Alexei Navalny’s speech at the opening of the campaign office in Ufa

Move along.

Big

from here

president

carts.

A traitor will not be president.

Put Navalny in prison.

Shame, shame, shame—Navalny, shame.

A great situation

American.

Shame on the traitors to the Motherland.

Shame on the traitors to the Motherland

8

Samara.

Departure

6:22

They're earning their money, damn it.

spirits.

Motherland

shame shame

shame shame shame. Zhdofy,

don't drive him around

the situation.

Now that's a president,

and this man wants to be president.

This is the kind of person who wants to be president

including media people as well.

Hello.

Please,

My name is Leonid Volkov. I am the head

of Alexei

Navalny's campaign headquarters, excuse me. And I will introduce

Alexei Navalny, candidate for

president of Russia in the 2018 election.

Thank you very much, Leonid. Thank you

very much, dear friends, for coming.

I am very glad to be in Ufa, glad to see

such a lively political life here.

It's absolutely amazing. Today, when we were met

at the train station, food products were flying through the air.

Apparently, the local authorities were demonstrating

the high standard of living in this way. And

you can see many amazing things here.

For example, snowdrifts as high as

a person. The last time I saw anything like that

was when I was little, and

my height, generally speaking, was much

smaller. And this is our fifth headquarters. The first

headquarters in a national republic. For us,

this is an important region. And we are sure that our

program, what we are offering, is very much

needed here. And we are the only

political force that is actually

offering what the residents of

Bashkortostan need, without exception. They will not

be allowed to participate in power. In Bashkortostan there are

Russian nationalists, Bashkir

nationalists, Tatar nationalists.

They are united by one thing: all of them are

being crushed. They have no

political representation. Everyone

has been strangled because there must be only one

United Russia. There are no democrats, no

communists, nobody—only United

Russia. We are the only ones who

believe that yes, let them too

register a party, let them run in

elections.

My question is: what is your view of

the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples?

What do you see as the ways to protect the rights

of indigenous peoples on the territory

of the Russian Federation? And in general, how do you

see it—what can you say about

the federal structure? Does it need to be

strengthened? Or perhaps move toward a

confederation, and so on?

So, the solution to these problems is

simple. We need to give everyone freedom and give

everyone political opportunities.

Bashkir nationalists—I started with this—and Russian

nationalists, and

Bashkir nationalists, and Tatar

nationalists—they have no political

representation at all. From

NOD activists to you, everyone has been pushed out from everywhere.

United Russia has devoured the entire political

space. And of course, I share

the values of this declaration. Of course, I

understand that there are republics like

Bashkortostan, and a more

radical example is Dagestan. There are

Russians, Tatars, Bashkirs, and not everything can be

resolved by simply

outvoting one another. That is precisely

why my main idea is

to transfer power not even to the regional

level, but to a lower level. City mayors,

town mayors—in this particular locality

the majority are Bashkirs.

That is clear. Bashkirs make up the political

representation there. Where there are Tatars, Tatars do.

That is how real democracy works.

The representative body of government, which you

call the Kurultai, should

be formed proportionally, taking all of this into account,

because right now it is

formed solely with regard to

falsification, with regard to the wishes of United

Russia, which wants to shove someone in.

Say you are president, and your orders

are simply ignored, brushed

aside.

They get stalled for half a year, 6 months, 8

months, a year—your actions, that is.

So there are two, well,

Then I will not be that kind of president.

If my orders, issued within the scope of my powers,

are not carried out, I will

remove those people or put them in prison. So

that definitely will not happen with me. That is

the first point. The second—well,

the water intake issue is a huge problem.

There is a city of over a million people there, and its water

is being poisoned. But it is even a little funny

that you came to the headquarters of a candidate

who is not even being registered for the election.

And you say: "The problem is not being solved. We are to

People appealed to you three times, and you still

haven't solved the problem. That, by the way,

shows, well, excuse me, perhaps a certain

irony there, yes, let me answer that. And

it shows that, well, there are no

mechanisms left in a normal system.

The city's residents would simply have already

elected a bloc of deputies that would have banned

this construction. The best president

for you will be me, because I am

the only one who will give you the chance

to work in peace. Thank you very much,

dear friends. I am very glad. I

hope that, as far as possible,

I have answered your questions fully. Thank you

very much.

