Alexei Navalny’s meeting with voters in Moscow’s Tyoply Stan district

Hello, thank you very much for

coming. Please come a little closer.

Take your seats. Thank you for coming to this

meeting. It is very important to us that local residents come,

because I and the people who

support me in this election

campaign—the volunteers, thousands of volunteers

who are working—

we are truly building our

election campaign primarily around

meetings with voters, because we believe

that only voters truly grant

power, and that any candidate for mayor

of Moscow, or the incumbent mayor of Moscow, or

any person seeking to obtain any kind of public office—it is

their duty to go out and meet with

voters. This may be very

unusual for Russia, this way of conducting an

election campaign, and usually no one

dares to do it this way—simply meet people,

answer questions. But we believe that

it is simply an obligation.

If you act differently, then you are acting

with reliance on someone else—

maybe on television, maybe on

oligarchs, maybe on money, maybe

on your own self-confidence. But

we want to appeal to the people and

rely on the people. That is why I am at this

meeting and ready to answer your questions.

Now I would first like to say a little

about myself, and then answer any

questions—hopefully you have some.

My name is Alexei Navalny.

I have two degrees. One is in law;

I graduated from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia,

which is not far from here,

and my second degree is in finance.

I graduated from the Financial Academy

under the Government of the Russian Federation.

By profession, I am a lawyer. I live with my wife and

two children in the Maryino district, quite

far from here. For 17 years now, in the same

place, in the same

apartment.

My main area of work is

investigating corruption in

state-owned companies. I am that very

troublesome minority shareholder,

that troublesome lawyer who keeps going after

Gazprom, Rosneft, Transneft, and so on.

And I am the person who regularly files

lawsuits against them and demands that

various managers be held accountable

for buying those very pipes at twice

the proper price, for carrying out construction at

three times the proper cost, and so on and so on.

And I am very often asked at meetings like this,

indeed in any interview,

I am always asked: why do you need all

this? There are 140,000 VTB shareholders, and they all

sit quietly, while you keep bothering them,

suing them, demanding that this person be jailed.

There are 200,000 Rosneft shareholders, and only with

you does Rosneft seem to be fighting, and you with it.

If you look at the database

of commercial courts, there is Navalny

constantly against Rosneft. My answer to this

question is very simple.

It is that I calculated everything for

myself and for my family. Today I will very

often return to this point: that

you simply need to calculate everything for yourself, and

then you will probably understand why I am

doing this. We all know, unfortunately,

that the Russian economy is currently structured

in such a way that we extract oil, extract gas,

sell this oil and gas, and with that money

we supposedly live. Unfortunately, we do not

produce or make anything else,

and we do not earn from anything else.

There is a simple, and at the same time

striking, fact: over the last 15 years, during Putin's time,

Russia has received $3 trillion from oil and gas sales.

That is an abstract figure, and it is hard for us

even to imagine such a number

in our heads, as ordinary people. What is 3

trillion, really? To understand it better,

you simply need to divide it. That means

$50,000 for every person,

about 1.5 million rubles per person, and for a family like

mine, of four people, that is 6 million rubles. So I naturally

ask myself: where are our 6 million rubles

that should belong to me, should belong to my

family? What form do they take?

Do they show up in newly built roads?

In new schools? In newly built

cities? None of that exists. I do not see any of it.

In Russia, the amount of railway built

in a year is what China—despite not having such vast

natural resources—builds in a week.

I see many older people here,

and you remember very well that a large

amount of petrodollars flowed into

the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era.

A stream of petrodollars flowed then as well. One can argue

about whether those petrodollars were spent properly

or improperly, but at

least we can see them, and we

know what they went to. During the Brezhnev era, there was

the space program,

these residential districts and

neighborhoods in which we live were built. There was

an Olympics held, there was built

a huge army.

We fed half of Africa, half of

Latin America, supported regimes

all over the world, built universities, and so

on. Whether that was good or bad, whether too much money was spent

or too little—at least we can see how

it was spent. Everything around us—even

this asphalted площадка here—

was built in those days. And what have we

received now from an even greater

amount of money, even in the richest

In the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union did not

receive as much money as it does now,

as it has been receiving in recent years.

Yes, we still seem to be trying to launch rockets,

but unfortunately we see

live on air how they fall. We try to host the Olympics,

we try to hold them. But even our Winter

Olympics, for some reason, cost three times

more than the Summer Olympics in other

places. We got nothing from all this

money, and neither I nor my family got anything

out of it. That is why I am involved in all this,

why I keep going after Gazprom, VTB, and Rosneft,

because they are robbing me personally, and personally

robbing my family. I have no other country.

I have no other city, and I understand that

the stolen money was taken from right here. Stolen

money was stolen from me, from my children. They stole those very

railways that I am supposed to travel on

and that my grandchildren will travel on.

They stole new schools. They stole community centers,

and so on and so forth. I

simply take this very personally,

very close to heart.

After all, these are mineral resources. These are resources that

belong to all of us. This is not some kind of

abstract thing. They take them from us, sell them

abroad, and pocket the money

themselves. I stand here before you now as

a candidate for mayor of Moscow, and I am addressing you,

trying to persuade you and hoping to gain your

support. Because I am the most ordinary

Muscovite, exactly the same as

you, someone who every day faces

the very same problems that

you face.

I want to solve these problems for myself, for

my family, and in the same way for you. I

stand here and say that I am running in the election

for mayor of Moscow because the problem of housing and utilities concerns me

not because I read about it

in a newspaper. Not because a poll

showed me that housing and utilities are a major concern

for Muscovites. It concerns me because

every month I get a bill for 9,500 rubles, but it

cannot possibly cost that much. I know that

perfectly well. I know perfectly well that the price rises

every

day. I know perfectly well that the quality of services

is not improving, it is actually getting worse. I know

perfectly well, just as all of you do, that our

district heads, our managers of the management

companies, are all funded by us. You probably

may have seen, some of you,

about a month ago,

a TV report showing how

the head of the Maryino district administration, right where

I live, was removed from office because his wife

in a luxury SUV ran over

pedestrians. Remember that Range

Rover with the license plate

999. And yet this district head

had spent his whole life in municipal

service. Yes, he may have a large

salary, but there is no way he can

afford the standard of living that he

openly enjoys. He should not be able to live like that.

