Navalny’s Circles: Migration and the National Question (full version)

Friends, thank you very much for coming.

Today, our topic for discussion is this:

it is a very sharp, very painful issue for everyone.

Opinion polls show that when Muscovites (residents of Moscow)

talk about Moscow’s problems, the first thing

they put at the top of the list is immigration, and more broadly

the issue of peaceful coexistence,

the coexistence of people of different

nationalities in Moscow, is a question

that is truly painful and always provokes

huge arguments, and for us it is very

important to discuss, because in our

platform, with which my team and I

are going into the election, we probably have the

toughest position on migration. I am

quite often criticized for my, for my

position in general regarding

some

the issue of the peaceful coexistence of different

people, and I am criticized for the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus”

(a Russian nationalist slogan about ending federal subsidies to the North Caucasus), and so on. I am very

grateful to you for coming and for discussing all

these issues here with me in an

open

discussion. Probably something harsher than

deportation and that special operation that

Comrade Sobyanin staged at the market, we are unlikely

to see, of course. So your position

may be the toughest in the platform, but not

the toughest in practice. I believe that what

Sobyanin is doing is not even a tough

position — it is simply hypocrisy. They

react: well, a situation occurred —

Dagestanis at the market beat up a police officer, and

in response they created a concentration-camp-like facility in

which Vietnamese people are being held. There is neither

any practical sense in this, nor any real fight against

illegal migration. There is nothing in it

except a TV news segment saying that the authorities

of Moscow have built a camp. In that sense,

I am instead proposing a systemic solution

that many people do not like, for example,

a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and

the South Caucasus. But I believe this is a systemic

solution that will reduce the number of

migrants in Moscow, and it does not

involve building camps.

We do not need camps. Because if

all undocumented migrants in Moscow were put into

a camp, it would hold 2 million

people. The point is that there is also this

myth that a huge number of people

who came from Tajikistan all

dream of settling in Moscow and

staying here. That is not true. More than

half of them have families and children there; they

want to return. But they do not have that

opportunity because there is nothing for them

to do there. So if these communities were somehow structured

and if some kind of work were carried out with

them, I think that already

now, strictly speaking, this work

is partly being done. But if it were

supported by the city hall, then of course

much more would be possible. Well,

Look, sorry for interrupting, but this

is completely opposite to my point

of view. Denis is telling us that they

come because things are bad there; let us

make life better there, and then they

will probably be more likely to stay. But it seems to me

that this is not the task of the mayor of Moscow, nor

the task of Russian citizens, to improve life in

Uzbekistan. Especially since our

ability to influence life in

Uzbekistan is, after all, fairly

limited. If a visa regime applies to me and all

of you for Germany

or France, I do not see anything

wrong with introducing a visa regime

for Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Well, perhaps we can wait until

life improves there, and after that

reconsider it. But during the transition, what

what will happen during that transition?

Let us say we begin introducing a visa regime. In

Moscow there are a lot of migrants right now. What

happens at that moment if we

reject the option of a camp in

Golyanovo (a district in Moscow)? A normal transition period —

six months, during which everyone must

return and obtain a visa.

Technically, how? Technically, a person

has come here now without a visa, and often

even without an international passport; we tell him

that in six months you will thereby become

undocumented. You have six months

to go back, arrange

a visa for yourself, if you get one, and come back

here again, if we allow you to return.

Alexei, well, right now we already have a filter:

a work permit, and all the

legal procedures people go through. Yes,

you are adding a second filter — visas — which

there hits undocumented migrants too,

most likely. But there it will most likely simply

increase their costs, uh, and further feed

the Russian corruption machine. Yes, they

will somehow set up a channel for issuing

these visas through a little window in the consular

department somewhere in the Russian embassy

in Tajikistan, and people will come here

anyway — it is just that someone will

profit from it as well. Second, we will hurt

our compatriots who live there

for business and so on, and so on. So,

to what extent is introducing visas really

a systemic solution to this

issue? First of all, unfortunately, none of

our compatriots are really left there anymore — it is

a very small

number.

We would be better off deciding to

bring them all here at public expense already; they are

practically not there. That is the first point.

Second, introducing visas is not

the only mechanism. Yes, it is the main

framework decision. But what I intend

As mayor of Moscow, what I intend to do is this:

to make sure that migrant labor here

is simply used much less.

Why are there so many migrants here?

Because every street cleaner officially

earns no less than 30,000 rubles, but

the real

salary is 15,000 to 20,000 rubles. They simply

kick back part of their wages, so

it is profitable to keep them. They are slaves—cheap and

rightless slaves who can be housed

20 people to a room, who can be

put up in five-story buildings awaiting demolition and exploited.

When I become mayor, I will simply introduce

a ban on hiring foreigners for those

organizations that operate using

budget money. If it is a private

organization, fine, let it hire

whoever it wants. But if it is budget

money—landscaping, major repairs, and so

on—they have enough money to

hire Russian citizens. That is the first point. Second,

we must introduce disqualification for

hiring migrants.

