Interview with Tatyana Felgenhauer dated January 14, 2015.

Good evening.

Alexei, we expected a whole army from the Federal Penitentiary Service, the police, and who knows who else. But nobody showed up. What’s going on? What happened?

I left my army outside. Over the last two days they’ve stopped tailing me quite so blatantly. Before that, officers were literally sitting in our office at the Anti-Corruption Foundation. We gave them their own desk, pencils, coloring books—they sat there, and while I was fighting corruption, they sat there guarding me. There’s a Federal Penitentiary Service car parked by my building entrance; you can see they’ve arranged seats for themselves in there. Well, they can’t sleep in passenger cars, so they rotate shifts and sleep. Everyone feels very awkward. And these are senior officers too—colonels, lieutenant colonels. They feel terribly foolish, and everyone is embarrassed somehow—me, them—and nobody understands what to do with this, but it goes on all the same.

Do you have any kind of communication with them? Have you discussed it at all? Did you go up to them and say, don’t follow me? And they say, we can’t, Alexei Anatolyevich. We have to follow you.

I come out of my building, they walk up and say, where are you going? I say, I’m going to work. They say, well then don’t drive too fast so we don’t lose you. So I drive... At one point, as I said, they literally followed me into the office and sat there guarding me. In our country, if you do the right thing, everyone says you’re asking to be thrown in jail

What about paying 671 rubles for the ankle monitor?

I’ve already paid it. Why would I need that? After all, it really is property of the Federal Penitentiary Service. Back when they put that monitor on me, I signed 123 different receipts or whatever. And then yesterday evening they stopped me near my building entrance and officially handed me a claim saying I had cut off the monitor and it cost 670 rubles. I transferred that amount to the Federal Penitentiary Service account today.

All right. Since we’re already talking about the monitor—your decision to cut it off. There are two completely opposite views. One side says you were deliberately provoking them so they’d arrest and jail you. The other says you were acting in a safe zone, knowing nothing would happen to you, just showing off. Which of those extremes is actually closer to reality?

You see, the thing is that in our country, unfortunately, if you do something right, everyone says: you’re asking to be jailed. People have been saying that to me for years: you’re asking to be jailed. Well, I do what I think is right. According to the law—I consider myself a law-abiding person—and, in principle, according to my own rules for living. And I was already under house arrest illegally. The criminal case against me was opened illegally, in my view. My brother is in prison now without any guilt whatsoever. But when the Zamoskvoretsky Court even violated provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Criminal Code and did things that were outright absurd, I said I would not obey that. I am not obliged to comply with unlawful orders. Tomorrow the police could come and say you’re forbidden from doing anything at all, from now on you may only wear striped shirts—am I supposed to obey that too? No.

Wait, but then it turns out like this: okay, Oleg is in prison, in your view, unlawfully, and the arrest was unlawful. But you cut off the monitor, whereas nobody is organizing Oleg’s escape from prison. Where is that line you can’t cross? Is this still a comfort zone, a safe zone, beyond which nothing happens?

If, say, they had arrested me as I was leaving this studio and put me in pretrial detention, then I wouldn’t have been able to organize an escape either, simply because I couldn’t have done it. In Oleg’s situation, he can’t do anything, right? They just grabbed him by the arms, put handcuffs on him, and took him to Butyrka (a Moscow detention prison). I am, in principle, fairly free, and when I took off that monitor, or when I went out to Manezhnaya Square on the 30th, I understood that it could lead to some kind of arrest. I understood that, fine—so what was I supposed to do because of that? From the very beginning, when I started investigating corruption at Gazprom or VTB, I understood that yes, that could also lead to arrest. So what? It’s simply each person’s choice. I made mine. Sometimes the risk is greater, sometimes smaller, but still.

T. Felgenhauer: ― And on the 30th, when you went to Manezhnaya Square—was that primarily emotional?

Not really. I can’t say there was nothing emotional about it...

So it wasn’t a gesture of despair?

That same day they jailed my younger brother, jailed him because of me, in the sense that it was simply because of my activities, right? And naturally, let’s be honest, I experienced and am still experiencing a whole range of emotions because of that. Of course I’m not going to lie about it. But still, I did it not as some kind of hysterical stunt, but simply because it was the right step for me to take. If I was calling on everyone—including on your radio station, through your phone, Tanya, which somehow ended up in my hands during that scuffle with the police—to go out into the streets, then I have no moral right to sit at home while shouting: please, Muscovites, go out into the streets! I went out with them too, to share the risk with those people.

But your risk was much greater, far greater, because you were under house arrest...

That’s the responsibility of a person involved in politics or claiming some kind of leadership role. If I want more, if I claim to know certain things and claim the right to tell citizens my views on Russia’s path of development, then of course I bear greater risk, naturally.

Okay, since we’ve started talking about the 30th—who failed the Manezhka protest?