In theory, he should be poorer than I am, because

my official salary is higher than

that of a district head, yet he openly lives

ten times better. And I know perfectly well that my

9,500-ruble bill simply

guarantees him that luxurious

lifestyle. I am running in this election

so that utility rates will be transparent and open. I am running

in this election in order to become the mayor who

will conduct an audit of housing and utility services, and then we will all

see how Mosenergo every year

sends 200 million rubles to United Russia,

which we pay for when we pay our electricity bills.

We are paying for United Russia. And then, when

I conduct the audit, we will see all

the things that do not exist, yet we pay for them every

day. I am running in this election because I

want to solve the problems of my family, of all

the people who live around me, and of your families

who also go, just as I do, to

an ordinary local

clinic. I do not live on Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow), I am not

assigned to a special ведомственная clinic for officials. I

go to an ordinary clinic like everyone else, just as

everyone else does. On television I hear talk

about how we have this wonderful

electronic queue system, which supposedly means

you sign up,

and receive medical care on the same day

you apply. I have gone to this clinic and

also poked at that

machine, and my wife went to the children's

clinic and also tried to make an appointment

through the electronic queue, and I know

perfectly well, as an ordinary Muscovite, that it does not

work. This thing does not work. But at the same time

I look at the Moscow city budget and I

see that just for outpatient clinic

care for each

Muscovite, a certain amount of rubles is allocated.

It comes to 80,000 rubles for my family for

outpatient clinic care. Where does it all

go? Why can I not get, for

this enormous amount of money, especially considering that I do not

go there that often, decent

medical care? Raise your hands, I am simply

curious, those of you who have gone to

your local

clinic in the past year. So, there are people. Raise your hands,

those who have not gone in the past year.

I can do this at every

meeting: those who have not gone are far more numerous

than those who have. But from each person they took

20,000 rubles. An astonishing amount of money,

with which it would be possible to provide better

medical care in Moscow.

That is why I want to become mayor of the city, so that

those enormous sums of money that

are allocated would actually go toward hiring

general practitioners, toward the training

of doctors, toward making sure that we have more

general practitioners so that we actually

receive proper care

overall, and not the way it is now

when Sobyanin and the head

of the healthcare committee say that we

should be proud that Muscovites, that Moscow

has surpassed all

European capitals in the number of scanners. Why should I be proud

of that? I know perfectly well that if you go to a

clinic and ask for a scan,

getting one

is impossible. If I want a scan,

a full-body MRI costs 60,000 rubles

and what exactly am I supposed to be proud of? That they bought

the scanners at twice the price and

made money off them? I don’t want to be proud of

that. I want to be proud that

Moscow spent those enormous

funds it has effectively, and that we

have actually seen an increase in

recovery rates. I look at the terrible statistics

for cancer and I see that neither

prevention nor

people whose families are facing tragedy—

people with cancer—know that if you

turn anywhere for help, everywhere they will

try to squeeze money out of you, from scans

to medication, and no one will treat you

properly, even though money is allocated for everything

—for medicines, for everything

money is allocated. I am running in this election because

I, like you, am concerned about the problem

of migration and the crime associated with

migration.

Here, probably—these words of mine

may sound sharper than elsewhere, because for me

in the southeast of the city this has turned into

something of a nightmare, and for me the words

“migration” and “high migration-related crime statistics”

are not something abstract. It means that women

are genuinely afraid to step out of their

apartment building entrance in the evening, and it’s the same here for you. When

I was preparing for this meeting, I

looked at the crime statistics in

your district. Do you know how much the number of rapes

has increased over the past year?

In the Southwestern District, Teply Stan is one of

the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. 50% of all

crimes are committed by migrants, including

illegal migrants. I am running in this

election because I know how to solve

the migration problem, because our

program includes simple measures. How

do we make sure the city does not keep drawing

all these migrants here endlessly?

Because the main employer for

migrants right now is the city itself.

Specifically, municipal services. Why

—have you ever asked your

janitor how much he earns? Do you have

any idea how much a janitor in

Moscow makes?

12,000, 15,000—basically working for food.

How much does he work for?

30,000 on paper. Officially, a janitor cannot receive

less than 30,000 rubles

at minimum. He is supposed to get at least 30,000, but

in practice, if you go up to him and

ask, they all get 12,000, 15,000, 18,000

a month. Every month they simply hand over half

their salary there—to the management

company, then further up, then to the district

administration, then to the prefecture. They

have simply created a system of these

migrants who generate every

month a huge flow of cash into

someone’s pockets, while all we get is crime.

All we get are these strange

things.

I want to solve these problems for myself, for

my own building entrance, because my wife and

my daughter walk these streets. They do not live on

Rublyovka (an elite wealthy area outside Moscow), and they do not go around with security.

That is why it is very important to me that

one of the candidates, that there be an իշխանություն

that would solve these

problems. I’m telling you here: right now

I will answer all your questions. I am telling you here about

the problems in education not because

I read about them in the newspapers, but because

the main scandal right now, the scandal

that all parents of school-age children are discussing,

is connected with the merging of

schools. The same thing is happening to me: my daughter studies at a

school that is being merged with a neighboring school,

a weaker one, and on top of that they are attaching

a kindergarten too, and it is impossible to make sense

of why this is happening. My wife is

a member of this school’s parent committee, and

even the parent committee does not understand

why this merger is happening, and even

the teachers do not understand why this

is happening. We allocate colossal

amounts of money to education, but we get

nothing in return. I am running in this election in order to

make the system transparent, so that

this—actually the biggest

line item in the Moscow budget

for education—would truly work for

us, so that every parent clearly understands

—and they will understand if I become mayor—

why a school is being merged or not

being merged, why some teachers are hired

and others are not, why the salaries are

what they are. Does anyone know how much a

Moscow school principal gets? Between 220,000 and 300,000 rubles

is what the principal of a Moscow

school earns. This is not made up—ask

your own school principal. I don’t begrudge them that—let them

earn it. Let them.

