Program "Chronic Today: A Year Without Alexei Navalny" from February 17, 2017

Alexei Navalny is here in our studio, alive and in person. Good evening, Alexei.

Good evening.

Alexei, we were expecting a whole army from the Federal Penitentiary Service, the police, and who knows who else. But no one 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 obviously. 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 an FSIN car parked outside my building entrance; you can see they’ve arranged seats for themselves in there. Well, they can’t sleep in regular 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, everyone is embarrassed, me and them alike, and no one understands what to do with any of this, but it goes on all the same.

Do you have any communication with them? Have you talked it over 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 some point, as I said, they were literally following me into the office and sitting 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 bracelet?

I’ve already paid it. Why would I need that? It really is FSIN property, after all. Back when they put that bracelet on me, I signed 123 different receipts or whatever. And then yesterday evening they stopped me by my building entrance and officially handed me a claim saying I had cut off the bracelet and that it cost 670 rubles. I transferred the money to FSIN’s account today.

All right. Since we’re already talking about the bracelet, let’s talk about the decision to cut it off. There are two opposite views. One 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—that it was just bravado. Which of those two 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 telling me that for years: you’re asking to be jailed. But I do what I believe is the right thing to do. Both according to the law—I consider myself a law-abiding person—and according to my own basic principles in life. And I was already being held under house arrest illegally. The criminal case against me was opened illegally, in my view. My brother is in prison now despite being completely innocent. But when the Zamoskvoretsky Court violated provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Criminal Code and did things that were simply absurd, I said I would not comply with that. I am not obliged to obey unlawful orders. If tomorrow the police come to me and say you’re forbidden from doing anything at all, and from now on you must wear only striped shirts—am I supposed to obey that too? No.

Wait, but then it turns out like this: okay, in your view Oleg is imprisoned illegally, and your arrest was illegal too. But you cut off the bracelet, while no one is organizing Oleg’s escape from prison. Where is that line you can’t cross? Is this still a comfort zone, a safety zone where nothing will happen?

If I were arrested, say, on my way out of this studio and put in pretrial detention, then I wouldn’t be able to organize an escape either, simply because I wouldn’t be able to. In Oleg’s case, there’s nothing he can do, right? They just grabbed him by the arms, put handcuffs on him, and took him to Butyrka prison. I, in principle, am fairly free, and when I took off that bracelet, or when I went out to Manezhnaya Square on the 30th, I understood that this could lead to some kind of arrest. I understood that, fine—so what was I supposed to do because of it? From the very beginning, when I started investigating corruption at Gazprom or VTB, I understood that yes, that too could lead to arrest. So what? It’s 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, first and foremost, an emotional act?

No. I can’t say there was no emotion in it...

So it wasn’t a gesture of despair?

That same day they imprisoned my younger brother, imprisoned him because of me, in the sense that it was simply because of my activities, right? And naturally, to put it plainly, 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 outburst, but because it was simply the right step for me to take. If I had been calling on everyone—including on your radio station’s airwaves, using your phone, Tanya, which somehow ended up in my hands during that scuffle with the police—to go out into the streets, then I had no moral right to stay home while shouting: please, Muscovites, go out into the streets! I went out with them too, in order to share the risk with those people.

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

That’s the responsibility of a person involved in politics, or someone who aspires to a leadership role. If I want more, if I claim to understand 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’re talking about the 30th—who botched the protest at Manezhnaya?

What do you mean, “botched”? 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, if they had announced that he was acquitted, I was acquitted, and that the country was undergoing political reform, everyone was being allowed to run in elections, mayors were being elected again, and Russia would have honest courts. That would be a successful protest, whether on the 30th or any other day. Our success will come 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?

Yes, in the summer.

When they jailed me and then released me and Ofitserov the next day. Miracles like that don’t happen. And there’s no need to think that there are such utterly nervous people sitting in the Kremlin that, understanding roughly the same thing could happen, they 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, but 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 the people who are imprisoned unjustly, all the people suffering 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? And my position is this: what is the symbolism of the 15th now? At one point the verdict was scheduled for the 15th, and then the Kremlin pulled this political-technological stunt, a legal-and-political manipulation, when they completely illegally moved the verdict from January 15 to December 30, deceived everyone, and made sure fewer people would come out. We all understand that perfectly well. Now, by and large, there is nothing left in the date of the 15th except that it was once planned, and I believe that in terms of street politics and protest politics, we should direct our efforts toward organizing a major event that would truly demonstrate both to the authorities and to ourselves that we are going to push for change in principle, and that we are not some marginal minority. You know, some strange liberals sitting in a ghetto, 3%, squeaking in thin voices: give us human rights! In reality, most people in this country want exactly the same things we do: a fight against corruption, judicial reform, honest courts, elected mayors, and so on. On these issues, the majority is with us. That same 84% supports us here, not Putin and not United Russia. Those are the slogans under which we should be gathering people, and those are the slogans we should be focusing on.

