According to the newspaper, a corresponding order has already been written up and posted online for public discussion and signed by Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and the head of the Federal Migration Service.

Sources in the Ministry (MVD) said that the formal reason for the measure is the departure of the migration service from the MVD. Unofficially, however, they said it was intended as a way to deal with undesirable foreigners, such as political activists and religious radicals.

As an example of what the MVD is apparently concerned about, Izvestia noted an incident this past March during the Russian presidential election when women from the Ukrainian organization Femen stripped naked at the polling station where Vladimir Putin had cast his vote. The group was subsequently banned from the country.

The MVD black list would also include powerful foreign criminals, such as mafia bosses.

The Izvestia report stated that the foreign minister would personally decide the fate of each “undesirable” foreigner.

Human rights advocates fear that the measure could become a repressive instrument for the MVD to use for political purposes.

In February 2011, British journalist Luke Harding was stopped at passport control and denied entry to Russia with no explanation.

The Guardian, where Harding worked, believes that the decision to keep the journalist out of the country was made at the highest level of government in connection with the Guardian’s publication of documents from WikiLeaks that characterize the Russian government as a mafia state and suggesting the possible involvement of President Vladimir Putin in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Wednesday’s roundtable was held under the title “Medical Aspects of the Use of Torture.” During the course of discussion, experts gave various accounts of how torture in the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and the Internal Ministry, which controls the police, had developed into a social norm that the government is not interested in addressing.

Public Council member Andrei Babushkin addressed how torture was employed specifically within the police, arguing that young people who decide to work in law enforcement often get the impression that the results they desire from detainees are fully achievable by simply using their fists.

Andrei Mayakov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Civil Rights, brought attention to the established practice in pretrial detention facilities where detainees are intentionally denied medical treatment for any injuries they might have. Moreover, medical professionals working in these facilities often fail to report instances when they suspect torture is being used against a detainee, he said.

Whereas the use of torture is punishable in many European countries by a significant prison term – up to a life sentence in Great Britain, for example – its maximum term under the Russian Criminal Code is seven years in prison, the experts noted.

Public Council Representative and Moscow Public Oversight Commission head Valery Borshchev noted that human rights advocates had begun to carry out cell-by-cell inspections of detainees located in pretrial detention facilities after the deaths of businesswoman Vera Trifonova and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, both of whom died this past year in the Moscow pretrial detention facility Matrosskaya Tishina.

Borshchev proposed that a special registry be set up in Moscow’s law enforcement agencies to record the circumstances of how cases of torture were allowed to occur.

“We cannot exterminate this evil, but it is possible to reduce it and make it so that torture ceases to be a norm,” said Borshchev.

Russia has been accused of using torture by a variety of international rights advocacy groups. A report in January by the United Nations blamed Russia for holding detainees in secret prisons that are meant to cover up the fact that torture or other ill-treatment is practiced in such facilities. Amnesty International has accused Russian law enforcement agencies of using torture both in the North Caucasus and throughout the rest of the country. Opposition activists and human rights advocates routinely report cases of torture by the police, and the Russian Internal Ministry itself has admitted that torture is used on a regular basis.

The current law, titled “On the Police,” dates back to 1991, when “there was a different state, a different time, and different responsibilities,” Nurgaliyev said in his address. “And any law should correspond with current realities.”

The minister gave the infamous Russian tradition of “identity checks” as an example of an outdated protocol – to an extent. “In accordance with ‘On the Police,’ if a person is outside without identification documents, a police officer has to bring him to the station to establish his identity,” Nurgaliyev said. “But now that’s entirely unnecessary – the patrol cars have computers, and officers on foot have hand-held devices, so they can use our information database to establish the identity of a citizen in the course of a few minutes in that very place.”

The Internal Ministry plans to finalize a draft of the new legislation later this spring, and will then post it on the agency’s website for Russians to read and send in their own input.

“Every voice will be heard and taken into account,” the minister said.

Nurgaliyev stressed the importance of improving the relationship between Russia’s civilians and the police. “A person should be certain that, when he comes to a local police station, that he will meet an officer who is open to communication, who is considerate and kind-hearted,” he said.

