The show “Elections to the Coordinating Council — this is a story we made ourselves.” Part 2

We continue our conversation with members

of the Opposition Coordination Council, whose

names became known here today.

Of course, not all of them are present.

There are 45 members of the Coordination Council, and

somehow their number is gradually shrinking, and

we also hope that joining the

conversation will be candidates for the Coordination

Council who did not make it through in this election.

But God willing, these will not be the last

elections. Friends, I think those of you who have

Twitter—those who have Twitter accounts and managed

to log onto this resource we all love so much after 9:00 p.m.

have already noticed

what, uh, ordinary Russian

citizens are writing about the election to the Coordination

Council. They write: oh, well, this is all

completely predictable. Yes, it is clear that the first thing

the members of the Coordination

Council will hear is a collective cry: you do not even

represent us. Oh, this is awful. Who

are these people? Where did they come from? What kind of

election is this? So this is, this is, and this is your

opposition, and this is your protest movement?

No, we are not that kind of protest movement, we do not

want to sit next to a protest movement

like that. And besides, among yourselves

you are all

political activists of different

stripes.

These are your allies, not your opponents, but

nevertheless, let us talk about

how viable this

arrangement seems to you,

and how, in this lineup, the members of the

Coordination Council can avoid

falling out with one another. The danger is, is it a dictatorship

of the liberals? Yes, in the CC the most stable

composition of the CC is one where you are taking on

much more, so to speak. No, I was simply

expressing my opinion, which I have the right to do.

I believe the most constructive composition of the CC is

when no single curia (electoral group) has

a dominant advantage. Then, whether we like it or not,

we will have to look for points

of common ground. The composition is already

clear now, yes. It is what it is at the moment.

Ideally, we should live with it

for at least a year. So how do we find a balance of forces?

How do we avoid starting to throw

chairs at each other, how do we avoid

ending up in bitter quarrels over common decisions? Yes,

I hope we will

be spared that. No, I am a peaceful person, I am not

going to fight, but the point is that

of course some kind of consensus is needed—say,

23 votes, for example. That is, we need

to develop some effective mechanism

for making decisions so that, after all,

the liberal majority does not crush everyone

with its sheer weight, because it is clear

that in this election, basically,

Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station) and your channel were the main platforms, that is clear, yes, but

nevertheless, this is always how it is in the world:

wherever anything happens, Echo of

Moscow stirs things up. It may all be for the best, but nevertheless

they are terribly far from the people. Yes, we would still like

the balance of forces in the CC to reflect

the natural state of forces in society, yes,

where it is clear that both the left and

the nationalists are far more numerous than they are

represented in the CC, and this should be

taken into account. I think a normal mechanism is that

decisions should be adopted by two-thirds

of the votes. If two-thirds of the votes are not reached, we

put it to a referendum, again

among those people who were

verified. After all, we could hold referendums at least every month

on the main

issues. I think that would be the right

decision. Thank you, Vladimir Mirzoyev.

You are welcome. Well then, judging by what, judging by

the speech we have just heard, what is needed is

a very serious program

of enlightenment—first and foremost for certain

members of the CC, not to mention the population in

the regions, and so on. I am in favor

of the idea that

the council should develop a very serious

program involving television, cinema, and theater

that would engage in this educational

work. I think this

will somehow help

diversify both the content of rallies and

the understanding of engaged listeners of what is happening

not only in the council itself but in general with

the opposition movement. I think that without

such an educational

program it is impossible to move forward.

Without creating a cultural environment in the regions

and

in cities such as

St. Petersburg

which, as it happens, yes,

somehow are sinking into the

abyss

of provincialism—the Coordination

Council must focus precisely on creating a cultural en-

Of course. Because today one cannot, cannot

separate politics from

culture. It is a very

artificial, a very artificial

boundary in many ways, in many ways.

The fact that our political reality, or

pseudo-political reality, has broken away from the life of

culture has in many ways demoralized it.

We are not trying to seize the microphone, it is not

working properly. I want to respond

to two questions that were raised

by you, Yuri, and by Mr. Bondari here.

