— I am surprised that Russian society has agreed to the following order of things: Alexei Navalny is supposedly an extremely toxic figure, to mention which is dangerous, and on the other hand, Vladimir Putin is almost officially becoming a figure who is beyond criticism. There is a «criminal blogger» and there is a national leader. It seems that our social and political life has now come down to this. It's weird, how did it happen?
— Bipolar circuits are products of the brain, not reality. You can, of course, artificially compare Putin and Navalny — one has the ability to imprison and torment the other indefinitely. It is by this rather meager criterion that they can be compared, but why? Putin has become a supporting figure in the image backdrop of state television. He now has a different role than, say, even 10-15 years ago. Then people rushed to the TV, hearing a familiar voice, but today he can talk about something for six hours, and the agencies do not know what to tell them.
However, the problem is not with him.
It is that those who are called the opposition work on the agenda that interests the opposition.
They are, as it were, busy with self-service, and the authorities have every opportunity to form their own agenda. Generally speaking, the authorities and the opposition should have a common agenda for the country, they should grapple over it. If we are talking about how the opposition's agenda is when and where to go out into the street, then you cannot count on the majority, or from some moment on the simple attention of citizens.
Navalny took an important step. He created a thing that existed for ten years, but even today the press is too lazy to discuss — the experience of political resistance. Ten years of FBK (the editors are forced to point out that the organization is included in the list of extremist organizations by the authorities — editor's note ) have accumulated vast experience. Generally speaking, this is a subject for analysts of the opposition to rapaciously attack, there is a lot there. But nothing happens. Mournful sobs are heard — everything is destroyed, everything is over. You know, when Tvardovsky's New World was closed in 1970, I also thought it was all over!
— In your recent interviews you use the phrase “the former opposition”. When you are offered this topic about the defeat of the opposition, you say: «the previous opposition has been crushed.» But the new, it seems, has not yet been revealed, and from what it can be formed is also unclear.
— In countries like ours, when the opposition is really crushed or deeply failed, which has happened, generally speaking, more than once in history, the center of the opposition bifurcates — it turns into a resisting person and into power. When the Soviet government once defeated … we did not call it opposition, but the semi-legal liberal environment, actually powerful, and then dissidence arose, and it was also defeated, but it took about fifteen years, and then it really seemed that everything died. But everything went deep into the apparatus of power and then exploded with Gorbachev's perestroika.
I don't know what will happen now, this is actually a question for those who are ready to act. But I do not see any particular readiness [of people to participate in opposition politics], I see a lot of guys on the streets on scooters, and, in general, they feel good. There is a problem here: the opposition to what should be built up? Opposition to what is important. What was the opposition, say, before Gorbachev? And she was, several different oppositions arose, they were not united. There was, for example, a very strong wave of disagreement with the project of turning Siberian rivers southward, hundreds of people took part in it, moreover, with party membership cards. And, in general, they won. Did this play a role in the politicization of the government? Played. Now there are also giant latifundia called «state megaprojects» — with monstrous costs, uncontrollable, unverifiable. There are dozens of them, by the way, and they are not tied to territories. When they come to the territory, they walk along it in forged boots, the population does not like them. A topic for the opposition? I think the topic. But there is no such institution as responsible criticism of what is being done in this area.
And before that, it was the same with the 2020 Strategy. I also observed all this close up, there were hundreds of experts, they were exposed to a variety of classified data, and no one controlled them, Medvedev's time passed. But the experts themselves closed their developments, and as a result, when unrest began, which are called rallies on Bolotnaya, by this time the opposition, which had already arisen, found itself without a program, without a strategy. Because the strategies turned to the Kremlin. And now the strategy is not even clear to whom they are addressing. It is clearly useless to address the Kremlin.
That is, we are today a country with a gigantic number of new problems, serious, dangerous, in all spheres — economic, military, cultural, but without the worst strategy.
— I wanted to return to the figure of a man on an electric scooter who travels around Moscow and is happy with everything.
— Yes, he feels good.
— We noticed that people not only do not want to talk about politics now, but also hear about it. Citation of political topics is declining. And we explain this not by the fact that politics is so boring, but by the fact that people are afraid.
— Let's not make excuses, she's boring. She's boring. And people are afraid …
Photo: RIA Novosti
— But it seems to me that even over the past year there was a huge amount of political fun.
— Fun for whom? The activist is always having fun. In the 70s, as an activist, I did not see any stagnation, I was in high spirits all the time. Searches, surveillance, interrogations — it all amused me. But the activist is a special breed of people, they just have a different way of extracting joy from life. I think that now the activists who remained at large are having fun.
But politics became boring because the political proposal became unconvincing. What do you suggest? Before Navalny's arrest, there was a weakening, but the image that at some point the authorities would retreat, and maybe, as someone said, that they had already agreed with Navalny somewhere in a German bunker, and he would come back and turn on in the transit process.