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

You’re not an idiot. It just means I phrased it badly. In some cities—for example, St. Petersburg—a protest is planned, and the point 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 a rally has been prepared, if it’s happening, and you were planning to go out—then go out. In Samara, as I understand it, people are going out, and in several other cities too. If there are no clear plans and no real preparation, then it’s better to focus on a big protest, which I believe should be held sometime in the second half of February.

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

As for Alexei Navalny tomorrow... I’ll see how things develop. If there are people there, if they come out and 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 all day tomorrow working at the Anti-Corruption Foundation as well. Then we’ll see how things develop. But I don’t think any kind of protest is needed in Moscow tomorrow.

More broadly, how much do your supporters’ expectations of you and your expectations of them match when it comes to street activism? Because people are always waiting for you to say: come on, Alexei, tell us what to do, where to go, what slogans to chant. And whether to go out at all.

No one 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 it’s simply common sense. How can any normal person be against judicial reform that would give us honest courts? That’s why people need to go out and fight for all this not by staring at Navalny, not by orienting themselves around Navalny and his words, which are not prophetic, but simply the words of an ordinary citizen. 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 holding demonstrations on a colossal scale, like in the early 1990s.

But a politician who aspires to leadership, of course, has to be ready to answer these 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 to be held in the biggest cities, including a protest in Moscow.

Organizationally, will you proceed according to 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 should do everything possible to make sure more people 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 technicians: there seems to be some kind of sound problem—please take a look, because on Setevizor it appears to be cutting out from time to time. As for expectations, I’ve noticed an interesting thing: when people are outraged by some issue—say, commuter trains are being canceled—they say: why aren’t Navalny and his team doing anything about this? Are those expectations more flattering or more confusing?

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: Navalny must deal with it immediately. Kindergartens are being closed—Navalny must deal with it immediately. Commuter trains—he must deal with it immediately. And by the way, we are dealing with the commuter trains, because there is an obvious corruption component there. Commuter rail services are being shut down across the country because the regions supposedly cannot pay a certain “economically justified” fare. But what exactly that economically justified fare is—neither I nor you can verify, because that information is closed. In fact, today I was signing letters to the regional energy commissions that set those rates. All of this is completely hidden from us. But they tell us that commuter trains... though in Moscow they’re still running... I have no moral right to stay home if I’m shouting: please, Muscovites, go out into the streets!

Suburban ones.

In Zabaykalsky Krai, they tell us, commuter trains are being canceled because they’re too expensive. And when we ask, well, show us how that fare is calculated, nobody shows us. So yes, we work on 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 no one else people can turn to—no one they believe will actually do anything—does that feel more gratifying or more frightening, when you and your team are the only ones people really come to for help?

It’s neither frightening nor gratifying—it’s normal. You simply understand, as you rightly said, that when there is literally nowhere else to turn, people write to you... When I see a letter addressed to Alexei Navalny saying, “Alexei, please, they’ve cut off hot water to our whole town,” I understand that these people are desperate if they’re writing to me. And that gives you a more sober understanding of the reality of the country’s problems. Well, I understand perfectly well why they write to me, and I immediately explain to them: guys, I can’t always help you get your hot water back. I’ll do everything I can; we may be able to find out that maybe someone in the housing and utilities system simply stole a huge amount. 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 proper development strategy for the sector, we can’t replace the inept Prime Minister Medvedev, and we can’t replace the corrupt President Putin—not by our own actions alone, I mean. So here 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 campaigner, 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 speak on that, should make a statement, say what he thinks or doesn’t think, especially given that Europe has huge street mobilization and here we have 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 kind of 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 fighting corruption; 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 every other issue, from the terrorist attack in Paris to whatever else interests you, Tanya. Ask.