The first question is that you

do not even represent us. Yes, that is exactly it.

Yaroslavna's lament (a reference to a famous lament in medieval Russian literature) that is echoing across

the internet—well, in fact, we are not claiming

unlike the Churov-style State Duma (a reference to Vladimir Churov, the controversial former head of Russia's election commission),

to represent all of Russia

or all public opinion in Russia. We

represent exactly those people who

took part in the voting, that is,

precisely those 97,000 or so people who

registered, and the 82,000 people

who actually voted. We

represent the interests of exactly these people

—the vanguard of the protest movement, who

came out to Bolotnaya Square

and Sakharov Avenue, and to various rallies in the regions.

These are the people whose interests we

have undertaken to represent, and who

delegated authority to us so that we could

represent those interests. So here,

it seems to me everything is obvious and clear.

And as for the dominant

position of the liberals there—well, let's be

honest with each other: that's simply how it turned out.

The core participants in the protest demonstrations

consist, as it happens, of people with liberal

democratic views. At each of the

rallies, sociological

surveys were conducted, and each time around 50 to 55%

turned out to be people with liberal

democratic views. Well, basically,

yes, the voting results

essentially reflected that sociology. Therefore I

think we should organize our work

in such a way

that everything corresponds to the principles

of democracy.

And as for

—I mean, of course it is clear that

no one is going to forbid anyone from going

to the Russian March (an annual nationalist rally in Russia). But if someone there starts

making it their goal to secure mandatory

support for the Russian March from the

Coordination Council, then that will probably

provoke resistance. Therefore I

would like to propose in advance—today is the first day that the

Coordination Council has been elected—that we

focus on developing those

programmatic points that most definitely

unite us, because splitting

and dividing us is what our enemies will do, and we should not

give in

to that.

Ivan

Mironov: the most dangerous thing we must avoid

is when we turn very serious

key issues—such as the genocide of the Russian

people, the heroin war unleashed

against the nation, the replacement of the indigenous

population by an Asian element, yes, and

the formation of this new

citizenship, yes, with completely foreign faces,

with a foreign nationality that speaks

poor Russian—if we are going to, uh, if we are going to

turn this into empty theater.

We can talk all we want about how not to

quarrel with one another as members

of the Coordination Council. We need to define

a strategic direction and not

talk it to death. I will speak as someone who was forced

to solve this problem in practice

back in that early protest movement,

since I was on the editorial

commission and worked, excuse me, with Lev

Ponomaryov. That will make things clear to many.

So, I can say

the following: in order not to

get bogged down in wording, because I

know for certain that the same ideas,

expressed in different language, can turn out to be

unacceptable to two-thirds

of those present, or on the other hand

absolutely acceptable to the majority. I,

for example, am sure that what

has just been said is in fact

—let's take, say, the same topic

of migrants. Yes, indeed—for example, who

among us is in favor of Putin bringing in new

voters for United Russia? I think

no one is. So in this respect,

let's say, what is very important, I would say,

is correctness, a willingness, so to speak,

to hear one another, and a certain kind of, I would

say, editorial work. So,

second,

what will help us avoid quarreling?

Exactly right: focusing on what

unites us. What unites us first

and foremost is a common task: the democratization

of the country's political system. We are absolutely all

—why are we even here, after all?

We are here because we support this. Therefore, in this

respect, by the way, there is no need to think that

any of us is against it. If someone

were against it, they would most likely be welcomed

with open arms elsewhere. Well then, and actually

speaking,

last but not

least in importance: let's really

trust one another a little more. We are too

different for this to happen

by itself, and therefore it requires a certain

effort. Let's really

have a little more

faith in one another. I had a whole series of proposals,

for example, I very much wanted

—of course, in terms of strengthening trust—

to marry off Bandari,

but he's already married, he's already

married, I beg your pardon. Mikhail

Shats: for the Coordination Council not to

fall out immediately, I realized at once that we

have quite a year ahead of us—or however long it will be.

there, fate certainly won't leave us bored

yes, we definitely won't be bored, I can

say that despite the number

of words he speaks, if you listen closely to

them and pick out certain themes that

interest me, I'm sure—I, for example, at

those debates heard what I had wanted and was

glad to hear, for example

a position on judicial reform, and so

on. Mr. Bandari says this too

as, in fact, Mr.

