Take to the streets, candidate ratings, and the Chechen non-rally

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Hello everyone. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow. Alexei Navalny is in the studio.

Navalny.

Or, as the man who supposedly longs to be

arrested—as I was literally called yesterday by the Russian representative to the European

Court of Human Rights.

Court of Human Rights.

I may well be arrested, but for now I'm

here, live on air.

Please send me your questions on

Twitter with the hashtag #Navalny2018. We'll

be discussing today's topics, and I

will be answering your questions. But to begin,

of course, I want to start with the fact that

I've been labeled that way, so that's where I'll begin.

I'll say what I very much want to say:

the most important thing right now is

what I really could be

arrested for. Yes, absolutely, I am calling on

all of you to come out to the rallies on January 28 in

Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Especially because in Moscow and

St. Petersburg, the authorities have become so brazen

that they have essentially declared that

they will never again

authorize our rallies, and instead offer us

some

completely humiliating alternatives like:

go to Sokolniki and protest in the woods.

So I want to state this absolutely clearly and plainly.

A big hello to everyone at City Hall who

just said a minute ago that

if calls to attend the January 28 rally do not stop,

they will appeal to the prosecutor's office.

Go ahead and appeal to the prosecutor's office, dear

Muscovites,

this Sunday, January 28, come out to the

protest at 2:00 p.m. on Tverskaya Street.

In St. Petersburg, come to

the wonderfully named Proletarian Dictatorship

Square at 2:00 p.m.

This is the most important thing you can

do right now. In politics, there are different things—

some more important, some less important,

different strategies, different kinds of effectiveness—but

one thing is absolutely certain:

and

it would be very hard to argue with

the view that the most important thing

every person can do right now is come out to a

protest rally. Because politics in

Russia today—where they don't let us onto the

ballot,

where the mass media won't let us in,

where it's impossible to win a court case against

an official, where even local deputies—

local deputies themselves—like Yashin and

the Krasnoselsky District council, who again applied for

Sakharov Avenue, and were denied.

Several dozen deputies

appealed to Moscow City Hall: allow

the January 28 rally—what are you doing?

But they still won't allow it. So in this

situation, when absolutely everything is forbidden to us,

the main thing every

person can do, and the most effective thing he or she can

do,

is go out into the street with a peaceful protest.

We have the right to protest, and let's

be honest: right now, all the other

things we can do—we should

write columns, of course, we can

engage in public education, we can

work on the foundations of civil society, and so

on. All of that is great, but it is also quite

secondary. If we want to achieve

results, we need to stand our ground, we

need to come out. That's how it works all over the

world, not just in Russia—even in

developed societies. I wrote about this in a post today,

and I'll repeat it: look at the United States, or

France, or the United Kingdom. Good Lord,

you'd think those people wouldn't need to go out into the

streets—they should just vote, and they

do vote. They have politicians

they nominate, and those politicians

are registered,

so it would seem there is no reason

at all to be out there in the streets doing anything. And yet

their mass media are

open, and there are many, many, many different

mechanisms for influencing public life: you

can form associations,

nonprofits, you can create

trade unions, workplace collectives, speak out

for something—and all of that happens, all of that is done. But the most important thing

is still this:

politics is made by people who go out

into the streets and declare their demands.

Only in this way will those demands

be heard, even by society itself.

Only in this way does society itself

become aware of what is actually happening within it,

of what is building up inside it.

Because, look, before our

March 26 rally, there was nothing at all in the public

conversation, on the agenda, about

young people, school students, and all the rest.

By the way, today is Student's Day (a Russian holiday also known as Tatiana's Day).

Congratulations to all students, and to all

Tatianas in particular.

Special congratulations to you. We held the rally on the 26th,

and quite a lot of

young people came out. We are proud that young people

support us. And look—Putin

suddenly started rushing around schools, and special

bloggers

are speaking in the Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), and whole targeted

programs are being adopted, and now Putin is making his

presidential campaign launch

not only at a factory, but also at a

gathering of volunteers, where mostly

young people were present. Everything changed. Why? Because

they saw it—this youth is here.

People took to the streets, so that’s probably what this is about.

We need to talk about it: it happened, it became

a fact of political life in 2012,

until, when we stopped taking to the

streets, all of it was rolled back. But

at first, it looked like there had been gains: it was announced that

gubernatorial elections were being brought back,

it was announced—and implemented—that

far fewer signatures would be required for presidential elections,

and that the registration process for

political parties would be almost

notification-based. It didn’t apply to everyone,

and it didn’t apply to us,

but if back then we had

held out longer—not just

for essentially one year, 2012,

but kept it going beyond that—

the consequences would have been completely different.

We just need to work persistently. This is

the political work of every individual:

to go out into the streets and demand what is yours.

If we don’t do that, we won’t achieve anything.

If you don’t come out to rallies, guys, then don’t

complain that your life is bad,

don’t complain that your salary is low,

don’t complain that awful Putin is jailing

someone over posts on VKontakte (a Russian social network), or

some film director. He does it because

he meets no resistance from society.

Society, society—they count only

rallies. Those guys in the Kremlin

—those crooks—

they only count rallies. Everything else

matters to them to a much, much lesser

degree. When pensioners came out to protest then,

against the monetization of benefits (the replacement of in-kind social benefits with cash payments),

they immediately got results. That’s exactly how it

works. And, in fact, the Kremlin itself

is making it very clear to us right now: yes, yes,

yes—this is the only thing we’re afraid of,

the only thing we take into

account. Because right now there are some

political events going on,

supposedly elections, but everything happening in

politics is the wrecking of our headquarters. I’ve

got a whole report here, but I’ll

just say that in only the last

few days we’ve had 38 real

raids on our offices, with seizures of at

least leaflets. Everywhere they’re looking for leaflets

inviting people even to authorized

events. That is, we have more than 100

cities taking part in the January 28 action,

this Sunday. In only a minimal

number of cities were we denied approval; in

95 percent of cases everything was approved. But

even leaflets for approved

events are being confiscated. Why? Because

they’re afraid. They want fewer people to show up.

