“Most interesting was the unofficial part [of the event], when we began to argue about a one-time compensatory tax on the results of [post-soviet] privatization.”

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s “Emerging Europe” blog published an article by Ira Iosebashvili, titled “Russian Opposition Instigator Inspires Financial Crowd.” The post begins:

“Moscow’s financial community has met the most recognizable figure of Russia’s nascent opposition movement — and some became spellbound.”

Mr. Iosebashvili’s text relies on comments from two eyewitnesses to Navalny’s presentation: chief economist at Renaissance Capital, Ivan Chakarov, and another anonymous source. Reading over the article, it is never clear why the author uses words like “spellbound” or “inspired” to describe the reactions of the bankers who attended on Monday. Chakarov, for instance, has been quoted at length in both Gazeta.ru and Forbes.ru in the last two days — and his comments are far from exuberant.

Mr. Chakarov speaks for himself.

Today, Business New Europe published an 1800-word op-ed (in English) by Chakarov himself, where he said that Navalny failed to convince him that he wasn’t angling for a presidential run, and called his economic views “fuzzy.” Meanwhile, other bankers such as Citibank’s Andrei Kuznetsov and Diamond Age Capital’s Slava Rabinovich told Forbes.ru that they were pleased to hear Navalny praise economist Sergei Guriev (who incidentally is a board member at Sberbank, co-host of “The Russia Forum”). However, they apparently lectured Navalny afterwards that Guriev would not support his compensatory tax on businesses that profited from privatization, and while Rabinovich said that he disagreed with only 34% of Navalny’s platform, he confessed that it was enough to prevent him from currently voting for him in any election.

Asia Chachko and Ksenia Chudinova of Snob.ru live-blogged from the Cabinet Lounge, paraphrasing Navalny’s remarks. There are plenty of interesting details in their report, but I’d like to draw readers’ attention to Navalny’s following mid-presentation comments:

“There is the concept of ‘Putin 2.0′: that the ‘good’ Putin will come along and lock up the corrupt and the cardsharps, becoming the champion of all that’s good against all that’s evil. But this isn’t going to happen, and I’ll explain why: not long ago, a person from one of the major oil companies came to me and said that he knows exactly who needs to be kicked out and locked up, in order to make the company’s work efficient. But they can’t do this, because as soon as certain people understand that storm-clouds are gathering, they run to Timchenko and Sechin, who step in [to protect them]. If you don’t get rid of certain people, changes are impossible.”

Gazeta.ru’s report on Navalny’s “road show” with the bankers also paraphrased his Sechin comment, but it excluded any mention of Timchenko and was worded slightly differently. Whereas Snob.ru has Navalny saying that corrupt officials run to Timchenko and Sechin for protection, Gazeta.ru has him blaming Sechin “and his krysha” for mismanaging anti-corruption initiatives. Is the difference significant? Which did he actually say?

Navalny’s alleged ties to Igor Sechin are a major pillar of the conspiracy theories about his backers, and it’s potentially useful to note specific attacks by the former on the latter. In the past, I’ve asked pro-Kremlin bloggers to produce evidence substantiating Sechin’s sponsorship of Navalny, and so far I’ve seen nothing. I’m still waiting.

Getting Off Easy: Navalny’s Q&A Record

Celebrated writer and dissident Boris Akunin subjected Navalny to the most recent round of public inquiry, publishing a written dialogue between the two men, which begins with questions about nationalism. Akunin’s questions, however, hardly prodded Navalny to reveal anything new. After introducing the topic of nationalism, he concluded by asking: “Should all ethnic non-Russians or half-Russians feel themselves to be second-class people in your Russia?” This hyperbole produced the expected reaction from Navalny: first he said that the question was offensive, and then he explained that he is himself descended from a Ukrainian father (a well-known fact which he repeated in an Esquire interview just last November). When Navalny eventually said that he to this day still supports every word of the 2007 NAROD manifesto, Akunin abandoned the subject altogether.

Perhaps Navalny was lucky. Maybe Akunin was satisfied with his answers. Navalny was similarly fortunate on December 26, 2011, during a two-hour interview on Ekho Moskvy with Evgenia Al’bats. When a caller phoned to ask him about the nature of whatever future party he might lead, Navalny said that he would likely end up forming a “right-center party.” Al’bats interrupted, saying: “In a European understanding, a right-wing party is always nationalist. Politically rightist, economically rightist?” Essentially asked to what degree his future politics would be nationalist, Navalny answered:

“Now, don’t continue on this any further. It’s a pointless conversation because we have no idea what’s right-wing and what’s left-wing. For us, rightists are one thing, but in Europe, they’re entirely something else. Here we need to first define the terms.”

As in the Akunin dialogue, Navalny’s host let him off the hook, dropping her question and moving onto the next caller. Two days later, Foreign Policy published another Navalny interview, this time with his Anglophone chronicler, Julia Ioffe, who pressed the nationalist issue slightly harder than Akunin or Al’bats. Answering Ioffe’s first question on the subject, Navalny stated: “I think my line on most things is sufficiently clear.” When asked again, he confessed:

“If there are still people who are made uncomfortable by my participation in the Russian March, or are scared of ‘Navalny with his nationalistic views,’ that points only to a problem of clarity. That means I wasn’t able to clearly and correctly explain my views. Because every person with whom I am able to discuss this subject in depth, they agree that my views on this are correct, reasonable, and appropriate. So I guess I’ll just have to keep explaining.”

Not a step backwards! (Or a glance over one's shoulder?)

Navalny’s impatience with the public’s inability to understand his nationalism is palpable. (In a poll attached to Akunin’s dialogue, 43% of readers said his explanations were insufficient.) For visual evidence of Navalny’s agitation, one needs look no further than an interview he gave to Dozhd Television, just after his speech at Prospekt Sakharova on December 24, 2011. Asked to explain what he meant about the opposition’s unity, despite the obvious tensions between liberals and nationalists, Navalny’s answers were hurried and terse, and he tried to end the interview prematurely. Perhaps he wanted to return to the festivities or maybe he was simply freezing cold. Study a screen-shot of the video footage, however, and the awkwardness of Russian imperial flags over his shoulder juxtaposed against the rhetoric from the stage about democratic freedoms seems apparent.

When He Did Speak

In fairness to Navalny, he has been trying to clarify his beliefs for several years now. If one compares his June 2008 Izbrannoe interview to a November 2011 interview with Lenta’s Ilya Azar, the consistency is striking. That said, the things about Navalny’s self-explanations that distress liberals and confuse nationalists are subject to that consistency: as present in 2008 as they are today. Navalny’s shortcoming is that he endorses all the central tenets of “natsdem” Russian liberal nationalism without openly discussing the logical consequences of that philosophy. Furthermore, his efforts to build a broad coalition of “new nationalists” have led him to preserve ties to individuals with suspect loyalties and convictions.

What do I mean when I claim that Navalny is guilty of half-steps in his nationalist pronouncements? To understand what he is leaving out, it’s necessary first to understand the internal debates now occurring among Russian nationalists. A useful primer (short and written with a nationalist-democratic bias) is Aleksei Shiropaev’s July 2011 article on the “two vectors of Russian nationalism.” He attacks “old” nationalism in the following way:

“‘Russians need their own Kadyrov’ [is the] logical consequence of old Russian nationalism’s development: reactionary ideology, oriented on authoritarianism, [and] a closed and archaic society of medieval moral values. Old Russian nationalism openly declares its contempt for democracy, civil rights, and its dislike for ‘persons of a certain nationality’ in accordance with the black-hundreds’ cliches of the 19th century. The vector of old Russian nationalism is Eurasian, Ordyn-imperial, and anti-Western.”

In 2008, Navalny described a very similar challenge to liberal nationalism:

“[Russians] cannot rely on any political force because nationalists in Russia are either ‘Soviet’ patriots or some kind of skinhead, fascist hoods. We are convinced that new nationalists must emerge, and they will clearly chart a course between the pro-Kremlin pseudo-patriots and the radical groups of those [skinhead] lowlifes.”

In 2011, he said roughly the same thing:

“The ‘Russkii Marsh’ emerged as a result of the evolution of the nationalist movement in Russia. I consider the course of this evolution to be absolutely warranted and positive because, until recently, when we talked about nationalists, we remembered the kind of people with whom Yeltsin fought at the dawn of the 1990s. They were not in fact nationalists, but more often different kinds of Soviet patriots.”

The Difficult Dialogue

Mr. Dugin in all his imperial and beardly glory.

There is a context to what Navalny and Shiropaev are saying: this is an ongoing polemic with “old” nationalists, otherwise known as Eurasianists, often associated with mastermind Aleksandr Dugin, whose nostalgia for the Soviet Empire is outweighed only by the heft of his Orthodox beard. Journalists and scholars have been studying Dugin for years, but suffice it to say that his views (however zany) enjoy an alarming popularity among Russia’s military brass and defense-oriented figures. After the collapse of liberalism’s reputation, many have noted that Vladimir Putin’s assertive domestic and foreign policies appear to find inspiration (or at least utilization) in Dugin’s theory of geopolitics.

Consider how nationalist democrat Konstantin Krylov described the emergence of “modern Russian nationalism” in a 2008 article:

“The Russian nationalist movement separated from general protest ‘patriotic’ movement in the middle of the 2000s. Before then, Russian nationalism in its pure form was yet to be seen. In the 1980s and 90s, what is now considered ‘early Russian nationalism’ was a mixture of sentimental populism in the spirit of ‘Village Prose‘ writers, Russian Orthodox fundamentalism, conspiracy theories (about Russia and the West), acute nostalgia for the USSR, the cult of the strong state, various myths, and a general discontent with the status quo. People then believed the strangest things and didn’t understand what was happening in reality.”

Ideas about the state’s ideal strength and the necessity or evil of empire, as well as conspiracies and faith regarding democracy, shape the contours of the nationalist-Eurasianist debate. Today these issues collide foremost in discussions about the future of the North Caucasus. This clash is on display nowhere better than in the Khvatit Kormit’ Kavkaz movement.

The Khvatit cause has become so central to the liberal nationalists that many have incorporated it into their self-definition. Shiropaev, for instance, describes “new Russian nationalism” as:

“Western and Euro-Atlantic. [...] Moreover, new Russian nationalism [...] strongly and consistently advocates the Russian Federation’s separation from the North Caucasus. This flows logically from [its] anti-Putin, democratic position, inasmuch as the Kadyrov regime is a vitally important element of Putin’s political system. Today’s fight to separate the North Caucasus from the RF is the forefront of the fight against Putinism.”

Shiropaev’s explanation is amusing, insofar as it justifies the jettisoning of the North Caucasus in entirely non-ethnic terms. He is not the only Russian nationalist to do so. In an article published last November, Aleksandr Khramov, another natsdem, also defends the Khvatit campaign with arguments that are initially based only on sound fiscal policy and concerns about corruption and regional subsidies inequalities. Responding to the criticisms of liberal democrats (specifically Andrei Piontkovsky), Khramov lays out a rebuttal that is meant to affirm the new nationalists’ commitment to both democracy and the struggle against Putin.

Khramov’s (initially) non-ethnic arguments can be divided into three essential points:

1. The Khvatit movement is not a “slave’s battle cry.” Piontkovsky claimed that nationalists are targeting a symptoms of Putinism (the failed North Caucasus), rather than the cause (Putin himself). Echoing Stanislav Belkovsky (who coined the term “the Popular Rear Guard” in response to Putin’s “All-Russia People’s Front”), Khramov compares the Khvatit campaign to an attack on the authorities’ vulnerability: “The Caucasus is the regime’s rear flank, the Kremlin’s pressure point, and it’s here that we must apply pressure.” He argues that frontal assaults, like the past “Putin v ostavku” online petition, have proved ineffective.
2. The North Caucasus is the Kremlin’s most crucial asset: “And if the Vertical of Power gives way here, at its anchor point, in Russia’s most volatile region, it won’t remain standing across the rest of Russia.”
3. Finally, Khramov describes the Khvatit movement as a “tactic,” not a “strategy.” In other words, it’s less a public policy platform than an important anti-regime maneuver. The implication here seems to be that nationalists would march against any other over-subsidized region, if it presented the same opportunities for undermining the authorities.

Historian Valery Solovei, whose writing often appears on Rusplatforma.org (the same outfit that published Khramov’s piece), recently penned a public endorsement of Navalny. That appeal emphasized democratic principles and downplayed the issue of ethnicity, where Solovei’s most overtly nationalist statement is: “Personally, I haven’t any doubt in Navalny’s sincere readiness to defend the interests of the Russian people.” Like Khramov’s (initial) justification of the Khvatit campaign, Solovei’s support for Navalny is based largely on oppositionist abstractions like freedom and anti-corruption. Solovei does include an indelicate attack on “the liberal crowd,” but the message is aimed primarily at Yeltsin-era functionaries, whose reputation has eroded among the very liberal democrats considered to be their current base.

Ethnic-Nationalism On Display

So despite various discomforts about cooperating with democrats formerly connected to Boris Yeltsin, nationalists like Khramov and Solovei (or indeed Navalny) are clearly interested in playing up their commitment to democracy, in order to facilitate a nationalist-democrat coalition. This is why the Khvatit campaign is frequently described as a fiscal responsibility issue and it’s why some nationalist intellectuals frame their support for Navalny in the language of democracy, only winking at readers about his relationship to ethnic nationalism.