Bondarik says—that basically what we heard today

was this. That is, I mean that each of

us surely has common

positions that we need to listen to clearly and

carefully, and I, for example,

am ready not to

say, well, you're this or that, you're such-and-such, you have

all that culture-schmulture, and you

have people being cut down and killed there. In general, that really is not

the best

path. If the Coordination Council manages

to concentrate on the things that

unite all participants, on which

constructive dialogue is possible, then thank

heaven, everything will work out. We

continue. The last question for general

discussion, and I ask everyone, if possible,

to be brief

in speaking, especially those people who

rarely took

the floor today. A forecast for the next 2–3

years: what will happen in the country? How will

the situation develop? What role in this

will the Coordination Council play?

Mikhail Gelfand

please. I don't know

Thank you, Vladimir Tur

actually, the night is darkest before

dawn. I believe that we—I believe

that the night is darkest before dawn, and

that two very difficult years await us

ahead. And catastrophe theory suggests

that things always break unexpectedly, all at once

right up until the very second—one second before

the catastrophe, nothing had happened, and then everything

begins

to fall apart, the system to pass into oblivion, and the new

system to seize the reins that will

slip from these hands. In this respect, I

want to say a huge thank-you to a person

who is absent here now, namely

Leonid Volkov, for all

his shortcomings

of the elections that have just taken place. Clearly

elections are never ideal

but this was a step forward. This step forward consists

not in the personal makeup of the current

Coordination Council, but in the fact that

an institution has been created, certain

rules, a certain

mechanism that can be used going forward

A question was raised here about how to work with

the regions: we need to connect our strong

points with the regime's problem areas

So, there is a system that makes it possible

to hold elections. Yes, let's hold these elections

to coordination councils in

the regions

this will bring in new participants and new

activists, and create new problems for

the political regime locally. In general,

this voting mechanism

should be used as often as possible. But not

to renew the council, rather to set

new tasks and to find out what people actually

think about this. Thank you

Mikhail. Still, where is all this

heading? Well, I really don't

know

I agree with the speaker: for two years it will be awful

everything will end well, but Putin still has time to

ruin many lives and spill a lot of blood, of course

Yes, and I think we need to prepare for the worst in

that sense. Dmitry

Bykov: I have a fairly firm

conviction that over the next

year and a half to two years at most, the atmosphere

will indeed keep thickening; then, in all

likelihood, there will be some kind of serious

external shock. Either the regime, wanting

to strengthen itself, will get into a big or small

victorious war, or a crisis will occur

or the Olympics will finish off the budget. Well, something

of that sort will happen. But what really matters

is what comes after these two or three

years, and here I will say something very

unexpected

Russia is not made up of fans of left-wing ideas

it is not made up of fans of 'Russia for Russians'

it is not made up of

liberals. Russia is made up of people in

whom civic consciousness is awakening

and our task consists only in making sure

that this civic consciousness

awakens, and ideally in 2–3 years

the Coordination Council will no longer be needed. That

is something I would drink to, if only

there were something to drink

Ksenia Sobchak

please. Well, you know, I think that

very difficult years lie ahead of us

I don't know whether it will be 2 years or 3 years

what matters is how we get through this time

how decently we manage to live through

this period, with what losses, and most importantly, with what

kind of

result. It seems to me that

it is obvious that only the growth of protest

the increase in the number of people who will

come out with these ideas

can change the situation—whether immediately

or in a year, or two, or three

The question is that we are facing a difficult

choice: on the one hand, we need to build up

the protest should engage in public education in

many areas, including through

culture, through various media resources

through campaigning, through rallies. But on the other

hand, we must not turn this into something

ordinary. Because if we

really go out too often, on every

occasion, gathering people in the streets, I am very

afraid that unfortunately our enemies will be able

to present this as our defeat. And unfortunately,

yes, to gather even more people—I believe

that we need to do everything possible so that we

carry out very professionally

planned actions—perhaps not very frequent, but

very large-scale ones—so that we can live through

these next few years, when the clouds are clearly gathering,

obviously.

with dignity, and so that in 3

years we do not find ourselves in a situation where we

once again have nothing to offer, when

we have failed to write a program for real

political reform, when we have failed

to do certain important and substantial

things. It is important that in a year, in

two years, in three years, we come forward with a concrete

program of action and get through this.

