Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #015. Putin’s Rule Comes of Age, *Matilda*, Khodorkovsky, and Udaltsov

[music]

Good evening. In Moscow it's 8:18 p.m. That means

that Alexei Navalny is here in the Navalny Live studio.

Navalny. I'm always here on Thursdays

if I'm not in court, not in a special detention center,

and nothing has changed. Who's this girl? What

are you doing on my broadcast? This is my broadcast, my

views, my likes. My name is Kira, and I am

your secretary. So now I'm here. Yes,

actually, we wanted to reveal right away

one of my darkest secrets. Journalists

quite often ask me,

"Alexei, what are you afraid of?" And the assumption is

that I'll answer, "I'm afraid of a sudden

attack," or that I'm afraid of something like that. But the truth

is—and everyone in our office knows it well—

that I am terribly afraid of

live broadcasts. And in particular, this

live broadcast—more precisely, this specific

live broadcast. Everyone knows perfectly well

that when Thursday comes around, it means

Navalny spends the whole morning walking around the office

whining, "My God, I have to host the broadcast again today, I'm

terrified." So I, uh, invited

Kira, who claimed that she isn't at all

afraid of live broadcasts—it's just

a camera. Alexei was so terribly afraid—really.

Today he talked about it so much

and prepared so seriously that even you

started to get scared. So now we're all afraid that Kira

is going to mess everything up today. So be sure

to write in the comments what you think of her.

We'll kick her out if necessary.

For the rest of the broadcast, Kira will

help me with the questions. If something

happens to me and I start saying

the same thing over and over again—which does

happen to me, as you know—she'll kick me

under the table. And, very importantly,

since she is my press secretary,

the press secretary of the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

thanks to Kira, we'll have

a segment called

—I forgot the name of the segment—the segment

is called "The Question Navalny Doesn't Want

to Answer."

For all the journalists who ask me

questions all week, I

bring them to Alexei, but Alexei doesn't always

feel like commenting. But finally,

today he will comment, and there'll be

no way out. She'll simply ask the very

most important questions that journalists ask me,

in exactly the wording

they use, and there'll be

no escape—I will answer them. And our

first news item that we want to discuss

is, of course, the celebration that took place across

the entire Russian Federation, because on August 9,

that is, just yesterday, 18 years ago,

Vladimir Putin came to power. He was

appointed acting

prime minister of Russia—or rather, he was

appointed prime minister, and then became

acting president. And that was how

this 18-year

ascent began. And yesterday, a child who

was born on that very day turned 18

years old. In other words, entire generations

have grown up under Putin. How old are you? I'm

27 now, and back then I was nine. So

your entire conscious life has passed

under Putin. A Putin child, in that

sense—a child of the Putin generation.

That's really true. Let's recall

a few seconds of video showing how it happened, how

he was appointed, what all the citizens of

Russia saw.

He will be able

to unite around himself those who

in the 21st century

are destined

to renew

Great Russia.

This is the secretary

of the Security Council,

director

of the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service),

of Russia, Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin.

"...who are destined to renew Great Russia." Well,

there you have it—he's been "renewing" it for 18 years now. And this is a very

important video. I think it's important to

show it, because now Putin

builds his ideology on a kind of

contrast with the Yeltsin years. We

can see it. But who appointed him? He was

appointed by Yeltsin, appointed by the

Yeltsin family. He was appointed in order to

serve the interests of the Yeltsin family. So I don't

know—do you feel any contradiction between

the Yeltsin era and the Putin era? Or

do you not remember the Yeltsin years at all?

I mean, I think I remember the moment when

my parents were deciding to vote for him.

That's about the only political memory from

my early childhood connected with

politics. And after that, I already remember the moment

when he was leaving.

On New Year's Eve itself. Kira has just now

partly formulated the explanation, the answer

to a question journalists also often ask me:

why have young people now come out

to protest rallies? Well, that's why—

because all their lives they have seen

only Putin. And all these stories about

the "cursed '90s" or the Soviet Union

or how little we had back then—

I don't know, in the 1980s we sat down at

the New Year's table and had nothing, whereas

now everything is abundant—I have bored Kira

with stories like that several times. But

she can't even understand what it's about. Right. And

my children can't understand it either, and even people

who are older—if a person is 30, that

means Putin came to power when they were

12. Even for a 30-year-old...

a person for his entire conscious life. He

has lived under Putin all his life, and he's somewhat

tired of it. Besides, in recent years they

have obviously seen the economic situation

deteriorate; put simply, they just see

their wages going down, right? Yes, of course, and they

are absolutely not buying all these stories

about how things are better now than in the 1990s

they want things to be better than in

the neighboring country; they want things to be

better than yesterday, but instead something is happening that

makes life worse and worse, every

year. So young people, people of the new

generation, people of Putin's generation, they

will protest because they are simply

fed up. Will you protest? Of course. I

saw how you—yes, somehow you didn't end up in

police custody during the rally. And yes, there were

some extremist episodes in your

biography too.

Well, speaking of 18 years of Putin, and

in connection with today's and yesterday's

events, we have actually seen very clearly

seen it.

What is it based on? The only thing,

the only thing Putin can rely on now,

is no longer the standard of living—not for a long time now,

not even high oil prices, but

exclusively, simply, the jailing of people

who are dissatisfied with something, including

people who, well, haven't even done

anything that could in any way be interpreted as

any kind of resistance to the regime.

Of course, at the start of our program we cannot avoid

touching on two topics. First of all, this is

the verdict that was handed down

yesterday, right?

regarding the rally on the 26th.

Andrei Kosykh was sentenced to 4 years—

or rather, 4 and a half years

of imprisonment in a penal colony for

taking part in the rally on the 26th. He is accused

of having attacked a police officer, uh,

and the photograph in the case file on which

the whole case is based is just some kind of

dark silhouette. It's obvious that no one

attacked anyone; we did not, in general, see any beaten

police officers. We basically did not observe

any genuinely beaten

police officers there who could

say that they had suffered harm to their

health. We did not see any. These are

completely fabricated cases. And one more

verdict was handed down just today, uh, right?

In court—I know, I'm saying Dmitry Kretsky

Dmitry Kretsky's case has been sent to court, but I mean

the verdict that was delivered just

today. It was the verdict in the so-

called Army of the Will of the People case.

