Alexei Navalny’s speech at the opening of the campaign headquarters in Yaroslavl

after this initial organizational

meeting is to

speak with each of you individually and

understand and record everyone in one

big spreadsheet, noting who can do what.

And after that, he’ll understand: "I have this many

street campaigners,

this many online campaigners,

and this many people who just like to sit and have tea." And

there are this many people from Uglich, from Rybinsk, from, uh,

Rostov, this many, this many,

this many, this many. And then, taking into

account all these preferences—who can do what,

who wants what, who is younger, who is

older, who is an introvert, who is an

extrovert—he will assemble

from all these little nuts and bolts a highly

complex campaign machine. This

will take quite a lot of time. It will be

not a very simple process, but when

Alexander puts it together—and the federal

headquarters will help with that—and this

campaign machine gets moving, you’ll see,

perhaps with surprise, perhaps

you may not quite believe it now, but you

will see that this campaign machine

is the most powerful media channel,

the most powerful media tool, the most powerful

tool for spreading the right

ideas—far more effective than television,

radio, newspapers, or anything else, because

it is made up not of paid

propagandists, not of lies, but of living,

real people. The headquarters will run

training sessions on street campaigning, on

online campaigning, explain things,

clear up doubts, help

answer frequently asked questions,

like, "I’m talking to a friend, he doesn’t believe me and

keeps repeating this and that. What should I say?"

The headquarters will help. "I want to set up in

Uglich a campaign club, but I don’t

know how. Help me write the application."

The headquarters will help. "I want to do this,

this, and this. I have this idea."

The headquarters will help. That is the function of the headquarters

and the coordinator.

To build a campaign machine out of

volunteers. It’s very difficult. No one

has ever done it before, especially not on the scale of an entire

country. But that is exactly the task.

The point is to take into account the wishes

of every person, each person’s ability to make their

contribution, so that everyone feels that

they have found for themselves in this

structure a place, uh, where

they can help the campaign as much as possible

regardless of whether they have

15 minutes a day or an hour a day or

no time at all, but will have

a free week in the summer. And the headquarters must understand

that and say: "Okay, you have

a free week in the summer, so come in on

Monday for a short training session

on street campaigning, and then we’ll

equip you with materials too, and you’ll work that whole

week. That will be your

plan. And for you, who has 15

minutes a day, we’ll come up with a task

that can be done in 15 minutes a day.

That will be your role. That is the task

of the headquarters and the immediate task of your

interaction with it. That is what will

be happening over the next month: personally

speaking with each person and understanding this

role and place. So within a month, Alexander

will assemble this very campaign machine,

and it will get moving. What will it do? It

will bring in new signatures. We currently have

about 3,000 signatures in Yaroslavl

registered on the website. And

the plan is six—well, they wrote six. And our

target, yes, is somewhere between five and six.

>> Right. Uh-huh. We want 10.

>> Excellent. Can it be 7, because

the maximum that can be submitted to the Central Election Commission is

7, so our plan for Yaroslavl is to collect

six, select from them, and submit five.

The best ones, right? The maximum is 7, so if

you collect 10, then we’ll say—and select

7 of them—we’ll say a huge thank you. Here,

uh, in cities with over a million residents there is

this problem that, basically, well,

in Moscow we currently have

65,000 registered, but we can still submit only

uh, 7,500. Here that’s probably less of

an issue, but

if we manage to exceed the maximum plan,

well, let’s say, a huge

thank you. We’ll hang an honorary certificate on

the wall in the headquarters. Right now there are about

3,000. So in a month,

when Alexander has spoken with all the

volunteers and understands what each person’s

role in the campaign is, he will then begin

processing these signatures. That is,

he’ll be calling people,

sending emails, sending text messages, and

inviting these 3,000 signatories to

the headquarters so they can speak with them directly.

Because besides the fact that we will

be getting their consent for the processing of

personal data, checking

their passports against all the databases, and preparing,

in short, to formalize the signatures, these are also

wonderful people who also, well,

didn’t agree to sign

for no reason—they can also take

stickers, a car decal, a stack of

leaflets for their apartment building, and so

on. Then it will become clear, out of

these 3,000 people, how many actually

came, how many did not come, how many

on the contrary came and also brought

along, I don’t know, their mom, dad,

grandmother, grandfather—maybe that will be even more

people—how many turned out to be from

more remote towns, and it will be difficult with them

to work with. In general, as we go along it will become

a little clearer how many

signatures we actually have. But either

way, while the campaign office is busy

verifying signatures, the outreach task

is very simple. Bring in at least 3,000 more

people to register on the website,

so that, again, the campaign office has something

to work with. In other words, the office is processing those

3,000 contacts that already exist

right now. You bring in another 3,000

contacts, if we set aside, if we set aside

the nuances. Basically, the simplest task possible.

>> There will be nuances. There will be nuances. There will be

details, there will be difficulties. Some people

will struggle with something. There will be

people right here to explain everything,

teach you, coordinate things, and

help. But in fact, this really isn’t

very difficult, because, well, what do we

have, what are we going with? We have six

points in our platform, each of which

is supported by an absolute majority

of voters.

But of course there are also people

who will say: "Who knows what’s written

here, we don’t believe any of it." And in general,

all of this is hostile propaganda,

blah blah, and get lost. In that case, there is

a seventh argument, absolutely

unbeatable. Right now we are collecting

signatures so that he can take part

in the election. You are not signing to

vote for him, only so that he can

take part in the election. What, are you against that? And

at that point even the most hard-core

viewer of Kiselyov and Solovyov (pro-Kremlin TV hosts) has nothing

to say. And moreover, we know from

polling that even a majority

of supporters of the current government, nevertheless,

believe that the opposition should be

allowed to participate in elections, that elections should

be competitive. They even go further

and say: "Oh, great, our

Putin has 86%. So go ahead, let them in,

so he can show them." Well, fine, that works

for us at this stage, right? while we are

campaigning for access to the ballot. So

persuading someone to sign

so that Alexei Navalny

can take part in the election, so that he

can present his platform in the election

and receive however many votes

he receives. This is not just a

solvable task, it is a fairly easy

task to solve. You just need not

doubt your own abilities. And if there

are any doubts or problems,

come to the campaign office, and the office will

help with all of it—provide materials, give some

training, a webinar, answer questions, and

so on, and so on, and so on. That’s

how our work will be organized. In other words,

roughly May will be for getting to know all

the volunteers and building the campaign machine,

June—when students are on break—will be for

street outreach, and closer to

autumn, training election observers. And of course various

other campaign tasks will also

come up. We won’t even notice how fast it goes.

