Alexei Navalny’s Interview with The New Times

Let's go.

>> Hello, you're watching the news

portal New Times. My name is Oleg Dusaev, and

right now we'll be speaking with Alexei

Navalny, a member of the federal council

of the Yabloko party, who was expelled,

>> a former member of the federal council.

Let's rewrite it one more time,

we'll use it.

>> Yes,

right now I just need to introduce you

first somehow—do we start with a two-shot or a

close-up?

>> Close-up.

Yes,

>> then now I'll say a couple of words about you, and

then I'll greet you.

>> Yes.

>> Former member. You see, nowhere does it

say former, everywhere it just says.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Uh-huh.

>> What?

already.

>> Hello, you're watching the news

portal Newes. In the studio is Oleg Dusaev.

Right now we'll be talking about the

Yabloko party. There have been a number of major news stories there.

First of all, Alexei Navalny, a member

of the party's Federal Council, has been expelled from

the party's ranks. And about that, as well as

other decisions of the Yabloko party congress, about

not recognizing the election results, about supporting

the candidacy of Vladimir Bukovsky, we

will be speaking, in fact, with Alexei

Navalny. Hello, Alexei

Anatolyevich. Well then, let's

start, probably, with your expulsion. You

surely have some thoughts on

this matter that you're ready

to share with our viewers.

>> Yes, the official official

wording under which I was expelled was

the promotion of nationalist ideas,

which caused the party political

damage. But to understand

the real wording, the real reason

for my expulsion, it's enough to take

the official documents of the Yabloko party. I

actually brought them—if possible, here is the decision on my

expulsion, and as is customary when

considering some issue, there are

materials that were distributed to the members

of the bureau, here officially with the visa (approval mark) of the head of

the executive office, which are supposed to explain

why this awful Navalny

should be expelled. Here, for the most part,

they've collected quotes from some of my

public statements. Here

there really are a couple of quotes on the topic

of a couple of reports saying that I, together with

Sergei Gulyaev, who at one time,

incidentally, was on the Yabloko

list in St. Petersburg, created the

Narod movement. Well, basically, if we

look at the quotes, then—Navalny stated

that Grigory Alexeyevich—Grigory

Alexeyevich Yavlinsky discredits

democracy. Navalny stated that

at the Dissenters' March he greets

The Other Russia on behalf of all honest

Yabloko members. And we should send these people

to the political trash heap. Well,

of course, that's a rather risky wording. And

similar quotes from some media reports

or even from my LiveJournal blog.

Therefore, the true reason for the expulsion

is quite obvious when we simply look

at these official documents. And,

indeed, since 2006, after

it became finally clear that

Yabloko would under no circumstances enter

into any kind of unification schemes, under no

circumstances join any

democratic coalitions, I

have consistently and quite harshly

criticized the Yabloko leadership. I believe

that Yabloko is turning into a spoiler

for the democratic forces, that it has actually

received a political order

to destroy the non-systemic opposition

to Putin's regime. And that it is

working deliberately in exactly that niche.

I do not agree with that.

>> So you believe that your expulsion was

solely—excuse the tautology—

for criticizing the leadership? And

without any doubt, of course,

the national-democratic discourse

that I propose should be adopted,

including by Yabloko, is not supported

by 100%, and possibly not even 50%,

of Yabloko members. But most of them, they

are, in principle, ready to discuss it. Maybe

they disagree with me, but they are

ready to discuss it. But the real

reasons for expulsion in Yabloko in 99%

of cases are always only one thing. If

a person allows himself public criticism

of Yavlinsky and the leadership in general. And are

you personally hurt by this decision?

>> I, well, of course it's unpleasant for me. I've been

in Yabloko, in effect, since

1999. Since 2002 I've worked in Yabloko

on a professional basis and devoted a lot

of time to this party, which I consider

my party. And I believe that I have

achieved quite a lot. And so, of course, it's

unpleasant for me, a little hurtful, but I am not

wounded by it, and it was, in principle,

quite expected. When I

came out with this criticism, I understood

that it was only a matter of time.

My expulsion was a matter of time. That is, until

a certain point they were simply afraid

that my expulsion would cause some sort of

scandal, criticism, and so on. But

now, properly speaking, after

getting one and a half percent, there's nothing left to lose, and

any criticism no longer plays

any special role here. So I understood that this is how

it would all end sooner or later.

>> And why did you act so

carelessly?

>> Well, you see, what is the point

of acting carefully? That is, you can

act carefully, like some of our

bureau members who are, in principle, quite

decent, respectable people, but nevertheless they

listen to yet another

piece of nonsense—that we shouldn't

unite with anyone, that Yabloko is

the only democrat. They sit there at the

bureau, looking down at the table like this, they

just want to object to this,

to object, but they act carefully. I

think that's pointless. That is, either

we are trying to change something, or else

Then why get involved in politics at all?