What interests me, for example, is this: 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 Alexei Navalny, our Alexei Navalny, take the side of those whom they call all sorts of names...

Alexei Navalny told the absolute truth. What I said, word for word, was that the Crimea problem will exist for years. And expecting Crimea to return to Ukraine in the foreseeable future would be pointless. That is precisely the gravity of the situation Putin created. He created a problem for years to come, and Crimea will stand alongside Northern Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, or Japan’s Northern Territories. It’s something our grandchildren will still be discussing, and there will be a problem there, and there will be residual sanctions, and so on and so forth. The truth is that, in 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, such problems are not solved in the world. Putin created a problem for years to come, and Crimea will stand alongside Northern Cyprus

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

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

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 into the streets 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 that the authorities consider unauthorized is a fairly dangerous thing. We saw how a Turkish citizen who didn’t know Russian was happily convicted for allegedly 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 on their own, and I’m sure a huge number 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 person arrested, every person beaten—I know perfectly well that I bear responsibility too for the fact that these people are being punished. For the fact that my brother is in prison, for those serving administrative jail terms. I think Kriger, arrested at the protest on the 30th, is still in the special detention center. And so on and so forth. Naturally, I share responsibility for all of this.

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

It’s like provocative cartoons.

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

You just asked me properly, phrased it normally, and I answered normally. But that’s just my point of view; I’m not going to lecture you. You have a radio station, so I’m not going to teach you how to run a radio station, and I’ll probably say something sarcastic if you try to teach me how to build 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 nonsense. It’s a crude oversimplification. People don’t think that way. They’re not going to prison for Alexei Navalny, and they’re not going out for Alexei Navalny—they’re going out for themselves. I see you two women too, including at various protests—I don’t know whether for work or not. Are you going out for Alexei Navalny? No, you’re going out for your normal human life, for your children...

We go out for Alexei Venediktov.

Well, for Alexei Venediktov then—so put it to a vote: are you ready to go to prison for Alexei Venediktov?

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

I’m extremely grateful to all those people who come out to support me personally, and who are now coming out to support Oleg. And naturally I bear responsibility for them. But I have no doubt whatsoever that these people come out for me because they share the things I say. They’re not coming out and saying, “Alexei, you have such a nice shirt, we’re following you...”

And the beard really suits you.

And the beard. They come out because they say: Alexei, like you, we want a fight against corruption. Like you, we want Russia to develop normally. Like you, we want the trillions of dollars from oil and gas sales to be distributed fairly. I’m just saying that they share those very things, and maybe for some people I embody this struggle—for some larger or smaller number of people, I don’t know, I’m not inclined to overestimate my role, but probably such people exist. But this is 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. By your own sense of it, 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 kind of pessimism...

But you do some polling, don’t you?

We do polling, so I can see that there are many of these people, and their number is growing. It’s just that before, some issues were less acute: mayoral elections existed, gubernatorial elections existed, people didn’t think much about it, it wasn’t a problem. Now those things are being abolished, and I see that—again—the majority in our country, and I myself, have absolutely no pessimism about support. I’m not driven into depression at all by the endless arguments so beloved by a certain depressive part of the intelligentsia: “Oh my God, they have 84% support, let’s give up, burst into tears, and leave the country...” That’s all nonsense! On every issue on our agenda, our support is higher. When we propose our bill on combating officials’ illicit enrichment, I see—we’ve measured it several times—87% support. Seventy percent of Russian citizens believe mayors and governors should be elected. More than 80% of people demand judicial reform, and among those who have actually dealt with the court system, even more. 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 out of a runoff, 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 to everyone. 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 in elections. Broadly speaking—not just me. Right now I’m completely barred from participating in elections. If you 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 simply 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 dragged around in bureaucratic limbo, as has been happening to us for years, and if 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.

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

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

Yes, just a tiny handful, because there are still a number of questions. Let’s go back 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. The censors at Butyrka prison 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. And 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 District Court refused even 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 sphere. At one point they jailed him without even having the written sentence in hand, which is impossible: you don’t put a person in pretrial detention without paperwork. They did. And apparently everything is fine. He’s just sitting there.

Listen, that same system, excuse me, keeps sending the penitentiary service with its complaints about your behavior. What do you connect that with?