It’s very important to them that the factor of

cold weather works, and the second factor is simply the lack of

information. That’s why there are real

pogrom-like attacks on our offices. You know, I’m going to

talk about this in detail—at even greater length.

A legal entity of ours was liquidated in a completely

illegal way—our legal entity,

through which we had been organizing

the voters’ strike earlier in

the campaign. Our campaign account was frozen

in a highly outrageous

manner—I’ll talk about that too. So we

have adjusted things here, and today I’m

announcing Operation Phoenix.

To bring us back, 2.3 million

rubles of your money are frozen in the account, and they

think that by doing this they’ve

eliminated our legal entity and that we won’t

be able to do anything. But, in fact, that’s exactly why

we

planned ahead and learned how to collect

donations here on YouTube.

So I set a target—I asked them to set

the target at 2.3 million rubles,

exactly the amount of money they

froze in the account. Over the course of probably

several broadcasts, of course, I

plan to raise it. So I call on all

of you to take part in this very Operation

Phoenix and show everyone that they will not succeed

in stopping us this way. The police

forces being deployed are, of course,

absolutely astonishing: dozens of police officers come,

they monitor our

activists and volunteers handing out

leaflets; entire squads follow them around,

whole squads.

You can see video now

from different cities showing how these

police raids are carried out, and it’s absolutely

astonishing. It’s not just confiscations—

there are also, of course, outright

arrests, and they are completely illegal.

They are meant simply to obstruct

the holding of our actions. Our biggest

personnel losses have been in Rostov-on-Don,

where there was a loss:

one person was given 10 days in detention,

another person 8 days. These losses are reversible,

fortunately, but even so they

are trying to derail these actions this way.

So, Rostov-on-Don, come out

without fail—this is how you answer all of this.

There are also various fines against us.

So far, the leader in detentions is

Omsk: eight people detained.

In Penza, three people. The most aggressive

administrations are in Pskov and

St. Petersburg: there, constantly, several times,

they come after our people. But we

are absolutely not afraid of this, and we

are absolutely not going to stop. And we

know and understand that if we do not

do this, if we do not

organize ourselves in order to go out

into the streets, everything will lose its meaning. Or rather,

no, that’s not quite right—by itself it won’t

lose its meaning at all, but

the effectiveness of all this will drop many times over.

By the way, remember the Coordination

Council, which many consider a rather un

successful project—the Opposition Coordination Council,

which was created in the wake of

those protest rallies in 2011.

When those rallies were taking place,

there were polls by the Public Opinion Foundation

commissioned by the Kremlin, and about which

we later learned from hacked

correspondence of Kremlin officials, who

were simply shocked that the polls at the time

their sociologists were conducting showed something like

20, 30, even 35 percent of people—and in some places almost

40 percent—were ready to vote in

elections for the Opposition Coordination Council.

Why was this happening? Because

rallies themselves change

public opinion. People sit there and

think, in whatever city they live in,

whether Omsk or Penza, “Well, here

everyone is for Putin, here everyone thinks these elections

are real elections, and I’m the only one here

in all of Omsk sitting around being clever and

thinking this isn’t really an election. But I’m alone,

so I’d better keep quiet. I feel that

if I speak up too much...” And then, bang—

a rally happens, and

several thousand people come out, a couple thousand

people, and any observer

realizes that things are not like that at all. If, in

freezing weather, under bans and

obstruction, thousands of people come out,

that means millions stand behind this idea.

So, folks,

this Sunday, come out in every city—well,

in every major city. Find the link in

the description, find your city, and join in.

Once again: Moscow, Tverskaya Street.

Any point on Tverskaya Street, from Mayakovskaya

to Manezhnaya. Come, or walk counterclockwise,

or, if you want,

if you want to gather somewhere, then at

the Mayakovsky monument.

St. Petersburg: Proletarian Dictatorship Square

also at 2:00 p.m. In

the description there’s a link—find your city there

and come. Now let’s discuss how

the big cities are going to vote.

Our polling service operates

thanks to the money that you

send us. Last time

we published the results of a nationwide

survey.

But now it’s important—very important—for us to understand

what is happening in the big cities.

Many people think—or rather, not just think,

it is partly true—that there is, broadly speaking,

this thing called Russia as a whole,

a bit backward, because there

most people mainly watch television, and television

is the main source of information.

And then there are more advanced cities. These advanced

cities ought to

vote quite differently,

in a rather distinctive way compared

with the rest of the country, and

they ought to think differently, they ought to

view elections differently, they ought to view

candidates differently.

That was very interesting to us, especially since

you and I are, broadly speaking,

the party of the big cities,

in the broadest sense of the term.

Because those who watch this program,

those who take part in our movement, are people

who live in cities and use

modern means of communication,

above all the internet. And we conducted

a survey in Yekaterinburg because it is

a typical city of over one million people.

Voting results in Yekaterinburg

are usually very similar to the results

in Moscow, and now we

will see what

Yekaterinburg tells us, and we’ll know what

the large, biggest cities generally think

about what is happening in these elections.

Let’s first look at slide

number one, about overall awareness of

the elections—how many people know about them.

Look: 91 percent. By the way,

it’s actually pretty funny.

We have an app both for

iPhone and for Android, and quite a lot of

people now—thousands of people—listen to this

program, and our channel in general, like radio, and

last time I showed slides but didn’t

read them out, and I got a lot of

indignant responses like, “Read them out! We

can’t see what you’re showing there.”

So I’ll read them out. Please bring back

the slide. So, awareness is very

high: 91 percent of people

know that there will be this

procedure that is called an election.

Eight percent have heard something about it. So

television has done its job, the electoral commission is working.

Next, we

asked residents of Yekaterinburg,

that is, residents of all major cities: whom

have they heard will be taking part

in the elections? And we see the results on

the next slide.

Ninety-one percent of people—that is,

almost everyone—know about Putin. In second

place is Sobchak, just as in

the rest of Russia: basically everyone

has heard of Putin and Sobchak; they

get a lot of airtime on television.

Zhirinovsky, Yavlinsky—and the same picture

as across the country emerged

in Yekaterinburg.

Every fourth person thinks that Zyuganov is running in the election,

and 22 percent of people think

that Mironov is running, though neither

one nor the other is actually running. But somehow people

still have that idea in their heads, so

we also asked here about Grudinin.