What do you mean, “failed”? Miracles don’t happen.

So it wasn’t a failed protest?

It would have been a failed protest if on the 30th Oleg had been released from Butyrka and, moreover, declared acquitted, and I had been acquitted too, and the country had political reform, everyone was allowed to run in elections, mayors were elected again, and Russia had honest courts. That would be a successful protest, whether on the 30th or any other date. Our success is when the law starts working in this country, when courts simply stop imprisoning innocent people. That would be a successful protest. And sooner or later that will happen, I’m sure of it. On the 30th it was foolish to expect what happened on July 18, 2013, to happen again, right?

Right, in the summer.

When they jailed me and then released me the next day—me and Ofitserov. Miracles like that don’t happen. And there’s no need to think that there are such terribly nervous people sitting in the Kremlin who, understanding that roughly the same thing could happen, would first jail everyone and then release them after people took to the streets. Most people in this country, in fact, want the same things we do The only way to force these people is by showing real strength. That’s why I believe we don’t need small, perhaps emotional, unauthorized protests—we need very large ones. We really need to bring a lot of people into the streets, not just to defend Oleg Navalny, but to defend our principles and all those who are imprisoned unjustly, all those who suffer from the injustice established in this country.

Was that what your post about January 15 was about?

Of course. Everyone asks: what should we do on the 15th? My position is this: what is the 15th, what is its symbolism now? At one point the verdict was scheduled for the 15th, and then the Kremlin pulled this political-technological stunt, a legal-political manipulation, when they unlawfully moved the verdict from January 15 to December 30, deceived everyone, and made it so fewer people would come out. We all understand that perfectly well. Now, as far as the date itself is concerned, there’s basically nothing left in the 15th except that it was once planned. And I believe our efforts in street politics, protest politics, should be directed instead toward organizing a major event, in order to really demonstrate both to the authorities and to ourselves that we intend to achieve change in principle, and that we are not some marginal minority. You know, some strange liberals sitting in a ghetto, 3% of the population, squeaking in thin voices: give us human rights! In fact, most people in this country want the same things we do: a fight against corruption, reform of the judicial system, honest courts, elected mayors, and so on. On these issues, the majority is with us. That same 84% supports us here, not Putin or United Russia. Those are the slogans under which we should gather people, those are the slogans we should focus on.

Maybe I’m the only idiot here, but I didn’t understand from that text about the 15th: should people go out or not?

You’re not an idiot. That just means I formulated it badly. In some cities—for example, St. Petersburg—a protest is planned, and the meaning of that protest, its theme, goes beyond the agenda of Oleg Navalny and Alexei Navalny. It’s a rally on a broad range of political issues. If the rally has been prepared, if it’s happening, and you were planning to go out—then go out. As I understand it, people are going out in Samara and in several other cities too. If there are no clear plans or preparations, then it’s better to focus on a big protest, which I think should be held sometime in the second half of February.

And one more thing is unclear: Alexei Navalny will not be at Manezhnaya Square in Moscow tomorrow?

Alexei Navalny tomorrow... I’ll assess the situation. If there are people there, if they come out, if there are detentions, then as usual we’ll help those detained. Alexei Navalny is currently working every day at the Anti-Corruption Foundation. I plan to spend the whole day tomorrow working at the Anti-Corruption Foundation as well. Then we’ll see what the situation is. But I don’t think any kind of protest is needed in Moscow tomorrow.

And in general, how much do your supporters’ expectations of you and your expectations of them, in terms of street activism, coincide, in your view? Because people are always waiting for you to say: all right, Alexei, tell us what to do, where to go, what slogans to chant. And whether to go out at all.

Nobody says that. Tell me, Ira and Tanya, are you my supporters or not? You’re supporters of common sense, right? And I think all people share certain basic ideas that I put forward, not because they are my supporters, but because those ideas are simply common sense. How can any normal person be against judicial reform that would give us honest courts? That’s why people shouldn’t look to Navalny, shouldn’t orient themselves around Navalny, around some words of his that are not prophetic, but simply the words of an ordinary citizen. They should just go out and fight for all this. Because unfortunately we have to admit: we didn’t set things up this way. At this point there are practically no methods left for achieving anything except demonstrations of colossal size, as there were at the dawn of the 1990s.

But a politician who aspires to leadership, of course, has to be ready to answer those questions: what should we do? What exactly should we do today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow?..

I do answer those questions. And I believe that in terms of street politics we need to prepare large protests, which should be held in the biggest cities, including a protest in Moscow.

Organizationally, will you follow the law on rallies—that is, will you file official notice, or what?

Yes, of course, we will file notice. In fact, notice is always filed for every protest. Sometimes the authorities ignore it, sometimes they agree. But I think we need to do everything possible to get more people to come—so why not notify them?

