Alexei Navalny’s meeting with voters in Moscow’s Otradnoye District

Hello. You've got quite a lively atmosphere here,

music is playing.

Thank you very much for coming. It's tremendously

nice, and tremendously important. There were many

skeptics. When we were planning our

election campaign, everyone said

that people wouldn't come to any

meetings. And that this whole strange

idea of holding courtyard meetings with

candidates was pointless. The candidates don't need it,

and the people don't need it either. Better to

put videos online or run ads on

television.

But since you are coming after all, that means

our idea was the right one:

that this is the most important part of an

election campaign: meeting with voters. This is

the kind of work every candidate

ought to do—meet with

voters so that they can

see him and ask him questions. And I

hold a great many meetings like this. I

meet

three times every weekday and five, five

such meetings every weekend.

This really is a wonderful

election campaign. This is my job.

I'm trying to do it well now,

to convince you that when I

become mayor, I will work

well too. I would

like to begin, if you don't mind, by

telling you a little about myself, and then I will

be happy to answer all your

questions.

You'll become president. Wait, let's

elect him mayor first. Still, thank you

very much.

My name is Alexei Navalny. It's almost

strange to say after that. My name is Alexei

Navalny. I am 37 years old. I live with my wife and

two children in Moscow's Maryino district.

It's in the southeast of Moscow. I have lived in this

same apartment for the last

17 years. In that sense, I have a

completely ordinary, typical Moscow

family. My son is 5 years old, and he goes to the

kindergarten in our courtyard. My daughter is 11. She goes to a

regular neighborhood school. I come from a

military family. And so throughout my childhood and

youth I moved from one place to

another. And my parents still live

in a military town. By profession I am a

lawyer. I have two higher education degrees.

I graduated from the law faculty of

the Peoples' Friendship University and

the Financial Academy under the Government of

the Russian Federation.

If you have followed what I've been doing in

recent years, what do you know about me?

He sues someone, he's always fighting with

someone, first he goes after Gazprom, then

Rosneft, then he calls United Russia members crooks

and thieves,

then with Bastrykin he dug up some kind of

residence permit in the Czech Republic. And he's always

going after everyone: VTB, Gazprom,

Transneft, demanding criminal cases

be opened and all that.

At every meeting—and this is already the forty-

sixth one—the first question I get is:

"

Why are you so fixated on them? Did they personally

wrong you or something? Everyone else is sitting

quietly. Some are calmer, some less

calm, but you've latched onto them like

a bulldog. Did they personally steal

something from you?"

Why do you take such offense at them

and keep insulting them, calling them names all the time?"

I wanted to begin our meeting precisely by

answering that question, because, it seems to me,

if you understand my motivation,

you will understand why I am on this stage

right now.

I genuinely believe, personally, that

I and my family have been robbed—not just

in some abstract sense, you know, not just that

we were robbed, but that I and my family were personally

robbed. I even have a specific calculation

for it.

Tell me, please, what does

Russia make its money from?

Oil. The sale of oil and gas. Exactly

right. For how much did Russia sell

oil and gas over the last 15 years, during

the fat Putin years?

3 trillion dollars. Is that a lot or a little?

Who here has ever seen a stack of 3 trillion

dollars? In

a dream.

In a dream. It's actually hard to tell whether that's

a lot or a little. It feels like a lot,

but the country is huge, so maybe

it's not. To understand for

myself whether that's a lot or a little for me, I

took that sum and divided it by the citizens of Russia

and realized that for each of us—from

newborn babies to hundred-year-old elders—

that comes to 640,000 rubles. That is my share of the oil and

gas: 640,000 rubles. And everyone here has a share of

640,000 rubles. So for my family of

four, that comes to 2.5 million rubles.

And that, in fact, is why I go from

Rosneft to Gazprom, from Gazprom to

Rosneft,

to VTB and to Transneft, first and foremost,

because I ask them: "Where are my

2.5 million rubles?

What did you do with my 2.5 million rubles? You pulled the oil

out of the ground and sold it. Sold it.

So where is it all? There are people here

from the older generations. You remember that

the Soviet Union in earlier times also

received a lot of petrodollars.

Petrodollars flowed into the country, and they were spent.

You can argue about whether that was good or bad, but,

at the very least, we can clearly see,

how they were spent. Let's just use our heads

for a moment.

Residential districts, apartment blocks. Exactly.

Apartments were handed out for free.

Huge residential districts. We built

a massive industrial sector, factories,

plants, enterprises.

We built roads. We built

railways. All of it with Brezhnev-era

petrodollars.

Science, industry, the akademgorodoks (planned Soviet science towns) still

lie scattered all across the country. That was

all those same Brezhnev petrodollars. Right?

The army, that enormous army, was maintained with

that money, and so was that giant space program.

Exactly. We supported countries,

the so-called socialist bloc,

in Africa, Asia, Latin America,

everywhere. In other words, we know how

the Brezhnev petrodollars were spent. Russia's

petrodollars were even greater. How were

they spent? How many people are standing here?

Probably around 400 by now. Can anyone

tell me, name even one

major industrial enterprise

built in this country over the last 15

years?

No.

Nothing at all. Well, Skolkovo was mentioned.

.

Not Cyprus.

You could hardly call that an industrial

Cyprus?

Cyprus, yes. Well, Cyprus isn't exactly it. I

said a major industrial enterprise in Russia.

That's all anyone could come up with.

Sochi.

Well, the Sochi Olympics, yes. A Winter

Olympics that cost three times more than a Summer Olympics.

Still, that's not really an industrial

enterprise. I

Russian Railways. Well, basically, what was

built in Soviet times, whereas what they've built

in modern times are fur vaults (a sarcastic reference to lavish corruption).

At every meeting I ask

this question, and not once has anyone answered it.