Just one small remark.

As many times as this is

said, that many times I will try

to jump in and remind everyone of

this: we cannot hold any

mass actions. It is the mass actions that can

carry us

forward, in fact. The initiative comes from the

other

side.

I would say it is form-generating, because

the content is formed apart from us, and our

task is to keep track of it, of this

content. It seems to me this is extremely

important. We should have no illusions, and so

to speak, I would say

we should not indulge in organizational arrogance

either, and experience clearly teaches us that. Thank you.

Akim.

[inaudible]

You know, like in forty-one (1941, the first year of the Soviet-German war),

when they marched into battle from Red Square, when

the fascists stood near Moscow, and I know that

we will win, because God is with us. Morning

is wiser than evening—I am sure of it. Everything

will be fine. Mikhail Shats,

please. You know,

I will gladly repeat Mikhail’s words,

because what these past weeks have taught me

when

the flat tax scale was changing and

the Ministry of Internal Affairs was [inaudible]

in Dagestan—in general, I really like that

quite sincere people have gathered here

to speak the truth.

And I will tell you honestly: I do not know what

will happen in the next 2

years, but what has already happened makes one

think about

bad things.

Whether the clouds are gathering or not gathering,

we have only one country. We have nowhere to go,

and we do not want to go anywhere. And some people do not even

have permission to leave—don’t speak for everyone.

So,

we simply know that this regime

is doomed, because it hates its own

citizens; it fights against those citizens,

and it imprisons the most active among them.

Therefore, here

and whether

it takes another month and everything collapses, or

33 years and only then we achieve some kind of

victory—but sooner or later, we of course

will win, because this is our country.

Thank you. I

must apologize to the candidates

for the Coordinating Council who

came here despite the late hour, and

I must admit that, all in all, we

perhaps did not expect such an influx of

people.

And I am afraid that we

do not have enough time for

everyone to speak, but let us

try taking questions for the candidates, questions

for the members of the Coordinating Council.

Please.

Cherva Chernyshova, thank you.

Thank you very much. The microphone, please.

The other microphone—that one is not switched on.

It works, yes, all good. And my suggestion is this:

complete openness in the work

of the Coordinating Council. And besides, well,

everyone should be informed about what took place,

the voters, that is. And besides, in our case

for example, as a municipal deputy,

there are provisions in our

municipal assembly that if someone misses

three municipal assembly meetings without

a valid reason, that person may be

removed from the municipal deputies. So

I propose that you introduce something like that,

so that people do not miss Coordinating Council meetings and

report back to their voters on what they

are doing.

[inaudible]

Please.

Hello. My name is Vladimir Malyshev, I am

a civic activist. I am probably one of the

most satisfied candidates, because

I received 910 votes. In fact,

despite everything, I am satisfied with the campaign.

But I would like to say this: just now I

listened to people, and there is something I do not like in

this whole story. Yes, I have not been in the protest movement for very

long, and there is one thing I do not like: everyone

says, for example, elections, we recommend

candidates, we do this or that—but for me

for example, it is completely unimportant who will be the

candidate. What interests me is that these

elections should be fair, first of all, that they should be

tools of influence need to be devised so that they

couldn't cheat us; we can nominate candidates

a thousand times over, yes, but they

will just bluntly... No, hold on a second.

the observer movement mechanism

has worked fairly well. But as you can see,

these are all just tools, yes; that is, there wasn't

a single person there who did this who was punished.

So we need to come up with some way

to punish them, some kind of lists, that sort of thing.

That's much more important. And one more thing I'd really

like to say: a great many people, yes,

civil activists, unfortunately, did not take part in

these votes, and in that I, for example,

disagree with them, yes, and I don't

support that, because they say

it's a Moscow тусовка (clique/crowd), and all the rest of it.