Let me remind listeners that Alexei Navalny is here with us live in the studio. I’d like to address our technical team: there seems to be some problem with the sound—please take a look, it seems to be cutting out periodically on Setevizor (Echo’s online video stream). As for expectations, I’ve noticed an interesting thing: when people are outraged by some issue—say, commuter trains are canceled—they say: why aren’t Navalny and his team doing anything about it? Are those expectations more flattering, or more puzzling?

We are doing everything we can about it. On the one hand, I understand that whatever happens, whatever negative thing occurs—and lately, in socioeconomic terms, if we’re talking about commuter trains, only negative things have been happening—everyone says: let Navalny deal with it immediately. Kindergartens closed? Let Navalny deal with it immediately. Trains? Immediately. We are dealing with the train issue, by the way, because there is an obvious corruption component there. Commuter trains are being shut down across the country because the regions supposedly cannot pay a certain “economically justified” tariff. But what exactly that means—neither I nor you can verify, because the information is closed. In fact, today I was signing letters to the regional energy commissions that set those tariffs. All of this is completely hidden from us. But they tell us that trains... well, in Moscow they still run... I have no moral right to sit at home while shouting: please, Muscovites, go out into the streets!

Suburban trains.

In Moscow they still run, yes, suburban trains. But in Zabaykalsky Krai, they tell you, we’re canceling your trains because it’s too expensive. And when you ask, well then show us how the tariff is calculated, nobody shows anything. So yes, we deal with a lot of things, but you have to understand: I’m not the government, our organization is a nonprofit, and we do exactly what a nonprofit is capable of doing. Though of course we have plans in many areas.

Let me rephrase, sorry. I meant that when there’s literally no one else people can turn to—no one they believe will actually make something happen—is that more flattering, or more frightening, when you and your team are the only ones people really go to for help?

It’s neither frightening nor flattering—it’s normal. You simply understand, as you rightly said, that when there’s nowhere else to turn, people write... When I see a letter addressed to Alexei Navalny saying, “Alexei, please, they’ve shut off hot water in our whole town,” I understand that these people have been driven to desperation if they’re writing to me. And it gives you a clearer, more sober understanding of the reality of the country’s problems. Well, I understand perfectly well why they write to me, and I explain right away: guys, I can’t always help you get your hot water back. I’ll do everything possible; we may be able to find out that maybe a lot of money was stolen in your housing and utilities system. But beyond establishing that a lot was stolen, we can’t replace your mayor, we can’t replace the governor who stole it all, we can’t replace the housing minister who can’t come up with a normal development strategy for the sector, we can’t replace the inept Prime Minister Medvedev, and we can’t replace the corrupt—I don’t mean by some personal action of mine—President Putin. So at that point we all have to fight together on political issues in order, among other things, to solve your hot water problem.

And yet listening to you now, I get the impression that in front of us is Alexei Navalny the anti-corruption fighter, not Alexei Navalny the politician. Because a politician’s sphere of interest includes many more topics and issues. Say, for example, the tragedy in France, the series of terrorist attacks, Charlie Hebdo—a politician should have something to say on that, should speak out, say what he thinks or doesn’t think, especially given that Europe has seen huge street mobilization while here it’s zero.

I think a politician is someone who should have a profession, right? A politician isn’t just someone who comments on every topic under the sun. Otherwise you get some infernal political pundit, you know, whose only job is to comment on everything in the world. I have a profession, I have a specialized organization. Naturally, my professional focus is anti-corruption work; I’m a lawyer by training. I was a practicing attorney until they stripped me of my license because of the first criminal case. So naturally I have a professional sphere of interest. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion on everything else, from the Paris attacks to whatever else interests you, Tanya. Ask.

What interests me, for example, is that in your previous interview on Echo of Moscow, Alexei Navalny said that Crimea is ours after all. And after that there was a wave of outrage: how could this be, our Alexei Navalny has taken the side of those they call all sorts of names...

Alexei Navalny told the absolute truth. What I said, word for word, was that the problem of Crimea will exist for years. And expecting Crimea to return to Ukraine in the foreseeable future would be pointless. That, in fact, is the gravity of the situation Putin created. He created a problem for years to come, and Crimea will take its place alongside Northern Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, or Japan’s Northern Territories. It’s something our grandchildren will still be discussing, and there will still be a problem, and there will still be residual sanctions, and so on and so on. The truth is that, as a matter of fact, Crimea is now annexed to Russia. The truth is that we will be dealing with this problem for many, many years, and we won’t solve it, because no solution is visible. And unfortunately, problems like this are not solved in the world. Putin created a problem for years to come, and Crimea will take its place alongside Northern Cyprus

And that wave that followed the previous interview—didn’t it make you think, all right, maybe I just won’t speak out on such painful issues anymore?