But why are only they paid? Let ordinary teachers

also get something, and let our

children receive a proper education in

Moscow. There is an enormous amount of money here. I am standing

here before you because I want

to change the power in the city. The wonderful and

very rich Moscow budget is 1.6

trillion rubles in size, second only to

Moscow’s budget alone is comparable to New York City’s.

There is enough money to

have proper housing and utilities services, one of the key areas where we

invest enormous amounts of

money, and to have a city with no

large numbers of undocumented

migrants, where the transportation

problem is solved, even though we pour unimaginable

amounts of money into it. You know how much

that interchange at

Profsoyuznaya Street costs—5.4 billion rubles. The Yuzhnaya Rokada (Southern Express Route)

costs, nearby, 7.9 billion rubles, and

transport budgets are burning right before our eyes. What

is spent on just one construction

project—more money is stolen from all of us there

than would be needed to build outpatient clinics

for the entire Southwestern

District. I am standing before you because I

have solutions to all these problems. We

have a program that was written

by the best specialists, because we

know that other cities—prosperous

major cities around the world—

regularly face these

problems and solve them. Money—I repeat—

today I’m going to talk a lot

about money. It exists. If I

were running for mayor

of Oryol, and you were asking me here to

build you a road interchange or

an outpatient clinic, or if there weren’t enough schools, I would

say: I’m sorry, but in Oryol’s budget

there is no money—for a school, for an

interchange, for anything. But since I

am running here, there is money for clinics, for all of it. This is a very

rich city, one of the richest

cities in the world, and I am standing here because

I am saying to you and to myself that the only thing

we lack in order to

truly start living better is

simply a little faith in ourselves. We are

actually surprised—even I am a little

surprised that these meetings are taking place. This

is very unusual for Russia—a candidate

standing here in person.

We need to believe in ourselves, and we must understand that we

must make every

candidate stand and answer questions before any

number of residents. At my first

meeting, on the first day, there were three

people. I stood there anyway. That is simply the duty

of a candidate. We must finally

believe in ourselves that

the only source of power is

the people, and this

applies in Moscow as well.

This is how things should be organized here.

We have a very high level of education in Moscow,

we have 77% internet penetration in Moscow,

everyone knows everything. I am telling you

corruption stories here,

but I am sure each of you could come up

here, stop me, and tell ten of your own

horrific stories about corruption. We understand everything,

we are aware of everything, but for some reason, year

after year, we allow this government to

fool us again, falsify

elections again, and then say, well, it just didn’t

work out—we’ll go on living as we have been

and keep looking at colossal

Moscow budgets while still paying for

supposedly free education, paying for

supposedly free healthcare, paying for

nonexistent housing and utilities services, and so on. If we

believe in ourselves and understand that

the mayor of Moscow is in fact elected by only

a few million

people, then to tear down this whole

mafia and elect someone else, all it takes is

people in Moscow—and they are there, they understand everything, they

understand it all, they want to remove Sobyanin

they want to remove

this mafia. We simply need to understand that in order

to counter television,

this propaganda and brainwashing, we

have a more powerful weapon: ourselves. Each

one of us can talk to someone. Each

one of us can get certain ideas across to a

neighbor. We can all do this. We just need

to believe in ourselves, my friends. Here I am

asking you to support me, asking you

to support yourselves, asking you to support me

as a candidate who will solve the problems

he knows everything about. Our

problems are the same. We live in

the same apartment buildings, go to the same

outpatient clinics, and our children go to the same

schools. I am just like you, and it seems to me

that the time has come when Moscow

should have as mayor a person who

truly understands the city’s problems and

who sees no other source

of power than the people.

That is why he meets with people. I

thank you. Thank you very much. Now I am ready

to answer any of your questions.

Thank you.

Please, I’ll ask a question from where I am, and then I’ll

repeat it so everyone can hear.

You outlined many problems that you

want to solve. Please tell us how you

want to solve the problem

I asked them: and how do you

issue permits? I said: come here,

get over here—right here are the leaflets from our

meeting, come up and you’ll see them, right here.

How could you solve the problem, Gennady

Nikolaevich, correct? Let me go

one by one, because we, Gennady

Nikolaevich—let’s simply all

think about it together. We know how to solve these

problems. Who should solve the problem? As

you said, the issue of vagrancy—the district administration and

the police, because when people lie around and

drink alcohol in a

public place, they are committing an

administrative offense, so

the police, when residents demand action, must act.

come and drive the homeless people away, eliminate the encampment

the homeless encampment. Why isn’t this happening now?

Because the police simply do not care at all about

what the residents there think, because

the district administration does not care either what

the residents think; they are not connected to them in any

way, to the local population.

And with us, even at the local level, Sobyanin (Moscow’s mayor) may

not even know about your homeless encampment, and he

will order it eliminated. That kind of showmanship does happen.

If, during an open hotline

you managed to get through to Sobyanin and asked him

a question, saying: we have a homeless encampment under

the bushes here — he would say: eliminate

the homeless encampment under the bushes in Tyoply Stan (a district in Moscow).

Some police officers would come running here and

clear out the encampment, but in 148 other

districts the encampments would remain. The solution

to this problem lies in the fact that in general

in a city where all decisions

are made in a single office at the top — let me give you

one small example. What percentage, do you think,

of the budget money, out of this

1.6 trillion-ruble Moscow budget

is actually allocated by local

deputies, by local self-government, at

the grassroots level? What do you think?

What percentage is allocated where

people live, where they deal with

homeless encampments, with schools — what percentage?

Thirty? Or — you probably read in our

program.

One percent. One percent — 16 billion out of 1.6 trillion

is allocated by all the thousands of deputies

across all

184 Moscow districts. This shows that

local government has neither power nor

authority, and a city cannot be governed

this way. No city and no

country is governed like this, because Mosc-

ow

is the size of a medium-sized country, and it is impossible

to govern Moscow from a single office.