What then are these people saying when they aren’t winking? Returning to the Khvatit movement, Khramov in that same November 2011 piece follows his non-ethnic reasons for the campaign with at least four deeply ethnic-based rationales:

1. In addition to hosting wasteful local governments, the North Caucasian regions have “another important distinction” that renders subsidization a bad policy: they are “non-Russian regions that actively export their foreign model of behavior to the rest of Russia. This distinction is key from the perspective of the battle for an ethnic Russian democratic state, built on the principles of national community [...].”
2. In an interesting effort to use democrats’ anti-imperial rhetoric against them, Khramov accuses “certain liberals” of supporting a version of empire, arguing that ethnic Russians are denied the right to national determination, which they willingly grant to “little peoples” like the Poles, Slovaks, and Estonians. Khramov implies that the modern-day Russian Federation treats Russians like a “collector-people” (narod-sobiratel’), depriving them of all the rights titular nationalities enjoy elsewhere.
3. Khramov rejects the idea that Russia with its current boundaries can be expected to enjoy the same level of national solidarity that exists today in Italy or Germany. They can find a consensus to finance their different regions, he argues, because ‘Milan and Naples’ or ‘East and West Germany’ are parts of the same ethnic nation, “built on [shared] ethno-cultural standards.” Russians can agree that resources must flow to Kamchatka, he says, “but how do you convince them to ‘feed’ Ingushetia, where Russians are just a fraction [of the population]?”
4. The icing on the cake is a final rebuttal to Piontkovsky, who criticized nationalists for pursuing a “fatal contradiction”: “empire, but without black assholes.” Khramov’s response is short and sweet: “there’s no contradiction.”

If cutting loose the North Caucasus lies at the center of the “new” nationalists’ agenda, what is Navalny’s position on the issue? Before getting into that, let’s first look again at some of Solovei’s comments on the subject. In a June 2010 interview, he had this to say when asked about “imperial relics” like the North Caucasus:

“It’s unlikely that it will remain a part of Russia in the long-run of history. Sooner or later, the possibility of its detachment or secession will become a reality. And I’m sure that this will occur within our lifetime. Many people currently think this, but are reluctant to say so aloud. It’s perfectly obvious that we spend a colossal amount of resources on [the North Caucasus] and get nothing in return. We send the resources of Russians and of Russia. The Caucasus produces nothing but hatred and conflicts, which they then export back to Mainland Russia. The Caucasus uses all the advantages of existing in the Russian space, without giving anything back in return. It’s not fair play.”

When the interviewer asked about restoring a nation-wide civil identity — something like”rossiian” instead of “russkii” — Solovei was pessimistic. The regime, he said, has stunted civil identity by cracking down on demonstrations and public associations. “All the talk about [non-ethnic] Russian identity is a mantra of emptiness,” he concludes grimly.

Winning Russia’s Soul

Nationalist democrats are caught in the unenviable position of having to defend themselves against both liberal and Eurasianist criticisms. In this two-front war, they lobby the former to abandon their apprehensions and join forces, and clash with the latter over the ‘fate of the Russian people.’ A perfect example of the Eurasianist position on the North Caucasus question is Denis Tukmakov‘s July 2011 article in Zavtra, titled “Russia Without the Caucasus?”

After a long and mocking retelling of the Khvatit movement’s raison d’etre, Tukmakov explains that retreating from the North Caucasus would have dire consequences for Russia. Here are three of his worst-case scenarios:

1. “A Second Khasavyurt.” The Caucasus would return to the lawlessness of the interwar era, “becoming a second Somalia, [...] without industry, but with an enormous arsenal of weapons.” Another war to end the chaos would be inevitable, except it would be bigger this time because Russia would be fighting the entire North Caucasus and not just Chechen separatists.
2. “A New Georgia.” Russia would lose its legal sovereignty over the territory, inviting American interference similar to what Russia confronted in the 2008 war.
3. “A Bottomless Pit.” Appealing to concerns about budgetary waste, Tukmakov argues that (a) policing the border and (b) the inevitable war would both cost astronomically more than what is now ‘lost’ subsidizing the region.

Tukmakov then moves to the perennial “who is to blame?” and “what is to be done?” questions, answering the latter in these words:

“What’s happening in the country today isn’t the fault of the Caucasians, but of the socio-economic ways that have arisen in [post-Soviet] Russia. At the hands of compradors and the corrupt, you and I have suffered far more than from any Muslim holiday celebrations [ot peniia muedzinov]. Empty the pockets of the corrupt and the coins you collect could feed all of Russia’s regions.”

Though corruption is the main culprit, Tukmakov and the Eurasianists have in mind something very different from what motivates the lawyers on staff at RosPil. He goes on to warn that “Perestroika 2″ (a phrase Belkovsky has used to describe the latest wave of Russian oppositionist politics) threatens Russia most of all — not only with the loss of the North Caucasus, but with a color revolution at the heart of Moscow that would “open a black hole,” destroying the entire country.

It’s in this way that Eurasianists like Tukmakov, Dugin, and others attack the nationalist democrats: as a hazard to territorial integrity and international sovereignty. That, indeed, is the context needed to understand what people like Khramov, Solovei, Navalny, or Krylov mean when they criticize imperialism or beseech the Russian people to follow the path of history.

Having seen Tukmakov’s use of geopolitics and the threat of war, consider the following passage from the Krylov text mentioned above (written years earlier, but just as relevant now as then):

“Russia was never an empire in the traditional Western sense of the word. If it was indeed a prison for anyone, it was for the Russians, who gained nothing from exploiting the colonies because Russia had no colonies — it had peripheries, to which it gave more than it took. One can understand for what and why these borderlands were necessary: fundamentally the logic was based on military-political considerations. Russia is literally caught at the world’s crosswinds, at the heart of Eurasia, protected from enemies by neither mountains nor seas. Some territories — indeed the Caucasus — became necessary acquisitions only because they at the time were the only means to ending the constant incursions and halting the aggression. But the peripheries were not subjected to systematic exploitation — the Russian tsars had not learned this European science. Alas, it was the Russian people who carried all the burdens and obligations of nation-building. If anyone was enslaved — in the direct meaning of the word — it was the Russians.”

Here the tension between the “new” and “old” nationalisms is clear: imperial self-defense versus the prison of empire. With that context in mind, let’s turn to Navalny’s interview with Ilya Azar, where he was probably as open about his nationalist views as ever.

Getting Down to It

In his Lenta interview, Navalny explained the Khvatit Kormit’ Kavkaz campaign like this: “We propose not allocating money [to the Caucasus] until some kind of rules are established for how these funds are spent. We propose controlling the expenditure of these funds.” When Azar asked what he actually intended to do with the North Caucasus, after Russia stopped ‘feeding’ it, Navalny backtracked:

“What do you mean ‘stop feeding it’? All budgetary resources should be distributed evenly. And the Caucasian republics should receive budgetary funds on the basis of real needs and ability to utilize the resources somehow. First and foremost, one needs to observe the law.”

Was Navalny reversing his pledge to cut off all funding, or had Azar initially led him to misspeak? Another moment of waffling seemed to be when Navalny declared that Chechnya is no longer de facto a part of the Russian Federation. When Azar asked him if he then supported Chechnya’s secession, Navalny feigned surprise and accused Azar of offering false alternatives, before ultimately returning to the claim that Chechnya has already seceded:

“I don’t know where you get that subject. What, are there only two alternatives: either one just pours money into the region and enriches these local chiefs indefinitely, or Russia separates from them immediately? No, this alternative doesn’t exist. With the North Caucasian republics, it seems necessary (especially if the situation deteriorates into civil war) to introduce additional controls, some of which already exist. [...] So at the administrative border let there be controls on the movement of people and cargo, in order to regulate all these things. The Caucasus exists at any rate as something disconnected. It’s already not a part of the country. Let’s call a spade a spade: it’s not a part of the country.”

It seems to me that Navalny does want to endorse Russia’s separation from Chechnya, though he can’t quite manage it: proposing an end to subsidies, but also not an end — claiming that it’s beyond Russian authority and calling for a militarized border, but refusing to call this “separation.” In spite of his adamance about straight talk, he seems to get cold feet when it comes to this core nationalist issue.

Why So Insecure?

Aleksei Navalny is many things, but he is by no stretch of the imagination a coward — and neither is he a fool. In that case, how can we explain his serial reluctance to take liberal nationalist ideology to the logical conclusions that his comrades regularly reach?

On the one hand, Navalny is clearly concerned with maintaining his appeal among liberal democrats. In this capacity, he and other nationalist democrats recycle the non-ethnic talking points (discussed above) that underpin the Khvatit campaign. But it’s also important for Navalny to build solidarity among nationalists, and evading hard questions about what he would do as the nation’s leader possibly helps avoid unwanted splintering.

Consider Navalny’s continued defense of Aleksandr Belov, former leader of the now banned Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI):

“I’ve talked with Belov a million times. As many times as we’ve talked, he’s said absolutely correct things. I’ve heard his speeches on Ekho Moskvy, at rallies, and so on. Different people at different times of their lives say something stupid. I, too, have also said stupid things. Belov and I organized the ‘New Political Nationalism’ conference [in 2008]. There, we adopted a political declaration that included things I consider to be entirely correct and acceptable, and I think you or any other normal person would also find perfectly acceptable.”

Navalny and Belov.

Navalny has also defended Dmitri Demushkin, another DPNI member who like Belov has a history of criminal convictions for inciting ethnic hatred. In the summer of 2011, both Demushkin and Belov accepted a controversial invitation to Chechnya from none other than Ramzan Kadyrov. Upon returning to Moscow, Belov and Demushkin shocked many by loudly praising Kadyrov’s effective management. “In Chechnya, there are no traces of war, and that’s cool,” Belov told Svobodnaia Pressa in June, going on to explain that the Chechen wars were a genocide for Russians and Chechens alike, that the Chechens’ suffering was actually better documented, and the importance of remembering that the federal government and Russian state companies also extract resources from Chechnya.

In other words, Belov and Demushkin refuted all the major arguments of the “new” nationalists — the group in which they ostensibly play a leading role. Their trip prompted Stanislav Belkovsky to accuse Kadyrov of personally controlling up to one-third of all Russian nationalist organizations. However, when Ilya Azar questioned Navalny about why Belov and Demushkin were so taken with Kadyrov’s regime, he merely answered: “Ask them yourself. I happen not to like it over there.” Navalny then changed the subject to Dagestan.

When Belov isn't organizing opposition rallies, he likes to attend Kremlin banquets. Pictured here at a 2006 'Police Day' function.

What drove Belov and Demushkin to make this strange trip and speak so warmly afterwards about nationalism’s archenemy? Possible explanations lie in Belov’s curious relationship with the authorities. Despite regular brushes with the law, Belov has a history of close ties to powerful people. In a November 2006 Izvestia article following his appearance at a Kremlin banquet in honor of ‘Police Day,’ the paper wrote:

“Yes and rumors about the special ties between DPNI and the Russian special services cannot be discounted, in the end, as Belov himself talks openly about his contacts among senior counterintelligence officers.”

The article went on to speculate about the role of Dmitri Rogozin (who at the time was dealing with Rodina’s demise and planning future work in Andrei Savel’ev’s “Great Russia” political party). Izvestia believed that Rogozin might have provided DPNI’s principle funding throughout the mid-2000s.

Demushkin, on the other hand, spent his late adolescence as a foot solider in Alexander Barkashov‘s “Russian National Unity,” a group with a record that includes everything from paramilitarism to anti-semitism. Demushkin’s personal history includes behavior as repulsive as mailing death threats to human rights activists Andrei Yurov and Liudmila Alekseeva in 2004. In short: he is an extremist without aversions to anti-liberal rhetoric or imperial restoration.

Some (Very Brief) Conclusions

None of this information is in any way a revelation. Navalny knows who these people are, as do most politically conscious Russians. Indeed, Navalny’s rising popularity continuously narrows the field of knowledge that might be considered arcane or unknown. As his support grows, he is challenged with sustaining an increasingly diverse, sometimes contradictory following. It’s in that context that I suspect we are best situated to understand Navalny’s position on nationalism.

“Liberal nationalism” remains one of Navalny’s most interesting distinctions as an oppositionist political figure. Combined with his anti-corruption activism (which makes him a “doer” not just a “talker”), nationalism has helped make Navalny who he is today. That wider audience is won at a cost, however, and the questionable allies he’s compelled to keep will raise eyebrows today, tomorrow, and for a long while to come.

Even ‘pro-regime’ figures like Maksim Kononenko, despite ridiculing the opposition, have indicated that they consider the stakes of Russia’s current unrest to be dire. “‘Peaceful rallies against election fraud’ have never in any country ended peacefully,” Kononenko warned ominously. Throughout Russia’s post-election tensions, former United Russia Duma deputy Konstantin Rykov has been tweeting intentionally inflammatory and absurd things about the violence and chaos that could result from the opposition’s protests. On December 5th, he joked that the police were shutting off the Internet and raiding the liberal-leaning Dodzh’ station’s television studio, and before yesterday’s large demonstrations, Rykov promised to “take thirty liberals down with him” in a killing spree at the site of the rally. (This latter tweet Rykov later deleted, possibly fearing criminal liability.)

All this optimism and hysteria suggests that Russia’s chattering classes are increasingly convinced that some kind of watershed moment is nearing. Just what is supposed to happen, however, remains thoroughly unclear. Focusing on the challenges facing the Kremlin (rather than the goals of Moscow’s protesters), Tatyana Stanovaya has suggested a basic four-step policy approach for the federal authorities:

1. Either address the election irregularities or say nothing about them. The government’s stream of statements, explaining why they’re ignoring the protesters, only proves that they aren’t, and only further infuriates the opposition.
2. There need to be cadre shifts. Central Elections Commissioner Vladimir Churov can’t remain at his post. Putin should start elevating new faces within the state, reforming United Russia, and promoting the newness of his coming government (but abandoning Medvedev’s already-tainted ‘big government’).
3. Putin needs a platform. Consolidating for the sake of consolidation is no longer a viable political program.
4. There needs to be more dialogue and openness with society. (Whatever that means.)

This, it seems to me, is a fairly realistic forecast of the compromises and adjustments that the Kremlin needs and likely will agree to make. But what if it doesn’t? What if Russia’s hardliners prevail, driven by either self-confidence or excessive fear, and the authorities continue down a road of non-responsiveness?

