Autumn Tour. Rally in Novokuznetsk

Hello, Novokuznetsk!

Hi, guys, I’m very happy that I’ve finally

made it here to see you, but tell me, what

happened?

Some kind of maniac, apparently—they think only the hair gives it away

to the police.

Some villain is prowling around Novokuznetsk.

He doesn’t need to be protected, he needs to be caught.

I’ve already counted several colonels here in such

cool hats.

A few people—and they keep turning away from me.

Comrade colonels, we love you. Alexei

Navalny—we love you too. We’ll talk about you

as well. I saw that lots of

different cool events are taking place today

in Novokuznetsk.

Is this what it’s like here every weekend, or is it because of

my visit? Well, if you invite me more often, I’ll

try to bring holidays to your cities more often.

The best event I saw was called

—I nearly burst out laughing at the name—

“New Year Hype Disco.”

As I understand it, Aman Tuleyev (former governor of Kemerovo Region) personally

came up with the name—some kind of New Year hobby

disco.

All right then, let’s say that our

event is called

the “Pre-New Year Anti-Hype Rally.”

It’s very important for me to come here. I rarely

have the opportunity to visit every

federal subject. I’ve been to your region three times—well,

this is my second time in your federal subject.

I was recently in Kemerovo.

Not only because Novokuznetsk is effectively

part of an urban agglomeration of 1.4 million, and it’s

important for me to win votes here. Not only that—

I also know how things are arranged here,

which is why I came to Kemerovo

and came to Novokuznetsk. And I know that here people

say, “Alexei, as in the famous

movie quote,”

“you want our votes, and you’re asking us

without respect.” I came with

respect for your votes, I came here—but also

because Kemerovo Region

is fundamentally important for

all of Russian politics, because here

the authorities—Putin, your

governor, and your mayor—are trying

to use this region as an example to show that everything

is fine, that everything here is wonderfully organized,

as if this is some kind of

ideal Russia.

That you live better than anyone else. Look:

90 percent for Putin, for Tuleyev

what was it—89 percent, for your mayor

what—87 percent. So it turns out that

they show all of us this and say:

this is the real Russia, Siberia, and everyone here is for

Putin and for United Russia. But I don’t think so.

So I decided to check. It matters to me. I

come and I check.

And this is the most important proof, guys.

Look.

Turn this way—see, there’s

a police officer filming with a camera.

Later he’ll show it, bring it in. Everyone, raise your hands—

those who voted for United Russia—

those who are against United Russia, who don’t like

United Russia in Novokuznetsk. Comrade

police officers, comrade governor, comrade

mayor, comrade Putin—right, they try to tell us

that sure, you can come here

and shout something, get angry,

flirt with the people, talk about

some so-called populist things, as they

see them—but people will still support them

because the standard of living is high, because

after all,

people are getting richer under Putin. Are you

feeling it? Getting richer?

No? Then you ought to think about it, you ought to—

wait a second—well, a large part of

the industrial complex, the backbone of the country—

Kuzbass (the Kuznetsk coal basin region).

Turn on any program and they’ll

talk about the economy and say: Kuzbass

is the foundation, la-la-la-la. But does any of that

actually affect you? These are the two main

things we need to figure out right now.

In fact, you could say that gathered here

are residents of Novokuznetsk, because not everyone here is, of course,

a resident of Novokuznetsk, but

if United Russia held a rally here,

it wouldn’t be bigger.

If they held one, it would be smaller than this—smaller than United Russia’s.

You could say this is one of the largest

rallies in recent years, which means

quite a lot. So let’s discuss it. He’s been sitting there for 17 years—

18 years—they’ve been doing something all that time, and

it must have turned into something by now.

Money—what does a person need? Love,

family, and so on. But ask a person,

and he’ll say: give me money.

Money. And the answer to that question is

your wages from your job. All right, you

all work, your parents work,

your relatives work. The question is

how much can you earn in a country

that these people have ruled for 18 years? I know

for sure that one of the reasons why

the authorities hate my rallies so much is because

I conduct this survey in every city,

and it really infuriates them, because these aren’t

just words—these are real

facts, real evidence that shows they’re lying.