Yes. Well, everything is clear there with Alexander

Sokolov,

who was sentenced to 3.5 years. It's not

entirely clear with the others, to be honest,

the other members.

It's not clear to me at all. So let's—if

it's clear, maybe it will be clear to the viewers too,

at least a little, so

there are strange views. Some people consider my

views strange; some consider your

views strange—for example, your

views on music or partly on

literature seem rather

strange to me. But if I become president, I am not

going to put you in prison for that for four years.

These people who today received

various prison terms—the journalist Sokolov

got three and a half years, Parfyonov four years,

Kirill Barabash three years, and the group's leader

Yury Mukhin got a 3.5-year suspended sentence. What

exactly was their crime? If you

just type into YouTube right now "Army

of the Will of the People" or "referendum for

responsible government," you will see directly

—I wrote it down, yes—they stated that

they wanted a referendum and had even drafted

a bill under which there would be

accountability for the highest elected

state officials—the president and deputies

if they did their jobs poorly. I mean,

it's all logical: people simply wanted to hold

a referendum if they were doing a bad job. For

example, if, uh, your performance on

this broadcast today were to get

nothing but dislikes—well, at least

it would be hard, hard to separate whether

people were actually criticizing themselves or

criticizing me.

You say "dislikes" because you're mixing things up

or on purpose? I already said just now

"without likes" because deliberately, yes, with all

due respect.

So anyway, returning to the

serious subject: these people came forward simply with the idea

of direct democracy. They said: we want

to hold a referendum, we want to evaluate

this government. If the government is evaluated

well, we reward it. This was explicitly

written down. If we evaluate the government poorly, we

punish them—not shoot them, not hang them,

not do something horrible to them. Well,

there should be some system of penalties within

the law. And all these people, for

simply sending out press releases,

—I was called by the defense side

as a witness in this case. Well, because I

know people from this group, uh, and I have long

followed their activities. For the most part, their

activities, with all due respect, mainly

consisted of the fact that they

sent out press releases about their

bill, and these press releases were read

and deleted, and now they have been sent to prison for

3 to 4 years for that. Let's listen to what

Sokolov said—not even in his final statement,

but after the verdict was delivered, uh. Do we have

that clip?

that the idea of a referendum in Russia

and in essence, the full weight of the law will begin to be used against us.

a petty crime involving obstruction

a referendum, as you can see

thank you for your work

please throw it in here

please

for conversations

people were accused of creating

an extremist community, practically

a terrorist group, simply because

they said, “Let’s hold a referendum and

we’ll evaluate this government.” What

happens in Switzerland, for example, what

happens in a large number of countries, what

the Russian authorities themselves introduced when

for example

they began using the Russian Public Initiative system

where 100,000 people can

vote there on something

or assess something, and the

Active Citizen system under Sergei Sobyanin is

exactly about that. Of course, we know

that everything there is rigged and falsified, but

in essence it’s exactly the same thing, a kind of

direct voting system, a referendum.

So now let’s jail Sobyanin and this whole

group under the same article

as Sokolov. Uh, I don’t know, Sokolov is

also an excellent investigative journalist.

Did you ever work with him, did you

ever speak with him? I didn’t. I remember he did

an investigation into the Vostochny Cosmodrome

there was some major, really good

investigation, but I never personally

interacted with him, unfortunately. But he

really was great. I also, with him—with

him specifically, from that group—

he was the only one I didn’t know, uh,

he was an excellent journalist—probably still is

an excellent journalist, just a journalist

who is sitting in prison, and this is completely

uh, a completely vile, disgusting

story. I understand perfectly well that in every

one of our broadcasts, unfortunately, we talk about

some criminal case, and it is

revolting, it’s disgusting, it’s

lawlessness has already become somehow

almost banal to use the word ‘lawlessness,’ because

people call every case lawlessness. But here

it’s simply

random people being imprisoned. For what? So that

these 18 years of Putin, uh, well

so to speak, would continue further. That’s

the only thing holding it all together. It’s,

unfortunately, uh, unfortunately, horrible,

monstrous, and

this concerns not only

such political cases; it concerns

the criminal justice system in Russia as a whole. This

week some striking statistics were

published—yes, in *Vedomosti* (a Russian business newspaper), if

I remember correctly, *Vedomosti* published

statistics on the number of acquittals

in Russia. And it would seem they couldn’t

possibly get any lower, because everyone kept

joking endlessly that in Russia only 0.4%

of verdicts are acquittals—0.43%, which is

lower than under Stalin, but apparently there was still

room to go down, and now it’s 0.36%, as

you can see on the screen right now, percent

acquittal rate. But the most interesting thing there

is which cases have lower—or rather higher—

acquittal rates. If you wanted to know

what crime to commit so that

your chances of acquittal would be higher,

well, obviously—if you know the answer to that question

you need to—don’t look here, don’t look here,

please

corruption crimes. It seems to me

people should be acquitted more often for them in our

country.

That’s right—in fact, really,

the acquittal probabilities are all very

low across all types of crimes. That’s how

the system works: it just imprisons everyone.

Once you end up there, you’ll almost

certainly be jailed. But several times

less

the probability—if you, uh, are put on trial there—

of being imprisoned is lower

for abuse of official position

and exceeding official authority.

For abuse of official position,

the acquittal rate is 2.1%; for exceeding official

authority, 1.6%. So there, several

times more often, as we can see—still low, but

several times more frequent

some measure of justice, the chance of

acquittal, goes to those people charged with

the crimes under which officials are usually tried

rather than for bribes, because here people are

actually prosecuted for bribery fairly rarely. It’s a complicated

offense structure, whereas exceeding official

authority—But if you, Kira, decided

Interesting, weren’t you supposed to be given

the same little note as me?

Actually, here’s the takeaway: if someone wants

to commit a serious crime,

a crime with a high probability of

acquittal, then what they need to do is

falsify elections, they need to

rig elections. What do we have there,

eight, almost nine percent—8.7–8.9%

chance that you’ll be acquitted

if you falsify elections. That is,

that’s the kind of crime toward which

the authorities are most lenient. But I

think it’s fairly

obvious why: because in 100

percent of cases, the authorities are the ones who

organize it, and probably imprison these people

if they falsify things in favor of some other

side. And guess under which article

there are no acquittals at all, with a 0%

chance of acquittal if you suddenly

find yourself charged under the infamous Article 282

the extremism article under which

Sokolov and all the others have now been imprisoned, under which

these criminal cases are being opened.

against our campaign headquarters, where in general

they persecute people and fabricate cases against

political activists. Article 282 (Russia’s law on incitement of hatred or extremism) — if

you are charged under it and the case makes it to court, you are

saved 100%. That’s how this

system works. But what I actually want

to say to you, Kira, is something very interesting.