Simply because that industrial enterprise

doesn't exist. It just

isn't there. So I go around asking:

"Where are my factories and plants? Where is my

healthcare? Where is my education?"

Where is my space program? I don't want to see a rocket

that takes off and then crashes.

I want to see railways. Do you

know that in Russia, in a whole year, as much railway

is built as China builds

in a single week? And China has neither oil

nor gas.

And when I come with questions like these

to Rosneft, for example—well, I'm

suing Rosneft—I come to the

commercial court, and sitting there is this

woman, Rosneft's chief lawyer,

Kolanda, that's her surname,

right? Her official income—as the chief

lawyer of the state company Rosneft—

is 880 million rubles a year.

You can look up the official

declaration. 880 million rubles a year. And she

looks at me and says: "Nothing here

belongs to you here."

"And people like you have no claim

to anything here."

And at that moment I feel as if

someone is sticking a hand into my pocket and

pulling out my 640,000 rubles. And at that same

moment, they stick a hand into my five-year-old son's

pocket too and pull out 640,000 rubles.

And from each of us, at that moment,

they stick a hand into our pocket and pull out

our share of the petrodollars.

That's what it means when they say nothing belongs to us.

That is why I believe I personally

have been robbed. And that's why I call them

crooks and thieves. That's why I take this so

personally,

with that kind of, you know,

personal stake in it. With resentment, yes,

exactly, with resentment. It really hurts me.

After all, in theory, all of this is mine too.

And now here I stand before you as a

candidate for mayor of Moscow, and I want to earn

your support. I am counting very much on

your support,

first and foremost because I am simply

the same ordinary Muscovite as

you.

Someone who lives with exactly the same

problems and wants to solve them for himself and

for you. They are the same problems. I

don't need a list of problems in the Otradnoye district.

I know them all myself. Are you here

concerned about housing and коммунal services?

Are housing and utility services a major concern for you? Very much so.

And as a matter of fact, it concerns me too,

maybe even more, because for my

apartment in a prefabricated panel building, I get

a bill for 9,500 rubles. That concerns me

very much, every single month.

I don't understand what this bottomless

pit is that we can keep paying into forever.

We're not getting services. And I want to become

the mayor who finally conducts an audit

of housing and utility rates so we can ask: "So what

exactly are we paying for in these rates?" And we

will see astonishing things. We will see

that last year, when we paid for

electricity and heating, we also paid for

300 million rubles in sponsorship for United Russia

(the ruling political party). This is not a joke. Mosenergo transferred

300 million to United Russia and included it in

our rates. And we paid for it as part of the tariff.

Mosvodokanal, which raises rates for me and

all of you once a year, in 2011

made a net profit of 3 billion rubles.

They took that net profit and did who knows

what with it, and then raised the rates again—they

still didn't have enough money. I don't want

to pay for the net profit that

is being siphoned off. I don’t want to pay for

some people’s luxurious lifestyle. I want

to become a mayor who will make sure that

you and I pay only for the services

that are actually provided. This is my third

meeting today. Earlier, I first

spoke, then I was just in South

Medvedkovo, and before that in North

Medvedkovo.

And

when I was preparing for this meeting, I simply

looked at

the asset declaration of the local district head

whom all the residents accuse of

skimming money from housing and коммунal services. That’s what they

accuse him of—skimming money from housing and utility services. But

when I asked whether they had seen

the declaration, nobody had. In that

declaration there are four apartments, plus another eight

apartments belonging to his daughter, two cars,

four ATVs, and two jet skis. They

know what a jet ski is, but at

least they’re listed in the declaration.

And yet we put up with all of this. I don’t want to be—I

don’t want to pay for someone else’s jet skis. I

want to become a mayor who will make sure

that both you and I pay only for

the services we actually order.

I am standing here before you because

I go to a public clinic.

It happens to me. And the

clinic I go to

is very different from

the clinic they show me on

television. On TV they show me

a clinic that Sobyanin visits, and

they tell him: "You know, we have

this electronic registration system—you can

book an appointment without any problems and get seen right away—well, you

laughed, so you’ve probably tried

to book through the electronic registration system."

I know this because when I was preparing to speak

here, I learned that you have three district

clinics for a population of 175,000 people,

which obviously means that there are

terrible lines at the clinics. The same thing

as where I live. Exactly the same as where I live.

Where I live, there are two clinics for

a district population of 150,000.

So I suspect that you and I

go to the same kind of clinic, while

for some reason Sobyanin goes to some

other one.

But even so, I know how much

more money is allocated for healthcare

for Muscovites compared with

other residents of Russia. Does anyone know

how much more—by what percentage

more money is spent on Muscovites than on

ordinary citizens?

20, 15,

I think

30,

50,

50%—they give 50% more for Muscovites.

Four times more—your

healthcare, yes, gets funding that is

four times higher than

the healthcare funding for any other

citizen in the country. Just for

outpatient clinic care for each of

us, 20,000 rubles a year are allocated (about US$200). For my

family of four, that’s 80,000 rubles per

year (about US$800). Just for clinic care—that’s huge

money. Just out of curiosity, please raise

your hand if you went to your

district clinic in the past year.

A lot of people.

Good. Thank you. Now raise

your hands if you did not go to your local

clinic in the past year. Aha.

Yet 20,000 rubles were written off for each person. And I

want to become a mayor who will make sure

that with the enormous sums that

are allocated, they finally hire

internists and general practitioners

whom Muscovites need in 90% of cases.

They’re not there—those doctors simply aren’t there. Is it easy in your

district to get an ultrasound?

It’s difficult.

Difficult. In fact, often impossible.