No. But people ask me, as you yourself rightly said: it’s a politician’s responsibility to speak precisely on the most acute issues. If people are interested in my opinion, I’m obliged to give it. And I do. And even though it’s very frustrating to me that many people listened inattentively—as you did, for example, Irina, you listened inattentively to what I said—that just means I need to explain it better. It means I need to formulate it better. It means I was at fault for not expressing that thought clearly enough to your editor-in-chief, who asks questions so briskly that they generate all sorts of interpretations afterward. Well then, I’ll patiently keep explaining my position, and I believe I’m right on this.

About responsibility not only for words, but for people. Those people who go out into the streets, who have gone out and will go out at your call, for you as your supporters—do you feel responsible for them? Because we understand that in Moscow, under current conditions, going out to a protest the authorities consider unauthorized is a fairly dangerous thing. We saw how a Turkish citizen who didn’t know Russian was happily convicted for chanting slogans in Russian.

Of course I feel that responsibility. Maybe I even exaggerate my role to myself, because every adult who goes out does so, and I’m sure huge numbers of people go out not because they love me, but because they share principles shared by millions of people. But of course every detainee, every arrested person, every person who gets beaten—I know perfectly well that I bear some responsibility for the fact that these people are being punished. For the fact that my brother is in prison, for those serving administrative detention. I think Kriger, arrested at the December 30 rally, is still in the special detention center. And so on and so on. Naturally, I share responsibility for all of that.

Then why did the question—which, incidentally, was also asked on Echo of Moscow—whether people are ready to go to prison for Alexei Navalny seem so tactless to you on Twitter, Alexei? Because it’s true.

It’s like provocative cartoons.

But people really do go to prison, they really do end up in court. That’s true.

You asked me just now, phrasing it normally, and I answered normally. But that’s just my point of view; I’m not going to lecture you. It’s your radio station, so I’m not going to teach you how to run it, and I’ll probably say something sarcastic if you try to teach me how to run the Anti-Corruption Foundation or a political party. But it seems to me that putting to a vote the question “Are you ready to go to prison for Alexei Navalny?” is just silly. It’s a simplification. People don’t think like that. They’re not going to prison for Alexei Navalny; they’re not going out for Alexei Navalny—they’re doing it for themselves. I see you two, ladies, including at various rallies—I don’t know whether for work or not. Are you going out for Alexei Navalny? No, you’re going out for your own normal human life, for your children...

We go out for Alexei Venediktov.

Well, for Alexei Venediktov then—so put the question that way: are you ready to go to prison for Alexei Venediktov?

But we all saw the picture of how, after one of the rallies on Bolotnaya Square, huge numbers of people followed Alexei Navalny simply to walk down the street behind him. I’m not exaggerating at all—we all saw it, people following Alexei Navalny, and they go out for Alexei Navalny, or for Oleg Navalny.

I’m extremely grateful to everyone who goes out to support me personally, and who is now going out to support Oleg. And naturally I bear responsibility for them. But I have no doubt whatsoever that these people go out for me because they share certain things I say. They’re not going out saying, “Alexei, you have such a nice shirt, we’re following you..."

And the beard really suits you.

And the beard. They go out because they say, “Alexei, just like you, we want a fight against corruption. Just like you, we want Russia to develop normally. Just like you, we want the trillions of dollars from oil and gas sales to be distributed fairly.” I’m saying they share those very things, and maybe for some people I embody that struggle—for some large or small number of people, I don’t know, I’m not inclined to overestimate my role, but probably such people exist. But that’s a matter of principles, not simply love for Alexei Navalny. Otherwise I’d just be some kind of show business figure.

Well, politics is partly show business, let’s be honest. You’ve been promoting these principles for years now. And you’ve been in politics for years. In your own sense, are there more people who share your views now, or fewer?

There are still many of them. And in fact I don’t share any of this pessimism at all...

But you do polling, don’t you?

We do polling, so I can see there are many such people, and the number is growing. It’s just that before, some issues were less acute: mayoral elections existed, gubernatorial elections existed, people didn’t think about it, it wasn’t a problem. Now those are being abolished, and I see that—again—among the majority in our country, and for me personally, there is absolutely no pessimism about support. I’m not depressed in the slightest by the endless arguments so beloved by a certain depressed segment of the intelligentsia: “Oh my God, they have 84% support, let’s give up, burst into tears, and leave the country...” It’s all nonsense. On every issue in our agenda, we have higher support. When we propose our bill on illicit enrichment by officials, I see—we’ve measured it several times—87% support. Seventy percent of Russian citizens think mayors and governors should be elected. More than 80% demand judicial reform, and among those who have dealt with the court system, the figure is even higher. So our support is enormous, and support for our principles is enormous, and I have no inferiority complex about that at all. What’s more, I ran in an election, and while I didn’t win, even under censorship and falsification that kept me from reaching the second round, practically every third Muscovite voted for me. In that sense I know there are normal people, there are many of them, they are the majority. These people want the same thing I do—a normal life. And they are convinced that a normal life is possible in Russia.