Sometime in May, we will begin training

observers. If by June all of this

has melted, then we will also begin street campaigning

as well, if it gets, well, uh, drier,

yes, a little cleaner, if that

ever happens. Well, if not, then we'll have to do it

anyway. So. That is, don't expect, you know,

that tomorrow, so to speak, all across

Ufa there will be Navalny leaflets everywhere. And that

isn't necessary. A campaign has its own

dramatic arc, yes, it should reach

its peak in December, when we

will be seeking the candidate's registration,

and then in March, when we will be going into the election

itself.

But gradually, relying on the small

modest resources of our headquarters, we will get this

machine up and running, get to know everyone,

figure out with each person how to work, how best

to make use of your desire

to help us, for which we are tremendously

grateful. And little by little,

little by little we'll finish building it, and the machine will start moving. That

is, just so you understand. Now

look,

it's very cramped in here for you, cramped for us too, stuffy

and so on, but that's because, well, this is a

people's headquarters, created with people's

money. In terms of our finances, yesterday we

received 24,800,000 rubles. More than 20,000

people. That means the average

donation was 1,000 rubles, and the median was 500

rubles. For some people, that is by no means

spare money—far from it.

So, okay, we didn't rent

a big, huge, beautiful hall

to hold the opening there. We

invited you to the headquarters. Even if it's

interesting here, we wanted you to see that this is a

working headquarters. There will always be

three or four people working here,

who are paid a salary so that they can

work here permanently, so that each

of you who isn't paid a salary can

still, at any moment, on any

day when you have a free minute,

come by, talk, get an assignment,

pick up leaflets, and so on. So this is

purely a workspace,

maybe not a hangout spot, but rather

a place for work. We hope you'll remember this address

and come here when

you have the time, the opportunity, and the desire

to help. And the headquarters will do

everything so that you can help, and so that it

moves our common cause forward. And

we have already printed a certain

amount of materials, again with

people's money, right? That is, literally

someone sends 30 rubles or 50 rubles. And

say, a car sticker is nice, but

it's expensive—it costs about 150 rubles,

I think. So sometimes that's the money

of three people. Please treat them

seriously. Really. Yes. These are not

souvenirs, friends—these are things people

donated money for. So if you take

a car sticker, please put it on your car and

drive around with it. If you take leaflets,

please hand them out. Well, maybe

that sounds a little harsh, but we also

want to focus specifically on work and

on making the most productive use

of all these very modest

resources that we have. That is,

our headquarters is about work, and of course it is

about a real, honest election

campaign, the way it should be, when

ordinary people, like those of you here, all kinds of

different people, go out and tell other

people about their candidate, about the ideas

they believe in. Alexei Navalny.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, dear friends. I am very

glad to be here with you. Today I was simply

given an absolutely fantastic welcome at the

train station. You probably saw my post. At

8:00 in the morning, you step out of your compartment

like that—yes, at 8:00 in the morning, after pulling

into the platform. It's dark. And on the platform there is literally

a guy with a sign saying, "U.S. State Department agent"

of the United States. Not even "Navalny, U.S. State Department agent,"

just "U.S. State Department agent." There stands

a guy with an American flag.

I actually thought to myself, what does this

look like from the outside? Like, imagine someone in the

next railcar just traveling along. He arrives

at the platform and thinks:

"Good grief, it turns out

our overseas masters are here." But this

a little bit, on the one hand, shows

the idiocy

of this government; it shows that, well,

they have absolutely nothing to say in response to us, nothing

to say against us. But it also shows, in

fact, how few of them there really are. Look,

look, what day is it today? We are

marking a sad date. Five years ago

Putin was elected president of Russia. Five

years ago, for the third time, uh, he became

the absolute de facto ruler

of the country. For five years he has been ruling, he

he has built things in such a way that he has completely strangled all

politics here. Not just here—everywhere. And what

can he put up against us? Well,

these guys right here. And I had no problem

inviting them today to a debate, to a, uh, to a

press conference. They say the same

things I do, but then they add:

"Well, Putin is good."