I connect it with the fact that the ruling 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 and yet sitting in your studio. Because in any other situation, I would have gone straight from your studio to pretrial detention. But in my case that isn’t happening. Right now I’m moving around freely because it is simply absolutely, totally illegal, and this is some kind of... system glitch. But I do think, of course, that 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, I get asked that question.

And still they just won’t jail you, Alexei.

I still don’t have an answer to that question. It’s obvious that the decision whether to imprison me is made by one person. For whatever 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 activities—what you do—but you don’t choose your relatives. Oleg is not guilty of the fact that his brother 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 permanent isolation. It is obvious that the decision whether to imprison me is made by one person I’ve simply decided not to comply with house arrest now, and I’ve thrown their script off a bit. 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 that they will appeal it. I’ve been living for the last three years, essentially, in a state 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 for 10 months you had no opportunity to leave your own apartment, how adequately—or inadequately—were you able to assess what was happening with your associates—we saw there were lots of different problems—and with your foundation?

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

Then journalists were allowed in, since 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 I did watch a lot of television, and that made a strong impression on me.

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

Again, when there’s a sentence, and especially the kind of sentence that involved Oleg and so on, honestly there isn’t much time or desire to track what other politicians were saying. But the people I respect, whom I regard normally, who, it seems to me, 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. That’s obvious to everyone anyway. As for the people who, for a salary, say “fine, let it be so, he should be jailed for 20 years,” while ignoring, for example, the Serdyukov case—why should I listen to them?

You say they constantly try to keep you isolated, and you went and somehow broke their script. But in general, do any sort of liaison officers ever try to get in touch and say, “Alexei, we have an interesting proposal for you. You do this and that, 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 all know, your radio station’s editor-in-chief. But he hasn’t come to me with any such messages. But joking aside, nothing like that has happened, and in fact never has: no one has come to me, and I haven’t approached anyone.

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

I think that’s pretty 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.

You want to hear some kind of realistic approach from me, right?

I want to understand what Alexei Navalny would do.

Sending corrupt officials to the moon tomorrow is not a realistic approach. Even if power changed hands, and Putin flew off to the moon while I somehow miraculously arrived 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 a long time ago; the problem is that they are not followed.

Yes, that’s all correct. But with low oil prices, with sanctions—fine, all that is good and right. But something has to be done now so that 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 now from the government and the president. Does Alexei Navalny have a plan?

Alexei Navalny absolutely has a plan. And as many government members 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 is far from only oil prices that are to blame. Our political system, our political situation, is such that it does not allow the country to develop, because all the authorities’ efforts are now, by and large, aimed at guaranteeing Putin lifelong rule as president. 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 some kind of chaotic flailing. You had Aleksashenko in the studio before me; he spoke very well about this, saying these people have no plan at all. 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” onto the boards for some reason. These are people who have no plan whatsoever, because they are solving one clear and fairly simple 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 their own lifelong rule, but to serve the allotted term, solve economic problems as best they can, and then leave to do something else so that another person can be elected to the post.

If we’re talking now about the conditions the country exists in... I’ve lost the question from our listener... 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 life situation: 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 has never been a real item on the agenda. We discussed all these questions about emigration. We decided for ourselves that for us this is not a serious option, including because I am 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 reality there are objectively fewer of them; there really aren’t that many. They’re sitting there solely because of our passivity. We just need to work a little more effectively, that’s all. And 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 with some representatives of the intelligentsia. I held 90 meetings with voters, tens of thousands of people, with whom I spoke more or less personally. And these were people—the very pensioners, servicemen, police officers, anyone at all—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—there is no disagreement between us. They tell me they live in 18-square-meter dorm rooms, 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 has never really been on the agenda As for 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 set 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 the leading blogger 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 a 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 rifles? These people are the very definition of illegal armed formations, because if they are police, it’s unclear what they are doing in a stadium with rifles. If they are servicemen, it’s unclear why they were given weapons to stand around in a stadium. What we see is some kind of horde, a Sharia army, which for some reason obeys the head of a federal subject, even though a governor commands neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office nor, in fact, anyone in uniform. And this is 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 believe that in Chechnya, as in Ukraine, Putin is making a colossal mistake that we and our children, and perhaps 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 Chechnya’s territory is beyond the bounds of legality altogether. In that sense there is simply an arrangement: we pay tribute of a sort, and they do whatever they want. And if at least that had fully solved the terrorism problem. But when they’ve supposedly rebuilt everything there, and there are 20,000 armed men, and yet Grozny is attacked by 20 or 100 men, buildings are burned, and tanks are firing in the city—that shows that the problem of terrorism and the pacification of Chechnya has not been solved either. And what happens next? If, let’s suppose, the 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 he says, “Goodbye! We now have a Sharia state. I heard that at the Echo of Moscow radio station 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 it would be a million times harder to fight than in 1994—“or we turn into Islamic State number two.”