Yesterday, flashing what seemed like a potential institutional lever of power, ‘Just Russia’ Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov called on the country’s (registered) opposition parties to refuse the mandates they won in the December 4th election. Gudkov’s son, also a ‘Just Russia’ functionary, elaborated on Twitter this morning, explaining, “If two fractions surrender [their mandates], there will be a revote. […] Tomorrow we are going to discuss it with KPRF.” Vladimir Pribylovsky responded within the hour, directing Gudkov Jr. to a detailed explanation of why his mandate scheme for an election redo was legally impossible. Gudkov answered Pribylovsky shortly afterwards, saying only that his plan was “morally sufficient.”

Here is a rough summary of blogger di09en’s argument (endorsed by Pribylovsky):

1. A political party’s leaders cannot refuse the mandates awarded to the individuals on its party list. Only those individuals can make this decision.
2. Even if all deputies from both ‘Just Russia’ and KPRF agreed to refuse their Duma seats, the Elections Commission would simply award them to the next people on the parties’ lists, which amounts to six-hundred people for each party. Furthermore, even if all six-hundred individuals from both parties’ lists refused their seats, Point 6 of Article 89 of the ‘Federal Law on the Election of [Duma] Deputies’ (No.51-FZ) states that the seats would simply remain vacant until the next parliamentary election (scheduled for 2016).
3.  If all party-list members of ‘Just Russia’ and KPRF indeed refused to join the Duma, there would remain just two fractions (United Russia and LDPR) and just 294 deputies — which is less than two-thirds of all seats. Gudkov has argued that this renders the parliament inoperable. But di09en asserts that two fractions are all that’s required for a legitimate Duma. Furthermore, because the Elections Committee has already distributed the deputy seats, the spots allotted to ‘Just Russia’ and KPRF will still count as the presence of additional party fractions — the seats will simply be empty. On the other hand, a Duma with less than two-thirds of its seats allotted would indeed have limited powers, however, it only forbids (a) hearing constitutional legislation, (b) amending the Constitution, and (c) impeaching the President.
4. Even if ‘Just Russia’ and KPRF had planned ahead and removed its lists of candidates from the Election Commission’s consideration, Point 10 of Article 83 of federal election law merely activates a mechanism by which deputy seats are then proportionally allocated to any parties that received at least the number of votes equal to one mandate (which di09en estimates to be about 0.02% of the general vote). Article 83 only goes into effect if the Duma is left with less than 226 seats allotted. In other words, even this clause could not have applied to the December 4th election, where United Russia alone won 238 mandates.

What’s It Mean, All This Jazz?

The discourse in and about Russia right now is increasingly apprehensive. This is not an accusation: all sides of the political spectrum seem to agree that a swelling demand for change makes either reform or violence inevitable. Stanovaya offers a reasonable blueprint that the Kremlin could adopt, if it comes to accept that at least some adjustments to its self-defense strategy are necessary to end the ‘Snow Revolution.’

But it’s possible that the authorities will not come to this conclusion. ‘Peaceful protests’ are, after all, essentially large groups of people standing around, cheering occasionally, and eventually dispersing. With winter approaching, ‘tent cities’ or other forms of truly long-term street demonstrations will be difficult, to say the least. Otherwise, this type of activism can really only threaten a handful of things: disrupting traffic and the flow of daily life for the government and the city; recurrent ‘negative PR’ from the mass media; and explosions of police brutality that could spark even larger rallies. This is to say nothing of the implicit threat in any large gathering: that the participants might become violent themselves, if pushed too far.

Since May this year, beginning with Mironov’s ouster from his spot atop the Federation Council and peaking with the party’s surprising resurgence on December 4th, ‘Just Russia’ has twinkled with the promise of potentially empowering the non-systemic opposition. Whether it might have been a vent on social pressures or a bridge to a more inclusive government, Gudkov’s suggestion yesterday about forcing a new election by surrendering the seats won a week ago was exciting.

Had the opposition finally found a legal instrument of real political power?

The answer, it seems, is still no.

So after a bit of planning, getting the equipment, and executing, my first contribution went online about an hour ago: an interview with Jarrod Tanny, Assistant Professor of History at UNC Wilmington, about his brand new book, “City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa” (Indiana University Press, 2011).

You can find the interview and my brief introduction here.

I think readers of AGT will enjoy it and the interviews I have planned for the future.

Subscribe to NBN via iTunes.

Facebook comes to Russia. For real.

With an eye to this year’s ‘Arab Spring’ and last decade’s ‘color revolutions’ (and indeed America’s recent ‘Occupy Wall Street’ phenomenon), many in the media are highlighting the mobilizing role of online social networks in organizing and politicizing previously dormant pockets of society. Thanks to the Web, analysis and observation now spread to the corners of the Earth in seconds, instantly and easily disseminating photographs, videos, and ideas between strangers united only by their shared interests and concerns.

In the spirit of this digital community, I’ve asked twelve fellow bloggers and micro-bloggers of the anglophone Russia-watching world to contribute brief reactions to the last week’s events. Unaware of who else was participating, these individuals agreed to share their perspectives as bloggers. The result, I hope readers will agree, is a fruitful diversity of informed opinion from some of the Web’s most prominent and colorful Russia-watchers.

Without further ado (and in alphabetical order), here are the solicited comments:

@FyRuPolitics can be read on Twitter and the Web.

I’ve been watching the unrest in Russia on sites like Twitter and Tumblr. It was obvious even before the election happened that there was going to be fraud and no one expected a fair election. The cases of election fraud where recorded and uploaded to YouTube, then shared on twitter and other sites. They spread fast and upset many Russians who were already mad at the “party of crooks and thieves,” igniting the unrest in Triumph Square, which has also gone viral.

Some journalists are remembering the Arab Spring and think, or maybe even hope, the same will happen in Russia. It is a little similar: you do have pro-government and anti-government people in the street. However, journalists and others comparing this to the Arab Spring is actually bad for the opposition in Russia because then anti-government protesters will be seen by average Russians as working for American interests. The tweet by John McCain is just ammunition for pro-government forces. Comments like this give leverage to the government, as they can say the unrest is just meddling by foreigners to destroy Russia. This is what I have seen in many articles. These journalists or experts suggesting revolution will only make Putin and his regime stronger in the end.

@GoldenTent can be read on Twitter and the Web.

Something had changed, and the mechanisms of the Kremlin machine seemed to need oiling. Ever since the tandem announced the decision that Putin would retake the presidency from Medvedev, “stuff” started happening. The gaggle of Russia-based, English-speaking journalists and Russia-watchers on Twitter are some of the sharpest [users] on that social media network—they’re a pleasure to follow and read, as facts and opinions emerge, take shape, are compared, and make it to published form.

As for the Russian Duma election itself, voting fraud employed techniques well-known to residents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani “carousel” voting has been documented in this 2010 RFE/RL video report from Baku, and has also been seen in Yerevan. The rude and aggressive behavior by election officials that Julia Ioffe encountered (as noted in her New Yorker report “Russian Elections: Faking It”) is very reminiscent of Armenian youth activist Karen Tovmasyan’s 2010 experience observing blatant election fraud in Yerevan.

Armenian Twitter users varied in their opinions about the post-election unrest. While supporters of Armenian’s opposition movement such as Tovmasyan (@HimaKaren) optimistically hailed the protests as the start of Putin’s removal from power, others such as bloggers @ditord and @kornelij downplayed it as an event that would quickly subside, leaving Putin ensconced at the top for perhaps another decade. My own view lies somewhere in between, perhaps best articulated by Brian Whitmore’s (@PowerVertical) post “Nothing Has Changed and Everything Has Changed”: “The air of omnipotence that Putin has enjoyed…is gone.” When Toto pulls aside the curtain, we see a middle-aged man at the controls, not a Great and Powerful Wizard, and his days are suddenly numbered. The question is, what is that number?

@MarkAdomanis can be read on Twitter and the Web.

I don’t think this really sets me apart from other Russia watchers, but the scale and intensity of the post-election protests have really taken me by surprise. I basically assumed that “the rules of the game” were pretty much set in that UR would get a majority that was not so Soviet-like and fabricated as to be obviously ludicrous (nothing on the 99% level) but large enough to keep all the other parties in check. It looks like things turned out a little differently.

Since my blogging is a side-project that I do in addition to my usual 9-5, I haven’t been able to do anything particularly crazy when it comes to following the protests and keeping abreast of the latest news. Mostly, I’ve been following my Twitter feed where people such as yourself, Julia Ioffe, Miriam Elder, and Sean Guillory have been putting out a truly impressive, and sometimes bewildering, array of both English and Russian language sources of information. Most the time Twitter can be pretty tame as a medium, but in times like this it is an invaluable tool – there were times over the past several days where virtually the entirety of my Twitter feed was occupied by up-to-the-minute accounts of what was going on in Moscow which almost allowed me to feel as if I was taking part myself.

As for the overall discourse, I think it’s perhaps a bit misguided in overstating the role of young urban liberals, or at least in overstating the role they would play in some sort of post-Putin system. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but the early protests in Egypt were primarily run and organized by “the Facebook generation” though the ultimate political benefit accrued almost entirely to extremely retrograde movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. Will the same thing happen in Russia? Not necessarily: a lot of what happened in Egypt can be explained by the fact that Egypt is generally a much more backward, poorer, and less urban society than Russia. But even the estimates of what a totally non-rigged election would have looked like have Yabloko getting less than 7% of the overall vote (or less than a quarter of what United Russia would have gotten). I don’t think this means the protests are “bad” or that the authorities are justified in crushing them, I think we just could stand to be a bit more realistic of what Russians themselves want and, judging by their voting patterns, it’s not a triumphant return of liberalism.

@mbk_center can be read on Twitter and the Web.

Thank you, Kevin, for inviting MBK Center to contribute. As you mentioned, you were interested in hearing what people are reading and hearing about the post-election events this week.

Out of the plethora of analysis, two ideas stood out to us. The first came from Vedomosti editor Maxim Trudolubov, who argued that we are witnessing a breakdown in the social contract of the Putin era, whereby voters “agreed” to sacrifice some democratic freedoms in exchange for stability, order, prosperity, etc. This anger over a stolen vote marks a reversal from these years of apathy. Much emphasis has been placed on the way the “arrangement” was (mis)handled when Putin assumed to take the presidency back without consultation. Not since LeBron James televised “the decision” to take his talents to South Beach has such a popular vehicle so quickly become an object of scorn. But what Trudolubov notes is much bigger than that:  he writes about a cultural shift in which “the heroic collective spirit of Soviet times is long gone,” while individual success has become the “dominating value.”

The second idea that goes back to the perils of rising expectations. Julia Ioffe has a piece quoting the young Nashi and Duma member Robert Shlegel, who complains that citizens are getting greedy, arguing that with “the emergence of the good things” that demands have changed, focusing not just on how to survive, but also how to live with dignity – which includes a role, minimal at least, in how public affairs are conducted.

But both of these perspectives are also problematic — on the one hand, there is a cultural shift toward some form of individualism, or worse, selfishness, while the other assumes that people are protesting out of some sort of unreasonable motive. But when you watch a YouTube video of an election official casually filling out hundreds of ballots to vote for United Russia, just what kind of suspension of apathy were they hoping voters would have?

What has happened this week is interesting, unforeseen, and meaningful. But let’s not blow things out of proportion. Remember, it was only last year that 12,000 people gathered in the streets of Kaliningrad to demand the resignation of a widely unpopular governor (appointed by United Russia) who had raised utility prices, and assail the party and Putin over a variety of grievances. Similar anti-Putin protests took place in Vladivostok in 2008. In both instances, there were a number of premature celebrations among the oppositionists predicting the imminent fall of Putinism.  That didn’t happen, and no one should expect it to happen in the next few weeks.

Yet still, this week could be a game changer. If United Russia is no longer reliable or credible as a platform, then what instruments will be used to bring Putin back into power next year? Will we see the inevitable counter-revolution of teenagers and pensioners bused in from the regions to protest in favor of Putin? More mass arrests, or is a new level of violence coming soon? What does seem clear, and quite different from the past, is that the Kremlin lacks a consensus strategy to deal with the current situation, and that this causes significant discomfort.

@Nils18 can be read on Twitter and the Web.

It seems that Vladimir Putin has severely underestimated the reactions to his announcement that he would again run for the post of President. From Putin’s perspective, the move seemed quite logical: the reforms instituted by Medvedev have not achieved the expected results (even though there has been some tangible impact). Also, there is the fact that United Russia had been performing badly in the polls throughout 2011: he clearly thought that by returning himself to the presidency, he could boost support for the party.

His choice has backfired. The older generation of Russians probably approved of this, as they like to see a father-like figure leading the country. However, the new generation of Russians felt cheated and took to the streets after the elections on Sunday, which Putin had turned into a de facto pre-presidential election. At first, I was not really impressed by the demonstrations in Moscow, but now that people are planning demonstrations in more than 80 cities in Russia, I’m far more excited. I found the reactions to the defeat of United Russia particularly interesting: Medvedev seemed more confident while Putin was clearly worried. The “manager” of the political process in Russia, Vladislav Surkov, managed to make a parody of himself by proposing that “Russia needs a new party for the angry middle class,” after he so enthusiastically destroyed that possibility by removing Prokhorov as the leader of the Right Cause Party just a few months ago. Other younger members of United Russia, like journalist A.Khinshtein, have expressed their frustrations, as well.

Some of the journalists and Russia experts have already started to predict what can and might happen. Notably, some Dutch journalists seem to be anticipating a revolution. I don’t think we will see a revolution, but if we do, I expect it will be bad for Russia. Others predict that Putin will get rid of Medvedev or that Kudrin might return. This could happen, of course, but it will not solve the government’s fundamental problems: Kudrin is not popular among Russians, which leaves only Medvedev as a “bridge” between the generations. It might well be that Putin will start relying on Medvedev more and more as a Prime Minister after his victory in March. Whatever the outcome, the Kremlin elite will need to address the problems and demands of the younger generation. Even when this all blows over.

@ninaivanovna can be read on Twitter and the Web.