When it becomes clear that this does not exist, has not been and will never be, there is a bummer, a simple human bummer — and what should you pay for?
After all, death is red in the world, when everyone writes about you, they report about you, about your arrest even for five days. And then it becomes unimportant, uninteresting. I think that fear, by the way, is always more such an explanation than a reason here. Who would mind? You say: you have a family (although not everyone has a family), how can you not leave in such a situation? But in fact, maybe the motive is not fear, the motive is disappointment, the motive is the realization that you will simply make an unnecessary sacrifice, that this victim no longer has an audience.
And this, in particular, is also due to the fact that in recent years the opposition, with all due respect to your newspaper, has shifted to the journalistic environment. And what is the peculiarity of journalism? In what the journalist describes and testifies to what happened. The journalist is not engaged in two things — the image of the future (this is not his, as they say, dog business) and intellectual discussions about strategy (it will also be boring to read to the rest of everyone). Therefore, the journalist describes the event, that is, he acts after the fact, and the politician is left alone with himself. There is a conflict of employment, a conflict of orientations. In some cases a journalist can go absolutely to the end, but then he is no longer a journalist, but a hero. But the hero's position is not only a vulnerable position in the era of terror.
And then what happens in the country? There is a criminalization of various types of activity, indiscriminately associated with activism, any kind of activity. For the first time, by the way, not just from Stalin's times, but since the adoption, I would say, of the Constitution of 1936, which abolished the categories, different categories of citizens — the former, the concepts of different categories of citizens are introduced, moreover, as it were, legally recognized, but not legally appointed … This really has some similarities with the category of the Jew. Although the Germans have worked out legally this concept is clearer than we have the concept of «foreign agent».
— And other persons involved in the activities of extremist organizations.
— Yes, and other persons involved in the activity. Nobody, in my opinion, still knows exactly how to live in this society of different categories, there is still no concept here.
And, mind you, such an important institutional function as internal criticism has dropped out of the opposition. During the dissidence, there was, for example, Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants, who very harshly criticized the movement from within, being a participant himself, there were fierce debates between the supporters of Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, they were completely serious. None of this is here. Here, again, there is some sluggish snot about — oh, how everything is going wrong with us, in the wrong direction, and again the bottom is punctured. But politics is discourse. This is a tense discourse, conflicting. If this drops out of politics for you, politics will again become boring, and it's not just about power.
And the power is odd, left to itself, having lost even an internal alternative for a while. Even our executive power is reduced to nothing, the power of the government, it just takes different actions. Probably, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has no serious business if he amuses us with pitiful gags about Stalin.
— Do you agree that Stalin is perceived in this pre-election, but also in a broader context, as a people's avenger who must come and punish those who today mock the people?
— Partly yes. However, this is an old story, it was from Soviet times. We have had many de-Stalinizations, and not one has been brought to a political result. And in the end it turned out that Stalin was some kind of object of mysterious attacks with dubious arguments. Yes, Stalin remains a dream of brutal justice. Cruel precisely because they will not believe in another, stage-by-stage, soft one, this train has left.
— They say that the liberals have tried, and we see how it ended.
— I don't really understand what the liberals actually tried in the field of justice. Rather, all the 90s have passed, I remember this well, while talking about the fact that in general justice is some kind of wrong value, it is dubious, it leads to equalization, leads to totalitarianism, but freedom is a value. As a result, the struggle of the Russian establishment and elites with justice ended badly for them.
But, on the other hand, there is, pardon the expression, life — the life of people in these very programs, megaprojects, in fact, for a long time already state capitalism, and it is simply getting worse. Why is it getting worse? Because this type of big state capitalism, gigantism in it, it generates «scissors» between economic growth (it can provide economic growth to some extent) and the need for labor and personal income. At the same time, the fiscal pump is pumping, which sucks out money, taxes, fines, and on the other hand, migrants solve employment problems. Migrants today are such a new, soft, well-distributed GULAG.
Gleb Pavlovsky. Photo: Vlad Dokshin / «Novaya Gazeta»
— Let me try to describe the political context in which, as it seems to me, we are, partly in your words, partly in mine, and you tell me, please, what I am missing and what can follow from this. What has happened lately? Many believe that last year there was a coup, a change in the Constitution, an extraordinary extension of powers, and the dismantling of the electoral system, which is taking place right now before our very eyes, is added to it. The removal of Lev Schlossberg is very indicative, who walked along the path in the park in Pskov and therefore found himself among other persons involved in the activities of extremist organizations, and was retroactively removed from the elections. And the destruction of the media, which has now slowed down a little.