Well, you need to engage in politics in order

to leave your own mark, your own point

of view. That’s what I was doing.

>> So are you saying that Yabloko

has basically developed a bureaucracy?

>> Well, every party always has

bureaucracy. And Yabloko certainly has it,

without any doubt. The issue is that this

bureaucracy and the staff members,

who simply, well, basically receive

a salary there, including from

Yavlinsky, are the ones who mostly decide all

political questions.

>> Uh-huh. Tell me, maybe now, after all,

we do have a chance

to cool down a bit, let’s

put it that way, not think about wounded pride,

and really have a serious conversation

about what problems, in your view,

today’s Yabloko has — not

the one that existed in 1999

or several years ago. So

what do we have now?

What we have now is, beyond any doubt,

and setting wounded pride aside,

a fact that

cannot be disputed. That is 1.6%

in the election. Even if, let’s suppose,

there were some falsifications, no one

in their right

mind can assume that Yabloko got more than 2%. So

what we have is a complete failure in the election.

>> Well, you made a statement, right, that

the false results came from nonexistent

exit polls,

>> Yes. In fact, one of the

things that really outraged

the leadership was my criticism of

the position they came out with. They

said that we actually got

6, maybe even 7%, but our votes were stolen,

and that’s why they

drew 1.6% for us. I maintain, as someone

who followed the election

campaign, worked for a long time in

the party apparatus and knows all the ins and outs,

that this is all a lie, there were no exit polls,

and the real result was 1.6% or around

that. Of course, the election was absolutely

unfair, and so on, and so on,

and so on, but Yabloko got

what it got.

>> Why do you think the results were like that?

>> Uh, because first of all, I believe that

this narrow liberal, uh,

this blinkered, narrowly liberal

tilt that Yabloko took

has, first of all, simply led it into a dead end.

Second, and this is the most important thing, Yabloko

has over the past few years turned into a kind of

sect. We won’t unite with anyone. We’re

the most important, and only we are right. Everyone

else is an idiot. Kasparov

is a provocateur, Belykh is an idiot, Kasyanov is a crook.

So everyone around us is a crook or a fool,

and so on. And we alone are the

most important ones here,

standing there in a white coat looking

beautiful. But voters, especially in this situation,

will never support

that kind of position. I mean, since

1996 the same thing has been said

over and over. Everyone else is stupid, only we are good.

That’s what led to this predictable

result. People simply became disillusioned.

They refused to support those who have

been muttering for many, many years

about some kind of unity but doing nothing

to achieve it, or muttering that

they are the best but unable to

show it in any way. So it is completely obvious

that we have a leadership crisis,

an ideological crisis, and, well,

basically a broader crisis of the

democratic opposition. All of this

led to Yabloko getting

1.6%. Well, look, so many

unpleasant things, right? It would seem

this is bad, and that is bad, and that is bad, but you

still somehow, for some reason, did not

leave the party yourselves. You were,

so to speak, forcibly, one might say,

expelled. So why, uh, if, so to speak,

you were so outraged by all this and, well,

made various statements and

so on, why didn’t you, for example, simply leave

on your own?

>> On my own?

>> I’ll repeat: I have always taken an active

position. When the first talk began

that you’re with Navalny, you’re such a

bad person, so why are you sitting here

with us, get out, I said that I myself would not

leave, I would change all of you, I would do everything.

In fact, in Yabloko a huge portion

of the party members are the so-called opposition.

>> Some are a little afraid, some

simply don’t want to get involved, and so on.

Well, I

>> assure you

>> inside, of course. I assure you that, uh,

60% of those bureau members who sit there applauding

Yavlinsky and saying he’s the best,

in the back rooms of that bureau say

such nasty things about him that, uh, compared to

them, my criticism is simply nonsense.

So there is opposition inside Yabloko, but I

believe this needs to be stated publicly

and there needs to be an attempt to change things. If

I am unhappy with the leadership, that

does not mean that I

should leave Yabloko. I will do everything to replace

this leadership, because Yabloko is

my party too, no less than it is

Yavlinsky’s party.

>> Well, you see, then wouldn’t it have been better,

so to speak, not to air dirty laundry in public,

but to work on some reforms or

promote ideas for improving

the way things function internally, so to speak,

meeting privately so that it would not become known

to the public, so as not to damage

the leader’s reputation, and so on, and so

forth.

