Bastrykin and the Magnifying Glass, Grudinin and the Mandate, Unrest in Yakutia

[music]

Hello everyone. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which means

that we're live with the program *Russia*

of the Future, and I'm Alexei Navalny

or rather, a politically extremist

slogan—that's exactly what they called me,

they called the word "Navalny"

"Navalny." Security guards at the Lokomotiv basketball club

in Krasnodar did that because at a

match of that club, a man was not allowed

inside because he came wearing a T-shirt

that said "Navalny." They told him, "Come on, man, you've got

it on your back—or on your chest and back, most likely—

a politically extremist

slogan. That's not allowed." When he asked, "What if

it were a T-shirt with Putin on it?" they said, "Well, with

Putin it's allowed, because apparently that's

a political slogan,

but not an extremist one. I have

a magnifying glass, my friends, and you

people of the internet have spent the whole week

snickering and laughing at Alexander

Ivanovich Bastrykin (head of Russia's Investigative Committee), because he was sitting there with

a magnifying glass like this, examining a monitor.

You called him every name under the sun—

a fool, an idiot—and probably many

of you, those watching right now, are either at

a computer or on your phone, though

probably most are at a computer, and you can

press Ctrl and plus right now

and see how the image gets bigger, and then

Ctrl and minus and see how it

gets smaller. If you know anything about

monitors, pixels, and so on, then

you understand that probably the people there—and Bastrykin himself—

who was examining the computer screen with a magnifying glass,

or the people around him,

were not very

qualified, and clearly cannot

be investigating crimes,

because they fundamentally do not understand

even something as basic as

how a computer monitor works. In general, they don't

understand the basics of physics, optics, or

anything else. But today I will appear as

a defender of Alexander Bastrykin,

whom, as you know, I dislike very much—a man who

personally

has fabricated criminal cases against me,

against Volkov, against Alborov, against

the head of our city headquarters,

and he personally is involved in fabricating

criminal cases. He's an absolutely

brazen hypocrite and scoundrel, but today

I am going to defend him, and a little later in

our program I will prove, 100 percent, that with

the help of a magnifying glass and by studying

carefully what

is happening on a monitor screen, you can

find all sorts of interesting things. We'll get

to that. But to begin with, I want

of course to start with Nazarbayev. Everyone was discussing it;

it was unquestionably the main story of the week.

After all, Nursultan Nazarbayev had been president of

Kazakhstan since 1990.

A Soviet-era figure, really—

we all remember him, he was there with Gorbachev,

arguing for preserving the Soviet Union,

then he became the first president and kept

his power, and for as long as he sat

there, no one ever really put it

in doubt. Kazakhstan is, of course, not

a democratic country, not even close, so

naturally it was a shock for everyone, including

me, when Nazarbayev announced

that he was stepping down from the post. Let's

watch 25 seconds of him telling us

that he is leaving.

Dear people of Kazakhstan, compatriots,

friends and colleagues, today I address you as

I always have at the most important moments

in the history of our state, which we

are building together. But today's address

is a special one. I have made the difficult

decision to relinquish the powers

of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

From the very beginning, there were, broadly speaking,

doubts that he was really

leaving. They did not call new elections; of course

that's not how things are done in countries

where some person has sat as president for decades.

We understand perfectly well that this is not

how things are done in authoritarian

countries.

Authoritarian leaders do not leave

voluntarily. And indeed, it quickly became clear

that the daughter of Kazakhstan's president

would become the speaker of the local

parliament, while Nursultan Nazarbayev himself

would retain for himself the chairmanship

of the Security Council

and some other posts. Nevertheless, I want

to say this, because I received many, many

questions about it. By the way, use the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture and write to me on

Twitter—I will answer your questions

during the program.

Quite a few questions came in asking whether I consider this

pure deception, or whether there is still something

positive in it. Of course, we will see

what happens next, but I think there is

something positive here, because, you see,

a complex system is always better than a simple

system.

A complex system—with democracy,

parliament, independent courts, independent

mass media, local

self-government—is always

far better, and we know that countries with

a complex system

always live better and are wealthier. But for us, it's not even about that—

forget independent

courts; at least, at least some separation

of powers, at least not 100 percent of power in one

set of hands, as is happening now in Russia

and until the very last moment was happening in Kazakhstan. We

understand that power still, one way or

another, remains mostly with Nazarbayev.

in the hands of his family, well, some kind of...

people appeared; the speaker of parliament was appointed

Tokayev became the new president, and

he was appointed and will be elected; we can see it has become a little

the system has become more complicated; some new

players have appeared inside it, and that is always better

than when there is just one person sitting there

and one person remains in charge, so

well, we have to admit that at least

right now, perhaps sensing the spirit

of the times, Nazarbayev, in a certain sense,

outpaced Putin and got the better of Putin, and

by the way, I want to draw everyone's attention

to the fact that he outdid him not only in this. We

in Russia sit around and think that, well, we

of course do not really think so; we understand that Putin

has, essentially, wrecked the country's economy

but for all these 20 years, the talk has been that Putin

has been in power, and especially over the last 10 years

there has been talk of a brilliant politician who

lifted Russia off its knees, so to speak

the 1990s were cursed, and everything was falling apart

people's salaries were, you know,

so tiny you could hardly see them even through a magnifying glass, and everything was

an absolute nightmare

and Putin supposedly lifted Russia off its knees,

held it together, scraped together and paid some

salaries, and people started living a little

better. This is presented as a unique breakthrough. Let's

look at

the chart of GDP per capita for Russia and

Kazakhstan

it is all the same there too; quite quietly and steadily

Nazarbayev did it as well, I mean he did it, and

now GDP per capita in

Kazakhstan

is higher than in Russia. So if we

say that Putin achieved a unique

breakthrough, that he is a unique

leader, then should we not also say that

Nazarbayev, who

did even better? Kazakhstan also did not

fall apart; Kazakhstan experienced, and still experiences,

many internal contradictions

including ethnic tensions

there were originally more Russians there than

Kazakhs; now there are more Kazakhs than

Russians, but Russians still make up, I think,

33 percent. Interestingly, Nazarbayev

recorded this address in two languages

in Kazakh and in Russian. So the country

has a huge number of internal problems

a sea of them. And in economic terms, the same thing applies:

he used them in exactly the same way, even better

Nazarbayev used the oil money, and

in that sense, his example

actually shows one thing: without all this

pomp, you can do all

the same things, achieve the same results, and there is nothing

particularly special about it

he did not do anything extraordinary. Well, at least GDP

per capita in Kazakhstan is higher

than in Russia. As for the fact that there is a lot

of talk about this now, naturally everyone

is joking, endlessly joking, about the

renaming of Astana to Nur-Sultan, but

it really is a strange thing. I recently

noticed that, in general,

the history of renamings is interesting

the endless renamings of this city

it is always a city that simply

keeps being renamed. It was founded in 1830

and was called Akmolinsk, and before that, on

its site there was simply a settlement

called Akmola, and so the Cossacks

called it Akmolinsk. Then later

it was renamed Tselinograd

then in 1992 back to Akmola, then

to Astana

and now this city has, once again,

been renamed to

Nur-Sultan. There have been a huge number of jokes on

this subject

well yes, it is a somewhat controversial decision, but on the other

hand, good grief, all leaders of this kind

do this constantly. It is probably

more unusual that a capital city is

renamed after a living person, but

if you remember, we had a city called Brezhnev

Naberezhnye Chelny (a Russian city temporarily renamed after Leonid Brezhnev), and yes, in every

city we still have some Lenin Streets and

Krzhizhanovsky Street

and so on, more than streets with normal

names. This situation really is amusing

Let's see how the situation develops

in Kazakhstan, but I repeat: the more

complex the system, the better. They have taken

a small, very small step. It is not that I

want to praise Nazarbayev now

he is definitely not the hero of my story

but I am certainly very curious to go

to Astana and see it. I even wrote on

Instagram recently that lately

we have been seeing a lot of these cool and

modern Kazakhs; they keep appearing

here and there. It would be very interesting to

see it. Flying there is

quite a long trip, so I still have not

made it there, but I definitely will someday

go. Still, some small

step toward making this

authoritarian system a little more complex

has been taken, and that is already good. But by the way,

we joke and joke, ha-ha-ha, look

at this Asian

autocracy where people rename

the capital to Nur-Sultan, and especially now

it is interesting how our various Kremlin guys

are reacting this way; they kind of

feel a little stung that

Nazarbayev's economic successes are

even better than Putin's, and yet he still

left power voluntarily, and so they

are therefore emphasizing precisely that

but look, it seems not

really proper government there, just this 'Asiatic' backwardness

and all that. No, what I want to say is

that at this rate, we are heading in the same direction already

Very soon, someone will propose renaming Moscow to

Putinogorsk.