So the issue is not about introducing visas

or banning citizens of Uzbekistan from

entering, or making entry more difficult. We need to make sure that

there is no situation at all in which 2 million

citizens of Uzbekistan coming here

can come here hoping to find

work. You could say right away—even so, yes, you

are proceeding from the assumption that, okay, we have

a corrupt housing and utilities sector, yes, everyone there

is skimming money, and that is why they maintain a workforce without rights. That is

bad for the migrants themselves, bad for

the city’s economy. We will remove them, and then

some Russian people will appear who, from

Vologda and various other provinces,

will flock to Moscow to work as street cleaners in

housing and utilities for, say, 30,000 rubles or whatever

normal salary we are going to

pay them. I understand this thesis—it

is appealing, sound, logical, but it raises

some practical questions. As far as real-world testing goes, I

know of only one experiment so far in

the capital, where several management companies

really did completely отказаться from

using migrant labor and hired Russian workers instead. As a result,

residents are now bombarding them

with demands to bring the migrants back. Why?

Because Russian people do not go to work

for 30,000 rubles. It seems to me that this is a fact. Even here,

even people from villages probably would not. This

can only be tested empirically.

Perhaps several pilot

projects need to be launched and tried, yes. But those

Russian people from villages who would go

to work for 30,000 rubles—I do not see them. I do not

see students who would go

work part-time as street cleaners for 30,000 rubles

in their first or second year, and so on.

In Soviet times, street cleaners were Tatars.

That is, for a very long time in

the municipal services sector, we have had

migrants working there—or rather ethnic minorities were there even before

the Revolution. Yes, it is a big myth that

all housing and utilities work across the country is done by migrants. This

is simply not so. We are talking about Moscow. And then

I have a question for everyone: how much is

migrant labor actually worth? How much

should it cost, and why is it that

it ends up costing less than the labor of a Muscovite?

Because he has no insurance, because

he does not have a guaranteed

eight-hour workday, he has no

vacation, he has no benefits, and

no taxes are paid for him. If I, as mayor,

am upholding the law, then it is simply

impossible to pay a person

a salary of less than 45,000 rubles. His labor cannot

cost less. If someone’s labor

costs 88,000 rubles or 15,000 rubles, well, that

already means corruption. That is impossible.

And I am absolutely sure that if we take

a migrant and a person who came from

a migrant cannot cost less. On what basis

could he? Only because his rights

are being violated. And in that sense, paradoxical as it may seem,

it seems to me that I am much more

of a defender of migrants’ rights than those

people who forbid me to introduce

a visa regime. This is not about a ban.

It seemed to me that it was wrong

that my proposals were immediately described as

contradicting your position. That is not the case.

These diasporas should not exist in the form of

some kind of underground

communities—or, if not to say gangs. They

should be legal structures, well, with

which some kind of dialogue is conducted, with which

certain contentious issues are identified.

Some of these people may possibly

integrate in some way, and so

on. And here it is especially important that

there are specialists who work with

children, and so on. But it seems to me

that the quickest and easiest solution

to the issue is when the most active among

these people leave, and

fortunately, with our

help.

Then we will end up with a wonderful Egypt nearby.

Well, all right, okay. No, that is much better

than what we have now. But look, you

mentioned 40,000 to 50,000 rubles—a rather

nice figure. Yes, some of my

reporters work for a little more

money than that, but most for less. In fact,

most work for less.

Absolutely right. Yes, associate professors at Moscow State University

earn one and a half times that. This is all also connected with

corruption, with

many other things. But look, where are we

going to get that kind of money for housing and utilities? If

everyone there officially gets 30,000 rubles

as the salary of housing and utilities workers—well, on average—and we

add 20,000 rubles to the figures you mentioned,

that comes to 15 billion dollars, I think, per...

800,000 housing and public utilities workers—that’s about 10

billion dollars, with Moscow’s budget at 15

As for that, we already have a budget deficit. I

understand that fighting corruption

could free up, yes, substantial funds if

the Rotenbergs and others like them were removed from public contracts

we would have some money left, but isn’t it

too unrealistic a salary? Look,

first of all, we are guided by the opinion

of Muscovites who do not like such a

large number of migrants. This is simply

a political fact: 80% of Muscovites

are unhappy with the large number of migrants

and I, as a Muscovite, am also unhappy about this. I

believe this system is wrong.

Second, as for wages, the minimum

approved standard tells us that

there cannot be, in Moscow,

a janitor with a salary

below that. Money is already being allocated—they are

colossal sums. Moscow’s budget is 1.63 trillion

rubles, and we can pay a fairly

high salary for that very difficult, in

fact, work. I do not want now

to compare a janitor with, as you say,

an associate professor at Moscow State University. I want to speak only about

the janitor, because an MSU associate professor is

some kind of federal employee, whereas my

janitor is a person who performs

hard work, and he should receive

good compensation for it. Besides, this is very closely

connected with

a gigantic economic

problem of the country: low

labor productivity. In our housing and utilities sector,

labor productivity is 10 times

lower than in the United States, for example. That is, where

they have one person working, we have

10 people working, and it is precisely because of

the huge number of migrants and the fact that

it is profitable for officials to bring in

migrants that our labor productivity

does not increase. Therefore, strict

control in this sphere is needed. To say that

Russians will work more

productively than migrants—I am not saying that.

Russians and non-Russians alike—any

managers of property management companies must

increase labor productivity so that

a person of any nationality

working for a legal wage would increase

their productivity. Where

10 people are working with things like these

to mow a lawn, all that is needed there is one tractor, that’s all.