There. This is an important thing that I already

noticed about Bashkiria (Bashkortostan) at the

press conference, based on the fact that

we spoke with a lot of people there. Here

people are unhappy with absolutely everything. Here, people are very

deeply unhappy—the Bashkir

nationalists, the Tatar nationalists, and

the Russian nationalists. And all of them have been

crushed. None of them are being allowed to live in peace.

People here are unhappy with the mayor, unhappy

with the governor, unhappy that

Bashneft was taken away. And, broadly speaking, everyone

is unhappy for perfectly valid reasons.

And I want to tell you that our campaign

here in Ufa and Bashkiria (Bashkortostan) has enormous

potential, because, well, we can do more than just

channel discontent,

bring everyone who is unhappy over to us—and we are the only ones who

actually have substantive answers,

and in fact we are the only ones who are not

afraid. But everyone understands that

ProBashneft is just some kind of

nonsense. But neither the Communists nor the LDPR—no one

can say that, because they are

afraid of Sechin. But we can say directly

to all residents: this is, really,

stupid. They took a company that had

problems, but was still better, and handed it over

to a very bad company that has 3

trillion in debt. We can say with complete certainty

that we are for political

competition. We are not bothered at all by

Bashkir, Tatar, or Russian

nationalists in elections. Let everyone run.

We are not afraid of that. They all are. Their

mechanism of action is, uh, the center, uh,

which comes in, grabs everyone, turns on

some kind of lists, and presses and suffocates everyone. We

are not afraid of a free press; we answer

any questions. We are the only ones, in

fact,

the only real political force. I say

"we" because this is not my election

campaign. Then whose is it?

That’s the problem with livestreams. You all

are streaming, damn it, and people in other

cities can already see what I’m saying, and then

I don’t even know what to say anymore, because

it has to be something new. It’s hard, right? This is our

election campaign. It’s not like

Alexei Navalny has

four points written down. Whether it’s four points or 44

points, they are points all of us share and

which, in fact, everyone here

shares too, because everyone is unhappy with what

is happening. I’ve already said many times

about this, uh, about the snow higher than

human height. Well, of course,

because I’m talking to you and I

can see it; there was a press conference, I can see it.

But honestly, for God’s sake, damn it, this is a city

in an oil-producing republic, and here they simply do not

clear the snow. You could ski down

that mountain that you can literally see from the window.

And when the city’s mayor says, "I don’t have

the money to remove the snow from

the streets," then the question is: what other

city has money at all? And where, exactly,

does the money go if an oil-producing

republic in an oil-producing country

cannot clear snow from its streets? That means

everything is broken. And in fact, everything

is broken. And everyone understands that everything

in public administration is broken, from

housing and utilities services to foreign policy.

Nothing works, not a damn thing. All of this

is simply replaced with, well, like,

they took Palmyra once, then something else,

well, they need something to report on television,

so they say: "We took Palmyra again, and

it’s an anniversary, the seventh taking of Palmyra, and

everything else." In essence, there is nothing.

There is nothing. Total emptiness. Yes, they

can block information,

but only up to a point. Who watched our

investigation about Medvedev? Everyone.

4 million.

A little over 4 million. That means that here

in Bashkiria (Bashkortostan), well, 200,000 or

300,000 people watched it. I’m sure

that our audience retention rate there

will be 70%. That is, most

of those people watched for about 30 minutes. They know

quite a lot. If they watched for 30

minutes in front of a screen, that means it

concerns them. Yes, they block everything. But we

can see that we are able to get this

information across. And in fact, an important

part of what I want to say before

I move on to answering questions,

is this: you should not think of this regime as a stone

wall. It is not a wall at all. It is not even

a Styrofoam wall. It is some kind of

nonexistent thing. I can tell you

that the most powerful,

best-organized political force

existing in the Republic of Bashkiria (Bashkortostan),

a genuinely political force, not, not some

derivative of the administration, but

a real ideological and political force—well,

it is gathered here, because

150 or 200 people united

by a single idea they truly believe in,

can do absolutely anything. We

can get any ideas across, we can talk about anything,

we can overcome any censorship. And

it is important to believe in your own efforts, because

in fact, once they crushed and

cleared everything out, it actually became fairly

easy for us to act. Sure, there will be problems, you will come

Say "Navalny" to some people, and they'll say:

"He stole timber, he's an American agent." But people

can be persuaded otherwise.