And getting an MRI is completely impossible. Only

now, you know, here’s the interesting thing. It’s difficult

or impossible. But please go over to

Sobyanin’s campaign tent by the metro station. There

it says something completely different. There

it says that one of Sergei

Semyonovich Sobyanin’s achievements is that he bought

1,200 ultrasound machines for Muscovites. Well,

apparently his salary is high enough. And he has surpassed

all European countries in the number of

scanners per capita.

They cost 4,000.

Well

our Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) carefully

studied that very healthcare modernization

program for Moscow, on which

100 billion rubles were spent (about US$1 billion). So I know exactly

how those scanners were procured. I

know exactly how those ultrasound machines

were procured. And they were bought not in order to

treat people, but simply to

buy them at twice the price. And someone from

this modernization program for

healthcare became a billionaire. I

want to become a mayor who will make sure

that I can go to my clinic and

get an ultrasound if I need one, and

that those who need an MRI can get an MRI.

I

am standing here before you because I am

deeply concerned about the problem of

migration.

You react to that with, “Oh.” And I say:

“Oh, because they moved

Cherkizovsky Market (a major former Moscow market), and it’s not far from my home,

because this market is right next to me

"Sadovod".

And because for me, this

statistic that 50% of crimes

are committed by migrants is not an abstract

thing. It means that women in the evening

are afraid to leave their homes. It

means that bags are being snatched from people's hands.

A question for all of you. Do you know

whether crime has increased or decreased

in your neighborhood over the past six months?

Increased.

It has increased. The police aren't

working.

I am informing you, dear residents of Otradnoye,

that especially serious crimes in your area have risen by

47%, and robberies by 72%.

72%.

Illegal drug trafficking. An 82% increase

in your area.

And I want to become mayor because

I understand that

migrants who come here in huge

numbers and who, among other things,

drive up crime rates,

come not because there are

jobs here, but because they are

a source of profit for officials.

Tell me, please, who knows

how much the janitor in their courtyard earns?

What is the salary of a Moscow janitor?

Nine

25,000, 20,000

6,000–7,000

There you go

I always ask, is that

6,000–7,000, and then someone always shouts from the corner,

shouting: "Officially or unofficially?"

That's the kind of secret all of

Moscow knows.

And they live in basements.

And they live in basements or in buildings slated for

demolition. Yes,

and we all know perfectly well that they are brought here

and made to live in basements, in the

position of slaves, because each of

them simply kicks back part of their salary.

The official pay standard for a janitor

tells us that there should be no

janitors earning less than 30,000 rubles.

But all of them get 8,000 or 10,000

and each one, from their salary, every month

kicks some of it back. And just imagine, it's simply

a river of cash. It's hundreds of millions

of rubles just flowing from

the management company to the DES, from the DEEZ to

the district administration, to the prefecture, and so

on and so forth.

But you and I see the other side

of this river, this river. Sorry, what we see

is only a 70% increase in robberies. What I see

is only bags being snatched, and that is why I want

to change this. I want to become the mayor who

will change all of this.

I am standing here because I have spent a great deal of

time over the past few years

on

following all kinds of Moscow

governance processes, finances, and

the budget. I know exactly the size of

Moscow's budget. Who can tell me, what is Moscow's

annual budget?

About half a trillion rubles. One trillion

1.6, 1.63 trillion rubles a year.

By budget size, Moscow is second only to

New York and Shanghai. All of us need to

understand one important thing very clearly: we

live in one of the richest cities

in the world.

The richest cities in the United States and Europe can

only envy Moscow's budget.

They are nowhere close. Here's

a question for you. As I already said, Moscow ranks

third in the world by budget. In your view,

what place in the world does Moscow rank

among major cities in terms of quality of life?

Tenth? Fifteenth? Which one?

How many cities are ahead of us?

A lot, ninety-something.

In terms of quality of life, Moscow ranks among

major cities in

154th place.

We are third by budget, and 154th by

quality of life. Right now, we already have

the money to ensure that Muscovites have

quality education, excellent

healthcare, roads on which we

successfully fight traffic jams, and an absence of

migrants. But we are in 154th place.

Why? To change all this, we

have

a city,

we have infrastructure, we have

an educated population,

which is actually important, because

very few cities have such an

educated population. We lack

only one thing, but it is the key factor. We

lack faith in ourselves. For some reason, we

think that this is just how life works,

that nothing can be changed. After every

meeting, after every one, someone comes up

to me and says:

"You said everything right, well done. We,

to be honest, knew all this without you, but you

said it all correctly. But you

understand, deep down, admit it,

you understand that nothing can be changed."

That's just how it is устроена. Nothing can be changed

Nothing can be changed. We are in first place in the

world for oil and gas sales.

Just a second.

But we are in sixty-ninth place

in terms of standard of living.

We have a budget that exceeds

all the others many times over, but in terms of quality of life

we are in 154th place. They are building

the North-Western Chord. Do you know that

construction project?

You know?

It costs 70 billion rubles. And all the builders

and all the transport experts say in unison

that the price is inflated twofold.

And we all know that yes, in the construction of

the North-Western Chord, 35 billion rubles will be stolen.

That is more than is needed to build

clinics and schools across the entire

North-Eastern District. But somehow we just

shrug our shoulders. That’s just how it works,

nothing can be done.

Elections are rigged. Well, they always seem to be

rigged. They’ll deceive us. Well, they always seem to

deceive us. They’ll rob us. Well, they do rob us,

yes. They always have. And what can

you change? That’s just how life is.

But I came here because I believe that

life should be organized differently. I

believe this is not the natural order

of things. I believe this is

an unnatural order of things. What is

happening is a perversion. And I came here

because I believe in the most

important thing: this is the source of power. Not

the election commission, not television, not

this zombie box, but the people. The people are the source

of power. People can change everything if

they stop being afraid and believe in

themselves. Who is forcing us

to hand over half the cost of

the North-Western Chord to someone? Who is

forcing us

to pay for housing and utility services we do not receive?