When we devolve authority downward

to municipal deputies, when we

make the local police, your

district police officer, accountable to you and to municipal

deputies rather than to a federal minister,

then they will work, because

the local police officer will know that

the residents will throw him out, dismiss the district officer, and hire

another one if he does not deal with

the homeless encampment. This is how it works everywhere, in all

countries. Only here

the Moscow authorities say that the residents

of Moscow are too stupid to manage

this money themselves, that deputies in

Moscow are too useless to

control the money. But everywhere else

they do control it — in all thriving

cities this works, and in Moscow

it will work too. And sooner or later we

will be forced to do it. It does not work, it cannot

move — this tadpole-like thing with

a huge head and tiny legs in the form

of 1% local self-government — it does not work like that.

The sign fell down. That is a bad sign.

It was glued on badly, glued on badly, yes.

Alexei, right — and so this system in which

we vest local

authorities with powers, including the local police,

making it accountable one way or another to local

self-government, will make it possible to solve your

practical problems, so that you could call

and say: there is a homeless encampment — and the district officer would come

and, on the basis of the law, disperse the encampment.

Your question? The question is: where do you propose

to put these homeless people? They are not just “bums.” They, they

are socially vulnerable members of the population.

These are people, human beings — where should they go?

What do you propose? Where are they supposed to go? Why not

offer them shelters?

Create shelters for them — they are people after all, human beings.

People whom their children threw out, whom

their neighbors threw out, swindlers who

black realtors (fraudulent property dealers) and so on — you, you are saying

only what people want to hear about

migrants, about people from the Caucasus, about others, about

homeless people who must be “eliminated,” but the ways

to solve the problem must be something else.

What kind of specialists are you supposed to be? You

say “eliminate the homeless” — where are you going to

eliminate them to? What, just load them up and cart them away?

All right, the problem — you asked your question, and I

am answering you. If, if you know

the Russian

language, if you respect the people gathered here, then you

will be quiet for a moment now and let me

speak. Listen: in response to my question, I urge you

to respect those gathered here, do you understand? If

you understand the meaning of the word “eliminate,”

then to eliminate a homeless encampment means to make

sure that people do not violate public

order. No one is proposing to kill

homeless people. Young man, you should simply

take our program, open it, and

look at the breakdown of the Moscow

budget there.

The social budget — for social welfare,

healthcare, education, including

assistance to people who are without

a fixed place of residence, including

for social

institutions — billions, hundreds of

billions of rubles are allocated, enough for

everyone. If this person is suffering from

alcoholism, he needs treatment. No one

is saying that

their children threw them out. Well then, there must be

a law in force under which you cannot simply

throw a person out of an apartment just like that. And you know

that — I do not need to explain to you

that most of the scams and these

black realtors are connected with whom? District administrations,

social welfare offices, social workers — they deliberately look for

lonely pensioners and draw up fake

wills. It is a mafia-like system that

takes away apartments and money. We have the money for it.

so that people don’t think that in Moscow

there are millions of homeless people. There aren’t millions, but there are many.

There are thousands. Well, in order to solve

the problem, in order to provide them with housing

and shelters. We have the means. There is a well-known

public figure, Doctor Liza (Elizaveta Glinka, a Russian charity activist), and she

is engaged precisely in treating these

homeless people, helping them, and providing

social support. She has this miserable

basement near Paveletsky railway station,

and the city is constantly trying to drive her out of

that

basement. One institution for all of Moscow. And

there sit these officials, with those

expressions on their faces and with all those billions, and they

are pushing out the only charitable

organization. It doesn’t take that much money

to treat them all. Yesterday my campaign chief

ended up

in—well, he got overstressed, and they took him to

City Clinical Hospital No. 1, and I

stopped by to see him. My God, I walked through that hospital. I

just—since I’m currently holding

three such meetings every weekday and five

every weekend, I talk a great deal here

about healthcare and I know

the healthcare figures well. I

looked around and couldn’t believe it—where was I, in

Nigeria, or Rwanda, or Moscow, where we

allocate all this money to healthcare,

money that is supposed to be there so these people can

have surgery, even those people who have no

money at all. After all, we have free

medicine in theory, and a great deal of money is allocated

for everything. I already gave the example of

outpatient clinics: a sea of money, but

absolutely no services. That’s all. Any

problem—you don’t need to just throw up your hands like

that. Any problem

can be solved. To solve

problems,

there are large numbers of people with higher

education in Moscow. There are people who

understand all urban problems. There is

humanity has been governing cities for thousands

of years. We all know perfectly well how

cities work and all aspects of urban governance.

The money to solve these problems exists. Well, go ahead—

yes, your question please. Coming back to it—so,

if you become mayor of Moscow, will you be able

to build relations with our

law enforcement system? You said

district police officers should be appointed. You studied in

the States—do they elect sheriffs there or what?

In many states, sheriffs are elected.

Of course. I understand your question: how do you build

relations with the federal police? The federal

police—the head of the city police department doesn’t report to you,

no, no. How will you build those relations?

Excellent question. What can we do

about safety, the police, the FSB (Russia’s security service)? I’m answering

your

question. Let’s think about it.

What matters to us isn’t controlling

the FSB. Who here wants to run

the FSB? Yes, they won’t let you—there, two people.

All right. And who here simply wants

the streets to be

safer? Everyone does, and so do I. I don’t want

to run the FSB. I want my wife to

go out into the courtyard with the children and for there to be less

street crime. So even at the

city level, where the federal police do not report to you,

you can still do the things

that have worked in many cities

around the world—take London and Singapore. Volunteer patrols

—we’ll get to volunteer patrols. London and Singapore

introduced CCTV systems that

reduced street crime there by up to 80%.

There are tons of cameras hanging around, they just don’t work.

Brilliant. The man says there are tons of cameras hanging around

but they don’t work. I know that

better than anyone else, because in the

RosPil project (Navalny’s anti-corruption initiative) we were engaged in

monitoring those cameras, and when the city

allocated billions of rubles for cameras, we challenged

that tender because it was secret.