Or they’ll suggest renaming physics

to “Putinics” — because, judging by the kind of

statements people are making, they’re just genuinely

insane statements, considering that before this

they spent so long earning the unquestioned title of [__]

of the week goes to

Mikhail Kovalchuk. You very often

hear the surname Kovalchuk. Most likely,

the Kovalchuk brothers — including on

this program — really are

two disgusting, vile crooks.

They’re old friends of Putin, and with the elder

Kovalchuk,

Ilya Kovalchuk, the banker, Putin together

founded the Ozero dacha cooperative, and Putin

kept a bank account at Bank Rossiya.

Yuri Kovalchuk — sorry, with the older

brother. And the younger brother, meanwhile,

pretends to be a great physicist, despite

the fact that, strictly speaking, the scientific community

does not recognize him as a great physicist. And this

same Mikhail Kovalchuk,

who is our [__] of the week — he

was not admitted for several years in a row to

the Academy of Sciences as a full member,

because everyone said, well, he’s some kind of

not-quite-real scientist. He’s a physicist, but he doesn’t

reach the required level. And, so to speak,

he got his revenge, using

the fact that he has this kind of resource — that

he loves Putin and fawns over him.

That’s why he was one of the

ideologues

of the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And

basically, they wouldn’t accept him, wouldn’t

accept him, so he bared his teeth: fine, then I’ll dismantle you.

So then, this Mikhail Kovalchuk,

speaking at a

meeting, literally declared that

Vladimir Putin

initiated, and personally took part in,

all

the grand scientific breakthroughs

that Russian science has achieved over

the past 20 years. Let’s watch this

one minute. Be careful — it may

make you sick.

He has been engaged with science throughout his entire

time in power. I can say this:

the grand steps that have been taken over

the last one and a half, practically

two decades since 2000 — not one of

the major landmark steps in the development

of science was made without the participation

of Putin. Moreover, they were mainly

done on his initiative.

You know, Vladimir Vladimirovich is actually, I hope,

of course, a unique personality. I want

to say that when the conversation turns to

a person — I meet a great many

people — but when you explain some

complex things, I’ll tell you frankly that

there is no better

listener. That is, a person who

grasps everything, seemingly in a field

that is very far from him — I don’t know,

absolutely.

That is, a person who instantly

grasps the essence of things that are

completely alien to him. That’s first. So

a conversation with him is simply

a colossal, let’s put it this way,

intellectual pleasure. Well,

you must admit.

You must admit, the title of [__] of the week goes to

a man who fully deserves it.

Fully deserved. I said that at some

meeting, live on television,

he said — seriously — that the grand

breakthroughs in Russian science over

the past 20 years...

What breakthroughs exactly? I’ve got a magnifying glass,

please give me the list and I’ll examine it.

First of all, there have been no breakthroughs.

Russian science has become a ruin over the last

20 years. Putin has systematically crushed

the Russian Academy of Sciences, with the participation of that

same Kovalchuk. Funding

is being cut. In other words, things are very bad in

Russian science, and you’ll hear this man

— someone who is at least somehow connected to it —

and yet this person comes onto

a TV show and says: this is the kind of man

Vladimir Vladimirovich is — he

was involved in all breakthroughs,

personally participated in them, initiated everything,

grasps everything instantly,

takes part in everything. I mean, it’s some kind of

unceasing stream of syrupy praise, just — and he

says it, and he says it on

Solovyov’s show, while Solovyov just nods and nods.

What disgusting liars and

scoundrels they really are. And again, I return to why

I’m showing this: it’s really not far from here to

renaming Moscow to Putinogorsk.

It’s very close — closer than ever. Soon

some similar old hack will appear on TV

and say: I am Mikhail Kovalchuk from

the Kurchatov Institute, I am a great scientist,

and on behalf of all scientists I believe that Vladimir Vladimirovich’s contribution

to science is so

great that let us

rename physics to Putinics,

and to applause, to applause,

our children will study from textbooks

that say “Putinics, Grade 8” on the cover.

And cities will be renamed, and everything else too.

This is very close. This whole gang

of United Russia members, disgusting bootlickers and

similarly servile lackeys, are all just poised at the starting line.

They’re waiting for someone to be the first to start

pushing this kind of initiative,

and then, once they get as far as

such absurdity as renaming

cities,

then the real spectacle will begin.

We need to do something about these

vile people: insult them. And everyone expected

that we would start insulting officials

right on today's program. This needs

to be done always and constantly, because in

today's Russian reality

to insult an official simply means to tell

the truth about him. But that Kovalchuk isn't

exactly an official, but still, he is a

lackey and a scoundrel; his brother is a crook and a thief, and together with

the same thief Putin, they together

carry out their shady dealings. Is that an insult to them?

No, it's the plain truth. But as far as I know,

so far no one will try to bring me to

administrative liability, because

this law too—I've been asked a lot

about it—comes into force, this law

by Klishas only on March 29, and we

today had—well, there was some confusion, and so

Ruslan Shaveddinov's channel *Living in Russia*

—subscribe to it, by the way. He

put out a video there, a funny video where he called

various officials and insulted them over

the phone. He was like, "I'll be the first to insult

all of them." And I said, "Come on, I'll

be the first, because I'll go ahead and curse

them all out on the program." But the lawyers say that

none of you will be first, because

the law hasn't entered into force yet—it starts on the 29th.

Let's cut loose. I just want

to draw your attention to something. By the way, this is

quite interesting: the law on insulting

them is a kind of sign

that everything really is collapsing for them.

I mean, it's genuinely falling apart. In one

of my previous programs I showed that

there was a very similar censorship statute

adopted under Nicholas the Hangman (Tsar Nicholas I)

in 1828. Let's just take another

look—I'll quote it again:

"Any work

of literature

is prohibited not only if it is outrageous against

the government, but also if it weakens the

respect due to it." And now they have adopted almost

the same thing. I'm reading from the Klishas law

—quote—which enters into force on March 29:

"The dissemination of information expressed

in an indecent form that insults

public morality and clearly

shows obvious disrespect toward

society, the state, official state

symbols, or bodies exercising

state power in the Russian

Federation..." That is, if you say that

the head of the Investigative Committee

is a [__] because they use a magnifying glass

to examine pixels on

a screen,

then in theory you fall under this provision. But

there is an even more interesting parallel to

this Klishas law, and it's not nearly as

ancient as that censorship statute

under Nicholas the Hangman (Tsar Nicholas I).

It turns out that on March 14, nineteen

ninety, there was adopted

a special decree banning public

insults against the President of the USSR and slander against him.

Let's take a look. So,

it's very, very short, a kind of

brief decree—you can very easily

find it: "Public insult of the President and

of the USSR, or slander, is punishable by a fine or

corrective labor and/or deprivation

of liberty. The same actions committed

using the mass media are punishable by corrective labor

or imprisonment for up to six years."