I present evidence, and you—I

ask you a question: think, remember

your own salary, the salary of your

parents, the salary of your acquaintances,

friends, relatives—based on real

life.

Tell me, what is the average salary

in Novokuznetsk? 20,000? 18,000? How much—25?

A bit higher? What’s the salary?

No? Well then, the average earnings—we can’t

even say how much?

Ten to fifteen—how much, 12 to 20?

I can hardly believe it—I found myself in one of the largest

industrial cities in Russia, and the biggest thing,

the main thing I keep hearing is 25. And then I realized

there are buses parked there, and all of you

were specially brought here for money.

Foreign agents, they said—you were being deceived.

Raise your hand if you came here from

Washington. Seriously—right?

They sent some assassin here to lie about how

low the salaries are here, so

then I pull out a terrifying little document.

I open the most terrifying little document

you can possibly imagine, and

any one of you can get it if you

go to the website of the governor's administration

of Kemerovo Region.

It clearly says here that the average

salary in Novokuznetsk is 35,000 rubles.

Tell me, is it true that the average

person earns 35,000? Right now I...

I'll continue.

Excuse me, this is official statistics.

Please raise your hand—those who have

acquaintances.

Teachers, now a question just for you: what is

the average teacher's salary in the region and in

the city—in the region, I mean?

I hear 15, I hear 10. And teachers—

how much, 20?

No wonder those who said

they came from Washington raised their hands, because

your governor claims that the

teacher's salary in the region is

30,907 rubles. I think teachers—I can't

repeat your words; they end

with something rude. But teachers, do you have an expression like that?

An expression like that? But probably, overall,

you would agree, because it's hard to

describe these salaries with any other word.

Now, doctors—those of you who know doctors will like this.

You there, you're a doctor—what's your salary?

Here, let me give you the microphone, yes.

Are you local?

Osinniki—it's nearby.

All right. Anyone else—who knows about

doctors' salaries? Someone local who knows about

a doctor's salary—go ahead.

She used to make 11,000 too—as a medical

nurse.

It's 2017, the 21st century, and people are naming figures

that are even below 20,000.

But your governor, our governor, Putin—

take this paper home, because let the most

important thing be the paper: our authorities officially lie to us.

The authorities officially say that the average

salary of doctors in the region is 44,900

rubles. This election campaign

is exactly about simply saying

the obvious thing:

Guys, it's all lies. Everything you

have built is lies. On television it's

endless lying, when they show us

a minister and he says that Russians' incomes

have risen by 4 percent again over the year. Your

income—everything is built on lies. Look:

if they lie so much

in figures that anyone can verify,

then they lie about everything else too. All

the other data about the economy,

economic growth,

development, everything else—it's all

derived from those same figures. It's lies.

Do we really need a government built on lies?

Do we need such a government? I don't

need it. Nobody in this country needs it.

It cannot give us anything

except these very lies,

except this poverty. All right, if we already

understand that with you

real life somehow does not match

what they claim,

then let's talk about the future. I want to

say I've seen several remarkable things.

A United Russia (the ruling party) supporter once said: all right,

so what, he's only been in power for 18 years,

give him six more and then he'll finally

start working.

He was just getting warmed up for those 18, and now

he'll begin. So come on, guys, let's tighten our belts

and endure, let's wait. Then the question is this:

you've already lived through some part of your life.

Raise your hands if you're younger than me—I'm 41.

Forty-one. Most of you—well, about half

of those gathered in the square—

are younger than me, which means most of your

life has already passed under Putin, and now

the question is whether you are ready to spend

a considerable part of your life still

under Putin. And here we need to calmly assess

the prospects, to try to understand rationally

whether there is any sense in that. So,

raise your hand if you're still in school.

Let's do a thought experiment. You

graduate with straight A's—is that possible?

Look how confidently the hands go down. Well, one person

said no. All right, let's suppose

it happened: you graduated with all A's and

got the best-paying job in

Novokuznetsk, the best job in Novokuznetsk.

What is it, what job is there here? Not

McDonald's, I can't...

What is it—governor, not governor...

not something like McDonald's. Something where you

come home from work and your mom says to you:

what a great job, well done, you've landed

a great position. The police? The police,

for example? Though I don't think police officers

would agree with that. So my question is:

what would the salary be?

