Navalny’s Speech at Shtabikon

I invite to the stage the presidential candidate

of Russia, Alexei Navalny, and

Yulia, his wife. Hello, thank you very much.

Leonid, thank you very much. Thank you all, friends,

for coming from every corner of our

vast country. On December 13 of last year,

just a little more than

eight months ago, when I had only just

published a video about

my nomination, about putting forward

my candidacy for this presidential election,

both I and some members of my team, our

team, some of whom you can

see behind me now,

were thinking then: what would this look like

by September? Would we manage anything at all?

Would people leave signatures

in support?

Would volunteers sign up? Would the

campaign

be real? Would it touch people's hearts?

Because even then, the tired, conventional

line of thinking was that everyone

was terribly disappointed in politics, and that people

with genuinely democratic views—that is,

those we could rely on first and foremost—

were completely

demoralized by the state's daily assault

on people's rights and freedoms.

What kind of election could this even be? And we wondered whether

it was even possible to run a real, honest

election campaign in the regions. That is,

we believed it was possible,

but all around us—remember—there was simply

a chorus of political analysts

trying to convince us that in Russia

it was impossible to go beyond the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD, Moscow's beltway),

well, maybe St. Petersburg at most,

but to open a headquarters in Kazan

with ideas like these—Alexei, you ought

to present them not in a presidential election

but on some comedy show,

because it sounds like a joke.

A candidate against corruption opening

a headquarters in Kazan—and everyone starts laughing,

especially those who came from Kazan.

Or open one in Mordovia (a republic in Russia), and everyone doubles over

laughing. Or, you know, a statement like:

we'll open a headquarters in Krasnodar and we'll

have to fend off huge numbers of

Putin-supporting grandmothers who will be pounding

on our door—and everyone immediately

slides onto the table laughing, because, well, because

it's impossible, because it's a joke.

And this is what these wise

political commentators were telling us: that we would not

be able to do any of it—not even because

we wouldn't find office space for headquarters, but because

it simply couldn't be done, and no one had ever run

regional campaigns, first and foremost

because there are no people there who are interested in it.

After all, everyone knows, everyone has always known,

that only in Moscow

is there some group of people interested in

things like

the fight for freedom or against

corruption, while in the regions there's nothing of the sort. Yes,

people are poor, they suffer,

they have no prospects, but they will never

stand up for change.

Our country is too heavy to lift, they told us.

It does not respond to words like

freedom and justice. Don't be

naive. The only way—listen to

us clever political scientists—the only

way to run a regional campaign is

to strike a deal with someone up above,

to negotiate, at least at the regional

level, settle the matter, and promise not

to make it personal, for example, so that

a hint would come from there,

a signal would be sent. And as usual, as always

at every election, that's how it goes. In other words,

even opposition politics is always

seen by everyone as something derived from

the will of those in power.

If they allow a little, then we

do a little. So the first thing I

want to say now, and what I regard

as unquestionably our achievement, and for which

I want to thank everyone standing

behind me now,

everyone sitting in this hall, everyone working in all

76 of our headquarters and in the regions, and all

150,000 volunteers who signed up

with us—I want to say thank you for

being ready for independent

politics. Thank you all for becoming

part of this campaign and proving the skeptics wrong:

it is possible—possible in Russia—to run

an independent campaign without having any

handlers other than your conscience, your convictions, and

your faith in the future. Thank you very much. But more than that,

it turned out that this is not merely

possible.

It is the best, indeed the only, way

to run a campaign at all. Only this way will people come,

and only this way did they come to us,

because they believed that everything we do is

real. Because for us, everything is

real. For the first time in Russia's history,

we are running a real political campaign

across the entire country, in every city now,

in every major city, and we will run it in

every populated place, relying only

on people,

relying on our platform and relying on

the real demands of millions. I am proud

that, standing on this stage, I can

say with complete honesty—and you won't let me

lie—that no one, ever, in

the central headquarters

or in any regional headquarters, received from

me any instructions like, 'Guys,

go easier here,'

'let's stay quiet here, let's not

upset this person, let's not quarrel with

them over there...' Nor when our lawyers

Our lawyers—our lawyers, our lawyers—never

heard me say, "Let's not sue

this guy because he has

some high-ranking

relatives."

Our designers never heard

"Let's not put on the leaflet

a photo of the governor's dacha (country house)

because, well, who knows, he might get angry,

get upset, and it will make it hard for us to run

a campaign in this region." No, for us it's the opposite.