So in fact, there it is—almost

the same Klishas law, you see; the law

may bear Klishas's name, but its real

initiator is, of course, Putin personally,

because Putin personally is terribly

upset that tens of millions of people in

Russia see him as a crook and a thief,

not some great national leader.

And accordingly, he wants to shut

them all up. The same thing was wanted by President

Gorbachev, who in 1990, well,

wasn't exactly popular, as

those of you who were already

of a conscious age at the time probably remember.

And he adopted this decree, and I just want

to ask: well, Mikhail Sergeyevich, did it help you

and the Soviet Union?

This law didn't help much either. Other

things needed to be done then. Instead of

adopting this law, they should have

been working to fix the reasons

why people didn't like them and insulted them. And the same

can be said to Putin in exactly

the same way: it didn't help Gorbachev,

it didn't help the tsarist regime, and it won't

help you either. Once again, I urge you all

to fight this law

and, in effect, this censorship, by simply not

being afraid of it and continuing to tell the whole

truth about officials in completely plain

language. Before, maybe you

wondered whether to say something, whether to express

on your Facebook page

everything you feel about

the authorities—well, it reaches them, but

you couldn't be bothered, or didn't feel like it. But now

make sure to write it, simply so that

they can see that this law is being massively

ignored, that people are demonstratively

refusing to comply with it. This is extremely important.

Let me answer some questions. Pechenka asks me:

"Hi, Alexei, I wanted

to ask: is Nazarbayev highly

corrupt or not?"

"I specifically registered on Twitter

for this question." Well, listen, I

think that any leader of that kind—

Nazarbayev and all the rest—well, it's as if

the whole country belongs to him, in that sense.

So the question of corruption doesn't even

make much sense. I won't lie, I

I don’t follow any particular

Kazakh politics that closely, or what’s going on there.

If you ask him, for example, even about

Uzbekistan,

I could tell you more about Kazakhstan.

I don’t know much, but this question is,

in principle, about as relevant as

asking about Putin’s money: how many

people, how much money, whether the entire central bank

belongs to him. If tomorrow Putin needs to, or

Nazarbayev needs to transfer someone a billion

dollars, he picks up the phone and says,

“Transfer a billion dollars to my wife”

or daughter.” That’s how it

works. So when people ask me

to comment on the mass resignation

of a governor and a kickboxer-turned-

something—I’ll talk about that. Sergey Nikolaevich

asks me: “Alexei Anatolyevich,

what should we think about the fact that in Ulyanovsk

they’ve started jailing deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation?” I’ll

talk a little today about Grudinin, but not

answer that question either.

Petr Zavyalov asks:

“Please comment on the possibility of refusing

in Russia to recognize ECHR decisions

(European Court of Human Rights). Is this possible?” Russia is constantly

threatening to leave the Council of Europe,

and that

the consequence of that would be a refusal to

recognize the jurisdiction of the European Court.

Frankly, I think that’s unlikely.

At the very least, it’s unlikely to happen in the

near future. Flight Termin asks me

what is happening with the case around the film

*He Is Not Dimon to You* and what happened to Zolotov. Well,

regarding *He Is Not Dimon to You*, we filed a million

complaints on every single episode.

Naturally, there have been no investigations anywhere

close to real ones, because

the real consequences, the genuine

consequences of the film *He Is Not Dimon to You*,

of our investigation, should be this: there should

be the arrest of Dmitry Medvedev, an investigation, and

a trial concerning him, members of his family, and

a large group of his friends,

oligarchs, Usmanov, and many others.

But as you can see, there are no proceedings

where you can see Usmanov and

Medvedev sitting together behind bars

or in a glass cage. What happened

to Zolotov? Nothing happened.

He still commands the National Guard (Rosgvardiya).

He’s probably watching this broadcast right now, wearing

his famous gold cap to

intimidate people. And Yakutia is an extremely

interesting and extremely important topic.

Especially since we saw that at the first stage

it was completely boycotted—

boycotted one hundred percent, censored

by the federal media. But later on,

the scale and significance of the events became

so great that it was simply impossible

even for federal TV channels

to ignore it, and we started seeing some

reports. Let’s talk

a little about what actually happened.

In Yakutsk, on March 17, there was a

crime, and

the perpetrator—let’s say right away, the perpetrator—

was a migrant worker

who had come from Kyrgyzstan; he was Kyrgyz.

He forcibly dragged a local young woman

who was ethnically Yakut

into a car, apparently into the passenger compartment,

or a garage.

He raped her, then left and instructed

two of his friends, also

Kyrgyz, to guard her. At some point

they fell asleep,

and she escaped and went to

law enforcement with a report

of rape. And she did the right thing by

not hiding it. After that,

well, in Yakutia there were very real

riots, mass unrest—without any

exaggeration, one can say

that this happened because we saw

a genuine uprising of Yakuts against

migrant workers, and Kyrgyz people in the first

place. At first there were some

gatherings of people at night, literally at night, when

as far as is known, on the main square

someone persuaded them to disperse, and

nothing especially significant happened there.

Then, realizing that it was impossible

to ignore it—people were simply going to pour out

into the streets en masse and smash everything up—

they invited people to the local stadium, and there

most of the speeches were in

the Yakut language. Let’s just look

at what it looked like for 15 seconds, so you understand

the intensity of the emotions.

Ah

[applause]

Ah

[applause]

And those gathered were all young men, and

you understand yourself: when

several—clearly tens of thousands, or

a couple of tens of thousands of young men—gather,

they can do many things, especially

when they have gathered over facts like these,

facts that genuinely affect every

normal person, truly.

Across the republic, a number of

incidents swept through. Besides all that,

there is also a rather unpleasant aspect.

Of course, migrants raped a local

resident, and they committed a horrific

crime. But the response to this, in

some places, also looked, let’s say,

quite ugly. At the same time, I

completely share the level of outrage

of those who come and say that, well,

migrants committed this crime

because there is no migration policy,

because there is no normal judicial

the system, but this is, in a way, the response of many people

it looked pretty disgusting, though

let's watch 29 seconds

this is basically how locals shut down a food outlet

a public catering place where

Kyrgyz people work

shut it down now, it's closed

guys, there are like 50 of them—you can tell right away

come on, shut it down

[music]

today nobody should be working, got it?

then close it, come on

the video that shocked me even more

some of you probably haven't seen this

maybe some have seen it, maybe not, but just

a video of some man with a

gun leading away some unfortunate Kyrgyz man

or maybe a Tajik migrant somewhere, and

he is literally saved by people passing by

let's watch three seconds of it

they roughed him up here, and, bro, they

let him go

I'll punish those guys, you know how things work here in our

camps—he has nothing to do with it, don't touch him

leave him alone, man

this incident took place in one of the

towns in Yakutia (a region in northeastern Russia), not in Yakutsk itself, as I understand it

as I understand it, the man with the gun has already been

detained, so you can't say that

it was completely ignored, absolutely not, but what I

want to say is this: why is this happening?

You can't justify

those people who break into

various food outlets and

just go, "oh, there's a Kyrgyz guy, let's

beat him up"—I mean, that's just

absolutely vile. But why, exactly,

did people actually pour into the

streets, outraged and believing in nothing?

Because they know that in Russia there is no migration

policy, there is no real police in Russia,

there is no judicial system in Russia, and

a high-profile crime will be

truly investigated only if

you run around with eyes like this

across the square shouting, "Do something,

investigate it, or we'll burn everything down here"

And for that to happen, apparently there had to be

a rape, there had to be

not exactly deaths, but some

extremely disturbing, disgusting incidents

for the authorities to even

start moving. And there are quite a lot of

videos—I won't show them to you

because it would take too much time. Officials and

various talking heads are speaking out now, and

federal figures are saying, "My God, migration—

we need to restrict migration

indeed, migrant criminals

commit many crimes," and so on

But what were you doing before? Why do we still

not even have a visa regime at least?