Who? Well, there are no troops standing here—just one or two

police officers standing here. And, judging by

everything, they agree with everything I’m

saying.

No one is forcing us; it’s just that we

our shoulders.

That is exactly what this

government rests on. A handful of these crooks,

who have latched onto our budget and

our city, and who have turned all of this

into a way of making money, they

rely on the fact that we shrug

our shoulders.

I believe we can change everything. In

order to elect the mayor of Moscow, you need

half a million people. In a city where 15 million live,

there are half a million people in Moscow who

know everything, who understand everything, who

understand that Moscow’s problems are the same

problems other

cities have faced. Did other cities not also

have traffic jams or migration? They solved

those problems, and they can be solved. There are one and a half

million people who can read

my platform and see that it was written

by the best experts. It contains answers

to everything. There are half a million people, each of whom

could come up on this stage

and say exactly the same things I am saying.

The only question is whether I will be able to reach

those one and a half million people. How can I

convince them of anything through television?

Who has seen me on television in the last five years

except in reports claiming

that I stole the entire forest?

Well, yesterday, yesterday there was a debate, for the first time

it happened, right? And even there something about the forest

came up.

But maybe I don’t have television.

Questions later, please. Maybe I

don’t have television, maybe I

don’t have billboards, but no one can take meetings like this

away from me. I

have calculated it all. I calculated that if by

September 8 I hold 100 such meetings and

after that remain alive, then I will have spoken

more or less personally like this with 1%

of the voters. That is a lot. 1%

of the voters is a lot. After all, each person’s

power of persuasion is

tremendous. All studies

show that if you speak with

ten people, you will convince six of them

almost for sure. People

need guidance. Let’s give

the right advice. Let’s take

an active stance. Let’s make

the authorities change. And let’s become

the authorities ourselves. Let’s elect someone who

represents the people, who lives the ordinary

life of the people. I am sure, my friends,

that by relying on you, by receiving your

support,

I will be able to change everything for the better. I will be able

to form a team that will take

power in the city and turn that power to

our benefit, and make it so that we will

build a great city for us and for

our children. Thank you very much. Now I am

ready to answer your questions.

Please, you’ve had your hand up for a while. How do you

plan to change everything? Just now you

said a lot about, well, the problems,

yes, you listed them, but you did not give a single

solution.

I’ll repeat it for everyone. You, you

listed the problems, but did not say

what the solution is. All right.

Look, here is the problem with the North-Western

Chord. It is being built at twice the necessary cost.

The contract for the North-Western Chord

was handed to the Rotenbergs without

any tender. So what is the solution to this

problem? The solution is

that when I become mayor, roads

will be built by road builders, not by

the Rotenbergs and Timchenko.

There will be no billion-ruble contracts awarded

without estimates, without accountability, and

simply handed over to Putin’s friends.

This may seem elementary, but in

our system of power it is incredibly difficult,

because Sobyanin is a mayor

whose job is to hand over

construction contracts to the Rotenbergs.

Who were they back in Soviet times?

Judo coaches. And now they've become

road builders. And for you they are

building the Southern Chord. For you they are

building the North-Western Chord, the Southern Rocade, and

so on. I will be the mayor who

puts a stop to this. Do you know who is now

the main contractor for the construction of

the Moscow Metro?

Timchenko.

Timchenko. The very same guy I'm

suing. The main seller of Russian

oil, a friend of Putin, who gave up

Russian citizenship. A citizen

of Finland, living in Switzerland. He

became a billionaire trading Russian

oil through his offshore company. And

now he's building our metro too.

And of course, all the experts, both our own

metro builders and foreigners, all of them

say with one voice: "But, excuse me,

the price is twice as high."

The solution to the problem, this one in particular,

is that, yes, you should not

hand out construction contracts to your friends.

Let metro builders build the metro.

In order to defeat corruption,

you have to start fighting it. That's all.

We need to make sure that people

are held accountable. We need

to make sure that those under suspicion

are thrown out.

It's a simple solution. It just doesn't work here

because the authorities exist for

corruption. If there is a government

for the people, then we will fight

corruption, and I will do it. Next

question, please.

Alexei, I have two questions for you.

First,

if the election goes to two rounds and in the

second round

I'll repeat it for everyone afterward,

in the second round

the votes, so to speak, are

falsified,

and, so to speak, Sobyanin will be

declared

the winner, so to speak—what will your

actions be? That's one question. Second, if

you become, uh, mayor,

how will you build your relationship

with Putin?

The first question was: if they

falsify the election in the second round and

the mayor is declared to be Sobyanin, what will I do?

What I have to do is act before that. I will do everything

to prevent them

from falsifying the election. Votes

come to us through hard work. I'm not

complaining, but these meetings are

work. And the people who hand out

leaflets like these all over Moscow, standing

next to these campaign cubes, in our

volunteer groups there are more than 10,000

people. Not one of them gets

paid. Not one. Not because they love me,

but because they love themselves. They

want change. And of course, when we

win votes through such hard work,

we will do everything

to protect them. Already now we have

sent 2,500 people to the election commissions

as commission members with the right

to cast decisive votes.

We want to mobilize thousands of

observers. 14,000 at a minimum.

And here we will need your support,

because without you, of course, we won't be able to gather

that many observers,

but we will definitely make sure that

the situation of December

2011 (after the disputed Russian parliamentary elections), when the only

observer at a polling station was grabbed by the police

by the arms and legs and thrown out. There will be 10

observers at every polling station, and 10

people will be waiting next to the

station. But we all have to do this

together. In your district there are

175,000 people living there. And who is it that falsifies the entire election?

A secret organization?

A Masonic lodge? Three women in the district

administration just take the protocol and rewrite it,

overturning the will of 175,000 people.