December: registration, the final round of signature collection,

candidate registration, and

the decisive, victorious phase of the campaign,

which we still have to make it to.

That’s the main thing I wanted to say in

organizational terms, just so everyone

understands what the campaign office is, what

you are, how we see your role, how we see

the role of the office. If something is unclear,

you can and should ask both me and Alexander

questions about it a little later. Now

I give the floor to the candidate for President

of the Russian Federation, Alexei Navalny.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, thank you very much. They explained everything in detail.

You were still pacing so much

back and forth, back and forth. I thought

you were going to get a running start and jump. I was already

making mental bets on whether they’d catch you

or not.

>> Thank you very much, guys. I’m glad we

made it to Yaroslavl. I’m very glad to

meet with you. And for me, perhaps

what matters more here is not simply

to give a speech. I see everyone is doing

streams. I assume you’ve heard this

speech of mine about 80 times already. More

importantly, I wanted to discuss something with you.

You see, the cities where we open campaign offices

can be divided into roughly three

groups. Mostly these are poor regions

and poor cities. Officially, they are poor.

People there earn less than the subsistence minimum

there. The second group is simply

poor, and the third is considered wealthy. So

when I came to Yaroslavl, I came here to a wealthy

city.

>> Tyumen was the same before this. And,

well, indeed, several times I was told

by some United Russia people or people close

to United Russia that all your rhetoric about

corruption, decay, and miserably low

wages will work somewhere where there is

poverty, but in more developed and

populous regions it won’t work,

because in Yaroslavl Region

they specifically said: "You won’t be able

to go on about terrible roads anymore."

Easily.

We were driving through Dmitrov District. You said that in

Yaroslavl Region the roads are so wonderful

roads

by average Russian standards.

>> Well, they were saying the same thing—that in Yaroslavl Region,

in Yaroslavl, you wouldn’t be able to talk

about low wages. So let me

ask right away—I ask this everywhere. This is

something I’ll ask you right now as well. What is

the average salary in the city of Yaroslavl

in Yaroslavl? Even judging by the roughest estimate,

>> 15,000 rubles. Officially it's 28,000. Isn't that a bit low?

for what is supposedly the real official figure?

>> A firefighter gets 9,800.

>> And how much did you say the official figure is?

Public-sector workers: 75.

>> 28,600. I am reporting to you, my dear

people of Yaroslavl, that Russia's statistical

what is it called,

>> agency, Rosstat (Russia's federal statistics service), in short,

>> says that the average salary in the city of

Yaroslavl is 32,300 rubles.

So then, give me your advice, and

let's all think this through together. Can we

here, in the wealthy city of Yaroslavl,

talk about poverty wages?

>> Does it correspond to reality,

>> this position and claim by the authorities that

the average salary here is 32,000?

>> Who knows people who earn less than

32,000?

Who knows people who earn less than

that?

>> Who knows people who earn less than

20,000?

>> You can keep your hand up.

>> And that's why

I

>> know, and I'm glad that I feel something

together with you. And I'm glad that we really

do understand our country here far

better and more accurately than all those who

try to convince us that everything is fine,

that over 17 years we have achieved a great deal and

that life in Russia is generally improving.

>> Because you and I know that even in a

wealthy region, an officially wealthy

region, one of the very few, very few,

people are living in destitution and poverty.

If people are living here, here where there is

oil refining,

some industry, tire manufacturing

has survived, and before the Revolution

people from Yaroslavl were considered the best

hired workers. You know, there were those

seasonal labor migrations, and everyone wanted to hire

people specifically from Yaroslavl. So here, in

fact, even that familiar

line doesn't work—that Russians live like this, uh,

that Russians are poor because they are

lazy. Well, you definitely can't say that

here, because there is even

historical evidence that

people here are very hardworking.

>> And despite the surviving

industry, despite the historical

traditions, despite the $3 trillion

received from the sale of oil and

gas, we still live in poverty. So what

should everyone else expect then? What then

should the whole country expect?

And if you and I understand this here, in

Yaroslavl, then that means we absolutely

have the right to conduct our

election campaign. Right?

>> There you have it. And yet they all say that

Navalny has no right to run in the election,

because he is

an ex-con, because he's a criminal, because

he's Hitler, because

who knows what else,

because he has no support, because

only three and a half colleagues or one and a half diggers support him,

But is that true or not?

>> No.

>> And you and I know perfectly well that

we gathered here, and the volunteers here too,

right? You are people who

checked a box—I hope there aren't any here

who checked it by accident and are now

listening and thinking, "My God, what have I done?"

You checked a box and said that you

want to work several hours, at least

a month, for free. But

you and I represent the front line

of millions of Russian citizens who

believe that they have political

rights, and that they will not give up their

political rights. We represent in

our country a substantial number of

people. The Kremlin is trying to convince us

that, well, the number of those who are against

corruption is minimal. But we

know that the majority are against corruption.

They are trying to convince us that in our

country

80% want to rebuild Palmyra,

but do not want to rebuild their own cities. But

what matters more: Yaroslavl or Palmyra?

>> Yaroslavl. With all due respect to Palmyra, with

all due respect to Aleppo, our own cities are

still closer to us. But the figure that I

saw today, well, it simply

shocked me. Remember the Admiral

Kuznetsov, which sailed to Syria

and back? The one belching smoke.

>> We remember. Why?

>> It cost 22 billion rubles in the end. Yes, they

lost two aircraft in the sea. But they also said that

the ship would make the trip, but since

the voyage was so long, they would need to

replace, uh, all the units inside,

the engine and everything else. And today

it was announced that this will cost 40 billion

rubles.

>> That's the price of 12 spacecraft.

>> That is the price of twelve spacecraft.

That's three city budgets for

Yaroslavl. That's almost the annual budget of

Yaroslavl Region. Why the hell are we

spending money there when money is needed

here? Could we find a way to spend

40 billion here?

>> I'm sure we could.

>> And that is why we represent those people

who believe that our country comes first,

and everything else comes after. And there are many such people.

