Interview with Alexei Venediktov and Lesya Ryabtseva about the Russian March and the “Russian World” from October 16, 2014

A. VENEDIKTOV – Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny, Lesya Ryabtseva, Alexei Venediktov. Our listener Mont Blanc-2000 asks: what is the difference between Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s “Russian world” and Alexei Navalny’s “Russian world”?

A. NAVALNY – Well, no one is being herded into Alexei Navalny’s Russian world, and that’s why Alexei Navalny’s Russian world is developing much better than Vladimir Putin’s Russian world. Because people join Alexei Navalny’s Russian world willingly.

A. VENEDIKTOV – Crimea joined Vladimir Putin’s Russian world willingly.

A. NAVALNY – Yes, but from the Russian world we lost... you see, we annexed Crimea with its population of 2 million. But we lost, unfortunately, perhaps forever, the Ukrainian state of 40 million people. We seriously complicated our relations with and frightened Belarus, also part of the Russian world, though Belarusians probably won’t like that phrasing. The Baltics, Kazakhstan, and so on. In other words, we are losing our natural advantages. Having such a large friendly people as the Ukrainians, Ukraine, was a colossal strategic asset for Russia’s future, for Russia’s development. Now we’ve lost it, and lost it simply because of ambition and stupidity. These media crooks dart back and forth. I’m standing where I’ve always stood.

A. VENEDIKTOV – Now let’s move on to interethnic relations. Lesya.

L. RYABTSEVA – We were recalling West Biryulyovo. And the previous years. When border controls were tightened, when there was all that talk about the Customs Union, last year all the media were blaring about it. About illegal immigration. Why has this issue faded away in this campaign?

A. VENEDIKTOV – What’s more, I’d add that in the Moscow mayoral election, as you remember, when the polls were being taken, the issue of illegal migration and guest workers was number one, everything else came after. Now in the Moscow City Duma elections, I think it’s seventh or eighth. What happened over the year?

A. NAVALNY – Exactly.

A. VENEDIKTOV – In people’s minds.

A. NAVALNY – That answers the question of why Putin did all this. He very seriously changed the domestic political agenda. Migration is still discussed at the everyday level, it exists. Go out into Maryino, where I live, look around under my windows. The issue will immediately come to mind. But it has been pushed off the agenda because there are other, much more powerful things. Fabricated life-and-death issues: when they tell you on television about a “crucified child” (a notorious false story spread by Russian state TV), you stop thinking about migrants. So it has been pushed out of the political agenda, but it still exists, and the problem of illegal migration is real. And I still support introducing a visa regime, and I still believe that from the standpoint of Russia’s development, the Russian world, or however you want to put it, the issue of illegal immigration is a hundred times more important than any Ukraine.

L. RYABTSEVA – Alexei Anatolyevich, the Russian March is coming up soon. What do you say?

A. NAVALNY – All I can do now is wave from the window. It passes near me in Lyublino.

A. VENEDIKTOV – Will you wave?

A. NAVALNY – I will. I’m just following very closely what’s happening around the Russian March, and I find the debate going on there very interesting, because the nationalist movement is far from homogeneous. There were even polls there, note this, about what the Russian March should stand for. For Ukraine – that’s the main Russian issue. For Novorossiya. Second: drop the Ukrainian issue altogether, focus only on Russians. And third was formulated as: a march for Russians against vatnik chauvinists (“vatnik” is a derogatory term for jingoistic pro-Kremlin patriots). And there are such nationalists, quite a large number of them. So I’m very interested in which agenda will prevail, and I’ll be very disappointed if the Russian March ultimately turns into a Soviet-style march in support of Putin. We don’t need that kind of Russian March.

L. RYABTSEVA – Alexei Anatolyevich, should I go to the Russian March? I’ll do whatever you say.

A. NAVALNY – I don’t know what the Russian March will be now. If the Russian March degenerates, as I said, into a march of Soviet patriots – let’s seize all countries and revive the Soviet Union – then it won’t be a Russian March, it will be an anti-Russian march. Because nothing is more harmful to the interests of the Russian people than this imperial chauvinism. It is not in Russians’ interests to be busy seizing neighboring republics; it is in Russians’ interests to fight corruption, fight alcoholism, and so on. To solve internal problems. It is in Russians’ interests to make sure that the enormous oil rent still flowing in works for Russians. Russians do not need to seize the Baltics, Ukraine, Kyiv, or Donbas. So if the Russian March is for Russian interests, go. If the Russian March is about, say, let’s land troops on the moon, then we don’t need that kind of Russian March.

L. RYABTSEVA – All right. I’ll write to Yulia Navalnaya and ask what she thinks about it.

A. VENEDIKTOV – By the way, I just thought: why is it you and I sitting here, Lesya, and not Vladimir Solovyov or Pyotr Tolstoy from Channel One, who at one time said Navalny held nationalist views? Now, it seems to me, they are repeating much more of what you said, or what was attributed to you.