That’s it. May I ask a question that

really concerns me?

80% have a negative attitude toward migrants, yes,

but this is being created, after all, this is

created easily—the ethnic card is the easiest

one

to play. To explain something that is not

there are many problems—problems, of course, yes—but it is being

created. Tell me, this is exactly what I want

to say: the mayor has plenty of opportunities to play

this card, yes. At the moment when

things get difficult, when there are problems with housing and utilities or with

anything else, the card is pulled out of the pocket

—the ethnic one—and played: everything is

the migrants’ fault. Or, on the contrary, the mayor could

work to create some other

policy. Yes, because this is not

some kind of objective

reality in itself—this 80% is, in fact, created

including by the mass

media, by what the mayor says

and by what someone else who is often on

screen says. So how would you work with that? Well,

first of all, what I see from the side of the

federal authorities is precisely this kind of

ritual “friendship of peoples” (a Soviet-era slogan about ethnic harmony), with no

incitement that I can see. I see that everyone

is living together just fine. Rahmon comes

—Putin meets with him

embraces him and agrees on new

quotas for incoming citizens of

Tajikistan. So I do not have the impression

that anyone is deliberately playing a special card.

I have a clear sense that

objective reality in Moscow is fueling

these sentiments, including everyday

xenophobia, and denying that would be

pointless. Moscow ranks first in the world

in the number of illegal

migrants. Is that a normal situation? It is

an abnormal situation, and citizens are simply

objectively outraged by it. I

see my task not as

playing any card, but simply as

reducing the number of illegal migrants.

There should not be so many of them here. The

number of illegal and legal

migrants in Moscow should be

reduced by 70%, and we can reduce it

without insulting or humiliating anyone

and without violating anyone’s national

dignity. It can be done, and we will do

it, absolutely. Excuse me, but the majority of

people, uh, on the streets—yes, the majority of

Muscovites, including my colleagues from

whom we worked at Rosatom, could not

tell a Buryat from an Uzbek, they could not

tell a Tuvan from a Kyrgyz person. Excuse me, and

trying to explain to them that these people had the same

Russian passport was

useless. That is, it took me

a certain effort to explain: guys,

where is he actually from? How do you know? That is,

they say, if they speak their own language, then they must be

—yes, okay, they do, yes, they speak

their own language. But that does not mean that

they are labor migrants here, that they are—well, what exactly is

the problem here? I, I can—let’s say I am

a public authority. My task is not

to distinguish people by appearance, but by

passport, yes. After all, beatings are not handed out according to

passport, but we are looking precisely at the

passport. But most often Muscovites are

talking about people who, to them,

somehow don't look the same, who don't

look the same either

are partly lumped in there too. Yes, that 80% includes

the North Caucasus as well — all those dances there

on

Manezhnaya Square, the legendary Dagestani

wedding gunfire. Yes, and those terrible

Chechens and so on — all of that gets included

in the same category. Yes, here I agree: when people

talk about migration, they include everything in it

the North

Caucasus too. A question for you as well: then why

isn't there a visa regime with Ukraine

and Moldova? Moldova is the second-largest source

of migrants after — or third after — Uzbekistan

and Tajikistan, the South Caucasus, and so on.

Why do we talk about Central Asia

for example, and not about them? There is, I believe,

no racism in this, but there is

an objective fact, which is that

most of the arriving

migrants from Central Asia and

the South Caucasus are young people, residents

of rural areas, and their way of

life simply stands out

to Muscovites (residents of Moscow); they actively dislike it.

Those coming from Moldova, from Ukrai-

well, perhaps by some cultural

codes — forgive the expression —

they are closer in mentality, in their way of

life, in their habits of living in cities.

Quite simply, people come from

Uzbekistan — genuinely poor

young people from the countryside — and they are not

used to living in cities. Besides, they

are willing to accept a very bare-bones existence. They

are willing to live 20 people in one

apartment. What are they supposed to do on the weekend? Well, they

go out to the park, grill some

shashlik (grilled meat), sing songs — they also need

some kind of leisure, right? They're people too. This

is very noticeable; their way of

life is noticeable too, and their

religiosity is somewhat unusual

for Muscovites; the level of everyday

religiosity among Muscovites is very low

in reality, whatever people may tell us —

very low. But among these people the level

of religiosity is very high, and that

stands out to Muscovites. They see

that a large number of people have appeared in the city

who live according to

some other rules and cultural

codes. That causes irritation, it

creates tension. After all, we're talking about

a big city, a city of many millions.

At the same time, okay, we have

people with Asian features, but we don't have

representatives of other races there, so

does that mean there is room here only for those

people who match us in terms of

cultural codes? Listen, what even are

cultural codes? Say a person comes from

Kazan — a Tatar from Kazan. Yes, his

cultural code is exactly the same as mine.

Or a Buryat from Ulan-Ude, or especially from

Irkutsk — what, is he a Buddhist, or is he going to

perform some religious rituals somewhere? His

cultural codes are exactly the same as

mine. And in that sense, it's an interesting

situation: people are outraged by migration,

they are outraged by Central Asia, but the issue of

those same Vietnamese and Chinese

is raised much less — by an order of magnitude less —

because even though they seem to have different

cultural codes, still, to put it

plainly, their everyday behavior is less

noticeable. Then may I ask a question about

socialization and adaptation? Because

all of this is fine, but we're talking about

a given reality. This is what migrants are like.

