Overall, I’m satisfied. These were the first debates of the season, and they needed to be run briskly. They turned out even brisker than necessary. **The participants. **Both were good. Both speak as if reading from a script. Great reactions. In short, you can tell they’re used to public speaking. Neither abused the rules too much, and both stopped when I asked them to. Honestly, I was worried the comrades would charge ahead like tanks and that stopping them would be a problem. Kholmogorov was almost absurdly politically correct. And that despite promising to be so sharp that not a single person in the room would vote for him. And yet not one jab, not one statement on the edge of decency. No incitement, nothing like that. This was the kind of speech you could deliver either at a round table with United Russia or at The Other Russia (an opposition coalition). Sensible, balanced, moderately emotional—a speech by someone who knows the subject inside out. Why did he do this to us?
What I really liked about Novodvorskaya was that she made absolutely no attempt to use the incident against her opponent, even though the temptation was obvious. I couldn’t resist and said something about Orthodox believers with African-style passions. But Valeriya Ilyinichna acted as if nothing at all had happened. By the way, during the scuffle she sat there looking as though she were on the Côte d’Azur watching seagulls glide by. Remarkable composure.
**The audience. **Some random idiots who kept shouting nonsense all the time really started to get on my nerves. I don’t mind the audience putting on a fun, harmless flash mob or something like that. But when drunk men just yell incoherently, that’s not glamorous. And before the debate I asked them not to make a scene. They promised. They lied. Next time they’ll be banned like the fascist sholademi was from Novodvorskaya’s LiveJournal. And in general, the main complaint from the normal audience members this time was the noise in the hall. We’ll have to think about that. **The incident. **It was absolutely clear that someone would ask Kholmogorov that question. I’m sure that was clear to him too. And when people pulled out those idiotic “ESD” signs, it became completely obvious. I was actually worried that Kholmogorov would get nothing but questions on that subject, mixed in with things like, "Tell us, what exactly did you feel when the Mother of God blessed you?" Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. But then Yashin jumped in. Before the debate he kept pestering me about whether I was going to ask that question. I told him of course not. If you want, I said, ask it yourself. But it never even occurred to me that he actually would. So once again I apologize to Yegor Kholmogorov and everyone else who was in the hall for not cutting off the little provocateur and not taking the microphone away from him. I should have made an arrangement with vorobieva — she would have calmed him down. So anyway, Kholmogorov was in the wrong too. He knew the question would come up one way or another. He should have prepared some devastating reply and shut the subject down. Though I should note that I’m not sure I personally would have behaved any differently in the same situation. There’s one more important thing. Yashin has one killer trick. Very useful for a politician. After asking his nasty provocative questions, he knows how to look at his opponent with such an insolent smirk that it genuinely drives people up the wall. That smirk is what pushed little Yegor over the edge. Though—to be fair, and I could see this perfectly well from the stage—when the atomic Orthodox guy lunged toward him, yashin was already clearly regretting what he’d done. He wasn’t scared, but he understood that he shouldn’t have done it.
It’s a lesson: it’s one thing to needle the meek idiots from United Russia at round tables, and quite another to pull that kind of stunt with a big healthy man in an embroidered shirt. Especially in front of his friends, acquaintances, and the public in general. He should be grateful they didn’t strangle him in the heat of the moment with a fofudya (a mocking term for pseudo-traditional Russian garb). **The debates. **As I said from the stage, from now on we’ll be holding the debates on a fixed schedule — once every two weeks. Usachev’s photos