First of all, don’t commit a crime,

because given where you work,

you have no chance of being among that 8% of acquittals. Even

if you start rigging elections.

But besides the fact that this system has

a repression-based— is that even a word?

Repression-based, repressive — sorry,

a repressive machine, yes, uh—

it also grotesquely distorts

the law enforcement system, the police.

Police officers simply understand that they do not need

to prove anything in court. Yes, you don’t have to

prepare proper case materials, because

there is no adversarial process in court. You can put together

some case file, send it over, and you will still

get the person imprisoned, the person will still

be convicted. That means there is no need

to work. The Investigative Committee doesn’t

work, the police don’t work at night,

don’t work — well, just imagine that you are

an investigator.

I think about this a lot when I’m at your

court hearings. I recently told Alexei

that three years ago I sincerely thought that

something here might change, that in the end

some kind of

sudden event might happen that would somehow

change the outcome of the case. Well, at least

a little bit — like in the movies: an acquittal, a witness

suddenly says, “You know what, no, I

changed my mind.”

Those same police officers who

come there, stand up, start

— at your last hearing, the police officers, well,

seriously, he was fumbling with some papers, he

was nervous, as if he had forgotten a lesson

he hadn’t learned. I mean, usually they — well, they

absolutely do not need to do anything, that’s

true. And still, the rewritten

reports — they brought in ten people, and their

reports all said the same thing. Was it in

Volkov’s case or Rubanov’s, when there was

that case where they were in the courthouse corridor

rewriting them? I was sitting there then. What

was that? Well, and the same thing happened now

when your report was signed

by the police officer who, at that very

moment — formally, when he supposedly signed it —

was in Volkova’s courtroom giving

testimony. They literally rewrite reports in the corridors.

So in principle, in the kind of courts

we’ve seen in films, and that will exist in the

beautiful future, this would be

inadmissible evidence altogether. Any

judge would throw it out immediately. And in an adversarial

process, in a jury trial, this would be

completely impossible, because jurors, well,

obviously, would never find

a person guilty on the basis of such

evidence. It would all fall apart. But in

a Russian court, it works. By the way,

that is one of the reasons why, uh,

the Russian state

so persistently removes jury trials from

so many areas, because

the percentages — actually, with juries, by the way,

there

it’s 30–40%, precisely because the police do poor work.

Well then, uh, let’s probably

move on — you’re rubbing your hands — to the question

I don’t want to answer.

Well, I mean, maybe I do want to, I just haven’t yet

answered it anywhere before on the air of this

program. Tell us, uh, what were you

being pressed about this week? Well, obviously

they asked about Khodorkovsky first, and then

today about Udaltsov, so about

Khodorkovsky — what were they asking? Let’s put it in the

harshest possible terms for

me. About Udaltsov, uh, they quoted him to me,

a quote that went as follows:

We probably have it — please play it.

“And when that same Ilya Ponomaryov was running around on

that day saying that we needed to break

through the police cordon, I found it

strange, and I wondered why he was doing

that, when Alexei Navalny, the day before

that rally, had suggested not going to Bolotnaya (Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, site of major protests)

but instead heading toward the Udarnik cinema/theater.”

End quote. Yes, basically it’s simple:

comment on it. And right now I also see

that we’re getting a huge number of

questions: will you cooperate with

Udaltsov, will you be on friendly terms, will you

create something together? Alexei, please comment

on the statement. Who are they asking about — Udaltsov

or Khodorkovsky?”

Well, today it’s really about Udaltsov, because

of what happened today.

Let’s start from the beginning. I’m sitting at work in the morning,

and after a while Kira comes to me

— my phone is exploding: “Udaltsov,

press conference,” everyone’s asking. So I

went to look at what was going on there.

The press conference — I click on Rost...

Show me the photo. Ah, there it is,

it’s on the screen. I see Udaltsov, and I

honestly, without any reservations, say: I’m very glad

he’s free. I’m glad to see him. He is

without question a political prisoner. The case

against him was absolutely fabricated.

I’m happy that Sergei has finally been released,

especially since he served the full term without

any reductions, without any of those special arrangements. Well,

and who do I see standing next to him? You saw it

in the video — nodding along, standing there like

his handler.

At the press conference, clearly orchestrating everything.

Some familiar woman. Where had I seen her

before? Maybe we have a little...

A video featuring her—let's watch it.

Let's watch that too.

Mr. Navalny deceived people—that's where we started.

We started with the fact that he deceived the people

who follow him.

And we also saw this wonderful

person—what's her name?

Volkova, who for some reason goes around everywhere and

says that she is my former lawyer.

She's a strange woman who, for all anyone knows,

appeared out of nowhere, probably in 2012,

and started introducing herself as—what does that even mean—

speaking from the position of a lawyer. You've probably

seen her in REN TV reports (a Russian pro-Kremlin television channel), where she also

talks about me and what she called me. We

even had some video where Navalny was called

a political pedophile, a political

pedophile—meaning Navalny is a political

pedophile. And most of all—then there appeared

a photograph of this person on screen right now.

The director of our foundation, Roman

Rubanov, who was jailed for 10 days,

was jailed because this very same

Violetta Volkova, who today

was running Udaltsov's press conference,

showed up at a rally where he was

the legal coordinator, and then in an

interview she said, "I was just passing by, I saw

the stage was empty, so I went up and started

speaking." And when Rubanov said,

"Why is some—well, I don't want her

speaking. I'm the official filer for the rally, I'm its

organizer," and tried to turn off the sound, the

police came up to him and arrested him, and

they took him away—he was detained and

jailed for 10 days. He served 10 days

because of this wonderful

woman. So, uh, despite all that,

while I understand how hard it has been for Sergei,

these four and a half years, and the kind of

difficult circumstances he found himself in, still, to me

it's strange to watch the group of

allies he now has—this

is very disappointing to me. Well, I

hope that the man has just been released—what can

you expect from him? I understand that even if

you're locked up for 15 or 25 days, you're

basically isolated. Kira brings me

printouts,

news summaries of what's happened. But

when a person is actually in prison,

there's even less real information available about

what's going on. So let Sergei

get out, look around, understand what's happening

around him, and maybe be a bit more, uh,

careful, perhaps, in his choice of—well, I don't even

know what to call them—adviser, handler,

whatever. Unfortunately, it looks

like a handler. I've known Udaltsov for many years,

probably 15 years. It seems to me that he

will somehow be able

to break out of

this grip, this entanglement, uh, and from those whom

she, of course, represents.