All right, but children go to school, and this

is exactly where the mayor has enormous

resources. So how can the education system be adjusted

in such a way that in five

years, those who could potentially

end up not being socialized would instead be

fully

socialized? Yesterday we had a similar

meeting on education issues, and we

spoke with Moscow teachers.

This really is a major problem

that the mayor is obliged to solve. In any case,

there is a certain number of migrants here;

in any case, there is a huge number

of these migrants' children, and they go to school. We

have classes where most of the children

do not have Russian as their native language, and

their families speak another language, and

the task of Moscow City Hall is, of course, to allocate

additional funds in order to

socialize these children and eliminate

entirely

any kind of segmentation

into national schools, because that would be

a ghetto. We have two bad options, two bad choices.

Either we

leave them on their own, and they have no prospects

in life because their Russian is poor,

they get failing grades, and then they become

criminals, and so on. Or we

teach them in their native language, and that is also a ghetto,

and in the end they do not

integrate into society. We have to make them

Muscovites. That's what inclusive education is called:

helping the school adapt.

Exactly, exactly. And in

that sense, the budget has the resources. This is

not that much money; this is more

a staffing issue, a matter of methods, a matter

of approaches. But this absolutely needs

to be done, because I myself, in my own

courtyard, see an astonishing situation when

there

a fifteen-year-old Uzbek boy

has grown up in Moscow. He is a Muscovite; he even

dresses exactly like my children, but

he helps his parents instead of

to go to school, and people don’t like that.

No one likes it. A fifteen-year-old child should not

be helping their parents work.

Sweep the yard, maybe—but he should be going to school,

just like my children. Otherwise,

when he turns 18, he’ll say, well,

excuse me, I’m just as much a Muscovite (a Moscow resident) as anyone else. I grew up here,

I’ve never even been to Uzbekistan, and

I have no prospects in life at all.

This is an extremely important issue that plants

a kind of time bomb under all of us. Maybe let’s come back to that,

and return to an interesting question,

about the differences between Central Asia, yes,

the emigrants from there, and Russian citizens

from the North Caucasus, and so on.

There really is a mixing going on among Muscovites,

yes. How, as mayor, would you

help manage that distinction? What should be done

about poor rural youth from

Dagestan, partly from Ossetia,

partly from Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-

Cherkessia, and so on, who also

come to Moscow with the same

Russian passport, but also with

a somewhat different cultural code—what

should be done with them? Here, the answer

may be only one: law and order. Three

identical hooligans—a Russian, a Dagestani,

and a Chechen—should all be treated

the same way. No one should be asking questions,

No one should specifically persecute

a Dagestani hooligan because he is

Dagestani, but no one should specifically

shield a Chechen hooligan because

someone first has to call Grozny (the capital of Chechnya) and

find out whether he has an uncle who’s a prosecutor, and whether

there will be complications, whether someone will come

from the President Hotel with a gold

pistol to get him released from the police station.

Equal treatment for any

offenders—that’s the main thing, and it seems to me

the only possible approach here

is this. We know that people are treated

differently; we know it’s simply a fact that

the Moscow police segment them.

Some may be additionally repressed for not being ethnically Russian,

while others, because they are not ethnically Russian,

are treated

more softly or with special consideration.

That is exactly what must be absolutely

eliminated, that’s all. And everyone should understand:

if you commit an offense on the streets

of

Moscow, then it will be strict but fair for everyone,

regardless of nationality. But what

about things that aren’t crimes? We immediately

jumped to the criminal extreme,

but

what about dancing on Manezhnaya Square, for example? If the law

allows it, then fine. How is dancing different

from drinking beer there by people who came

from Golyanovo (a Moscow district), for instance?

Let’s ask—I'm interested too.

May I? As I understand it, a large part

of the Caucasian community, in general,

doesn’t like the dancing on Manezhnaya Square, and

doesn’t like gunfire at weddings either. Are there

any mechanisms by which the community itself

can influence its own members? Well, honestly,

first of all, I don’t like the word

“diaspora,” because after all, we are citizens

of the Russian Federation, and accordingly

we live in our own country, and we

cannot be a diaspora.

A community, perhaps. Excuse me, but the diaspora itself

really loves the word “diaspora” and

likes to exploit the fact that it is

a diaspora. That is very wrong,

actually.

That’s not how it should be done.

Actually, as this discussion has gone on,

a few thoughts have occurred to me.

First,

it’s not entirely clear to me how

the cultural code of someone from Kazan

who comes to Moscow really differs

from that of someone from Tashkent, because I do not think

they are all that different. Because the difference

between a Tatar and an Uzbek is the same as

between a Russian and a Ukrainian. That is,

those are Turkic peoples, these are Slavs; some live in cities and have for many years,

in a modern environment, while others live in

villages. That is a matter of social class, not

ethnic or developmental differences.

