Conversation with a politician. Part 2

Part 2. The Year of the Dragon

G.Ch.: In this part, let's change the format of the conversation. We'll exchange views on what the day (that is, the year) coming to us has in store. Let's compare our expectations regarding the further course of events?

I am not a politician, it's not my job to develop strategies and propose answers to the question "What to do?". The other thing is guessing "What will happen?". This is quite in the writer's realm.

I think that in 2012 Moscow (and Russia in general) will become the most interesting and important place on Earth. Just as a quarter of a century ago, during Perestroika, the eyes of the world will be turned here. The struggle of the awakened civil society against the authoritarian regime will be a captivating spectacle.

Two Russias will clash — "open" and "closed", democratic and "arrestocratic".

We will entirely use our natural weapon — openness, appeal to reason and integrity, a cheerful confidence in our own righteousness; the opposing side will also fight with whatever they know: provocations, special operations, underhanded maneuvers and cheating.

We will push forward, they will retreat.

If Putin knew history, he would use the ancient wise rule: "If you can't stop the process — lead it." Only then does a ruler have a chance to stay afloat — though not in the same conditions as before. However I doubt that the "national leader" has the adequacy and courage for such a flip.

Probably, he will, maintaining the pose of a real macho, constantly compromise something. He will start with trifles — for example, hand over the switchman Churov. He will look: has the people not calmed? Ah, no? Then he will release Khodorkovsky. What, they still make noise? And I will promise to grant amnesty to two hundred thousand entrepreneurs, victims of raider attacks and corrupt courts. What, is that not enough for you?

He will be late all the time. Meanwhile, the protest movement will grow, spread across the country, take organized forms (this is already beginning). In addition to rallies and marches, new, unprecedented forms of civil protest will appear. And all blows will fall exclusively on Vladimir Putin, for he is simultaneously the strongest and the most vulnerable point of the regime.

The remainder of winter will pass under the slogan "Let's roll Putin", and by March 4 this movement will reach its apex.

Only scraps will remain of Putin's rating. Victory in the first round is absolutely excluded. Putin's main opponent will be the candidate who clearly and unambiguously declares: "Choose me — I will immediately dissolve the Duma and announce new elections." In the second round, Putin will have no chances against such a candidate. Widespread ballot-stuffing with vote-counting will be impossible, because millions of wary eyes will monitor the election commissions. And what's the point of cheating? It is impossible to govern a country that does not want you. It is impossible to live and work in the capital that hates and despises you. No matter how many times you declare yourself president — you will not hold on.

Exactly so, I think, that's how it will all happen.

Theoretically, of course, it's possible that Putin will surprise everyone — he may promise to dissolve the Duma, carry out reforms, release all "prisoners" and more, and more. But even if he promises, it's not certain that people will believe him.

And now tell me, to what extent do my predictions align with yours?

A.N.: I think you have a too romantic notion of our revolutionary future. Putin knows history well, and the rule 'Lead the process to slow it down' has always been his faithful aid in domestic politics.

I am convinced that the Kremlin's main strategy in the coming months will be neutralizing protest moods through traditional deceit and bribery.

Instead of real political reform, we will be offered a system in which it will be comfortable for professional political activists to exist, and then we will need to create three competing liberal groups, a couple of nationalist groups, a couple of left-wing groups. Each micro-leader will be promised money, support, and a bit of "access to television", hinting that he is the real promising liberal (nationalist), while the others are sham.

All this political fuss will be actively covered by the press under the guise of "what a nightmare, a gathering of chatterers. The worst signs of the 90s have returned to life".

We must soberly understand that for Putin and the Kremlin crooks the task of presenting a "revived civil society" as a bunch of quarrelsome, greedy maniacs is the number 1 issue in political survival.

We must be prepared that the work ahead will be largely tedious and nerve-wracking. Cheerful creativity risks turning into routine. Eager meetings into quarrels.

Not that I spread fear — I am simply preparing everyone to "be calm and stubborn", as sung in a famous song. Then everything will work out.

I'm sure we'll manage.

I completely agree with the key message: we will advance, they will retreat.

The belief that any problem can be solved with "deceptions" will, most likely, greatly harm the Kremlin. Offering one fabrication after another, they will seriously irritate people and ensure a flow of new participants into mass protests.

I'm not at all sure that they are ready to "give up" Churov and, even more, release Khodorkovsky.

They will drag this crook Churov to the end, realizing that every appearance of him on screen drives millions of people crazy and delegitimizes the electoral process.

That is, it will be exactly as in the joke: Kremlin mice cried, pricked themselves, but kept on eating cactus.