This protest appears to consist of people who are frustrated and angry at the system. They are angry because they feel like their voice was taken away from them. And they are angry because corruption is making it difficult to live. They feel as if Putinism has failed them. But as Egypt and Tahrir have shown us in the last year, a movement of angry people can only get you so far.

A movement needs clear leadership, and right now this movement doesn’t seem to have one. Stanislav Belkovsky is still advocating Alexei Navalny and something Belkovsky calls Liberal Nationalism (as an American this seems a bit of an oxymoron, and I question what exactly that would look like). But as we saw on Unity Day, even Navalny can only appeal to a small portion of the middle class: young Russian Hipsters, apparently (or at least those with Internet access).

Despite the lack of focus and leadership of the protesters, at some point Putin and the Kremlin will have to make some concessions. And Vladimir Putin is not someone who makes concessions. Currently, Putin is dragging his feet and promising vague changes to take place after he becomes President again. But that may not be enough. Difficult choices must be made in the Kremlin in the coming days.

@seansrussiablog can be read on Twitter and the Web.

The Russian parliamentary elections have been incredibly exciting. The results, the street protests, and the debate swirling around what the Kremlin will do next has injected an urgency in Russian politics that’s been missing for a while. There are several things I’ve noticed, some obvious, some not, about the last few days.  First, is the pervasive use of technology and social networking among activists. As many have pointed out, Twitter, YouTube, Iphones, etc have played a similar role in Russia as in other countries. What is crucial about these technologies is that not only do they document events in real time, but more importantly, they create a counter-narrative that cannot be suppressed or counteracted through a medium, that, frankly, the Kremlin doesn’t seem to even understand.

Second, the discourse about the meaning of the elections has several parallel layers that don’t intersect. There is the government which obviously is trying to save face by giving recognition to their drop in support with promises of changes in personnel. For the most part, though, the Kremlin thinks it can use a combination of technocratic alterations to satisfy its constituency and force to quell civil unrest. The second discourse is that of expert intelligentsia. Most of the mainstream critical Russian press has been giddy about the elections and the protests, but their commentary has been sober and mostly concentrated on speculating the Kremlin’s next move. Also, their rhetoric is mostly focused on systemic themes: Russian political development, the relationship between state and society, the place of liberalism, and changes in societal attitudes. Despite their disparate viewpoints, they all seem to agree on one thing: Sunday’s elections were a major watershed.

The last discourse is that of the liberal opposition, its media, and street protesters (I would also include much of the Western media here too). There is an atmosphere of revival and revolution, and for good reason. The response to the elections, particularly among educated urban youths, has reinvigorated an aimless and wilting movement. Rather than analyzing the new situation, they are fueled by their convictions, sense of injustice and lack of recognition. What is most ironic is that many of these youths are products of Putin’s successes. Though their actual numbers on the street have been small, they have been impressive, particularly in their defiance of authority. Also, like many movements today, their support shouldn’t be measured by the bodies in the street. They have a growing constituency backing them on the Internet. The challenge of the opposition will be to materialize that virtual following into a concrete social force. My concern, however, is that the opposition will fetishize protest as it has in the past. Street protests have diminishing returns especially if there is a sense that they aren’t going anywhere. At some point the opposition is going to have to consolidate, strategize, and build for the long-term. As much as the rhetoric of a “Russian Winter” is in the air, it is important to remember that the vast majority of Russians support the system. Their deference toward United Russia may be waning, but they still overwhelmingly back the other sanctioned parties.

This brings me to my last point. The crucial voice missing is that of the Russian citizen who sincerely voted for one of the parties on the ballot.  The only time I’ve heard the voice of “Ivan Ivanovich” is in a report on how Russian state television isn’t reporting the protests. Besides that there has been little attention paid to what he or she thinks, what this vote says to them, or how they see the future. Like many other instances in Russian history, they are not invited to the conversation. In fact, to the players above, “Ivan Ivanovich” is nothing than the dark muzhik devoid of any political subjectivity. If this is indeed a new situation, ignoring this voice could have vital consequences on the course Russia takes in the future.

@siberianlight can be read on Twitter and the Web.

You want to know my guilty secret? Every day – elections or no – the first site I check for news about Russia is RIA Novosti. I’ve been impressed by the depth of their coverage and the (comparatively) even handed way that they’ve covered the elections, although the cynic in me wonders if its just a facade of open debate put on for foreign audiences. Plus, they’ve got pretty infographics.

The second tool I’ve found really useful is Google News. A quick search for ‘Russia election’ is a great way to get an overview of what the major press outlets are saying about the Russian elections. Although, I have to say, I’ve been disappointed by the spectacularly simplistic way that the election has been covered by most in the west – “a fraudulent election, followed by liberal opposition protests that are being crushed by the Kremlin” is the standard message, delivered by lazy hacks with varying degrees of breathlessness and, for good measure, littered with references to Russia’s Arab Spring (colored revolutions are yesterday’s news). The best thing about Google News, though, is that if you refine your search, you can drill down to some of the more interesting news sources and get access to some more nuanced reporting and opinion.

(Top tip: there’s also a Russian language version of Google News – news.google.ru – which uses Russian news sources)

The third and final step is, of course, twitter, which is where I keep up with the most interesting analysis (of wildly varying viewpoints) and any breaking news. I also find twitter’s short, often snarky, exchanges a great place to bounce around ideas about the implications of the election and to develop my own thinking.  I usually follow English language feeds because my Russian is (charitably) a bit crap and I tend to read Russian tweets slower than new ones arrive. Although occasionally I delve into Russian language twitter feeds for more detailed research or up to the minute news, I’ve found that the important news filters through to me fairly quickly.

@timothypost can be read on Twitter and the Web.

“Russia’s Generational Wars.” What exactly have we been witnessing this week in Russia? A civil war? A ideological struggle between competing economic systems? A political death match? A revolution?

Actually… it’s none of the above. Rather, what we’re witnessing in Russia is a generational stand-off. In many ways, Russia’s current unrest is part of the broader “global generational wars” that have already spawned the Arab Spring, the riots throughout Europe, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US. Of course, Russia’s generational war has its own flavor and was sparked for its very own unique cultural reasons.

In order to understand those cultural reasons, we must remember that there are three very distinct segments of society in Russia today. First, there’s the Vladimir Putin’s generation (i.e. the last Soviet) that is comprised of people over 50 years old. Then there’s Alexey Navalny’s generation (i.e. the first Russian) that is made up of young people under 35 years old. Finally, there’s Dmitry Medvedev’s generation of 35 to 50 year olds who came of age in the 1990′s (i.e. the lost generation). What we’re witnessing right now is an escalating generational power struggle that pits a young Russian generation against an older Soviet generation. Surprisingly, it was a rare political misstep by Putin and/or Surkov that was the potential root cause of this week’s flare up.

Until the United Russia party convention this past September, there had basically been a tacit understanding between the older and younger generations that Dmitry Medvedev would continue to serve as an interim caretaker in Russia’s political secession plan. All agreed that Medvedev was the least worst solution. Had Medvedev announced in September that he would run/stand for reelection to a 2nd term, most of the young urban generation would have begrudgingly pinched their noses and bit their tongues because unlike the youth in the other generational wars, Russia’s youngest generation has relatively good economic prospects. Medvedev, with his Skolkovo innograd (Russia’s Silicon Valley project), his highfalutin pronouncements on civil liberties, and his appealing techno-geek veneer would have let him serve as the political bridge, which would span Russia’s generation divide for another 6 years.

But something strange happened on the way to the convention. Putin got spooked (a topic for another time) and he decided that the original secession timetable should be pushed back (not at all uncommon… just ask Rupert Murdoch). The result was that the tandem awkwardly switched places and Medvedev begin a surrealistic dance as he campaigned as the new leader of the United Russia party (think: the class nerd who suddenly becomes the capo of the gang that steals the other kids’ lunch money). In the process, Medvedev sold his soul, invalidated his liberal credentials, and abandoned his role as the de facto political voice for Russia’s under 35 generation.

Vladislav Surkov (i.e. Russia’s Karl Rove), for reasons still unknown, was unable to balance the competing egos of Medvedev and Mikhail Prokhorov (owner of the Brooklyn Nets and a member of the Brat Pack Oligarchy). Thus, Prokhorov threw a very public and embarrassing temper tantrum, took his basketball, and quit the political game when he learned that it would be Medvedev who would be filling the Prime Minister’s chair for the next 6 years. Thus, the conditions were set for a perfect political storm in which the most sophisticated and modern segment of society, that young “first Russian” generation, was left completely and utterly without any political voice.

Since we know that nature abhors a vacuum, it’s not really that surprising that an unknown political wonder-kid, Alexey Navalny, would arrive on the scene as the newest Russian political superhero (think: JFK but with the Southern vote). While Medvedev and Putin toured the country attending rubber Chicken Kiev campaign events, and Surkov was too clever by half… Alexey Navalny quietly showed some surprisingly wise political instincts and did something nobody thought possible… he created a coalition of strange bedfellows that merged the moral activism of Russia’s urban liberals with the emotional patriotism of Russia’s nationalists.

Sunday’s elections and their obvious and insultingly clumsy incidents of voter fraud were simply the spark that lit the “bonfire of the indignities.” The result is that’s we’re now living in uncertain times over here in Russia. The escalating protests this week in Moscow, with the very definite possibility of nationwide demonstrations this weekend, has everyone treading on eggshells. Where it all leads, nobody knows. However, what should be quite obvious to everyone by this point, is that whatever the ultimate solution, it must quickly and fully give Navalny’s generation a real and substantive voice in Russia’s political life. Managed democracy is dead. If Putin remains firm in his belief that he must/will be a candidate for President in March (wouldn’t he be happier as the Chairman of a newly merged Rosneft/Gazprom) then he’ll have to offer the young protestors something of real value in order to put an end to Russia’s generational wars. Your move Mr. Putin.

@tomashirst can be read on Twitter and on the Web.

Text to come later. (Hopefully.)

@WParlett can be read on Twitter and on the Web.

Election fraud has long been an important tool for the Russian government in managing or — perhaps more accurately — “faking” democracy. One of the key reasons why the government has been able to get away with this fraud is its monopoly over information. The recent post-election unrest seems to suggest that the government’s control over information is slipping. Although it is impossible to know for sure, the scale of the falsifications this time around were likely no greater than in the past. The key difference this time, however, is that bloggers have posted a vast array of online content (including youtube videos and blog posts) showing blatant examples of voter fraud. Despite massive distributed denial of service attacks, the sheer scale and grainy reality of this information has proven impossible to contain.

The massive online exposure of the falsifications and the ensuing protests likely do not spell the end of the Putin regime or the first step to a dramatic “Russian spring”. But they do suggest that the Russian government is losing a critical weapon in its attempt to manage democracy: monopoly over information. Although the influence of the internet on Russian politics is likely overstated (see Morozov’s “net delusion” argument”), the recent post-election unrest suggests that the internet can play an important role in undermining the Russian a key government weapon in managed democracy. The obvious next question therefore is whether the Russian government can find more effective ways of renewing their information monopoly next time around.

William Partlett is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution. These comments are his own.  

@Yenisei23 can be read on Twitter and on the Web.

“Why I’m organising an anti-election fraud rally in London.” It all started really spontaneously. On December 5th, like anyone not attending the rally at Chistye Prudy, I was glued to my laptop screen, watching in awe as Moscow, my home town, erupted in the biggest public protests in 20 years. I was thrilled, but at the same time feeling helpless and detached from my friends and colleagues in Moscow, who were chanting, marching, tweeting madly, running away from the police, and getting beaten and detained. I almost felt like hitching the nearest flight to Moscow.

At some point, one of my Russian friends in London, equally stupefied by what he was watching on DozhdTV (‘RainTV,’ virtually the only independent Russian TV channel) and elsewhere, turned to me and suggested: “Hey, maybe we should do something here in London?” Dictum factum, I started a Facebook group and included all of my Facebook friends based in London. “Alright,” I thought, “we’re going to stand around with some placards, tweet for a while, take a couple of pictures to send to our friends in Moscow and that’ll be it.”

The next thing I know, I’m managing a 500-strong rally at Trafalgar Square. I’m getting calls from Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, and Sheffield from people wanting to come to our demonstration or organize their own — which is kind of overwhelming! I’ve never organised any public protests before (although I’ve been to quite a few, both as a journalist and as a participant), and I’m not at all involved in politics. I never even wanted to be a political journalist in the first place — but I guess you just can’t be a journalist in today’s Russia and not be political. These days, even the most timid nerds whose media careers mostly consist of reviewing indie gigs in Moscow’s smallest clubs are sharing the latest riot police evasion tips and angrily tweeting things like ‘Down with the party of crooks and thieves!’

So, I’m now in charge of a massive demonstration ten times the size that originally discussed with London’s Metropolitan Police. Who are all these people? They probably belong to the 2,000-plus people who voted in the Duma elections on December 4th at the Russian embassy in London, and most voted for any party but United Russia. I was an observer at that polling station, which was probably the freest of fraud of all the thousands of voting stations across Russia and its embassies worldwide. Now that I think of it, it’s pretty cynical: 2,000 voters are statistically insignificant, so nobody would bother chartering planes for Nashi to import rigged absentee ballots into or away from London. Unsurprisingly, at Britain’s three polling stations, EdRo lost epically, attracting just 10% of votes, ahead only of the nondescript parties the ‘Patriots of Russia’ and the Prokhorov-less ‘Right Cause’. Yabloko clocked some 40 percent. Now, if you look at Central Election Commission of Russia’s website, the overall votes-abroad result for United Russia was 63.91%, with Yabloko at just over 7 percent. Apparently, United Russia’s most loyal supporters prefer living somewhere outside of this supposedly ‘United’ Russia. In the bombed-out and mostly deserted Abkhazian town of Ochamchira (official population 4,702), more than 12,000 votes were cast for United Russia.

These examples go on and on. I think the point is clear: our votes have been stolen in a scam so massive, so brash and obvious, that it broke the political apathy of Russia in the 2000s. People simply won’t put up with that anymore.