I also disagree with them, because

these are all worthy people, all very good people, and I

am in favor, but as a civic

activist I continue to act regardless

of the Coordination Council; that is,

it's not going anywhere. So, I have a question

for Mr. Katz. That is, I, as a

civic activist—well, as I said, I

continue to carry out my own actions, and right now I, I

am from St. Petersburg; it's my hometown.

So, as for what's happening there now,

what's going on there, yes—well, the governor,

is a complete boor, you've probably even heard,

and so I've decided to announce a campaign,

that is, to think it through from scratch. Yes, we have

tools, of course; we're waiting for somewhere

for the elections to be announced there, and then we'll start

doing something. But right now, out of nowhere,

I want to organize, so to speak,

the public in St. Petersburg, yes, and raise the issue of

electing a new governor—that is, to start

completely from scratch. That is, I kind of

have a slogan, yes, a slogan for us. I'm starting:

Let's make Ksenia Sobchak governor

of St. Petersburg. So, Mr. Katz,

how are you prepared to help? Is it possible—

No, we'll ask about Sobchak later,

when it's decided how to achieve that.

Why now? I see. In fact,

I can help in many ways in elections

for city mayors, governors, or

city councils, by offering what I

can offer: a fairly detailed

and constructive program for reorganizing

the city so that it becomes

comfortable to live in. This issue is very much

on the agenda right now. As for icicles hanging from roofs,

do you have any

technology?

Everyone can see, everyone can see that, in general, those

problems that exist

do exist, and one can

propose ways to solve them, and with that

you can go into an election. To answer the question—what

was the question again? Thank you, friends.

Otherwise we'll get stuck on this topic forever.

All right, Maxim Gongalsky.

Yes, I have a short question for Alexei

Navalny. Alexei, are you planning

to

are you planning to run for

the post of mayor of Moscow in the election that

will take place in three years? Because it seems to me

that the only person who

can compete with, say,

Sobyanin is you, among the members

of the Coordination Council. Well, actually,

it seems to me that United Russia has

a different opinion on that matter, but...

Moscow... Maxim, thank you very much for your

question. The authorities' candidate can only be beaten by

a people's candidate. I believe that this

model that we tested

—namely, holding primaries in which

tens or even

hundreds of thousands of Muscovites take part—this is exactly the kind of

mechanism that should be used to

choose a people's candidate. There should

again be primaries, again debates, only

this time substantive ones on urban

problems, not just about politics, but

specifically about Katz's benches and so on and so forth,

and so on. And through such primaries we

can and must—and I am sure we will—

choose a candidate who will beat everyone.

Whom?

Whoever it is. Thank you. Katz's bench versus

Kapkov's Wi‑Fi—the coming battle in the Moscow mayoral

election.

Please. Hello, my name is l...

Nikolai. I want to congratulate those who were elected,

those who ran, and of course

the voters. And my question is this: how

do you see the mechanism for working and interacting

with those candidates who were not

elected to the Coordination

Council? By the way, I can answer that, actually.

In fact, right now, before your very

eyes, I am ready to take on representation of

the progressive bloc of Pryanikov and

Smirnov and

to voice, and voice in the

Coordination Council, everything they wish to convey to me

by means of, I don't know,

mobile communication. I trust them; I've known them

for many years. Our broadcast was not in vain: the surnames

Pryanikov—the sacred surnames Pryanikov and

Smirnov—have been spoken. But, Nikolai, this is

a very simple thing: the Coordination Council

must do some practical

things. For example, we need to raise half a million

rubles (about 5,000-6,000 USD, depending on the period) for each prisoner.

The interaction will consist of this:

I’ll call you and say, Nikolai,

start raising money together with us, and I’ll rally the others, well,

and that’s it, I’ll talk to the left-wing people and everyone else.

Nikolai, likewise, by taking part in

the formation of election commissions

with the right to cast a deciding vote—that is

interaction. That’s the kind of interaction we need.

Well, first of all, I wanted

to thank the voters who

voted for me. Vasily Kandyba, candidate.