Is that right?

So are we

ourselves going to let them do it or not? If

we finally come out and say that we will not

let this happen, we will fill every polling station

with observers, and we will not allow those women

to rewrite protocols on behalf of 175,000 people,

then nothing will be able to be rewritten. And we are

working on that.

The second question. How will your

relationship with Putin be built?

Well,

Putin,

it will not be an easy relationship. However,

many people think that I should immediately

start, or will start, a war with Putin.

Meaning, street-washing trucks and what else?

Bulldozers, graders, tractors rolling down

Tverskaya Street. Next to them march

street sweepers carrying rakes like

rifles. We are not going to do any of that,

at least not in the first few days.

A mayor must work by the rules. For my part,

I will carry out the duties

that a mayor is supposed to carry out.

When they ask me: "Navalny,

please hand the metro over to Timchenko." I

will say: "Sorry, we have a fair

tender." When they tell me: "Come on,

please, the Rotenbergs want to build another

interchange there." I will say:

"Excuse me, we have a fair

tender. Moscow is structured in such a way that money

cannot simply be siphoned out of it. That is, I

you can't deprive it of funding.

I have street-cleaning vehicles that

can be moved. So you can't be pushed around either."

And federal money—I'll answer that

question now. You can't strip Moscow of funding.

And most importantly, what I will need in order

to be able to act as

an independent mayor and carry out the

duties I am supposed to perform,

is your support. If

Moscow has a mayor who is elected

by Muscovites, who relies on

the support of millions of people, and who

for the first time in the country's history uses power

not for personal enrichment, but

to work, then they won't be able to do

anything to me. They won't be able to take away money,

or jail me. On the contrary, relying on your

support, I'll be the one putting them all in jail.

Your questions.

Do you understand that you're entering into a struggle with

officials, right? Say you become mayor, and

you start working honestly. God

willing. The officials will go on strike, and the judiciary

will back them. What will you

do?

The officials will go on strike, and the courts in power

will support them.

But what exactly would they be striking over?

How many—how many people run the

city?

Tens of thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people

run the city. Eighty-five percent of these people,

are not corrupt simply because

they have nowhere to steal from. They are in

positions where there is nothing to pocket.

They are people just like us. They have

fairly decent salaries. They do not

need to be persuaded. They want a normal

life. They are no different. In fact, if

there are, I'm sure, standing here

20 officials, they don't have light bulbs

glowing over their heads. They are ordinary people who just

like everyone else don't want to overpay for housing and utilities,

who want to live steadily, under law and

order. And relying on that 85 percent, I

will effectively crush the 15 percent who,

apparently, can no longer be reformed. I will

definitely do that. You're not raising your hand

to ask a question, but since you're saying

that it's all a sham, I'll hear your question. I

want to say, my

...

they won't give her one-time pension payment. She

died on the twenty-first. She received her pension

on the seventh. Why wasn't the pension

paid out?

Well, this person has gone through a tragic

situation. His daughter died, a grandson was left behind, and they are not

returning the pension that was

due to her.

Due, yes. Well

since she received it through the bank. I have to

go through all this bureaucracy and supposedly deal with it.

First of all, my condolences for

your loss, and second,

the system is set up in such a way that

for everyone involved, well, they simply don't care, it doesn't

concern them.

They are constantly saying they don't have enough

money for social payments. When I

look at the size of Moscow's budget, it's

simply ridiculous to say there isn't enough money for

social payments. That is exactly why, in

our program, we have already included

a provision under which we will immediately halt

the adoption of the 2013 budget and

increase social payments both to

pensioners and those in need. Now,

please tell me, does anyone know

how much support a large family in Moscow receives

if it has four

children?

That young man over there—

3,000 rubles.

3,000 rubles.

At the same time,

he said,

let me tell you this. Let me approach it from another

angle. Do you know how much is allocated in Moscow

for public procurement every year?

How much is spent on public procurement? 600 billion

rubles. And the Moscow city government itself

says that out of those 600 billion rubles

150 billion are stolen every year. What does

150 billion mean? For us, that's 30,000 rubles per

person. Just understand this:

from each of you, just through

public procurement alone, 30,000 rubles are being stolen. From you, from

your grandson, from that large family,

with six people including children—from each of them

30,000 rubles are stolen, and then they are

told: "Here, take 3,000 in return

and live on it, however you can." I

know exactly what to do about this. At

our Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), we have canceled

corrupt procurement contracts, despite the fact that

we have no official powers whatsoever, worth

59 billion rubles. We drafted all the laws,

resolutions, and instructions. We know exactly

what to do about it. I know exactly how

to save this money through public procurement alone

and increase payments to everyone in need.

And we will do it. Moscow's budget is enormous.

It just needs to be managed

prudently. We need to make sure that

the money doesn't get siphoned off by Rotenberg and

Timchenko, but goes instead to Muscovites

like you. Next question,

please. You say that

pensioners, so to speak, do not pay

taxes. You probably don't shop at

foreign stores like Auchan or Leroy Merlin. I

take the receipt—VAT is listed there. This much, that much,

this much, that much. One question: those are

taxes. In our stores they don't

write that or indicate it. Pensioners don't

know that they are paying taxes. Second...

question.

Instead of factories, they opened offices, and there,

basically, they are engaged in,

they collect,

I’ll repeat that for everyone later.

They charge rent. Excuse me, but

if I’m being charged rent, then

I include it in the price. That’s why

the price of many goods here is higher than

in Europe’s, and once again we are paying 140,000.

I understood the question. I’ll answer: they pay taxes.

And the first question was an interesting one about

taxes. They say that pensioners supposedly do not

pay taxes. But you really are, you are

absolutely right. We pay VAT, we pay excise taxes,

we pay indirect taxes.

