 100 films that won

Oscars, the top 100 films with supporting

actors, the top 100 films by

companies like Columbia Pictures, and so on. I had a lot

of time. I mean, the life of a person

who for 10 years—10

years, please—10 months is under

house arrest looks like

a computer and torrents.

And

that’s prohibited, and computers are prohibited too,

but in any case, there are people in your home

who

can do it, and you can always peek over someone’s shoulder. I

still worked a great deal, and during

the second part of my house arrest, in

the second half, employees of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

were already allowed to come visit me,

we held planning meetings, and part of the office

effectively moved to my home. But even so,

you still have a lot of free time

because you don’t go anywhere,

you don’t spend time

sitting in traffic, you don’t need to shave, iron shirts,

and so on. Those are the little perks of house arrest.

Although by the second month it becomes very

wearisome. A great deal of the Foundation’s effort,

if you follow the publications on the

website, goes specifically into

explaining what Article 20 is and,

more broadly, into this kind of verbal struggle against

illicit enrichment.

And where does the confidence come from that this is

really what concerns people? From

our experience, quite simply. The point isn’t even

that it already concerns people; we need

to explain to people what ought to concern them,

because, again, we have extensive experience—

a lot of experience hearing the response

when we publish particular cases of

corruption. We publish someone’s dacha (country house) on

screen, and people say: yes, terrible corruption—but what do you

propose? And for quite a while now we’ve

moved beyond the format in

which we simply talked about

corruption, pointed at a person,

and said, “He’s a crook—look, here’s the scheme by

which he stole a billion.” We propose

systemic solutions for somehow fighting corruption,

and from my point of view, and from the point

of view of the Foundation’s staff,

a legislative framework that would

prevent it is the key thing here.

That’s why we want, through concrete

examples, to show what illicit

enrichment is, but also to lobby and call on

all of us to push forward

a specific law that would prevent illicit

enrichment. There are

several questions here, yes. First: concrete

examples—there are a great many concrete examples,

detailed, very high-quality journalistic

work,

presented to the public. But who said that

this will impress the public?

There is simply a counter-

assumption that in our country everyone

has long known that

everyone steals, everyone has long had an idea of

the scale on which this can happen,

and that it’s not this fact—not a detailed, thorough

description of how

it happens. It may be a bit more sophisticated there, a bit

more crude here, but really, who could this

surprise? The main question is: why? Why devote

your life to repeating the same

story over and over, when basically everyone

already knows about it? One’s life

is worth devoting to things that

seem important. This seems important to me,

and therefore, despite the fact that I

of course closely follow the public’s reaction,

and closely watch how

I can prove it better, more simply, more persuasively,

nevertheless, I do what I believe is

necessary. And even if tomorrow it turns out

suddenly that this

will lose all appeal for everyone, will completely lose...

interest in this, and the TV Rain channel

whether they stop interviewing me or not

or stop talking about some of the things that

we uncover, I will still keep

doing it, because I consider it

important. I understand. Exactly.

what you're saying, and we've noticed for a long time that if, three

years ago, every investigation of ours

would cause an explosion online, now

people say, well yes, the Anti-Corruption Foundation

there they go again, they've found some

guy who stole a billion. So what?

That's not interesting. Let's watch

the latest Oscar gifs instead, but even so

we still think this is important, and I

am absolutely convinced that corruption is

that a corrupt system is

the main obstacle to the country's

development. My efforts are aimed at

removing this obstacle so that

Russia can

develop. Well, to take corruption as a

phenomenon—well, that's of course a fantastical

yes, there is corruption in Norway too, and in

Denmark as well, but the scale is

different. So at the moment

the main task is to explain as much as possible

well, and

as long as anyone still cares about it, let's say.

The second part, as for Article 20,

of the convention/article.

how serious is it, or is it just

really an answer to the question people ask

when they say: all right, you've

just explained all this, but what exactly

are you proposing? Well, we are proposing this.

This is an appeal to some very

strange mechanism that

could work if the rest of the

machine were working, but you keep writing

that the whole machine doesn't work, so

let's just, say, repaint this machine's

fender yellow, and then everything will become

much better. If the whole machine isn't

working, what's the point? Well, not exactly. We

aren't proposing to paint it yellow after all;

or add an extra air conditioner, but

it still won't run. What we're trying to propose is

installing an engine from a fundamentally new

system, because officials—

state power, how is

state power structured? It is the foundation

of the state, and at present

corruption and the corrupt system—this

system of delegation, where Putin

says: you may steal, but do what

I tell you to do—

Well, he doesn't say it like that. But it's a kind of

informal consensus. He doesn't say it

out loud, but it's completely obvious from

what is happening in the country. You only have to

remember Serdyukov, for example.

There was a lot of shouting that he would be jailed

because he stole billions, but nevertheless

for his latest court hearing

just the day before yesterday he arrived in a car with

a flashing official light. You see, that is exactly

what shows this kind of

social contract—not a social contract,

but a pact between Putin and the entire

Russian bureaucracy: that you can do

whatever you want, you can steal

billions, but the main thing is to preserve

political loyalty on fundamentally

important issues. That's it.

We propose changing this entire system.

We propose creating a system in which

this arrangement of theirs

will stop working. But at the same time, of course,

I am not going to be disingenuous. I am not

going to deceive anyone: for

our country to begin developing

normally, some basic things must be changed.

Judicial reform, first and foremost.

No anti-corruption effort in our country

will seriously begin to work until there is

judicial reform, until judges

become independent. Reform of

public administration, reform of

federalism and federal relations,

interbudgetary relations. Power must

be transferred from Moscow to the regions, to

the cities first of all. Until these three

things happen—these are already political

slogans now, yes, but they simply

follow quite naturally nevertheless.

These things are connected. But now, right now,

sitting in front of me is one of the leaders

of the Progress Party, who has already gone down this road, and I

am trying to show, and have always maintained,

that we have never approached the problem of

corruption narrowly. It was never the case

that I, you know, wrote: well, there are some

crooks, and maybe Putin will notice

them and drive them out. That is,

I have always criticized this

state mechanism. It seems to me, well,

I tried to do it without any

hypocrisy, speaking about how I know it

works, and I think I have never

ignored those broader socio-political

questions—important, fundamentally important ones.

It's just that people focus only on corruption because

there is more attention on my work now, and

if once people only asked me for my

opinion on corruption, now

they ask for my opinion on

they increasingly ask for my views

on broader

issues. So what are you aiming for, Alexei?