So, honestly, I don’t really understand

this kind of

segregation. I have a question about

the issue of

introducing a visa regime. If we

say, for example, that we make the decision

that Russia introduces a visa regime with

the countries of Central

Asia—we all agree that we have

an absolutely colossal level of corruption, and

where is the guarantee that in our

consulates there won’t be the same corruption, and

that we won’t end up with essentially the same system

anyway? Absolutely—that is, those who come will be the ones who

have arrangements with representatives of our consulates, and so

on. So will this fundamentally change

the situation? There is no guarantee, but at least

we will have a mechanism. We can say: we will not

allow in more than 500,000 people a year,

and that’s that. Right now, that mechanism does not exist

at all. Right now, any citizen

of Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, even without

an international passport, can simply buy a one-way ticket

and come here. That situation

is abnormal. I understand that even if

I manage to get a visa regime introduced tomorrow,

the police won’t change, nor will

the border guards—no one will change

overnight. But even so, there will at least be

a mechanism. That is the most important

thing. Thank you for

the answer. One more question regarding

[music]

the North Caucasus—what uncle are we talking about there, and is it necessary

to ask there whether he should be punished or not. So,

moving on, but on a mass scale I don’t think that

this is any kind of trend. And as for

if we’re talking about the majority of people from the Caucasus, I

think that, all the same, they are in a

position of being discriminated against.

[music]

citizens from the North, from Central Asia, and

the North Caucasus, and on the other door

it says “Russian Federation.” So you think

that this is normal?

I think it’s not normal, but

you understand, these things happen

because of certain objective preconditions.

You see, when

we criticize those who discriminate against people

on the basis of ethnicity, we should not

forget those people who provoke

all such discrimination and all the rest. In fact,

the scandalous incidents of recent

years, which may even have been connected

with some kind of street violence, which

arose, after all, from the fact that someone

commits a crime, and then the police

treat him in a special way. We

see that, unfortunately, that same

North Caucasian youth just loves

to push this kind of

machismo, all those things like “whoever is with us,”

or, as they say, “whoever is not with us is beneath us,”

“the Caucasus is strength” — it simply turns into

a cult and this kind of swaggering. Besides,

we should remember that Muscovites (residents of Moscow) who simply

have never served in the army

ignore this problem.

Xenophobia is, to a large extent, brought back from

the army, where people encounter

these ethnic groupings, with

dedovshchina (violent hazing in the military) along ethnic lines, all these

well-known cases, yes — naked soldiers with

“Dagestan” written on them — and they bring

back from the army a level of xenophobia that is

completely

off the charts. This has to be fought, and it has to

be fought, it seems to me, from both sides.

Here, well, let’s put it this way, on the one hand, those

who already live in Moscow should uphold

the principle that everyone is equal before the law, but on the

other side, it seems to me, there should be

firm condemnation of any

of these things, and so on. When in

Grozny, women are shot at with

paintball guns because they are wearing

short skirts, and then Ramzan Kadyrov

says, “Well done, I’d give them all

medals” — well, that, that of course

infuriates everyone else in the country.

I have a wife, I have a daughter.

Naturally, I just — the quote that

I saw today when I looked on Wikipedia

at what Navalny writes — yes, but that’s only one

side of the coin, right? I know lots of

guys from the Caucasus.

They’re all intelligent — all the guys from the Caucasus I know, you

are all intelligent guys from the Caucasus.

But that’s exactly what I’m talking about: this is

how public opinion is formed. What

I saw

was only that. But that’s completely untrue — you are all

nice, good guys from the Caucasus. Which of

you here is a governor? Tell me,

please. There is no governor among you. I

see the governor — the president of Chechnya —

who is not just some nice guy from the Caucasus, who

supports violence against women

who simply put on a dress. That is what

that exact quote is there, and it alone

is what forms public opinion,

because that public opinion

is shaped not by my quote, but by the fact that I am

quoting Ramzan Kadyrov, that’s the point.

Public opinion is shaped by the fact that an official

vested with enormous

powers allows himself such

a statement. Naturally, it throws everyone into

a rage. If I were just saying this and

were simply quoting some guy

named Maga from Makhachkala, they’d say, well, so what?

There’s Maga here, and here

there’s a good Ibrahim. But here we’re talking about the president

of the republic, so public opinion

is shaped not by me, but by them themselves. Sorry, but

you know, I’m from Chechnya. I’m not

Chechen; I’m a representative of an ethnic

minority in Chechnya as well. So for me

it is actually very hard to imagine

a situation where, for all of Kadyrov’s shortcomings,

Kadyrov would say that

representatives of ethnic minorities,

for example Nogais, Kumyks, and Tatars, should

have their movement restricted within

the Chechen Republic, that they

cannot move from one municipality

to another. But who here is proposing

that? No one is proposing anything like that, and in

Russia no one is proposing that. But I

do see an objective fact: when you turn on Chechen

television — well, I can’t watch it

in Moscow except on YouTube — everyone is in

headscarves, and everyone knows that this is

Kadyrov’s instruction that all presenters should be

in headscarves. And I understand that this is

an unlawful instruction, an instruction that

directly contradicts my Constitution.

If, unfortunately, the authorities of Chechnya themselves, and to a

lesser extent Dagestan, but regularly

this happens, themselves want to do

some unconstitutional things on

their own territory, setting themselves apart from me, well

then why be offended if I

say, excuse me, stop feeding the Caucasus?

Alexei, no one is offended when you

say “stop feeding the Caucasus,” because

you have explained many times that this means

stop feeding the Caucasian elites, and

that is perfectly clear. The other question is

that you are now running for office,

so what are we supposed to do in this situation?