They said it was a state secret. Then

someone pocketed those billions, installed

the cameras, and a year later a scandal broke out

over the fact that the cameras were fake altogether,

or were broadcasting some kind of static

image. That’s

it. There are mechanisms—even if the police

do not report to you—by which you can make it so

that there is less street crime.

But I already told you: for example, install

a large number of cameras. But if

the people installing the cameras

just want to make money off it for

half the job—change what, exactly? Let’s—

let’s not get heated, and instead

let’s think together about what can

be done that has already been done in other

cities. As I said, solution number one:

there is no need to invent anything. In all

prosperous million-plus cities, this

works: the cameras there work.

Solution number two: if we cannot get

proper police officers who would do a very good job—

ideal police officers—and no one reports to us,

then we can use

the Moscow budget to hire a large number of

private security guards—not the kind of private

security guards who stand around in every shopping

mall scratching their bellies, but genuinely

people who

are accountable to citizens, accountable

to local self-government, who will not

have the power to put

handcuffs on anyone, but who will carry out

basic patrols. If they see

someone snatching a bag from someone else, then

they will intervene in that situation or

call the actual police.

They work, and they worked in London, they

worked in Singapore, and they will

work in Moscow too, if of course we do not

we think we're the stupidest people in the world, but that's not true.

I don't believe that the residents of Moscow, or me, or you,

are much stupider than the English or the Chinese

living in Singapore. If it works there, then it can work here too.

There are no methods

that will simply eliminate

crime overnight. There is no button

I can press and suddenly—

that's it. If you demand a fight for

public order, then you probably,

first and foremost, need to observe

public order yourselves. Because everything

starts with us. If someone comes to

a rally and starts disrespecting other

people, shouting—then that's where the problems begin. Your

question.

The cinema... or rather, if along this street,

if you walk along Profsoyuznaya Street, there has been no sidewalk for 15

years. That's it. So everyone walks along the side

nearby.

Yes, I'll ask

the question: people have been suffering, walking like this for 15 years. During that

time, there have been

four different heads

of the district administration. I've appealed to the mayor now,

and they're trying to bury this issue.

What should be done in a case like this?

I didn't even have time to open my mouth—

This government has to be changed, this power structure that

has arranged everything this way. You have lots of examples like this here.

When I was preparing for this meeting with you,

I carefully read the local district

press, the forums, what people are writing, and so on.

You have had absolutely

astonishing cases here—for example, in that park

money was allocated to inspect some kind of

amphitheater, even though the amphitheater had already

ceased to exist a year earlier. But money for its

inspection was still being allocated, and someone was

writing it off. I assure you that in exactly the same way,

money has also been written off for your nonexistent sidewalk and your

nonexistent streetlights.

Let me give you a completely

simple but very clear example. I

was speaking in the Zyuzino district, right there in the courtyards,

really deep inside the residential blocks, with apartment buildings

all around us, at a regular courtyard stadium,

a normal football field.

According to the paperwork—and a local deputy brought the documents—

this stadium was fully

equipped. On paper, it had a fence.

On paper, it had basketball

courts. On paper, it had goals, and

so on and so on and so on. And I,

and all the residents standing there, were turning our heads like this

and saw nothing except

a sunken, miserable field—nothing else. And these same

people, this same government, still have the nerve

to come and show us this and say: everything

is there. Look, here are the signed completion certificates.

We paid for all of it. But we

for some reason allow ourselves to be treated

this way: they show us these

pieces of paper, and we—I don't know—we just stay silent.

Well yes, of course they stole 10

million rubles from this sports ground, and we just shrugged for some reason

and somehow accepted it all. But it was stolen from us.

If we look at how much

money is allocated for

urban improvement, including the construction of

sidewalks, we know...

Let me give an example with this same road.

Look at how much the Northwestern Chord costs:

73 billion rubles. All the experts, unanimously,

say it could have been done for half that price.

Just imagine how much lighting

and how many sidewalks could be built with that money.

Try a very simple experiment.

Take Moscow's budget. If we're talking

about roads and their

infrastructure, look at how much

money is allocated for

reconstruction and what is planned to be built in a given year.

You'll see that every kilometer

of reconstructed or new road in

Moscow costs 28 million

dollars. A fine German

[music]

four-lane highway—we could

build two or three times more for

the same money. But for some reason we have permanently

accepted that any

construction contracts, any roads,

are driven not by the real needs

of residents, but by the fact that some

official in an office meets with a contractor and says:

Let's come up with something

so we can write off 10 billion somewhere. Sure.

And that's where things like your

interchange come from—the one all

transport experts have already said

will cost billions, while the traffic

situation will only get worse. And the same goes for the Southern Rokada.

This is where decisions like

the one affecting Bitsevsky

Park, which is near you,

come from. They call it "clarifying the boundaries."

Every time they "clarify" the boundaries, a little bit

of Bitsevsky Park disappears somewhere—into

development, commercial development, and

so on. It's an astonishing situation in the city:

the residents of the city and the city authorities

seem to exist in separate, autonomous

universes. There are residents who, at

every public meeting, say: at least build us a sidewalk along

the houses.

And there is a city government that

controls trillions and billions, yet somehow

quite openly and simply

takes that money for itself. What exactly are we supposed to be proud of in this?

Because of this, we now have a list of billionaires:

80 dollar billionaires. In 2001 there were

four of them, and now there are 96.

And all these billionaires come either from

raw materials, or

the budget, from officials—they are open, obvious dollar

billionaires. Or millionaires—who here has seen

them? Who here has seen my...

The investigation into Yakunin that I

recently published made many people ask, how can it be

that an official at the head of

a state corporation that appears

to be quite poor on the surface—everything there is

somehow falling apart; pardon me, but if you walk into some

train station restroom, especially outside Moscow,

it’s an absolute horror. Facilities run by

Russian Railways (RZD) are in disrepair even in Moscow.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, we

build as much railway in a year

as China builds in a week. And yet

the head of RZD, together with his

sons and his wife, has simply

created a giant offshore empire. They

own billions. All of this is happening

out in the open. Until we change the government, we

will get neither new railways nor

streetlights nor sidewalks. Clear out the vagrants’ shelter—

Next question, please.