Of course, a visa regime will not save us

from some

visiting idiot raping one of our citizens—we

understand perfectly well that the majority of

migrants who come here do not commit any

crimes. But if we

want to control this situation in any way at all,

then we should start by

establishing some kind of visa regime

for starters

and counting how many there are. After all, this is

Yakutia (a region in northeastern Russia)

This is not, you know, a situation like Texas and

Mexico, where people run across the

border and it's impossible to count them

You can only really get there by plane

or by a very long trip, and you'd think

that at least at the border they would count

people, that a visa would be required

But none of that exists at all, and every time

our officials begin to think even a little

about this issue and speak out

only specifically after rapes and

murders. Look at every single case

when officials come out and start saying

or mumbling something like, "well yes, yes, yes,

yes, it's time to introduce a visa regime," and that's when

someone has already been stabbed or killed

in the meantime. And as for migrants,

again, you are the ones bringing these migrants in

you opened the borders

they come, they work, most of them

work honestly, they are normal people. But if

our concept—the Putin-era concept—is already

that Russia needs to bring in

hundreds of thousands of people so that they can

replace

the dying-out population, then you should

also think about their socialization

What are they supposed to do? What kind of

leisure do they have? How will they learn Russian?

How are they going to integrate into

the community? What are migrants doing now?

Nothing—they sit around in shopping

malls

in summer, where do they sit? On the riverbank

drinking. They have no

socialization at all, basically

And who are migrants, most often?

They are young people who came from

Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan—they are young

people, and many of them are from

villages; they have little experience of life in big

cities. Some of them are fairly

religious, and that creates a certain

lack of understanding in large Russian

secular cities. So then let's

actually think through a plan: if people come here

from villages, for example,

then we should try somehow to

integrate them here, we should find

some kind of leisure activities so that they

I don't know, have something to do in the evenings

so that they do not isolate themselves in their own

communities, so that they learn Russian

so that among themselves they

They spoke Russian and tried

to communicate in Russian because

otherwise it turns out like this. But we brought them here

and said, well, here you go, people like this work as

janitors.

And some people want to work, while others seem not to

want to, and some started working and

felt that life is very hard and

decided to make extra money by bringing in

drugs, or amusing themselves by, I don’t know,

snatching bags. Of course, not everyone does this.

Only a small number of people do it.

Guys, we already have plenty of crime as it is.

Why should we import additional

crime here? In that sense, the terrible

events in Yakutia (a republic in northeastern Russia) are connected to this

rape case, and the unpleasant events that followed

were tied to the unrest. This is, of course,

a direct consequence of the authorities doing absolutely

nothing and having no

strategy at all

for what to do. People often say to me,

so, you’re in favor of not letting migrants in?

Yes, I’m in favor of

restricting the entry of migrants from Central

Asia.

But at the same time, I support their

labor rights. They simultaneously want to bring them in

while also wanting to ignore their labor

rights and keep these migrants in a

slave-like position. Make up your minds: if

you’re bringing them here,

then figure out how they are supposed to live here.

If you’re not bringing them, then introduce a visa

regime. But as usual,

the Putin state doesn’t do a damn thing.

It wants to bring in several

million people so they can wander around

in unclear circumstances, while police collect money from each of

them, and passport offices

make money by selling

documents and so on and so forth.

It’s a huge, enormous business from which

a huge number of

officials profit, and this completely runs counter to

our interests. So let’s—

you’re asking me whether people in Yakutsk can

hold rallies. No one is stopping them, while others

elsewhere in Russia are treated differently.

Or is it simply that the security forces are with the people?

I’ve seen quite a lot of this.

Mikhail Pozharsky wrote a similar post on

Facebook when

some similar events happened in

Kondopoga (a town in Karelia, Russia). He used much harsher

words there. But what happens in Moscow? We see

an extremely painful reaction

from the security services, who simply start

locking everyone up, rounding them up, arresting them, imprisoning them

because, well, they’re Russians. In Yakutia,

that can’t be done, because the Yakuts in

this sense

acted much more cohesively, and everyone

looked at that and said, well, you can’t

mess with them. Let’s

come to an agreement with them and somehow resolve

the issue. With Russians, that doesn’t

happen, especially where there are

similar kinds of

conflicts.

They just start imprisoning them, because all

Russian nationalists are seen by the system

as enemies who need to be crushed

and

persecuted, jailed, and so on and so forth.

There are different kinds of nationalists; there are

people who call themselves nationalists

but in reality they are simply downright

fascists. But yes, of course, this is

a complicated issue, and of course very few

politicians are prepared to discuss these

topics at all. But I do discuss them because I

am trying to speak with you honestly.

Obviously, you simply saw that in

Yakutia, the locals acted in solidarity, and

the authorities said, okay, okay,

we’ll deal with this issue. But then

Russians, in that sense, do not act according to the principle of

one for all and all for one,

so they can be jailed. I am not

calling for that, of course.

Of course, every time such a dangerous

incident happens on ethnic

grounds,

the authorities must do everything possible to prevent

any pogroms from happening.

There will be emotional unrest, but that is

something impossible to control completely.

There must be no violence or threats of violence.

That must not happen.

But of course, of course, here we see

completely

double standards. As for the governors—

what is going on? I see a lot of questions

being asked right here, asking about

the governors. How should this be understood? Guys, how

should it be understood? It’s the same old deck of Soviet-style crooks,

and a demonstration that Putin

himself does not know what to do about it. I see here

Roman Virolainen writing: “Alexei, my

teacher works in schools and also gives

private lessons at home, and makes 22,000 rubles a month (about $240).”

Then he asks how to persuade her

to join a trade union.

I’ll say more about that later, but anyway,

you see, Putin is frantically trying

to respond to public discontent by

first shifting the population’s dissatisfaction

onto the local level, and then removing those

governors. Let’s take a look:

five or six people have been dismissed:

Marina Kovtun in Murmansk, Boris

Dubrovsky in Chelyabinsk,

Alexei Orlov in Kalmykia, Yury Berg in

Orenburg, Alexander Berdnikov in Altai, and

now they’ve been removed. I’m very interested

to read the Kremlin Telegram channels

that are now writing about what they used to be like.

Kovtun was awful, Boris was a nightmare.

Dubrovsky in Chelyabinsk.

He was a terrible governor.

Good grief.

Our headquarters in Murmansk and our top team.

in Chelyabinsk.

They fought Kovtun and Dubrovskiy as best they could.

They were jailed, and in response they were dispersed there.

They were persecuted, and we shouted for months and

years

that these were crooks and thieves and should be sent into

resignation, and nothing happened. She

now, having sort of realized that, well, they need to

give the public at least some kind of answer to

why this trash involving these

meaningless crooks being replaced by other

crooks is happening. Let’s just look at

who was removed and what results they had.

With results like that, they were elected—what, were those

some kind of, again, by

by Kremlin standards,

unpopular people? No, no, look at

the results.

Kovtun got 65 percent, Dubrovskiy

86 percent.

Orlov 83, Berg 8—though Berdnikov

is a bit of a special case, but come on.

Most of them are more popular than

Putin. I mean, if that idiot Dubrovskiy not so long ago

was elected and got 86 percent,

then you’re a great politician—how can you even

want to remove him? After all, he’s adored by

the Chelyabinsk Region.

Eighty-six percent of people are ready to carry him around on

their hands. Putin, yes, got 76 percent across

the country,

and this one got 86 percent across the whole region. Again,

it turns out it’s all fake, it’s

something nobody needs, and they simply removed them

because they understand that the population

hates these governors and hates

the federal authorities, and for a while

they’ll remove these disgusting people. The same goes for

Kovtun—good Lord, people were literally giving testimony about her.