Stop funding the representative office.

Dagestan's office in Moscow, for example—well, judging

by all appearances, it is also funded by

the federal center. The question is different:

in the recent past, you took part

in the Russian Marches, and you are supported by

Sputnik i Pogrom (a Russian nationalist media outlet), you are supported by Doni

perhaps when you become mayor of Moscow,

won't you in some way be indebted

to the nationalists, to those people who really

propose deporting people without even looking at their passports,

restricting movement, and so on?

Because I don't like this kind of

collectivist approach, where there are

some Caucasian guys, they came here and

shoot, leave, block people's way, and

so on. I'm 18 years old, I was born in

a high-mountain Dagestani aul (mountain village). I have a

Russian passport, under the Constitution,

by birthright. So there you go. And shooting—

maybe I've fired a shot at a wedding sometime, but

even so, I don't like this attitude. And

I want to be sure that the promises

that you are so eloquently making to us here,

you will actually keep, because

you have a completely different constituency—

constituency.

The national question—this is an important question. I

am probably the only politician in Russia

—and I am very proud of this—who

is in a normal dialogue both with

the liberal part of the political spectrum

and with those who are usually called

nationalists. I would simply call them

the more conservative part of the

political spectrum. And I was supported by

parties ranging from NAROD and December 5, which

can more likely be considered liberal

parties, to the National

Democratic Party. I truly value that,

in fact, precisely because

I

am running for Muscovites. They are different.

A huge number of Muscovites have

everyday xenophobia; they say

all sorts of foolish things like

"let's punch those people in the face because

they're not like us"—well, they are mistaken, and

we need to engage them in dialogue. Some people

are mistaken, some are not, but in any case these are

people who will vote for me.

And even if they do not vote for me,

I still have to remain

in dialogue with them. How will you

balance relations with

representatives of—different representatives of

different political camps? Exclusively on the

basis of the law. Here I have

exactly

a clear position that I stand on

with both feet, and no one will

push me off it. I don't care what anyone's

nationality is. If you are Russian but

you shoot at a wedding or dance

lezginka (a traditional Caucasian dance) on Manezhnaya Square, I consider that

a violation of public order. If you are

Dagestani and do the same thing, that is

also a violation of public order. Muscovites

want me to put a stop to

violations of public order, so everyone who

dances lezginka will be treated equally:

taken to the police station and fined

1,000 rubles (about $10). But why don't they detain those

guests—guests from, from southern

countries, let's say—who dance near the exit,

near the exit of metro stations? Right now in Moscow

you can observe scenes like this: well,

Indians are standing there and dancing. But these are still

different things. Yes, they entertain Muscovites,

they do not create any tension, they

entertain people and earn money that way.

You see, it's a subtle matter.

[music]

And the legal system is structured in such

a way that in different parts of the country the same

event can be interpreted as

a violation of public order and

a public offense—well,

not a crime, but an administrative offense.

Well, you are violating

public order. Look, for example,

you go out into the street naked. Well, where is the

violation? It seems like no violation at all—I'm just walking

down the street naked,

not touching anyone, not bothering anyone. And yet

it is petty hooliganism, and we

understand that if you walk naked down the street,

maybe in Gelendzhik (a Black Sea resort city) that's just, well, a person

walking naked down the street. But in Moscow, even

if you go out in swimming trunks and

ride the metro, that's a violation.

These are subtle matters. That is exactly why society

created courts, society created

jury trials, society created ways to assess

particular events and actions. Therefore,

we need to approach everything reasonably, not

discriminate against anyone on the basis of nationality,

but at the same time firmly

put a stop to certain things. If you are Russian

and sitting on the street drinking vodka, that is

the same kind of administrative offense

as if you are Dagestani and firing a

traumatic pistol (non-lethal handgun) in the street. I

can say that I am ethnically Chechen,

and as you can see, I am without a

headscarf in Chechnya. Yes, well, by the way,

they wrote that one should wear long skirts or trousers,

and since I'm wearing trousers...

No, the point is that in Chechnya no one

forces anyone to wear headscarves there.

Those who appear on television wear headscarves, even hijabs,

but that is their choice. Yes, it is their

choice—or is it an instruction from management?

An instruction. But if she does not want to wear it,

if a woman does not want to, then she simply

does not go to work at

television. That's first; second,

you talk about a cultural code there, right?

I agree that what irritates us is not the Caucasus itself.

We’re also irritated by people who don’t know how

to behave properly. Yes, that depends on

upbringing. Maybe it stands out more clearly

because people from the Caucasus often have a very

distinctive appearance. Yes, especially

when they dance lezginka (a traditional Caucasian dance), when

they drive around the Eternal Flame (a war memorial) in a jeep, but

that is not

the problem of the Caucasian community as such.

It is a problem of the upbringing of a particular

individual, and of law enforcement.

If he were sure that

if he were detained, then later

his rich father could buy him out, then he wouldn’t

behave that way. Right? If he

had doubts, or if he were sure

that he would go to jail for it, he wouldn’t

have done it. Yes. But for some reason it doesn’t irritate people nearly as much

when nationalists who come out

to rallies throw beer bottles at

the Eternal Flame—that never seems to bother anyone.