The Great Digital Hype

Alexey Sidorenko of RuNet Echo tweeted earlier today that “as United Russia has 49% with all these violations, we can say: yes the Navalny Option has worked.” Sidorenko is a brilliant observer of the RuNet and I strongly recommend his regular posts about Russian bloggers and online phenomena. That said, Sidorenko’s reportage often crosses over from analysis into advocacy. RuNet Echo, a wonderful project from Global Voices, is dedicated to “expanding and deepening understanding of the Russian language Internet.” The inherent logic here, of course, is that the RuNet is worth understanding. While this is a perfectly defensible proposition, it has a tendency to guide its disciples to sometimes exaggerate the political significance (or even ambitions) of digital activism.

Navalny's Victory Tweet from inside a police bus, after being detained.

For instance, the day before the election, Sidorenko wrote that “It seems that through digital discussions on whether to vote or not [...] users have finally chosen the option proposed by blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny [...]: to vote for any other party but PM Vladimir Putin’s United Russia.” I agree that Navalny’s Option had palpable attraction and momentum among Russian bloggers, but Sidorenko seems to clearly over-simplify the very long and unfinished debate among oppositionists about the best voting strategy. When I asked Sidorenko via Twitter to name any major shifts in the ‘digital discussion’ as I laid it out in a July AGT post, he only named one individual who’d converted to Navalny’s camp.

Why downplay the diffusion of opinion among digital dissidents? My best guess is that students (and advocates) of online civil society want to present it as potent and coherent as possible, when the context is electoral behavior. Given the ‘real-world’ obscurity of Russian bloggers (only six percent of Russians had ever heard of Navalny back in April), even a truly unified digital campaign would likely have had just a small impact on this Sunday’s vote tally.

As it happens, yesterday’s national turnout was 60.2% — three percent lower than in 2007. While I suppose turnout among younger age groups would be the most telling (I’ve yet to see these figures reported), the fact is that less of the Russian electorate bothered to cast a ballot in this election. If this is proof that Navalny’s Option worked, then it’s also proof that Belkovsky’s and Udal’tsov’s Option worked, too. After all, the ‘passive boycott’ advocated staying at home and producing a lower turnout!

Meanwhile, the “New Political Reality”

RuNet tweeters tweeting photos of each other, and then retweeting them.

Amidst all the tweets and self-celebration, above and behind the outrage against vote-stuffing ‘carousels’ and ballot-buying schemes, the Grey Cardinal himself — the President’s First Deputy Chief of Staff, Vladislav Surkov — sat down to discuss the election with writer, blogger, and TV show host Sergei Minaev.

Surkov described United Russia’s ‘victory’ with unwavering optimism, calling the result: “very good,” “simply excellent,” “splendid,” and “expected and natural.” Surkov was in good form, dismissing the higher expectations of some United Russia officials (cough, cough: Boris Gryzlov) as “acts of faith,” not serious analysis. “On the principle of religious tolerance,” he quipped, “I’ll make no further comments about this subject.”

Repeating remarks from more than a year ago, Surkov argued that United Russia’s constitutional majority was “abnormally high.” (Never mind that Surkov’s tone was slightly more optimistic immediately following last September’s ‘castling.’) Complex, fragmented societies typically cannot sustain electoral victories over 40%, he said, adding about yesterday’s election: ”It’s good that a normalization of the political system has come after the abnormal period. The system has become more balanced and, consequently, more stable.”

Making it ever clearer that the era of power verticals and sovereign democracy is at least rhetorically over, Surkov declared “a new political reality” and criticized Russian politics for being too closed, even implying that it suffers from a certain backwardness:

The vertical responds to its failures in management by aspiring to become even more vertical — to become more primitive, to put it simpler. This is a flawed method. It leads to even greater insularity, and consequently to greater chaos. Therefore, in order for the system to survive and develop, it has to be opened up. Allow in new players. There has to be more than a single figure. A big party cannot win by fielding just one figure, even if it’s the figure of the king. You can’t be ‘solus rex’ — the lone king. You have to act in concert, and not close up. In an open system, there is greater turbulence, but paradoxically there is also greater stability. And we’re for stability, aren’t we?

Surkov also reveals a few sticks and carrots for the liberal opposition. First, he criticizes “negative and provocative” interpretations of the election’s effect on state institutions, promising that such efforts are “doomed to fail” (though he never explains at what exactly they’ll fail). “Everything is under control,” he says rather unnecessarily, in what could fuel future satirical online memes. “So to all the squawkers,” Surkov adds, “I answer: enough squawking. We’re tired of it.”

But it’s not all threats and defensiveness. When Minaev asks him what Russia’s political system lacks, Surkov admits that the country needs a “mass liberal party” (which he defines as “a party of the disgruntled urban communities”). Liberals’ participation in the current system (comprised mostly of media consortiums ironically owned by the entrenched authorities) is “too little,” and “they must also be given [...] parliamentary representation.”

Discussing the winners of yesterday’s election, Surkov singled out ‘A Just Russia,’ saying that many dismissed Mironov’s party after he lost his seat as Chairman of the Federation Council. “But thankfully they turned out to be wrong,” Surkov concluded, adding: ”The party has come into its own as a real, seasoned political force that people believe in. Without [A Just Russia], the system’s stability and validity [adekvatnost'] before the public mood and tastes would be lower.”

A Just & United Russia

So what happens when we combine the three biggest stories to come out of the 2011 Duma elections? (1) United Russia lost its constitutional majority; (2) Navalny’s camp of young oppositionist liberals claims to have achieved some kind of victory against the political establishment; and (3) ‘A Just Russia’ reinvigorated itself in the months before the election to pull off a surprise comeback, actually outdoing Zhirinovsky’s better established LDPR by almost a million votes.

Surkov says he’s happy with the results of the election. Though he marched tonight in protest on the streets of Moscow, Navalny too appears to be pleased with his impact on the vote. Sergei Mironov, who a few months ago was probably drafting different versions of his resignation speech, is undoubtedly happy with yesterday’s ‘splendid result.’ If we take everyone at their word, we’re left to guess at shared interests or possible tacit plans. Tumbling down that rabbit hole is for another post, but those itching for a head start are encouraged to begin the conspiracy hunt here, here, here, and here.

This is what Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion, said about the Internet’s power to topple regimes. Subtitled “The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” Morozov’s book focuses on the challenges facing states confronting digital threats and the Web’s unfortunate empowerment of fringe groups that sometimes spills into the real world as hatred and violence. This he presents as the untold story of online activism — the overlooked “dark side.” The good sibling to this nastiness is the more familiar story of Twitter-organization, flash mobs, and color revolutions. The Net Delusion is a useful counterweight to the loads of fluff that’s written about the democratizing wizardry of digital social networks. But there are reasons to wonder whether or not Morozov is only inflating popular delusions about the Web by overlooking the regular ineffectiveness of online mobilization. (For instance, the word “ineffective” only appears six times in the entire book, and always in the context of government attempts to control the Internet.)

Last month, Vladimir Milov in his Gazeta.ru column wrote an article titled “Apolitical Internet.” He argued, like others before him, that the RuNet is mostly the domain of entertainment-seeking young people generally uninterested in politics. Milov goes on to offer a few interesting examples of digital activism’s failures, including Evgeny Roizman’s fundraising troubles and the sad fate of a blogger from Perm who tried to build a political campaign relying solely on assistance and advice collected online. For more context about the Roizman example, it’s useful to go back to June 26th, when Milov blogged disappointedly about an unexpectedly low attendance for a PARNAS rally the previous day.

In that post, Milov lashed out at Nemtsov and Limonov for arranging doomed-to-fail demonstrations and promising unlikely turnouts: “The rally once again confirmed my old core position: it’s better not to have a rally at all than have a bad rally.” When a reader took issue with Milov’s argument and encouraged liberals to place their hope in figures like Navalny, Milov fired back:

So what about Navalny? In April, Navalny promoted the ‘Khvatit kormit’ Kavkaz’ rally. The turnout was 700 people. In June, Navalny promoted ‘Anti-Seliger,’ and the turnout was less than 1,500 people. There were more people than that at yesterday’s [failed] rally.”

Milov also cited a Slon.ru report, where Svetlana Romanova assessed the success-rate of digitally organized real-world activism. The study explored the blogging community’s attention-span on issues that have galvanized Russia’s electronic intelligentsia (tracking how long, but not necessarily in what capacity, certain stories continued to be discussed). Romanova focuses on seven such cases, each of which is worth reviewing here. Some of the incidents will be familiar to Western readers. For instance: Andrei Sychev and the hazing that allegedly cost him his legs was a shocking enough scandal that there was even some English-language coverage in early 2006, when it happened. Other stories, like Viktor Borisov — a homeless man who moved to the forrest and survived wearing military camouflage and ranting against the government, are presumably less well known outside Russia.

Let’s briefly run through Romanova’s research (carried out in March 2011):

Disclaimer: I’ll point out that Yandex’s blog search engine includes ‘notes’ and media reposts from social networking sites (mostly from Vkontakte). In other words, the graph’s results incorporate online attention that isn’t always as in-depth and dedicated as a public blog might be. It’s my experience that people use services like Vkontakte and Facebook to speak mostly to real-life friends about issues of personal importance. Reposting an article from the mainstream media does indicate an interest, but it clearly requires less energy and commitment than someone who writes his own article for a LiveJournal post.

Mercedes 666

On February 25, 2010, Lukoil Vice President Anatoly Barkov’s car collided with a smaller vehicle on Leninskii Prospekt, ultimately killing the two women inside the other car. The RuNet spent months debating whether it had been Barkov or the other car that had crossed into oncoming traffic. (Most blamed Barkov.) Russian rapper “Noize MC” (aka Ivan Alexeev) released a song attacking the Lukoil VP titled “Mercedes 666: Give Way to the Chariot.” A YouTube music video of the song (which is admittedly ‘catchy,’ if one enjoys or can even stomach a moment of rap) now has nearly 500,000 views.

Despite all this energy and excitement, frustrations on the Internet have not had a measurable impact in the real world. Romanova points out that, while they were enraged enough to write 23,000 different posts about the car crash, bloggers only assembled in reality once, outside Lukoil’s building in Moscow, with a fairly low turnout. The last significant spike in online attention was in September 2010, when the police concluded their investigation without any charges against Barkov.

Anastasia Ermakova & State Assistance to Mothers

As 2010 came to a close, Anastasia Ermakova, a 24-year-old mother living in Balashikha (just outside Moscow), took to the street to protest a new law that would reform the way that mothers’ social benefits are determined. (The law would make it so that welfare calculations are based on five years of employment history, instead of just two.) A LiveJournal community, “Ru-perinatal,” picked up the story, and became a forum for Russians dissatisfied with the state’s support for and attitude toward motherhood. The pickets spread to twenty different cities.

The government’s early response was clumsy. Yuri Voronin, the Deputy Minister of Public Health, first intervened unsympathetically. Shortly thereafter, however, the Ministry reversed its tone and promised to rework the changes to benefits calculations. In January 2011, Putin announced that any reforms to the subsidies program were being delayed by at least two years. Perhaps only temporarily, the activists appear to have won unambiguously.

Sandra Zarubina & Her Damned Portuguese Upbringing

Early last decade, Natalia Zarubina was traveling in Portugal, where she decided to give up her daughter, Sandra, for adoption. Natalia was an alcoholic at the time, but five years later, she declared herself fit to reclaim Sandra, who had been growing up in Portugal since her mother abandoned her. Natalia won the ensuing legal battle, and Sandra returned to the village outside Yaroslavl, where her mother lived. During an interview on NTV in 2009, Natalia caused an uproar among Russian bloggers when she rather viciously slapped Sandra on-camera and complained to her interviewer, “This damned Portuguese upbringing!”

The online discussion focused mostly on the apparent damage to Sandra, who had been living a materially superior life in the West, presumably without an abusive, drunkard mother. Bloggers’ interest quickly faded, however, and the attention during the summer of 2009 was short-lived. By now, Sandra has reportedly lost all knowledge of Portuguese and assimilated into Russian society quite normally.

Homeless Viktor Borisov

Photos like these helped boost Borisov's celebrity online.

Viktor Borisov is a homeless man living in the forest outside Moscow. For the last year, he has enjoyed declining attention from Russian bloggers, who like to read into his actions various kinds of political and social protest. Borisov’s story is not unlike the character Doc Daneeka from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. After he made his way to Moscow from Kamchatka, Borisov tried to renew his documents, only to find that his hometown had long ago registered him as deceased. When Moscow officials refused to issue Borisov the paperwork necessary for legal residence and employment, he made his way to the city’s outskirts and set up permanent camp in the forest. A sympathetic local soon visited and supplied him with basic goods like a sleeping bag and materials to build an oven. Bloggers arrived shortly thereafter, gifting him a cell phone and bicycle rigged to charge various small electronics. Borisov soon had his own website, crude and rarely updated, to which he posted entries from his mobile phone.

Russians have maintained some interest in his site, but Borisov himself quickly soured on the nature of blogging. Almost instantly, he denounced what he thought was a preponderance of “wickedness and shit.”

Migalka Thugs

On November 24th last year, Aleksei Smirnov was on his way home from work, driving on Moscow’s Ring Road in heavy traffic around midnight. The congestion was so bad (even at the late hour) that Smirnov was unable to move his car out of the way to let pass an ‘elite car’ flashing its siren behind him. When he didn’t clear a path, several young men exited the rear car and approached Smirnov, threatening him with their fists, trying to enter his vehicle and even smashing his headlights and driver’s side window. Things might have gotten significantly more violent, but the other drivers in the surrounding cars intervened and the assailants retreated.

The Blue Buckets Society took up Smirnov’s case, organizing its investigation through its LiveJournal community. Soon, the owner of the migalka-car was revealed to be Tel’man Ismailov’s private security firm “ACT Shield.” The blue bucket group offered Smirnov legal help, and even submitted an official report to the police on his behalf. Russian activists were clearly hoping to repeat their success in provoking criminal charges against Vadim Boiko, a (now former) Petersburg police officer still in court for using excessive force during the dispersal of a rally in the summer of 2010.