No one works alone as mayor; you

have to have a team. Please name

and briefly describe the people

you are going to work with. Well,

the key areas are headed by people responsible for

healthcare, education, housing and utilities,

and finance. Understood—the question is about the team. You

cannot run a city alone. How will you

form your team? Excellent

question. I want to say that a city

really is not governed by one person. In

fact, the mayor of any city

is someone who spends 90% of his time

cutting ribbons and

handing out honorary certificates. A city is

run by tens of thousands of people, and if

I told you all that tomorrow I would replace

tens of thousands of people, you would

just tap your finger to your temple, and you would be

absolutely

right. The main thing that needs to be done, from the point

of view of building a team in the city, is

to change Moscow’s political leadership

and simply establish the right principles

on which the team operates—the right

principles, which are that

people must carry out their official

duties, and that being corrupt must be

very difficult and very dangerous. Let’s

compare that with the signals

the authorities are sending us now. What

principles exist now? Remind me,

please, what is the biggest

corruption case in the country right now?

Serdyukov. Aside from the Kirovles case, Serdyukov.

Serdyukov. Exactly right—Serdyukov.

Remind me, please: is Serdyukov in prison?

And is Vasilyeva in prison, or is she under

house arrest? She is, she is under

house arrest in a thirteen-room apartment.

As you may recall, she is allowed 3 hours a

day to go for walks, visit

the doctor, and she is regularly photographed while

visiting jewelry

stores. Besides, I can remind you

as a lawyer that formally she is still

under house arrest; this

is called restriction of freedom, and it

counts at a ratio of one to two. So if later

after some time Vasilyeva receives

for example 2 years of actual imprisonment,

she will be released because she will have

already, so to speak,

served her time. This shows that the authorities

are sending a very clear signal as well:

steal, skim, do whatever you want, but just

remain politically loyal, hang

portraits

of the leaders everywhere, keep quiet when you need to keep quiet,

and

kick back money to the deputy mayor.

Khanov of the Eastern District—proven

theft of 600 million rubles (about US$6.5 million). That’s it. So

from the standpoint of building a team,

we need to stick to the principles that

if you are suspected of corruption—goodbye.

If corruption is proven—definitely

jail. Of these tens of thousands of people

who run the city, 85% of them

really are not

Let’s form the leadership on the right

principles, so that people follow

the rules and do not steal, and relying on

those 85% of people who are not

corrupt, we will be able to suppress and

change the 15% who really

need to be gotten rid of and who

really cannot be reformed. Your

question.

About the report on work done—

if you became mayor, how would

reporting on the work done take place: annually or

in some other format? Daily, and

every second. This is the most important part of my

program, including in the fight against

corruption. How should reporting on

work done happen? You

see that something is being built, for example. You

go online and within a second

find out who is building it, what is being built, how they

won the tender,

how many migrant workers are living there,

whether they are authorized for that construction site, the migration cards

of all those migrants, and all the certificates

of completed work. That is what

the mayor’s daily, every-second reporting

should consist of. If I simply once a year

issue a report this thick for you and

send it to all of you, describing

how wonderful I am—that is not a report. A report

is real daily oversight. You all

know my whole saga, probably, with

Sobyanin’s paving tiles. Well, many of you do. I’ll

just remind you: about 3 million

volunteers carried out inspections and saw

that in 180 places the tiles had to be replaced,

because they had been laid poorly, and in 150 places

there were no tiles at all, and for a year we sought from Sobyanin

We’re asking for one simple thing: just give us

the plans showing how these tiles were laid, down to the

meter. There must be acceptance certificates for the

completed work, there have to be, but they won’t give them to us and they won’t

because they’ve created this

murky situation where nothing is clear

and corruption thrives. Even if Sobyanin—Sobyanin

is probably annoyed that people keep bothering him about

these tiles—but sorry, he can’t do anything about it

because his deputies,

district prefects, heads of local district administrations—they all

still treat any kind of work, including laying tiles,

as a source of money. So that there’s no temptation for me, for my

subordinates, and so on

to get involved in these kinds of things,

everything must be absolutely

open: all completion certificates,

all spending—and more than that, the most important thing

that my colleagues and I wrote into,

or tried to write into, the new

legislation on the contract procurement system,

which we were pushing for at the national

level, is disclosure of so-called ultimate

beneficial owners. What does that mean? If you

go now to a district administration website or a

prefecture website and look at the local organizations

that win tenders for

landscaping, housing and utilities, or anything else,

take any organization and run it through the legal-entity

database, and it turns out to belong to offshore

companies. It’s unclear—in other words, it’s unclear

who they belong to. Or rather, it’s clear enough that all of this

belongs to prefects’ children,

the wives of district heads, the nephews of

management company bosses. That is, we understand

who owns it, but it’s all hidden.

When I become mayor, not a single kopeck

of budget, municipal, or state

money will go to a company if we do not know

exactly who owns it.

Everywhere, there must be a real individual listed—

a person with a full name and patronymic—so that

we know this is the person making money from it, that this is

what they do. These are the most important

anti-corruption measures, because then

we will immediately see how things are really arranged,

whose children are where, whose

nephews are where. And then if I want to, excuse me,

to appoint one of my own people and turn bad a year later,

some relative of mine—

a cousin, say. Do we need New Moscow?

As for New Moscow, by the way, no one

asked Muscovites. You can’t move all of

Russia to Moscow. No one asked me either.

I’m asking this question about New Moscow

just like you are, and

I actually do have some information

to think it through. Let’s

think about it. Remember why they announced

that New Moscow was needed? Why?

To move federal government bodies,

officials, and so

on. A few months ago they

said, no, we’re not going to move the officials

after all. It’s like—right now, take the striking example

of relocating one executive authority

body

from Moscow to another city. Does anyone remember?