Additionally, Interfax reported on Wednesday that plans had been posted on the agency’s website for a regulation that would require all civilian, military, and law enforcement personnel in the Internal Ministry to inform their supervisors of any possible instances of corruption among their colleagues.

Notorious levels of brutality and corruption have stained Russia’s police forces for years, but media coverage of such incidents exploded after a lethal shooting spree by a drunken police major in a Moscow supermarket last April. Since then, the need for drastic police reform has figured among the most agreed upon topics by Russian politicians, the media, and the public alike, and President Dmitri Medvedev has made a number of proposals to that end in the past several months.

On Tuesday, the day before Nurgaliyev’s radio address, reports surfaced that the minister had been given nine months to fix the dire situation in his agency or face being fired. According to the newspaper’s source in the central apparatus of the Internal Ministry, whether or not his initiatives were successful would be judged by the number of criminal suits filed against the police, monitoring by the media, and reports by human rights and other public organizations.

In a move that was both practical and symbolic, activists had prepared 50 thousand copies of the Russian constitution to hand out to police charged with manning the event. Renowned rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who was detained in a New Year’s Eve protest despite being 82 years old, had signed each copy with the phrase “in kind remembrance.”

None of the officers present turned down their copy of the document.

A wide variety of opposition movements were represented at Saturday’s rally, and many made speeches chronicling their clashes with police violence and abuse of authority.

“I very much love the police that protect me, but I rarely see them,” said writer Viktor Shenderovich. “More often, I see the cops that beat and murder.” He stressed that the necessity for drastic police reform is a result of Russia lacking free elections, a free press, and free courts.

Referring to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s stated goal of wiping out corruption, White Ribbon movement representative Lyubov Polyakova pointed out that whistleblowing officers, such as Aleksei Dymovsky, had been poorly received when responding to the president’s call. “Look what they’ve done to them!” she said. “You don’t want to get rid of corruption; you say that we’re rocking the boat.”

“Yes, we’re rocking your rotten boat, which you, like beetles, have already completely eaten through,” Polyakova concluded.

Major Dymovsky was detained not long after posting two videos on YouTube in November that detail corruption in the Novorossiysk police department.

Sergei Davidis, coordinator of the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners, appealed to the officers themselves. Remarking that the rally was calling for rights for the officers, he asked whether they really wanted to work for such paltry salaries and extort bribes to get by, and whether they really, after all, wanted people to hate them.

Solidarity movement member Anastasia Rybachenko stressed the importance of new methods for hiring law enforcement officers. “People who enter the police force intend to get police batons and power,” while others join simply to avoid Russia’s mandatory draft, she said. With the Internal Ministry scraping the bottom of society’s barrel and paying officers next to nothing, it follows that the resulting police force is less than ideal.

Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s federal designate on human rights issues, was noted among those present at the rally.

A resolution taken at the end of the demonstration called for the management of the Internal Ministry to be fired, that political persecution of whistleblowing officers be put to a stop, and that police force not be used in political investigations.

Two groups of counter-protesters attempted to disrupt the rally. Some cast leaflets into the crowd that were printed to look like hundred dollar bills, reading “these dollars are payment for the collapse of the police in Russia.” Members from one group were detained.

While the Russian police have long been notorious for their violent abuse of authority, they came under particularly harsh criticism after Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded dozens more in a Moscow supermarket while drunk late last April. With the renewed wave of media attention to police abuses that followed, prominent government and public officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved. Last December, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the Ministry to be extensively reformed, and in a January 24 statement said that the number of police personnel “needs to be reduced and wages should be raised.”

In the meantime, scandalous incidents of police brutality show no signs of slowing.

In a press released posted Tuesday on the agency’s official website, Lieutenant General Vladimir Gorshukov said that an article published Monday in the New Times magazine accusing an elite subdivision of the OMON of using slave labor was “a complete fabrication.”

“I would call it an intentional campaign against the OMON detachments of the Russian Internal Ministry, and against the Zubr detachment in particular,” said Gorshukov.

The lieutenant asserted that the article was based on “the private statements of a former member of the division who had disciplinary problems and did not follow demands from above that were given to members of the special subdivisions; in consequence of this, she was fired.”