Most people, the majority of people in

the country, well, look at this and simply do not

understand: why did Russia forgive all

debts to all these countries? Why does Russia

keep feeding everyone? Just look,

just recently Russia finished paying off

another Soviet-era debt to, for some reason, Montenegro,

or maybe to some share owed to Bosnia

and Herzegovina. We paid an additional $53 million

on Soviet debt. At the same time,

we forgave Cuba’s debts, we forgave Mongolia’s debts,

we forgave debts to all African countries,

and wrote off Syria’s debts

>> tens of billions of dollars. And why

does no one else do that? When

Cuba said to the Czech Republic, "Dear Czech Republic,

please forgive our debts, because

we here in Cuba have no money." The Czech Republic

said, "Guys, if you want, pay in rum, if you want,

in cigars, however you like, please

settle it." Well, that is exactly what we should

say too. Right.

>> Right.

>> This is our money. This money is the money

of our children. It is a pothole in the road

that needs to be filled. Today I do not

know, maybe some of you saw it on Twitter.

There is an amazing photo from Tomsk (a major city in Siberia). There

people, to draw the authorities’ attention,

were photographing potholes, and now there

a man climbs into one of them, like this, up to

his waist, and gets photographed. Well, take a look,

go and see it. This is Tomsk, population 600,000,

one of the largest cities in

Siberia. We have gigantic holes in the roads. We cannot

solve basic

road construction problems in the 21st century. What

is there even to talk about? Under Gorbachev, in the impoverished

USSR, under early Yeltsin, in desperately poor

Russia, ten times more paved roads

were built than under

wealthy Putin and during the fat Putin years.

Why is that? Because all of this is being

offset. Fewer roads are being built here,

but on the French Riviera,

and in Spain, everything is just fine. Uh-huh.

>> Official

data from London real estate agencies show

that most apartments

worth more than £1 million

are bought by Russian officials.

>> How does that even happen? You can

see the official data from the latest

income declarations. They have just

published them. Newspapers analyzed them. In

the Federation Council (upper house of Russia’s parliament), the average income rose by

twofold, I think. In the State Duma, it rose by 30%.

In the government, everyone became twice as

rich. At the same time, well, I do not know, I take

official statistical handbooks, I look at them and

see that since 2012 the real decline in

people’s incomes has been 12%, plus

8% inflation. That means that we, the people who

apparently live in some kind of

parallel reality from the deputies,

have become at least 20% poorer. Right?

Well, does anyone feel that over

the past few years they have become richer? No,

>> no one feels that way. In reality, people’s incomes

have been falling for the fourth year in a row,

but for some reason in the Duma they are rising. Why?

>> Because of corruption, because

we live in a rich country but in poverty,

because of this damn corruption. Right?

>> Yes.

>> What football match is on right now? Or

has it already ended?

>> Zenit vs. Ural.

>> Where is it being played?

>> At the stadium. At the brand-new, freaking amazing

stadium that cost how much? 50.

>> 40. 40 billion rubles. Go and look

at the photos of how they are replacing the grass turf

with some kind of green IKEA-style plastic grid

right in the spot where corner kicks are taken.

It probably has some proper

name, that place where

the corner is taken, yes. But

>> 40 billion rubles. We built the richest,

the most expensive stadium in the world. And

this stadium has no proper grass pitch. At this

stadium it turned out that the retractable roof

does not work. And it turns out that this

stadium leaks. At this

stadium, half the stands already need to be redone.

So I am saying: out of those 40 billion,

35 were simply stolen.

>> And that is what it comes to: we are at once both

rich and poor. That is it. But

again, just take textbooks, take

reference books, and compare ourselves—

the Yaroslavl Region, Yaroslavl—with other

countries. Estonia, my favorite. Let us

compare. Tell me, please, is there oil production in

Estonia?

>> No.

>> Is gas produced in Estonia?

>> Maybe they have some kind of

mining and processing plants

in Estonia? No, apparently not, right? No aluminum,

no nickel, there is nothing in Estonia except

a normal government. And in Estonia

the salary is

1,100 euros. That is 66,000

rubles.

>> Minimum.

>> Average, the average. Now let us compare it

with the average salary here in the Yaroslavl

Region. But we understand that Rosstat (Russia’s official statistics agency)

lies, and the real average salary is probably

somewhere around 22,000 to 23,000 rubles.

>> No, probably

>> more or less,

>> even less.

>> Why? Really, let us

think it through—maybe we are missing something, maybe I am stupid

and do not understand what the objective reason is.

An objective one. Not corruption—they have

was stolen, but an objective one. Why do we live

so much poorer than Estonia? We don’t

create anything.

We do create things here, but do you have

elevator manufacturing, processing, decent-paying

industry? We do make some things.

>> It’s not enough. The money all goes to Moscow.

>> That’s exactly it — it doesn’t work. Everything goes to

Moscow. And in Moscow, it all gets stolen.

We, well, we didn’t just realize these

basic truths. I haven’t told you anything new

here, have I? We’ve simply

taken a step forward. First, we’ve

come together

in order to tell these basic truths

to everyone else. Second,

we are not afraid

simply because otherwise

we will have no prospects

at all. A lot of people talk about, well,

emigration, not emigration.

It’s true that emigration from Russia

is enormous, but still we understand that we

were born here and will most likely

die here, and our children will live here. And the most

important reason to run

an election campaign, it seems to me,

is that you and I refuse to accept

Russia’s hopelessness, we refuse

to resign ourselves to the fact that we are doomed

to die in poverty, and that our children are doomed

to be just as poor, because we have everything

we need. Russia, even in its current

economic condition, even in its current

economic condition, is ahead of many countries where

the minimum wage is, for example, $500

a month. Argentina’s GDP per capita is

lower, but the minimum wage is $500

— how much is that? The same

25,000 rubles, or even more.

>> That’s more than the average salary here.

Why the hell, I don’t understand, do people in Chile and

Argentina live better than they do here? There is

not a single reason for it, except that

the government, which has degraded over 17 years,

has already devoured everything around it. Everywhere,

I ask the author of this wonderful

quote. One man — you know him —

said that after 10 years in the presidency

any president will go mad.

>> Who said that?

>> Putin.

>> Putin.

>> Putin, in the seventh year of his presidency,

said that after 10 years anyone

would lose their mind. And Asov said after 5 years.