Grudinin is very interesting here, so let’s

look at the next slide.

We asked an open-ended question: who is running from

the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), and 30 to 32 percent of people

say that it is Grudinin — they know correctly — but

13 percent of people still believe

that it is Zyuganov, while 51 percent

have difficulty answering and simply cannot

say who is running from the CPRF.

Let’s move on to the last two and most important

slides — the candidate ratings, essentially.

First, out of the full 100 percent of respondents.

That is, we ask:

“Who would you vote for

next Sunday if the election were held

next Sunday?” The most interesting thing

on this slide is what is written

in gray at the bottom: that possible

turnout is reported by 65 percent

of respondents. For the rest of the country

it is 75 percent. So we can see

that in large cities, already now,

10 percent fewer voters

are planning to go to the polls

than in the country as a whole. But all these figures

are inflated — people always, excuse me, lie

about their voting intentions,

because socially it is considered

the “correct” answer to say, “Yes, I will go to

the election,” even among those who

never actually go. But here we see

the same situation: Putin at 56 percent.

That is if we count from all respondents; Zhirinovsky,

Grudinin, and then further down, already within

the margin of error, Sobchak, Titov, and Yavlinsky

all have 1 percent each. And the final slide,

the most important from this point of view — on it

we see the real ratings. If

the election were held this Sunday, the big

cities — Yekaterinburg and Moscow —

would vote in fact almost exactly

the same way as the rest of the country. That

is what most

surprised me, and to be honest, these

data surprised me — they show that attitudes toward

the candidates in the largest cities are exactly

the same as in the country overall: 79 percent

support for Putin. Putin would receive 79

percent in his re-election bid.

Zhirinovsky and Grudinin would be fighting for

second and third place with results of

around — sorry — both of them at

7 percent. Then Sobchak, Titov,

and Yavlinsky are already within the margin of error, at 1

percent each, and “another politician” gets 4

percent. In other words, it is all the same. This

Putin re-election setup

leaves us with absolutely no

hope of influencing anything in these

elections. So there is no need to go there. These are

basically stand-in figures with

minimal ratings, bouncing around

around Putin and not even trying to

raise their own

ratings. We were interested

in looking at the results of an alternative

poll in the city of Yekaterinburg, because

at the same time as us, a local sociological

service was conducting a survey.

Let’s take a look at what they

measured there. We can see that their results are very similar:

they give Putin 77 percent, Grudinin 6

percent. Zhirinovsky is lower there; unlike us,

we give Zhirinovsky 7

percent, while they give him 3.8. Then

Sobchak gets 1.3 percent, Titov 1

percent, Yavlinsky 0.6. So all of this

is around 1 percent. So as we

can see — go back, please — as we can see,

the results are very similar to ours. But

very interestingly, they measured negative ratings (the share who would never vote for a candidate).

In our next poll, we will also

measure negative ratings. There are quite

interesting numbers here. This is the largest city —

Yekaterinburg — and Putin’s negative rating is 3

percent, Grudinin’s is 13 percent,

Zhirinovsky’s 32 percent,

Yavlinsky’s 24 percent, and Sobchak’s

negative rating is absolutely extraordinary.

It comes out to 80.5 percent

of people who say they would never in

their lives vote for such a

candidate. Quite interesting. Well,

in fact, this is probably

the main reason why it is specifically

Sobchak who is now being promoted on television as

the main opposition candidate,

because, obviously, these huge negative

ratings will lead to a very low

result, and then all of us will be told

how it happened that the opposition

candidate performed rather poorly. So if you want

to be part of all this,

go to the election and take part in

all the fuss around Putin’s percentages. If you want

normal elections, boycott them

and call on everyone to boycott. Demand

that all candidates be allowed to run.

Take part in the voters’ strike, and

of course, in connection with this, people write to me every

single day, and I can see that Twitter is already

full of this. Everyone says to me, “Alexei,

after all, people can come to the election and spoil

their ballots, cast invalid ballots, and

that can lower

Putin’s rating, because his percentage

is calculated from valid ballots rather than from the total

number. So why don’t we come and

vote — imagine half of all voters

showing up at the election and, in

a united burst of enthusiasm, following your powerful

appeal on the Navalny LIVE channel,

they come and spoil their ballots, drawing

crosses on them, writing obscene words,

or writing in Navalny’s name,

or drawing little faces — and that’s it, then there will be less than

50 percent for Putin. Let’s think about

how realistic that scenario is, so as not to

So I’m not just making empty claims, I even prepared some numbers for you.

I prepared them so that we can settle this

question once and for all. Let’s take a look

at how many spoiled ballots there have been in Russia’s modern history, starting in 1996.

How many spoiled ballots were there in

elections? Let’s look at this absolutely

remarkable chart. Up at the top, you can see

a dark blue line — that shows

what percentage the winner received.

That is, for 1996 we have

both the first round and the second round here — that was

Yeltsin, and everything else is Medvedev and

Putin, respectively. And below, you can see

a red line hugging the bottom of the chart,

and that is the number

of invalid ballots there were

in Russia’s modern history. Notice this:

in the first round in ’96,

there were 1 percent spoiled ballots —

1.43 percent.

In the second round, 1.05 percent of ballots were spoiled,

and at that time, by the way,

there was still a “none of the above” option on the ballot.

In 2000, fewer than 1 percent

of ballots were spoiled. In 2004 —

remember that election? It was such a dreadful

election. There were Khakamada and Glazyev,

and Malyshkin — Zhirinovsky didn’t run then,

instead it was Zhirinovsky’s bodyguard, Malyshkin — and still

the share of spoiled ballots was only

just 0.83

percent — eight-tenths of a percent,

sorry, in other words, a minimal number.

Then the “none of the above” line

was removed. And you’d think: if you remove

the “none of the above” option, people will start

spoiling ballots. But we see that in

the 2008 election, spoiled ballots still amounted to

1.36 percent. In the 2012 election,

1.16 percent, despite the fact that

many people were calling for ballots to be spoiled.