Monday’s article by the New Times consisted largely of the transcript of an interview with former Zubr OMON officer Larisa Krepkova, who claims to have witnessed migrant workers brought to the OMON base and forced to work without pay. The article asserts that her reason for leaving the force was related to illness.

Major General Aleksandr Ivanin, who commands the Zubr unit of the OMON, said that while Krepkova was sufficiently qualified for her job as a canine handler, she had repeatedly come to work intoxicated and was seen consuming alcohol on the job. “We conducted a service check on the matter and have all the supporting documentation,” he added.

Ivanin claimed that Krepkova was given the opportunity to resign, but that the reason for her dismissal was changed to the condition of her health after a medical commission was completed. What exactly the commission concluded was unclear.

Internal Ministry spokesman Oleg Yelnikov accused the media of failing to fact check their articles. “Some journalists, clearly, have forgotten that in accordance with article 49 of the law regarding the media, a journalist is required to check the reliability of the information presented to him,” blaming the New Times for relying solely on Krepkova’s testimony.

The agency announced Monday morning that they plan to sue the magazine for libel.

The article, which was published on Monday by the New Times magazine, is based on allegations made by former police officer Larisa Krepkova, who left the elite Zubr subdivision of the Russian Internal Ministry’s OMON security forces a year and a half ago due to illness. According to Krepkova, officers from the unit would travel to Moscow’s Yaroslavskoye Highway to recruit migrant workers, who were then brought to the Zubr base in the nearby region of Shchelkovo. There, they were forced to dig ditches, set up fences, and clean toilets without pay, even though Official invoices included tallies of the cost of labor.

Krepkova said that the workers, who she labeled as “slaves,” even wound up working in the dacha of Deputy Interior Minister Colonel General Mikhail Sukhodolsky. In addition to not being paid the workers were beaten and poorly treated in general. After Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev undertook a survey of the base, the workers were assigned more specific tasks, she said.

The former officer explained that funding for labor was previously determined by the Zubr officers themselves, and that today the funds are specifically allocated by the Internal Ministry. As such, she was unaware if Zubr was continuing such practices today.

The New Times article adds that the Zubr OMON subdivision is under the direct jurisdiction of Internal Minister Nurgaliyev, and is commonly known as “the minister’s personal security.”

A spokesperson from the Internal Ministry said on Monday that they plan to sue the magazine for libel.

Monday’s article is the second in less than a month by the New Times to address problems with the OMON, which are notorious for their brutal suppression of activist rallies and other protests. On February 1, the magazine published an open letter from a number of former Moscow OMON to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, describing poor working conditions, mistreatment by their superiors, orders to break up opposition rallies, and rampant corruption.

The next day, members of the Moscow city OMON announced their decision to sue the New Times for libel. City Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev later stated that an internal investigation found the charges to be false. Additionally, the agency sent invitations to a number of journalists and rights activists to join the OMON for Russia’s traditional Maslenitsa festival celebrations. The OMON said that the event was a chance to show that the agency had nothing to hide, but the online newspaper Gazeta.ru described the proceedings as obviously staged.

The New Times noted that in response to the February 1 article, it has received a record number of letters from police officers with similar experiences. Its editors said on Monday that while they have yet to receive notification of any lawsuits regarding the articles, they are prepared to defend them in court.

Monday’s article can be read in its entirety in Russian by clicking here.

Judge Dmitri Fomin handed down the conviction on Friday for two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder.

The former police major sparked a national media blitz last April when he walked into a Moscow supermarket around midnight and began randomly shooting people. Three people were killed and many others were injured.

CCTV footage shows the officer, clearly drunk, struggling with patrons and supermarket staff while trying to pull out his weapon. Yevsyukov admitted in court to the murder of one cashier after being shown the incident on tape, but said that he has no memory of what happened that night.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Yevsyukov stated that “I’m not asking for a light sentence, I’m asking for fairness, if I may ask for it.”

Defense lawyer Tatyana Bushuyeva, who had argued that Yevsyukov was not in a normal state of mind and asked for the court to consider the incident “an act of hooliganism,” said that they plan to contest the ruling.

Moscow City Police Press Secretary Pyotr Biryukov admitted to RIA Novosti that they had expected a life sentence, saying it was “a deserving punishment.”