If, in the very best case, you get

that job, what would your salary be—20, 25, 30

40? I hear 40.

55—that's more, but...

[music]

150? Is there really such a job here?

Look, this is the most important thing for us:

we only have one life, and we'll live it before we even know it.

Before you know it, you’ll have grandkids, and if

it’s all over—I don’t want to sound too

pessimistic, but that’s how life works. You only get

one life, and no matter how much of it we’ve already lived, do we

have any prospects at all, or not?

And the reality is this: I’m not in some

village—I’m in a major industrial city,

and a “dream salary” here is said to be somewhere between 40,000 and

100,000 rubles a month, and that is less than

the average salary in Estonia. It’s less

than the average salary in any Eastern

European country. It’s less than

the average salary in Argentina.

It’s less than the average salary in

a huge number of countries that are poorer

than Russia.

That is why I am running this election campaign—

because I refuse to accept the fact

that in a rich country, we are somehow supposed to

and doomed to live worse than people in poorer

countries, and that we are supposed to dream of a salary

that is still poverty-level. Just think about it:

with 150,000 rubles a month, can you buy an apartment for

50,000? Can you raise two children

properly, dress them decently—well, decently enough?

Will you be able to live normally and go on vacation abroad

once a year? No. And if, God forbid,

someone falls seriously ill,

will you be able to buy the medicine without problems?

No. Fifty

thousand rubles is still poverty. Thirty thousand

is extreme poverty, and the 20,000 that people actually

earn is destitution. And I am running this

campaign so that the wealth of our

country works for us. And I understand exactly what

that means. For me, it is absolutely

concrete: where does the money go, the money that

exists in huge quantities in our country?

Where does it disappear to?

They steal it. They steal it. Look at the size of the

budget. Look at the amount of oil

money flowing into the country. It is

being carved up, looted. Here, just

state and state-owned company procurement alone amounts to

26 trillion rubles a year.

You and I cannot even imagine a sum

that large. If we use the formula of my

favorite, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev,

it turns out that 6 trillion of that

money is stolen every single year—6 trillion

rubles.

It is siphoned off into offshore accounts,

spent on dachas, spent on

yachts. Every year, folks, with that money

we could build a whole new economy. The very idea

that we have bad roads is absurd when 6

trillion is stolen every year. I will change that. I

can defeat corruption. I

know how to fight it.

I’m not a police officer, I’m not the Investigative

Committee, not the FSB (Russia’s security service), but our organization

has already stopped corrupt tenders worth

tens of billions of rubles. We have drafted bills,

we have a fully worked-out system, we understand how to fight

corruption. I will be able to bring this money back and

make sure it works—

works for the economy. But this is also my

big difference from the other presidential

candidates.

Because in two years—I believe that in

two years—I will change everything. But look, here is the important

thing:

wait, I am different from everyone else.

Everyone talks about fighting

corruption, sure, absolutely, everyone does.

Anyone can now come out and say we need to

fight corruption. Medvedev will come

here, wave around his iPhone, and that’s it—

“we need to fight

corruption.”

But why do they call me an extremist? I want to

understand whether you support my

“extremist” views. Why are there so many

police here filming me on camera

every single time? And I like saying

this: the fight against corruption is not only a systemic

fight, it is also

a fight against specific corrupt officials. And standing here in

Novokuznetsk, on this stage, under the cameras of the

police,

under the cameras of the Center, and under the cameras of your

governor, I promise you that I will put them all

behind bars.

Into the dock, before local courts,

before juries—we will put them all on trial.

Corruption is happening openly. People are stealing billions

without the slightest shame. Deputy prime ministers

fly around on private jets, hauling around

their dogs on planes. In any European

country, that would trigger a government crisis,

but here it all happens out in the open.

And I am telling you: we need these show

trials. The whole country asks: where will they be jailed, where will they be

sent? I assume many of them will be

serving time somewhere around here—you have plenty of

penal colonies here. What I’m saying is that there is no

fight against corruption without show

trials.