So it’s a stalemate?

It’s a difficult situation. It’s hard now 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’s also a kind of... doomed man, because here he accuses Echo of Moscow of insulting Islam, but even more fanatical people call him a kafir, a traitor, and so on, and accuse him of betraying Islam. In that sense he is trying to become a bigger Islamist than they are, also to guarantee his own safety. He too is in an extremely difficult situation, and in a sense his life hangs by a thread. So everything there is very tightly bound together. And if in this structure you pull out the personalities on whom everything rests—the personality of Putin and the personality of Kadyrov—everything will become completely uncontrollable. That is Russia’s problem in general: too much depends on one person. If a piano falls on that person tomorrow or something happens to him, everything starts falling apart. That’s not how it should be. The system should work. It shouldn’t matter if even five presidents and prime ministers in a row suddenly die of some unknown illness—the sixth should come in and the system should function normally without breakdowns.

Do you feel any joy when, for example, Serdyukov, Vasilyeva, or Yevtushenkov are arrested or sent to trial?

Who was arrested there? Serdyukov was arrested? I don’t feel any particular joy, because I see the scale of corruption. It is absolutely colossal, and in that sense Vasilyeva—everything is fairly clear with her, and with Serdyukov, but I have plenty of characters like that... Look at Yakunin or Sechin—they’re already some kind of mythical figures, 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 areas of London. It’s all just astonishing. So some story about catching one corrupt official doesn’t impress me at all. More than that, I follow this closely. If you remember all the more or less high-profile anti-corruption cases “Putin-style,” starting with the prosecutors’ gambling case, Serdyukov, the Malofeyev case, the Skrynnik case—you’ll see that they ended in nothing, absolutely nothing. Whenever these cases are launched, journalists come to me every time and say, “So, has Putin taken the anti-corruption agenda away from you, taken the opposition’s trump cards out of its hands?” I always say: “Let’s wait until there are charges, until not just the system but at least a few specific corrupt officials are demonstratively punished.” But that never happens. Where is Serdyukov now? Heading a federal state enterprise. 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, what tactic do you think is more correct: when you rely on self-organization—and that’s more like the end of 2011...

Bolotnaya Square.

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

I saw from the inside how the Bolotnaya rallies were organized, among other things. Naturally 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 out, people will go to such an event if they are persuaded not by leaders, but by other people. In that sense, my strategy for turnout is that I’m relying on you to persuade your acquaintances; that the most active and engaged people will bring others. Otherwise it doesn’t work. Because if it’s just the call of one person—respected, very respected, even extremely respected—only a limited number of people come. What matters to us is broad... what matters is explaining to everyone that, “Guys, come out, because let’s be honest: until Moscow and other cities see rallies and demonstrations of a hundred thousand people, not much will change.” And unfortunately that’s the only way it works. In Zabaykalsky Krai they canceled commuter trains and said they were canceled... The 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 brought things to the point where nothing impresses them except things like the Trans-Siberian being blocked. But unfortunately—I’m not saying we should go around blocking the Trans-Siberian—still, it has led to a situation where we have 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 definitely ready to reach an agreement with each other 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, really, because I can’t even run for anything anyway, so it’s especially easy for me. I don’t see any major problems with... who would you like me to list? With PARNAS, with Kudrin.

They see plenty of problems with each other, Alexei.

They do see plenty, I agree. Partly the uniqueness of my position is that I’m more or less on good terms with everyone. They often aren’t on good terms with each other, but I’ll try to make them be. And again, we’ve reached a stage where things are simply very bad; it was impossible to imagine in 2008 that Russia would reach this stage of development, 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 somewhere with my children, because of course it’s very painful for any parent not to see your children learning to swim or something like that. So any place where I could spend time with them.

Thank you very much! Alexei Navalny was live on the air of Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station). Your hosts were Irina Vorobyova and Tatyana Felgengauer.

Take care!

― This was Chronic Today. The program was prepared by Kseniya Nikonova. Goodbye!