Survivors injured in the shooting, who were earlier denied compensation by the police because Yevsyukov was off-duty at the time of the incident, are already renewing their appeals.

In addition to life in punishment for the former officer, Judge Fomin issued a separate statement to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, declaring that the career politics of his agency are “unsatisfactory.”

Investigators had determined that Yevsyukov was under stress due to pressure at work prior to the incident.

Tackling Russia’s notoriously corrupt and violent police force has been a stated goal this year for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Yesterday, the president fired two deputy interior ministers and more than a dozen top law enforcement officers, and issued his second order in less than a month for drastic cuts in law enforcement personnel.

While violence and corruption on the part of the police is nothing new for most Russians, the media attention brought on by Yevsyukov’s killing spree has resulted in increased coverage and criticism of the disturbing number of incidents of brutal police criminality. As reports followed one after another of officers killing pedestrians while driving drunk, fatal beatings, and an increase in police suicides, top governmental officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved altogether.

In a recent example earlier this month, an elderly composer was severely beaten and robbed in the city of Yekaterinburg by a group of police who allegedly swore at the victim, telling him “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you.” Local authorities only accepted the composer’s appeal about the incident after he filed it a second time, and no criminal charges were initiated until after the story broke in the Russian media last Tuesday.

Sergei Beloglazov, a 62-year old piano professor at the Ural State Conservatory, originally filed a complaint on February 2 that he had been beaten and robbed by police on February 1. According to the professor, he was on his way home from the store when he was stopped by a police officer to check his identification documents. Beloglazov did not have his passport, which Russian citizens are legally required to carry at all times. The officer demanded that he come to the police station in order to have his identity established, but the musician refused.

At that point, says Beloglazov, several officers began to beat him, saying, “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you, bitch,” referring to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev. “A composer,” the officers went on, “that means you’re a faggot, and we piss on people like that.”

Additionally, the police robbed Beloglazov of 2000 rubles (about $68) and he has lost feeling in his left hand, which he says may affect his ability to play the piano. Local authorities only accepted his appeal about the beating upon filing it for a second time, he says, and a criminal suit was only initiated after the story broke in the Russian media on Tuesday.

According to a press release from the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor’s office on Wednesday, the decision to initiate charges was made only after prosecutor Yury Ponomarev personally demanded that the local police address the composer’s complaint. He had pointed out that it had been a week since Beloglazov filed the complaint. “However, as before, no proper criminal case had been initiated. And this is in spite of the presence of clear indications of criminality in the actions of the police,” says the press release.

Escorted by a local human rights representative, Beloglazov met with Sverdlovsk Regional Police Chief General Mikhail Nikitin on Tuesday evening, who privately apologized for the incident and promised not to do anything to hinder the investigation. Despite his concerns, Beloglazov says he was satisfied with the meeting and invited the general to one of his concerts.

The police officers allegedly involved in the beating are charged with exceeding their official powers with the use of violence. If convicted, they could face up to ten years in prison.

Sources in the local branch of the Russian Internal Ministry say that the officer charged with instigating the incident is Lieutenant Valery Postnikov, a canine handler. In an explanatory note, the sources say, the lieutenant claims that while he and his colleagues did participate in the incident, the musician had been drunk.

To prove their point, police officers distributed security camera footage on Wednesday from the store that Beloglazov visited prior to the beating. One clip shows a man appearing to be the composer entering the store, and the second clip shows the same figure exiting the store and taking a gulp from a bottle. “I’m not going to deny that I purchased a light beer in the store,” explained Beloglazov. “But I was not so drunk as to fall over, like the police are indicating in their explanatory notes. This doesn’t give them the right to beat me.”

The composer’s colleagues spoke out strongly in his defense. Vice Rector Yelena Fyodorovich of the Ural State Conservatory insisted that the video clips had been falsified. “Beloglazov was not examined for intoxication when he was detained. When a medical examination was done later, it showed nothing. Such actions on the part of the police are simply outrageous,” she said.