Smirnov’s case, however, did not go anywhere. Police investigators simply didn’t show up for scheduled meetings, and the GUVD’s Moscow spokesperson, Viktor Biriukov, ignored the issue entirely. At one point, Rashid Nurgaliev seemed poised to take personal control of the case, but nothing ever came of it. In March 2011, when Ismailov was called in by the police for questioning, he denied ever having been present in Moscow at the time of the attack. It was implied that his son might have been in the car during the incident, but the police never attempted to question him.

Andrei Sychev Loses His Legs

On New Year’s Day in 2006, Andrei Sychev, a new conscript at a military academy in Chelyabinsk, was reportedly subjected to several hours of hazing (known in Russian as “dedovshchina”) that days later led to the amputation of his legs. Sychev claims that he was forced to squat for three hours, while other soldiers kicked and beat his legs. When treatment was delayed, Sychev developed gangrene and soon ended up on the operating table. Some argue that he would likely have died, had one of the hospital’s doctors not contacted ‘The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers,’ which brought the case its initial attention.

On February 14, 2006, a small but visible crowd (organized largely through LiveJournal) gathered for an unsanctioned rally outside the Defense Ministry in Moscow to protest Sychev’s treatment. At first, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov tried to dismiss the case, saying publicly that “nothing serious happened.” This provoked bloggers into collecting over four thousand signatures calling for Ivanov’s dismissal. At the height of the scandal, even Channel One covered the story.

Soon, bloggers’ advocacy helped pressure the authorities into moving Sychev to a better hospital in Moscow. Later, he was moved back closer to his hometown, to a facility for disabled veterans located in Ekaterinburg. In the years following the tragedy, Sychev has maintained a fairly low profile, occasionally lobbying on behalf of wheelchair ramp installations for various municipal buildings. He stays mostly inside during the winters because of snow, and Romanova notes that he seems to take less interest in the ramps after they’ve been installed. Aleksandr Siviakov, the man convicted of leading the assault on Sychev, was released from prison in February 2011, after roughly five years behind bars.

One of the most lasting effects of Sychev’s dedovshcina is a related scandal involving journalist Oleg Kashin. In early February 2006, when Kashin was still in his ‘conservative phase,’ he authored a report for Expert, where he accused protesters and bloggers of ignoring the truth that Sychev had never really suffered a brutal beating — that the real cause of the infection in his legs had been a preexisting vascular disease. According to Kashin, the public was only using Sychev to express otherwise justifiable anger against the army and the Ministry of Defense.

Though his piece was apparently based on extensive research that included interviews with doctors and suspects (as well as a thorough review of the investigators’ records), the online public denounced Kashin for seemingly defending Siviakov and disrespecting Sychev. Last year, when Kashin was himself brutally beaten nearly to death, more than a few bloggers taunted him (quite hysterically) for having invited this fate with that 2006 Expert article.

The Ring Road & The Human Shield

In March 2010, Stanislav Sutiagin and several other drivers passing down Moscow’s Ring Road were stopped by police and told to park their vehicles across the middle of the highway. Moments later, a speeding car crashed through the barricade and the officers (all except one) left the scene, in hot pursuit of the getaway criminal. Sutiagin, along with others who included a pregnant woman, had been unknowingly used as a human shield.

Bloggers flooded the Web with posts about the incident, including Sutiagin himself, who published public appeals on LiveJournal and YouTube. Prominent blogger, activist, and journalist Marina Litvinovich frequently addressed this case, sometimes recirculating Sutiagin’s videos. Sergei Kanaev of the Russian Drivers’ Association offered legal aid to victims. The GIBDD paid for the auto repairs of the damaged vehicles. On November 30, 2010, Inspector Oleg Sokolov was convicted of going beyond his authority and a court sentenced him to a year in prison. Sokolov was also barred from ever again working in law enforcement. Channel One interviewed Sutiagin and others involved.

Whether or not the ‘human shield’ case was a success for digital activism, however, remains unclear. Despite Sokolov’s conviction, he was released early on parole, and some reports allege that he might actually rejoin the police next year in March. Litvinovich argues that Sokolov was merely a scapegoat, and that other, higher-ranking cops got off scot-free. Sutiagin, for his part, has since deleted his LiveJournal and YouTube accounts.

So What’s It All Mean?

Romanova concludes her study by comparing RuNet activists to Randle Patrick McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “At least I tried,” that character told a disappointed audience, after he foolishly promised and then failed to lift a drinking fountain. Her sentiment is clear: the blogosphere’s potential is spirited and exciting, but its inability to deliver real results ensures defeat and irrelevance. Is that the fate of online activism? Is the true ‘dark side’ of the Internet that its warriors are inconsistent and ineffective?

Yandex.Blogs Analytics

Google Trends Analytics

Though it will be difficult to measure, next month’s Duma elections will be an interesting test of one of Russia’s most prominent online-based campaigns: the “Vote For Anyone Except the Party of Crooks and Thieves” movement, spearheaded by Aleksei Navalny. Navalny first used the ‘crooks and thieves’ phrase in a Finam.FM radio interview on February 2, 2011, in the following context:

Yuri Pron’ko: Do you have your own political sympathies? How do you feel about the party “United Russia”?

Aleksei Navalny: I have very negative feelings about United Russia. The party United Russia is a party of corruption — it is a party of crooks and thieves.

The slogan (abbreviated in Russian as “PZhiV”) went viral and now produces over 1.7 million hits on a Google search. Since early 2011, the blogosphere’s discussion of PZhiV has eclipsed all seven of the above incidents examined in Romanova’s report. ‘Navalny’s Option,’ as the electoral strategy has come to be known, has the advantage of a noteworthy leader and a single date on which coordinated activism is planned to take place. While it will be difficult to gauge to what degree non-United-Russia votes are cast (a) in concert with Navalny’s Option, or (b) in support of those other parties’ actual platforms, a large spike in votes for minority parties will likely be seen as a victory of the PZhiV campaign.

In any event, the coming elections will be an interesting test of Russian bloggers, offering us a chance to judge if Milov’s and Romanova’s pessimism about digital activism is well-placed. If Navalny and his supporters fail to make a noticeable impact, it could become the most conclusive evidence yet of a RuNet delusion — unlike the one Morozov warned against in his book, but perhaps more ominous for civil societies across the world’s authoritarian states.

Politrash_ru tops LiveJournal for a day.

Below, you will find my English translation of the interview, followed by the original Russian text.

Transcript translated into English

A Good Treaty: Thanks very much, blogger PoliTrash, for agreeing to answer my questions!

Recently, you’ve quite extensively and frequently written about the politics and personality of Aleksei Navalny. Why do you pay so much attention to this one person? 

PoliTrash_ru: You’re somewhat mistaken here. I haven’t been writing a lot about Navalny only recently — I’ve been doing so since the moment I created my blog, nearly a year-and-a-half ago. Navalny is a political phenomenon of part of the Russian blogosphere (or more precisely, of LiveJournal, where I created my own blog), which is why I pay him so much attention. To be honest, I’ve been able to so quickly ‘hype’ my own blog in part thanks to how often I write about Navalny.

AGT: For instance, I did a search of your blog for public figures, and I got the these results:

(Surname: the number of times the person appears in a PoliTrash blog post)

• Navalny: 165,
• Prokhorov: 57,
• Nemtsov: 48,
• Putin: 42,
• Medvedev: 37,
• Belkovsky: 36,
• Milov: 17,
• Khodorkovsky: 13,
• Yashin: 12,
• Latynina: 4,
• Berezovsky: 4,
• Zhirinovsky: 2,
• Timchenko: 2

On what basis do you determine the priorities and main characters in your work?

PoliTrash: Solely on a basis of their informational relevance in the online political space. Currently, Navalny is often a newsmaker in the blogosphere — with his posts often ranking in the ‘top’ [most-read] of all of LiveJournal — and that’s why I write about him. There was a period of time when I was more interested in Prokhorov, and as a result I was writing about him. If I relied on Channel One’s informational picture, then I’d be writing about Putin and Medvedev, but then again the Russian blogosphere isn’t Channel One.

AGT: You quite thoroughly examined the details of the personal correspondence between Navalny and a figure, who is most likely Stanislav Belkovsky. If Gustav von Aschenbach and Oleggio Boticelli really are Belkovsky’s pseudonyms, what does it mean? What changes in the country’s politics after such an event? What consequences do you expect for Navalny, after the publication of this correspondence?

PoliTrash: The emails between Navalny and Belkovsky reveal only two things: (1) how and with whom the ‘nationalist-democratic’ concept was created (whose shining representative is Navalny), and (2) the core of Navalny’s muckraking activities relating to Russian corporations. Regarding consequences: nothing in Russia’s politics will really change (Navalny’s weight in real politics is only slightly above zero), but this will hit Navalny’s own political prospects hard. Would you continue to unconditionally believe a person who feigned righteous anger against Deripaska, but was actually carrying out a commercial order for ‘black PR’? Who received fifty thousand euros for such work? [sic -- this should be dollars, AGT's note.] I’d think twice about it, at any rate.

AGT: Will the electorate remember any of this in five years? How about in ten? 

PoliTrash: In five years, perhaps they won’t remember, but I don’t rule out that, by that time, they might not remember Aleksei Navalny, either. The publication of these emails with Belkovsky will simply stop (or rather it’s already stopped) the growth of Navalny as a public political figure. And there’s no reason to fixate just on the [$50,000] moment in the correspondence. There are fragments concerning the Party of Right Forces’ advertising campaign and Navalny’s dealings with [Peter] Ofitserov in Kirov. I don’t rule out that, after an analysis of these blocks [of text], Navalny might join Ofitserov, who is currently charged in a criminal case.

I’ll explain: until all this, for the last two years, Navalny’s development as a politician has relied on the idea that he is “entirely in the white,” meaning that nowhere is there any kompromat on Navalny that he participated in anything tainted ethically or politically. In this respect, he stood out from previous leaders of the ‘non-establishment’ opposition — [people like] Nemtsov, Kasparov, Limonov, and so on. After the publication of this correspondence, Navalny firmly entered their ranks, turning out to be nothing like a ‘white knight,’ and no less stained than the rest. And he’s even lying publicly now about the authenticity of the [Belkovsky] emails.

AGT: What do you make of the recent Moskovskii Komsomolets article by Belkovsky, where he complains that Navalny (a) advocates supporting the ‘vote for any party but United Russia’ strategy, and (b) “stands alongside those [nationalists Dmtiri Demushkin and Aleksandr Belov] who not long ago openly promoted Ramzan Kadyrov’s image”? As you know, this is far from news. For a long time now, Navalny has supported his own electoral ‘option,’ and he’s attended the Russkii Marsh for several years already. Why did Belkovsky suddenly decide to criticize his friend? Does this article mark a split in the Navalny-Belkovsky tandem?

PoliTrash: Unlike Navalny, who from the start has been talking about falsified emails and was immediately caught in a lie, Belkovsky decided to act more intelligently, reducing the entire story to insanity, in order to change the situation to Navalny’s advantage. First, Belkovsky released a video parody through his own ‘FSB’ project, and then he wrote this article in MK, where he tried to play up Navalny politically. It goes without saying that neither amounts to real criticism. In both the video and the article, all this ‘criticism’ is nothing more than Belkovsky’s latest game — an attempt to minimize the consequences of the [leaked] emails, for himself and for Navalny.

AGT: Just to avoid any ambiguity: if the video and the article are fake criticism, does that mean that Belkovsky will soon again be writing all kinds of articles in support of ‘Navalny-politics‘? Or has Belkovsky entered a new era, where he will support Navalny secretly?

PoliTrash: Belkovsky has never really written articles in support of ‘Navalny-politics,’ and very rarely actually mentioned Navalny by name in his publications and speeches. It’s more that their agendas are practically identical. That and their views on most key issues, such as the Caucasus, for instance.

AGT: Belkovsky said in the video that Berezovsky paid Navalny a million dollars for some kind of work. Clearly this is some kind of joke or craziness, but Berezovsky did indeed finance Belkovsky in years past. Are there reasons today to suspect that Berezovsky still plays a role in Belkovsky’s affairs (or, through him, the affairs of Navalny)? If not, where do these figures get the money to support their activities? 

PoliTrash: I’m not sure that Berezovsky backs Belkovsky. In any case, it’s obvious that Belkovsky finances different political projects (such as the ‘black PR’ project against Deripaska) not out of his own pocket, but on someone else’s dime. For now, I cannot answer exactly whose money it is.

AGT: In July earlier this year, Navalny tweeted a link to a post by a fairly unknown blogger, Mikhail Zhivov, titled, “The Tactical Democratization of Russia, Instructions,” where a link to your blog appeared with advice to Navalny’s supporters not to believe you, and that Zhivov himself “won’t believe you” because you’re a “hired troll.” How do you (or did you) react to this? 

PoliTrash: If I’m not mistaken, Mikhail Zhivov linked to a post titled, “The Navalny Manual,” in which I combined the arguments of both Navalny’s supporters and opponents, where one of the most common arguments of his supporters was to accuse his opponents of being “hired trolls.” As it happens, I found this particular excerpt:

If you see comments or articles promoting either United Russia or Putin, write that the author lies, that he’s one of PoliTrash’s hired trolls, and so everything is clear add a link to PoliTrash’s manual, where he’s already laid out all possible cliches. Let the author find excuses, but even if he’s absolutely honest and sincere in his thoughts, there can be no believing him.

I think this passage is a good example of the quality of reasoning in Russia’s radical opposition, don’t you? By the way, [what Zhivov wrote] is the same thing Navalny said when he was told that his recently released video about “United Russia’s 2002 Manifesto” was based on lies. (United Russia’s manifesto never made the claims that Navalny alleged.) “Don’t reflect on it, disseminate it!” Navalny said to his supporters. “Leave them to their own defenses!” In other words, he basically encouraged others to spread lies. I’ve never subscribed to such reasoning and I never will. It’s a shame that, instead of basing its criticisms of the authorities on real issues (and there are plenty), the Russian Opposition campaigns on blatant lies.