I would like to congratulate everyone

who was elected. And here’s my question: a large

part of the people elected to the current committee

are representatives of the former organizing committee.

That’s not all that many, really.

Quite a lot. Believe me, I attended the meetings

of the organizing committee. I don’t see, uh, I don’t see here

the people who were sitting there. Everyone speaks

in very vague terms about expanding

the protest, about how we need to defend

political prisoners. Will there be

a concrete program developed that

will be published, which...

The answer is yes. There are also some other...

Besides expanding the social base of the protest, our

main task

is

of the elected Coordination Council is that in

the next elections, participation should reach, well,

a figure close to one million, and the development of

civil alternative legitimacy

is one of the strategic goals of

this whole process. It seems to me that

a very important tool for this

is the development of feedback between

the elected members of the Coordination

Council and their voters. My question is this:

who is ready to be the first to support this idea

and open a club for their voters,

to communicate with them directly?

Frankly, I don’t really understand why

there’s a need to open a club if practically everyone

already has—first of all—Democratia 2 (an online platform),

and secondly, everyone has blogs there,

social media accounts, accounts on

social networks. Denis, every day I

spend about, well, 40 minutes

replying to messages that come in

through social networks, on Twitter—people

send them there. It seems to me that in this respect

some additional mechanisms—well, I

don’t know, maybe they are needed, but at least

for me, they don’t seem especially necessary.

All the social networks, by the way, were very helpful

during the election campaign, so

creating some special clubs

and piling things on doesn’t seem effective to me.

It’s just—like a constituency office, and that’s what it

will all end up as: constituency offices.

Vadim Korovin

please.

Vadim Korovin speaking. Excuse me, a question for

Rustem Adagamov, a person who did not

take part in the debates. There are also several

other people who did not take part in the debates.

What will your first initiative in

the Coordination Council

What will your first initiative in the Coordination

Council be? Now, come...

there, because I think—sorry, I’m forced

to withdraw this question because Rustem

asked... he came here.

All right, Adagamov then, come in somewhere into

the light...

to gather together first of all. I think that this

won’t be easy, because to gather

45 people, as I understand it, it will require

in general

applying

rather considerable

effort. My first initiative, I

think—Sergei Smirnov. I want to address

those who were elected, yes, to the

Coordination Council, and those who

accordingly were not elected. This

week, court hearings begin on preventive measures

for the prisoners in the Bolotnaya case (the criminal case tied to the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protest in Moscow).

I urge everyone to attend these hearings actively.

These people really need support.

The hearings start this very week, that’s all

from me.

Please, you go ahead.

Please. Grigory Kotskiy. First of all,

I want to congratulate everyone. It seems to me that all of us—

both those who were elected and those who did not make it

into the Coordination Council—are solving one common

task for our society, namely

establishing dialogue within society. People

are bad at talking to one another, and even

the fact that there were some

arguments here today—we are setting an example for the whole country.

Representing different groups in society,

different in education, different in

background, in income level, we are learning

to talk to one another and setting an example for the

rest of the country. This is very important. And I have

a wish for those who were elected: do not

forget about involving

those opposing the education law that is trying

to break the entire system of school and

higher education in the country. Thank you.

Please, your colleague.

Alexander from SRK. I also, of course, want to congratulate everyone

and say thank you to the 5,000 people

who voted for me. And my question is

very simple. I want

to ask: respected elected members of the Coordination Council,

will we now vote on speakers with

the understanding that we have a database

of verified voters from the Central Election Committee, or not?

Will we? The short answer is yes, we will.

Please. Hello, I wanted to

congratulate everyone who was elected. I am Pavel

Shelkov. I also thank the 15,000 voters

who

who cast their votes. There were quite a lot of complaints

during these elections. And unfortunately, well,

the fear that there would emerge, well, a kind of

Moscow clique proved justified, yes.

Because there were a great many people

interesting people from the regions, from Saratov

from—well, from very many places in general. I can even see among

the members of the Coordinating Council many interesting people

from the regions. Oleg Kashin is an interesting

person, but unfortunately from the regions almost

no one—Anatolyevna from St. Petersburg came to us

came.

