Alexei Navalny’s speech at the Anti-Seliger forum

Hi. Thank you very much. As I understand it,

this was Zhenya's cunning idea—to seat

everyone here out in the sun so they'd get drowsy

and ask fewer questions.

We had actually expected that we'd be

on the big stage, because Panfilova

really wanted to jump around at the end, like

they do at rock concerts, when there's still

a chance to perform on such a big stage.

And I, actually, am very happy

to be here today,

partly because I'm trying to suppress

a certain sense of guilt. When I was still working

for the Yabloko party many, many years ago,

we had this kind of committee to defend

Muscovites, and we were fighting against

all sorts of construction projects. And back then some people came

—I don't even remember their names anymore—and

said: "We're from Khimki and we're going to

fight this—they want to build something there

and so on." I was exactly the person

who said it was idiotic,

completely pointless, not even worth

getting involved in. You won't be able to form an initiative

group, you won't be given a single

document, the residents of Khimki will beat you up, and

the residents of Moscow will beat you up too. The media won't

be interested in this at all, I mean, don't even

bother with it, right? And now I can see

how wrong I was, and, uh,

how, really, seemingly,

there are these smart guys sitting in offices somewhere,

who think they're experienced and that

they already know everything, and then along comes

someone like Chirikova, and everything

changes. So every time

someone says that something

can't be done, the answer should be: "But

Chirikova did it," right? Construction was halted for half a year.

As for the Khimki Forest,

there's Bono, Shevchuk, I don't even know who else.

All of Europe is up in arms over it. There are

a huge number of people here,

including because of the Khimki Forest.

So here's a little

slogan: "Chirikova did it." That's very

important. I suggest we give Zhenya a round of applause, as

the organizer of all this.

I'll try to be very brief,

because apparently there are a lot of questions.

The most common question is this:

what can I do? How

exactly can I fight corruption?

That's the most frequently

asked question of all.

If we're talking in general about practical corruption

in this country, as I see it,

I would divide it into three

areas. The first is the spending of our

state monopolies—or quasi-

state monopolies. These are all sorts of

half-private, half-state-controlled

entities, from Gazprom

to Rosneft, which have

enormous investment programs that

are impossible to monitor, and from which

billions and trillions are simply siphoned off.

Just compare this:

the country's public procurement system spends 5

trillion rubles a year, while these largest

companies—just a few of the biggest ones—

spend 7 to 8 trillion rubles a year.

This is actually the main focus of my

work—the corporate side. But

for an ordinary activist, this is fairly

difficult, because they won't give you documents,

you have to become a shareholder, and so

on. The second area, which is very important,

is what the Rospil project does—

monitoring public procurement.

Every citizen has the right to request

this information, and every citizen has the right

to file a complaint. That's what we do.

Many of you fund Rospil,

or work as experts in the monitoring

group. So absolutely anyone can

get involved here. The third

area, as I see it, is actually not being

covered by anyone, really,

and it's something I simply can't

get to myself—I don't have the time. It's

various utility rates. That includes,

among other things, housing and коммунальные services (public utilities). How is the price set?

How much do we pay for hot water,

cold water, electricity, and so

on? In every region there are

tariff agencies that simply

set these rates. In practice,

energy companies and utility providers come to them,

bring suitcases full of money,

and made-up investment programs. These

utility providers jack up the rates,

get them approved, and say: that's just how it is,

—you have to pay x rubles for this service. That's

the fair price. No one has even

tried to check any of it. Although in

fact, each of us can, well,

for example, if you live in an apartment building—has anyone

ever seen, in their building, in their

stairwell, the windows being washed?

Well, one person has, right? But in fact

she washes them herself, right? But in fact, money is

regularly allocated for that and written off.

Cleaning ventilation ducts, and

a whole bunch of other minor jobs—

huge amounts of money are written off

for them. Nationwide, that's

trillions. And no one is dealing with it,

not even remotely. And this is exactly where there's huge

room for anyone to start doing something.

For anyone meticulous. Where should you start, exactly?