The truth is that all

political change is made by 1%

of the active population. I see them right in front of

me. Everyone else, whatever they may be

like—well, you all talk with

your parents, your neighbors. And at every

meeting people come up to me and say, "I

like you so much, but my mom can't stand you

at all." No matter how much your mother may dislike

me or us, she will listen to you,

because you are close to her, and you will always

be able to change her mind, because you have

an active civic stance, just as that 1% of the active

population always changes everyone's minds. Right

now it's the anniversary of the February Revolution

(in Russia, 1917), look. Now people are posting great

news items from a hundred years ago from

Telegram channels and all the rest.

Look at the headlines from the regions.

Nobody even understood what was happening

in St. Petersburg. People generally knew nothing

about the revolution, basically, because

that 1% of the active population,

which wanted to do something—well,

whether for good or ill is a separate

discussion—they did it, and they

forced everyone else to change. And we will make

everyone change too, if we work,

if we really put in the effort. Because another

truth is that no one has ever

really run election campaigns.

No one has ever run real presidential election campaigns in

Russia, because the format of presidential elections has always

been a result known in advance.

Fake

sparring partners and approved topics

for presidential debates. Do we need that kind of

campaign? No.

No.

We will impose our own agenda. We

will say what we want. We will

do what we want, hand out our own

leaflets, choose our own methods of

door-to-door canvassing and so on.

We control all of that completely. And

again, our problem won't be that

we hit a wall, but that there will be

a vacuum. And we'll understand, basically,

how easy it is to do, but how much needs to

be done. I hope that relying on you,

relying on our wonderful

campaign manager, Liliya, whom we are

proud of—and as I already said, there was

a really funny incident involving her,

she used to work at Deloitte, you've probably read

about her. And Deloitte was constantly being picketed by NOD

(National Liberation Movement, a pro-Kremlin group). And now she has come

to work here, and NOD is picketing her again.

Apparently Liliya is some kind of big

problem for them, because they are attached to her

and keep following her around. But, uh, this is a person

who came here to work,

and in her example we see that someone

came from a Big Four company,

giving up a big salary and

certain career prospects. The future is ours,

because they don't have a single person like that.

Not one person who

would work for them for free—there is

none at all. Zero, literally

zero, despite the fact that they have

Putin, whatever ideology, Crimea, all that

Ukraine stuff, imperial conquest—lots of

people in front of the TV say, "Yes,

yes, yes, we support it." But when it comes to

working for free, nobody will do anything

for them. But we will do it for ourselves,

for our own cause. That's why I believe in victory. I

think Ufa is a wonderful region. I

look at you, and I see that here we will

build a real headquarters. Great job, everyone. Thank you

very much. I'm ready to answer questions.

Question.

your own business. Do you want to do something about

Grigory Alexeyevich Yavlinsky? No.

Neither do I. I have a normal attitude toward him.

He's a good person. I have no desire,

I don't know, to quarrel with him or even

comment on him at all. But the problem

with Russian politics is that nobody does a

damn thing. They've gotten used to doing nothing

for years. And people who actually do things

seem strange to them. Many of them

really think I'm

crazy.

Because I travel to different regions, do things,

conduct investigations. Well, nobody

used to do that. We somehow lived without

doing it. And this guy does it, so

there must be something wrong with him. Well, maybe

there's something wrong with all of us, since we

have gathered here in order to

work. So we'll keep working, and

we'll send Grigory Alexeyevich

our warm regards. Next question.

Just like that. Yes, go ahead with the next question.

You're quite a brave person. It's just,

there could be some very, very harsh

pressure. They could make something up,

put you in prison, or there could be

pressure?

Yes, there will be pressure. They could make something up.

How do you feel about this

administrative pressure? And aren't you

afraid of some kind of reprisal?