So pensioners, non-pensioners, any

people who live in Moscow, they pay

a great deal in taxes. And the second question is about

the high cost of living. We have in our

platform

a special section on the high cost

of living. And I realized

that this absolutely had to be included in the

platform, you know, after I

spent half a year in the United States. I can

tell you that there all food products are

half the price.

Really, everything there is half the price.

Clothing there is more than twice

as cheap. Moscow is expensive to live in.

It’s just impossible. Even for a working

person, it is very hard to live in Moscow, not

to mention pensioners.

And indeed, there are simply calculations for everything

that show that in

everything, from a carton of milk

and a kilogram of meat to a square

meter of housing, 30% is a corruption-related

markup.

30%. So when people reproach me for

saying, “Navalny, you’re like a parrot, all you do is

talk about corruption, corruption, corruption,”

that’s exactly why I talk about corruption, because

I don’t want to pay that extra 30% for everything.

When I was preparing to speak in this

part of Moscow, I looked carefully at

what the vendors at the markets were writing, those who

sell at the so-called

weekend markets. Who here knows how much

a spot for a vendor at a

weekend market, at a weekend fair, costs?

Free.

Supposedly free — 200 rubles.

But in reality they pay 2,000 rubles.

Question: who pays the 1,800-ruble difference?

We do. The people who buy. I mean, my

wife buys the same products in the same

place. So by eliminating corruption, we

will be eliminating this high

cost. Because in my milk,

in my meat, in your milk, in your

meat, that corrupt surcharge is hanging there.

So to answer your question: yes, we

all pay taxes — pensioners, non-

pensioners — and we all must demand

a lower cost of living. Your question.

One moment, just a second.

I heard Zhirinovsky said, yes, yes, yes, that

supposedly when you were speaking in America,

you said that when you become

president, you will eliminate nuclear

weapons. Is that true or not?

Zhirinovsky spoke and said that when

I was speaking in America, I said that

I would eliminate nuclear weapons. Where did he

say that?

On television today.

Well, listen, Zhirinovsky says a lot of things.

If I just go around refuting everything

Zhirinovsky has said, that would simply be

ridiculous. Zhirinovsky is a funny,

amusing old man who is doing his job. For

You should sue for slander.

He, he, he dreams of my suing him

for slander, because then there would be

more attention for the funny old man

and he’d make more money. That’s his

way of earning a living. Well, of course, that’s

not true, but obviously I’ll be voting

for you.

Thank you. Next question,

please.

There is a common opinion among Muscovites that

Sobyanin is a good manager. And that you are supposedly a lawyer

and all that. Now quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet.

And that you are supposedly a lawyer and will be a bad

administrator.

There is a common opinion among Muscovites that

Sobyanin is a strong manager, and

some Muscovites immediately disagreed with

that. And that I am not a manager and therefore will not

be able to run anything. Yes,

well, listen,

who here has read my investigation into

the Moscow paving tiles?

I have.

Well,

a lot of people. For those who haven’t read it,

I can simply say: “They laid paving worth

2 billion rubles, then another billion.” And

we haven’t been able to find any trace of those tiles for

a year now. Who has read my investigation into

landscaping?

For those who haven’t read it, on Tverskaya Street

they install these marble planters,

each of which costs 9 million rubles. They are

strong managers in the sense that they

know exactly where and what to siphon off.

Put it in their pocket.

All these “strong managers” are about

registering 308-square-meter apartments in their daughters’ names.

That’s the kind of “strong management” they’re good at.

In fact, the mayor of Moscow

spends 90% of his time

cutting red ribbons and handing out

certificates of honor, like the mayor of any

big city. The job of the mayor of Moscow is

My task is simply to establish the right

principles for governing the city,

so that people are appointed properly.

You are right to talk about the team. For

that, all of you, and I, all of us must

understand why this person became

a prefect, while that one did not. Why did you

appoint this person head of the district administration? Why did you not

appoint someone else? We must have tools

of pressure so that if this one

has stolen, he gets thrown out. Or not just

thrown out, but imprisoned.

Principle is the most important thing. I want, with a simple

example, to say once again

how important principles are, because I often

hear people say, well, principles are nonsense,

we do not understand principles.

Tell me, please, what is the biggest

corruption case in Russia right now,

apart from Navalny's case?

Oboron...

Oboronservis. Correct.

Serdyukov is in jail.

Charges have been brought against Serdyukov.

He is a witness. More than that, Serdyukov is still

driving around in a Mercedes

assigned to him by the Ministry of Defense, and

the flashing official beacon on his Mercedes is still flashing.

His girlfriend Vasilyeva is under arrest,

writing poetry.

She is under house arrest in a thirteen-room apartment,

and she gets 3 hours

a day for walks. And during those

walks, she gets photographed

buying things in jewelry stores—what should we call it,

honestly looted, honestly

earned?

What is more, as a lawyer I can tell you that

Vasilyeva is under house arrest, and

that is a formal restriction of liberty, and

it will count toward her sentence at two days for every one. So,

when Vasilyeva is

sentenced to 2 years, she will be released immediately.

She has already

because she has already served her time. Is what

I just said news

to anyone?

No,

no, this is a principle being directly

demonstrated to all residents. I am sure that

if you conducted a poll,

99%

of Russia's residents would say that they are

simply furious about what is happening.

Absolutely furious. And yet this is being

imposed on them openly. They are being told,

go ahead: steal, skim off the top, be

a completely incompetent defense minister,

a former furniture store manager

who wrecked everything. The main thing is,

if you keep quiet and pay your cut, everything

will be fine for you. My task is

to introduce different principles. And then there will be no need

for any so-called strong manager; then everything

will start working. Please, your question.

Here, please. Yes, Alexei,

have you been invited to the Kremlin for a talk? They

usually like to do that, sort of

have you been invited to the Kremlin for a talk?