The Constitutional Court was moved

where? To St. Petersburg, right. So in St. Petersburg they

renovated things for them—but also built a new building,

an entire palace. For every Constitutional Court judge

they bought an apartment in St. Petersburg,

for every Constitutional Court judge

they built a dacha in central St. Petersburg

in the very best part of the city, and now

the Constitutional Court

still holds visiting sessions of the Constitutional Court

in Moscow. So why did we spend those billions?

It’s the same with New Moscow. I simply do not

understand it. If I become mayor, it will never

happen that Navalny just up and

decides whether we’re relocating or not relocating something.

You can’t decide that so casually. An ordinary person

cannot make that kind of decision because

the question of annexation and expansion

of the city

has to be fully calculated. You need to

sit down and spend a year calculating how much construction will cost,

how people will get there,

whether there will be traffic jams, how much

public transport will cost, whether these officials

who go there will be able to pay

for that public transport, who will move

and who will not. This is a professional

question, a matter of calculation. First, you calculate everything,

then you publish it, and everyone who wants

to criticize it

does so, and then you bring all that criticism together

before spending the money. But right now we have the opposite: once again

we are moving toward a system where there are some

Rotenbergs or Timchenkos, all these

endless former classmates and ex-coaches

from judo who for some reason have now

become construction magnates. They come in and say,

‘Well, you’ve got a budget of 1.6 trillion rubles here,’

‘let’s come up with something so that

we can bury 20 billion somewhere.’ And so

they invent things: they invented New Moscow,

they invented Skolkovo, they invented Rusnano, and

so on and so on. You can

continue that list without me. Next question, please.

Yes, next question.

Pavel, if you become mayor of Moscow,

how will you build

relations with the current authorities? Will it be

conflict, confrontation, or

dialogue? Is revolutionary change even possible

within a single city when

the entire federal

machine is—thank you very much, that’s an excellent question.

How do you build relations with the federal

government? Because I assume that

the federal authorities won’t be especially fond of me.

Yes, if they

understand that

the Tax Code and the budget process

tell us that Moscow will retain

That amount of money, and the federal

government, won’t be able to do anything about an

elected mayor of Moscow, because he will

have a budget and, most importantly,

he will have actually been elected by Muscovites and will have their support.

Yaroslavl was a different

case. In Yaroslavl, first of all,

despite the fact that Yaroslavl Region

is a donor region (one that contributes more to the federal budget than it receives),

when it comes to public support, Moscow is completely

different. You know it yourselves: about

15% of the country’s population lives here, and all these

officials are here, and all the country’s political issues

are, unfortunately, really decided here — but that’s

how it works. In Moscow, Moscow decides

everything. As my campaign chief figuratively says,

and he is absolutely right: if in Moscow

I become mayor, all of Putin’s power

turns into a pumpkin — and not for nothing.

A victory in Moscow makes it possible to change something

in Russia. With all due respect to the

wonderful cities of Russia, if the mayor of

the mayor of

Vladivostok, Ryazan, or Yaroslavl

is a decent, honest person,

that person gets devoured,

destroyed — and we’ve seen this happen

many times. I think in Ryazan

they elected a Communist as mayor, a fairly

decent guy, and they simply shut off

the hot water in Ryazan for a month so that

the population would hate him. In Moscow, that

cannot be done. In Moscow, the mayor as a

political figure would effectively be

equal to Putin, and this whole political

system, which is based on deceit,

falsification, and lies, would collapse immediately

if that happened in Moscow. And it wouldn’t

mean some kind of collapse or catastrophe,

civil war, and so on. On the contrary,

this is the most proper way of peaceful

struggle for power and peaceful change

in Russia: specifically, a political victory

in Moscow. Next question. Yes, Alexei,

in your program there is a section on crime

.

It says there that in Moscow

roughly half of all crimes

are committed by newcomers, and of those

only about half of the newcomers

are illegal immigrants.

So everyone assumes that

the main 25% are people from our

“friendly republics” who are

Russian citizens rather than Muscovites. So

the question is: how do you deal with them? And the second

question: in that same section

you write that it is necessary to pursue

an integration policy for the children of newcomers,

yes, by placing them in kindergartens

and so on.

But you are now referring to examples from Western countries,

like London itself.

Yes, the examples of France, Britain, and Germany

show that integration policy does not work.

Doesn’t it seem that this won’t work? And as for the question of

migration in general, let me just say something about

migration, and in particular about crime

that is connected not with foreigners but with

our fellow citizens simply from other

republics. Let’s look at the situation as a whole.

Moscow is the number one city in terms of the number of

illegal migrants. We have surpassed the United States

in this respect. Is that a normal

situation? No. Forty percent of all

male Tajiks in the world live in

Moscow. Is that normal? No. They have

simply moved here from the entire

country. You’re answering all my

questions at once. First: the introduction of a

visa regime. That is a federal measure, but

nevertheless, we must push for it. It is

absolutely normal; it does not infringe on anyone’s rights.

If we go to Germany, we

get a visa; if we go

to the United States, we don’t just get a visa, we

give our fingerprints twice — first at the

embassy, then at the border — and that does not

particularly infringe on us. This is simply normal

rules, normal practice that

exists everywhere, and we should introduce it. Why should

we have to buy a ticket and travel, while any Uzbek or

Tajik can buy a ticket,

come here, and stay for as long as they want?

I have already spoken about what the real

reason is. It is not because there are jobs

for these migrants, but simply because it is a situation

in which it is profitable for all officials to hire

migrants, because migrants are

like slaves: you can yell at them, you can take

half their wages from them. This

will continue endlessly. The introduction of a

visa regime

and the blacklisting

of enterprises caught

using illegal labor.

Right now this happens all the time, and

they get off with a small fine. If you are

caught once with an illegal migrant worker,

that’s it — you will never see city money again.