Then why do those 70 and 84 percent keep voting for Putin and United Russia? How does that happen?

For a simple reason, Irina! Because, for example, I’m banned from running in elections. That’s exactly the point I keep explaining, and never tire of explaining, and I’m using your radio station to say it once again. The only reason Putin has any percentages at all, and United Russia has any percentages at all, is because they don’t let us run. Broadly speaking, not just me. Right now I’m banned from participating in elections altogether. If we follow the letter of the law, the next time I’d be allowed is sometime in the 2020s. In the last Moscow City Duma elections, they removed all the candidates. In the State Duma elections, who was there to vote for? There are no parties. When I ran for mayor of Moscow, did I get my 30%? I did. I’m sure that if the Progress Party were registered now instead of being endlessly stalled, as has been happening to us for years, and we went into elections, I’m not saying we would immediately win or get more than United Russia, but I have not the slightest doubt that United Russia would lose its parliamentary majority. So that 84% is a fiction that exists solely because they simply don’t let anyone else in.

Alexei Navalny live on Echo of Moscow radio. We’ll be back in three minutes.

NEWS

It’s 8:35 p.m. in the capital. The broadcast continues on Echo of Moscow. Interview with Alexei Navalny. Tatyana Felgenhauer and Irina Vorobyova, two wonderful hosts, are conducting this broadcast. Our SMS portal is exploding, of course: +7 (985) 970 45 45, and the vyzvon account on Twitter. Send in your questions too. We’ll ask a few of them.

Not just far from all of them—really only a tiny few.

Yes, just a tiny few, because there are still a number of other questions. Let’s return to the case for which your brother was imprisoned. What is happening now? First of all, what contact do you have with Oleg, and what should we expect in the near future?

Since the 12th, they’ve started letting letters through to him. In Butyrka (a Moscow pretrial detention prison), the censors have started working and some correspondence is getting through. He’s all right. And I know from my own experience—maybe not from a real prison, but from a special detention center—that when a person writes letters, he exaggerates his cheerfulness a little so as not to upset anyone. But at least he’s in good spirits; he asked for a Spanish and Portuguese textbook. It seems everything is all right with him. We can see that the judicial system, the law enforcement system in general, is still functioning in a completely abnormal way, because today the Tverskoy Court flatly refused to consider Oleg’s lawyer’s appeal against his placement in pretrial detention. So in that sense he has been completely removed from the legal field. At one point they jailed him without even having the sentence in hand, which is impossible: you don’t take a person to pretrial detention without the paperwork—and yet they did. And apparently everything is fine. He just sits there.

Listen, the same system, excuse me, keeps sending the Federal Penitentiary Service with complaints about your behavior. What do you attribute that to?

I attribute it to the fact that the decision was absolutely unlawful. A person cannot remain under house arrest after receiving a suspended sentence, and that is precisely why, conditionally speaking, I am now formally under house arrest while sitting here in your studio. Because in any other situation I would have gone straight from your studio to pretrial detention. But that isn’t happening in my case. Right now I’m moving around freely because it’s simply absolutely, totally unlawful, and it’s a kind of... system malfunction. But all the same, I think of course they’ll come up with something.

Why isn’t Alexei Navalny being sent to prison?

Good question. In fact, every time I come to Echo of Moscow, they ask me that.

And still they just won’t lock you up, Alexei.

I still don’t have an answer to that question. It’s obvious that the decision to imprison me is made by one person. And for reasons of his own... Well, maybe he thinks this is more cunning, more vile, and more painful. And in that sense he guessed absolutely right. This sentence, the one that was handed down, is of course the most painful for me and for the rest of the family, because, to repeat what I said at the sentencing: you choose your activity—what you do—but you don’t choose your relatives. Oleg is not guilty of having a brother who does what he does. So apparently Putin decided it would be cooler, more entertaining, to imprison him and leave me in this suspended state. As I understand it, the idea is simply to keep me in isolation constantly. Obviously, the decision to imprison me is made by one person I’ve just decided not to comply with house arrest and I’ve broken their pattern a little. But I have no doubt that they’ll now bring some new charge against me and there will be some new house arrest. Besides, you understand, the prosecutor’s office has already said the sentence was too lenient and they will appeal it. I’ve been living for the last three years, essentially, in a format of criminal cases, restrictions, travel bans, and so on. I haven’t left Moscow at all in three years, and for 10 months I didn’t leave my apartment.

Well, Kirov.

Kirov, yes.

What a lovely trip that was!

Interesting trips to Kirov, yes.

By the way, while under house arrest, when you spent 10 months unable to leave your own apartment, how adequately—or inadequately—were you able to assess what was happening with your associates—we saw there were many different problems—and with your foundation?