Khodorkovsky? Yes, Khodorkovsky is in there too.

There's also that wonderful quote everyone is asking you

to comment on. I hope we'll

listen to it. Let's imagine that something

happened and Navalny was allowed to run in

the 2018 Russian presidential election,

and let's imagine that he wins. How would

you react? Would that make you feel

joy or fear? For me, it would cause

joy on the one hand, because I

believe any rotation of power is

a good thing. On the other hand, I would definitely

say: guys,

stock up for hard times,

because famine will begin—not famine, I mean in

a broader sense. No, it's just that we'll return to

a system of monopoly power that is unpleasant for everyone.

At the beginning of his path, Putin was

noticeably more liberal than he is today, but the path

that a

leader in our country travels

is always more or less the same. And that is exactly

why I believe we should frame the question not as

"Who instead of Putin?" but "What instead of Putin?" And that

is the position that, as of today,

a real transfer of power in

our country will take place, first,

within the next eight years, and second,

it will specifically be a change from a presidential

to a parliamentary, or parliamentary

republic. There will be no other kind of change.

So you're stocking up on, I don't know, suitcases

and hardtack just in case? No? All right, so they're

asking you to comment on that.

Simply put: okay, Mikhail Borisovich (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) has been talking about

me all week—let's talk about him.

Mikhail Borisovich, listen and take notes. But

first of all, as Khodorkovsky himself correctly said,

I watched his interview

with Yury Dud (a popular Russian interviewer)—an excellent interview.

I also watched his interview with Venediktov.

In that interview, he said, well,

"Guys, you're quoting only one of my

phrases." And in essence, in essence,

there's nothing bad there. I mean, I certainly

don't like, uh, the way it was presented,

which is exactly what he was talking about, because

he understands that journalists will

pull out only the phrase, "If Navalny

wins, stock up on hardtack or suitcases,"

but in essence he's simply saying that

we don't need to elect just a person—we need

to change the system. And that's fine, he

is saying the right thing, and I'm glad that

this is being discussed, because that is the purpose of

our election campaign. After all, this

is not an election campaign specifically for

me personally. It is an election campaign for

people who want change in Russia, and

of course change in Russia is impossible

unless we make the system such that

some person, some new person, will not be able

to usurp power again. And that requires the very

constitutional reform. In every

I talk about this in the interview.

It says

that what disappoints me about the position

of Mikhail Borisovich (a respectful way of referring to Mikhail Khodorkovsky) is this: why

doesn't he want to read our program? Why

do we keep coming back to this over and over?

A lot has already been said: we will reduce the presidential term to 4

years, we will eliminate

the possibility of serving more than 8 years, we will give

more powers to parliament, and everything

else—this is all a huge part of my

program, and a lot has been said about it. But again,

uh, well, the saddest thing in all this

is that Khodorkovsky—I think very highly of him,

he is a very smart person, very

good—but unfortunately he still

gravitates toward that traditional camp

of the Russian opposition that has led us

into the dead end we are now in.

The entire Russian opposition, broadly speaking,

is divided, for me, into two parts. Some

people do things, while others endlessly

discuss how exactly we are going to live

in some future Russia when Putin is gone.

And they say we absolutely must, right now,

think about what Russia will be like without

Putin. That's a valid conversation, it needs

to happen, it needs to be discussed—but we also need

to do something else. Say Putin is gone tomorrow—

who will be president then?

Let's say right now, this very moment, there's breaking news:

Putin has, uh, been taken to the moon; he's gone off into the wilderness

to chase pike and has decided to keep chasing them

for the rest of his life. Sorry, but

who will be president then, in this

system? They'll appoint someone—Sergei

Ivanov, Dmitry Medvedev, along with his

yachts and all that stuff. In other words, this

system will reproduce itself if we do not

fight it. So let's fight it.

Let's do something every day

to defeat this system, instead of

endlessly agonizing and talking about

how, well, yes...

Well, that's not action—it's an imitation

of activity that consists of

endless discussion and dividing up the skin

of a bear that hasn't been killed yet.

One more question. All right—then what, in your view,

should Khodorkovsky's activity ideally

look like, the activity of his organization?

Please make a note of this, so that when there are

headlines

like "Another scandal in the Russian opposition,"

it says Yarmysh started all this and

all that—well, okay, I'll answer your

question. First,

I absolutely do not share the view

of those people who write, "Look, he's already

been working for three years, we're disappointed, they

haven't done anything," because there was no reason

to have inflated expectations. I

have been involved in this kind of work for many

years, and I understand that you can't change everything

The people who expected that Khodorkovsky would come

and immediately build

some huge organization, really

make things happen, do this, do that—well, that's

nonsense, my friends. You can't just

show up and make it happen like that. You cannot

build, for example, a network-based organization

while being abroad. It's impossible.

You can't build a political party here

especially under conditions of repression. And in general,

he shouldn't be doing this. I told him myself

that he shouldn't try to organize a network

structure—it's impossible to organize one here.

And besides, I certainly did not

uh,

I certainly wasn't expecting extraordinary achievements in terms

of organizational work.

Khodorkovsky is a smart man.

But an ordinary, normal smart person

can't create some kind of super-structure,

because it's simply not possible.

And you can't say, "Ah, he was an oligarch or

a wealthy man, so he must possess

some kind of superpowers." No, he doesn't.

He's a smart, capable guy, but like

any Russian oligarch in the commodities sector, well,

basically none of them has any super-

mega-abilities. If, I don't know, you want

to dispute that, then name me

even one Russian

commodities oligarch—or even a non-commodities one—

who achieved something while operating in

a competitive environment in the West, built

some kind of business there. Where are they? Even

the best of them, uh, accomplished nothing there.