I aim to be useful.

Personally, I personally—well, personally, I think all

people strive to be useful.

I don't think I can say anything

original in that respect. I won't say anything

that any normal

person wouldn't say: I strive to be a normal

family man, a good father, a good husband, and

in my public work, in

some broader human

mission, I try to be useful

to society and the state. I try

in the short time allotted to me

to do as many right

things as possible. As for being a normal family man—where

is the line you cannot

cross? What do you mean?

And in your, in your political

activity, any politician has to

sacrifice something. Mm-hmm. In particular, sometimes

the interests of their family. What happened

over the past month obviously

shows

that the safety of Alexei

Navalny’s family is under threat because of his

professional activity. Does that mean

that thoughts about this kind of

harm to yourself and your family must have

crossed your mind? Well, you’re proceeding from a certain

premise or assumption that there are

some family interests that are separate from, or even at odds with,

my public interests. But the truth is

that my family

supports what I do, and in that

sense, my

family is prepared to put up with all the inconveniences

it experiences and, quite frankly,

rightly tolerates them for the sake of

all of us doing something right together, because

I’m not the only one doing all these

right things—my wife, together with

me, who sits through those searches

or gets dragged in for questioning—this is

her part of the contribution to the right things

that I do. It seems to me that this is

the right way for a family to be organized. Yes, but that

sounds a little unconvincing, because

everyone lives in roughly similar

conditions, everyone assesses those risks, everyone—

every person, when choosing a job,

thinks about what good it will bring them

and what they are risking. And many of your

colleagues, understanding that perhaps it was not

best for them to keep working in Russia,

left. Mm-hmm. Leonid Volkov left to work

abroad, another left to study, Vladimir Ashurkov

left because—what do you mean, “left”?

Volkov was here yesterday. He works there

but comes here. Ashurkov was forced

to flee, and so on. What did you say to them

when they came to share

their decision: “I think I’ll go work

in Luxembourg”? I said nothing. It’s a personal

choice. I can’t force people

to do

something in a situation where, for example,

specifically, Volkov doesn’t receive a salary from

us at the foundation, but he does quite a lot

of work. He has to earn a living somewhere. He

worked in Yekaterinburg, then he

worked in Moscow for a while,

then he found a job in Luxembourg,

works in Luxembourg, comes here regularly,

and works here. In fact, he has always been a volunteer

for us. Actually, not that many people work at the foundation

as staff; far more people work with us

who don’t receive a single

kopeck from us, who somewhere—I don’t

know—in Moscow or anywhere else, in

Luxembourg, in Africa, or on the moon—somewhere

they work, and then they come here to put in

their few hours honestly. That’s basically

how everything is set up, because we can’t

pay everyone

a salary. I don’t doubt that there are

people who are ready for volunteer

work. I

I’m trying to imagine the mindset

of a person who is watching us

and says, “I still don’t believe it,”

I still

just—it’s like in the film *Beware of the Car* (a famous Soviet comedy),

where Papanov says to Mironov,

“They’ll put you in prison, and you…”

Well, when choosing what I do, I

understand what could happen to me because of it

and every time I’m forced

to weigh the pros and cons. It actually seems strange to me

that I’m being asked these questions, excuse me,

by TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel), which is filming me

here right now, because you were thrown out of

your studio, because you were taken off the air, and yet

none of you ran away. So

you also assess your own

risks. Because everyone assesses them in the same way:

first, everyone has an idea and

the right motivation to do the right

things in life. So some people choose

money, go to Channel One, and lie

on that Channel One all day long, and maybe

they’re happy with that, or maybe they

suffer over it in the evening. And someone else goes

to practice the profession they love—

whether as a lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

or a camera operator at TV Rain—

and does it despite the fact that they

earn less money, because they get

thrown out of the studio, because they have to

live in some strange, makeshift, almost underground

conditions with an uncertain future, because, well,

who knows for how long. I hope you will continue

to exist and develop. But after all,

you could be shut down tomorrow too, just like us. But

for you, I think, and not for me, that

doesn’t mean there’s no point—it just means something different.

Right. So everyone, everyone pays their own

price. Yours is a little lower, mine is

a little higher—but tomorrow everything could

change. It’s everyone’s choice. I make

my choice. The people who come to

work for us at the Anti-Corruption

Foundation—I explain all of this to them

at the very first interview: that you will be

searched—everyone has been searched; they will

take away your personal phones and computers;

there will be surveillance, there will be pressure, covert

email, illegal criminal

prosecutions, but nevertheless a huge

number of people come to do it, well,

because it’s the right thing to do, because they

don’t want to live in a country where, for no reason,

people are searched, their computers are confiscated, and

some crooks run the country. Is there a

final goal to this? Yes, we want to change

Russia. For you personally and for me personally, I

want to do—I want, over the course of my

life, as I already said, to do the right

things. I want to—I want to make my contribution

to making Russia a normal

country where people can work in peace

and live in peace. Well, I, you know,

I started smirking because I

recognized myself. If I, if I give, well,

comments—if I give comments

to foreign journalists who

ask, like, you’re TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel),

I usually say very similar things.

Misha, then please tell the truth

to your audience right now. But I

just remembered that I say similar things

to foreign journalists. We want

foreign journalists

usually take such remarks with tears in their eyes

because the foreign

press is structured a little more

idealistically, and they themselves, as in

your case, I’m sure, sincerely

say these words quite sincerely. You

consider them a little bit

like, why say these grand

banalities? But the truth is

that life works like this: either you

do something good, or you simply

stare at your desk, trying not to notice what

is happening around you, and keep quiet

just in case. Or you do

bad things. In fact, bad things are done by

a relatively small number of people

who are greatly helped by those who simply

stare at their desks. Our responsibility,

those of us who understand what is happening,

is to do the right things and try

to genuinely make our small contribution

to the country’s development. But what is wrong with that?

It may sound lofty, but only for that is it

worth living, isn’t it?

No? There are different ways to do good things.

Your path is exposing those people

who

who steal, among other things. That’s one path, but

we do many things. We are building a party

now in order to win

elections. I ran in the Moscow mayoral election. I

wasn’t only exposing things—I was proposing options

for development

and

and for the external situation as well, likewise. But

before, they didn’t let us into elections. The party

wasn’t registered—then it was registered,

but it still isn’t allowed to take part in elections, let’s put it that way.