We prepared for it. Again, since every time I come to Echo of Moscow and they ask why I haven’t been imprisoned, everyone had prepared: the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the party—we all... we had a plan in case of my isolation, one kind of imprisonment or another, house arrest. So it wasn’t a shock or news to anyone—everyone basically understood what to do and did it. And at first I was forbidden to communicate with anyone at all. Then that ban was lifted...

Then journalists were allowed in, because they’re not exactly people, just professionals carrying out their duty.

Yes, exactly. So then foundation staff simply started coming to my apartment and holding briefings there. In that sense I hope I didn’t lose any sense of reality, although of course I watched a lot of television, and that made a strong impression on me.

Listen, did you follow the reaction to your sentence—how other politicians or public figures or writers reacted?

Again, when there’s a sentence, and especially the kind of sentence there was, involving Oleg and so on, there isn’t much time or desire, honestly, to track what other politicians said. But the people I respect, whom I regard normally, who I think may not like me but still try to assess the situation objectively—I had no doubt they would say the only possible thing: that this sentence is a sham, that the case is political—and that’s obvious to everyone anyway. As for those who, for a salary, say “let it be so, he should be jailed for 20 years,” while ignoring, for example, the Serdyukov case—why would I listen to them?

You say they’re constantly trying to keep you isolated, and then you went and somehow broke their pattern. But in general, have any supposed liaison officers tried to get in touch and say, “Alexei, we have an amazing offer for you. You do such-and-such, and in return we’ll do...” No? No one has ever reached out like that?

The main go-between between everyone and everyone else is, as we know, your station’s editor-in-chief. But he hasn’t come to me with any such instructions. But joking aside, nothing like that has happened, and in fact it never has: no one has come to me, and I haven’t appealed to anyone.

That’s an answer to those who say Alexei Navalny is a Kremlin project.

I think that’s fairly obvious to the Kremlin too, because, well, what could they expect from me? They’d say, “Alexei, please don’t go out into the streets,” or “Stop saying the Rotenbergs looted the budget,” or “Stop calling crooks crooks.” I think the people in the Kremlin are not fools. We understand that if these people seized power in a huge country, then they are definitely not fools. And I think they assess reality quite adequately, including the prospects of persuading me to do something.

Then let’s talk about reality. Alexei Navalny the politician. I’m talking now about Alexei Navalny as a politician. The socioeconomic situation in the country is difficult. The situation in Ukraine is difficult. And in this difficult situation, let’s imagine that Alexei Navalny became president of the country today. How do you pull the country out of this—only without slogans about who looted and ruined everything—what do you do, what would Alexei Navalny, as the country’s leader, do right now?

Wait, what do you mean, “without slogans”? Is fighting corruption a slogan or a proposal?

All right. Fighting corruption. Let’s imagine that all those whom Alexei Navalny and his team consider corrupt officials, crooks, and so on—they’re gone.

But you want to hear from me some kind of realistic approach, don’t you?

I want to understand what Alexei Navalny would do.

Sending the corrupt to the moon tomorrow is not a realistic approach. Even if power changed, and Putin flew off to the moon, and I somehow miraculously landed in the Kremlin—all the corrupt officials would still be in place. Russia needs normal reforms in general. We must, of course, fight corruption. We must set up the system so that law enforcement can fight corruption, and so that corruption does not reproduce itself. We must finally guarantee property rights. We must reform our state companies. By and large, all the road maps for reform were written long ago; the problem is that they are not being followed.

Yes, that’s all correct. But with low oil prices, with sanctions—all that is good, all that is right. But something has to be done now so people don’t slide into poverty, so there isn’t some kind of collapse. Is there some kind of plan like that... We hear statements and plans from the government and the president now. Does Alexei Navalny have a plan?

Of course Alexei Navalny has a plan. And as many members of the government say quite openly—and today there was the Gaidar Forum, where government members said this directly too—in the projected GDP decline, up to 5% this year, it’s far from only oil prices that are to blame. Our political system, our political situation, is simply such that it does not allow the country to develop, because all the authorities’ efforts now are basically aimed at guaranteeing Putin lifelong rule. And the entire system of power is doing nothing else at all. If you look at what the government has done lately—it’s just a series of chaotic movements. You had Aleksashenko in the studio before me, and he spoke very well about this: these people have no plan whatsoever. More than that—they lurch around even in small things. A small thing that struck me, for example: Medvedev accepted a proposal that I too had put forward, namely to remove all officials from state companies’ boards of directors. That was in 2011, with great fanfare. And today there’s a statement saying “we’ll bring officials back” to the boards for some reason. These are people with no plan at all, because they are solving a clear and fairly specific political task set for them by the supreme power—to ensure lifelong rule. In this situation I would do what a president and government are supposed to do—not to ensure my own lifelong rule, but to serve the allotted time, solve economic problems as far as possible, and then leave to do something else so that another person could be elected to the post.