>> The possibilities for that are very limited. I mean,

if it is not known to

the public, then it will not be known to

anyone at all. I believe that in the

dialogue and discussion about what Yabloko

should be and, more broadly, what a united democratic

the party; in this dialogue, it should be

not only and not so much

party functionaries who take part. The

whole public should be involved, because

without the support of this so-called

public, without this broader

democratic backing, the party

structure itself is worth precisely

nothing at all. So this is our common decision.

That is firstly. Secondly, here is an

example. At the last bureau meeting,

when I was expelled, there was also

discussion of a proposal from the St. Petersburg

organization precisely about reform, about what

you mentioned. And what happened?

They were completely humiliated, as the saying goes,

and their draft resolution was totally

shot down. Nobody knows about it,

nobody has heard about it. So these

attempts to reform the party

somewhere quietly from within—signing

letters, sending them to the leadership. In other words,

you know, it is like going to the Little Father Tsar

and saying, 'Look, Grigory

Alekseyevich, you are so wonderful, now go ahead and

change everything yourself.' He will change

absolutely nothing. So I believe that

there must be a hard line here: the leadership is

the leadership; it is not prepared to change

itself, and it does not want to

do so, naturally. Therefore it simply

has to be removed.

>> And what prompted your harsh words?

You called Grigory Yavlinsky

a coward.

>> A coward? I will explain why. Because

the very form in which the

bureau meeting and my expulsion took place was

quite something; that was what

affected me most of all.

After all, I represent the Moscow organization. I

am a member of the Federal Council of the Yabloko party.

I was officially elected by the Moscow

organization in a secret ballot and,

representing its interests, I

may represent them at the bureau as well. The charter

states that I have the right

to be present at the bureau with

advisory voting rights. But when I came

to the meeting,

I had been officially invited by Telegram and

by two letters and so on, but downstairs

there was literally a security cordon waiting for me,

which said, 'Sorry, but this is

Yavlinsky's order: we will let you in

only by yourself, and no one there with

you, no one at all, you cannot bring

anyone with you.' And only exactly for your issue,

only for your issue, your expulsion,

after which you would be obliged to leave,

that was all. And

thus I could not, I

had no opportunity to be present for

the first item, about

the election results and so on. In other words,

everyone knew perfectly well that if I

appeared there, I would ask fairly tough and

unflattering questions of that same

Yavlinsky regarding his report,

regarding his speech, in which

once again it was said that we are the best,

there is no need to join forces with anyone, and 1.6 percent is

a very good result.

>> How do you know? You were not there.

Well, I was not there, but there were

a great many of my comrades there,

who told me. Besides,

you can see it in the official

press releases. In other words, we

consider Yabloko's result our victory.

That is simply a verbatim quote from

Yavlinsky. So then, after

I finally managed to get upstairs

for the consideration of my own issue,

Yavlinsky was no longer there. In other words, I was

deliberately kept out, uh, not allowed into the

building until the moment when he could

leave, hide away in his office.

I know perfectly well that he initiated

the issue of my expulsion. Nevertheless,

he deliberately left so as not

to hear my speech with this

criticism. Uh, first they did not let me in,

then when they did let me in, he left and

hid, and then, after I had already come out,

he returned to the bureau again. I consider

that position absolutely cowardly. And

this fact—that insulting fact—

that I, as a representative of the

Moscow organization, was not allowed into

a significant part of the bureau meeting is, of course,

a manifestation of cowardice and weakness.

>> Well, you know, if you read the internet

carefully, of course it is clear that

the internet is also called a giant

dump. People write all sorts of things there, but

nevertheless, when, naturally, the question

of your expulsion is discussed there too

- in connection, so to speak, with the fact that

Navalny was at the Dissenters' Marches,

that he heads a nationalist

movement. They also write there that

he organized a shooting during a

drunken brawl, that he has very

strange relations with Gaidar,

which have already become an open secret,

and so on and so forth. In other words,

a certain picture emerges. Well,

indeed, the party simply had to

expel from its ranks someone

who was, one might say, disgracing it.

Well, what you just said is, by and

large, a collection of rumors, right?

In other words, some old women are sitting on a

bench and, well, the old women on the bench are just

talking, while these internet old women on

the bench are writing something there. I

still proceed from the idea that if we have

an official political party that

claims to be seeking

votes from the electorate and so on,

then it should appeal to

facts, to political disagreements, to

political positions, and so on. But

all this stuff about Navalny being

somehow bad, harsh, and that there is

something wrong with him, and we heard it and

read it somewhere, saw it somewhere—well, that is all just nonsense, really. I am not engaged in

The fact is, I’m not discussing any

personal life of Yavlinsky or any

of his problems or anything like that, or any

rumors or anything along those lines. I

believe that doing that is simply

beneath one’s dignity. And so,

of course, I would like it that when

an official political party

considers the question of some kind of

expulsion of, uh, effectively a representative

of the intra-party opposition, they should

be dealing with an examination of my

political position.