According to President Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin, he himself has officially

been running the country for 7 years with a slipped

mind.

>> That’s exactly how it is.

>> Well, yes,

>> because

>> it’s not about Putin, it’s about the fact that

that’s how the world works, that’s how humanity is. There has never been

a single national leader in

recent — well, in the whole recent history

of humanity — who stayed in office for more than 10 years

and still governed

properly.

And that is exactly what we will be talking about

during the election campaign. I assure you

that we will be able to convince everyone. This is

the main thing I want to say

before I move on to answering

questions.

The most mistaken thought that

keeps coming into our heads is

that, well, damn it, you can’t break a whip against a butt end (a Russian saying meaning you can’t beat overwhelming force).

I mean, look at what they have there:

television, Solovyov (a pro-Kremlin TV host),

Kiselyov (a pro-Kremlin TV host), OMON (riot police), the National Guard, election fraud,

at elections. And it seems, wow, how

solidly they’ve built it all, and there’s no way

to get at it. But no, actually that’s

not true, because there is no

concrete wall. There is a void. In

this political void, where no one has

been doing politics — well, here in Yaroslavl,

is anyone else’s election

campaign even noticeable?

>> No.

>> I don’t know. Maybe Zyuganov is doing something?

>> No.

>> Maybe Yavlinsky is doing something?

>> Zhirik (Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s nickname).

>> No one has ever done anything,

you understand? No one has succeeded

because no one has ever done

anything. No one has tried to work with

volunteers. Everyone is engaged in some kind of

shady dealing. They go to the Presidential Administration

and make some arrangement there,

split the money, and that’s it. But we are going to run

a real campaign. And we will step into this void

and explain everything to people. Everything.

We’ll explain it all. And the fact that it’s a void is

obvious even here. United Russia in

Yaroslavl Region barely has any presence.

Right? Yes,

>> In 2011, if I remember correctly,

it was the second-lowest region in terms of support for United

Russia.

>> Or maybe even the very last one.

>> So the opposition, the so-called

opposition — the Communists, Zhirinovsky’s people, and so

on — without really doing anything at

all, actually have the majority of votes

against United Russia. And if we

actually do the work, we will be able to change

absolutely anything together, because, well,

there is not a single political force in Russia

that has this many volunteers. Not

one. Right now, 90,000 people like you

have registered; there will be 200,000. Managing

even yourself is hard. Managing

this mass of us — very different people who

want to do different things — is hard.

to govern, but once we learn how,

we will definitely defeat everyone, because,

fundamentally, the truth is on our side,

because the National Guard and the police,

are just like us. I say this everywhere,

and it is the absolute truth.

I’m not exaggerating. They drag me into

the police van.

sit me down, and then the bus starts moving,

and they all turn to me and start

telling me about their hard lives.

And what kind of good life do they have?

Where do the OMON riot police live? In dormitories.

Tell me, please, is it easy to get

a mortgage here in Russia?

Is it easy to pay off a mortgage here?

Easy?

>> Impossible.

>> Twelve percent, yes, 13–15% — it’s just impossible

to pay off. Meanwhile, in the Baltics it’s 1%

annually, and in Denmark mortgage rates are already

negative. And these same

cops say: "Damn, we’re living

in a dorm, and we have no

prospects at all. I have to buy my uniform

with my own money.

My wife gets angry because the only way I can buy her

a pair of shoes is on credit. I

can’t go on vacation, because going to

Crimea has become expensive, and Turkey

won’t let me in anymore." Right. You’re barred

to police and all security personnel, so

basically they’re all with us. All those people we

call names there — they’re not,

in essence,

>> they’re all with us. Why do they fight, then?

I’ll explain why they fight. Because

they’re afraid to believe what they

feel. They’re afraid to believe

that we are actually living in poverty. They’re

afraid to believe that there is

a normal path of development. They’re afraid

to believe that the country can live

normally. But in reality, Russia has always

been poor for at least the last

several decades, including the Soviet years. People have always

lived in poverty. And indeed, our

main problem in elections is that people

have grown used to misery and poverty. They’ve

convinced themselves that, well,

this is how we’ll always live.

>> We’ve never lived well, so

there’s no need to start now.

>> We’ve gathered here to say:

"It’s time to start living well." We

will prove it to everyone. We’ll get the message across to everyone,

and then everyone will vote for us,

and we will win in the first round. Thank you

very much. I’m ready to take questions.

What a cautious person has come,

look at the sign he brought. You know,

it’s like at Putin’s press conferences:

"Agriculture."

Briefly, please, yes, straight to the point. That’s exactly

why, in order to stop thieves from clinging to power alongside Putin,

we went for the main seat —

the presidency. I’m sure we are capable

of winning. Next question: how

do we deal with the government, the governors,

and the State Duma, since the overwhelming majority

of them are from United Russia? Doesn’t the new president

Navalny, whom the people support, risk being impeached

by United Russia members? That’s the question.

And one brief note

about Yaroslavl. For your information, the "garbage king,"

Igor Ilyich Chaika, son

of Russia’s Prosecutor General,

>> my favorite,

>> has secured a waste management contract in the Yaroslavl

region. We’re talking about

2.5 billion rubles. Uh, he has already

been here several times on private visits,

and in Yaroslavl he was photographed with Governor Mironov.

Please pay attention

to this. FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation).

>> Send us the information. We, we

adore Chaika. He’s so cute, so

nice. I mean, we love them. And

besides, they do everything so brazenly

that it’s actually quite easy to investigate.

Send us the information. As for

the first point — impeachment. Well,

indeed, who is sitting in the Duma now?

United Russia members, right?

>> But let me ask you: does this Duma

represent you?

>> It represents no one. You

understand? Because even if we

even if we believe in this

party-list voting,

we see that United Russia does not get

50% of the vote, yet it controls 70%.

This Duma should be

>> dissolved.

>> Dissolved. There — you’ve answered your own

question. So: I become

president, we dissolve the Duma, we

call new elections. In those elections we

allow everyone to run, from nationalists to

liberals.

United Russia too, of course — please,

they’re people too, living human beings

just like us.

>> I’ll get to that in a moment.