So, my friends, let’s

once and for all

settle this and not come back to it again:

the strategy of spoiling ballots does not work.

It has never worked. I can

call on you to do it, and I can

probably persuade, through our channels,

at most a million people to spoil

their ballots. But you and I will never persuade

the broad masses of people. And after all,

our task is not to operate within a single percent.

Our task is to persuade 30

percent of the population, 40 percent

of the population, to take part in something. They are not

going to spoil ballots.

If someone has already come to vote, they treat

that piece of paper, that ballot, as

something of value. It seems foolish to people

to spoil it.

I mean, it just seems absurd to come

to an election only in order to

spoil your ballot for some reason. It doesn’t work, it won’t

work anywhere, ever. So let’s close the subject.

Spoiled ballots do not achieve anything.

Of course, it would be nice if we could say:

let’s spoil ballots, and really

get big percentages that way.

But no one is going to do that except a few

activists whom I might be able to convince.

People will not do that. We will get

that same 1 percent again

of spoiled ballots, and of those

the overwhelming majority will simply be

people who made a technical mistake — voted in

two places, or otherwise

marked something incorrectly.

The ballot gets spoiled, and there will be 1 percent

of spoiled ballots. And they’ll tell us:

look, the opposition — this is what they got.

These are the percentages of those who voted for them, and

Navalny, Sobchak, and the others got around 1 percent each,

and spoiled ballots are also 1

percent. That’s their ceiling. So no,

we should not do this. The people in the Kremlin are not

idiots. When they were designing

the election so that the result would show

Putin’s vote at around 70 percent,

of course they thought about this too. There is no

clever electoral strategy

by which you and I, simply by going to the polls,

can outsmart them. In elections, there can be only one strategy:

if there is a candidate,

we vote for that candidate. If there is no

candidate, then nothing works.

There is no way we can outfox them.

We have to resist

in another way: boycott and go out

to rallies. So, that’s how it is.

Please, let’s not

discuss spoiling ballots anymore. I’m looking at our

questions now, and I see

a message from Jeffrey66 Blake:

“Please show my post. Dear

Muscovites, when you see that Alexei

is being bundled into a police van (an avtozak, a Russian prisoner transport vehicle), under no

circumstances let them take him away — surround the vehicle

and don’t let it leave.”

No, you must not do that. First of all, I am

more often detained near my home or, I don’t know,

on the way out from here. The last three

times I was arrested in advance, before

the rally. If it happens at a rally,

as it did on the 26th, do not try to

free me.

Don’t pull me out of the police van. Later on,

people were rocking the bus, pushing cars onto

the roadway — there is no need to do that.

The main goal of our rallies is mass participation.

You need to come, be there, keep moving,

so that it feels like a march. You should

be persuading people. If you

block a bus so it can’t go anywhere,

and all of that happens, people will say:

“We didn’t let Navalny go.” But the point is not Navalny.

The task is not to protect Navalny, not

to promote Navalny. These rallies have

their own purpose.

The purpose of these rallies is to demand fair

elections, so let’s focus

on getting as many people out

as possible. But don’t try to rescue me there

again—you’ll just give them an opportunity to open

a criminal case. But if they lock me up for 30

days, it’s nothing—I’ll sit it out.

Nothing will happen. You yourselves know what

to do. Inferno Overkill asks: will there be any more protests

after this? I’ve been going on for 22 minutes

and, Inferno, I still haven’t managed to get this

idea across to you. Of course there will be, because this is

the most important thing: holding rallies, bringing

people out into the streets. That’s the main thing. It’s

a fairly difficult task, especially in

Russia, especially in winter, but without it

nothing will work. So, good evening.

“Did you serve in the army?” asks

Khalifa. No, I did not serve in the army because

I had a deferment while I was at university.

That’s a very easy one to answer. So, I

did not serve in the army, just like our minister

of defense. So, hi—Volodya writes: you

said that the rally on the 28th in St. Petersburg

would be on Proletarian Dictatorship Square

in accordance with the law, but holding

an event on that square is prohibited

because it is directly adjacent

to the building where the court is located. Why not

Palace Square? Well, first of all, guys, Palace Square, by

your own logic, is outright

prohibited under your city’s

laws—rallies on Palace Square are explicitly

banned. There really was a refusal regarding Pro-

letarian Dictatorship Square because

as the judge said during the hearing,

“It’s right here nearby, and whatever you

shout there will be heard inside the court.”

That was one of the grounds for the refusal. Well then,

that means we need to gather and shout

so loudly

that inside the court they hear it

clearly and distinctly. It is impossible to ban rallies

on such grounds. We have the right

to assemble peacefully. It is guaranteed by

the Constitution, guaranteed by

the European Convention, guaranteed by

common sense—guaranteed by everything. We’re

not crazy people. We are not

planning to block off

Nevsky Prospekt (St. Petersburg’s main avenue)

or the city’s biggest streets all the time. No, we are ready

to reach a reasonable compromise with the authorities.

There are always places in central Moscow and central St. Petersburg

that are, let’s be honest, quite

suitable for residents to hold rallies.

But since they won’t give us those places, we hold them

where we think necessary. This time the strike

headquarters chose Proletarian

Dictatorship Square—so away with proletarian

dictatorship. I don’t know

St. Petersburg’s geography very well, unfortunately,

and I’m not going to give advice on that subject.

That’s a St. Petersburg decision.

Alexei, how do you feel about Ukrainians

who support you? asks Svyatoslav. I

feel positively toward everyone who

supports me. Thank you all very much for

your support. “Why, in your statistics,” asks

Saw Raz, “don’t you take into account your possible

rating in the event that you’re allowed onto the ballot?”

Do you think that with access to TV channels you could

change things significantly? As I understand it,

this means opinion polls.

We don’t include that because we still

don’t want to measure some hypothetical

scenarios. Right now there are

clear candidates who will obviously be

allowed to run in the election. There is public

opinion that sees those candidates on

television, and to include me there—or

to include, I don’t know, Harry Potter or

Voldemort—makes no

sense at all. We might get some data,

but its value would be zero.