While the Russian police have long been notorious for their violent abuse of authority, they came under particularly harsh criticism after Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded several others in a Moscow supermarket while drunk late last April. With the renewed wave of media attention to police abuses that followed, prominent government and public officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved. In December, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the Ministry to be extensively reformed, and in a January 24 statement said that the number of police personnel “needs to be reduced and wages should be raised.”

The success of such efforts remains to be seen. In a post on his blog, opposition activist Ilya Yashin described an exchange in a Moscow police station on January 31, a week after the president’s statement. Upon asking an officer why the police station’s bathroom was overflowing with garbage, Yashin was told that “if we’re being serious, it’s the fault of the Internal Ministry reforms. Did you hear that Medvedev reduced the police force by 20 percent? So all the janitors in our station have been fired. Not a single one remains.”

The 65-page report, entitled “21st Century Russia: The Image of the Tomorrow We Want,” cites the country’s dependence on raw material exports and an ineffective government as problems that have caused “inertia and decay,” allowing Russia to fall into a “historical trap.”

In order to become a country that is “modernized in all respects,” a “strategic agreement” must be reached in Russian society, the authors say.

Among measures to achieve this, the report proposes returning to a four-year presidential term instead of the current six years, abolishing censorship, allowing for the existence of a viable multi-party system, and joining NATO. The authors also propose dissolving the Internal Ministry, which heads the country’s police forces, and the Federal Security Services, the successor organization of the KGB.

The authors go on to say that the lack of social consensus on political values and global viewpoints can serve as a starting point for discussion in Russia on how to overcome what President Dmitri Medvedev has called an “embarrassing dependence” on oil and other raw material exports.

Co-author Yevgeny Gontmakher said that the report is set to coincide with the release of a new policy document by United Russia, the country’s leading political party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The critical report is noteworthy for the think tank’s close ties to President Medvedev, who heads its board of trustees.

However, Russia’s political opposition was muted in its response to the report. Opposition leader Garry Kasparov has previously accused the Institute for Contemporary Development and it’s director, Igor Yurgens, of being “ideological opponents” of those working towards genuine reform, criticizing them for cheapening the understandings of “democracy” and “liberalism” in Russian society.

A PDF of the report in Russian can be found be clicking here.

The thoughts and proposals laid out in these articles elicited a stormy reaction from within the internet community. In an interview with Yezhednevny Zhurnal on November 23 to further explain his positions, Kasparov discussed the goals of Russia’s united political opposition, the importance of Russia’s integration into Europe, and the futility of Medvedev’s plans for modernization.

Garry Kimovich, in your opinion, how successful overall has the opposition been in moving forward in the development of its “way of the future,” given that it has been criticized for lacking one?

The National Assembly is an arena that was created for different ideological forces, united by a rejection of the current system, to discuss an agenda for the future of our country. The inability of the governing regime to make changes adequate for the demands of the 21st century has imposed this necessity upon us. Preserving the status quo has lead to the ruin of our state. An understanding of the doom of this regime and of these other menaces – which invariably lead to an uncontrolled collapse through our rotten government agencies – formed the basis for the unification of the opposition.

From the moment of conception of the United Civil Front in 2005, I have not tired in repeating that dismantling Putin’s regime is an applied problem. Dismantling does not presume total destruction; on the contrary, in order to avoid tragic consequences, maximal moderation is necessary to analyze the elements of the faulty structure that may still be used when forming a new statehood. The National Assembly defined a minimum set of basic elements: free elections, abolishment of censorship, and the observation of human rights. These simple things are written in its charter. The stage was therefore set to produce a national consensus. The task is to identify reference points to use to draw up a new state structure. This series of conferences is dedicated to drafting a new constitution, since the current one is, frankly, authoritarian. So that process is going forward rather intensely.

What place does your series of articles “Russia After Putin” have in this process?

They are the result of long discussions, including within the National Assembly, on political problems in this country. I dedicated the first piece of material to the morphology of the regime, since I think it’s important to find the root of the problem in the search for an exit from the crisis. It’s well known that many people, unprepared for a critical perception of reality, are easily subjected to ideological influence. The authorities use this effectively to their own ends, imposing their own perceptions onto such people by using various myths that unabashedly exploit the understandings of democracy and liberalism. We perceive a close interdependence between Yeltsin’s and Putin’s periods of rule. This position is now becoming commonplace even among experts.