Now they’re not letting me myself take part in

elections either. Well then, that means among the things left to us are

holding rallies and going out into the

streets, as happens all over the world,

as it happens in Europe, in the United States, as

it happened hundreds and thousands of years before

us, and apparently will keep happening after

us. So if we are unhappy with what

is happening, if we are not allowed into elections, if we

are not allowed to submit our bills, and so

on—well then, we will gather people,

go out into the streets, and demand our rights.

That is the only way, because there is no

such

system or scenario in which we

can keep sitting at home, somewhere

being indignant, posting on Facebook, and then

some other people will come and, on our behalf, put pressure

on this government so that it

changes. The government will not change

if the country’s residents do not put pressure on it. That is

our task: to organize that pressure

through elections, through elections,

through going out into the street and handing out leaflets. I

understand that many

people—office workers and those whom

it is customary to call the middle class—also

view the idea a bit ironically. Like,

what, we’re going to go and

stand in the street like lunatics, or

hand out some little newspapers? Without that,

nothing will work, unfortunately. There are no

formats in which

simply with likes on

Facebook political regimes are moved.

When people are standing in the street—and I’m not even

saying they have to stand there

endlessly, or seize buildings,

or set something on fire—but simply

the presence of a large number of people in the

street puts pressure on the authorities.

Moreover, I want to tell you that the authorities themselves—

you see—when they want

to demonstrate that they have popular

support, what do they do? What does

Ramzan Kadyrov do today? He takes some of

his men—his *basmachi* (a derogatory term for armed followers)—out into the street, and they

walk around with slogans. The same thing

happened in Ingushetia, and Putin does the same

when he needs to show that he has

support somewhere beyond television,

that beyond the virtual, he drags

state employees out into the street. And by doing so they

acknowledge that people must physically

stand somewhere, and other people, seeing this,

will change

the system. You mentioned Chechnya. Is Chechnya, for you,

part of the Russian Federation? Chechnya

is, of course, part of Russia, but at the

same time, what is happening in Chechnya

is completely unacceptable to me, and I see that

it is part of the Russian Federation in a

formal sense: we send money there, there

are all sorts of attributes of state power there.

Portraits of Putin hang there as symbols of Russia, but in essence

it is a separate region where

a Sharia state is being created,

a Sharia army is being formed, where the actual

laws of the Russian Federation do not apply,

where even

the principle enshrined in

the Constitution—that ours is a secular

state—is being denied. Some people walk around saying

there is no problem with them having religious

feelings and loving their prophet, but

when the entire republic is driven out on a

workday to demonstrate, that is something

wrong. Moreover, when the head

of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation

declares as his personal enemies those who

support the publication of cartoons there,

that says that we have created

a little state within the country

that denies the principles of the Russian

Federation, and this is absolutely unacceptable, and

it will lead to major problems in

the future. What do you think about these cartoons?

Should they be published? I

believe that, in general, should they

be published in the Russian media? We have

a Constitution, laws, customs

of coexistence, and so on. Within that

framework, anyone has the right to publish

any cartoons. Moreover, I want

to say that in

Russia in 2015, such questions should not

even arise in principle, because

most of the people who are in

power—or simply living here—we all lived in

the Soviet Union. All those people who

now walk around with crosses or with

placards saying “we love the Prophet” took courses in

scientific atheism at university, you understand. We

did not just have some kind of

ideology; one of the foundations of the Soviet

state was the complete denial of religion,

not merely mocking it, but

destroying it—churches were blown up there, and

so against that background—churches

were blown up, admittedly in a somewhat different

historical period, all right, but

you understand—in the 1970s and

1980s, in those churches that had not been

blown up, there were warehouses; they were turned into

barracks, and so on. And films,

cartoons—everything from that

time was simply

child’s play compared with what

French cartoonists publish, and

everyone knows it. You see, all those people back then

were shouting, “There is no God, religion is the opium

of the people,” and now they have become such

religious fundamentalists.

Should the Russian media urgently print

the cartoons? Do you join

that call, do you share the view that

they absolutely should? I absolutely believe

they should. As a sign of solidarity, the media

should of course support those

cartoonists, because those killed were not

just some cartoonists, but

victims of religious fanatics.

Terrorists attacked a media newsroom and killed people

for publishing certain

materials. Once again, these

cartoons—it is ridiculous even to say that they are

more offensive than what

existed in Russia, in the USSR, in Chechnya,

in Azerbaijan, in Armenia—everywhere—just

a few years ago. The leaders of

our country—Putin studied at law school,

and in his official curriculum

there was scientific atheism. All party members

could not even enter a church,

and if they had their children baptized, they could

be expelled. For example, when

my grandmother had my father baptized, she did it secretly

because he was a party member, and

they were afraid he would be expelled for it. And

now those very same people who in

the 1970s and 1980s

jailed people for distributing the Bible

are now posing before us as

guardians of “spiritual bonds”; they are religious

fundamentalists. This is simply

an utterly outrageous hypocrisy, and in

our country of all places,

all those guys in uniform ought to keep quiet,

the ones who would not let people attend

religious processions (Orthodox cross processions) just 20 years ago. Processions—

that is, in our country

officials

who display religious

beliefs, religious feelings—they

are not the problem. Those who display

religious feelings—let them display

them. But those who try to impose their

religiosity on us, their pretended

religiosity on us, and those who try

to turn Russia into a fundamentalist

state, whether Orthodox or

Islamic—those are the ones who should keep quiet and

stay out of it. Because my favorite example

in this regard is that our head of the Supreme

Court, Lebedev, when he was a judge in the 1970s,

sent to prison the father of the well-known

journalist Zoya Svetova, with a sentence for

what? For distributing the Bible. And later

this same Lebedev upholds the verdict

saying that they offended the feelings of believers

by dancing in a church. In what church?

One that did not exist in Soviet

times—the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was blown up, as

we know. And back then, for some reason, he in

the 1970s did not remember his

great religiosity or think about the rights

of believers. So all of this is

a grand fiction, this whole

business of official believers—crooks who can

put on anything, you understand. Right now

they have put on crosses; if necessary, they will

walk around with some kind of...

Satanic ones—I think right now you are speaking

more or less the way

many of your critics do, who

say that he has no faith at all because

he is a nationalist. He took part in the Russian March (an annual Russian nationalist rally),

and at that moment he had already told everyone

everything about himself. Since then—since then,

well, the thesis is that people do not change.