Go into private business if you want, but

never again budget money. And third:

within a year, introduce a rule under which

with city budgetary

and municipal funds, it is forbidden to hire

foreign labor. If it is

private business, hire whomever you want — that is

your business. If you are

working with the city,

it is prohibited. We should not, with our own money,

create problems for ourselves, because

we remember very well that in fact it is

a myth that Moscow will be overrun with filth tomorrow

if there are no migrants. Before 2003,

there were practically no migrants in Moscow,

and in most Russian cities, including

well-maintained ones, there are no migrants.

They all live in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

people, including those in decent housing

There are no migrants at all, and everything is fine.

Nothing has fallen apart, so we, we, we

if we apply these three measures, we will seriously reduce

the number of migrants, among other things,

and reduce the number of crimes

committed by migrants. Now, to the second

part of your question, and this is an important question

specifically for your district. After all, you recently had

here, near this shopping

center, Prince—what is it called? Prince

Plaza—a fight, yes. Everyone there was a citizen

of Russia, fighting among themselves.

And recently that LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) deputy was beaten up in your area,

LDPR

right? There is nothing new to invent here

except enforcing the law. There is only

one rule: the law must be the same for everyone. As long as in

Russia there are political enclaves

where the laws of the Russian

Federation do not apply, where, as if it were the Zaporizhian Sich (a semi-autonomous Cossack stronghold), you go there

commit any crimes you want, and then

return, and there is no extradition. Where any

bandits are given golden IDs and FSB

passes, and they drive around committing crimes

—you yourselves read about these monstrous

things they do, and at the same time everyone knows

that this gang is based right there in the

President Hotel, all with these weapons

that any passerby can see, and everyone

knows the bandits are sitting there, but no one can do

anything about it because

there is a political decision: it is an enclave, they

exist outside the legal framework. We allocate

huge amounts of money; they have created

their own army. In their regular schools, children

are taught only

a certain amount of religious subjects,

specialized

Islamic ones. Women are shot at because they

walk the streets in skirts—shot at with paintball guns,

after which the head of the republic says,

“That’s right, they should be shot at. I shot at them too.”

Until this federal problem is resolved,

nothing will ever change. It is necessary

to address it. That is precisely why, once again, we

wrote here: “Change Russia.”

Russia needs to be changed so that

the law is the same for everyone—Chechen,

Dagestani, Russian—so that everyone knows:

for you, there is the local police officer; for you, the Criminal

Code, and so on—absolutely equally

and identically. Your question—I wanted to ask

about how you think

the future is possible, for example, for scientific

enterprises in the city of Moscow, especially

those in the medical and biological fields,

because given that

the anti-advertisement for Skolkovo

is one thing, but the real institutions

have in fact now turned into empty shells.

The future of scientific

enterprises and the property of these scientific

enterprises—this, by the way, ties in perfectly.

I am often asked a question

about the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is directly connected to

property. I have spoken a great deal with

supporters and opponents of the reform there,

I studied this issue, and if we simplify

but speak broadly and accurately,

it looks like this: officials

declared that the Russian Academy of Sciences has

a huge amount of property, land, and

so on, including in Moscow, and these are

just some old men in their eighties

who are senile and cannot manage it

so let us, the fashionable

wonderful officials, now begin

to manage all this property. The question arises:

fine, maybe there are some

old men there. But these old men are all winners of

Nobel Prizes; at least we understand

where they came from. Fine, they

may not manage well, but they have

some right to occupy these positions. But

where did you come from at all?

Where did you all come from? How exactly are scientific and

innovative

industry and technology being built by our

government? We all know perfectly well. We

have already seen Skolkovo; we have seen Rusnano.

Therefore, the answer regarding the reform of the Academy

is this: if things there are being run opaquely, well, at least

they are being run by academics. That is bad, but

it can be dealt with. But we definitely do not want

to hand over the exact same closed and murky

management simply to some people

whom absolutely no one knows. Koval

heads the Institute

of Crystallography, and then this whole mafia

that appeared from nowhere is pressuring

the academics. Yes, maybe there are some

people there who are difficult to deal with, but they are at least

deserving people. Why should we

now hand over all this property simply

to some obscure bureaucrats who

literally came from who knows where? We

do not even know their names. Therefore,

the answer on reforming the Academy is: it must be reformed,

but on the basis of transparency. If

you simply turn your head here, you can see

these huge, remarkable buildings

further along Profsoyuznaya Street—there are many of them, these gray

buildings that belong to former some kind of

and so on and so forth. Are they being used for their intended purpose

now? No. What happened to them?

Everything has been rented out. And if

we look at how it was rented out, we

will see that it was leased for one ruble, while

in sublease it was rented out for $500 per

square meter. All that needs to be done here with regard to

this property—and the federal government

must do it, and the city must do it—

is simply to open all the data so that

any person going online could

see what area, at what price, and

to whom it has been leased. And then we will see

astonishing things in many cities.

By the way, this was done by the head

of my campaign headquarters. He is from Yekaterinburg, and in

the Yekaterinburg City Duma, he spent two years pushing through

such a law. They passed it, and in

Yekaterinburg, all municipal property

that is leased out by the city can all

be viewed: for how much and to whom it

is being leased. And then we will immediately see

that the head of some department leased everything

to his wife and his brother, and they then subleased it

at ten times the price. That's it.

More transparency will allow us

to control this revenue and direct it

into the budget so that

it truly works for us. My friends, I

hold three meetings like this a day. I

have to leave for the next one. I am very

grateful to you for coming. It is very

important to me that you came, because I

really—and this is not just a figure of speech—have no one

to rely on except you. I have no television,

I have no billboards. But I have something

more important: the opportunity

to meet like this with people, and that is something

no one can ever take away from me. I believe that

relying on you, on your support, I believe

that I have managed to persuade some of you. Today you

will tell your neighbors, and your neighbors

will tell other neighbors that there is

a candidate who considers it his

duty to meet with residents; that there is

a candidate who has

a real program for solving real

problems; that there is a candidate who

is just like you, who knows about all these

problems because he lives

the same kind of life. I hope that all together

we will finally believe in ourselves, unite, and

on September 8, vote and be able

to build the kind of city in which we will

truly have an excellent quality

of life, both for ourselves and for our children.

Thank you very much.