— I am opposed to sadly collecting these fallen leaves of hope in a basket. It always turns out convincingly, it never gives any support for further action, this, in fact, only leads to an alibi: well, Russia lies in evil, well then everyone can relax for a while. Eventually she will come out of this state, and if you haven't left, just relax and wait. One of my acquaintances wrote an article with the central idea that Russia lies in evil, and I ask, maybe the whole point is that we should not lie down, but try to get up? For example, go to the observers to sign up.
By the way, it is usually such elections that bring surprises. That is, elections in which all mice have their tails tied.
But the matter is not in the elections as such, but in what people will do after September 19, which is much more interesting.
Something happens to the system in which people live, continue to live and continue to derive from this, excuse me, this or that pleasure. There are quite a few people who only extract melancholy. There are such people, but still not most of them. Those 20, how many there are, 23-24%, who, according to Belousov's official calculations, are engaged in what his friend Kordonsky calls the «garage economy» not ready to drop it and go wreck garages.
— Is there a garage political economy?
— We must contact Simon Gdalevich. He doesn't like political economists, he doesn't like him terribly …
— It seems to me that what we are doing, including you and me even in this conversation, is a bit like studying «garage political economy», because we are discussing extremely non-public, non-transparent, informal processes.
— Isn't the Kremlin a garage? This team came to power and operates the «garage economy» methods, it's just that their garage, I would say, is bigger. «Garage economy» is also the use of resources …
— By informal methods …
-… by informal methods, often not paid. The people of the Kremlin's inner circle are people of the “garage economy,” just Russia is their garage. But what is our problem? Force them, if not to be a state, then in some cases behave like a state. And you cannot force to go out into the street, the state is not controlled from the street. In Kiev in 2004, people took to the streets, but half of the parliament was already oppositional, the opposition was sitting in the Rada. And they won. And in 2014, in Kiev, too, the opposition controlled half of the parliament and the mayor's office. So what is our problem today? Our problem is that we cannot sort of collect our own resources, our own capabilities, and this includes a part of the state apparatus. There is an oppositional spirit, but not in the sense that officials decide which square to enter. I am an old critic of the turn that, unfortunately, took place in the minds of the liberal opposition in 2004/05, when it abandoned concern for parliament, for building a party infrastructure, which was then stronger in our country than in Eastern Europe. There were hundreds and hundreds of NGOs, factions in local parliaments, centers for developing policies, drafting laws — all this crashed, and it was not Putin who crashed.
Euromaidan. Kiev, 2014. Photo: Yuri Kozyrev / «Novaya Gazeta»
— Who?
— And the opposition got carried away after Ukraine [street politics]. Well, two points: the loss of the [Yabloko and SPS] faction in the Duma in 2003, in December, and then the false example of Ukraine: people decided that it was possible to go out into the streets, the notorious withdrawal of a million, as they said, and that's it, and the president is yours.
I repeat, a very serious political infrastructure was tied to these factions in the Duma. Today the problem is to build the opposition, develop its strategy, intercepting it from power. You cannot simply call the experience of organizing ten or even fifty meetings and processions as an alternative strategy. This is not a strategy at all.
— You talk a lot about transit, and you refer to the obvious fact that human life as a whole is finite, and none of those living today, including leaders and leaders, is no exception.
— Yes, this is my discovery.
— But we have wonderful medicine, we spend so much money on genetics. How do you like the prospect of, say, the 30th anniversary of Vladimir Putin's rule, counting from 2021?
— I think we live in a gloomy forest. A brain that has given up politics falls into the Gothic style. Yes, anything is possible here. But do not think that people are pipes that you can always play on. I do not see the possibility of a 30-year prolongation of the status quo; rather, it will be about detente. If there is no internal discharge, destruction will come in one form or another, from outside or from within.
— You are painting a complex picture of the RF system. And many in conversations in the field say: «It's just that this decision was made by people from the special services.»
— They believe in the fabulous rationality of what is happening. It would be great if we had a dictatorship of the special services, then it would be vertically integrated and it would be clear with which elite to talk, what interests it has specifically. You are not dealing with such a system, it does not exist, it is a dream in a sense. Even with Stalin's system there is no comparison, although Stalin really got into the details of how the government was going. But there was Stalin's team, where people, disliking each other, acted together.
— This is described in Sheila Fitzpatrick's book Stalin's Team.
— Yes, a wonderful book. But our situation is not at all perfect, because initially this ruling team was formed outside of an idea, outside of ideology, with the task of preserving and surviving, exaggerating fears and threats to its survival. Well, I can say that they were really afraid. Why were they afraid? Because they did not believe in this statehood. It was an experimental statehood, and 30 years of the Russian Federation is 30 years of experiment, the same as 70 years of experiment before that. And now, I think, the main stage of the experiment ends.
— And what next, the laboratory will be closed, the scientists will disperse?