So there is no need

to expect that a wealthy person, coming into

politics, will suddenly change everything here,

set everything right, and do some

super impressive things we've been waiting for for a long time

but that never got done. And anyway, can you name

even one

wealthy person—oligarch or not,

businessman—whose move into politics in

Russia was successful? Not even one that

ended well—just one that, at least for a time,

didn't end badly, or was successful in principle.

Prokhorov? Or those people from Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia, a Russian business association)?

The current Titov is a businessman too. Well,

nothing was accomplished there either, despite enormous resources.

So for now,

when Russian oligarchs, or simply

wealthy businessmen, run into

politics,

from Khodorkovsky to Usmanov, it generally doesn't

go very well. And there's a great

O. Henry story called *The Modern Village Entertainment*.

Have you read it?

Read it—it's easy to google.

It's called *The Modern Village

Entertainment*. It brilliantly describes the pattern

of interaction between a Russian oligarch and

various people who are trying to

providing political services, that's what this is about.

That's exactly what it's about—even Usmanov, yes, Usmanov,

rushed into politics and decided to say something to me there,

to answer me. But when he ran into

a competitive environment—well, YouTube,

It's great, you feel really confident

when you have Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel) or

the newspaper *Kommersant*, and you write something,

and people can only respond on Facebook. But

when you say it on YouTube, and on YouTube itself

someone answers you back, to a much broader

audience—well, what was his big achievement there?

His "achievement" was that he got played like

a child by some crooks. Who was it there—

Minaev, Krasovsky—who simply took

a huge amount of money and made him look

ridiculous. So I apologize for going on so

long. In general, there's no need to have

inflated expectations. But what disappoints

me is that in that same interview with Dud (Yury Dud, Russian journalist/interviewer),

Khodorkovsky was asked, "So what is

your coolest achievement over the last three years?"

and he says, "A website."

Well,

here we have

an impressive person with almost 100 percent

name recognition in Russia, with probably hundreds of

millions of dollars,

and an intelligent person, a good person,

who has a team—and the biggest

achievement is a website. Well, I have a website too.

Any person can make a website; for that

you basically need nothing at all. I want

Khodorkovsky to come out and say: I will build

a TV channel, I will build radio, I will make

an outstanding newspaper. I will help all these

journalists who otherwise won't be able to do anything.

I go to the section of his—well, this

project for defending political prisoners,

it's a great project. I was one of the people

who advised him to create this

project. At first, if you remember,

it was even called—maybe someone remembers—the project

of Navalny and Khodorkovsky. You remember, right?

We talked that through at the time. So yes,

good for him for doing it—it's better

than nothing. But there it says: currently we

are defending, what, eight people or seven, and

we have helped about 30 people, to whom

they gave 150,000 rubles each (about $1,600), but that's

great. Khodorkovsky helped me too, by the way,

once, with paying lawyers in

one of my cases. If not for him, I would have

been completely screwed there, because from

all sides there were criminal cases, lawyers,

and there was absolutely no way

for me to carry all that myself. But

that's not his scale—to defend seven people, and

it's not his scale to help 30 people.

He should come out and say: I am allocating 2

million dollars a year, and I will pay for

lawyers for all political prisoners

in Russia. There are many of them, but for sums like these—

amounts that are laughably small for him—

he can absolutely allocate them. And they should

select those lawyers through a competitive process.

Relatives can't afford to get to the prison colonies,

so he should say: from this money, I will pay

for tickets for all relatives who need

to travel somewhere—I don't know, to Norilsk,

to visit their imprisoned relatives held on political charges.

Mikhail Borisovich, I am absolutely certain,

I kind of want to tell you this directly—

someday we'll meet, and I'll gladly

discuss this with you in person. But for now,

speaking through the camera, I don't want to see

a tweet from Open Russia saying that we

are raising 40,000 rubles (about $430) for a fine and have already

collected 4,000. That's ridiculous. That's not

Khodorkovsky's scale; that's not the scale

of Open Russia. I want to see the kind of work

that you are capable of doing. You should

do what you know how to do. I don't know—

create some kind of think tank, gather

the best scholars, pay them, do the things

that we can't do. Make films

that millions of people will watch. Build

television. But here, as you can see, everything is

about a little cup—we think every time which

one. Oksana, the producer of our channel, asks

what color cup we should use today—

white or red—and so we

perform in front of a wall painted

with colored chalk because we can't

afford to install, like others do, a video

screen; we can't do a green screen and all

the rest. That is, we do a lot of things,

these broadcasts are watched by hundreds of thousands of people, but

Khodorkovsky could do it on a much bigger scale.

He could make a much stronger showing. But I hope he will.

I hope he will do something bigger. So, to sum up my long

and rather huge answer to

[music]

Mikhail Borisovich's statement: I'm glad that he

is discussing this. I understand that he

is constantly being asked about me. That probably

annoys him a little. But it's great

that he responds. Still, I hope he

moves out of the zone where there is endless

discussion of authoritarian me, and enters

the zone where something—why are you wagging your finger at me?—where something

interesting is actually happening.

One more question—

Wait, before the first question: I can see the chat

is exploding with questions about Kamikadze. What

happened to Kamikadze? As I understand it, this is

happening right now, live.

It seems to me he released a personal video,

and apparently they are opening

a criminal case over it. He said so himself.

He said so himself. People are asking, asking:

Have you seen Kamikadze's latest video? Could he

be imprisoned? Wouldn't you like to help him?

I haven't seen the latest video, but

of course, first of all, I'm sure he did not

make any video for which one would actually

need to imprison someone, and it's hard to make

such a video. But

Of course, we’ll provide whatever help we can.

Whatever help we’re able to provide. And I support him, and

his struggle, in general, for a normal

YouTube channel and in his political statements, I

of course support him, and I hope that

everything will be all right. There’s already

some kind of criminal case that’s been opened,

something unclear. Well, now

they’ll say it’s a criminal case for incitement to

suicide.

Anyway, we’ll sort it out. If he needs

help, we’ll try to provide that help.

Kamikadze is a decent person. You

were wagging your finger at me about something there. Yes, I

was wagging my finger because, well, your

well-known authoritarianism—authoritarianism

that everyone knows about.