We don't have enough space

on the leaflet

to fit all these people—

these remarkable people, their faces, their houses and dachas,

their yachts and salaries. And we will continue

to speak about them and expose them

without any fear at all, because that is the kind of

campaign we are running. Because besides us,

no one will tell this truth. Thank you

for agreeing to work under these

conditions. Thank you for not agreeing to

any other conditions.

Because I'll tell you honestly, guys, this is

a huge incentive for me to act

only this way, to act only

according to conscience. Otherwise, I understand

that I would simply be left alone, everyone would drift away,

and people would laugh at my campaign the way

they now laugh at the campaigns of all the so-called

systemic opposition, which once again

is going into an election,

again eager for battle, but again

afraid—

just as it has been afraid for 17 years to call things

by their proper names, to name specific

people, to speak about real problems

instead of endlessly talking about the international situation

the way they do. And I simply know that

if I, if my team, stay silent about something,

then no one will come here. What would be the point

of coming here, to Moscow, to the Moscow

region, to this campaign headquarters, from

Komsomolsk-on-Amur, flying to Moscow and then

moving on, like in a spy thriller,

by two commuter trains

and a taxi? And why be brave

if your candidate, if your candidate's team,

is afraid? Well, we are not afraid, and

I want to say once again, very clearly, that we

are conducting our campaign and our struggle for

a better future for the country while recognizing and saying aloud

that the main obstacle to

Russia's normal development is

the corrupt, morally degraded

and incompetent group around Vladimir

Putin. It is he, together with his friends and

relatives, who for 17 years has used

power as a tool for personal enrichment.

They are corrupt to the core, and Putin is without

a doubt the chief corrupt figure among them.

They have sunk their claws into the country and do not allow it

to develop; they do not allow citizens to prosper,

they do not allow business to grow. They are draining

Russia of all its lifeblood, simply turning it into

an accounting office that every day

writes them a new check. It used to be that

Russia was merely a raw-material appendage

of the West, but now it has turned into

an appendage for Putin's and his friends' offshore bank accounts.

We will never accept this.

This is our country, and everyone here

is a citizen of Russia. Some have already

realized that, and others still have to

come to realize it. With your help, we are conducting

our campaign by genuinely relying on

the interests of the majority. It is very important

to understand this, and it is not an exaggeration.

We are in fact the only voice even

for those who remain voiceless, who still do not know about

our existence, or for those who, under

the influence of propaganda—or, more often, because

they believe there is no alternative at all—

support this government. But who else

will stand up for the millions, the tens of millions,

who receive poverty wages of less than 25,000 rubles

(about $270) a month? Who besides us?

Look, we can see how both on the right and

on the left they try every day to prove to us

that introducing a normal minimum

wage

is impossible in Russia, that it cannot be done.

This is truly an aggressive and very

harmful minority that claims

every day that the experience of developed

countries cannot be applied in Russia. But we

know that it can.

And this is not a joke, but an actual statement

by the government, which you have probably all

read recently. Literally: "Wage growth

will harm the Russian economy." Yesterday there was

another government statement, also

literally: "A decline in jobs

has been recorded; this is a signal of positive

changes in the economy."

What kind of nonsense is this? Why does everyone simply

listen to it in silence and nod along? Who is this

economy supposed to exist for? For us.

The economy—its main purpose is for a person,

for every family, with each passing year,

with each passing month, to live, as much as possible,

more prosperously and better. And here, everyone will agree with us—

100 percent of voters will be on

our side. Who besides us

will truly stand up for

the interests of business?

What about these business associations,

the Union of Industrialists, the various

Business Russias that support Putin

in every election? Of course they do, because at

the latest forum he said for the 146th time that

pressure on business needs to be reduced.

Listen, if he says this several times a year

for 17 years, then has the pressure

gone down?

No. The pressure has steadily increased every

year, just like the number of officials in Russia.

Russia finally needs a candidate who clearly

and clearly say simple things: I will reduce

the number of business inspections by 200 times, and

I will reduce

I will abolish this useless certification, I

will tear down

these administrative barriers that

no one needs except the officials who

take bribes over them. When we come to

power, it will be easy to do business in Russia

and the entire business community will support us for

these words and will support us for this approach.