All because they see the solution not in removing Churov, but in bribing some opposition figure or installing a web camera in his bathroom with a live broadcast on LifeNews with the headline "And see what the opposition is doing".

All available and familiar authorities mechanisms for raising (maintaining) their popularity will work for us, i.e., to reduce this popularity. Every move will worsen the situation. Of course, there are some strong things in reserve, like starting a war with someone, but now there is no one to fight with.

Real large-scale anti-corruption processes could improve the situation, but arrest the Rotenbergs or Kovalchuks? Not really, Putin would rather start a war.

I have said many times and continue to assert: Putin's power was based not on some "siloviki", but on real support of the population.

In 12 years at the helm he burned through it, exchanged for a comfortable existence, billions of dollars for his friends. He remains a popular politician, but not a national leader. With a rating of 40%, he cannot claim such a grand title.

The movement "Let's roll Putin" (I completely agree — this is the main task, the rest is resource dispersal) should reduce his rating to 30% nationwide and 15-25% in the largest cities, thus destroying the real base of his support.

The target is quite achievable, even considering official results of United Russia in large cities.

We have mechanisms for this, activists too — there are one hundred thousand on the square, we need to improve the infrastructure of agitation and the creativity/persuasion of its delivery.

The most important thing — we won't have to lie. By telling dry and truthful facts about Putin, his billionaires friends, about the FSB generals, whose children suddenly all became state bankers, we will achieve our goal.

The slogan "United Russia — the party of Crooks and Thieves" came to life not due to some technology, but because it is true.

And further our Python Kaa will face a choice: credible elections with a humiliating "unmanly" second round or victory in the first round with the "wizard Churov", cast out from polling stations by observers (which will be an order of magnitude larger), video recordings of falsifications, etc.

It seems this will be the second option and on March 5 the country will have a president not recognized by millions of citizens. A president whose power rests only on fake commission protocols. Such a president will not stand for long.

I see only one way out for Putin: to stop claiming absolute monarchy. Better to have a not-so-simple coalition government formed by the Duma, elected after real political reform, than a rock crashing through the office window.

Poll #1808505 Predicting the Future

Open: Public, detailed results visible: Public. Participants: 6389

How will the authorities behave in 2012?

Show answers

Putin will win honestly in the first round — 488 (7.3%)

Putin will win dishonestly in the first round — 2798 (42.1%)

Putin will win honestly in the second round — 900 (13.6%)

Putin will win dishonestly in the second round — 1660 (25.0%)

Putin will lose — 262 (3.9%)

The elections will be sabotaged or postponed — 533 (8.0%)

G.Ch.: Yes, I am referring to the same thing. It is just that I believe events will unfold more rapidly, and the regime will collapse sooner than you anticipate. The presidential campaign will serve as a powerful catalyst, which I am certain Putin is already extremely unhappy about. I would like to ask what you think about the following hotly debated issue: could Putin, realizing that he is losing ground, resort to repressive measures? It seems to me that he does not have sufficient resources for this and that such a turn of events would only shift the protest from a peaceful phase to a revolutionary one. A Great Terror is impossible in modern Russian reality, and a “small terror” will only add fuel to the fire. Is that right?

A.N.: The thing about ineffective regimes is that they're ineffective at everything. Including repression. Sure, they can make up criminal cases and lock up any specific person for as long as they want. Ten people. They can hire football fans to organize an attack, as they did in the past. But repression against relatively large groups of people is unlikely — it is not so easy to coordinate and administer. It's not like putting on a show on Channel One. Repressive measures require the involvement of a large number of repressors with a certain motivation. The system is needed, but it does not exist. Even in the case of Khodorkovsky's second trial, in which all available resources were thrown at it, we saw how unconvincing it looked and how many blunders were made. It all ended in a spectacular failure when the court clerk publicly stated that the decision had been “handed down from above.”

Such heavy-handed (and impossible to avoid) actions against large numbers of people will indeed lead to an escalation of protest, and an aggressive one at that. This is not a speculative assumption — we are seeing something similar in Dagestan and Ingushetia. And speaking of the possibility of repression, let us once again recall Brzezinski's phrase, which is used to scare children in Russia: there is $500 billion belonging to the Russian elite in American banks. You figure it out, whose elite is it — ours or yours? Who will make decisions about repression? Finnish citizen Gennady Timchenko, a Russian oil trader? British billionaires Abramovich and Usmanov? It is unlikely that they will be enthusiastic about the idea of suppressing dissent if it jeopardizes their ability to enjoy coffee in wonderful Italian restaurants and sail on the Pelorus. The American elite cannot organize repression in Russia, because then they would stop loving you in Greenwich Village and Belgravia. If you are a crooked billionaire from Russia, they laugh at you, but they allow you to buy football teams, and if you are a crook and a murderer, they will at least deny you a visa, and most likely send the tax authorities after you, because they know how to do that too.