We measure candidates’ ratings so that

you won’t be deceived, so that no one

tells you fairy tales that your

vote in this election determines

anything. It determines nothing. This is simply

a reappointment—a guaranteed Putin

70 percent. That’s why we conduct very

honest polls.

So that, overall, none of the others

can lie to you. So: only

boycott, only hardcore. Absolutely right.

After the election, will your headquarters continue

to function? Nothing will disappear, right?

Of course nothing will disappear. Nothing

can disappear, because this is not just

about premises—it’s about the people who

want to work in these headquarters.

But Putin has a high rating. Here’s

an excellent question from Transsexual

Gestalt: “Given his high rating in

your polling, that means there really are

a huge number of people

who support him.” Dear Gestalt,

of course there are a lot of people

who support Putin, absolutely

right. He has been president for many years,

he is shown on television constantly,

for 18 straight years, and even simply by force

of propaganda, many people support him.

And of course there is also

a substantial number of people who

share some of his rather crazy

views of reality. There are probably

plenty of people in your own circle

who, in response to any question,

reply with the phrase, “Have you seen the American

national debt?” There are such people, and they support

Putin. But the data we

show here is election-related, pre-election

sociology. It is Putin’s rating

specifically in a lineup with concrete

candidates. It is not Putin’s overall rating

—it is Putin’s rating in comparison with Yavlinsky.

Sobchak, Grudinin, Zhirinovsky, and Titov.

That is the whole point of the Kremlin's deception: if

there were other candidates,

including me—I am not the only candidate,

the world does not revolve around me, but all

candidates who have the right to be

allowed to run should be allowed to run. Then

compared with those candidates, Putin's rating

would be completely different.

Because those candidates—for example, I

intended to run an election

campaign, and I did run one for a year, and I would have continued to do so. I

would have driven down Putin's rating, just as I quite

effectively, together with my comrades, drove down

Sobyanin's rating back in the day.

And now we would be acting even more effectively,

because we would have had much more time.

But these people—the ones who

will now be on the ballot—are doing nothing

to bring down Putin's rating.

That is why he has

77 percent. Exactly for that reason, not because

there is some enormous nationwide

support. So, who banned *The Death of Stalin*?

There have been a great many questions on

this topic, and right now it is one of those

things everyone is discussing. You know there is

an American film called

*The Death of Stalin*, and this film was suddenly

banned by the Ministry of Culture, as

usually happens here, "at the request of working people"

(a Soviet-era stock phrase). And the Minister of Culture himself,

Medinsky, quite recently said

that they would not ban it, that it should be released.

It is just a film comedy—and now they have banned it.

Why? In children's programs—

those of you who follow my program

know why this happened: because for

several months now I have been saying here

that the main ideological

pillar of Putin's regime is becoming

this endless search for reasons to be offended. They are always looking for

some pretext

to take offense and feel insulted; they invent such a

pretext if none exists, and then

go on about their offended

feelings. We have already seen deputies and,

good Lord, some granddaughter of—

or grandson of—Khrushchev living in the United States,

a granddaughter, I do not remember, a granddaughter of Khrushchev or a grandson

of someone else—in short, some great-grandchildren and

grandchildren of Stalin and Khrushchev, for some reason living

in the United States, declared that they were of course offended.

And State Duma deputies are offended, and some

other people are offended, so the film

was banned. Today it was shown at the

Pioner cinema, in violation of some

some

rules, without a distribution license.

Some are admiring them—what a great job by

the Pioner cinema, really, well done.

The Ministry of Culture, having already dropped everything else,

is declaring: we will punish the

Pioner cinema.

They supposedly had no right to show it. But this is not as if

they screened a pornographic film

or something like that—they showed a perfectly normal

feature-length film that is being shown all over

the world. They are endlessly looking

for something to be offended by. Today the subject of their

offense is a film about Stalin's death. But I

wanted to say something else. A lot has already been

said and discussed about this; it is all clear enough that this

would happen. What interested me was

to see who exactly was offended—who

are, formally, these people who

came out before all of us, before 143 or 145

million people, and said: we are so offended

that none of you will be allowed to watch this either,

because it will offend you too. Look at

us—we are your representatives. It was some kind of

public committee under the

Ministry of Culture, where there are

all sorts of different people.

Most of them are rather strange. I

looked through the list of who these offended people were, and

whether it really looked like these were the people

who were so deeply troubled by this issue, and

I saw

the name of Igor Ugolnikov, for example. Those of

you who are older may remember that in the 1990s

there was a show called *Oba-Na! Ugol Show*; back then

it was fairly funny. I watched it then;

if you watch those episodes now,

to be honest, it looks a bit like

trash. But it is precisely Igor Ugolnikov,

who used to put out such

risky sketches, who is now, on our behalf,

speaking in our name,

claiming to be offended by the film *The Death of Stalin*. Let us

take a look: if Ugolnikov says

that we cannot insult leader Stalin,

then first I want to show a little excerpt

from one of his sketches from the 1990s about an even

greater figure, from the point of view of recent Russian

history: Comrade Lenin.

[music]

Excuse me, sir... good... gentlemen...

mushrooms... running... sitting... we with you...

comrades.

Organic—well, actually, liability...

limited liability—no, not

foreign, but limited

liability. What a funny sailor. I am

a soldier—it is all the same damn thing. Do not lie. No, no, no.

But a sympathizer—that is what I want...

And what, here out of necessity?

Out of necessity. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Comrade, someday there will come a

moment when working people will not

be in need—whether small need or great need.

You see, not so long ago Igor Ugolnikov,

putting on a little beard and mustache and a cap,

was portraying Lenin, and there were these kinds of

toilet-humor jokes, and everything was

just fine. No one paid any attention to it.

By and large, no one cared. But now

several years have passed, and

Igor Ugolnikov realized and understood that you shouldn't

laugh at Dozhd (TV Rain, an independent Russian TV channel). Well then, why didn't you also

delete your Troshova and all those jokes

from YouTube? And if it's all so offensive, then you

thank you very much for preserving it and saving us from

a terrible film, but then please

save us from your own work.

That stopped being interesting several years ago.

As for Igor Ugolnikov, at the same time

he believes he was doing something right

and that he can sit on the public council

under the Ministry of Culture, and he

on our behalf

decided to take offense, decided for us

to determine what we should watch and what we shouldn't.