Right now, in a Moscow pre-trial detention center (SIZO),

there’s a man named Igor Babchenko sitting there.

He said outright that

Kovtun—he testified during the investigation that

she gave orders to collect bribes, and the money

was spent on gifts for federal

officials. In other words, one side was itself taking bribes—

I mean, there was just a pile of compromising material.

We talked about it, we wrote about it,

and nothing happened. Now they’ve been replaced

by some people who now

in September

will be elected again with a result of 86 percent,

and then after some time they’ll be

removed again. And who are all these people? More often than not,

they’re just brought in from other cities—to Chelyabinsk,

they drag in some Alexei Texler,

he may be originally from Chelyabinsk, but he worked in

Norilsk. In Murmansk—Chibis, by the way,

is the ideologue behind this whole capital repairs system.

Because he came out of the housing and utilities sector, from

the Construction Ministry, and he came up with all these things

about how we’re supposed to pay more and more

for major building repairs. He actually—he

worked in Chuvashia and in Ryazan Region.

And now he’s appointed to Murmansk. How do you

think—are Murmansk residents happy about that connection?

Obviously not. Pasler was appointed to

Orenburg; everywhere he’s considered a man

of Vekselberg (Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg), from Sverdlovsk Region.

It’s very funny—remember how everyone

was joking when there was the previous round of

replacements?

They were appointing the same kind of little guys everywhere, at these

blank squares, and they were all exactly alike,

and everyone said that meant the system of

artificial intelligence had simply

designed roughly the same governor every time.

Now everyone is joking that

they appointed Texler and Pasler as if

it’s just a hangout of pointless guys who

nobody needs. And our task here

is very simple: go after all of them.

Why are they being removed? Well, because in particular

in Chelyabinsk our headquarters made a very, very

big contribution to that, because we were waging

a war against Dubrovskiy, and our Murmansk headquarters

was waging a war against Kovtun. Everyone kept telling us

they wouldn’t be removed, and yet

who would remove Dubrovskiy? After all, he got

86 percent. Go after all these people, and

in the elections now, these new ones

they’ve dragged in and put there as some kind of placeholders,

with weak opponents—vote against them.

Go after them on social media, humiliate them, insult

this government, because any humiliation and

insult directed at this government

is fully deserved. Go after them, and let them keep

replacing them so that the public becomes more and more

convinced that really these are

pointless guys who can’t do anything,

that only one person here can do anything—

Putin, and Putin must bear

responsibility for it—not Kovtun being swapped for some

Pasler or whoever. What needs changing is

Putin, through real elections. Please show

the link to Smart Voting once again,

register in order

to

fight all these so-called

strong guys. Uh-huh, sure. The best

example of what happened is, of course,

the appointment in Kalmykia—it’s just, simply

masterful, you see. They removed someone

unpopular from the head of Kalmykia, with the surname

Orlov—Orlov, that’s right, isn’t it?

For us,

Orlov got 83 percent, and they appointed

in his place a kickboxer, Batu.

I’m not trying to say, you know, that a

boxer must necessarily be stupid

or something like that, but really, some kind of

random boxer—a very good kickboxer,

who won some matches here and there, and so on.

Fine, then he could have become a coach.

He could have worked

teaching children in Kalmykia kickboxing, or, well,

I don’t know, earning money, organizing matches himself,

or something. But why, somehow, this?

Of course, all professions are important, all

professions are needed, but if a guy was just yesterday

walking around the ring half-naked in shorts and hitting

another guy in the head, that doesn’t mean he’s

bad.

It means he probably shouldn’t be

a governor.

Especially since I wouldn’t even have brought up the subject of

this wonderful Batu

if, if I

— Batu Khasikov is his name — hadn’t also read

that in 2016 he was stripped of

his academic degree because he had

a completely plagiarized dissertation. And back then

he was in the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament), and even then everyone

was saying, basically, that he should be kicked out of

the Federation Council because the man’s

dissertation was entirely stolen. If you’re

that kind of person who, for some reason,

decided to get an academic degree and

completely stole everything — and Khasikov did

something truly astonishing: he took

a dissertation about Karachay-Cherkessia (a republic in southern Russia) and

then, throughout that dissertation,

he clumsily replaced “Karachay-Cherkessia” with

the word “Kalmykia.” You see, these are the kind of

people

they appoint as governors. So this man

— if you now brought him not to Kalmykia

but put him in an office in Karachay-Cherkessia,

a wonderful republic — have you seen what things are like there

from our investigations?

He probably wouldn’t notice either. And that shows

the quality of the human material. Very

A very, very funny video — I watched a long

video of how the hearing went, and at the request of these

wonderful

wonderful people here — Dissernet (a Russian volunteer network that exposes plagiarism),

which finds plagiarism — I consider them

absolutely our colleagues. They are definitely

also fighting corruption and theft.

The way they defended Khasikov with his

stolen dissertation, where he replaced

Karachay-Cherkessia with Kalmykia — they literally

compared him to a victim of the Inquisition. Let’s

watch 56 seconds.

There are certain things spelled out there

which may, perhaps, be personally

— I’m sure the internet says something about this —

some passages in a previous

dissertation.

But that does not necessarily mean they belong

to this dissertation, and every repetition

is somehow suspicious. Well, I don’t think so.

If we go that far, you know,

back in the Middle Ages there was that famous treatise, *The Hammer of Witches* (*Malleus Maleficarum*),

a manual on witch-hunting, where it said

quite plainly that if, during

questioning under torture, a witch moves

her eyes from side to side, that is

proof that she is with the devil.

And if she stares at one point, that

is even greater proof

for the case. So, in other words, a mere

coincidence is plagiarism,

and if the coincidence is preceded by some

phrase like “thus” or

something similar, then it is plagiarism twice over. The devil

really does find work — the nerve some people have. But he

took Karachay-Cherkessia and swapped it for Kalmykia,

and by doing so, it seems to me, he even

slightly insulted

the Republic of Kalmykia itself. I also

want to address, in this program,

the wonderful kickboxer

and acting vice president

Batu Khasikov. What the hell, really?

Why was this necessary? I mean, obviously,

you were too lazy to write your dissertation yourself,

but why at all? Why is there this need

to become president? Why can’t you

just be an honored retired boxer

and mind your own business? Why does Putin do this?

Actually, that question is pointless, because

he simply has no one else left to appoint. He’s

already appointed all his bodyguards to

various regions; now they’ve moved on to

kickboxers, and after that there’ll be someone else. He’s just

frantically trying to reshuffle the deck.

But again, I simply don’t understand

why.

Why do the people of Kalmykia need any of this?

Why do we need Khasikov at all?

Nobody needs this. Register for

Smart Voting so that we can fight this

on principle. Against any

person Putin appoints

as governor, you need to vote — not for just anyone, but against

that person, for any other candidate.

Register with us now. We will be

organizing and coordinating this

voting in order to fight these

people.

There are 33,600 people watching me live right now,

asking about informing people about

Smart Voting. So, look,

guys, here’s how this system works. I

keep urging you in my videos

to join. Right now we have

about 130,000 people registered there.

Closer to the election,

when the candidates have already been

registered, once they are registered, we

will know the lists of candidates, and I will

ask each of you to become a campaigner for

Smart Voting. Those 130,000 people can, within

two days, inform 10

million people. Then we’ll bring in more

people and may be able to inform 50 million

people. That’s how we will

operate.

So that on the Single Voting Day (Russia’s nationwide election day) in

September, every resident of Russia in those

in regions where there is a choice, and it came via

phone calls, messages, and so on

with a link explaining how to choose

a candidate. I see a lot of questions about our

confrontation with that disgusting

Prigozhin, who is Putin’s chef, and in fact

this confrontation has already become a real

direct clash — we’ve really locked horns with

this thug who is poisoning children in

Moscow.