AGT: Many thanks, PoliTrash, for taking the time to sit down and answer these questions!

Исходный текст интервью на русском

AGT: Спасибо большое, блогер ‘ПолиТрэш’, что Вы согласились ответить на мои вопросы!

В последнее время, Вы обширно и часто пишете о политике и личности Алексея Навального. Почему Вы обращаете столько внимания именно на этого человека? 

ПолиТрэш: Вы не совсем правы. Я не в последнее время о нем много пишу, а с самого момента создания блога, что произошло лишь полгода назад. Навальный – это политический феномен части российской блогосферы (а именно сервиса Livejournal, на котором я и создал свой блог), поэтому я и уделяю ему столько внимания. Скажу честно, мне удалось так быстро “раскрутить” свой блог в том числе и потому, что я часто писал о Навальном.

AGT: Например, я сделал поиск в Вашем блоге по общественным деятелям, и получил такие результаты:

(фамилия: количество постов, в которых человек появляется) 

• навальный: 165
• прохоров: 57
• немцов: 48
• путин: 42
• медведев: 37
• белковский: 36
• милов: 17
• ходорковский: 13
• яшин: 12
• латынина: 4
• березовский: 4
• жириновский: 2
• тимченко: 2

На какой основе Вы определяете приоритеты и главных фигур в Вашей работе?

ПолиТрэш: Исключительно на основе их информационной актуальности в политическом интернет-пространстве. Навальный сейчас часто становится ньюсмейкером в рамках блогосферы, его посты часто висят в “топе” “Живого журнала”, поэтому о нем и пишу. Был период, когда больше интереса представлял Прохоров – в результате я писал о нем. Если бы я опирался на информационную картину “Первого канала”, то писал бы о Путине и Медведеве, но ведь российская блогосфера – это не “Первый канал”.

AGT: Вы досконально обсудили детали личной переписки между Навальным и человеком, который, вероятнее всего, является Станиславом Белковским. Если Gustav von Aschenbach и Oleggio Boticelli действительно псевдонимы Белкового, что это значит? Что изменится в политике страны после такого события? Какие политические последствия для Навального Вы ожидаете после опубликования этой переписки?

ПолиТрэш: Переписка Навального с Белковским красноречиво показывает только две вещи: 1) то, как и кем создавалась “национал-демократическая” концепция, ярким представителем является Навальный 2) суть разоблачительной деятельности Навального в отношении российских корпораций. А что касается последствий, то в российской политике это ничего особо не изменит (вес навального в реальной политике совсем немного выше нуля), а вот по политическим перспективам самого Навального сильно ударит. Вы бы стали продолжать безоговорочно верить человеку, который, изображая праведный гнев в отношении Дерипаски, на самом деле выполнял коммерческий заказ по “черному пиару”, получая за это 50 тыс. евро [sic]? Я бы, как минимум, задумался.

AGT: Вспомнит ли об этом электорат через пять лет? А через десять? 

ПолиТрэш: Через пять лет может и не вспомнят, но не исключаю, что через пять лет не вспомнят и о самом Алексее Навальном. Публикация переписки с Белковским просто остановит (а вернее уже остановила) рост Навального как публичного политика. Тут, кстати, не надо зацикливаться только на этом моменте из переписки. Там есть фрагменты по поводу рекламной кампании партии СПС и дел Навального с Офицеровым в Кирове. Не исключаю, что после анализа этих блоков, Навальный может присоединиться к Офицерову, который ныне является обвиняемым по уголовному делу.

Поясню: до этого в течение последних двух лет развитие Навального как политика опиралось на то, что “он весь в белом”, т.е. на него нету никакого толкового компромата, он не участвовал во всяких грязных с этической и политической точки зрения историях. И в этом качестве он контрастировал с предыдущими лидерами “несистемной” оппозиции – Немцовым, Каспаровым, Лимоновым и т.д. После публикации этой переписки Навальный прочно встал в их ряд – оказалось, что никакой он не “в белом”, а запачкан ничуть не меньше всех остальных. Да еще и врет публично – в том, что касается подлинности переписки.

AGT: Как вы расцениваете недавнюю статью Белкового в МК, где он жалуется на то, что Навальный (а) выступает в защиту стратегии ‘за любую партию, кроме ЕдРо’, и (б) “становится в одну колонну с теми [Д.Демушкин и А.Белов], кто совсем недавно открыто выступал пиарщиками Рамзана Кадырова”? Как Вы знаете, это далеко не новость. Навальный давно поддерживает свой избирательный ‘вариант’, и ходит на Русский Марш уже несколько лет. Почему Белковский вдруг решил раскритиковать своего друга?  Означает ли эта статья раскол в Навально-Белковском тандеме?

ПолиТрэш: Белковский, в отличие от самого Навального, который сперва начал говорить о фальсификациях писем и сразу же попался на лжи, решил действовать умнее и свести всю эту историю с публикацией переписки в маразм, а то и переиграть ситуацию в пользу самого Навального. Сперва Белковский выпустил пародийный ролик в рамках своего проекта “ФСБ”, а потом написал вот эту статю в МК, где сделал попытку политически масштабировать Навального. Разумеется, никакой настоящей критикой это все не является. Вся эта “критика”, что в ролике, что в статье – не более чем этап очередной игры Станислава Александровича и попытка минимизировать последствия переписки как для себя, так и для Навального.

AGT: (Во избежание разночтений.) Если ролик и статья являются фальшивой критикой, значит ли это, что Белковский скоро опять будет писать всякие статьи в защиту ‘Навальновской политики‘? Или Белковский открывает новую эпоху, где он будет поддерживать Навального в тайне? 

ПолиТрэш: Белковский никогда особо публично и не писал статьи в защиту “навальновской политики” и очень редко упоминал самого Навального в своих публикациях и выступлениях. Другое дело, что “повестка дня” у них почти идентична. Ну и взгляды по подавляющему большинству ключевых вопросов – теме Кавказа, например.

AGT: Белковский сказал в ролике, что Березовский заплатил Навальному миллион долларов за какую-то работу. Шутка или маразм какой-то здесь конечно есть, но ведь Белковского действительно финансировал Березовский в прошлые годы. Есть ли на сегодняшний день основания считать, что Березовский все еще играет роль в делах Белковского (и через него Навального)? Если нет, то откуда берутся деньги на которые эти фигуры кормятся?

ПолиТрэш: У меня нет уверенности в том, что за Белковским стоит Березовский. Тем не менее, очевидно, что Белковский финансирует различные политические проекты (ну и такие проекты “черного пиара” как в случае с Дерипаской) не из своего кармана, а за чей-то счет. У меня пока нет ответа на вопрос за чей именно.

AGT: В июле этого года Навальный опубликовал в Twitter ссылку на пост неизвестного блогера Михаила Живова, под названием “Тактическая демократизация России – Инструкция“, где появляется ссылка на Ваш блог вместе с советом защитникам Навального вам не верить, и что он сам Вам “верить уже не будет” потому что Вы “проплаченный тролль”. Как Вы на это отреагировали/отреагируете?

ПолиТрэш: Если я не ошибаюсь, то Михаил Живов в своей статье ссылался на мой “Мануал по Навальному“, в котором я свел воедино как агрументы сторонников Навального, так и его противников, и где одним из наиболее распространенных аргументов его сторонников было обвинение своих оппонентов в том, что они “проплаченные тролли”. Кстати, нашел специально этот фрагмент:

Если вы увидите комментарии или статьи, возвышающие Единую Россию, Путина, или наоборот, дискредитирующие Навального или оппозицию, то пишите, что автор лжёт, что он проплаченный тролль politrash_ru’а , а чтобы в этом все удостоверились, давайте ссылку на мануал ПолиТрэша, где он уже перебрал всевозможные клеше [sic]. Пускай автор оправдывается, но даже, если он был абсолютно честен и искренен в своих мыслях, верить ему уже не будут.

Мне кажется, что этот пассаж прекрасно характеризует уровень аргументации российской радикальной оппозиции, не находите? Навальный, кстати, писал примерно то же самое, когда ему указывали, что недавно запущенный им ролик про “Манифест Единой России 2002 года” основан на лжи (ЕР не принимала такого манифеста в 2002 году). Он писал критикам: “Вы не рефлексируйте, вы распространяйте, пусть отбиваются”. То есть фактически осознанно призывал других людей распространять ложь. В общем, такая аргументация меня никогда не устраивала и устраивать не будет и мне очень жаль, что российская оппозиция не видит реальных причин для критики власти, коих предостаточно, а строит свою агитацию на откровенной лжи.

To read or not to read? [...] Just go get it and read it. You have my permission. Better you read [the original] yourself than the interpretations of these gangs of bloggers, who post nothing but nonsense that all misses the mark.

There are excerpts floating around the Web by now, but here’s how I downloaded the full archive of what’s been leaked: follow this link to a website run by ‘Hacker Hell,’ the individual who claims to have broken into Navalny’s gmail account and stolen the data. A few paragraphs down, you will find links to webfilehost.com files (“1 часть, 2 часть, 3 часть, 4 часть, 5 часть”). You will need to download all five sections. Once you’ve done that, unzip the first часть and enter the following password (reported here): “navalny-zalupa-0201″. Next, you’ll need to download a Windows-only email client called “The Bat!” (available here). Set up any dummy email account (you don’t have to use a real one — just button-mash through the installation), and then import the TBB file. The total file space is significant (more than 3GB), thanks mostly to file attachments in many of the emails. (This is a mix of work documents and personal photos.) The timeline for the leaked emails is from January 11, 2007, to August 16, 2010. In an interview with ridus.ru, ‘Hacker Hell’ claimed to have hacked three of Navalny’s email accounts — two belonging to him and one to his wife. Describing the leak, ‘Hell’ says that he’s so far only released one mailbox (leaving it unclear whether or not this refers to both of Navalny’s own accounts or just one).

Vladimir Pribylovsky has put some time into revealing ‘Hell”s true identity (despite reported threats). So far, he’s convinced that the hacker is actually Sergei Nikolaevich Maksimov, a 37-year-old resident of Germany. Pribylovsky has even posted photographs of the front of Maksimov’s home in Bonn, saying:

It’s clear that Mr. Maksimov has some psychological problems (he’s severely psychotic at a minimum, and possibly schizophrenic, as well). He demonstrates vicious homophobia combined with obsessive fantasies about sodomy (usually fantasizing about sexual violence involving ‘rail tracks’ against ‘fags’). Usually, such sado-homophobic fantasies indicate the presence of serious [sexual] orientation problems. Equally, he is an extreme White supremacist and anti-Semite (despite Jewish heritage on his mother’s side of the family).

For a taste of Hell/Maksimov’s particular flavor of crazy, have a look at his October 27th blog post, where he (a) calls Navalny a “dumb hayseed fag,” and then (b) explains with surprising sophistication how it is actually possible to verify the genuineness of the leaked emails. (For an separate confirmation of Hell’s authenticity claims, see here.) In his blog (http://torquemada.bloground.ru), Hell/Maksimov blogs in pure ‘padonok‘ speech, using intentionally misspelled Russian that heavily relies on profanity and slang.

So What Did the World Learn About Navalny?

There are several chains of correspondence in the leaked emails that at first glance could compromise (or at least complicate) Navalny’s public stature. For critics seeking evidence that Navalny is an American spy, there is his correspondence with Michael Murphy of the National Endowment for Democracy in April 2010. Navalny asked Murphy to put him in touch with someone who could help him lobby the U.S. government to apply the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the FCPA) to businesses in the Kirov Oblast’, where he was advising Governor Belykh at the time. Murphy worked to introduce him to Thomas Firestone, the State Department’s representative to the Justice Department and a Moscow embassy legal advisor.

On April 19, 2010, Navalny wrote the following to Murphy:

[...] I collected a huge crowd to fight corruptionists with the Daimler and HP case. About one thousand [people] have written complain[t]s after my watchword in blog [sic] and about one hundred [have] registered for constant activity. I [am] really sorry that I was not successful with [...] contacting Tom F. and [other] U.S. officials. We really need it.

Your neighborhood, sweatervested electronic theft victim.

There is also a host of emails that occurred during Navalny’s stay at Yale for the World Fellows Program. Most of these messages involve the scheduling of meetings with other fellows and with Yale scholars. You can even read Navalny’s correspondence with Ed Verona and the staff of the U.S. Russia Business Council (which invited him to present at a conference), or see the massive number of unsolicited random emails from perfect strangers all over Russia and the West, offering Navalny their skills in the fight against Russian corruption. I personally was most disturbed by the emails from Navalny’s wife, which often included photos of their children. (Whatever his dirty secrets, it’s hardly pleasant that anonymous hackers are trafficking images of Navalny’s small kids.)

What’s So Compromising About Any of This?

Roman Dobrokhotov (the man who recently debated Navalny on Ekho Moskvy about the ‘Khavtit kormit’ Kavkaz’ rallies and lost 11% to 89% in listener voting) offers an interesting defense of Navalny in the email leaks scandal. Regarding Navalny’s involvement with NED and attempts to utilize the FCPA, Dobrokhotov explains:

Although [the FCPA] is an American law, it can prove very useful because Russian companies that want to do business in the U.S. are subjected to scrutiny by their potential [American] partners, driving them to want a guarantee that any [future] cooperation won’t be marred by illegal bribes. In other words, Navalny tried, through American experts, to strengthen the fight against corruption in the Kirov Oblast’ — which is quite far from what the pro-Kremlin commentators are saying about him.

Dobrokhotov has a point: much of what’s found in the emails does more to vindicate Navalny than damn him. The evidence shows that he has been the one to lobby the United States for intervention and assistance — not the other way around. In specific cases, like correspondence concerning the Kirovles scandal, Navalny indeed shines as a genuine champion of entrepreneurs.