Until people, the press, and officials

see that people really are being jailed

for corruption, nothing will change. I promise

you this much: I will jail them. Second point—they tell

us in plain Russian, shouting, “This parasite!” Well,

fine, call me a thug if I

send crooks to the dock.

Fine—then I’m a thug, and I’m ready to be one.

So, the second thing: I need money. I want to

double spending on education.

I want to double spending

on healthcare as well. I need

money—so where do I get it? I want to spend more on

roads too, and then I remember that

it turns out we are a rich, resource-based

country. It turns out that we are number one in the

world in oil exports.

It turns out that we are number one in the

world in gas exports. But do you feel

that? When oil prices go up, do you

Do you feel it?

All right, forget oil for a moment—a concrete

example from your own life, right here.

The problem is that they steal and run these open-pit

mines right up against the city, seizing

land. Fine—but can you say that as a

result of this environmental

crime, you are becoming richer? But

instead they dug up the mine, and now there is black

snow.

Illnesses are increasing. At the very least,

has there been more money in your pocket—do you feel that?

No. That’s how this country is built: there is no connection

between the natural resources that belong to you and

your own prosperity. These people do not pay

taxes at all. One of your main

local oligarchs is Abramov.

I’ve seen him once in my life—Abramovich

and Abramov. Once in my life I saw Abramov.

You won’t believe where: I studied at Yale

University in the United States, and they have

an annual high-profile gathering there.

All sorts of rich people come there who

have paid tens, maybe even hundreds,

of millions of dollars in order to

stand there looking important.

As if they’re joining the global elite.

That’s where I saw, for the first time in my life,

this cult-like specimen.

This guy from the yard, this so-called oligarch.

Abramov made a fortune in Kuzbass (a coal-mining region in Siberia).

And he paid Yale

University hundreds of millions

of dollars. But has he paid that many here?

Has he contributed those millions to your local institutions?

Those enormous donations? No—here he just stands around looking

important. No, I will do something elementary,

something very simple that has been implemented

in all countries:

people who make money from natural resources must

pay taxes.

But it’s obvious, isn’t it, that our oligarchs keep

getting richer year after year. Over the past year,

the wealth of Russian oligarchs

increased by $21 billion.

Who here in this city increased their wealth by

$21 billion?

Strange—no one. This whole system is built

entirely on the fact that they not only do not

pay taxes—they also suppress wages, and

they don’t pay taxes. Remember my famous

dialogue with Alisher Usmanov,

during which he spat at me twice—but you

remember when I told him something like:

“Usmanov, you are not paying decent wages

to your miners. Look—at your mine

people earn 35,000 rubles a month, while

in the United States, doing the same job,

a miner earns $5,000

a month.” To that, Usmanov told me that

well, there he went again with his insults.

But in between all that, he said: “Alexei,

wages in America are not wages in Russia.” And what

does that mean? That wages here should stay underpaid?

That’s exactly what it means for them. I will become

the president who will force them to pay

taxes, who will force them to pay

proper wages.

This is normal. It exists in Germany,

and in the United States,

it exists in France, in all oil-producing

countries like Norway—it is normal.

Let them pay taxes, let them pay decent wages,

and we will be richer from our natural-resource

wealth. According to this plan, I need

a lot of money, including for these

wonderful people standing over there,

guarding us. I open the budget of the

Russian Federation and I see that we spend

2.5 trillion rubles on them.

But at the same time, take any

police officer standing here right now,

and he’s probably muttering to himself, “Damn

it, why did you come here?

I’m already freezing standing here, and I’m sick of it.”

Am I right, guys? That’s what you’re thinking.

Not “damn Navalny”—damn Putin

made you come here. That’s the first thing. And

made you stand guard for no reason. But these

gigantic sums of money

allocated in the budget for law enforcement

simply are not working at all right now.

Dear police officers, if I’m wrong right now,

then don’t make a sound for me

ever. But if I’m right, then please

just acknowledge it—Navalny is right.

Go up to any operative and

ask him about his life, and he will tell you

that he bought paper for the fax machine

with his own money. Right? You’ll say

that’s true.