Yes, yes, Alexei Navalny represents

the Moscow Region. Well, of course. Alexander

Vinokurov, who is absent here, is from

the Tver Region, from the very depths of Russia.

There are masses of interesting people from the regions. 70%

of the votes, after all, came from the regions.

And something like 80% from Moscow were—well, that is, no, well,

that is, so to speak, an objective reality. Well,

you can’t really argue with that. I just wanted to

ask a question. First of all, given

all those remarks about the elections, yes,

some candidates withdrew their

candidacies as well, as everyone knows, yes. And

do the members of the newly elected

council consider that the elections were optimal and

fair, let’s put it that way? And the second

point: of course, I would like those

bright, standout people who emerged, especially

from the regions, to be brought in. Well,

perhaps in an advisory

capacity, perhaps Andrei Piontkovsky’s idea could be implemented

of creating a Forum

of Free Russia, where everyone, let’s say,

both candidates and those elected and the voters could

communicate, vote there—well, that is,

that is my question. Navalny, please.

I believe that the elections that have taken place are our

shared, tremendous victory. Who could even

have imagined that a project of such

scale could be carried out

truly from the grassroots, without help from any

Kremlin towers (rival power centers within the Kremlin), without help from any

oligarchs, without help from any

factions—really, directly

from below. All of this grew organically, all of it was devised

by some programmers from Yekaterinburg

who built the system; hundreds of people went through the debates.

Was it optimal? Well,

of course not. But we came up with it ourselves,

all of it. We built all of this with our own hands.

By the way, in fact only 34%

of the people who voted were from Moscow. This is

truly a regional project.

At last, good Lord, for the first time in my life,

some person in Komsomolsk-on-Amur

where you can hardly even move at all because

the local FSB (Russian security service) has nothing better to do than

harass all political activists—was able

to vote and influence the formation

of some kind of opposition. I simply congratulate

all of us. This is a great trust, a great

responsibility for those who were elected. But

this is a tremendous victory for everyone who

took part in this process. We will make

it better. There were many mistakes; we must

get rid of them, we must overcome them.

But this is something that we built ourselves. We

owe nothing to anyone. This is something that

belongs to us. Over many years, the opposition

has done something that belongs

only to it. It is only its success, and we

must

be proud of it. So you believe that

it is fully legitimate? Yes, it is

elected, yes.

And

Excuse me, but in the next elections, will there, so to speak,

be changes made? This is what

concerns me, because

I would like, I would like to note

what is in my view one very important

injustice that occurred in

these elections. It lies in the fact that

in these elections there was adopted a deeply

unjust and

formula of ideological curiae—these are, these are, these are

specially reserved seats for

political invalids who had no

chance of being elected

in the normal way. Let’s not get into whether they had

a chance or did not have a chance to be elected, and

therefore special

extra little chairs were specially created for them in order to

create this artificial opportunity. I

very much hope that this decision was taken

for these elections, and it was

unfair. Nevertheless, it was

implemented very clearly.

I hope that

the work—I hope, I hope that the work

of this Coordinating Council, among

other things, will lead to that very important

decision that the next elections will be

held without these special

reserved places for various

ideologies. Two final questions. Elena

Rusakova.

Please. Thank you. Elena Rusakova, so,

I congratulate those elected. Many thanks

to the voters, that is, who voted

for me. Like everyone else,

I cannot help repeating that.

So, I have a question for Mikhail Gelfand

if you permit me.

For me, for example, this is a very

joyful takeaway from the election results:

that a person who is seemingly not a media

figure was able to place so high

in the rankings. But what I wanted to ask is this:

perhaps on this—well, your area is

science policy, science,

education. So, the other members

of the Coordination Council have not dealt with this topic

—or maybe they have, just not to

the same extent as you. So how do you see

this specific topic, this specific field—how

will the Coordination Council be able to help

solve this

problem? Well, first of all, in the area of—

in the area of science policy, most likely

it really won’t be able to, not because it is

difficult, but because, generally speaking, it

most likely will not be the most

urgent issue in the field.