I have been to the Kremlin many times—on tours of the

Armoury Chamber, on tours of the

Diamond Fund.

I took my child to see the

Tsar Cannon. My mother took me to see the

Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell. But I have never been inside any of

those buildings where ordinary

people are not allowed. You mean

you were not invited?

I was not invited. And I am not going

there. The only people who can send me

anywhere are you. I hope that all of you

together will send me to Tverskaya

13.

About the verdict. About

the verdict. Yes, please.

The question is this: after the election, God forbid,

if things turn out not

for the better and

well, yes, if, God forbid...

Yes, say it plainly regarding

the election. If things go badly and

you somehow cannot bring yourself

to say, "they will imprison you," well, that is nothing

terrible—I have already been jailed once.

And rightly so, I was jailed. I am speaking before you,

speaking here. Every time I am asked about this,

the first thing I say

to the people gathered is: thank you, my

dear friends, that I have the chance to speak

before you. Because you

were outraged, I was released.

I know that nothing will ever happen to me

as long as I have the support

of the people behind me. That is the most important thing. I will do

everything I can not to lose

your support.

A question: what is your attitu...

wait, one at a time,

just louder, if possible.

Worked... well, 2 m... not...

give it here

about migration

migration

yes, the question, the question

we are already in migra...

what a long question

I do not understand

I understand the question. So, the first point was

a remark about the name of our

newspaper Do Not Lie, Do Not Steal.

Well, there are many opinions here. Some people like it,

some do not.

Do you like it when people steal?

No.

Do you like it when people lie?

No.

Well then, you should like not

lying and not stealing. I like it. Maybe

it may be that someone doesn't like what

is written there, but I believe the authorities should not

lie or steal. That is why our

newspaper is called exactly that. As for

migration,

let's first take a look together at the overall situation

here. What is

called

where does Moscow rank

in the world by number of undocumented migrants?

First.

In first place. Is that a normal

situation?

No,

this is not a normal situation. And it seems

abnormal to me. You know,

for example, that 40% of all

Tajik men in the world live in Moscow.

So the whole country moved here.

all these Kyrgyz, all of them.

And before I lay out my three solutions, I have

a question for you, for everyone. Please raise

your hand if you have been to any

European country, just any one at all.

Wow, that's a lot of people. Thank you. Now

raise your hand if you entered that

European country without a visa.

How so? Across the border

to Cyprus without a visa.

Montenegro without a visa. Cyprus,

to Cyprus without a visa, to Israel you can go without

a visa

Montenegro without a visa. Can you go to France

without a visa? Well, maybe somewhere

you can crawl under a fence. To Germany

can you?

if we go to the United States, any of us will be told:

"Please, first get a visa,

and while you're at it, submit your fingerprints

at the embassy and at the border."

Now then, please explain to me why

any citizen of Uzbekistan or

Tajikistan, even without an international passport,

can buy a one-way ticket and

come here? Is that a normal situation?

It is not normal. If a visa regime applies to us,

why does it not

apply to them? What's more,

you could say these are former

Soviet Union countries, and we need

integration with them. But we have a visa regime

with Georgia, we do. No one died because of it. We

have a visa regime with Turkmenistan. We do.

No one died. How are

Georgia and Turkmenistan any closer or dearer to us than

Kazakhstan and Tajikistan? They aren't. If

European countries protect their borders

from us, then we too must protect ours from

migrants. So the first measure is that I

will push for the introduction of a visa

regime. The second measure—thank you very much.

I know this has support. In fact, I am

actually the only candidate

who supports this tough

measure. Second.

Right now any contractor is happy to

hire undocumented migrants because

it's profitable, it's cheap, they provide

cheap labor

and cheat half of them.

And who will... but I'll answer your question now.

your question.

And when you're caught employing a migrant, an

undocumented migrant, it's a small

fine or some minor punishment,

or a small bribe?

I will introduce rules, and we already have

a draft law under which

any organization will be disqualified

if it hires undocumented migrants.

And this measure will genuinely

stop everyone. And third, within a year

we will introduce a rule under which any

organization working with budget

funds will not have the right

to hire

foreigners with that money. If you are

a private business, hire whomever you want. This

young man is shouting, "And who will work in

the stores? A commercial store

can hire whomever it wants with its own commercial

money. But if this organization

is working with our municipal

budget funds,

capital repairs, beautification, property management

companies, and so on and so forth, then they

must hire Russian citizens. And they have the money

to hire Russian citizens, and even

Muscovites. There are a great many

myths on this subject. This

young man has partly repeated one of them. You

have heard this before: if the Uzbeks leave

Moscow, we'll all be buried in filth. Have you

heard that? It's nonsense.

Listen, we've lived in Moscow for a long time.

We know that the truth is

that before 2003 there were no migrants in

Moscow.

There weren't any.

Muscovites worked as street cleaners. We know

that in most cities in the country there are no

migrants at all. We know that in all

cities with populations under 500,000

there are no migrants. In Belarus

there are no migrants, so we need to stop

believing these tales. And the three

measures I have outlined really

will work. They really will reduce

the number of migrants and reduce the number

of crimes associated with them,

the crimes they bring with them. Miss,

very much so, actually, yes, actually

a clarification to that question. And the problem of

migration

louder, please.

Our migration problem is mainly, in fact,

not with the near abroad (former Soviet countries). Our

main migration problem is our own

The North Caucasus, because of migrants.

Tajiks, in short.

Since they are completely illegal,

at least they work, say, in those same jobs as

basement janitors, because they

don't know that they can easily be thrown out. But how

can one legally get rid of this

dominance of the North Caucasus? Because

they buy [it] for 100 rubles. The question is,

that those migrants are foreigners, but

the tension, and many of the crimes,

are committed by our fellow citizens

from the North Caucasus, whom you cannot get rid of,

you can't expel them, you can't introduce visas for them

and so on. That's the question.