Remember how Ramzan Kadyrov's horse was removed from races in the US? Well, Abramovich does not want to become Putin's horse, which is not allowed to graze on the slopes of Aspen, while political decisions in the country are made by him and those like him. Most likely, the plan of repression will consist of two traditional things: 1) attempts to legally restrict the dissemination of information on the Internet through "anti-extremist" legislation and the like; 2) allocating new suitcases of money to create a "pro-Kremlin internet" with its own opinion leaders, a role that will be taken on by well-known figures from the media. Neither the first nor the second will work, but it will annoy everyone terribly and swell the ranks of protesters.

Poll #1808506 Will there be repression? Open: Everyone, detailed results visible: Everyone. Participants: 6343 And what will they lead to? Show answers There will be no repression 795 (12.6%) There will be repression, the authorities will be able to suppress the protest movement 293 (4.6%) There will be repression, which will lead to revolution 197 (3.1%) There will be “selective repression” that will intimidate society 905 (14.3%) There will be “selective repression” that will only exacerbate the situation 4117 (65.3%)

G.Ch.: What do you think about the increasingly popular idea of creating a single election headquarters not for a particular opposition candidate, but for an "Anti-Putin Headquarters" — and entrusting it with coordinating protest actions during the election campaign? Is this realistic? Effective?

A.N.: Such a headquarters already exists, and we even attended its meeting, which took place on December 24 on Sakharov Prospekt. There were about 100,000 members of the headquarters, who gathered under openly anti-Putin slogans and were eager to spread these slogans in order to drive the leader of the Party of Crooks and Thieves out of the Kremlin. I don't think we need another headquarters, one that is more compact or professional. If there is a headquarters where the police, sanitary inspection, or fire department can come, they will come there — no doubt about it. If there are huge print runs of centrally printed propaganda materials, they will be arrested under any pretext. If there is a headquarters leader who is in charge of everything, then the leader can be arrested, intimidated, or bribed. Why take the risk? These 100,000 people are both a headquarters and an ideal propaganda machine, capable of conveying the necessary information to tens of millions of fellow citizens in a relatively short period of time. The word "propaganda" should not be used, as it has too negative a connotation, immediately bringing to mind Channel One. Our task is greatly simplified because we don't have to say anything but the truth. You could call it the "Truth Machine" — it sounds ominous, let the Kremlin lackeys fear it.

Each member of this machine, which numbers in the thousands, must talk to a dozen acquaintances, send emails, and post information on social media. Nothing else is needed. Gunvor and Ramzan Kadyrov; Putin's privatization in the interests of Abramovich and the real estate holdings of officials in London; the theft from Gazprom and the failure of national projects — these are the main achievements of Putin's 12 years in power, and they speak for themselves to voters. We must simply impartially disseminate the facts. I am sure that there are enough creative people among us who can come up with the right ways to present information and safe, decentralized, and mass methods of communicating it. By the way, there is no need to focus on Putin. "Anti-Putin Headquarters" is wrong. It should be "Anti-Crook and Thief Headquarters." Putin is the leader of a gang, and now he is trying to distance himself from the political form of the crooks' organization, the United Russia party, but we will not let him do so. The Party of Crooks and Thieves has nominated its candidate for president — the chief crook and thief. We are fighting not only this thief in law, but also his nasty henchmen. This is how we should approach this, and this is how voters will approach it.

Poll #1808507 Prospects for the presidential election Open: To everyone, detailed results visible: To everyone. Participants: 6675 What will happen? Show answers Putin will win fairly in the first round 488 (7.3%) Putin will win unfairly in the first round 2798 (42.1%) Putin will win fairly in the second round 900 (13.6%) Putin will win unfairly in the second round 1660 (25.0%) Putin will lose 262 (3.9%) The elections will be disrupted or postponed 533 (8.0%)

G.Ch.: One way or another, the Year of the Dragon will not just be extraordinary, it will be historic. This is clear. In the third and final part of our dialogue, let's talk about what all this is for. Not about "we will destroy the world of violence to its foundations," but about "then": "we will build our new world." What kind of world? To what extent do our views on a "properly organized" Russia coincide? And most importantly, let's see what the range of opinions on this subject is among our readers.