>> So you think the party, uh, also considered

rumors? Well, what I showed

at the beginning, this

official memo for the bureau—well, here

there’s a fair number of quotations, it’s simply

also from somewhere, from, let’s say,

here there are some false quotations of yours,

things you never said at all

>> No. Well, and where there are my direct quotations,

for the most part my direct quotations are, well,

quite often taken out of context and so

on. But that’s not the point. The point, the point

is not that. It’s just that indeed, when

in the backrooms this was being discussed, when there was

work underway on, uh, some kind of my

expulsion, there, naturally, they were

working with all the members of the bureau. That is, this kind of

well, outright fabrication was being

put into circulation. And some

of Yabloko’s leaders, well, sank

to simply some kind of, I don’t know, complete

nonsense. For example, Sergei Mitrokhin,

with whom I worked for a long time,

whose deputy I was, actually

said somewhere in an interview that I am an agent

of the Kremlin, carrying out the line of Surkov

and Churov. Yes. Well, that shows

the level at which my

expulsion was being prepared. Well, as far as I know,

there was still one vote against your

expulsion. I think you know

who voted that way and can explain

why. I can say that, uh, there was

one abstention, Valery Borshchyov,

a well-known human rights activist, and one person

voted against. That was Ilya Yashin, the leader of

Yabloko Youth. Well, basically, he

stated his position openly. He, he does not

agree

with my proposals on

national-democratic discourse, and

he is, in fact, one of

the fierce opponents of these

proposals of mine. But nevertheless, as a

consistent liberal, incidentally,

he believes that there should be

discussion on this issue, and that expelling a person who—

he, he openly states that

I am being expelled for opposing the leadership.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> And he acknowledges this and considers it

completely unacceptable.

>> Well, you know, of course I’d also like to

discuss with you some kind of future

for the party. And the party without you now, I think,

you have some thoughts on this

matter. It is interesting, of course, that

right now we have no, so to

speak, Yabloko candidate, yes, and that

Bukovsky has been endorsed. So what do you

think about this? First of all,

why is there still no Yabloko candidate

as such, and why

did the party bureau decide to support

Bukovsky in the presidential election? Well,

first of all, I would like to say that we

forget that a few months before the

election there was a federal council of the party,

a fairly large gathering, where

Yavlinsky was proposed to the congress as

a presidential candidate; it was

loudly declared that he would run, with the wording

nothing less than in the name of Russia’s future. That

is, this was entirely official, and one of the

complaints that, incidentally, was made

against me was that I supported

another candidate, Sergei Gulyaev. And

afterward, naturally, after the failure in the

election, Yabloko suddenly, for some reason,

declared that it absolutely did not

want to participate in the election because

they are unfair. As if 3 months

earlier, or 4 months earlier, it had not been

clear that they were still unfair.

And my attitude toward Bukovsky’s nomination is

rather mixed. Probably he is

indeed one of the candidates closest

to Yabloko after all. But on the other

hand, I think there is

a fair amount of disingenuousness here. Everyone

knows perfectly well that Bukovsky will not be

registered and cannot be

registered, because he, uh, has not

lived in Russia for the last 10 years. He

has a second passport; he is a subject

of the United Kingdom. That absolutely rules out

his nomination. And so I think that, uh,

support for Bukovsky, who

most certainly will not be registered, is

a kind of gesture so that there is no need

to explain why you are not

supporting Kasyanov, for example,

who, I think, Kasyanov is

the only one who will make it to the signature-collection

stage. And so Yabloko, Yabloko

will always say: "Well, we supported

Bukovsky, he was not registered,

therefore we are in favor of a boycott,

for example." Uh, but I would also like to note

one more, uh, very curious point,

which somehow remained outside

the attention of the mass media,

namely that during the discussion of, uh, whom to support

and whom not to support, one of

Yavlinsky’s deputies, Arbatov, a highly

respected person in the party, stated

that Yabloko should support

Medvedev.

And this statement did not provoke

any outraged reaction at all and so

on. That is, in effect, it was

proposed that they turn into Civic

Force 2 and simply support the successor. And

uh, well, this question, of course, was not

considered, there was no vote on it,

but some leaders

of the regional branches even publicly said so.

applauded, clapped, and so on.

This caused absolutely no outrage.