If he did that—I spoke at the Russian

March, and I can repeat it now. I

took part in the Russian March and said that

I am against illegal migration. I still say

that now. I was asking now not about the Russian March

but about the thesis that no one can

change their views, that people over time

do not develop. So if the chairman

of the Supreme Court once made such a

decision, does that mean he must

keep churning them out? I am simply saying

that in that case the chairman of the Supreme

Court should not have made such a

decision. And if he once made

such decisions, he is not just a private person—he is

a judge. That means that now he should not

remain chairman of the Supreme Court,

and he should not be the person

who makes 100 percent

opposite decisions and then supplies

them with some ideological basis, saying

that they are all violating and insulting

the rights of believers. And at this demonstration in

Grozny, half the people marching are former Komsomol members (the Soviet Communist youth organization),

you understand, and former Party officials

who used to shout, “Religion is the opium of the people,”

and now they are shouting, “Let’s kill

those who publish cartoons.” In this

there is nothing but hypocrisy, and nothing

but an attempt to fit absolutely anything

under the theme of, “Let’s make sure power

stays in our hands forever.” Was lustration needed?

Of course it was.

It was a colossal mistake

—a major mistake that did not

allow the country to develop. It was

a mistake made by Yeltsin, and yes,

the political elite, the leadership, of course,

there should have been lustration: the top

all those Party—all the top Party

officials should have been excluded

from political work. They should not have been—

the Central Committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), local Party leaders—

all of them. I believe that this whole

Komsomol gang—despite the fact that

most of them went into business

and became oligarchs—

should have been removed

from these spheres of activity in political matters.

And of course employees of the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the KGB

who were specifically responsible for political

repression, the special departments, should

also have been prohibited from

holding public office,

engaging in teaching,

and so on. That is, according to the principle

used in the Czech Republic and in

Poland, they would have had the opportunity to go into

business, to do some kind of

political consulting outside the state,

and everything would have been fine, and then the country

would, I think, have developed more

stably. So in general, in your view, for

the future, lustration is a positive

step that helps society

develop? Of course. Lustration does not

mean that these people will be hanged from lampposts tomorrow.

On the contrary, it means that these

people will, in some way, bear some

punishment and will have the opportunity

to start a new life in other fields,

to apply whatever talents they have,

which they undoubtedly do have. These people would not have seized

power in the country if they did not possess

some talents. It is simply that in certain

specific spheres we say: we do not

trust you, guys, to run

the state. We do not trust you, for example,

to teach our children. Everything else—

please, do as you like: go into business if you want,

travel, entertain yourselves,

go into show business, create something,

whatever. But in some areas you are forbidden to work.

That would have been a completely normal

transition. This system of lustration

is precisely what allows countries to get through

moments of political crisis more or less gently,

without creating additional polarization.

I think no—well,

polarization is arising now, when

people say, “We are allowed everything, but those

others are some kind of outcasts.” Some kind of—well, we

see some dressed-up clowns

walking around in, I don’t know, leather

jackets and looking generally rather strange,

who shout that they are supposed to

kill everyone, starting with liberals

and ending with homosexuals. And to quote roughly:

“Only the fear of death

can intimidate the opposition, and then it will not

come out into the streets.” I think this was said by

that very “Surgeon” (nickname of Alexander Zaldostanov, leader of the Night Wolves biker club), some guy with

some kind of fox tails, a leather jacket,

and hats, who himself, frankly speaking,

looks like some kind of—this whole

crowd of theirs looks like a bunch of

caricatured gay characters from

American comedies. And they are the ones

making these statements—that is polarization,

when devils for hire say that we

are going to kill some other

people. Well, polarization is when one

part of society hates another part

of society. That is exactly what is happening. They do not merely

hate—they always, quite directly, this is

literally a part of society. Do you think that behind

these people stands a large part

of society? There is always some part

of society that supports the most

radical views in the most

In a wonderful society, there will be ultra-

conservatives who may want

to kill liberals, and conversely there are

some liberals or pseudo-liberals

who despise their

opponents so much that they want to

deprive them of all rights, impose

voting restrictions, and so on. What matters is that

the mainstream, the majority overall,

balances these points of view and does not

allow radicals to kill

each other. Is there a danger that in

Russia there could begin

a war? Russia is already taking part in a war,

moreover, a war we could not have

imagined—a war with Ukraine. This is a war in which

Russia is participating. That's a different matter.

You asked whether it is likely that in Russia

a civil war could begin. I think that

there still are no such direct

preconditions for that. At least right now I

do not see them. In principle, those

who went to fight in Donbas (a region in eastern Ukraine)—many of them are

people who were either carried away by a false

romanticism or fell for this

sort of imperial propaganda. But generally speaking,

inside the country, if, if

you set aside this part of their nonsense about how

we are supposedly meant to rule the whole

world and seize all neighboring countries,

I do not see that even someone like

Strelkov says that in Russia

there should be created some kind of

corrupt state and that there should

stand a monarch who has stolen all

the national wealth. No, they do not seem

to be saying that. So despite the fact

that there are radicals there—in America there are

radicals, in America even more than in

Russia. There are fanatics who believe

that America should be in charge of everyone

and drop nuclear

bombs on everyone. There are such people there too; they just are not

in power. There are such people in Europe too.

They exist everywhere, and in Russia they will exist too.

It is just that

if they are not given

direct state support, then their

role will be extremely

insignificant. The idea that Russia

should rule the whole world is nonsense.

You said that. But why should we rule the whole

world? And does Russia need at all

to strive to become

a superpower? Russia right now can

aspire to become

a regional superpower. We should aim

in the foreseeable future to become

a leading European

power. In general, for Russia the only possible path in the world

lies through economic

development. Our budget must be

comparable to the budgets of the United States and China. Our

military spending must be comparable

to that of the United States. Right now these are simply figures

of entirely different orders of magnitude. Therefore the task, and it seems to me the path

to becoming a superpower,

does not lie in seizing the countries

of the former Soviet Union, but rather in ensuring that

people become wealthier, GDP per capita grows,

the budget grows, tax revenues grow, and the population increases.

In the United States, the population is more than 350 million people,

and GDP per capita is enormous. Here, by contrast,

the population is shrinking, and GDP per capita

after inflation is frankly laughable.