Ah, they can take part in the elections too,

but I assure you that we will be able

to form a majority coalition in the Duma

that will support

our laws. Because regardless

of ideological differences, the main

points of our program — from fighting

corruption to raising the minimum wage —

are supported by everyone. Everyone supports them,

because these are people’s demands. They call it,

populism, but it’s not populism. It is

what is genuinely popular with the people. And these are

the right steps. So we will build

a majority and form a normal

the government, and no impeachment. But

that immediately raises a question. A person

gets tense and asks, what about lustration—won’t there be any?

The fact that we will dissolve the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament),

>> our favorites Blinov, Tyurin, and those other

whoever they are, will once again

slip through and wait for some moment.

>> That won’t happen. I promise you,

dear residents of Yaroslavl, that won’t happen.

Why? Because all these judges—Blinov

and all the rest—do not need to be

subjected to lustration. They are criminals under

the current laws. They fabricate

criminal cases. There is a specific article for that—

bringing a knowingly innocent person to criminal liability.

From fabricated

criminal cases to simply detaining people

illegally at rallies. Here in your city,

were there many people on the 26th? A lot?

>> Very many. How many? Roughly. Give me

the minimum estimate.

>> More than a thousand.

>> All right. Give me a minimum estimate—say,

300. It doesn’t matter how many people were

detained.

Well done. This is exactly about the claim that

there’s a concrete wall there and they can do

nothing. In any case, there was

all these people were detained, and against them

cases were fabricated, starting with

the police officers who wrote false

reports,

>> and ending with the appellate courts

that upheld these

illegal verdicts—all of them will end up in the defendants’ dock

without any lustration, because there is no need

for any lustration. As for

lustration, we believe that

Russia’s political elite

must bear some responsibility

for what it is doing.

>> It must. Because if it does not bear

that responsibility, we will once again achieve

nothing, just as it did not work out under

Yeltsin, because all that crookery—

the CPSU and Komsomol crowd (the Soviet Communist Party and Communist youth organization)—they

changed colors many times. They were

party members and said churches

had to be demolished. Then they became great

democrats and all supported Gaidar.

Then they all immediately ran to

Chernomyrdin. Then they ran to

Luzhkov. Then they came running to Putin. And

now every Easter we see these

members of the CPSU from 1976 standing there

and banging out full prostrations. And they tell us:

"Look, this is spirituality, this is

Orthodoxy." So yes, I absolutely

support lustration. It’s just that it should not

be declared by the president. If

you allow the president to declare

lustration, [clears throat] well, at some point one might

fail to restrain oneself and

lustrate them too, and nothing good

will come of it. This is a decision that

the Duma must make, and it must be

a consolidated decision by different

political forces, including

opposition ones. It seems to me that the country

is ready for lustration. Next question.

>> What about a referendum?

>> A referendum on lustration. Quite

possibly. Quite possibly. In any

case, first the State Duma, but the newly

elected State Duma must make

the decision. I see a hand over there. Go ahead.

Anatolyevich, do you have enough experience

to run the country? Is your team

up to the task? And will the old

ministers stay, or will there be new ones?

>> The old ministers.

>> Guys, let’s hold a referendum. Do we keep

the old ministers?

>> Do we keep Igor Ivanovich

Shuvalov and his little dogs on the plane?

Do we keep the great guy Mikhail

Abyzov with his

>> Tuscany, right? And all the rest of them. Well,

of course not. And that brings us to the question of experience.

You know, they very often tell us,

they say: "Well, Navalny, what has he

ever managed, this Navalny?" Well,

look at them—they ran Gazprom.

They did a fantastic job of it, didn’t they?

>> Oh yes, they sure did—they built the Zenit stadium

(Gazprom Arena). Turned out to be a great stadium.

>> If someone came out here and

said, "I ran

Yaroslavl Region for many years. I’m better than all

these people." Did he run it well? No, no,

no, and no. The truth is

that if we

analyze the best national leaders of the last

20 years, we will see that

the best among them were those who were engaged in

carrying an idea. They worked somewhere

in the apparatus. What did Obama run? What

did Havel run? What did Lech

Wałęsa run? What did Angela

Merkel run? Nothing—she sat in the party

apparatus. The president’s job is not to be

a tough, hands-on manager. We have plenty of those

tough managers on display. The whole of

United Russia is made up of them.

>> The president’s job is to formulate

the right ideas and be the guarantor that

everything will be carried out. As

Lee Kuan Yew said: "If fighting

corruption requires this method, then we

will jail our friends." Well then,

that is what the president must do. He

must bear responsibility, so that

after 4 years or after 8 years, you yourselves

can answer for it. Then perhaps, back in

April 2017, I did not come for nothing

to the movie theater and sit in terrible heat for an hour

listening to Navalny, because he

is doing what he said he would do. That is the task

a president, not just a tough

manager. Otherwise, well,

let’s just make any of those devils from

Gazprom or Norilsk Nickel presidents.

But that doesn’t

work. We can see that it doesn’t work.

Question.

>> May I?

>> Yes.

>> Alexei, if you became president, who would you

most want to see, first and foremost, as

your ally?

As what?

>> An ally.

>> As your ally.

>> Do you mean a person or an

organization? And

>> Most likely specific people. Maybe

not just one.

>> So this is really a question about your team.

>> And that’s an important question.

>> And all those who aren’t yet on your team.

>> We think about this constantly, and we’ve

written a lot on the subject, and we do have names.

But there’s still a year until the election. The nature

of an election campaign is such that any personnel

decisions are made and announced

closer to the actual date. Otherwise,

it just won’t be interesting. I’ll come back to you

in six months, and there’ll be no

intrigue left. Right? You’ll already know everything

about me. So, well, in all

election campaigns.

>> The reasons. Can you name the reasons—

can you say why you would want

to see that person in that role?

>> Who would I like to see? I can give the reasons, I can

say that. These people must be honest and

decent. That’s the most important thing,

because any minister is, after all,

a political position. A minister doesn’t really manage

anything directly; he sets the direction and

then goes around cutting ribbons. It’s a

political office. The real management is done by

the deputies. First and foremost, I want to see

people who are principled, honest, and

decent. From that, in turn,

follows that they will do their job,

and work properly in their position,

because a minister simply has to

carry out his duties properly, not

engage in shady schemes that take up

90% of his time, while only 10% is spent running

the ministry. He must be a decent

person. If you look at the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

if you’ve seen all my

job postings, they all begin the same way. Requirement

number one: must be a normal

person, not love power, and be ready

to work honestly in the organization. Well,

that’s right: being a normal person and not

loving power—those are absolute synonyms.