And it’s very interesting right now

to watch how he simply doesn’t

spare any money trying somehow to

pressure us, though in general we’re not

very timid people, as you know. Still, he’s trying

to exert psychological pressure on us.

For example, Lyubov Sobol is literally

constantly being followed by people filming her

on their phones, and by now it has already

spread to me too. It looks very

ridiculous. Here at our office,

on the ground floor, there are always

several people hanging around, and every time

I go downstairs to buy lunch,

they follow me and film me

with their phones. When I go home, behind me at

a distance of about two meters (about 6.5 feet), there walk

two creeps who simply

follow me, film me on their phones, and

trail us everywhere, filming us.

In some way they’re trying to

apply this kind of

psychological pressure. But we are not going to leave this bastard

alone, because in fact he

is supplying rotten food to Moscow

schools. And today Lyubov Sobol released

a video saying that she is beginning

to work on this case. And not just because of

a huge number of mothers who came forward and said

that, as it turns out, at the end of

2018 there was an outbreak of mass

dysentery.

Caused by Putin’s chef, it was not

the only one — there had been another similar

outbreak before that. Let’s listen briefly to 46 seconds

of Lyubov Sobol and her trademark

dramatic voice. As it turned out, this was

not the first case of a dysentery outbreak among

preschool children.

Parents of children from the

Delfinyonok kindergarten came to me.

This kindergarten is located in another

southern district of Moscow. According to the parents,

a year ago more than 50

children there were poisoned. He had such attacks of pain,

he turned pale, bluish, he was burning up —

he was screaming through the night, just

bleeding. He was skin and bones. I

simply couldn’t look at all of this

without tears. For two months he simply didn’t eat, didn’t

drink; we had to run around and prove things to

someone.

The information we were given was that

everything was fine. A four-year-old child

went through something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

For two or three months, some are still

undergoing treatment.

In fact, this is 2018: a city with a budget

of 2.5 trillion rubles is poisoning

children, and the Moscow authorities are covering it up

with all their might. The departments —

the Department of Health and

the Department of Education — are hiding it with all their might

so that it does not come to light. We

are going to bring it out into the open, because

the issue here is, naturally, first and

foremost,

children’s health. My own children go to

a Moscow school, and of course for us

the corruption angle here is tens of

billions of rubles that this Prigozhin

together with Sobyanin are siphoning off.

Can you imagine that kind of money in

Europe’s largest city?

To control the supply of all food products

to all schools and all kindergartens — and now

they’re also planning to grab all sorts of

hospital contracts. So of course we are not going to leave

this alone. As for Chechnya,

it really ought to become a permanent segment

in our program — constantly

discussing Chechnya lately. We

certainly, first of all, I want

to talk about this situation with Oyub Titiev

who was sentenced to

four years for allegedly possessing

drugs. There cannot be two positions here:

an absolutely innocent man

had a packet simply planted

in his car with marijuana in it. You can read about it —

Novaya Gazeta wrote a lot about it. It’s just

an outright frame-up. This man is a

human rights activist; he provides legal

assistance to Chechens — he is Chechen himself —

he provides legal help to those whose

relatives have been abducted, to those who are, well,

being persecuted there — he helps them.

Kadyrov doesn’t like that. Kadyrov said

he should be jailed for drugs, and they

planted a packet of marijuana on him.

There is a sufficient amount

of evidence for that. And now, despite

the intervention of the Human Rights Council

and even some of those

human rights defenders — real

human rights defenders, even some half-loyalist ones —

who, well, thought that this was already

too much, such blatant lawlessness,

to imprison an older man like this — nevertheless

he was given four and a half years.

All of this is being presented in such a way as if,

you know, he’ll be eligible for parole soon, that is,

as if: well, if he’s innocent, then

he’ll be released soon.

He has already served quite a lot of time. Of course,

I want to express my solidarity with Titiev and

all his colleagues. And this is simply

a real crime. Those people

which the Libao factory was fabricating.

Cases should be brought against him; of course, they themselves should

be sitting in prison. It’s all very funny, of course.

This story got a sequel — the story about how

remember, I showed you the United Russia deputies

from Chechnya who, on Instagram,

addressing him, said that he doesn’t like Russians,

that he doesn’t like all of this — and it’s very funny how they

are now making excuses. They say it was translated incorrectly

from Chechen. We have the video,

and the wonderful Tarsa, whom we

talked about in the previous program, even

simply broke it all down piece by piece

and reproduced it, showing what was really said.

So no, it’s all lies — we understood everything correctly.

“pelt him with Chechens” — let’s see. We can’t

watch it here, I don’t have that clip right now, which means I’m

going off script a bit, but you can find it

quite

easily online. I just decided

to mention it. It’s also funny to watch

how this whole Kadyrov crowd

just twists and squirms like this

and says, no, they don’t want to

expel him from United Russia. They say

that, supposedly, we didn’t understand what he said in

Chechen, even though we understood everything he said there

in Chechen. Before I move on

to this wonderful magnifying glass,

I’ll still run my experiment and prove

that Mr. Bastrykin knows how to use it

properly — and by “use it” I

wanted to briefly mention my

favorite, Mrs. Rock Bottom, Margarita Simonyan.

According to various Telegram

channels — and RT did not deny this —

RT, which receives 18 billion rubles a year

of our money to keep the channel running — about $200 million USD a year —

has adopted a simply completely

fantastic new provision: amendments to

the employee regulations. RT employees

are now forbidden, for 20

years after увольнение, to discuss

the channel’s performance, its style, and its working methods,

to criticize it, and so on. And if you

do, the fine will be 5 million rubles

— about $55,000 USD. Why? Well, it’s obvious why: because the people

inside know that this is simply

stolen and talentlessly wasted

money. There are no real performance figures there; it’s

all absolute nonsense, and those 18 billion

just vanish into the sand. But this is

a state operation, after all. Can you imagine?

On state television there will be

some kind of rules that make it seem as if

the FSB doesn’t exist. This is a 20-year gag order

under threat of a 5 million ruble fine

forbidding you to criticize your former

bosses. So yes, of course, this

has shown just how afraid she is

that the secrets will come out. So,

we take out the computer, we take a magnifying glass, and I

give you a master class.

So, if you think you can’t

examine a screen with a magnifying glass,

if you imagine that physics

and optics somehow mean that this

doesn’t work — that you can’t inspect a screen — I’m about

to prove it to you right now.

I’ll prove it to you, just as Alexander Ivanovich

Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee,

with a Czech residence permit, as

I showed you in my investigation.

Take a photo like this one, or a similar one,

or even exactly this one, and I examine it on the screen.

Let’s take a look. Here is the photograph.

Please show the photo. What do you

see in it? You can’t really see anything in it.

You see one pleasant-looking woman, another

pleasant-looking woman. I point the magnifying glass at her and

realize that this is Olga Ivanovna

Alexandrova, the wife of Alexander Ivanovich

Bastrykin. That’s what it tells me — without the magnifying glass,

without the magnifying glass,

I would never have made that out in a million years. But

magnification does work, and while that’s

probably not enough, we have learned that

she is Bastrykin’s wife. So let’s

look closer, folks. A magnifying glass is given to us

so that we can inspect things closely. She is presenting

some important award, and we look here

at her pleasant face, at her hairstyle.

Some kind of award — let’s see what

kind of award it is. And somehow, as we’re

examining the award, we accidentally move

our lens over to the watch

on Olga Ivanovna Alexandrova’s wrist, and through the magnifying glass we

can make out even the very, very

smallest details. We don’t need Ctrl+Plus;

with the help of this device, we can see that this

watch is — Lord, even now I can see it —

Audemars Piguet Millenary 4101

in steel, night theme.

If, having made that out through the magnifying glass,

we now google the price of this

watch, we will see that it costs a lot,

Alexander Ivanovich.