Speaking of the conditions the country is living in now... I lost a question from one of our listeners... He was asking what you would advise people: should they leave or not leave, people who are now seriously thinking about emigration?

Everyone decides that for themselves based on their personal circumstances: children, parents, property, and so on. But for me, emigration is capitulation. Naturally I’ve thought about it, and my family has thought about it. But in fact it was never a real item on the agenda. We discussed all those questions about emigration. We decided for ourselves that for us the question is not a serious one, including because I’m engaged in political activity, including because I believe that Russia will sooner or later become a normal country, and I must make every effort I can to help it become one. Why should all of us, in the end, leave and hand the country over to a bunch of crooks? In fact there are objectively fewer of them; there really aren’t that many. They stay there solely because of our passivity. We just need to work a little more effectively, that’s all. That applies to me too.

Alexei, do you believe in the people who live here?

I do. I talk to them. And again, my recent experience during the election campaign, when I was talking not to representatives of the intelligentsia, but to ordinary people—I held 90 meetings with voters, tens of thousands of people whom I spoke to more or less personally. And these were people—the very pensioners, servicemen, police officers, anyone at all—and they agree with me on everything. When they were taking me away from Manezhnaya Square on the 30th, I was talking to these officers from the 2nd Operational Regiment—we have no disagreements with them. They tell me they live in dormitory rooms of 18 square meters, and I tell them about Sechin’s salary—5 million rubles a day. Both are monstrously awful, and we understand that this can be changed. For me, emigration is capitulation. It was never really on the agenda To return to the question of a plan: there are fairly simple, obvious things that need to be changed tomorrow. We don’t need these monopolies; we need to break with monopolies. The country should not have heads of state companies like Sechin, who do nothing, drive the company into debt, and yet assign themselves a salary of 5 million rubles a day.

One more thing about current politics. As the host of the program Blog-Out, I noticed an interesting thing: for a while Alexei Navalny was one of the leading bloggers in my rankings. Then there were two leaders: Alexei Navalny and Ramzan Kadyrov, who lately has been speaking quite sharply about many things happening in our country. This story unfolding in the Caucasus—is it actually calm there now because Kadyrov is there, or on the contrary, is this the kind of factor that will sooner or later backfire?

What exactly is calm about it if television shows a stadium with 20,000 bearded men carrying automatic weapons? These people are the very definition of illegal armed formations, because if they are police, it’s unclear what they’re doing in a stadium with assault rifles. If they are servicemen, it’s unclear why they were issued weapons to stand in a stadium. What we see is some kind of horde, a sharia army that for some reason obeys the head of a federal subject, who in fact commands neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office—indeed, no one in uniform is commanded by a governor. And it’s some kind of wild division shouting that yes, it supports Putin, but the subtext of this gathering is perfectly obvious: “Keep giving us money, because you see these 20,000 people—they could start shooting at someone.” So I think that in Chechnya, as in Ukraine, Putin is making a colossal mistake that we and our children, and possibly our grandchildren, will have to deal with. Because unfortunately in Chechnya we have created an uncontrolled sharia state.

And Kadyrov isn’t even under Putin’s control?

It’s not under Putin’s control. You understand, formally... he’s hung Putin’s portraits everywhere, he says “Putin is our hero and we love Putin very much,” and so on. But everything that happens on Chechen territory lies outside the bounds of legality altogether. In that sense there is simply an arrangement: we pay tribute of a certain kind, and they do whatever they want. And if at least that had fully solved the terrorism issue. But when they’ve supposedly built everything up there, and there are 20,000 armed men, and even so Grozny is attacked by 20 or maybe 100 people, buildings are burned, tanks are firing in the city—that says the problem of terrorism and pacifying Chechnya has not been solved either. And what happens next? Suppose that same Putin—who knows—something happens to him tomorrow, again he flies off to the moon and says, “I’m tired of all of you, I’m leaving”—to the moon or to Sochi. Fine. And what does Ramzan Kadyrov say then? He swore loyalty to Putin. So then he says, “Goodbye! We now have a sharia state. I heard that at Echo of Moscow in Moscow they insult the Prophet, so we are seceding and now we have a fully armed army. We’ve built everything up, and we’ll be on our own. Either fight us—and fighting will be a million times harder than in 1994—or we will turn into Islamic State number two here.”

So it’s a stalemate?

It’s a difficult situation. Right now it’s hard to predict what we would do in that situation. Again, with Ramzan Kadyrov... I’m not going to praise him, I think he’s an extremely negative figure, but in a sense he too is a kind of... doomed man, because while he accuses Echo of Moscow here of insulting Islam, even more fanatical people call him a kafir, a traitor, and so on, and accuse him of betraying Islam. And in that sense he’s trying to become more Islamist than they are, also to guarantee his own safety. His situation is extremely difficult too, and in a sense his life hangs by a thread. So everything there is very tightly bound together. And if you pull the personalities on whom this whole structure rests—Putin and Kadyrov—out of the equation, everything will become completely uncontrollable. That is Russia’s problem in general: too much depends on the individual. If a piano falls on the person tomorrow or something happens to him, everything starts falling apart. That should not be the case. The system should work. Even if five presidents and prime ministers in a row suddenly died of some unknown illness, a sixth should come in and the system should continue to function normally without disruption.