The population is not shrinking? The population

is shrinking, ours certainly is. Yes, yes—through

the annexation of Crimea, we added about 2

million people, but the population trend is very

bad. And despite the fact that there were certain

spikes connected with the fact that the generation

of the Soviet baby boom had its second

child—the first and second child—we

can see that a demographic pit (a sharp demographic decline) awaits us, and

we will fall into it in the near future. This

will happen in about five years. We will talk about that decline

a little later. But as for superpower status and

national pride, last year

you may have seen that there were several very

interesting opinion polls, and moreover they

were even tracked over time.

It was published how the ratio changed

of those people who would choose

national pride rather than personal

well-being, and vice versa.

Accordingly, the number of those people—those

who would prefer to see the country as a super-

power rather than see themselves as prosperous

individuals—the number of such people

rose sharply. More than 50%

of respondents would rather feel pride

than personally have a lot of money. It seems to me

that all these questions are just so

obviously manipulative. It is like asking

something along the lines of: would you like someone to spit in your

face for 100 rubles? Everyone says no, of course

they do not. There are other polls that

show that when people are asked:

was annexing Crimea a good thing? Good, yes.

Are you personally willing to pay anything at all

for the annexation of Crimea? Everyone says they are not

willing. These simply are not two real alternatives.

So you do not believe that such a

dilemma exists? I believe that this is

an absolutely false dilemma, and no one

should have to pay for becoming

a superpower or for development. On the contrary,

these things are directly connected: we will

become a superpower only if

people become wealthier. If people are paying for it,

if people are paying for the fact that we are supposedly

becoming a superpower, then that is not any kind of

superpower—that is the robbery of the population.

Only through a wealthy, prosperous

population—when families have

four people and there are no problems with

housing, cars, or

healthcare or education.

Only that can be called a superpower in

Denmark, in Norway, in Austria, and even in

Luxembourg—wealthy, prosperous

populations. Not one of these countries has ever

in its life—none of the wealthy, prosperous

residents of these countries would ever think that they

live in superpowers. The countries are small; this is

far from it. Some of them were once superpowers,

but that time has passed. The countries are small,

the population is small. Germany is

certainly a regional superpower.

The United Kingdom, despite its small

size, certainly is one; the United States is.

Why is this needed? Why does any country

—any country with a large population,

a large territory, and great

wealth—inevitably influence

the countries around it? One way or another, others

consult with it. It interacts with them somehow,

and the scale of that interaction is directly

proportional to its money, its population, and

its size. In that sense, small

Japan, which has a relatively small army—though

it is increasing it, by the way—

is, in Asia, a very

important partner and a very significant

country. And in that sense, Russia

will in any case remain influential, even in total poverty.

But if we want that influence

to grow, we must become wealthier.

That is the only path. We can see

that China’s role has grown not because

it bought more submarines, but because

whereas before, some 100 million

people there were going hungry, now no one

is starving; pensions have started being paid there,

the country is developing, the country has become richer,

and the country’s role has increased. If the country becomes

poorer, its role will decline. Right now Russia,

despite the flood of petrodollars,

is a poor country with a relatively small population,

and a shrinking one. We must break this

trend, develop, and let our people

grow wealthier—then Russia’s role in the world will

increase. What emotions did you

feel at the end of last year, when

the ruble’s exchange rate quite obviously began to fall very quickly,

and economic problems that had not been visible for

a long time began to become

apparent?

Well, in that way there also appeared

some new arguments for saying,

“You see? We told you so.”

Besides, speaking as someone who—

all my accounts have been frozen, and the money,

my savings, were in rubles in

those accounts. And when I saw that my

savings were losing value, I didn’t even have

the option of converting them into foreign currency, unlike

many others. So my emotions in

that respect may even have been a little

stronger than the national average. But

as for the economic situation overall,

yes, of course one can say—and

should say—that everyone had been talking about this,

because we were being fed nonsense that

the country was supposedly developing, that some kind of

prestige was rising. But all of it was

because of the price of oil. When the price of

oil was high, there was swagger; when the price of oil

fell, everything immediately collapsed. So, in other words,

was there some feeling of schadenfreude? No, not schadenfreude.

No—why schadenfreude? It’s just that everyone

had been talking about it for years. I was one of

the people saying it. It was

basically quite obvious that

all of this would collapse as soon as the price of

oil fell. The price of oil fell, everything collapsed, but

there was no schadenfreude, because yes, it collapsed,

but I’m the same person

who goes to the store and buys milk

that has gone up by 40%, and food and so

on. In that sense, the consequences of

this crisis will have to be dealt with by all of us, and

the current government, which is built on the

principle of “after us, the flood” (meaning: let disaster come after we’re gone)—for them,

it really is all the same; they

have grabbed what they could, and they want to preserve their

power. Is that just a propaganda line? No,

not at all—I

am absolutely convinced that, since

they want to keep power for a long time, they do not, in general,

not care what happens next. They do

care what happens next, but they

are prepared to make decisions that harm

the entire country in order to strengthen their

power. In that sense, they have

an absolute priority, which is

that Putin should be president for life,

and everything else is of

secondary or tertiary importance. That is

the whole point. Because with this

war against Ukraine, they have dealt

a colossal blow to Russia’s geopolitical

interests in the long term,

turning Russia into a raw-material appendage

of the West once and for all. They have dealt

a colossal blow to the country’s economic

development. But they did it

deliberately, because they think like this:

“After us, the flood. The main thing is that I

die peacefully in my bed as President

of the Russian Federation, and what happens

tomorrow—I couldn’t care less.” I see no other

logic in them. That is, the goal of making

Russia a great power, and making themselves

great historical figures—none of

the

leadership, ideally, would mind that,

but the priority is to remain the country’s leader,

to remain a kind of emperor. Therefore,

for them it is better even to remain an emperor over

a poor, torn-apart country than to become a person,

a lawful president who shared

power with everyone, even of a great country.

That alternative is much worse for them.

Their unconditional priority is precisely the preservation of

power at any cost.

with the rest, yes, to share power.

Please explain how this could happen very

simply. The current president and the Kremlin, they

have taken all the power and all the money for themselves, and

sharing power means electing

governors, which the majority of the country demands,

electing city leaders, which the majority of the country demands.

The majority of the country wants this. How should it

happen? Elections. First of all, elections

for governors, elections for mayors. Second,

an increase in powers and funding

for mayors. The entire financial system is now

set up so that Moscow siphons off, like

a giant pump, money from the entire country. This

has to stop. People on the ground, first and foremost

city mayors, must have

both the authority and the money. And lastly,

the most important thing in this system is

elections to representative bodies of government.

