Meeting with Alexei Navalny in Yekaterinburg. Part 3
The third part of the recording of Alexei’s meeting with residents of Yekaterinburg, which took place during the historic days of December 2011—at the height of the protests against the rigging of the State Duma elections. In this excerpt, Alexei uses simple examples to explain the difference between the American system of checks and balances and Putin’s vertical power structure, which is capable of destroying any independent organization through fire inspectors and the tax authorities. He mocks the “patriotic” elite, people like Abramovich and Vekselberg, who prefer to live abroad, and reminds the audience of our main task: to send corrupt officials to where their real home is—prison.
Text version
0:00
This morning there was news that Kovalchuk
0:02
had bought Channel One. Yes, they bought 25%
0:06
of Channel One. Correct me if I'm
0:07
wrong, for $130 million.
0:09
150.
0:10
150. So that puts the valuation
0:12
of Channel One, by their calculations, at what?
0:15
$600 million. Meanwhile, STS Media
0:18
is publicly traded and is worth $3.6 billion
0:21
dollars. How exactly, using what kind of
0:24
calculator, they come up with all this
0:26
is unclear. Absolutely everything is decided by one
0:28
person. That's the difference between systems. I mean,
0:30
in Russia, in the present day, in
0:33
some sense in Belarus, in
0:37
Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, and in
0:40
some other places, everything belongs to one person,
0:41
and he decides everything.
0:43
In America, really—I spent a long
0:46
time there—there is nothing like what we
0:49
say here, that the U.S. State Department decides something,
0:51
that's absolutely not how it works there. It does decide
0:53
a lot of things, but so do a huge number of people, groups,
0:56
universities, foundations, parties, whoever you like,
0:59
Puerto Rican associations,
1:02
I don't know, advocates of defensive gear,
1:04
gays, lesbians, opponents of gays,
1:07
opponents of lesbians, those who support guns,
1:09
those who oppose guns—they all exert
1:11
super, super-colossal
1:13
pressure on the State Department every day. There was a shooting there,
1:16
that senator, right, and people said: "Let's
1:19
ban guns." But no way in hell
1:21
you'll ban them, because the National
1:22
Rifle Association has 100 million
1:25
people there, and they say: "No,
1:27
you won't ban them." And he won't ban anything,
1:28
because the rifle association will go
1:30
and challenge everything in court, yes, and launch
1:32
a full-blown campaign. It can even remove
1:34
a president. In that sense, for example, it's very interesting
1:36
to read Clinton's book.
1:38
Half the book is devoted to how he
1:40
fights the National Rifle
1:42
Association, because they are
1:43
all Republicans and are constantly doing
1:45
petty and major dirty tricks to him. Can you
1:47
imagine Putin fighting with
1:49
some public organization? Of course not.
1:50
The fire inspectors would show up, seize something there,
1:53
find some violations, then immediately
1:55
the sanitary inspectors would come and find lice on everyone,
1:57
the fire inspectors would find a fire hazard, and the cops
2:01
would find that they were using unlicensed Windows
2:03
and so on, and that's it. And there goes any
2:06
rifle association.
2:08
Young woman
2:08
is digging. But their home isn't here. Yours is
2:11
here. That's the point. Yes, because where is
2:13
Misharin's home? Here, in Yekaterinburg?
2:15
But that's ridiculous. Abramovich, as is well known,
2:18
when he was governor of Chukotka, was there
2:21
twice a year, and at night he would fly
2:23
to Anchorage, Alaska, because in
2:25
Chukotka he considered all the hotels
2:27
unsuitable for him. Yes. Vekselberg,
2:29
who is now carrying out
2:31
this mega-hyper concept, building the school at
2:33
Skolkovo and so on, is a tax
2:34
resident of Switzerland. And for all these people,
2:37
home is Marbella, and for regional officials at
2:41
best it's Moscow, but certainly not their
2:43
region.
2:45
So their home is somewhere abroad.
2:48
And our task is to tell them: your home
2:51
is prison. A very simple, simple and
2:53
clear message.
2:56
Yeah.