As for education, I’ll confirm what

Grisha said behind my back there—

the problem there is much sharper, much

clearer.

And I can say what I’m going to do. So,

at the November meeting of the Public Council

under the Ministry of Education and Science

to which we were also elected, also

by a vote, though not such a

wonderful one, but simply on Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station), I

intend to publish the documents

that are sent to me for that

meeting.

And, well, to gather some points of view and then

try to formulate them. One of

them—well, there will be two

questions there. One is rather strange, about the image

of the teacher or something of that sort. That is,

in my view, meaningless chatter. And

the second is completely specific, about the Unified State Exam (EGE, Russia’s standardized school-leaving exam).

As for the EGE, I will

collect statements and

proposals and try somehow

to systematize them. It’s a fairly specific, local matter.

And beyond that, in fact, it’s all

the same. Yes, for example, if there is a law on

education, and if comments on it are sent to me,

then I will convey them.

Accordingly, the last question. Maxim

Sannikov.

Please, briefly. Yes, I just think

this should be said on air: we all, apparently,

have received a little message from Deputy Prime Minister

Surkov, who has just given an interview

titled “By My Convictions, I Am

Russian,” and he says that the constant terror

from idle

chatterboxes who have arrogated to themselves the right

to speak on behalf of society must stop. I think this

is about all of us, so we should keep it

in mind. We will stop the idle terror

in three minutes. And now I understand whom

we need to invite to the Russian

March (a Russian nationalist rally).

Hello, Maxim Sakov here, the very same

“political invalid” from the left curia (electoral group), for whom

someone nevertheless voted.

Thanks to those people. I congratulate everyone on

the election results, on the first honest

elections in the entire history of Russia as a

state. And enormous thanks

to Leonid Volkov for creating such a

tool and such a wonderful

platform. In general, it seems to me that he is a little

—many people underestimate the fact that

Democracy 2

can become a wonderful cradle

for democracy. The idea of direct democracy

is very dear to me, and the fact that a voter

can influence the decision of the Central Election Committee

through verified online voting

seems to me to be a very powerful tool

that should be used. In this connection,

I have a question for the candidates, namely:

how do you want to use this

extremely powerful voting tool? I,

for example, would use it across the board—that is,

the Coordination Council adopts

certain items for a vote: say,

we have an issue, and on it we have

ten positions, and the voters decide what

is more important. Briefly, on this question—

you have spoken more than anyone else, honestly.

Honestly, the devil is in the details, and

this mechanism cannot be launched

immediately in full. But it is necessary

to work in this direction,

to test the mechanism,

to put such questions more and more often until

it becomes an everyday,

easy, simple element. It is necessary

to expand the base of people who are

verified. And one of the main

tasks of the Coordination Council is that it is important for

goals to be set, overall,

to measure effectiveness as an increase

in the number of verified citizens. Yes,

because at the moment the number

is still laughably small. In fact, this is an enormous

breakthrough, but for now there are still very few people—there should be

not just 70,000 or however many there are, well,

100,000 voters, but in fact

the figure should be counted in the millions. Then

it will be a truly functional tool, and

that is what we need to move toward.

Thank you. I will allow myself to say the last

two words.

Today this marathon called

the election campaign

for the elections to the Coordination Council

of the opposition has just ended.

It begins with the fact that these elections took place, that

such a huge number of people took part in them

— that is a tremendous

achievement. And please do not forget

that now these tens of thousands of people

are watching you. They are watching you not

only when you are on the air on Dozhd (a Russian TV channel),

they are watching you all the time. They expect from you

that

you will be able to do something

they have not seen before, something

they may not even have expected

from you. They trust you greatly. Please,

for God's sake, do not turn the Coordination

Council into an arena for arguments about who is a cripple and

who is an enemy and who is a fool, and so on and so

forth. Forget everything you thought about one another

before walking through the doors of this new

organization. And do not forget that

tens of thousands of people are watching you. Do not

let them down. That is what I wish for all

members of the Coordination Council, and I

congratulate you on your victory.

Thank you.

Debates on

Dozhd (a Russian TV channel)