I mean, this is an old story—that you’re

accused of being a leader in the cult-of-personality sense, a kind of Putin 2.0.

I really don’t know

how many years this has been going on, but just in

recently,

over roughly the last

year and a half, it’s become absolutely widespread—

the main theme is calling you Putin,

comparing you to him, promising that if you come

to power, we’ll get the same thing

we have now. Columns are being written about it, everyone is talking about it,

speaking out, and even Yury Dud (a well-known Russian journalist and interviewer) asked

Khodorkovsky whether he would put an equals sign

between you and Putin.

It seems to me that it’s become fashionable now—

suddenly one person said it, and everyone

picked it up as one of those trending topics. What’s going on?

Well, first of all, it seems to me

that this is still being discussed by a fairly narrow

Facebook crowd, which of course

is interesting—we read what’s happening there—

but it’s still a rather small

discussion. Second, answer me

please, in front of the whole audience: well,

am I really authoritarian?

No, no.

Please. And you know, several times

at FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) staff meetings, I asked,

everyone says no. As for whether I’m authoritarian—I

really think I’m not at all

authoritarian. My working style is, uh,

it seems to me, super democratic, and

that even leads many people

to call our work style—sorry for the expression—

sloppy. That’s already kind of

a negative thing; it shouldn’t be like that, uh,

but

we need to keep an eye on it.

We should judge it by actions and by policy programs,

by statements. Let me stress once again:

we have clearly laid it out—I believe

and I’ve said this repeatedly for many years—that

the super-presidential republic

that exists in Russia is not what we need. The president should

reduce his own powers. If I become

president, I will voluntarily reduce my

powers. We must reduce

the presidential term; we must return

certain powers to parliament; we must give

parliament the ability to conduct independent

investigations, including against the

president. We must free the mass

media. These are my programmatic

positions. No one can reproach me

by saying I’ve only just started saying this now.

I’ve been saying this my entire political life.

And

that, it seems to me, fully explains

what kind of president I want to be and what kind of

beautiful

Russia of the future there will be if I am ultimately

elected to this office. It seems to me that one of the

reasons why this is constantly

being harped on is that, again,

historically, the Russian opposition has

ended up in such a terrible situation because

it is very afraid of leadership, very

afraid of competition. Everything that existed in

the Russian opposition—any principles of

unity—comes down to round tables,

remember Committee 2008 (a Russian opposition coalition),

these are people who, in theory, are supposed to sit down somewhere

and endlessly

keep negotiating about something. That doesn’t work. I

support primaries.

I

am saying quite openly that I will take part in these

primaries and win them. Maybe at some point

I’ll lose them; maybe I would lose them now,

but I’m ready to run and I’ll fight

for victory. I don’t see anything

authoritarian in that. It seems to me that this is a normal

situation. How else are we supposed to choose

our candidate? And many people, they

are simply afraid of this competition, afraid of

these elections. So they want to

reduce political activity to

an endless round table and meeting.

And if you don’t want to spend your time on round tables

and meetings, and you say, “No, I’d rather,”

“guys, go to the city of Omsk now and”

“hold a meeting with volunteers,” they say,

“Right, so you’re the leader; all you want

is to stand on stage, show off, and

have power.” I even shared the airtime, actually.

You can see it right there, with the other person. Well, that’s just

how the work of a presidential

candidate is structured: he has to travel and speak,

and his surname has to be printed on the leaflets.

And if you don’t want that, well,

that just means you’re afraid, you’re not confident in

your own abilities, and you don’t want to take part in

the primaries. So I completely do not

agree with these accusations from that point of view.

Well, probably that’s not surprising. Few people

agree with accusations against themselves; Putin probably doesn’t agree with

the idea that he’s a totalitarian leader either. Well,

once again, guys, judge by actions. My

political biography is completely clear.

You can look at what I’m doing now,

what I was doing recently, who my family is, what I

was concerned with how I live and everything else, and

Well, just draw your conclusions based on

these cases. We've been answering this

question for so long. What else do we have in the next topics?

Still-offended Russia: a new turn

just a new episode in the series: some

villains keep insulting Russia. You

remember that in the last program I said

that this is the main political trend

and that we would constantly see some

strange things, inexplicable things, about

certain offended people demanding

some kind of retribution against someone

and that's exactly what's happening now, has happened

something remarkable—or rather, it's not just now

that it's been happening; for several months now this

film *Matilda*, which was made by

Did you watch the trailer? I specifically

watched as many as two trailers today while preparing. I

really, honestly, don't understand. I understand everything,

that Poklonskaya has an unhealthy

love for Nicholas II, so in principle she

got outraged, but I simply cannot understand

what exactly could have irritated her so

much. Does she think that he couldn't have

been in love? Or—well, in this trailer

it's a tsar who cheated on his wife and

who was in love with a ballerina, and that somehow

undermines his pure image

It's just so hard to

grasp. I mean, what here could possibly be

so subversive that people

could get this outraged over it? Why

Well, listen, it's like this: there sits

Poklonskaya, thinking, well listen, this is

a saint, a holy man. He only

had a peaceful demonstration shot down. He

only wrecked Russia. He only

did a whole bunch of terrible things

He only was

a monarch who wanted to remain

an absolute monarch in the 20th century. That's all

nonsense. But this—

a picture with a ballerina—that happened, and

look, here's the thing: the director, Uchitel, is

quite clearly pro-Putin in his outlook,

as a person.

and he's being attacked by other pro-Putin

figures. This week

the main thing that happened was that on the 8th

Kadyrov said that on the territory of Chechnya

there would be no screening, and on the 9th the authorities

of Dagestan said there would be no screening and

tried to request it too. So suddenly

out of nowhere, all Dagestanis decided

that they dearly love Nicholas II and they

want to ban this film.

Even if we try to guess right now,

well, who is it? Did Putin decide to ban

all this? No—the culture minister,

who is pro-Putin, is on *Matilda*'s side.

Poklonskaya is also pro-Putin, but against

*Matilda*. Kadyrov is pro-Putin too, and someone

has stirred up this whole offended reaction—100

thousand signatures have been collected there,

some petitions and all the rest. What's all this for?