>> Absolutely. That’s why I believe

the Anti-Corruption Foundation is the most

effective nonprofit organization,

because we recruit people who are

professional, but the first criterion

is, of course, that they be principled.

Question: how does President Navalny

plan to reform

school education? The thing is,

for the past 10 years we’ve had

the Unified State Exam system (Russia’s standardized school-leaving exam), and after introducing it we’ve

ended up with mentally impotent people—that is,

children who are incapable of anything, incapable

of thinking, incapable

of reasoning. Okay. A question about the Unified State Exam. And

>> Do you think the Unified State Exam produces

mentally impotent people? Well, I think

you’re exaggerating a bit, of course. We do have

huge problems with secondary

education. That’s true. Overall, I

don’t think the Unified State Exam is such a bad idea.

It just doesn’t work in Russia. Why?

Because which region of Russia has the highest

scores?

>> Dagestan.

>> If

the Unified State Exam worked perfectly everywhere else in

Russia, but there is one region where

everything is falsified across the board, then it

loses its meaning. What is the exam for? It’s meant

to put a student from

Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Moscow, or

Vladivostok on equal footing. But they all lose out to

a student from Dagestan, who always has

perfect grades.

>> In Russian as well—and talented children from

Dagestan suffer from this too.

So in its current form, of course, it’s

simply unworkable. But as for

education in general,

>> its main problem is simply

underfunding.

Look at any developed country.

Any country with a more or less

decent standard of living allocates

five times more money to education as a share of

GDP than Russia does. Until we simply

start putting money into

education, nothing will work.

And I’m not saying all this because I want to say,

“Teachers, I’ll raise your salaries,

vote for me.” Although I will raise them, and

of course you should vote for me, but I genuinely

believe this is a rational strategy.

It is in our interest to invest money in

education. 100 rubles invested in education today

will bring us, in five years,

1,000 rubles back in taxes,

>> because people will earn higher

salaries. In modern society, human capital generates

wealth, not

oil or gas. That’s why we need to

invest money there. Let me take a question from this

side. Yes. Ah,

hello. I wanted to ask about

Dmitry Potavich—do you know him? I do.

>> Is a political alliance even possible at all?

That’s something one would have to get used to in practice.

Uh, when I become president, I

will have to work with everyone. I

plan to work with everyone. Why is everything

so bad for us now? Because Putin

says, "I work with these people, but with these

I don’t. We’ll push them out

from everywhere altogether." That’s no way to do things. A president must

be the president of the whole country.

>> You and I—I hope all of us together

will win, but we also need to understand that

when we do win, it will place on me

an obligation to work with some fairly

awful people. After all, they too are

citizens of Russia. They have awful,

stupid ideas, but we’ll have to

work with them too. But Potapenko, of course, is not one of

those people.

He doesn’t have any awful

ideas. Any help for the political campaign

would be welcome.

>> Right now, we welcome everyone from this

group—uh, the one around the Moscow

Economic Forum, roughly speaking—we have

a lot of informal contacts. They’re just

for now, like many businesspeople,

still a bit afraid. But if you look at what

they say and what we say, it’s

more or less the same thing. In fact, we have

a lot of supporters, a lot of allies,

a huge number of them. It’s just that you’ve already

taken that step—you’re not afraid. They

are still afraid for now. When they see that

there are even more of us, they’ll come to us

and we’ll work together with them. Yes.

>> Hello. I’m reco—

Leonid, greetings from Platon Malamatov.

You know,

>> Sorry, Leonid was just busy in the car

trying to make it through and

successfully advanced to some round of a

Yandex competitive programming contest,

so his expression is a bit dazed. No, that’s not

where that came from.

>> He’s still solving some kind of

problems in his head, so he’s a little

stunned. Yes.

>> And in 2013 I worked on the Moscow

mayoral campaign against you. Uh—

>> Against me? And for whom? Is it a secret?

Sobyanin.

>> Nice.

Yes, despite the fact that, really, your

people did an excellent job, and despite

a fairly large number of violations,

you still ended up getting fewer votes

than Sobyanin.

>> And what makes you think that in

2018 the situation would work out differently?

>> Then may I first ask you what

made you work for Sobyanin?

Money.

And you say that as if Anna

would say, "Well, okay, if it’s for money,

then anything goes." But look,

that’s a good question. Of course, I strongly

condemn you for working for Sobyanin.

There are more respectable ways to earn

money,

>> business,

>> So that means the famous

girl in the hat was talking about you: "He only wants

money, money, money," not about me.

If you were paying me, I’d be worried.

>> Here’s the thing: I take money from one

source. Raise your hand if you’ve

supported our campaign in any

way.

>> You see,

>> that’s how it works. Thank you very much,

guys. I applaud you. And our whole system

is set up so that we do not

hire PR people or political consultants; we

rely on people. To answer your

question: you yourself said there was

fraud. You acknowledge that, right?

The fraud consisted in this: in the

voting at normal polling stations, even

taking the manipulation into account, Sobyanin got 48%, and

then at the polling stations—at the, what do you call them,

the mobile ballot boxes outside the polling stations—he

got something like 90% everywhere, and that’s how

he crossed the 50% threshold by half a

percentage point. If there hadn’t been

fraud, there would have been a second

round. As you know, in a runoff it’s very

often the case that the person who comes

in second ends up taking first, because

the rules are different in the second round. Sobyanin

wouldn’t have gotten any more votes.

He had already maxed out what he could get. And all the votes

cast for opposition candidates

would have consolidated behind me. So your question

leads us to an important point:

it’s not enough just to win those votes,

those votes also have to be protected,

>> defended. And that’s why we will train

and build, here as well,

real, ferocious election observers. I

hope you will become exactly that—people who

will fight for every vote. We cannot and do not want to

falsify anything,

but we are not going to surrender our

votes. Next question.

>> So if you win, you’ll inherit a country

in a state of ruin.

A well-known figure said, "There’s no money, but

hang in there" (a widely quoted remark by former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev). Where do you plan to get

that money?

for the country, to get it back on its feet?

>> Well, first of all, we’ll take 70 billion away from that

person—the one who said that.