Yes. Yes. So how, how do we

get rid of them?

My solution is simple: law and order.

Just look at how the authorities have

responded now. Matveyevsky Market,

remember? At Matveyevsky Market

some Dagestanis beat up a police officer. In response

to that, the Moscow authorities created a

concentration-camp-like facility, where they put 800

Vietnamese people.

How is that connected at all?

How is that connected to preventing this from

happening? This is, of course, no longer a question for

the mayor of Moscow, but a federal issue. First

of all, there should not be these

political offshore zones in the country,

where certain people sit,

who are either bandits or police officers,

come here and commit crimes.

I will be a mayor who simply makes

everyone equal before the law. Here are three identical

hooligans: a Russian, a Dagestani, and a Chechen.

And the police grab them all the same if they

are causing trouble and put them behind bars. They

find out, with every Chechen, who his

uncle in Chechnya is, whether that

uncle is a prosecutor, or whether something will happen

in Dagestan if this Dagestani

gets caught, and so on. Look at what's

going on. I don't know, at the President Hotel.

There are just some bandits sitting there. All of them with

TT pistols, all with IDs saying they are

members of the special services, the FSB,

representatives of the Chechen Republic,

speeding around Moscow in Mercedeses.

The police salute them, because you never know

what might happen otherwise. I don't care what

happens in Chechnya. Under me, hooligans will be

caught equally. It doesn't matter whether he is Russian,

Chechen, Dagestani, Chinese, Arab,

Tajik, that's all. We don't need anything else

except law and order. If there is

law and order, everything will work.

Please, a question. First of all, an autograph.

Autographs at the end. Let's have the question

first. And when you become president,

what will your attitude be toward the Soviet

period of history?

When you become president, what

will your attitude be toward the Soviet period

of history? Let's start—let's take this step by step.

Yes, for now it would be good to get elected

mayor. Though I like your

optimism. My attitude toward any period of history

will be as toward a period

of history.

It should be studied. Listen, there were many

wonderful things there, and many

terrible things. I don't know, for example, my

grandmother had a sister who was exiled

to Irkutsk, and at the same time she was

an absolute fan of Stalin. She simply

didn't want to have conversations with me

about Stalin being bad. There were different

views; people felt differently. History should

be studied by historians. Our task is to teach our

children properly, so that they

know about the good and the bad, about

all the different things that happened during the Soviet

period. That was life, those were people, and it was all

different. And I will treat it—I won't—

the main thing I must not do is

rewrite history textbooks myself.

That is something I definitely will not do.

Please tell me,

what can we do at the Moscow city level

about education in Moscow? What are

our options? What is happening

is terrible.

Education in Moscow—what can we

do about education in Moscow? What

is currently the main problem facing Moscow

schools?

Consolidation.

These consolidation processes—no one

understands them.

This is a personal issue for me, because my

daughter goes to a school where they are

merging neighboring schools and also attaching a

kindergarten to them. And absolutely no one

understands why this is happening. I

spoke in some district, and they

told me they are merging a school and a

technical college. But that's complete nonsense. Why

this is happening, no one understands. My

wife is a member of the school's parent committee,

and no one understands. Local deputies

don't understand either. Huge amounts of money are being allocated

to this. Does anyone

know what the salary of a school principal in

Moscow is?

Ah, 100,000.

100,000. 120,000.

140,

170.

No, why are you laughing?

140,000

140,000—the salary of a school principal in

Moscow is from 150,000 to 300,000 rubles.

No one asks us what should be done,

so,

yes, I don't begrudge them that, let them earn it. The main thing is,

what do we want from schools? We want

a proper education. Yes,

and that is why, in my platform, I talk about

the fact that we must be given an explanation

of what is happening to schools. We must

increase the role of parent committees,

which should be able to block a decision on

a merger and take key decisions.

After all, parents are

the ones who certainly do not wish schools any harm.

We must keep a close eye on what is happening

with the finances there. Did you know that

the tender to supply all school

meals to every school in Moscow was won by

whom? Yet another friend of Putin's. I want

to become the kind of mayor who makes sure that

parents make the decision on mergers.

And that Moscow City Hall ensures that

tenders are won by those who provide the best

food, not by those who

once studied with Putin. That is the whole

point. This is our city, and we must

make sure that in education, in

healthcare, in every sphere, we

are the ones making decisions. I am going there, and I am standing

on this stage not in order to seize

power for myself, but in order to give

that power to you. That is the main

point, my friends. This is my third meeting

today. I have to run back to headquarters. You

have been listening to me for a whole hour, for which I am

extremely grateful to you. I apologize that I did not

manage to answer all the questions.

The pregnant woman—I can't, sorry.

Go ahead.

orphans are living here,

in an abandoned building.

What was it you wanted to ask?

There is a children's home that, as I

understand it, is barely surviving. So please,

just briefly state what

you want to ask, and then I will answer.

As the future mayor, speak up on behalf of

that children's home. I am pleased that you

already consider me the future mayor. And I

have said that I came here in order

to make sure that your interests are

represented there. I came so that

there would not be situations where people come to

someone who has absolutely no

authority and say to him: "Stand up for

the orphans. Here, in this place, there should be

a real mayor standing, and he should

be making the decisions he is supposed

to make. We simply all must together

force the authorities. We must change them and

make the government such that a real

mayor stands in this place. I will be

very grateful to you if you help me

become that real mayor. Friends, once

again, thank you all so much. It is very

important for me to rely on you. I have no one else

to rely on except you. But I

am sure that together with you we will do

everything we must do in order

to build a great city for us and

for our children. District No. 1.

Thank you.