In May 2009, he wrote:

The Ilim Group includes the Kotlassky pulp and paper mill, which is located in Koryazhma, in the Arkhangelsk Oblast’. This mill produces raw materials: pulp wood. One of the  major suppliers of these materials is the Kirov Oblast’. In 2008, the oblast’ shipped by railway about 520 thousand cubic meters of wood to the facility [in Koryazhma]. The damned problem is that the suppliers are mostly crooks. [They're just] intermediaries who add no extra value. The real producers can’t break through, and can’t reach their delivery quota.

For many different reasons, we decided to change the situation and we are trying to consolidate the raw materials [located] outside the oblast’, using procurement platforms [zakupochnye ploshchadki]. This enables our producers to sell their pulp at market prices, legalizing all kinds of shadow economy sawmill activity, because they can [now] sell the materials at a normal price, instead of [selling] to crooks for kopecks. It’s also profitable for the pulp and paper mill, because it provides the platform to consolidate the resource stream and delivery schedule, and also control quality.

As you can see, there’s nothing here about torpedoing Kirovles for private gain, or even in service to some political ally. The private records reflect what Navalny has said openly: he was working in the public’s interest to reform a corrupt system. In this instance, Navalny comes away looking quite good.

But There’s More!

Responding to the emails leak on his own LiveJournal blog, Navalny said that roughly 90% of the correspondence is genuine. Describing the allegedly falsified bits, he cites an email from “Oleggio Boticelli” (whom bloggers have argued is really Stanislav Belkovsky). The Boticelli messages (as well as emails from a second Belkovsky pseudonym, “Gustav von Aschenbach”) document a close relationship that includes funding, political advice, and extensive coordination in both nationalist politics and stockholder activism. (You can find the full records of the Belkovsky-related emails in three installments: here, here, and here.)

Belkovsky & Friend.

The most scandalous emails concern Navalny’s work on behalf of the minority shareholders of Sberbank and VTB in January 2010. It was then that Navalny publicly called on the banks to review their acquisition of Rusal stock, purchased on the Hong Kong market in a January 27th IPO. According to the logs, that project was initiated as late as January 20, 2010, when Boticelli wrote Navalny to say:

[...] Do you remember in December, during our last regular meeting at ‘the Academy,’ that we discussed the question of Deripaska? So that the state banks don’t buy his shares? In short, the time has come. If you don’t mind taking this up in the next few days, I have two requests for you:

(1) Accept a letter from me later today that details the facts and content of the task, and (2) tomorrow or the day after, meet with Roman, whom you already know, in Kirov for a thorough talk. I would come myself, but I don’t want to scare Belykh by suddenly appearing, as I’m sitting in Italy now, and it’s a long away to Kirov. [...]

Days later, Boticelli wrote Navalny again:

[...] Your capitalization over the last year has really increased qualitatively. Here I have only one comment. As you remember, I was one of the investors that helped jumpstart that capitalization. This was back before you were a world star. In return, I never asked anything for myself. So please take that factor into consideration now.

My counter-proposal is this: $50,000 for four months (January 25th to May 25th). The first installment will be $20,000. Roman is waiting to give it to you on Monday in Moscow. It’s about a month more than you suggested. What I’ll do for my part is make every effort in this timespan to extend [our] cooperation. For up to six months or more. I have an interest in this myself, as you might have guessed. [...]

I would also like to note that, in this project, I’ll operate as your ghost speechwriter and public relations coordinator, and Roman will be my secret staff. Our services are far less expensive that those typically used by world stars, but I trust we can still expect [fair compensation].

Navalny specifically denied the authenticity of these messages, saying:

Why would it all appear in a single email? Clearly, [the hackers] decided the public would find it too difficult to piece together the plot, if people had to work through subtleties and several messages.

LiveJournal blogger ‘Politrash-ru,’ however, highlights that these Rusal-themed Boticelli/Belkovsky emails correspond to Navalny’s late January 2010 explosion of Rusal-related stockholder activism. On January 26th, Navalny authored an article in Vedomosti titled, “IPO US Rusal: There Will Be No Modernization.” One day later, Navalny published another anti-Deripaska article on Slon.ru called “Deripaska’s Life-Line.” The next day, on January 28th, Navalny rallied the minority shareholders of Sberbank and VTB against the previous day’s purchase of Rusal stock by those banks.

I think it’s significant that the Rusal ‘kompromat’ emails are curiously subtle in their shame — quite the opposite of what Navalny said about the scandal’s “plot.” There’s nothing criminal in the alleged scheme: Navalny’s cooperation with Boticelli/Belkovsky is — as Dobrokhotov described it — quite voluntary. Assuming the proper income taxes were paid, neither is there anything illegal about Navalny receiving payments to lobby against state investments in Rusal’s IPO. This is all standard ‘behind the scenes’ interest group politics, and it would hardly shock anyone familiar with K Street.

And There’s a Catch

While Navalny should escape this scandal without suffering anything really devastating, there is a quiet poison in the Boticelli/Belkovsky intrigue. I suspect that Navalny worries about this, too, otherwise he might simply have acknowledged that Boticelli is Belkovsky, and suffered the immediate embarrassment in order to fast-forward to when all is forgiven and forgotten. (Of course, it’s entirely possible that the Boticelli messages are indeed as phony as Navalny says.)

The reason I think these emails could cause Navalny problems later on is precisely because the Boticelli-Rusal implications are so typical of Russian politics, where the ‘who funds whom’ question is eternal. (This issue permeates politics everywhere, but Russia’s particularly byzantine system justifies certain suspicions.) If it’s true that Navalny sometimes operates as a hired gun, it could severely damage his credibility as an independent actor. I raised this idea with a friend, who thought I was underestimating the cynicism of the Russian electorate. If Russia’s circumstances so radically shift that Navalny finds opportunities for elected office, the cynical interpretation says that no one will remember that he may or may not have accepted $50,000 to generate bad press against a hated oligarch.

That could certainly be true.

But what if, sometime in the near future, we find out that Navalny’s machine of bad press (otherwise known as his anti-corruption campaign) is paid for by some different hated oligarch? Would that be a stigma ugly enough to blemish the White Knight’s brand?

In a bizarre edition of the webcast series, ‘FSB: the Stanislav Belkovsky Factor,’ Belkovsky joked yesterday (with remarkable deadpan delivery) that Navalny’s work against corruption in Transneft was ordered and financed by a Chinese competitor oil company. He added that Boris Berezovsky is paying them both a million dollars for ongoing PR work, and concluded with a satirical conspiracy involving national sports leagues in badminton and darts.

Kudos to Belkovsky for achieving a feat of strange that I’ve not witnessed in recent memory. All kidding aside, however, the question remains: where is the money coming from?

Navalny, for his part, reposted the Gerasimenko piece on his own LiveJournal blog. In subsequent posts, and in a forty-minute debate with journalist Roman Dobrokhotov on Ekho Moskvy before Saturday’s rally, Navalny has reaffirmed his commitment to nationalism, going so far as to link it inextricably with his more widely respected anti-corruption activism. The Caucasus and the federal subsidies that sustain it, he argues, are the epitome of corruption. Therefore, the ‘Khvatit’ campaign should not be viewed as a sideshow to projects like RosPil and RosYama — it should be seen as an equally dedicated attack on Kremlin corruption.

Он объявляет свой город Безъядерной зоной?

Vladimir Milov — another popular oppositionist who has advocated merging liberalism and nationalism — has also publicly supported the ‘Khvatit’ rallies. Last April, when the campaign started, Milov authored an op-ed in Gazeta.ru repeating the many familiar talking points that nationalists have recycled for years. This included: the exodus of ethnic Russians from the Caucasus following the breakup of the USSR (decreasing their presence from 15% to 4% of the population, by Milov’s calculations); the de facto absence of the rule of Russian law and constitutional order on Caucasian soil today; and the argument that “subsidies will not solve the region’s problems.” Taking up the budgetary spin of the Khvatit rallies, Milov explains that ending subsidies to the Caucasus “is not at all xenophobia, but purely motivated by economic reasons.”

On her Saturday radio program, Yulia Latynina addressed the Khvatit campaign, specifically targeting the costs and benefits of Navalny’s escalated presence in nationalist activism. She perfectly encapsulates the confusion that I think many people experience when confronted by this movement:

When Navalny says ‘Enough feeding the Caucasus!’ I wonder, ‘But what exactly do we do with the Caucasus?’ I mean … do we just cut it off? Where would we actually draw the line?

Also this weekend, economist Sergei Aleksashenko wrote an open letter to both Navalny and Milov, criticizing them for focusing on the consequences of corruption (an unstable Caucasus) rather than the underlying cause (the Kremlin). “Just maybe the issue isn’t the Caucasus?” he asked rhetorically. Two days later, Milov posted a long response that included ad hominem attacks on Aleksashenko for past political flip-flopping, and stories from his travels across Russia, where Milov claims to have come to know an electorate that’s fed up with how liberals “shy from the nationality question.” Nationalism, Milov says, “can be a creative force” and “the battle is coming” to harness that creative energy. Aleksashenko responded hours later, and Milov responded yet again immediately thereafter. By now, Godwin’s Law has reared its head, as well as a debate about the merits of the American ‘melting pot’ version of patriotism. (I guess they’ve yet to hear about the ‘salad bowl‘?)

Nationalism: it's confusing.

The battle for strangest metaphor also rages on. Aleksashenko compared nationalism to a “bucket of shit” and the Khvatit rallies to a “bag of yeast” (because they threaten to spill over and make a mess) and Milov likened nationalism to nuclear weapons (because it is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands, but is capable of checking aggression if wielded responsibly).

That said, the Milov-Aleksashenko and Navalny-Dobrokhotov debates ultimately come down to the same concerns that Latynina raised above. What ‘positive’ policy implications are we to take from all this? What is the expected outcome of ceasing or drastically reducing federal subsidies to the North Caucasus? The logical conclusion would be that such a change could result in the secession or ejection of the Caucasus from the Russian Federation. It’s not clear, however, that questioning Navalny or Milov for a hundred years would ever extract a clear admission that this is the goal.

To evade the issue of territorial breakdown, Milov has tried to ‘accent the positive’ by introducing a pro-Europe spin to ‘liberal nationalism.’ Russians must counterbalance the creeping “asiaticness” and “eurasianness” of the Putin years with a “Europeanness” that embraces the West, he believes. The goal, Milov says, is to reverse the old mentality of ‘the West is bad and Asia and the Caucasus are good.’ He and Navalny have both employed the ‘de facto’ dodge when responding to the territorial integrity question, insinuating that losing the Caucasian republics would only codify what is already a political reality. Navalny said in his Saturday debate:

I support the return of the Caucasian territory, which currently lies outside the legal realm of Russia. I support them [Caucasians?] finally becoming subjects of the Russian Federation, which includes budgetary equality.

In this way, Navalny and Milov claim two contradictory aims: (a) supporting Russia’s current boundaries in principle, and (b) advocating financial reforms that could very possibly disrupt the Federation’s current composition. For these two goals not to conflict, there would have to be a way of arguing that cutting federal support could somehow bring the Caucasus back into the fold. In all his debates and expositions, I could only find one instance where Navalny even vaguely offers a rationale to explain how less support could improve the situation between Russia and the Caucasus:

We want to spark a discussion inside the Caucasus, among the Caucasian elite, and inside the local population.

Other than this brief suggestion that the Khvatit campaign might ‘spark a discussion,’ there are no other ‘real’ expectations or implications in the speeches and prose of Milov and Navalny. The rest is an opera of ‘budgetary equality,’ accompanied by a chorus of statistics, showing how the Caucasus collects few taxes but receives enormous revenues. In other words, ‘Khvatit’ seems to be another in that endless series of oppositionist protests built around moral indignation, with perhaps one too few feet on the ground. If the protesters denounce their critics as ‘cowards’ who run from the nationality question, what does it mean that they are just as unwilling to address the potentially disastrous consequences of ‘cutting off’ the Federation’s least popular peripheries?

In a report earlier today, Kommersant reporter Ol’ga Allenova talked to activists in the Far East, demonstrating that the Khvatit campaign is a two-way street. As it turns out, ethnic Russian nationalism and attacks on the North Caucasus’ leadership are far less popular in Siberia. In fact, ‘budgetary grievances’ target Moscow and Saint Petersburg more than any of the money pits in and around Chechnya. “Khvatit kormit’ Moskvu!” (Enough feeding Moscow!) and “Khvatit platit’ dan’ Moskve!” (Enough paying tribute to Moscow!) are far timelier slogans for the locals, where as much as 84% of Russia’s oil and gas deposits are located. In Novosibirsk, ethnic Russian nationalist activists like Rostislav Antonov have to moonlight as advocates of regional financial independence, just to stay relevant in an area where nationalism is soured by frustrations with Moscow’s administrative dominance.

Viktor Avsent’ev, Director of the Institute of Socio-Political and Humanities Studies, believes that rising levels of corruption and an increasingly criminal instability have made it impossible for the state to act as a protector of either Russians or non-Russians. In this situation, groups seek out alternative means of safety, which inevitably promotes regionalism and inter-regional frictions.

Where are all the Ekho Moskvy groupies?

This, it seems to me, is where the Khvatit campaign would lead, if it ever managed to achieve mass appeal. Supporters like Navalny and Milov like to think of themselves as spokesmen for all taxpayers, if not for their entire race. These men stand on soapboxes built from righteous indignation that they assume will unite Russia’s downtrodden majority. When Navalny spoke at Bolotnaia this weekend, he told the crowd that they “are the majority.” He repeated it enough to make me question his certainty.

In a sense, though, Navalny is absolutely right. The nationalists are the majority, but not because of any common blood or shared vision for government. They are the majority because they’re like everyone else in Russia: self-centered and panicked about the country’s future. In the grand vanguard fashion, Moscow’s nationalists read a universality into their campaign that crumbles into farce, the farther one ventures from the capital.