Second, and this is still a major advantage Russia has,

despite the fact that the country

is in a devastated state:

the plain truth is that there is a sea of money in this country.

>> Oil is now at $55 a barrel. That

huge sums of money, enormous, colossal sums.

Money. The Soviet Union built everything

you see around you with far less

money. And even now, this

price of $55 per barrel allows us

to receive billions and trillions in fairly

easy money, windfall petrodollars. We

have enough money for everything. It’s just that

it shouldn’t be siphoned off. They

steal it, and even more of it they simply

waste. There is enough money, as I

already said, and that is an important point. If we

look at all the technical,

economic indicators of Russia, we

see that objectively it should be living

twice as well. Everyone’s wages should

be twice as high. And that is exactly how it

will be when we stop stealing and

when the government stops lying

endlessly in order to cover up this

theft. The money exists. If the price were now

$17 per barrel or $10 per

barrel, as in the early Yeltsin years (the period of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency),

then we really would be facing

a major challenge. What would we do in the country?

How would we rebuild it if, excuse me,

there were no cash at all? But now it’s different.

And even if it were $10, we would still

understand what needs to be done. But now we

understand what needs to be done. And on top of that,

there is money to spare. Question.

>> Yes, well, as I understand it, you currently have

your campaign built around

analytics

at the very least. This is the minimum

wage. My question is this: what

will be the main idea here?

Will you be the president who

leads the transition period and

creates normal legislation for us?

Take the word “consecutive” out of the Constitution, and

make the normal presidential term 3

years, yes, and two terms, that’s all. Thank you,

thank you. And then write books and so on.

>> Absolutely, that is not needed. For me personally,

whether it’s Putin—or rather, for me personally,

Putin for 17 years with a minimum wage of

50,000 rubles is just as bad as Putin for 17

years with a minimum wage of 20,000. It makes

no difference to me. I 100% agree. That’s exactly right. In other words,

not only is that a hypothetical

construct—the real point is that

there will be no 50,000 wage under a president

who stays in office for 17 years. And it is simply

true that the main thing may be, perhaps,

perhaps even the main thing that a

normal president must do—and I, Alexei

Navalny, plan to be a normal

president—is to reduce his own

powers. No six-year terms.

It does not work. It is awful, it is a nightmare.

We are bringing back

a maximum of two four-year terms. All

this “consecutive or not consecutive” business will be abolished, and

we will firmly establish that it is impossible

to become president again. Uh-huh.

>> And we take away from the president the power to

effectively appoint judges. We

reduce the president’s powers to

manipulate the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament).

We reduce the president’s ability

to manipulate the mass media

and so on, and so forth. We have

a super-presidential republic. Everything is

run by one person in Moscow. Any

question of any significance is decided by

one person. But there are too many questions, so

he ends up deciding nothing. So yes,

of course, these powers must be

reduced, otherwise it does not work. There are no

normal developed countries where the president

is effectively an absolute monarch,

but in Russia he is. Therefore,

absolutely, completely, 100%, all these

things need to be cut back. And the current Constitution

is not good at all, contrary to what

the questioner is trying to argue.

>> Hello. I hear a great deal of concern

about the country’s internal problems

being important. That is, domestic

policy is very important. I agree with that,

but I believe foreign policy

should not be forgotten either, because

it can be directed in such a way that

the dividends from it are also properly

used for domestic policy. Do you

plan in some way not to lose sight

of foreign policy, how to conduct it effectively, and

who the allies will be? Ah, well, to forget

about foreign policy, even if I

wanted to, would be impossible. Russia is one of

the largest countries. It possesses

nuclear weapons. It has the right

of veto in the UN Security Council. This

largely defines its role. It will always

play, well, at least in the

foreseeable future, unless Putin

finishes off absolutely everything here

completely, a significant

role. I believe that, overall, the direction of

foreign policy should be toward

making Russia one of

the leading European countries. We can do that,

it is a realistic goal. We can become

prosperous enough to become one of

the leading European countries and one of

the guarantors of security in the world alongside

the United States, alongside China, alongside

the United Kingdom. We can do all of this,

but this is also important: any

foreign policy is a function of

domestic policy. It is a function of

the economy. In fact, what is happening

right now? We are puffing out our cheeks (putting on a show of strength),

we are sending off, with our last money,

the Admiral Kuznetsov (Russia’s aircraft carrier), while we ourselves are left with

broken roads and are left with

doctors’ miserably low wages.

We will have the strongest foreign policy and

the strongest army when here, in the city of

Yaroslavl, everyone is earning on average

90,000 rubles.

>> Only that way and no other, because,

well, look at the countries that truly

aspire to great-power status: in the U.S., the average

salary is several times higher than it is

here. In the UK, it is several times

higher than here. In China, the average

salary is now higher than in Russia. So,

if you want to have a formidable

army with all the Iskanders (Russian missile systems) and everything

else? You need money, right?

>> And money is needed, but either we make

the population poor and build Iskanders,

as is happening now, or we

make the population prosperous, the economy

strong, and build even more Iskanders.

So, yes, of course, Russia has played and

will continue to play an important role. But the importance

of that role is tied only to wealth and,

roughly speaking, to the salaries of people

at home. Next question.

>> Alexei, excuse me, my name is... Sorry,

may I ask a question? Yes, yes. Go ahead. Uh,

>> just yesterday I was talking with my

neighbor; he’s a young man,

not stupid, thoughtful. We were discussing you and

your work. And at one point

he asked me, he said: "Well, do you

understand that you’re an ordinary

person, just a regular guy. So what do you think—would you be able to

uh, film, say, with a quadcopter

the dacha of the country’s top officials, and how long

would your quadcopter stay in the air

before it was shot down by, say,

the security detail? And I, for one, had trouble

answering that question. What should I

have told my neighbor?"

There are quite a lot of neighbors here—many people

raised their hands when asked whether you had donated

money. So here’s what you do: chip in,

buy a quadcopter. Plyos is an hour’s drive away

from here. Take your neighbor, go to Plyos,

and fly it and film. The thing is,

it’s about this size and flies very fast.

You can’t shoot it down. Even if there are

soldiers standing there with assault rifles at the ready,

you still can’t shoot it down. It’s

small. You can’t reach it with birdshot from a shotgun,

and with a rifled gun

you won’t hit it.