Our Progress Party is not being allowed onto

the ballot. Yes, it would seem that I

ran in the Moscow mayoral election and got almost

30%. My colleagues and I have the right

to run in

elections and represent some part of

the population. It seems obvious that we do, but

I am not being allowed, and the Progress Party is not being

registered. This

must stop, and there must be free

access for everyone who wants to take part in

elections. Because, for example, in the last

Moscow City Duma elections, not one of my

associates was even remotely allowed

to get in. This has to change. And I am not

saying that tomorrow United Russia

will get 0% and we will get 99%, but there will be a more

balanced Duma where there truly

will be more political forces

represented. And let Putin keep

some kind of majority in the Duma, but it will be

a majority of, say, 35%. And there will also be

more communists, perhaps,

perhaps nationalists, perhaps there will be

more liberals, and so on. But it

will be a Duma that represents the interests

of Russian citizens. Can one conclude from

this that Alexei Navalny is a politician who

a few years ago publicly used the slogan

"Putin behind bars," and has now revised

his views and now says that Putin

should allow the Progress Party to enter

the Duma?

...the rules for regional elections. The slogan

I used at rallies was:

"Putin is a thief," and I still say that

Putin is a thief, and his friends are thieves and

corrupt officials, and we demand that we be

given the opportunity to take part in elections to

the State Duma and to regional legislative

assemblies, where we will either win or

take the number of seats that properly belongs to us.

That is all. Nothing has

changed compared with what I

said then. I demanded it then, and

I demand it now. It is just that back then I

didn't have a party. Now I do, and it is not being

allowed in precisely because they are afraid, because

they understand that we will take

a significant number of seats.

The economic difficulties at the end of last

year — are they an opportunity?

No, not an opportunity for anyone. It is a blow to

this system of power, a blow to the entire

population, and through that a blow to the whole

power structure. But it is entirely possible, and we

are seeing it now, that they will choose

the option under which they will tighten

the political situation, screw the screws tighter,

and put even more pressure on everyone in order

to compensate for their problems

in the economy. This is exactly where all those

costumed clowns come from, the ones who

shout that they are going to kill the opposition.

That comes from exactly the same place. Because there is

an economic...

Have you managed to speak with any of

the major political figures — opponents,

allies? In this short time I have only managed

to meet with the leadership there,

of PARNAS (a Russian opposition party), for example, with Kasyanov and Nemtsov,

in order to, well, among other things,

talk through certain matters connected with

regional elections and so on.

Because there are plans; life does not

stop anyway, regardless of whether I am under arrest

or not under arrest. There will be some

election campaigns, and in order for

people not to get in each other's way in

the regional elections...

to reach agreements, in the sense that, as you know, I said that

I believe we should hold a large

mass street demonstration at the end of

February or the beginning of March, and of course

our colleagues in the December 5 coalition and PARNAS, and

many others — they matter, and I am discussing this with them.

Now, among the well-known

political figures, with the leadership

of PARNAS so far... Have you spoken with

Kudrin? No. There has been some exchange recently,

from time to time, but that was quite a while ago. With

Khodorkovsky — with Khodorkovsky I do not have

the ability to leave Russia, and he does not have

the ability to... We have not yet spoken on Skype.

We have corresponded. Well, we will talk, yes.

We correspond quite actively, and

even when I was under house arrest, well,

we corresponded through third parties.

So in that sense, you know that I

even launched a joint project with him, and

the contacts are there, of course. Do you consider him

an ally, a partner? I consider everyone

allies — I consider allies all those

who tell the truth about this political

regime. There may be some differences in views,

personal sensitivities, criticism, and so on,

but that is normal. They are politicians; otherwise

we would all be one person. Then just

a couple more questions about the distant past: what...

What do you think about privatization? Is it necessary

to come up with some kind of mechanism, like

the one, for example, that was once proposed by

Khodorkovsky for legalizing

the final results of privatization

in the 1990s, or should there be some kind of review

of it? It needs to be divided up, yes. Yes, there is

the privatization that took place with

difficulties—legal in some places,

illegal in others, right in some cases, wrong in others.

Then there were the so-called loans-for-shares auctions

when the largest enterprises were simply

handed out to some dubious people who

claimed that they would manage them

efficiently. They did not do that, and instead

they simply became billionaires. I

am convinced that in order to overcome

the problem of those loans-for-shares auctions and the

property that no one considers

legitimate—not even the owners themselves, because

they are really just quasi-holders—

why can Putin so easily crush all

these oligarchs, jail them without regard for the law, and

so on? Because, yes, nobody believes

that Norilsk Nickel should

belong to Potanin or Prokhorov,

nobody believes that Uralkali should

for some reason belong to some

Suleiman Kerimov, or whoever it was—

Rybolovlev. No one accepts this,

including those very oligarchs. That is why I

am convinced that we need a mechanism, something

like a compensatory

tax—the kind that was used in Britain,

for example, after privatization, when

the difference would simply be paid between

the acquisition price and the market

value today, and we would all begin

to regard it as a kind of

fair act. Then property

would be legitimized, and then no one would

be outraged that some

district party committee (Soviet local Communist Party office) guys came along again,

from the Komsomol (Soviet Communist youth organization), and declared Norilsk Nickel—

a gigantic enterprise on which

the entire Soviet Union had labored—

to be simply their own, and then

made billions from it without doing

anything. They took those billions abroad and bought

some, I don’t know, football

clubs or God knows what. No one

recognizes or accepts this, and no one ever

will. So in order to overcome

this, we must of course introduce

a proper, normal mechanism—not

nationalization, but compensatory taxes.

Who should sort out these enterprises,

draw up a list?

A normal government would review it.

A government of public trust could do all this.

It can all be done; it is not

a problem. The Finance Ministry calculates more

complex things, the Economic Development Ministry calculates

more complex things, so a set of

enterprises whose privatization

took place in such an obviously

unfair way during those loans-for-shares

auctions is, first and foremost, well known.

All the largest enterprises, all

the largest enterprises. And moreover, I

would say there were reverse deals as well. For

example, the well-known deal involving the buyback of

Abramovich’s Sibneft: Abramovich bought Sib

neft for $100 million, and then Gazprom bought it back from him

for several billion.