So this shows a rather, um,

slippery position: that we

support someone who clearly will not be

registered, while at the same time somehow

there is this kind of

loyalty and sympathy being demonstrated at the level of the

leadership toward Medvedev.

This confirms what I’ve been saying: that

Yabloko is now effectively giving up on

real political struggle in exchange for

the financial resources it

receives from the Presidential Administration.

And are you sure that Yabloko

receives these financial resources?

>> I am absolutely sure. And your colleague

Natalia Morari, who has now ended up

in Chisinau instead of working

in your newsroom right now, described

that mechanism quite accurately. And I, um,

having worked in Yabloko for quite a long time and

knowing, again, the whole internal

side of things, can say that indeed

all political parties, including Yabloko,

the Union of Right Forces (SPS), though SPS until the very end

had not yet started criticizing

Putin quite so harshly, receive money exactly

according to the scheme she described. That is,

in reality, a wheeled suitcase full of cash

travels

from one of the controlled banks to

the party office. So the conditions—and this

money is allocated, but this money is allocated

on certain conditions. Those conditions

now are: a) to refuse any

opposition unity; b) to

subject all

non-systemic opposition figures like Kasyanov,

Kasparov, The Other Russia, and so on to

very harsh criticism. And

c) to take this kind of dual,

loyalist position. Like, well,

we’re against Putin, but at the same time,

Medvedev is sort of a normal liberal,

not the worst one. Those are the conditions.

Despite the fact that most rank-and-file

party members are categorically against it,

the party leadership is carrying out

these three conditions, and that is why it receives

money.

And why do you think they need this, in that

case?

>> Well, it’s completely obvious. They

get paid for it. That’s exactly why

this political party exists now.

It’s just unusual, when we’re talking about a party, right,

normally we’re still talking about some

principles, about something else, about some

ideas. But as for principles and

ideas, the party-based mode of existence for the

opposition has completely run its course. Look,

what is a party? A party is

this giant structure that

has to be registered with the Ministry of Justice and so

on. It costs, um, at least $3 million

a year. Well, $2 million if

you don’t run any electoral

campaigns in the regions at all, the way Yabloko has been

doing in recent years. And those $2 million

can now be obtained

only from, um, that same

Presidential Administration, because

there is no business in Russia

that can afford to finance

opposition activity on such a

scale without receiving direct instructions.

So the current mode of existence of

party opposition—and this applies to

Yabloko, SPS, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF)—is exclusively

the private business of the leadership. That is, they

simply, well, hold on to their positions,

carry out a certain political order,

and get paid for it.

Tell me, what do you think awaits Yabloko

in the very near

future?

>> In the near future, I expect that

people will emerge in

Yabloko who will

seek to replace Yavlinsky, to

change the leadership.

They will take a fairly hard line. And they

will run into the fact that, um, Yavlinsky and

the leadership will absolutely not agree to

any schemes for changing the

leadership structure. In fact, he recently

said as much, declaring that Yabloko

is the work of my life. I won’t allow

all sorts of riffraff to destroy everything here. I, I

will go to the end and will always remain the leader of

Yabloko. And I think that in this sense

Yabloko is heading for a split. That is, um,

some politically active

part of Yabloko’s members, who will support

these new leaders demanding a change in

leadership. They’ll struggle, struggle

for six months, well, at various party congresses and

other events, and with the help of

bureaucratic intrigue, as they say,

they’ll be crushed. They will, well, either have to leave,

or they’ll be expelled, or they’ll have to retreat

into some kind of, um,

super-Yabloko position, which will

always, well, which will try to create

some kind of structure, perhaps within

Yabloko, but will always remain on

the verge of expulsion.

Well, I have one last question for you,

Alexei Anatolyevich. Do you intend

to continue your political career

after your expulsion? And in general, do

you have any plans for the future?

Well, without any doubt. That is,

my expulsion from Yabloko is precisely

a step toward real politics. The movement

NAROD, of which

I was one of the co-chairs,

recently published a report on this topic

called "The Death of the Opposition." And we

are now calling on all

honest opposition figures, representatives of

the Communist Party, Yabloko, and SPS, to understand that, um,

the party-based mode of existence of the opposition

has run its course and that the opposition in the future can

exist only on the basis of network-based

structures. Our People’s Movement

is one of the links in this

network structure. We are confident that in

the future it will play a fairly, um,

quite noticeable role. And I am sure

that the future opposition and real

political struggle exist only in this plane. That is, as we write in our report, we need

real political struggle, not pointless bustle

in the Kremlin’s waiting rooms.

>> Thank you very much. I’d like to remind you that

our guest was former member of

the Federal Council of the Yabloko party

Alexei Navalny. All the best.

Stay with us.