I’ve never seen anyone react the same way when nationalists

climb onto the Eternal Flame; it seems like

it happened in the middle of the night. Yes, practically every

weekend I hear swearing and shouting

right outside my window—people cursing, yelling,

fighting—and that is considered normal. But when someone

dances lezginka, and when, as you say, people display

what you call pronounced religiosity—how is

that bad? Pronounced religiosity? They

don’t pray namaz (Muslim prayer) in the streets except, yes, during

holidays, because there aren’t enough

mosques and they have nowhere else to go. There are too few mosques in

Moscow, whereas there are far more churches.

But they have nowhere to go, and because

on holidays they perform these

prayers and sacrifices in the street, people say, yes, they slaughter

rams. I have never once seen that. I’ve lived in Moscow for 13 years

and never seen anyone slaughtering rams somewhere

out in the street. Not once. I don’t know, maybe

someone else has seen it. And how exactly is this

pronounced religiosity expressed? They don’t smoke, they don’t

drink. Is that bad? I’m talking about

imposing it, yes. If a girl wants

to work in television in Chechnya, she

has to wear a headscarf. That, that right there,

is in fact a criminal offense.

What is being done there is simply a criminal

offense. If you say, yes, go into

public service, but you must wear a headscarf,

that is a criminal offense which, unfortunately,

in Chechnya is committed quite

openly. There is also the reverse situation,

when in Moscow someone wants

to apply for a job and is told, “We won’t

hire you only because

that”},{

or when someone is expelled from university only

because a girl refuses to take off

her headscarf. Look, we need to distinguish

between the question of whether one may wear certain

religious symbols in public places. In France

it’s the same issue, but France and Russia are different

situations.

I also think that in Moscow

schools it would be undesirable if girls

went around in hijabs. I think that is

wrong. Why is it wrong? Well, you were

talking about naked people and so on,

yes. Well, okay, but if a girl comes in a hijab,

goes up to the board and recites

“By the Curving Seashore” (the opening of Pushkin’s *Ruslan and Lyudmila*),

what exactly is the problem, professionally speaking, with the fact that

the girl is wearing a headscarf? Because we are striving for

a situation where, yes, on the one hand, everyone can

live as they want, but on the other hand,

if these are children, if it is a children’s group in

which relationships are complicated, then there should

be some degree of uniformity in clothing

and appearance so that they do not

have any problems. We ourselves talk

about inclusive

education and everything else; we must

integrate these people. After all, it is not the children

who decide whether to wear a hijab or not.

It is the parents who put it on them or do not

put it on them. So the hijab is a choice? The point is

that it is prescribed by their faith; they

are required to wear a hijab, obligatorily.

If the children themselves perhaps want

to take it off while at school, then

their parents will not allow it. That is the first point. And second,

this logic can be taken to absurd extremes, you understand.

“Our faith prescribes that we

be photographed for our passport wearing a headscarf.”

“Our faith prescribes,” people say, “that we,”

Orthodox believers, should refuse a taxpayer identification number (INN). Our

faith tells us that the passport is the number

of the devil. Our faith prescribes that we

go off into the forests.” But that leads us to

absurdity. In fact, those are not the same thing at all.

And

an INN and a headscarf are completely different things.

And

all the same, I believe that restricting

people in their constitutional rights is

wrong. You speak of equality,

and we are saying: we are not going to

tear hijabs off anyone in the street—God forbid,

of course not. But a child is still a person

who does not yet have full legal capacity; he or she

does what their parents tell them. And in

Moscow schools, it seems to me, I would like

to strive for a situation where

children at that age are not too heavily

focused on this. I would also object to the introduction of

the foundations of Orthodoxy in school, so that children do not

fixate on it. I think that

this is a matter that belongs to the school council

and local deputies. If the school and

the parents do not want classes on Orthodox culture—well,

personally, for example, I am not against the foundations of

Orthodox culture. My wife is against

introducing the foundations of

Orthodox culture in school. She believes, simply on the grounds

that the curriculum is already

overloaded. If the parents’ committee

They say that we don't want this subject.

It shouldn't exist, Alexei, we more or less...

We're the generation that grew up with the idea that

we don't talk about religion, we don't

know anything about Orthodoxy, or Buddhism, or

Christianity—well, about nothing at all, not about

Islam either. And so what happens is

that people come out

for Easter, people come out for Hanukkah, and

people come out for Oraza Bayram (Eid al-Fitr), and other people

have absolutely no idea what it is.

So maybe this is exactly where it would make sense

to talk about it and explain what it is,

that is, to draw attention precisely

But okay, to draw attention to the fact that

all of this unites people—I don't think that's

the state's job. That's a matter of upbringing,

it's the school's job, and above all it's the job of

the family.

Some people study well, some

study poorly, some are more educated,

some less so, because that's how their family

raised and taught them. I don't think

we need to conduct some special

awareness campaign: dear Muscovites,

please understand Hanukkah, and that you need to relate to it in some special way.

Rather, what we should do

is simply educate people.

You can inform people about it, you can

say: Hanukkah is this kind of holiday,

Oraza Bayram is this kind of holiday, and exactly

the same with others—it's simply information.