That was a kind of de-privatization, but it was

a monstrous corrupt scheme. That

money—the difference, that unlawfully

obtained gain received by Abramovich—should also

be taxed. A significant

portion of that money should be returned, because

no one will ever recognize this, no one

will ever admit that this was

right, because it was obviously

wrong, unjust, and

corrupt. Returning to the previous

topic about partners and allies, am I

right in understanding that these people

who were clearly

involved in the unfair loans-for-shares

auctions and who now, or in the recent

past, owned these enterprises—

it is hard to regard them as partners and allies?

Whom do you mean? Well, Nemtsov, for example,

always spoke out against the loans-for-shares

auctions. Kasyanov did not take part in them. In

that sense, in the RPR

PARNAS party, I am not talking about

the people you listed conditionally—for example, Prokhorov,

for example, Khodorkovsky, and so on.

There, he was

the owner of such an enterprise, and

as far as I know, Khodorkovsky is actually

one of the people who

quite actively promote the idea of a

compensatory tax—one of the schemes in

that regard. In 2003, a couple of

months before—Khodorkovsky, in that sense, there are no

problems. Here they support it with

the RPR-PARNAS party. I do not see any

problems in that sense there. With December 5,

with Yabloko, which put forward this idea,

there are no problems either. With Prokhorov, well,

okay, then Prokhorov should, should

fall under this compensatory tax

and should pay.

Figures like Fridman, Potanin, Abramovich

and others, who could

be—or who in one way or another are

perhaps passive, but still some kind of

political players in Russia. Which

of them are political players?

They could be, but they are not. That means

they are sitting under the bed and rejoicing

that they have managed to drag under the bed

their billions, and they work

for this regime, as long as the regime does not take

those billions away from them. When the regime does take them away

When it comes to billions, as in Yevtushenkov’s case, they

start squeaking pitifully about something. Well,

fine, fine. I’m very glad that you’re taking all of it

away. In that sense, even just from the example of

this whole picture, we can see

the utter pointlessness of this entire oligarchic

gang. They are unnecessary; in fact, they are harmful.

They do not manage anything effectively, they do nothing,

they play no positive

political role. More than that,

they are so cowardly and worldly that

when things are taken from them, they hand it all over with

an ingratiating little smile. So I do not, for even a

second, see in these people any

political allies of mine or

anything of the sort. Even though perhaps

somewhere, over tea, they curse Putin

in the strongest terms—in that sense,

well, so what if they do? They are part

of this regime, not its foundation. In that

respect, the Yevtushenkov case is

—if not lawful—then at

least entirely logical and proper

from Putin’s point of view. Of course,

it is perfectly logical.

[music]

From a procedural and legal

standpoint, it is completely senseless and disgusting.

And if anyone should have been jailed there, then

all those Bashkir officials (from Bashkortostan, a republic of Russia)

who allowed the privatization should have been jailed,

and those ministers too—Medvedev in particular,

the then president, or

prime minister, who approved all of this,

because Yevtushenkov could not have

stolen

Bashneft; that was done by officials. So

the officials should be jailed instead.

But that is precisely why this case was carried out in such

a way—exactly because

no one in Russia really recognizes large-scale private property

as legitimate at all. It is so

illegitimate that, by default,

everyone

supports any move by the state,

because it is easy to say: he has a lot of money,

let’s take it all back. That is the problem. Now I want

to quote something.

Yes: “A drunken obkom boss (regional Communist Party chief in the Soviet era),”

“who traded Russia for security guarantees

for his family.”

Mm-hmm. Who is that about? About Yeltsin. Moreover, I

can say this as a former

great admirer of Yeltsin, as someone

who, foolishly, once supported

—like many of us did—various

of his strange actions, from

the loans-for-shares auctions

to the shelling of the Supreme Soviet. And in that

sense, when I look at what

is happening around me and to me, well, I

understand that this is, in some sense,

a kind of metaphysical price for the fact that I once

supported all that. I was a huge

Yeltsin fan. So what did we get in the

end? We got exactly this: he had the

hopes of millions of people like me,

who wanted change, and he traded all of that

away so that some little bunch of

crooks could now own—well, *Vedomosti* writes that they have

some $300 million worth of

real estate in Moscow—but for the sake of

guarantees for these pathetic

crooks of his, he traded away the hopes, aspirations, and

future of an entire vast country. And the fact that

well,

they may be nice people—I gather that perhaps

you, Mikhail, are friends with that whole riffraff

company, Chenko and the rest—I will not take back

a single word. I believe that this really

was the case: at the end of the regime there was

simply a deranged alcoholic there, controlled by

his corrupt family,

which made sure that we sold

the country’s future in exchange for their miserable

$100 million. Yes, that is exactly

how it is. Interesting how suddenly you shifted

to

to personalities—who I am friends with or not. I know

what you’re getting at there; I simply ignore all of that.

I ignore it.

So that means you are not very concerned

about

about us starting with insulting

the feelings of believers, and now insulting

the feelings of

people who are ideologically

finely tuned—you are not afraid of offending those people for

whom, broadly speaking, Yeltsin is a kind of

ideal?

He was once an ideal for me too.

That is precisely why I feel it is my

responsibility to say this so plainly.

Many people are outraged by this. What I am saying

now contains rather offensive words.

Offensive words were spoken about—about

a deceased person, a deceased

statesman. That deceased

statesman was an outstanding

man, but what he did at the end

cannot be called anything else, because

forgive me, once again I am forced

to repeat myself: what is happening now to the TV Rain channel (*Dozhd*, an independent Russian TV channel)

—it is being driven out from everywhere; everywhere there is

censorship, some incomprehensible people,

random figures who came to power

for no good reason. Aren’t you afraid? I am afraid,

on the contrary, I believe that my

responsibility is

to say this absolutely plainly.

Maybe that will also push you

to finally acknowledge it and move

on. And there are things one must not

say—things I may think, but I

would never say, because it is

dangerous, because it would offend someone.

Well, of course, any person can

say different things, as long as he does not cross

there, beyond the bounds of the Criminal Code, for

politicians and public figures in general

Well, there is an added responsibility.

There are some things you shouldn’t say or

do, because for some people you are

a role model. And of course, you shouldn’t

pass on bad examples to others.

What topics would you avoid

talking about? Well, it’s not even really about topics, but about

specific questions. Unfortunately, I

swear a lot. So when I’m in a public

setting, when I might be

filmed or there’s a journalist around, I try

not to do that, because that too is

a bad example. Everyone has

bad habits, and there’s no need to

put them on display—you should work on

getting rid of them yourself. I think politicians,

for example, shouldn’t... I like shooting, I

do practical shooting, but I’m not

going to... I don’t know, there was a period in

my life when I promoted it. I still

support civilian gun ownership now,

but I think politicians should not

pose for photos with

assault rifles or pistols, or go shooting at a

range for the cameras, and so on. Because, well,

that’s a bad example. If you want

to go shooting, then go shooting—but there’s no need to

turn it into a public theme.