The second part of my article, “Project Display,” characterizes the state of mind. I did a survey of ideas thought up by the opposition, since the official public arenas are intentionally “scorched” (even our parliament has ceased to be a place for discussion, and there are homunculi breeding in [Kremlin ideologist Vladislav] Surkov’s test tubes that are unable to think up any creative, original ideas). In the third part, I tried to lay out my vision of Russia’s future without changing my political views, which with a stretch of the imagination can be classified as left-liberal.

My first attempt to formulate this project strives to determine what will be acceptable to society. It’s possible, of course, to dream of various things – for instance, of the restoration of our state within the boundaries of the 1975 Helsinki Accords (a project that the nationalist-patriots announced at the conference), but my intentions are not so ambitious. I believe that in order to achieve a consensus, the project should take into account both the domestic political situation and the realities of our foreign policy. The National Assembly is an extremely representative platform that includes the main ideological camps of Russian society.

For your project, did you try to keep in mind ideas that would accommodate various groups?

When you’re looking for a consensus between different groups, you don’t attain anything by just tallying ideas. Politics, in any case, is not math. The main thing is that, understanding that we must somehow come to an agreement, we have already put a stop to the “citizen cold war” within our association. Moreover, such a consensus is necessary to counter an ideological ghetto, which is the atmosphere that the authorities are trying to reanimate. The authorities don’t try to suppress, for example, ideologically homogeneous demonstrations. On their own, the communists, nationalists, and liberals can have their own protests – but as the united transideological opposition undertakes any joint effort – for example, [Eduard] Limonov and [Lyudmila] Alexeyeva holding a joint rally – there, the authorities react in the blink of an eye, cruelly suppressing their effort. That very unification is seen as a menace. The ability of various ideological forces to agree with each other on government management methods, on the constitution, on the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and on the transitional period, represents an alternative to the existing authorities. And we cannot make do without compromise. In particular, I try to develop political formulas that such a “motley crew” could accept. Certainly, any draft reflects the convictions of the person who wrote it, and for me there’s a fundamentally liberal trend, but I’m prepared to make a compromise in the decision and take a more eclectic view.

In your opinion, how could a window of opportunity open for the opposition to implement your project?

The world is facing global change. In developed countries, there are attempts to extinguish it through financial influence. This even includes publishing houses that act in violation of their own basic beliefs. This, in my view, is the agony of the current world order. The fact that the system doesn’t follow the trends of the times is leading to a global cataclysm. During such periods in history, the world usually went through war. I hope that now it will make do without a major war; there’s an understanding, in any case, of the catastrophic scale of the consequences. But there are, in fact, localized wars. We live in a time of permanent war, when change comes at the expense of the weak and ill-equipped.

Right now, Russia is the weakest player on the global geopolitical map. The country is turning from an object into a subject, most of all in Chinese politics. As we can see, the Sinicization of the Far East is proceeding at full speed. Our government is helping China to prepare this gigantic staging area. The second menace is radical Islam, which comes from the south where the North Caucasus are a hotbed of tension. Illegal immigration exacerbates danger for Russia with its accompanying demographic problems.

Given these circumstances, I have a clearly formulated task: To preserve the core of Russian civilization, preferably within its current borders. There is an excellent toast from a classic Soviet film that comes to mind: “Let us drink so that our wishes would always corresponded with our opportunities!”

In any case, what concrete events could there be in our country that would dismantle the regime?

In commentaries to my article, many citizens wrote: “What Constituent Assembly – there are no elections here in general!” They say all that you’ve described – that it’s a utopia and will never correspond to reality. It seems to me that we don’t need to mix up these particulars of our reality with the general direction of our strategy. Of course, we can’t examine any scenario separate from its existing reality, but if we begin making adjustments to the things that we must necessarily build so that they correspond with today’s realities, then in the long run we drift into this so-called “Medvedev modernization.”

That’s not something that can last. I can’t make an exact prediction as to when the system will fall apart, but in my view it is inevitable. For example, it suddenly became clear in February 1917 that the government was non-functional. Today, state institutions are in an even worse crisis than back then. Today, disgust with the regime is spontaneously beginning to engulf the most varied, previously depoliticized strata of society, and furthermore, its support – the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is attested to by these virtual (for now) police riots. It’s happening because of the sense of the hopelessness of the regime and of its dead end. It is itself tumbling towards catastrophe; we have no influence on it.

