Why Is a Strike Needed? On January 28, We Take to the Streets

This is not about me at all, not about the fact that

I personally was barred from the election.

It is about you. Take your age

and add 6 years to it. That is how old you will be

when you next have a theoretical chance

to vote

in a presidential election and thereby

influence what is happening in

the country. And unfortunately, all of you have

a guarantee that over these six years, your income, your

standard of living, will either decline or

remain stagnant, while the rest of the world will

keep gradually growing, new

ideas will be born, and new technologies will emerge.

Russia will gradually sink deeper into a swamp, and

this is not my prophecy or assumption.

It is a fact borne out by official statistics.

The Russian government’s own data show a clear

trend: real household incomes

have been falling for 4 years in a row. That means every

year we have become a little poorer. And

you have to admit, it does not look like these

people are capable of changing and working

better. They themselves have reached a dead end, and they have led

our country into a dead end. They have deteriorated and

simply can no longer improve. Why?

Because any government, even the very best one,

degenerates if it does not have to compete

in elections and does not feel pressure

from society.

That is exactly how it works: you are president, but

gradually you relax, grow lazy, or

become corrupt, or the people around you

fall out of favor, and you lose the election.

Power changes hands. Or, if you do not lose,

your opponent gets so many

votes

that you understand: the people are sending

a signal — hey, Mr. President, wake up and

start doing your job — and you start working

under that pressure. You see, Navalny

has gained popularity as an anti-

corruption fighter. So let me create

an anti-corruption bureau modeled on

Singapore’s.

Or: a lot of people are coming to Navalny’s

meetings, and they are all talking about

low wages. Apparently no one believes

my government anymore when it says the average

salary in Russia is 36,000 rubles (about US$600 at the time). Let me

steal from his platform the proposal to raise

the minimum wage. Then fewer people will go

to Navalny,

and his votes will come to me. Or:

Navalny has a lot of young supporters — maybe I,

Putin,

should stop just talking for 18 years and

actually create a professional army at last

and abolish conscription, and also seriously

address the ruined education system, and so

on and so on and so on. That is

how things work in all normal, prosperous

countries. If they are arranged differently, the country

grows poorer,

becomes impoverished, falls behind — and that is exactly what we see. It is 2017,

and instead of breakthrough

technologies, we have a phone and a case and

Chubais for 10 billion rubles (about US$170 million at the time). Instead of

competing with the world’s leading countries, we have

a dachshund being stuffed into a tube

before the eyes of the whole country. Instead of Russian

Elon Musks, we have a robot in a pea coat

controlled over Wi‑Fi. Vladimir Putin

watches the soldier of the army of the future from

an observation post. This is directly

connected to the fact that there is no

competition in elections. The authorities, and Putin personally, do not

try to correct their mistakes in order to

win more votes and cut the ground out from under

their opponent’s feet. They say:

What, Navalny is nominating people all across the country?

He has built a network everywhere, he has 200,000

volunteers — have they completely lost their minds? What kind of

election are they dreaming of? We will not let them in.

We will allow only those whom we ourselves select. Let

people vote for them if they want. That is acceptable. That is exactly

why it is necessary to take part in our

voters’ strike — not to defend

Navalny,

but to defend your own right to influence

the authorities, to defend your right, through

pressure on the authorities,

to make our Russia better and richer. And I, and

my entire team, will now be

working on this. We have a plan. I urge you

to join our

actions.

If we cannot put pressure on them during

the election campaign because they threw us out,

then we will pressure them by

not going to the election and not recognizing its

result. They are terribly afraid of this. Just yesterday

the crook Peskov said that my

calls for a voters’ strike should be

investigated by law enforcement. It is important for them

to maintain

the appearance that the people of Russia believe in these elections and

accept this arrangement. But we will

prove that no — Russian citizens want

and demand real competition. We

will launch a major campaign

that will, on the one hand,

persuade everyone to join the strike and not

go to the election, and on the other hand,

calculate the real number of

people who came to the polling stations, and not let Putin

falsify that figure. And of course we

need a nationwide mass

street protest. I think this is one of the

most important elements of the strike.

But down there, this is how it all works: sitting there are

Medvedev and Putin, and Medvedev says,

Vova (diminutive of Vladimir), maybe we should not be quite so brazen, maybe we should not

steal so much, maybe let him

let competitors into the election. And the other replies to him:

Come on, calm down, Dimon (nickname for Dmitry Medvedev).

I do this all the time. You can see

they stay silent, they sit at home — it would be a sin not to take advantage of that.

to fool people who are so obedient and willing to accept anything

by pushing us out of the elections, they are essentially

leaving us with no other way

to draw attention to our demands

except through rallies. So let us

take to the streets for ourselves, for our rights,

for our future, for the fact that we do not want

to lose another six years.

This action must be prepared carefully, and we

will hold it across the country on Sunday,

January 28.

And I want to address the crooks both in the Kremlin

and in the regional administrations right away:

make sure there is no later talk

that we are violating public

order, filing notifications incorrectly, or preventing you

from holding Titmouse Day (a local bird-themed celebration) or a belly dance contest

.

Today we are submitting

a preliminary notice one month in advance

so that if there are any city plans,

we can coordinate everything. Then we will submit

another notice 15 days in advance.

This is our constitutionally guaranteed

right to freedom of assembly. We are fully

complying with all procedures. We are being as constructive as possible,

but if you start again

to deny us unlawfully, we will still go out to

these rallies anyway. I urge all of you

to approach this in exactly that way: peacefully,

but firmly. The matter is simple: either we

fight for our country

or, without a fight, hand it over to these incompetent

crooks. Think about whether you are ready to sacrifice

another six years of your life to those

who simply want to steal money and move it

into offshore accounts.

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