And so on. Do you picture

your hypothetical voter

when you make such vivid

appeals? Yes—any person, really. Here, I once had

a search that lasted 75 hours, and for 4.5 of those hours I was

giving lectures to bored militiamen (police officers).

A bored militiaman is, is, is one of

my favorite audiences, actually,

because I have to deal with them a lot.

They detain me, take me somewhere,

and I discuss things with them with great pleasure,

from Sechin’s salary (Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft) to

the salaries of police officers,

comparing them in Russia and the United States,

the housing situation in general, corruption,

and so on. I’m ready to talk to anyone.

In that sense, for me there isn’t really

a preferred audience that I

most enjoy speaking to. Though, for example,

those same police officers and

pensioners—talking with them

is the most interesting, because they argue

with you, and that makes for an interesting conversation. But

in general, I’m happy to talk with

anyone, and that’s a politician’s job. It’s always more interesting

to speak to a more aggressive audience.

To what extent

do you have to make your views

sharper, or on the contrary, less

sharp, depending on how you think

the audience will react? Let me give

you an example.

Take Crimea, for instance, which

“is ours” (a reference to the slogan “Crimea is ours”)—to what extent

is that the position of a politician who should

of course speak that way? Well, I

try, on every issue, to express

my actual thoughts and not

be dishonest. Okay, there’s this idea that

for a politician, saying

“Crimea is not ours” is political suicide. So in any case, I

will say this: my politics, my approach—well, many people

repeat this now, but I’m not

convinced it brings any

political dividends. Everyone said,

“Crimea is ours.” I said what I believe. I say

that the annexation of Crimea was

illegal, and in the long-term strategic perspective

it will do no one any good. Crimea

will not develop; it will turn into

a territory like Northern Cyprus,

and that will only create problems for us. But now—and

this is the second part that

for example Ukrainians and many liberals don’t like—I

say that there is neither a political

nor a legal way to return Crimea

back, and this Crimea problem that has been

created will be like

the issue of a united Jerusalem—it will be

something we’ll be discussing with

Ukraine for 200 years, and by then our grandchildren and

great-grandchildren will be around, and no one will agree on anything.

That is, Crimea will become one of those

disputed territories in the world that will

poison life for both Russia and Europe for many, many

years.

That’s my answer to the question of what I think

about Crimea, not an answer to

whether I take into account the hypothetical opinion of

the audience. I try to discard all those

political consulting tricks,

sociological calculations—I’ve even concluded that nobody

really knows anything.

I say what I think

needs to be said, and in that sense I’m not trying

to come up with some formula that

will please everyone. Because any such

formula that pleases everyone

ends up pleasing no one. In that case,

I might as well just say what they say on

television—everyone already hears that. What’s the point? Who needs

that? I represent the part of society

that wants positive change, and for me it’s

more important not simply what they think, but

to persuade them with my arguments. Okay, and

when the cancellation of commuter trains in

Vologda Region was called

“the genocide of the Russian people,” what exactly was behind

that? It was a metaphor, of course, it was

a metaphor, because these days we all

love talking about “genocide” and

so on. “Genocide” here, “genocide” there—the Investigative Committee

opens something like 15

genocide cases a month. So, well,

that’s what I was playing off in a

polemical

way—this whole idea. They’re all shouting about

some kind of genocide, that genocide is happening against

They say there is genocide going on in Donbas—but let’s

look at what is happening in Vologda here, and

where the real genocide of the Russian

people is actually taking place, in my view. If we’re

going to talk and shout about genocide, then let’s

talk about Vologda or the Pskov

region, where the population is simply being drunk into submission

Where—well, there is some kind of complete

lawlessness going on there.

In many regions, local commuter trains are being canceled, and

that is often the only way

for people to get around at all. So that’s what I’m saying:

let’s compare where

the real genocide is. That was the point of the post, that is,

it was a kind of

joke. What is genocide? Genocide is

the destruction of a particular group because

I even repeated that several times in the post

specifically so people would understand that throwing around the word

“genocide” is stupid. In Russian

political tradition now, it has become customary to call

just about anything genocide.

And so that is exactly the point

I was playing on. Of course, genocide is

a truly colossal, monstrous

tragedy, and that word should be used

extremely rarely. What are you afraid of?

I’m afraid of many things, like any other

person. I worry about all sorts of things.

Well, I can’t say I’m afraid exactly, but I don’t

like heights, for example. I really don’t like

it when someone sits on a balcony with their back

to the edge. We’re sitting low right now—well,

not that low, it’s the fifth floor. So I’m an ordinary

normal person with ordinary reflexes

and so on. So if, Mikhail, right now

you were to pull out a gun and leave it here, I would clearly

feel

discomfort and anxiety, let’s put it that way, like

everyone else when it comes to physical

objects.

Well then, is there no fear of becoming disappointed in

what you are

doing? No, there isn’t. I believe in it now.

That is, if such a moment comes,

I think—I wouldn’t want it

to come—but I may become disappointed in something.

But right now I believe in it, so why would I

be disappointed? On the contrary,

I believe in what we—I believe in what I

am saying. I believe that the things I

propose for the country’s development are useful.

I believe in Russia’s future in general. I’m

an optimist by nature.

And that helps me. And what will happen to you

in

a year? It’s hard for me to say.

Usually in interviews

I answer something like this: on January 20, 2016,

I will still be a person who

tries to draw other people into this work—

that was a bad start—who will

try to bring other people in

to change Russia for the better. That is

what I am doing now, and I would like

to keep doing it next year too, only better, more

effectively, and more successfully than now. I would like

to be a better Alexei Navalny

than the one I am right now.

Right now, I am one Alexei Navalny. And

in a year, I would like to be

a better Alexei.

Navalny: it’s a constant battle with yourself, yes.

I wanted to say that the sun is already

high, but in fact the sun has already gone behind the clouds.

So I think we will take that

as a good sign. We can—yes, it has

stopped shining in my eyes, and I think

that means we can wrap up our

conversation and wait for next year—or

maybe even meet before then.

See you. All the best.

Should we have shaken hands at the end

or not? What do you mean? I just

thought we should do something, you know.