Do you feel any satisfaction when, for example, Serdyukov, Vasilyeva, or Yevtushenkov are arrested or put on trial?

Who was arrested there? Serdyukov was arrested? I don’t feel any particular satisfaction, because I see the scale of corruption. It is absolutely colossal, and in that sense Vasilyeva is quite clear, and so is Serdyukov, but I have plenty of such characters... Look at Yakunin or Sechin—they’re almost mythical figures by now, you could write epic poems about their corruption, and all of it out in the open. These are people who write textbooks and books about the corrupting influence of the West and how the West is trying to destroy us, while buying their children houses in elite neighborhoods of London. These are truly astonishing things. So some story about catching one corrupt official does not impress me at all. More than that, I follow this closely. If you recall all the more or less high-profile anti-corruption cases “à la Putin,” starting with the prosecutors’ gambling case, Serdyukov, the Malofeyev case, the Skrynnik case—you will see that they ended in nothing, absolutely nothing. Whenever these cases are launched, journalists come to me and say, “So, has Putin taken the anti-corruption agenda away from you, knocked the opposition’s trump cards out of its hands?” I always say, “Let’s wait until there are charges, until not the system but at least a few specific corrupt officials are demonstratively punished.” But that never happens. Where is Serdyukov now? Heading an FSUE (Federal State Unitary Enterprise, a state-owned company). There was so much talk: “My God, he stole billions!” And nothing—he’s sitting there running a state enterprise.

We don’t have much time left. I’d like to return to people and plans. If we’re talking about street protests, mass street protests, which tactic do you think is more correct: when you rely on self-organization—and that’s probably more like the end of 2011...

Bolotnaya Square.

Yes, Bolotnaya Square—or on a person who coordinates everything and takes the whole organization into his own hands?

I’ve seen from the inside how the Bolotnaya rallies were organized, among other things. Of course there is an organizational part that has to be done by a specific headquarters. No self-organization can work there. But when it comes to bringing people in, people can go to an event if they are persuaded not by leaders, but by other people. In that sense, my bet on turnout is that I’m betting on you to persuade your acquaintances; that the most active and engaged people will bring others. Otherwise it doesn’t work. Because just on the call of some person—respected, very respected, even highly respected—you get a limited number of people. What matters to us is broad... what matters is explaining to everyone: “Guys, come out, because let’s be honest—until there are rallies and demonstrations of a hundred thousand people in Moscow and other cities, very little will change.” And unfortunately that’s the only way it works. In Zabaykalsky Krai they canceled the trains and said they were canceled... Residents of some village said, “Fine, we’ll block the Trans-Siberian Railway.” The next day they announced that commuter trains would remain in Zabaykalsky Krai. The authorities have pushed things to the point where nothing impresses them except things like blocking the Trans-Siberian. But unfortunately—I’m not saying we should go block the Trans-Siberian—but at the very least it has led to a situation where we are forced to engage much more in street politics. Speaking of plans: we are continuing to build the party. I believe that in the next elections, whenever they take place, in 2016 or earlier, we must put forward a united list of candidates. And even though many of our candidates will be removed, as happened in Moscow, we still have every chance, at least in major cities, to beat United Russia. And I think we are now at a stage in the development of society and the opposition where everyone is finally ready to make agreements with one another and step back from their ambitions a little.

Do you seriously think people, opposition leaders, will be able to come to an agreement with each other?

I’m one of those people. I’m absolutely ready to come to an agreement with everyone.

How many times have we heard that already.

It’s easy for me, because I can’t even run for anything anyway, so it’s especially easy for me. I don’t see any major problems with... whom would you like me to name? PARNAS, Kudrin...

They see a lot of problems with each other, Alexei.

They do see a lot of them with each other, I agree. In part, the uniqueness of my position is that I’m more or less on friendly terms with everyone. They often aren’t friendly with one another, but I’ll try to make them be. And again, we’ve reached a stage where things are so bad that... it was impossible to imagine in 2008 that Russia would reach such a point, where what is happening now would be happening.

Someday house arrest will end, and the travel restrictions too. Where will you go? Where do you most want to go first?

I’d like to go somewhere with my children. I don’t care where. I’d like to go with my children, because of course it’s very painful for any parent not to see your children learning to swim or things like that. So anywhere I could spend time with them.

Thank you very much! Alexei Navalny was live on Echo of Moscow radio. This broadcast was hosted for you by Irina Vorobyova and Tatyana Felgenhauer.

Take care!