— The laboratory is generally not clear where it is located and who is in charge of it. But here you see a lot of different groups and communities that are fighting for the position of the beneficiary. You just cannot count on being in this place. Even Sechin is fighting for the benefit, every now and then we hear about it, that he needs to take something away from someone, but he is not allowed to take it away. This is not an idyll.
The system of power has not built a truly neutral bureaucracy under it. She could, she had time, she had money, she didn’t.
And now she finds herself in a position in which, as it were, amateurs, finding themselves in some kind of unfavorable situation, try to imitate with loud shouts and knocking with tourist hatchets a formidable state and a readiness to break everyone. The test we are approaching is a test for the state, for statehood. And, unfortunately, 70 years of the USSR plus 30 years of the Russian Federation — this was a century of decline in humanitarian thinking, when people got used to describing politics at best according to Alexander Dumas: there are musketeers, there are cardinal's guards.
“And the Musketeers are shining their flashlights in the courtyards.
— Yes. Generally speaking, they [the elites] are more complicated themselves, do not recognize their own complexity. They are not so simple, they cannot be played on as on flute, actually. If they want to live, they will live, and they will have a state. In the meantime, the ruling team survives at the expense of everyone in a row.
— It seems to me that this story refers us to the events of 30 years ago, people in power and people outside of power, who once met near the White House. I live now in a sense of a very intense historical process that is dragging us somewhere. There was a post-Soviet history of the search for a new political project, by 2005 or a little earlier it ends, a period of prosperity, stability and electric scooters begins. And that Russia, in which we have lived for the last 15 years, is now coming to an end, a new society is emerging. Do you have a feeling that this is a historic moment now?
— Yes, perhaps because these 15 years were a period of depoliticization, in fact, it began after 2004/05 as a firm course. Because, of course, politicians left parliamentary work, but the authorities came and tried to prevent them from returning to this. Further, this is the role of the Kremlin. De-politicization is crowding out the conflict, at some point this led the Kremlin to the need to artificially generate conflicts, it began in the third presidency of Putin, enemies appeared. After all, the enemies were forbidden, it was forbidden to form the figure of the enemy in the legal field. And then, today we came to what? That the system produces all kinds of enemies, it cannot find a procedure for dealing with them other than arbitrary. In general, the application of the law is so arbitrary that the bureaucracy does not understand what the procedure is. After all, a bureaucrat needs some order, he needs to know what to do. When he is shown a complete disregard for the law, he, well, in a sense, stops trying.
So, of course, we are inside some kind of discharge. You are right that in 1991 there was a union, an alliance of people in power and people outside of power, but it was formed earlier. Gorbachev's five-year anniversary was the platform for the formation of this alliance, otherwise there would have been no victory in August 1991. The uprising was victorious. But the ground for this uprising, the platform for this uprising, was created earlier.
Defenders of the White House at one of the tanks brought into Moscow on August 19, 1991 in connection with the declaration of a state of emergency in the capital by members of the State Emergency Committee. Photo: RIA Novosti
Today we are heading for what ignorant people like me call the point of singularity, that is, we are heading for a line beyond which everything of the present immediately becomes irrelevant. It continues to exist, it does not disappear, it simply becomes irrelevant in politics. This will also happen in transit, where princes, for example, can break out. After all, children are already in transit, children of the inner circle. At the same time, a problem arises, which I generally consider to be central: how will social capital be preserved in the next spasm of the system? It is smaller than the Soviet one, but it exists, it is acquired, and people will not give it up. One of the reasons why they are ready to forget about Navalny for a while is that their capital, their assets are small, their «borscht set» is dear to them. Is a system that is endlessly talking about conservatism capable of pursuing a conservative policy? Can she promise people the preservation of their assets? No.
“We have no European history when I hand over my father’s grocery store to my children.
— Well, you know, we don't need to dream about it, about European precedents, while it would be good to convey what we have. I mean now even more social capital, which to a certain extent has been accumulated within the system — the capital of relations, the capital of trust — is small, but it exists. Do not think that all relationships are reduced to the attitude of the cop with the demonstrator. Here is the problem, and this is the center of the agenda for the next transition — how, how to guarantee millions of people that the next transition will not nullify everything they have.
For many years the Russian Federation existed on Soviet social capital, not on Soviet ideology, but on the relations and trust that was acquired within the USSR, which was a very large capital. Now there is no such thing, this capital is less, but it is also valuable, and people will fight to the death for it. And when they fight, they don't increase social capital. This is what is important — what the liberal opposition has to say on this issue. So far, nothing, while she is silent, well, for obvious reasons. So Navalny, from my point of view, took a step towards the agenda of the entire people from the sectoral agenda of the opposition. He took this step, but he was stopped. How he will develop further, I do not know, but there is no way to wait for what else he will say. Therefore, I think we will have to act on our own.