Yesterday, yesterday, the head of the Ministry of

Education said that all teachers

in Russia should be happy

after all, they calculated that teachers' salaries over

the year had risen by 1,200 rubles, and Medvedev did not

argue, because he said, "You're

wrong. According to my data, salaries

rose by 1,300 rubles over the year," and he even ordered

an inspection to be carried out in order to

prove that he was right. And he wants

to show in this way that he is

a benefactor, and no one but us will

stand up for these teachers, even if they

falsify elections at their

polling stations. In reality, they

have no one to rely on except us, you and me.

Take the regional authorities, for example.

We certainly don't like them very much, right?

And we have good reason not to like them. But when

every single day they

curse, in the strongest terms, somewhere in

the back rooms, this ugly and

inefficient federal system, when

the center simply robs the regions and does not let us

develop—but out loud they won't

utter a word about it. We speak about it openly and

serve as a voice even for these

representatives of the authorities who are terribly

afraid. But who do they really want to win?

In reality,

why, they're keeping their fingers crossed for us and

saying, "If only they succeed," quietly

they say it quietly, but sooner or later they will say it

out loud. The 21st century—

our healthcare system is still stuck in the 1980s

of the last century, and we are still afraid

to walk into a polyclinic (state outpatient clinic), and we read

yet another news story saying that in a children's

hospital, parents got into a fight over a place in

the queue. Just think about reading news like that in the 21st

century.

And yet that is exactly how everything sounds here.

The negative news is that parents got into a fight

in a polyclinic, and the positive

news sounds like this:

The governor of Tomsk Region, in a

ceremonial setting, opened a street

well,

water pump. Now, at last, you can

come with a bucket, fill it with water, and

carry it home. Thank you very much. But we know

that Russia can do better. We know how

to do it, and we will be able to do it. You and I, in this

election campaign,

are saving our country. That is exactly

how this should be understood, and no other way.

Russia needs to be saved. Think for yourselves

about where, into what abyss, these

people will drag us next, if in 17 years

they managed so incompetently

to squander and steal trillions

of dollars that, well, practically rained down on us

from the sky because of high oil prices.

But now prices are no longer what they were,

yet the appetites of Putin's group have not

decreased one bit. We can clearly see

the trend: corruption in 2003 was

greater than in 2000; in 2009, corruption

was greater than in 2005; in 2015 it was

already much greater than in 2010; and in

2017, you and I learned that

a cormorant (a seabird)

can eat the most expensive stadium in

the world, the one built in the city of

St. Petersburg.

But then what will happen in 2020 if

Putin remains in power? Ants will undermine

the Crimean Bridge,

ladybugs will carry off the Vostochny Cosmodrome,

and that is exactly how it will be, that is how it

will be, because we have an 18-year

period of observation, and simply by

using the methods of scientific analysis

we can state clearly: they will continue

to destroy science and education,

to destroy business and political freedoms,

to fight against high technology and

to hold prayer vigils against

films, because they have never been able to do

anything else; anything else

is simply beyond them. It is inevitable with the current

Kremlin, and we must save Russia from

this. And it is very important to me that you

get this across to every campaign staff member, to

every volunteer, and they in turn to

the largest possible number of citizens of the country,

across the country,

that our campaign right now is precisely about

saving Russia—no joke, no

exaggeration. A person who somewhere in

Kuban (a region in southern Russia) is standing there handing out leaflets or

going door to door is doing exactly

that: saving Russia. And those who are

ravaging and destroying it—now let us

think about whether they want to let us

into this election.

As for the tactics of our struggle, let us conduct

a thought experiment.

Let us imagine that in the Kremlin—perhaps

this is in fact exactly the case—

Putin is sitting there, listening to the live broadcast

of what is happening here. He has heard everything

I said, he sees you, he has

data on our organization, on our volunteers.

But what do you think is going through

his mind? "Let him run in the election and

say all the same things, only now already"

millions of citizens. We'll see what

comes of it. Well, of course not — he knows perfectly well

what will happen. They all understand perfectly well in

the Kremlin better than anyone that

this so-called 86 percent they use to

scare us

exists under one main condition:

a political vacuum. Only then is all

other politics fake and

make-believe, and only then does that 86 percent exist. That's

how it is in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament),

and now, as in all presidential

campaigns over the last 20 years,

when we, the opponents, simply play along with

the man who has already been designated

the winner. Once again we see that the main

instrument

behind the fake victories of United Russia and Putin

and the Kremlin's appointees

is, once again, keeping real candidates

off the ballot. Look at what's happening

in Sverdlovsk Region and in Novosibirsk.

Well, that's proof

that this is exactly how they operate. So first,

my friends, there's no need to guess:

they will try to keep us out of the election.