Well, I mean, I'm not—I'm not an idiot,

right? I do have a sense of

self-preservation. I don't get the slightest

pleasure from

dwelling on the thought that

something could happen to someone. I'm

a normal person, but at the same time I

chose this path voluntarily. I believe

that what I'm doing is right. And I understand perfectly well

that any person who

engages in independent politics can

well, end up in some kind of, in some

difficult situation. At the same time, with ninety

nine point nine repeating percent of people,

this never happens. I asked

this question in Samara. I’ll ask it here too. Who has ever had

at least an administrative arrest?

There were fewer in the audience. There, please,

in our... in Samara there was one hand. There you go. And

nevertheless, the proportion of about

90% probably holds. So,

just think about what is at stake for

them. There’s this guy sitting there, he has

these “charitable” functions, and they send him

70 billion rubles. They bought this,

bought that. A lot of things didn’t even make it into

our investigation, or the startups he

was buying. I just threw a lot of it out,

because there was too much. This

film would have been two hours long. Anything he

wants, he just points at it. People go and

buy it through some “charitable” fund. The same

goes for Putin: in the 21st century, an absolute

monarch

of the largest country in the world. Well, who

would voluntarily give up that kind of power?

So naturally, a great deal is

at stake for them. But, well, the truth on our side is

that regimes like this have always fallen. They are

doomed; they are simply historically

doomed. That is, even if we do

nothing, they will still

collapse. It’s just that we want them to

fall sooner. We don’t want all of

this to collapse during our children’s or

grandchildren’s lifetimes. We want it now, because our

lives are happening now, and our country is

ours right now. But of course, they

resist.

Of course, different things can happen, but

our problem is that my mom comes to visit me with bananas

and says health is more important,

Then I read that there were 30

Black Hundreds types (ultranationalist reactionaries) there, and I think, “Oh, come on,

next time.” Then I say, “Well, I

follow him, hello

photographer.”

And he posted a photo of Luma there. Well,

the store. I immediately realized you were on

the radio station Echo of Moscow. I went there so that

I could meet you, but you were already

gone. Uh, of course, so probably your

security took me for some kind of weirdo. Anyway,

that was just by way of introduction.

And the question is a little off topic.

Which political figures from

world history, from the past, are for you

an example? I’m studying to become a

teacher myself, so I wanted to ask.

Damn,

Those are brutal questions. I get asked that a lot, and I always

freeze up. Well, well, I can’t really,

it’s hard for me to name some

specific political figure. There are

a lot of great ones. Right now, any people

who are at the top of American or

European politics are people

who made it through

intense competition. Starting with Trump

and Hillary Clinton, and now what we’re seeing in

France—interesting processes are

happening there. All these people are truly

outstanding, because under conditions of

competition they make it to the top. It’s not

like Putin, whom Yeltsin simply

picked from a list and said:

“Well, this one seems like a kind of normal

guy.” And then appointed him president. These are

people who came through it all—they

just fought their way there and made it. That is,

of course, remarkable. I read

books, I follow them. And we try

to use some of the methods, I don’t know, that

might be possible, and

applicable. Although today, with

Volkov, after discussing how those

eggs were thrown at the headquarters in the north or whatever,

Obama didn’t write about that in his books.

But there are many wonderful people, and I follow

all of them. I can’t single out

just one. But as for your

kind words at the beginning,

we’ll take a photo and hug

only at the end, so I don’t get distracted.

Alexei, you talk a lot about

domestic policy. What is your vision of

our country’s foreign policy? How would you

build relations with America,

with the European Union?

Relations with America and the European Union do not

really need to be especially

constructed. Right now they are being shaped

in what way? We agreed to be

a raw-materials appendage. This has

a very practical implementation.

In reality, the share of oil revenues in

the federal budget is growing, and has grown

since Soviet times. Europe looks

at this and says, “All right, if

they are willing to be a raw-materials appendage,

let them be one.” Over the last two-plus years,

against the backdrop of economic problems—for three years—we have

started trying to scare them. “Now we’re going to start

a war in Europe.” And in effect, we did.

We’ll do this, we’ll do that—all just to

shift the agenda.

Russia does not need this.

Russia’s policy overall, including

foreign policy, in my view, should be

about directing resources toward

solving problems. First we clear this

snow, then we rebuild Palmyra. In other words,

in that order.