And remember how on the previous broadcast I

said this would become the main

political driving force: someone is constantly

getting offended, and some people are constantly

demanding that something be banned. This is what

all politics will boil down to in the coming

years. All sorts of people will constantly

be trying to ban something, because by now it's become

pointless to try to ban me or

you—or really, we've already been banned from

all sides. Now they'll start trying to ban each other.

But, uh, what I wanted

to say, still on the subject of *Matilda*,

there is a reason to be offended, and Poklonskaya

does have a reason to be offended. I don't understand why

she isn't getting offended over Lenin, though. And so

they're writing petitions against the film,

against director Uchitel. Today

Poklonskaya said there should be

a criminal case opened for creating an

extremist organization against

the director of this film. But if you get on at

Avtozavodskaya metro station, on the green

line, and ride along this

green line, where do you arrive? At

Voykovskaya metro station, which is named after

Pyotr Voykov, who, as is well known,

was involved in the execution of Nicholas II—he gave the order for the shooting

and was one of the people who approved

the execution. There are various memoirs

which, admittedly, are rejected by many, about

how he supposedly almost personally stabbed

those children there.

But what is absolutely certain, documentarily,

is that he received something like 16

liters of sulfuric acid in order to

take those people who had been killed in that massacre

and then pour sulfuric acid over them, and

Poklonskaya doesn't notice that at all.

She doesn't notice it at all. Before the start of the

program—I'm about to fly into a rage here

because I—just do the same thing

I did: google right now "Voykov Street"

and you'll find

28 Voykov Streets in major Russian cities.

Where are you from—do you have one where you are?

In Rostov-on-Don, for example, there is a Voykov Street,

and that's not even counting streets called

Voykovsky, or Pyotr Voykov Street, or

something else. What's more, I'll say this—yes, I

am sure Natalia Poklonskaya will listen to

this broadcast, so: dear Natalia

Poklonskaya, in your native Crimea there are two

Voykov Streets, in Kerch and in Simferopol.

What's more, the Kerch Metallurgical

Plant is called Petrus—this was the party

nickname of Pyotr Voykov—and in Crimea you also have

a village called Voykovo, that is, after Voykov. In other words, a whole lot of

streets and a whole lot of localities are named in

honor of the man who killed your

beloved tsar and poured sulfuric acid over him, his family,

and his children. Why are you silent?

Then please go to your native

Crimea and hold a referendum there.

Rename streets there. Why don’t we

hear a single statement at all on this

topic? What hypocrisy, you have to admit.

It’s easier to open these cases, teacher,

by the prosecutor of Crimea.

And she swore allegiance to Ukraine; now she

has sworn allegiance to Russia, but in any case she is

the prosecutor of Crimea, she is a deputy from Crimea, but

if deputies from Crimea are demanding

that streets be renamed—well no, you don’t

want that. You want to ban

some film. It’s disgusting. It’s

disgusting, unfortunately, and well, this is

what is happening. It’s unclear how to

put a stop to it already. As you can see, even Putin’s

people can’t stop it.

Because the theme of an offended

Russia will keep

working constantly.

Now, on to something good for a change. Come on,

something good. We have, we have

good news, very rare good news: we

won a court case.

And that really is an obvious

impossibility, because it was a case about

honor and dignity, a defamation case

against me. I always lose cases like that

because some kind of pro-

Putin clientele, all those people,

sue me and demand that some of

our materials or statements be declared

untrue,

defamatory. And one Sergey

Anatolyevich Mikhailov

who, as the media report,

is the leader of the Solntsevo criminal

group, nicknamed Mikhas, also sued

me over our film *Chaika* and,

surprisingly, lost.

It’s a completely astonishing thing. I think

it has to do with the fact that he really did it

on his own initiative.

He filed it just to somehow

curry favor a little with all that

Kremlin crowd. Riding the wave of Usmanov

filing suit, he apparently felt

that he needed to sue Navalny, needed

to send some signal that I don’t like him either,

that I’ll join the fight against

him, squeeze a million rubles out of him (about $11,000), but

what happened was that he filed suit and everyone

remembered the film *Chaika* again; everyone rushed

to see what we had said in the film about it,

*Chaika*, and once again recalled and saw the facts that

our Prosecutor General is a gangster,

that his family are gangsters and thieves and

corrupt officials, and that deputy prosecutors general

set up companies together with

the wives of Tsapok gang members

who murdered children, and the effect was the opposite.

So, in order to end this more quickly,

they denied his claim.

So that’s how we won, but

the most astonishing thing, because of this trial,

is that the documents Mikhailov

brought to court show that

he was awarded by President Putin.

President Putin presented him with

a commemorative watch.

And the coolest part—what I liked even more

than the Putin part—is that we see that in

2009 he also received a certificate of honor

from the Minister of Internal Affairs,

Nurgaliyev.

Our lawyers dug this up, and they brought

all of this in. You understand, it’s fantastic: here is

a man whom all Russian media call

the leader of an organized criminal group,

the Solntsevo group; all foreign media call him that,

the Swiss prosecutor’s office called him that,

that’s how he appears in police files,

and yet they give him a certificate of honor.

And I’d be interested to see how

that happened. There stands Minister Nurgaliyev,

Nurgaliyev back then, in his uniform with stripes

and epaulettes, all gleaming, and he walks up to him and

I’m interested in only one thing: did he say to him,

“Dear Sergey Anatolyevich,” or “Dear

comrade”?

“I am awarding you this certificate of honor

for your contribution to... whatever it is you do.” And the same

goes for Putin’s administration, because Peskov

was lying, as we have now learned. It turned out

that when this was first discussed,

he said there had been no award ceremony.

But there was—there is already an official statement.

It turned out he lied to all of us, and

indeed they did present him with a certificate of honor,

they gave him a watch. For what merits, I wonder?

But we decided not to drop this story,

and we sent official letters both to the Interior Ministry and to

the presidential administration—official

letters, which they are obliged to answer.

We want them to confirm the authenticity of both this

certificate of honor and these

award watches with which our authorities

reward the wonderful Sergey

Anatolyevich, whom for some reason everyone

considers the leader of the Solntsevo

organized criminal group.

It will be very interesting to see what they

reply to us.

What else is on the agenda for us, Kir?

Today we also have

teachers—not the director Uchitel, but teachers.