An even more astonishing character

declared that she was offended,

and therefore we would not get to see the film *The Death of Stalin*.

This is Sabina Tsvetkova. Right now you

can see her photo.

Guess who is in this photograph. This is

a person who sits on the public council

of Russia's Ministry of Culture on behalf of

the organization

"Officers of Russia." So before you stands

an "Officer of Russia" who, in your name,

does something or other at the Ministry of

Culture and, in your name, declares

that we do not want to watch the film

*The Death of Stalin*. There is such an organization,

"Officers of Russia," headed by a man

named Anton Tsvetkov. I don't know, I

strongly doubt that he was ever actually

in the military or that he is

an officer of Russia, though maybe he was. For

me, an officer of Russia is my father, who

served in the army his whole life, or my

classmates, all of whom—please put Tsvetkova back on screen—

especially Tsvetkova.

Or my classmates, all of whom serve

in the armed forces.

But for the state, for the Ministry of

Culture,

an "Officer of Russia" is Anton

Tsvetkov's wife,

the man who founded the organization "Officers

of Russia," and now this wife, on behalf of

the officers, tells us: you, Navalny,

and you, Ivanov, and all the rest of you, you will not

be watching *The Death of Stalin*

because that's what I decided.

So how else are we supposed to fight this?

You could fight it through parliament, and if we got

into the Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), we'd get rid of all these

so-called public councils, pass a law saying they are

not needed at all,

or else the mass media

—and in the mass media

they would be torn apart—or else

through the courts. We would sue this idiocy and

have the actions of the Ministry of

Culture declared illegal. They are obviously

illegal: they simply took away the film's distribution

license. We can't do that right now.

What we can do is take part in street

actions; we must take part in them.

That is why, among other reasons,

on the 28th, on Sunday, we need to go out into the streets.

Right now we have about—how much is it—146,

144 thousand rubles; we've raised 148 thousand

rubles as part of Operation

Phoenix. Let me remind those who have just

joined us: 2.3 million rubles

have been illegally frozen in the account

of our organization—the money you donated.

Over the course of several broadcasts, I will

try to raise exactly the same amount in order

to show that they will not succeed in

destroying our organization and

cutting off fundraising: I can also do it through

YouTube.

I'll still be able to raise something. Let's see what you're asking me here.

Let's see what you're asking me.

All right, there are a lot of jokes here about the film, and about this

"Officer of Russia," and about a vacation in Bali with

the hashtag "fairytale Bali"—Alexei,

a lot of people ask me:

does anyone know why the war in Syria is happening?

A gas pipeline from Qatar and so on—why are you

silent about it? Guys, that's complete nonsense.

There is a lot of speculation out there

that the war in Syria is being fought so that

some pipeline can carry gas from Qatar, but that's not

what it's about. Read up on it—there are

much

more interesting articles. That is not why

the war in Syria is happening. So, here is a photograph

of Putin naked and half-naked while

bathing. Well, I won't comment too much on it.

If he wants to bathe, let him bathe.

I don't know—whether in warm water or

cold water, what difference does it make? But many people

bathe in an ice hole (a traditional Epiphany practice in Russia); that already has little

to do with Orthodoxy—it's simply

a tradition. But thank God, at least they don't bathe his mustache.

So what will we achieve with a boycott? Well,

Putin will become president, and nothing will

change.

"Nothing will change," asks Shamil Khanov.

Shamil, this is not a guess.

There will be the election on the 18th—the so-called election on March 18.

It will lead to Putin

reappointing himself for the next six

years with a result of more than 70 percent. We

are boycotting the election in order

to show that we do not want to recognize this as

an election. We do not recognize as an election

a procedure in which candidates are not allowed to run. We

will criticize it, and we will call on everyone

not to recognize these

results. You have,

Shamil, the right not to recognize the results and

not to recognize this government if you did not go

to vote—there is no liar's vote in it—if from the very

beginning you said that this was a fake, not

an election. That is exactly what we are doing. A boycott by itself—

let me put it this way—

if we just say for a year that we're boycotting, then what?

Will this change whether it all collapses tomorrow?

Will Putin's regime collapse on March 19?

The answer is no, it will not. On March 19, Putin

will begin preparing for the inauguration and hold it

sometime around March 20.

There will be some new kind of red carpet,

soldiers with rifles will be standing nearby, and he will

go on talking about how wonderfully he

will spend another six years correcting the mistakes

of previous presidents, as if

the previous president—and the one before that, and before that—

had not been Putin himself.

Of course that is what will happen. Our boycott is

a political act of refusing to recognize

this sham as an election. If you recognize these elections, then

you recognize them; not going will be

your personal political struggle.

Danil Logachev asks: what should you do if

your parents will not let you go to the rally on January 28,

but you really want to?

Well, in cases like this I usually say:

if you are not allowed to, but you really want to, then you can. Danil,

it all depends on how old you are, after all.

Still, yes, if

you are at an age when your parents' ban

from your parents

plays a significant role, then you should

of course obey your parents. But I would

start by trying to persuade them.

Show them this program, show them

the rallies that have taken place in your city,

show them that in reality these events are almost

always completely safe. Yes, of course, there are

administrative detentions, certainly. I myself am

constantly detained, but okay,

they detain me, yet here I am sitting

here in front of you all the same. So just talk to

your parents, or better yet, bring them with you.

Parents and children together can

take part in this rally, and parents

will see for themselves that there is nothing

terrible about it. And on the subject of rallies,

parents, arrests, and so on, many people

have asked me how my trip to

the European Court of Human Rights

went. It went well. The main question being decided there

was this:

whether the arrests

I was subjected to at rallies

—there were several arrests and detentions—

seven episodes in five cases—should be recognized

as political. That is, those cases themselves

I have already won, and my lawyer and I—

many thanks to him—on all these

cases will receive compensation. In other words,

they have already been recognized, and the notorious

€10,000 for each arrest

has already been awarded because these arrests were recognized as unlawful.

That means Navalny was unlawfully detained.