A. NAVALNY – That’s a very interesting thing. Because now...

A. VENEDIKTOV – They’re basically your allies.

A. NAVALNY – Now I’m being denounced by the same people who six months ago called me nothing but a Nazi. It’s a very interesting transformation. I want to point out that the transformation is not with me: I’m standing where I’ve always stood. It’s all these media crooks who keep rushing back and forth.

L. RYABTSEVA – So you haven’t become either softer or tougher. At least while you’re sitting here.

A. NAVALNY – There is a real agenda. There is illegal immigration, and we need to fight illegal immigration. There are other issues usually assigned to the nationalist agenda: ethnic crime, problems Russians face connected with alcoholism, drug addiction, and so on. Those problems exist, and they remain. You can talk on television all you like about Donbas and so on, but just as Russia was number one in the world in absolute heroin consumption, it remains so. And from the point of view of Russians, that is far more important than any Donbas.

L. RYABTSEVA – I want to move to another subject. About your softness or toughness. You recently had a Twitter spat with Mitya Aleshkovsky. About your foundation’s post. Since Mitya and I launched a new program about charity, we discussed your exchange, let’s say, on social media. And Mitya said that charity should be outside politics. Can you comment?

A. NAVALNY – First of all, I really like all the people who do charity work. What I don’t like is a position I find rather hypocritical: the idea that charity can be outside politics. In fact, the exchange with Mitya Aleshkovsky came after the head of the Moscow Health Department turned out to have a Swiss residence permit, property in Switzerland...

A. VENEDIKTOV – They looked for it for 14 years.

A. NAVALNY – The Anti-Corruption Foundation found it fairly quickly; we just published it only after...

A. VENEDIKTOV – All right, he went and registered with the Federal Migration Service...

A. NAVALNY – I mean the real estate.

A. VENEDIKTOV – I mean the residence permit.

A. NAVALNY – Well, he bought real estate in Switzerland worth 200 million rubles.

A. VENEDIKTOV – When?

A. NAVALNY – Even though this man’s income amounted to... quite recently, in fact. Even though this man’s income amounted to at most 30 million rubles. You know, Mitya Aleshkovsky’s foundation has done a great job; over all this time it has raised 6 million rubles. That’s excellent, noble work. But I want to say that it is no less important to discuss how the head of the Health Department came to have 140 million rubles from who-knows-where. And to discuss those six million at the same time. You have to see the big picture. Corrupt officials clinging to healthcare budgets at every level – federal, Moscow, regional – are killing children. Every day, every year, on a scale a hundred times greater than all charities combined save them. So refusing to talk about politics is sheer hypocrisy. What, let’s ignore the fact that they stole half the budget, and instead raise 3 million rubles and save one child? That is a noble task. Save your child, but remember the important things. Healthcare has to function as a system. Charity will not cure everyone. And for the system to work, among other things, there must be no corruption in it, no people with Swiss residence permits, and so on. Save your child, but remember the important things.

L. RYABTSEVA – But sooner or later, charitable organizations may need help, resources – from politics, from someone they may once have opposed, for example. What should they do then? It seems more выгодно not to quarrel.

A. NAVALNY – Excuse me, but if in your charitable work you rely on the resources of people who are stealing from healthcare, then that is a strange kind of charity. Thanks to the fact that you help each other, that corrupt official goes on stealing billions from healthcare. And you say, well, let him steal billions, but at least he helped us raise one million rubles and we treated some elderly woman. I don’t want my perhaps sarcastic comment about elderly women to be taken as meaning I dislike charity. I repeat: it is a great and noble cause. But you have to see the bigger picture. Healthcare serves 140 million people. Thousands of children are waiting for operations. Do you understand that the money they steal from healthcare is enough to pay for operations for everyone waiting for those paid operations? So I am categorically against saying: let’s forgive officials certain sins because they helped us here and signed a letter for us.

L. RYABTSEVA – Do you do charity work?

A. NAVALNY – From time to time, like everyone else, I donate small amounts to foundations. But I’m not systematically involved in charity. No.

L. RYABTSEVA – I have another question from a listener. Andreika71 asks: if you were offered a high government post right now, would you accept?

A. NAVALNY – What exactly is meant by a high government post?

L. RYABTSEVA – As I understand it, replacing Shuvalov.

A. NAVALNY – Within this same system? Once again, my principled position is that you have to do everything you can do, but within the existing system no government post can function effectively. I’m more than sure that in your conversations and get-togethers with Shuvalov, Ulyukayev, and so on, once you turn off the microphone, all they do is tell you how awful everything is, how nothing can be done. What fools and crooks are sitting everywhere. Isn’t that so? What do they tell you?