He has to buy it with his own money. Or

take some investigator handling a murder case—

getting an apartment on a rank-and-file salary

is impossible, right? Every

district officer, every operative, every

investigator spends 70 percent of his

time filling out

useless paperwork. Right? That’s how the system

is set up, and they all know it.

So it turns out that we spend trillions

and get what in return? I will change this system so

that these people are actually engaged in fighting

corruption, engaged in fighting

crime. As I understand it, here

this problem is quite acute, right?

There is crime in Kemerovo Region,

and plenty of it. And we want these people not to

freeze here on a Saturday for no reason,

but to work.

And for that, we will pay them decent

salaries. Agreed? It’s a simple and

elementary approach. Why the hell drag the entire

police force out here? Why?

Why be afraid of me at night? Do you really feel that

there is something so frightening about me?

It’s pointless—completely pointless. And

let these words stand as the description of it.

the attitude toward authority in the law enforcement

system: they need the police so that it

protects them, while we need a police force that

will protect the people, right? That is why

dear police officers, colonels, captains, and

majors, and rank-and-file officers, remember the surname of your

candidate in this election

let’s tell the police the candidate’s surname:

Navalny. Guys, vote for me.

[applause]

Look, are you still ready to stand here for a while

longer? It’s cold — you haven’t frozen, have you?

Tell me, please: say there is a person

who receives some money, a salary,

gets paid, and then once a month someone

comes and takes away 70 percent

of that salary. The question is: can this person

ever become prosperous? It’s basically a child’s

question — what kind of nonsense is that? Obviously,

he cannot get rich if they keep taking away

his money. So then, can

your region become prosperous if your money is being collected

from you? After all, these are your taxes, you

pay them whenever you buy gasoline, pay excise taxes,

pay there, and now because of the Yarovaya package (a set of Russian anti-terror laws), there will be

another tax — you paid that tax, you paid

VAT, you paid personal income tax, you paid the tax on

mineral extraction — you paid all of it.

This is your money, and right now Moscow is

taking it away from you. I myself am in Moscow, and I am for the prosperity

of my own city, but you must admit

it is an absurd situation when Moscow spends

more on New Year’s holiday lighting than

your city’s entire annual budget. But is that

normal? No, it is not normal, it is complete

nonsense, and the whole country is crying out,

for heaven’s sake, stop robbing us,

leave us at least some of our money. I want to become

president in order to turn all of this

right side up. It is only natural that

we must fund the army, yes, we

must fund foreign policy, but

it is impossible to take everything. That is why I promise

that I will return a significant part of your

money and your powers. Regions and cities

will be able to develop because we will leave the money

here. If that does not happen,

then no matter how many government

meetings are held about regional disparities, they

of course have exceptions, but as for

how to develop a region, the answer is simple: money —

give them money. And by the way, they got

a road.

Leave the money here. That house next to

the five-story building — there are still two-story houses,

still there,

the barracks are still there, the barracks are still there.

And tell me, please, what about the program

for housing stock renovation here — do you have anything like it?

No, you do not. And yet Moscow is spending 3

trillion rubles on relocating people from buildings where

people do not even want to be relocated. But that

is absurd. This cannot be how things are organized. And one

more thing — now I will move on to

answering questions. I still have before me

the question of where to get the money — the country

needs money. We have already calculated it: from

the police budget, taxes on

oligarchs, fighting corruption — all of that will bring

additional revenue. Vova Putin (a familiar form of Vladimir) has all sorts of

things — I completely agree, completely

agree, he has plenty of them.

Besides the fact that Putin likes dragging

things to himself — as is known, his associate became

the youngest billionaire in Russia —

Putin also likes helping other countries.

Noble, right? But the question is: why?

I just want to say now — I know that I

differ greatly from the other candidates

in this, but this is my clear position on

the matter: since you do not

support it, do you want to pay money

for foreign aid?

Do you want to pay money for forgiving

Cuba’s debts? Do you want, at the expense of your

roads, to build roads in Palmyra (in Syria)? And someone

shouted, yes, fine, one person, a young

man — all right, send him to Palmyra. But

let’s arrange it so that if the majority

is against it, then it is against it. And when I look at

this, I simply do not understand at all what

is happening, I do not understand what is happening. But

connecting to gas supplies —

I ask: raise your hands, who here has

gas connected at their dacha (country house)?