If you have a homeowners' association or just an ordinary apartment building,

you write to your management

company and ask them to provide a list

of the work that was carried out and how much money

was written off for it; then you simply go to the

housing inspectorate,

they're required to provide it,

they are obliged to provide all of this. Here,

of course, nobody is stupid. And they,

of course, won’t want to give this to you,

because they understand

that things could start smelling of trouble there, but

with a little effort in that direction, and I’m

sure you can find the loose ends

that need to be pulled. So, it seems to me,

that out of these three directions I’ve

mentioned, at least two are ones where

everyone can take part. In conclusion,

just an example that came up right here

on the spot. A young woman came up—there she is,

sitting there, by the way—and said: "I have

a list. I dug out from

St. Petersburg City Hall the estimates for how much they

spent on repairing each street, including

things like traffic lights and so on, and so

forth, and so on." So here you have

specific data on how much money they wrote off

as spent. I’m sure that right here

there is at least some

builder, engineer, or someone similar who

can analyze these estimates and

easily establish that they are

inflated in cost, inflated in volume,

and so on. This could turn into

an excellent criminal case, an excellent

anti-corruption investigation.

If there’s a will, if there’s a will, everyone

can get involved. Let’s just

always keep saying this one thing. Chirikova managed it.

Thank you. If,

accordingly, there are questions, we’ll answer them.

Well, obviously, corruption-related issues,

can’t be resolved without political

action of some kind, without participation in

politics, in one sense or another. So

what kind of politics do you think

each of us should pursue? And how do

you personally assess

the upcoming elections—what should be done in them

and so on, and so forth? Please,

tell us.

I don’t know if you read my recent post on

LiveJournal. I wrote that it would be good to make

car stickers. Someone came here today,

showed me that his car has

such a sticker on it, and he gave me

one too. The most correct,

smart,

and effective political work right now

consists in promoting the campaign

"Down with the party of crooks and thieves: 'Come

to the elections and vote for anyone,

as long as it’s against United Russia.' This is real, this is

painful for them, and it’s achievable. I think

that by December, and I absolutely

believe this can be done, we

can effectively build a movement

that will include, I don’t know,

300,000 people. For a member of this

movement, it will be necessary to do very

simple things: put up a poster like this

in your apartment building entrance, come to the elections,

vote, send text messages to your

friends, share videos. That’s it.

A small checklist, basically—just tick the boxes.

And once you’ve done that, you’ve become a fighter against

United Russia, leveled up

to level 80.

That’s all. It’s a real campaign, and it

needs to be carried out. And these crooks are afraid of us.

So I think we should

act in that direction. On that note,

here’s a question. You took part in

the Russian Marches, where the co-organizers

included, for example, such

movements as Russky Obraz, whose members

killed Stanislav Markelov and

Yulia

Baburova, Anastasia Baburova. At those

marches, people regularly raise

their arms in a Nazi salute. These people

consider Budanov their hero, and to

his funeral, as far as I know, you

urged people to come. So how do you

think—should one really

have anything to do with these people? And why

are you pandering to them? Won’t this

actually damage your reputation instead?

Thank you for the question. Let me say this: I’m not pandering to anyone.

I’m not pandering to them, and I’m not

pandering to you either. I simply do what

I believe is necessary. I have gone and will continue

to go to the Russian Marches.

And people there are completely different. The fact

that there may be some murderers there,

crooks, just fools, idiots, does not

mean that overall I think

it is wrong. I know that some

people—I think even someone from DPNI (Movement Against Illegal Immigration)

called on people to come here. Some people

from conservative movements or, as they are

commonly labeled, nationalist ones,

may be here too. And they also, in fact,

support this Khimki Summer movement

and in practice

are civic activists.

It’s just that when a Russian March takes place,

naturally everyone runs over and immediately

photographs all those guys.

But that does not mean they are all like that. And

our task is to come to the Russian March and

make sure that at the Russian March

there are more normal people. That is why I

am absolutely not ashamed of my beliefs.

I am ready, well, with inner

conviction, to defend absolutely every

word I have said in the course of my

political activity—at the Russian

March, here, and anywhere else. All this

division into liberals and Nazis is just

a stupid, meaningless kind of political theorizing

that has nothing to do with real life.

Alexei, just a small

comment from me. The problem here, though,

is the specific position of these organizations.

Well, look, that’s not really true either. If we

take—right now I’m not going to act as

a defender of DPNI or anyone else. They,

I think, don’t need my

defense. But if you take

DPNI’s platform now, you’ll see that

their slogans, their programmatic declarations,

100% correspond to the declarations

of something like the Moscow Helsinki

Group, or any human rights movement.