For us now, it is very important that the court

officially recognize that this was done

for political reasons. Even though

it is obvious to everyone sitting here in

Russia that this kind of thing happens

for political reasons, it still has not yet been

recognized by a court. And the European Court

is extremely reluctant when it comes to

the idea of recognizing one case or another

as political. The last time

a Russian case was recognized

as political, and the so-called

Article 18 was applied, was in the Gusinsky case

(Vladimir Gusinsky, a Russian media owner). That was back in 2003,

many, many years ago. Since that

time, Article 18 has not been applied in a single case.

There is a major debate underway in

the European Court about whether this can

be done or not, and I attended a hearing

of the so-called Grand Chamber. This is

a fairly rare event for a country.

Over 20 years, Russia has appeared before the Grand Chamber only about 20 times,

and now this is

one of those hearings. There are many judges there,

it is very solemn, very interesting.

It is also quite stressful—you have to prepare.

It was very interesting for me to be there.

I am 41 years old, I am a lawyer, but this was

one of the very few times when I found myself in

a genuinely fair court. I am in court

all the time in different roles:

as a defendant, as

a defense lawyer, and as a witness—many,

many, many times. But in a fair court

I have found myself only one of the first times

in my life. Of course, that makes

a huge impression. In fact,

everything depends on you, on your position,

on your lawyers, on how well

you have built your case.

The judges really are independent people whom no one

can simply call on the phone.

It is a very solemn procedure.

Of course, it is very, very interesting. Unfortunately,

the decision will not come soon. People keep asking me,

'So what, the hearing has already

taken place—where is the decision, have they already handed you the papers?

Well, if it happens

in, say, nine months, that will be very

fast. So we estimate roughly

that it will take no less—absolutely no less—

than a year. We hope to win. The Russian Federation

is resisting very fiercely,

taking a very

aggressive position. Their representative there

said that I am a person

who likes being

arrested. He literally argued that everything

is wonderful with rallies in our country, that they are always

allowed all the time, and that they themselves

refuse to do everything properly, while everything in our country

is very good and very liberal.

Anyone who wants has the right to hold

their own rallies. And they were presenting

this with not even a legal but a political approach,

spreading their brazen propaganda

even in the European Court.

We will see how it ends, but we

of course hope to win, and we believe that

The law is on our side.

This will be very important for everyone

in subsequent cases if we reach the point

where the European Court, for the first time in

many, many years, once again recognizes Article 18.

Then, presumably, in other similar cases it

will continue to be recognized. Today we are raising

money for the Phoenix operation headquarters

in order to compensate for what

was, in effect, taken from us

stolen by officers of the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service), by employees of the

Ministry of Justice, and, unfortunately, by those at Alfa

Bank who joined them. Let me say a little about this

because there have been a lot of questions.

So, when we started running

the election campaign—well, obviously, I was

the candidate. When you open campaign offices in

the regions, you can’t open them

in your own name. I can’t sit there

signing a million contracts.

We set up a special legal entity

which, under the name Fifth Season Foundation,

was fully legal and operating

throughout that entire period, and it was through it that we

signed all these contracts, hired

people, and printed leaflets.

It was the legal entity through which

we did everything. When we

launched our voters’ strike,

the Kremlin got terribly frightened.

It saw that our

headquarters were not dispersing; they were filled with highly

motivated people who could not

simply be switched off by saying,

“We won’t let Navalny run in the election.” They had expected

that everyone would just go home, but instead everyone

said no, we will still go out, we will all

continue to speak out, we refuse

to recognize this as an election, and we will carry on

with the strike. So of course they decided

simply to shut down this foundation in order

to destroy our organizational base.

That does happen now—well, they are

generally trying to shut down

non-profit organizations in particular.

But usually, in virtually 100 percent of cases,

this is a process that takes

months—months. More than that,

the legislation is structured so that

we have at least a month. But look: the court

issues a decision to liquidate the Fifth Season Foundation,

and then one month is given

for an appeal. During that month,

the decision does not enter into legal force, which means

nothing can be done. We

can still continue working, and on appeal

such a decision may be upheld, but obviously

that would only liquidate it after a month. But what

did these crooks do? The bailiffs

acted on a decision that had not entered

into legal force, rushed in, and imposed

a freeze—and Alfa-Bank tells us

that, you know, your account with

2.5 million rubles (about $40,000 at the time), we

have blocked. And what is especially interesting about the block is that

they block it and then

write that the debt on this account is 1 trillion

rubles—as if to say, if you happen to have 1 trillion

rubles, deposit it and then everything will work again.

It was a pretty mocking situation.

It was absolutely illegal. That is,

there simply was no court decision in force, and on the basis of

a non-existent court decision, the bailiffs

blocked our accounts, while the banks

carried out these illegal orders. It would have been

very interesting to get some kind of

comment from Alfa-Bank in general.

It is a major bank, and, well,

it is interesting how easy it turned out to be:

the FSB wanted it, sent a piece of paper to

the Ministry of Justice, and the account was frozen.

Completely illegally. We may be a small

organization, but exactly the same thing can be done

to a big company, a large bank,

to anyone at all. You can, basically,

come tomorrow

and freeze 1 billion rubles

simply because someone feels like it, without

any court decision. And it was interesting

to hear Alfa-Bank’s comment, and

one of its deputy executives, Oleg Sysuyev,

shared his personal view

on the air of Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station). Let’s

listen. “The other issue here is that, for me as a person,

it raises, so to speak,

serious doubts that this decision

was really adopted and then, within a day,

made its way from the court without the proper

formal issuance of the ruling. In fact,

the affected party in this case

somehow got it to the bailiffs very quickly,

and the bailiffs

at crazy speed delivered

the order to four banks.

That is an astonishing speed,”

he said. Well, there you have it:

even an Alfa-Bank executive,

though he said he was speaking in a personal

capacity, expressed, very mildly,

his bewilderment at how this could have happened so quickly,

how it could be that—just like that—the account was blocked.