The foreign-policy goal is to

become Europe’s leading country. That

is possible, I believe. And the size of the

population, the level of education,

the abundance of natural resources, and everything else

everything else tells us that this is

a realistic goal: to become one of

the leading—possibly, in time the leading—

countries in Europe. That is our goal: for

people to become wealthier, and for us to gain our

economic strength by simply

becoming rich. Because as long as

the average salary in Ufa is 30,000

rubles, I mean, what are we even talking about? Who are we going to

scare? We can’t maintain an army.

Trump, whom Putin had practically been praying to, came in

and said he would allocate

what was it, $500 billion

extra. Well, of course, a brazillion

dollars. An enormous sum. Something

unimaginable even in the Russian

budget. Who exactly can we compete with there?

The only place we can compete is on the TV programs of

that Kiselyov and Margarita Simonyan,

who tell us fairy tales about how

our Admiral Kuznetsov, with its smoking

stack, frightened all of Europe. In reality,

power, including foreign economic

power, is a function of economic

strength inside the country and, ultimately,

a function of wages. When everyone here

is earning as much as people do in

Germany, then we’ll be truly formidable.

Yes,

thank you.

Ah, Alexei. I’d also like to ask a question in a positive

vein: when you become

president,

you do a great many

investigations, and those investigations

sound quite, quite

convincing. And at the same time, these

investigations concern a huge

number of people who hold

senior positions in many government agencies.

And you say that these people, who

according to the investigations—and I think

you really are convincing here—

are criminals, because they

steal money, so accordingly

they will stop holding their positions, since they are

criminals, because they are criminals,

right?

The state system in Russia

is very large. That means there are

an absolutely gigantic

number of people who steal, who

will be removed. So this

large resulting vacuum of people

who are supposed to

where will you find decent officials?

How exactly do you want—do you plan

to solve this problem? Where will you find them?

Will there even be enough of them? Are you planning

to somehow reduce the state

system? In other words, you’ve removed what was there—

what will you put in its place?

Okay, I understand the question. Ah, a good

question.

Well, it keeps coming up in various

forms. And ultimately it all

comes down to this: it’s thieves everywhere. You

drive out one bunch of thieves, and another bunch of thieves

will replace them. And we supposedly have no other people. But

in fact, we do have other people.

First, we will, of course, jail

the main thieves. Second,

when the people at the head of the state

are people sending different signals,

people who actually live by

the law, those below them will simply

work differently. People get used

to anything. If right now an official, say,

in the Ufa city administration, sees those

Medvedev 70 billion, then of course

he sure as hell isn’t going to clear the snow and

will pocket the money, because that’s

how it’s done, because that’s what everyone does. But

if the top of the state apparatus

starts working differently, the whole country

will change. And we’ve seen this many times in the history of

humanity. Take the Chinese.

People like to say that among the Chinese

corruption is in their blood. Well, there are Chinese

in Hong Kong too. And there you have some Chinese in

Hong Kong with practically no

corruption, while other Chinese just across the border

in China have a lot of corruption. Why?

Because the government is different. The same goes for

Singapore: Asians live there too, and there are also many

stories told about them, saying they’re

prone to corruption. But nevertheless, in

Singapore there is practically no corruption.

Finland, a former part of a European empire,

where a bunch of drinkers live, very much like

us.

And there’s no corruption. Zero corruption.

Despite all the other problems, and so

on and so forth. So society

does change. It’s precisely this 1%

of the active population that must force

society to change. It will change fairly quickly.

But again, there’s the well-worn

example of Georgia. Most of us are

young and don’t remember the Soviet Union. But

in the Soviet Union, a Georgian police officer

or a Georgian prosecutor was

the embodiment of corruption. Simply

the embodiment, the symbol of corruption. Nevertheless,

in a fairly short period of time they

managed, at least at the street level among patrol

police, to stop taking

bribes on the roads. And this didn’t happen over the course

of a generation’s lifetime,

it happened in five years. And in Russia this

will happen too. Russians will

act the same way—Russians, Bashkirs, Tatars,

excuse me, everyone will live the same way

they already do in Canada, when they go there,

I mean, the same way they live in

the Baltics, the way they live in other

countries: without corruption, the way it should be.

We will achieve that.