They demand political freedoms, they

demand civil liberties. So,

naturally, these organizations have been squeezed and

continue to be squeezed for many years. Naturally,

the fringe and all sorts of crazies

come to the forefront. So this

task is to engage with them so that

normal people come to the forefront

there. And

Here’s the question: Alexei has proclaimed

an interesting strategy: vote for

anyone except United Russia. I

wrote in the comments to your magazine that

I don’t quite understand what

that means, because everyone basically knows

that among our registered parties,

well, probably the only opposition party is

just one—Yabloko, right? So

the parties that are present in our

elections are the Communist Party, which is

semi-oppositional; the LDPR,

which is completely pro-Putin;

A Just Russia, which is

completely pro-Putin; and

United Russia, which is completely

pro-Putin. All these parties

are controlled from the Kremlin by Mr.

Surkov, as far as we know, right? So

everyone who understands

even a little about politics understands that.

So I see it like this: there is

one big pro-Putin United

Russia, and what it’s called and under what

name it was registered with the Justice Ministry,

is completely irrelevant. So in essence you’re

proposing to redistribute—say we have

a bucket, right, and in it there are four sacks,

four, I don’t know, balls, and you’re

proposing to rearrange those balls

within it. So if 30% goes to—well, you

get the question. In short, the question is

this:

Right? Thank you very much for the question. But that’s not

the case; I disagree, as I see it.

Mironov was here today. Mironov was here.

Did you speak with Mironov? I was told

that he really went all in there about the

party of crooks and thieves and all that. It’s clear

that

it’s clear that

it’s clear that any registered

party is registered because the

crooks and thieves basically allowed it.

But right now we need to find an effective

strategy. Four years ago I called for

a boycott of the elections. I admit that,

well, that strategy did not work out. People

do not want to boycott elections; it

doesn’t work. So, evaluating real

strategies, I see that both in the regions and

at the federal level, the Communists are quite

oppositional. The Communists support that same

Article 20 mentioned here; they have introduced it

and vote for it, and so on.

A Just Russia in the regions is in very

sharp confrontation with United Russia.

Then there’s Yabloko and everyone else. So, well,

we need to be realistic, right? We

need to decide right now what exactly we

are going to do by December. Not

sit around reasoning and spinning out some kind of

deep political theory over minor details.

We need to decide and choose a

strategy that we can explain

to millions. It seems to me this is the best

strategy for explaining it

to millions so that those millions can

actually carry it out. United Russia

must be stripped of its monopoly on power.

That is the most important political task. After

that, happiness will not arrive immediately, but it is

the most important political task of the near

future. I can answer this question

10,000 times, and I will answer it every time it

is asked. There is no Newton’s binomial problem here

(i.e., nothing complicated about it). People who call

for violence must be prosecuted

under criminal law. In these organizations,

which people habitually label

nationalist, an absolute

minority call for violence. And this

minority, by the way, is often

persecuted too, and in a completely lawless

way. The next important point, Karin, is this:

you, in various human rights

organizations—I’ll tell you that I

am the one defending migrants’ rights, not you. Because

when I say that we need to introduce

visa entry, we need to introduce

regulated working hours, we need to introduce

insurance, that means that when

a migrant who has come here—let me finish—

who has come here falls ill on a

construction site with pneumonia, he won’t go

off to die under a fence; instead, under his

insurance he’ll go and get treated in a hospital.

So who is standing up for migrants’ rights? Me,

the one demanding visa entry, or

the human rights activists who say: "Let

everything stay as it is"? It seems to me, I am.

So let’s drop the demagoguery and this

endless business of finding some

single skinhead, taking quotes from him, and

running around showing those quotes

to everyone. You can’t throw me off with that. I

know that I support decent people

in all these movements.

Right now, in a moment, we’ll speak, I

I’ll call Ernst and tell him to

invite me, I don’t know, onto

Pozner’s program. Well, you understand, well, I’m not

going to be invited onto TV, that’s completely obvious.

And I don’t

stress too much about it. I’ve said many times already,

as far as I’m concerned, I don’t exist for

television, and television doesn’t exist

for me. For me, well, I don’t give a damn about that

television. Don’t care. Of course, it would be

great to have airtime every evening on

Channel One. But that’s not an option.

So, so, let’s forget about it altogether.

We need to use the mechanisms that

exist right now. What’s internet penetration

in Russia now—40%, 35%? And it

keeps growing all the time. If only we could

convince at least those people. I need to convince

the people I can reach

every day, the ones who are online.

There are a lot of them. So, well, we need to move

gradually and use the

opportunities that exist, rather than dreaming

about something unattainable.