Any of you who has dealt with the bailiff service

knows that these are people who

take months to enforce decisions,

years to enforce decisions. You generally

cannot get anything out of them. You go there to

see some miserable bailiff,

and a typical bailiff is

someone sitting there next to

a stack of files this thick,

all enforcement proceedings,

and he does nothing. If you

want to recover money from someone, unless you

bring him a bribe, he will not even

lift a finger. And in our case,

there is no court decision in force, yet everything is already

blocked. So there it is—even Alfa-Bank

admits that this looks very strange.

So the position is basically this: where are we supposed to go?

We have no choice — we have to comply, you understand, we...

more or less understand that this is illegal,

more or less understand that it’s a scam,

but we still have to carry it out. What kind of development can there be,

what kind of investment attraction can there be,

when anyone looking at our case can see

from our example that even

if you open an account at some bank

that falls into the top reliability category,

and some jerk there doesn’t like something,

or you do something they don’t like, then they...

You come to the bank, and all your money

has been frozen — and there isn’t even a court ruling. And that’s not all:

then you try to fight it, try to sue, and...

I mean, I was reading about this —

the Civil Procedure Code, and you...

you read it and realize: arbitration cases,

criminal cases — and this is impossible,

legally, it just can’t be done. But there it is,

the money is frozen just like that. So far we’ve raised almost 200,000 rubles

(about $2,200) as part of Operation

Phoenix. We’re trying to raise these 2

million 300 thousand rubles (about $25,000), which were

illegally frozen, in order to once again

send a big hello to Vladimir

Putin and say that he will not succeed

in cutting off our funding as long as

there are people who support us.

About the Chechen rally — let me

tell you. You remember there was this

remarkable story back during those

events in Burma (Myanmar), which really

did appear to be genocide and

the Muslim population was being slaughtered,

and there was this wave of outrage

all over the world. But for some reason, a separate

outburst of outrage emerged in

the Chechen Republic, and by the way,

it appeared and then disappeared just as suddenly.

They were making statements like, well,

we’ll even go fight in Burma, we’ll seize it,

we’ll destroy it, and so on. So first they

were outraged, made a scene, and then

it all just vanished. Apparently

the Foreign Ministry or

the Kremlin told them, basically, calm down,

this is none of your business. But as part of all this, there was

this amazing episode — a sudden,

spontaneous

rally outside the embassy in Moscow, which

was initiated precisely by the leadership

of the Chechen Republic, saying: come on,

all Muslims — I think it was

the Chechen leadership — come on,

Muslims, go to the Burmese embassy

and protest.

And there was a completely astonishing

moment there. Let’s

just refresh your memory — let’s watch 32

seconds here.

[music]

[music]

[music]

Well, what do you think — does this look like a rally?

It certainly does: people are chanting,

saying things, and even a police officer is shouting,

“Citizens, disperse.” Let me make this clear:

regardless of what they were discussing at

the rally, they had every right to

do it. These people — Muslims,

Chechens, Dagestanis, whoever —

have every right to file an application and

then go out and hold a rally. In this

case, there was no application at all, and under

Russian law this was

a typical unauthorized protest. But in my

view, they had every

right to do it. They can come out — preferably without

blocking the roadway — and express

their protest. But what interests us

is that we compare this to ourselves. Look:

in the city center they blocked

the street, the police are shouting at them, and they’re not

listening — and yet there are no detentions, nothing at all.

Everything is perfectly fine and proper, while I get locked up for

25 or 30 days just for this broadcast.

So we wrote to the prosecutor’s office:

hello, prosecutor’s office, explain to us — how

can this happen? Why is it that

we get jailed for this all the time, while here

nothing at all happens? And the other day we received

a reply from the prosecutor’s office — absolutely

astonishing. I’ll show it to you full

screen.

They inform us that this was not a rally,

because no notification for a rally

had even been submitted, so therefore

there was, strictly speaking, no rally, no violation

of public order — in fact, nothing at all

happened. And a rally is only a rally

if a notification is submitted. That is,

if I were to call on you, without submitting any notification,

to come out onto Tverskaya Street,

then apparently there would be no problem at all, nobody would

be detained, and the prosecutor’s office

would react exactly like this. So

you see what vile, brazen

crooks they are. They could at least have lied differently,

could have said something else — could have said:

it was unauthorized; we believe this

was an unauthorized event,

but it ended without any serious consequences,

and so, all right. In general, they

should have said: we don’t see any particular problem here.

What were the consequences? Well, there was a traffic jam,

fine, a traffic jam — but they didn’t cause anything worse,

they didn’t kill anyone, they shouted a bit,

and honestly it didn’t look all that great

for an ordinary Muscovite walking by,

but nobody died because of it, and there was no need

to detain anyone or jail anyone. That’s what they should

have written to us. What lying

frauds they are — and this is the prosecutor’s office,

the very prosecutor’s office that Moscow City Hall is right now

saying to Navalny:

if you keep calling on people to come out, we’ll

report you to the prosecutor’s office. There you go.

So the prosecutor's office can do absolutely anything, then.

Okay, what exactly is your complaint against me? But you...

Just look at this—tomorrow it's the prosecutor's office, after all.

This disgusting lie will be directed at me.

You have no right to issue a warning,

you have no right, Alexei, to do this.

And if you do go out into the street on the 28th after all,

we will take appropriate measures against you.

Measures? Go ahead and take them.

Whatever measures you deem appropriate—but I will not stop

doing this, because I do not want to live in

a country where this kind of thing happens, where

it is plainly obvious that there are two classes of people:

some are allowed everything. Kadyrov (head of Chechnya) decided to hold

a rally—please, go right ahead, no problem at all.

But if you are against corruption, or

against the fact that candidates are being barred from

elections, against this sham,

then we will ban everything for you. You are not even considered

people here—you are nobody. So let's come out

on the 28th—

Sunday, January 28. Rallies will take place across

the whole country. Let us come out and show that no—we

do exist. We refuse to accept that

we are nobody. And until you begin to

take our interests into account, we will

keep going out into the streets. This is the

most important thing, and right now nothing is more important

than doing this. See you on Sunday.

Moscow: 2:00 p.m. on the 28th, on Tverskaya Street.

Street.

St. Petersburg: Proletarian Dictatorship Square.

In all other cities,

check the description—the link is in the description of this

video. Find your city and come out. See you

on Sunday. Happiness will win.

[music]