But second, don't think that they are all-powerful

and that they will definitely succeed

in doing it. It doesn't work that way at all, believe me, it doesn't

work like that. It's not just, 'Well, we've decided,'

'and we'll keep whoever we want off the ballot.' In essence,

every day and every moment they quietly

ask the people in different ways:

'Can we keep him out of the election? Will you

still recognize us as the authorities anyway?'

And as long as the answer they get is yes, or as long as you, the people,

mostly just shrug your shoulders,

they understand that they can do it.

That is, any government

still operates within the bounds of

what is possible, and the task of our campaign

is to make sure that the people say clearly and plainly:

'No, we want competition in

elections. It is deception and fraud if

the main opponent is not allowed to run.' We must make sure that

this lies beyond the bounds of what is possible.

Keeping a person out of an election when

the Constitution clearly and unambiguously,

in black and white, states that he has

the right to take part in elections — we can make it so

together with you, and we will. Already

now, 20 million people, according to

official VTsIOM statistics (Russia's state-run public opinion center), say

that they do not support Putin and do not

accept his rule. That is a huge number —

20 million. Together, we will increase it. As of now,

40 percent of citizens still do not know

that our campaign exists. This is actually

our

huge advantage — it is a whole field of work

we can enter, and where we can easily

campaign, reach people, and persuade them. We are

a huge political force. We have

150,000 people across the country. There are

76 headquarters in population centers across the country,

active supporters everywhere.

It is entirely within our power

to mobilize millions and turn

public opinion around, to make it so that

everyone with any interest in politics

says: 'Well, it doesn't matter

whether we like Navalny or not,

whether we like his program or not,

let him take part in the election.' This is

completely realistic. We see how it

works when we conduct sociological

research: even supporters of the authorities most often

say, 'Fine, let him run. We

don't see any problem with that.' If

someone in the Kremlin thinks that all their

problems will be solved and we will shut down the

campaign the moment the crooks from the

election commission say something, then it's nothing

of the sort. We will keep working, even

harder. We will launch such a campaign for

a boycott and against the election altogether

that we will leave no stone unturned. We

will persuade — and we will be able to persuade — everyone not

to go to the polling station, that

going to the polling station is shameful,

that it is disgraceful,

that it is not just humiliation, but

support for corruption — your personal

support for corruption, your personal

vote for being robbed even more,

for being made even poorer.

I have no doubt that such a

campaign would succeed, and it would be very easy to run

because people themselves would start

joining in when they once again see these

figures

pulled out of mothballs, dusted off,

put on display before everyone — the same people they've been showing us

regularly since 1996. Of course, the Kremlin

will definitely try to put forward

some fresh spoiler candidate to

attract independent voters. He

will criticize someone so carefully and toothlessly

without really conducting a genuine

campaign.

No, that may have worked before, but in 2018

it will no longer be possible to fool anyone

with that. That is exactly what we must

be working on very actively right now. I

assure you that if we work well,

they will have no choice and

will register me in full

compliance with the law and

the current Constitution.

And finally, it is important — very important — and the most

important thing is to believe in our own strength,

to understand how much can really

be changed, and how important what we are doing

right now is. There are already hundreds of thousands of us

without exaggeration — you know these

statistics — and the whole history of humanity

consists of examples of societies

evolving for the better through the efforts

a much smaller number of people in the country

And countries and states do not move forward at all

just on their own, by themselves, and progress

never happens by itself. That is not how it works.

It does not work that way: we cannot just watch our favorite

TV series, go to sleep, and wake up to find that

everything around us has become a little better. The main

condition is not even a favorable

moment.

It is not disagreement with the authorities, nor consolidation,

but the emergence

of a stable group of people ready to fight

for a new stage of development,

who say to themselves: we will do this

today, we will do this

tomorrow, and we will not grow tired of it, and we will not give up,

and for us this is not a game, not a political

pose.

It is not even a program written down on paper.

It is part of our lives; it is how we

live, and we cannot give it up.

I see such a group right here. I

understand that it has the power to change the country

completely. I am very glad to be part of this

group and to represent its interests in

the elections. We will not allow Russia

to be thrown back into darkness again. We will not allow

poverty to become привычной

and inequality the norm. We will lead our

country to prosperity and freedom. And it is precisely

you — those sitting in this hall, everyone who

signed up for lancer, and those standing on

the stage, those who may watch this

video and join us someday — who will

proudly say to your children and grandchildren:

"You know, once, long ago, I saved

Russia." Thank you.

[applause]