>> But they secured the Kremlin. How did they

do it? They altered the entire GPS system around

the Kremlin. You’ve probably seen it

online. When you drive up to the Kremlin,

your device shows that you’re in Vnukovo

Airport.

>> That’s the only way to fight

quadcopters.

>> There are now guns that can force

quadcopters to land from a distance.

>> They haven’t made it to Russia yet. That’s another point

about how ineffective this regime is. This regime

is so ineffective that it cannot even

cope with our quadcopters.

We filmed the dacha of the Defense Minister

and Patrushev of the FSB (Federal Security Service). We, we can

film, I don’t know, go tomorrow and film

Novo-Ogaryovo, where Putin lives. It’s just that

we don’t want to—well, there’s nothing much

to film there, and we don’t want to set a bad example so that

everyone sees how easy it is to get in there.

Then some nutcase might send not

a camera, but something else

with that quadcopter. Why would we

want that? And

>> this country under this regime is not

capable of doing it. You see, their

best technology is Chubais’s nanotechnology.

Damn, you know?

Skolkovo is their technological breakthrough.

In other words, endless lies multiplied

by endless theft.

That’s why they can’t do anything.

That’s why they tried to scare us before the rally

on the 26th: "We’ll twist everyone into

a ram’s horn." And what happened? So what? 80

people were put under administrative arrest

in Moscow, and another 10 or so across the country.

But there’s nothing they can do to people

when people aren’t afraid and come out in

numbers of several thousand or more.

So

>> tell your neighbor by example: you take

a quadcopter and go film. It’s

quite easy. I’m sure you have, well,

I don’t know, the governor has a dacha,

>> surely.

>> Well, probably. Let our

headquarters start with that. Let’s go film what

he has there. He’s not the president, of course,

but it can be filmed. Next question. Ah, Alexei, what interests me is this:

Will the deputies of the

State Duma and the Federation Council

each bear personal responsibility for the laws

they passed, which

contradict constitutional articles?

>> Well, personally, in my opinion, I would, of course, I

would jail them

>> for those disgusting laws, for laws like

the Dima Yakovlev Law (Russia’s ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children), yes—they condemned unfortunate

orphaned children to

suffering. They really do suffer,

they die, because some

people decided to pass that law. And there are

many others like it.

>> We’ve reached the point.

>> But here’s the thing: how can we

bring criminal charges against

a deputy simply for the way he voted?

But there’s no need to despair, because there is

such a thing as our draft law on

combating illicit enrichment. We

want to jail State Duma deputies, right?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Why so hesitant? We want to jail many of them. We do.

>> the law, Article 20 of the UN Convention,

which we will ratify, under which we

will pass a law that will let us put behind bars

half of the most odious figures, most of

United Russia members and all the rest, because

their incomes obviously do not match

their spending. Take Volodin or Neverov, for example,

just look at them. Income: 2 million rubles,

but a country house worth 50 million rubles.

Straight to the dock, in handcuffs. That's how

it works. Question. Alexei, here's

the question, actually. You all know that

these smear videos are really only

the beginning, so what else should we expect,

so to speak, and if there is a breaking point,

what would that be?

>> Well, listen, a breaking point,

a breaking point—what is that supposed to be? That I'll see

another video and say, "My God, I can't

take these lying videos anymore, so

I'm withdrawing my candidacy"?

>> Yes. No,

>> well, I don't see any such breaking

point. Damn, I don't even know how many

cameras they have set up in my home, or in

the bathroom, or wherever. I'm constantly

being searched, strange things are constantly

happening. So yes, they can probably

make quite a lot of

videos that will be unpleasant for me, but

when it comes to the substance, they have nothing to say in response. In

substance, they have nothing to say. So they

flood the internet with videos claiming that

I'm Hitler, videos with flashy

screenshots about how Volkov and I

invite prostitutes to campaign headquarters.

Or some supposed correspondence between

someone and someone else. They don't even bother anymore

with anything resembling evidence. They just

make things up. Look, a hacked

email exchange about something. From Ukrainian

servers we found CIA data showing that

Navalny is an agent of Freedom. Did you see

that whole TV segment? I mean, I even

wrote a post about it saying I wanted to make a video.

Then I went to court and said, "Have you

lost your minds? Excuse my language, but you just

made all of this up, completely made it up. There isn't a

single piece of evidence." The judge ruled against me

and wrote that Alexei Navalny

was unhappy about being called an agent of

Freedom. But in translation, agent of Freedom

means an agent of freedom. And that's not

offensive at all.

That's the plain truth. I'm publishing the court

decision. It's the plain truth. Absurd. Yes.

>> That's what they do, and they'll keep doing it.

But listen, what's at stake for these people?

Billions of dollars. They are the rulers of

the largest country in the world. They

can take anything they want from ordinary people,

from businesses to wives and husbands.

They can jail anyone they want. Yes,

>> they've gotten carried away, and they revel in it,

so yes, they have a lot at stake, and they

will absolutely, as the election gets closer,

put out all kinds of things. All kinds of

videos. But the truth is on our side.

So no matter how many videos they

release, I know that in Yaroslavl

there are several hundred people who will still

go around telling everyone that

it's all lies, who will go around

talking about our platform and will

win people over. We even proved it to ourselves with focus groups

that we conducted; we proved it to ourselves

when in several cities we

ran focus groups and asked people:

"Where do you actually learn anything about

politics, how do you make any

decisions?"

So where do you think people learn about

politics?

>> Television, YouTube, YouTube,

>> radio, the internet.

>> The main thing, the most important thing, is that

absolutely everyone says: I have this one

friend, and he tells me everything. Isn't that

true?

>> Yes.

>> The persuasive power of a real person whom

you know personally is a million times

stronger than anything else. You

talk to someone, and they'll say to you:

"Your Navalny is an American

agent, nothing can be done." But then they

start thinking, because they know

you. They know you're doing all this for free.

They know you're not

a State Department agent. They know everything about you. And

so they always listen to you.

They listen. That is the most powerful force

there is: people who believe,

people united by an idea. And the whole

history of humanity is precisely about

how people united by an idea achieved

victory. And we, my dear friends, will

absolutely win that victory together. As

you may have noticed, we're in a movie theater, and

the next screening will start soon. So

thank you very much. I am deeply grateful to you,

thank you very much.