This problem arose because

over the past five years, Muscovites have suddenly

been watching in surprise how the entire Prospekt

Mira avenue is filled, as far as the eye can see, with rows of backs,

and that simply unsettles and frightens them—they

have never seen anything like it before, and for that you can't

judge people too harshly, because it's

simply something new. There are people who

want to explain to others what Hanukkah is

or what Oraza Bayram is, and so on.

They should be given that opportunity. That

would be very good. It seems to me that

what happens

in education is still extremely important, because

education is an enormous resource—it's what

we will have in a few years' time, and

it seems to me that some kind of educational

policy is needed here.

As a Muscovite,

what I want from the new mayor is for the terminal

metro stations to be connected by light

surface rail transit—that's specifically what people want from us.

As a person of Caucasian

ethnicity, I still find it fairly

comfortable to live here. I'm used

to not paying attention to fools. I just

want to say that lezginka

—this stumbling block that for some reason ended up being

classified as a disturbance of public

order, even though it's performed during the day—

is a very beautiful, ancient dance.

I enjoy watching people dance,

whatever their ethnicity.

And I know for sure that if someone were

dancing in the square in Makhachkala, say,

I don't know, doing

a squat dance, people would stand there and applaud

with

pleasure. As for

housing and utilities, I think it would be great if

everything were genuinely calculated

and based purely on economics, yes—on the cost of

labor, how much money the city has. If

you can mechanize it, then you need fewer people,

and so on. That would be excellent.

Try a couple of pilot projects where

there would be, say, no migrants at all,

but instead internal migrants

of Russian ethnicity, or any other

citizens of the Russian Federation, and just see what happens.

Try it, yes, because that would already give

us some factual basis for

understanding: okay, this is how many

quotas we actually need for people from Central

Asia. And then everything in your program is

very well written—how to bring this into the

legal sphere, how to fight corruption,

and so on. But as for the Caucasus, yes, and

drawing boundaries—well, it seems to me that if

you look at it, these people have

drive and energy. If you look at

how many Dagestanis there are, you know,

where the greatest number of these well-known

figures came from in Soviet times—let me think—

athletes, military pilots, yes, well,

Dudayev was also well known. So if

you worked with communities, that is,

all these advisory councils usually

degenerate into complete nonsense, but

if you tried to find a mechanism to give people

goals and say: listen,

dancing lezginka on Manezhnaya Square

and hitting on some vocational-school girls may

or may not be okay—but you could do

something bigger and more

ambitious: go to Yamal, build a good factory

or an LNG plant there—not necessarily for Timchenko (a Russian businessman),

for someone else, for example.

And that, of course, is already a federal matter, that is,

that's where you run up against

the limits of application. Yes, but it could

serve as a model for the rest of Russia.

Possibly. The thing is, actually,

from what you were saying, Alexei, I didn't really

understand who exactly counts as a Muscovite, because

many people who live here do not have

Moscow propiska (official residence registration). And I've lived in

Moscow for seven years—seven and a half. I have neither Moscow

propiska nor Moscow registration. I

studied here, and now it turns out that

I'm often not in Moscow. But nevertheless,

I identify precisely with this city. And

likewise, I would like Moscow

to be a city where

it isn't frightening to live, and where there aren't any

certain narrowly one-sided cultural...

a cultural code that everyone should

conform to. Everyone is different, everyone has

the right to be themselves, but at the same time everyone

observes the law and order and does not

not

interfere with anyone else. It would be possible

Yes. Well, I would probably, of course, increase

the number of mosques, because this is

necessary for Muslims living in

Moscow. And before me, someone said on one

of the federal channels, or on Moscow

— Moscow 24, a wonderful channel — that it would

be possible to make a program that would

tell and show not only the dances

and songs, yes, of the peoples living in Russia,

but also their inner culture, their ethics, how

they communicate within their families. Yes, that would

help many people understand one another. Moscow

24 too, I would say, is not the most...

channel. Maybe I

just like it.

...so that people would not be afraid of one another

because of their ethnic differences, because

in fact

the people who even write a great deal

in blogs about how people from the Caucasus

are so bad and all that — I am sure that

many of them have not even had any

experience, let alone negative experience,

of interacting with people from the Caucasus. This is

some kind of background noise that really

ought not to exist. I would really like it if

people

would, um, actually

interact with one another and see that, in fact,

this is just another human being, and cultural

differences are, in fact,

secondary. As for me, I don't know, I do not

experience absolutely any difficulties or

problems connected with my background,

but even so, I would simply

author's glasses

hide... would like

I would like, I would like it if

a police officer were a real representative

of the law, so that what is written in the law

would actually be enforced, and that the

promises you make today

would be fulfilled. That is the main wish.

That is all. Nothing more is required.

Exactly. Well, that is why I am running for mayor:

to finally make sure that

the law, and any police officer, any

person vested with authority and holding

office, treats me and you

exactly the same. Do you believe in fair

elec

that sooner or later we will achieve fair

elections — that I absolutely, certainly believe.

I believe that it depends on us

whether there will be fair elections or not,

fair

elections. Friends, thank you very much. For me it is

very important that you came

to talk about this rather difficult topic

for us.

And it matters to me that you shared your

advice and views. On some things I agree with

you, on others I do not, but in any case it is

useful to hear criticism, because first and foremost

to me you are not

representatives of some communities, nor

representatives of one nationality or another,

but Muscovites (residents of Moscow).

Thank you. Thank you very much, truly.