$57,000 USD. Though, by the way,

today, if someone wants

to buy it today specifically, we checked and it’s

21% off — that makes it $45,000 USD,

or 2.9 million rubles. But

as for the question of whether, with the help of

a computer screen and a magnifying glass, one can uncover

some kind of corruption-related crime,

it seems that one can. I’m very interested in

how exactly

the family of the head of the Investigative Committee

manages to buy a watch for at least 3

million rubles — and more likely for 3

and a half million rubles,

because, well, I assume they

bought it without a discount. Here’s the thing:

of course, if we look at Bastrykin’s financial disclosure,

we’ll be a little shocked,

but we’ll learn that his income is 16 million

rubles a year — that is, he

earns

It’s unlikely that the head of the Investigative Committee

of Russia has some side job somewhere.

Although, generally speaking, everything that

is happening in the Investigative Committee

is a kind of business venture, really.

In fact, he may well be able to afford a watch like that.

But I would like Mr. Bastrykin

the leadership of the local committee, and Mr. Bastrykin’s family

to simply come out and say this, then:

to the many millions of the

multiethnic people of the Russian

Federation: “Guys, our income is high enough.

You pay us out of your own pockets. You

pay me, Bastrykin, 1.5 million

rubles a month—almost 1.5 million

rubles is his monthly income—and so I

went out and bought my wife a watch for 3

million rubles. And looking you in the eye,

those of you living on an 8,000-ruble pension,

looking you in the eye, those of you earning a teacher’s salary of 22

looking you in the eye, those of you earning

a nurse’s salary of 15,000, I say: no, I am not

ashamed.”

“Our family, thanks to the rapid

economic growth taking place in

Russia, can still afford

to buy wristwatches for 3 million

rubles.” I would very much like

the Investigative Committee—Alexander Ivanovich

who likes to publicly, well, drag me through the mud

here and there, and once even wrote

poems about me—

to explain to us, after all: are these watches

corruption? Someone’s gift? Were they not

declared?

Maybe they were a piece of physical

evidence from someone’s apartment, from

some bad governor, which you accidentally

took away, borrowed to wear, and then

forgot to return? Or maybe you bought them yourselves.

You have the right to do that—just tell us, tell

us, and then we’ll assess your standard of living

and, well, how exactly you manage to live on

the state budget. We want to see all

of that. But I think Bastrykin is still

not offended by me, because, well,

you have to admit, I proved to you that

by examining

through a magnifying glass

pictures on a screen, you can find something

very interesting. Grudinin—there are a huge

number of questions here about Grudinin. My

position here is completely clear-cut. You

know that, unfortunately, there died

the wonderful Zhores Alferov, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF),

a State Duma deputy from the KPRF, and a former Nobel

laureate—well, there’s no such thing as a former Nobel laureate.

He died, but since he

was elected from the party list, his seat

remained with the KPRF, the Communist Party

of the Russian Federation.

By taking part in the elections, it received a certain

number of mandates—say, several dozen,

let’s say 50—and they should always have

fifty seats. Those are their seats.

Alferov died, so by law the party—

the KPRF, not the Central Election Commission, damn it, not Putin, not United Russia—

United Russia (the ruling party)—

they are the ones who must decide who gets this

mandate. Only they, and no one else. And we

saw what happened today:

at the Central Election Commission meeting, something that would infuriate not

just a lawyer, but any

normal person. In fact, it was

just a gathering of crooks, and they said

something like this: “Yes, but with

Grudinin, it turns out, there were

some

foreign accounts. Those foreign accounts

he has, of course, closed now, but when

he submitted documents earlier for

inclusion on the list for the State Duma election,

those accounts existed. Therefore, Grudinin

has no right to receive the mandate.” And you

bastards registered him for

the presidential election—how

exactly, then? In other words, in the presidential election,

when you needed him to boost

turnout and you registered him, this

information about the accounts had already

been used to smear

Grudinin during the election

campaign. All of this was already known, and

back then the Central Election Commission said that all these foreign

accounts were indeed a violation, but that it did not

prevent Grudinin from

taking part in the presidential

race. But now, to give him a parliamentary seat

turns out

to be impossible. It’s clear why: someone

specific in the Kremlin—I don’t know whether it was Putin

or Kiriyenko—said, “I don’t want

Grudinin to be a deputy,” and that was that.

And so it turns out that the Communists cannot

dispose of or allocate their own

mandate. Frankly,

I expect the Communist Party to take,

well, some genuinely aggressive action. But

come on, guys, you’re deputies, you sit in the

State Duma—do something. Walk out

demonstratively once, I don’t know,

declare a strike for a week, do something,

because absolutely nothing will happen to you.

Your State Duma salaries will still be there. I first saw

Gennady Zyuganov’s speech,

which deeply disappointed me, and he looked

rather strange. He was outraged, but

for some reason he started blaming all sorts of

liberals. Let’s watch for a few seconds.

Today we were faced with an attempt by this same

pack to prevent our

comrade and friend, one of the country’s most prominent

leaders, Pavel Grudinin,

from entering the Duma. It’s beginning in the style

of the 1990s, only with even greater

cynicism and on a larger scale.

All kinds of lawsuits and information

attacks, and so on—none of this is new to us.

The next point concerns something new—rather, a new development.

Back then, in the 1990s,

Clinton was embracing Yeltsin in the fall of '94.

that is where the problem with our country's leaders begins.

It is all under pressure, in a sense.

Only at that level.

Back then, we still had some momentum left over from the Soviet past.

Among many leaders,

there was still some sense of popular solidarity; today, that is gone.

No.

It is rather strange when your person is not

being allowed into the Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), even though he has every right to be there.

Absolutely. People elected him, people

voted for the list; the Communists have

the right to make whichever person they want

a deputy—one of those who was on

the list. Not letting him in is simply

an utterly brazen violation of every law.

People say this about Clinton and about

Yeltsin, but I have to give credit

to Gennady Zyuganov, because after all

he pulled himself together and did speak out there, somehow.

Not too harshly, maybe, but still—properly enough.

He said it. Let's give Zyuganov another 50 seconds.

When he is finally criticizing the people who actually deserve criticism.

Nikolaevich's leadership created some of the best

in Europe: an amazing school, excellent

companies, unique kindergartens—everything

he did is something to be proud of. The authorities

are afraid of a people's leader. The authorities do not

respect the citizens' choice. The authorities continue

to persecute him. In my view, this is

completely criminal

and illegal politics. We are obliged to stand together

and support Pavel Nikolaevich, and I am sure that with

these difficulties

we can cope, but it requires very energetic

work and support for him in every workplace

and in every region. I hope that we

will manage, but we must keep in mind that

the persecution continues, and Volodya (diminutive of Vladimir) as well

was, of course, served with a summons

completely unlawfully. And our leaders

who head major regions

—and Zyuganov, yes, I am not being ironic—

has asked for support. I absolutely

support both him and Grudinin in this

situation. No matter whom you voted for,

we should all be outraged,

because what this means is that, basically, we

are having elections drained of any meaning.

They have a party list, they received a certain number of

percent of the vote, and then some nobody

from the Central Election Commission says—this thief Ella Pamfilova

sits there and says: no, well, this one

has some kind of mustache

that's too fluffy. No, he can't be allowed in—let's

have someone else instead. They have no

right to do that. That is why I have just asked

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov—I express

my support to him and to everyone else. I

would like the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation)

to do something too. Come on, guys, I mean—

declare a strike, do something, make

some demonstrative gesture against this.

It is disgusting. In Russia, people who are far more

vulnerable, people who are in

a much more difficult position, are not

afraid—so please, you should not be afraid either.

I mean, I do not consider the CPRF the most

amazing party or anything like that.

If the Party of the Future in Russia were registered,

it would be the coolest party, of course, but

in any case, this is the largest

opposition party. I am telling you this not

just on my own behalf, but on behalf of the whole country: please,

be a little more aggressive.