L. RYABTSEVA – Usually we’re the main pessimists. They reassure us that everything is wonderful for them. Speaking of pessimism, there’s another question: Anton Nosik recently asked about Russia’s falling economy – where is the bottom? My question to you is: where is Russia’s bottom?

A. NAVALNY – Right now we are seeing no bottom at all. Yes, the oil price has fallen, we see a very alarming rise in the dollar, but there is no bottom anywhere in sight. Russia is still meeting its budget obligations, and our external debt level is still fairly low. Apparently we just won’t be able to borrow now. But at least at the moment I don’t see anything in the current situation that portends economic collapse tomorrow. In terms of the trend, it says that in a year they won’t be able, at a minimum, to index wages. It is вполне possible that at some stage they won’t be able, as I said, to fulfill those May decrees. But honestly, it’s funny to me now to watch everyone, myself included, tracking the oil price. As if the moment it falls to 83, something will click in Putin’s head. That’s complete nonsense. If we look at the price chart over a longer period, we’ll see that in 2008 it fell to $30, and we remember all the talk back then: my God, everything is collapsing. The Putin regime will collapse tomorrow. It didn’t collapse. So these economic problems may come – I’m sure they will – and the current Putin economic course suggests that he does not want to avoid them. He is simply steaming straight ahead into this iceberg. But there is no current catastrophe in evidence.

L. RYABTSEVA – That’s exactly what Shuvalov and Ulyukayev say too.

A. VENEDIKTOV – You took the words right out of my mouth.

A. NAVALNY – Because we are looking at the same numbers. And we interpret those numbers roughly the same way. But I think that even from Ulyukayev’s public statements, we can see that everyone assesses the dynamics and direction of movement negatively in principle. Look at Gref’s speech too. I’m being denounced by the same people who six months ago called me nothing but a Nazi.

A. VENEDIKTOV – A quick blitz round. Kornilov asks: do you believe in the 86%?

A. NAVALNY – After we set up a sociological service, I got to the bottom of that 86%. Yes, there is an 86% who, for a combination of reasons – Crimea, Ukraine, propaganda, the lack of electoral competition – support him right now. But that means nothing. I’ll tell you this: I have more than 86%. Because 87% support our campaign to ratify Article 20 and introduce criminal liability for illicit enrichment. So what does that mean? That I have 87%? It doesn’t work like that. What was the Politburo’s rating in 1984? Probably very high. What is the rating of North Korea’s leaders now? Also very high. Or in Cuba – what’s the rating there? In an authoritarian state, it means absolutely nothing. I see the main thing, the important thing for me: our core political themes – fighting corruption, decentralization, judicial reform, and so on – are supported by no fewer people. On those issues, we have 70%.

A. VENEDIKTOV – But look, Vladlex asks: how do you defeat propaganda? On the one hand there is propaganda pushing one line, but on the other hand more than half of Russia’s adult population is on the internet. That means they have access to alternative information. So why the 86%?

A. NAVALNY – At some point, we – and I as well – overestimated the internet. Remember, I had that project called “The Good Machine of Truth,” when I thought we needed to launch mass propaganda through the internet and we would somehow be able to influence or defeat television. They also started doing something similar online, and we saw that their money and efforts also produced results of their own. So in a direct competition of propaganda, of course we will always lose to the state machine. But in that sense, I am sure that Putin’s propaganda will expose itself sooner or later. They can say all they like that, for example, high-quality Russian food products will appear after sanctions are introduced; those products simply won’t appear, and everything will become clear to everyone.

L. RYABTSEVA – Continuing the blitz: a listener asks, are there monuments in Russia that should be torn down – perhaps to Soviet rulers?

A. VENEDIKTOV – Or others.

A. NAVALNY – I don’t think it makes sense to tear down any monuments; let them stand wherever they are, we just need to build new ones. There is a completely fantastic project now called “Last Address.” Many people are involved in it, including Sergei Parkhomenko. Let’s build new memorials. To remind the younger generation – and ourselves – about Stalinism, for example, we don’t need to blow up a monument to Stalin wherever one may still remain. Probably somewhere on museum grounds. We need to put plaques on buildings with the names of the people who disappeared after being taken away from those buildings. So we simply need more memorials.

A. VENEDIKTOV – That leads into a question from a person from Cherepovets, whose username is Cherepovets: what is your attitude toward burying Lenin? Since we’ve gone there.

A. NAVALNY – I don’t have any particular attitude, but as an Orthodox Christian it seems a little strange to me that we literally still have the body there. As I understand it – correct me as a historian – this goes against Lenin’s wishes, his relatives’ wishes, and so on; it’s unlikely he wanted to lie there in that form.

A. VENEDIKTOV – That’s true.

A. NAVALNY – So I am rather in favor of the body naturally being laid to rest. But since this is such a political issue, perhaps it should be decided by a Moscow referendum.

A. VENEDIKTOV – A Moscow one.

A. NAVALNY – Yes.