How much does it cost to connect to gas? It is

basically impossible — nothing is gasified,

nothing is gasified.

And meanwhile Putin allocates 200

billion rubles for gasification

of Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan — while here, in our own

country, they cannot gasify this place. Therefore I

am making a clear campaign promise:

President Alexei Navalny will stop

forgiving debts. That is it: no money means no

money — we cannot help you.

At some previous rally, I even

came up with a really great, really great

formula for how I will refuse.

Suppose — look, recently

the president of Sudan came, and Putin

promised him money too — you saw it on television.

But I thought: what if I were in that situation?

I am sitting there, the president of Sudan is sitting there, and he says to me,

“Alexei Navalny,”

“give us...” What should I answer? You cannot

just say no — diplomacy is diplomacy, you cannot

say no.

I came up with it, I came up with it. I will explain to you what

I will do.

Hold on, I cannot help saying this.

I will tell him, roughly speaking, this is what I’ll say:

I will say to him, “Mr. President of Sudan,”

“let me give you a short tour.”

And where will I take him?

To Novokuznetsk. I will take him past your

barracks, I will drive him along these roads, and then...

So, five minutes later, the president of Sudan...

...says, “Alexei, could you spare some money?”

“We need money. Can you chip in? I need money.”

There’s simply no such trashy chaos even in Sudan.

That’s it: first our citizens, then

everyone else. Agreed? The obvious thing is this:

it’s right there on the surface. Look, guys, we have

everything needed for the country to live

normally. We have money,

we have educated people, we have natural resources. It’s the most

resource-rich country. We love to say

that it’s the richest country in the world

in terms of potential.

But in practice, we live in... So what is

the main problem? And this is the main problem

of my election campaign. My main

enemy is not Putin, and it’s not corruption. I know

how to defeat corruption. Medvedev—

Medvedev, you see, isn’t the enemy. So who is

the main enemy? It’s not Putin. Send us...

It’s not Alisher Usmanov either—he’ll just come back with

his yacht and pay taxes.

The main thing—look, so that you understand, so that

you understand who the main enemy is—raise your hands,

those of you who have ever tried to persuade friends and

acquaintances to support us in the fight against corruption,

showed them our films, our investigations,

many of you, yes, almost everyone. Raise your hands, those who

have heard my favorite phrase in response: “Well,”

“all right, so what? They’ve already stolen plenty,”

“they’re going to keep stealing anyway.”

Now that—this isn’t just a stupid phrase, it’s a

hateful phrase. Whenever someone

utters it, somewhere in the world there is born

one little Vladimir Putin.

And the big Vladimir Putin can feel it

when someone says that phrase, and he shouts:

“Diego, Dima, come here—we’ve locked in another

billion, they’ve allowed us to.” Our main

problem is not believing in ourselves.

Our main problem is that you yourselves have all

been convinced—the authorities have convinced us—that we

will never live normally, that

in Russia it is somehow ordained that people must live badly. I very

often talk to people, and when I’m speaking with someone,

trying to persuade them, in the end they tell me:

“Well, Lyosha (diminutive of Alexei),”

“you said everything right, but there’s one thing you don’t

understand, one thing you just don’t get:”

“this is Russia.”

But I am from this Russia, I am part of this Russia, I

do not understand, and I refuse to understand, why

we are doomed to poverty. Where is that written?

Is it written across the sky in huge letters?

That a nurse’s salary in Novokuznetsk

must be 11,000 forever and ever? No,

it is written nowhere. It is not

predetermined. Our problem is that

we have simply resigned ourselves, that we think

and say: Russia is for

the sad.

Russia is for the poor. Let’s wait.

Let’s just...

Anyway, everything will be bad. This one is bad,

that one is bad,

and nothing good will ever happen. But I know

that everything can be changed. Sooner or later there must

be a normal, honest

president. I will be that president. Guys, if you support me,

we will change everything and build

the Russia of the future, if we believe in ourselves.

Thank you very much, thank you. As promised,

I’m ready to answer questions.

Good ones, bad ones, critical ones, flattering ones—any kind.