This is actually extremely important news

that came out this week: the Levada

Center published the results of its

large survey of teachers, and it turned out

—well, a fairly obvious thing turned out. I think

even without the survey we all understood this,

it’s just that now we have actual figures

reflecting public opinion. So what

did they find? Please tell us.

What they found was that

the number of teachers satisfied with their work

By the end of 2016, it had sharply declined—

just think about it.

And the share of those dissatisfied with their salary increased,

while the share satisfied with their salary rose to 28 percent

to 34.

What matters here is the abrupt, almost sudden

drop in teachers’ satisfaction with their

work.

This is the most important point. We began

today’s broadcast by noting that

the Putin regime has turned 18—reached legal adulthood,

and that is a completely

fitting piece of news, because, well, that’s it—he has

already squeezed the entire country dry, to the bottom. He

can’t do anything anymore. There was a big

discussion about this last week,

or the week before, after an article in *Vedomosti* (a Russian business newspaper) about

how the presidential administration cannot

find an image of the future. So

Putin will run in the election, but they can’t

piece together any kind of vision for the future. But

how could they? What are they supposed to say?

Before, the vision of the future was clear. In 2005,

oil prices were rising, and they told people:

we’ll raise your salaries a little. That worked. In

2011–12, and then in 2014–15, it was: now we’re going to

go to war with everyone and seize something.

They seized something, but everyone only got poorer because of it. Basically,

the whole thing rested on repression and

on the fact that living standards were gradually

rising because the price of oil

was gradually rising. Then oil prices fell,

and the king was revealed to be naked. And this same Levada Center survey

also looked at teachers’ salaries, and we

learned that, uh, half of all teachers earn

less than

20,000 rubles (about $340 at the time).

Another 25% earn between 20,000 and 27,000 rubles (about $340–$460), and another

quarter earn more than 27,000 rubles, while the average

salary is

25,900—that is, 26,000 rubles (about $440). That still

sounds like a fairly decent figure,

but I personally know only one teacher—

my friend, about my age. She

works at a school in Tambov Region (in western Russia),

and she earns 11,500 rubles (about $195). At the same time,

part of that money is paid to her as a supplement

for being a young specialist, because, well,

to be completely honest, it’s 11,000—11,000

plus bonuses and extra payments.

That is, if she were not

a young specialist,

well...

That’s exactly why they jail people,

because what else can they say to teachers? Well, how

could job satisfaction possibly rise

if, among the top 25 percent

of the highest-paid teachers, we include people

who earn 27,000 rubles? That’s less

than 500 U.S. dollars. There you have it—a country

claiming global leadership,

extracting oil and selling oil for

trillions of dollars, which has

nuclear weapons, which gives various countries

billions of dollars left and right,

and yet to its highest-paid

teachers it can pay salaries of about $500,

at most $600. How is all this

even happening? And it’s obvious that, well, it cannot

work like this. It simply cannot. So,

please explain—your

teacher friend, does she talk about

politics, or do you not discuss it?

How she votes, I don’t know. But one thing is absolutely

certain: she will not vote for Putin.

So

no, in fact, they are all very

unhappy with the amount of reporting. And besides

their salaries and everything else, it’s not just that—

the entire education system seems

so

idiotic that they spend far more

time filling out stupid paperwork

instead of working with children. Have you

read Alexei Navalny’s platform? I have.

I’ve read the platforms. That’s exactly why, by the way,

this didn’t come out of nowhere.

I didn’t just make it up off the top of my head. In

2013, we were constantly

meeting with teachers. Even now I

still meet fairly often with teachers—

with teachers at meetings with volunteers—and

they too, by the way, cite salaries

well below 26,000 rubles, and all of them

complain that because of all the reporting, we are not

working with children—we are writing papers

that nobody reads. And since

2013, every one of my

platforms has included a point that I will implement:

I will free teachers

from this endless reporting. It is not

needed, it does not work, and in any case

it is falsified. It’s simply—yes, it’s

this endless paperwork flow that

nobody needs. Our task is to make sure

teachers work with children and with parents.

Let them use all that time

that they now spend on forms for the district education office and for

reporting. They keep an electronic gradebook,

and they keep a paper gradebook, and they also

do all sorts of other things—lesson guides,

endless materials, endless meetings—and

none of that is necessary. They should be teaching

children. And the practice of modern

education in European countries, in those

countries whose children achieve outstanding results

in various international

Olympiads, shows that teachers need to be left

alone, and that their salaries need to be

raised. And the Russian budget can

raise their salaries and stop

forcing them to do

stupid paperwork.

But I want to say, so as not to end

on such a gloomy note—I see we are already

coming close to the end—

that this situation with teachers is

catastrophic, and

It’s terrible for them, and it shows there.

There is a sharp rise in discontent. It

is good for running an election campaign.

These teachers who earn

11,000 rubles (about 11,000 RUB) are unhappy, but many of them

still, by the way, continue to vote for

Putin. Why? Because they all say,

“Well, if not Putin, then who?” It seems

there’s no one else. And for 18 years now

they’ve been told that there is no one else, but

there are others. In particular, there are other people

and there are ours as well. In this election campaign,

in this election campaign, we need to

take an active part, telling

teachers like these that there is another, completely

different world possible, and this is no

fairy tale. With the current budget, it is possible to

raise their salaries almost twofold.

This may not be a problem at all.

You could do it just like that, and remove

half of the excesses. There are candidates

who talk about this. So, my friends,

I urge all of you to take an active

part in the campaign. These people all across

the country, who are sitting there, who

are unhappy with their salaries, unhappy

with their situation, unhappy with their

principals, unhappy with their

bosses and governors—they are waiting until

someone comes to them and tells them

that such an alternative exists, that there is such a

candidate. They do not want to let him onto the ballot,

but all together we must, uh, make that

happen. That is why I am going into this election

—to help all these people. We are all going for one

choice, for that purpose, right.

And now, well, everyone in the comments

will write that I seated her next to me

so she could go after you.

Please, on the next live stream with me,

argue actively. Thank you very much to everyone who

watched this broadcast. Uh, in the description of this

video there are links to all our

social media pages, please

follow us—definitely follow us

and definitely subscribe to our channel.

They tell the truth here. Uh, next

Thursday, 2018, I’ll be here with Kira if

uh, she got good reviews, probably.

With Kira. If the reviews were bad,

then so that she can improve. See you

next Thursday.

[music]