If you are,

you will get more support, because

people who seem weaker are ready—but not weaker, actually,

stronger, really—

just more vulnerable. And at the end of the program,

I want to say this:

there were a lot of questions here about

trade unions and low wages. Here, I see

someone writing to me—Emil.

"Alexei, good afternoon. My mother works

as a teacher at a secondary school

in Nizhny Tagil. She is unhappy with her salary

but is afraid to take part in your program

to defend public-sector workers. Is there any point in submitting

an application?" Well, unfortunately, Emil, I cannot speak for her, but

what is there to be afraid of?

What terrible thing is going to happen? There is no need

to be afraid. Show your mother this segment,

show her the strike that

doctors carried out in the Novgorod region.

Good Lord, they are not afraid, are they?

Now is an excellent time

to fight for the realization of your rights through

some form of protest action, because

in reality, no one is going to fire

any sizable groups of

people.

Let me show you. I have already talked about it,

and I am following very closely

this strike by medical workers in the Novgorod region

and, more broadly, the actions

of the Doctors' Alliance. We are glad to cover

all of it. As you can see, of course,

the federal state media are completely

silent, and even those relatively

independent media outlets seem to think this is

all trivial. But I believe this is absolutely

real, genuine politics, and everyone should

do the same. Everyone should take

these brave people as an example. Give me one

minute—a brief summary of how

the chronicle of this strike unfolded in

the Novgorod region.

Tomorrow we will release a big video; for now,

I will show you just one minute.

I am talking now about the fact that labor rights are being violated.

Workplace procedures are being violated—that is what I am saying to you.

If we stay silent about this...

I would be grateful if you spoke there about

You will say, you will say that you...

that at some point, at such-and-such a time, this will happen.

The hospitalization plan will be revised.

Salaries will also be reviewed.

There is a plan for how to turn this into an emergency care unit.

Emergency care, yes, as you correctly say.

Are you celebrating?

the acting chief physician

at the Kursk hospital asked for a month to resolve the issues.

the problems.

And for our part, we will strictly

monitor whether these promises are kept.

Therefore, today we are suspending

the Italian strike (work-to-rule action) at Akulovka Central District Hospital.

We can resume it at any moment if

these promises are not fulfilled. We

are working.

At school, you...

were ready for an Italian strike (work-to-rule action).

With a saber.

When are you ready?

I want to know what is going on here, why

things aren’t functioning, because soon

it’s approaching. Why aren’t the duties being carried out?

Because they do not have employment contracts.

And they do not have job descriptions. By law, they

are not obliged to do this at all, dear sir.

Head of occupational safety,

we are having an Italian strike (work-to-rule action) because

our colleagues do not have employment contracts

and do not have job descriptions.

No one is going to work for free without employment

contracts and job descriptions.

than to dust them with pesticide.

In fact, they are simply

basically sprinkling it on from above

and watching to see whether people survive or not. But

if people at the Moshenskoye hospital are not afraid

to declare a strike and take part in

an Italian strike (work-to-rule action), then what can you do to them?

Are you going to fire all the doctors and

the entire medical staff?

From the Moshenskoye hospital? Well then,

there will be no one left to treat people, and that is why

this works. Three hospitals there

declared a strike. In one of them, as you

heard, it has already been suspended. This is

an Italian strike (work-to-rule action): the doctors go

to work, but they follow the rules to the letter.

What does that mean? Well, for example, the ambulance

service.

A doctor says, “Look, they haven’t bought it,”

“it’s not as required.” One of their

demands is: buy a new ambulance.

Therefore, we cannot go out on calls. Other

doctors can say: you haven’t provided us with

uniforms or other necessary supplies, so we

cannot do it, because the instructions prohibit it.

That is called an Italian strike (work-to-rule action), and

in one hospital they were promised that within

a month all the problems would be resolved. They may

be deceived,

or maybe not, but at least

they said: yes, we recognize the demands and

we will fulfill them. In another place,

there has been some movement. In yet another, this

Italian strike (work-to-rule action) is continuing. But

if the governor of Novgorod Region

is not a complete fool who does not

want his approval rating to collapse to one

percent, then he will meet these obvious

demands, especially since they are entirely

reasonable.

You have seen these people: they work in

a state hospital, yet they are not formally employed.

They are working without contracts, like some kind of

migrant laborers

who came from Central Asia. So

teachers, doctors, everyone else —

don’t be afraid. No one is going to eat you alive.

Even the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) that comes in

is actually fairly sympathetic

to us. Naturally — doctors are

on strike, and that same guardsman

may come to that very same hospital one day

for treatment. There is no need to be afraid of this, because

in essence, it poses no threat to you.

But if you are afraid your whole

life, then your whole life you will keep working

for a salary of 15,000 rubles (about $160) a month.

You only get one life, so why the hell

should you spend it in poverty? No one is asking

for millions — but for at least your own

25,000–35,000 rubles (about $270–$380), you have to fight. I want to wrap up

the program, but with this kind of

solidarity. Once again, people have reached out.

This time, from Moscow.

We move from the very poor Novgorod Region

to the very, very insanely

rich Moscow, where you might think there certainly

couldn’t be the same problems. Well, here you go.

Have you heard of the Stanislavsky and

Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre?

Even if you have never been there, just

stop and think, remembering that in Moscow

the budget is 2.5 trillion rubles, you

would assume that everyone there has

good salaries, and that under the May Decrees (Putin’s 2012 social policy directives),

no one there can be earning less than 85,000

rubles (about $920). Sobyanin says he has given them

all these wages. Let’s play clip 1 minute 13 seconds.

It’s a very powerful, passionate

speech by a person from this institution

who explains what the salaries there are

actually like in Moscow.

My name is Manuel Svyatoslav, and we are standing

outside the magnificent musical theatre

named after Stanislavsky and

Nemirovich-Danchenko, literally 10

minutes

from the Kremlin. This major theatre stages

10 premieres a year and employs 1,200

staff members.

It has three stages and is one of the largest theatres in the capital. But

that is only the facade.

For 10 years now, there has been no

salary indexation at this theatre. People

who came here 10 years ago on those wages are still

working for the same pay today. In accordance with

the president’s May Decrees, an employee

Employees of cultural institutions should receive no less

than the average salary in the region, that is,

in Moscow that is 82,000 rubles (about $900) — and among

the artistic staff, no one earns

that kind of salary.

The highest salary is 65,000

rubles (about $700) — literally just one, two, maybe three

people from the artistic staff. The rest

earn around 45,000

rubles (about $500) at most.

My personal base salary is 37,000 rubles (about $400), and

after all deductions, the take-home pay has never

been more than 45,000 rubles (about $500) in three years.

Today we are creating an independent trade union

for cultural workers, and already today in

our theater, a hundred people have signed

a collective letter. We will fight for

our rights.

Why stay silent? Why be afraid? Are you

afraid of losing a salary of 30,000

rubles (about $330), or a salary of 15,000 rubles (about $165)? In

struggle, you win your rights. And over there,

a couple hundred people in that

theater have already signed. A union is being formed now,

and we will help them, and we will

help everyone in state-run

organizations and non-state

organizations,

everyone who is not afraid and actually does something. Otherwise,

you will live your whole life like this,

and then, when you are 95 years old,

when you make it to ninety-five,

on that kind of salary, just think — think about it:

why the hell did I live my whole life, and spend my whole life

in poverty, knowing that the people who

underpay us are not just withholding wages — they are stealing,

stealing by the billions, buying themselves wristwatches

for 3 million rubles (about $33,000). Don’t be afraid.

So take part in wave-style voting (likely a reference to coordinated protest voting),

take part in the trade union movement,

insult this government online, do not

recognize its disgusting laws, and

remain human. We’ll see each other

next Thursday.