The possible types of scenarios can vary. It’s possible that I’m mistaken, but I’m incredibly certain about these events. When it happens is not important, but it is the duty of every honest citizen and patriot of our country to have a plan of action to propose – not to this regime, but to the people who want to form the core of a new statehood. The sooner we come to an agreement and reach a consensus, the more certainty there is that we will be able to find a common language in the frame of this new structure. This will be our greatest contribution to the creation of a future Russia.

And what will be the fate of the entire class of bureaucrats?

It’s not necessary to automatically write the whole class of bureaucrats into one category to cleanse and purge. However, we cannot repeat the mistake of the past and say that for the sake of civil peace we should close our eyes to the fact that many high-ranking civil servants, judges, police commanders, and deputies have acted in obvious violation of the law. It is obvious that anyone who tarnished their reputation by grossly violating the law cannot operate normally in our new state institutions. So a purge is inevitable, but what has to be discussed is the scale of the purge of the executive administration.

In my view, reforms in Russia cannot be taken gradually, even moreso if they concern such conservative social strata as the civil servants. My rather radical proposal is to organize the state administration’s structure by cutting the number of branch ministers and transfer administrative functions to the regional – and to a greater degree, the municipal – level. By doing this, we strip off a part of the federal bureaucracy that lived by distributing quotas and issuing permits, and by being able to extract bureaucratic duties. Shifting the focus of the administration’s burden is a more down to earth approach, and is closer to the spirit of the people’s traditions – and that is a better way to preserve the state.

One could theoretically agree with your thesis that reforms need to be taken quickly. But practically speaking, how will people react to this that have already lived through the shock of the beginning of the 1990s and don’t wish to repeat it?

As a matter of fact, it’s not the reforms that frighten people, but the material deprivation and psychological discomfort. A well thought-out plan and clear actions by administrative specialists, including ones in the financial sphere that could prevent businesses from stalling, would help avoid any social chaos. I believe that the population will accept many of the reforms with enthusiasm. For example, allotting more authority to smaller regions is a popular idea. Indeed, the majority of Russian citizens see Moscow as a vacuum cleaner, sucking out money from the provinces. That or the Ministry of Internal Affairs takes it. It’s perfectly obvious that the current form of the ministry, a hotbed of corruption and suppression of dissent, is completely out of date. The police are seen more than anything as menaces to the citizens, and by no means as a force to curb the crime rate. That’s to say nothing about the internal military troops, which are nonsense in general. We need an army for state defense from foreign expansion, which it is necessary to strengthen. I would intend for the internal security services and the Investigative Committee to be the ones fighting crime. The police should work to enforce the law, which is primarily a question of the local government. It is therefore necessary to hold elections for the municipal chief of police, as well as for local judges and prosecutors.

In your opinion, how important is the list of ministries and departments in the structure of government that you are proposing?

That’s a question of the essence of the government. As a matter of fact, the list of ministries and departments, which itself could make you laugh, defines both the social direction of the government and the ability to weaken its capacities for repression. This is something that I demonstrate clearly. Monsters such as the Internal Ministry disappear, but the government departments show up and expand the scope of the state’s concerns.

I, for example, propose to institute a department for the affairs of veterans of military action and the armed forces. There are many such people, many more than we think – veterans of the Great Patriotic War, military actions in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and participants of other military conflicts where Soviet specialists were unofficially involved. Our work with them should not be limited to one-time cash payouts or other compensation – the ability for veterans to adapt to peaceful life is a large, systemic problem for the government.

Additionally, many strategic planning problems need to be solved during the transitional period, and central planning agencies like the Ministry of Economic Development will become necessary. Something that I consider fundamental is for state agencies to direct their actions towards solving key problems, and for Russia, among the most important of these is to decrease income disparity within the population. In my opinion, we should make a conscious decision to put this task at the forefront of state politics. It cannot be solved without restoring citizens’ trust in the state. We have to put a stop for good to the practice of deceiving citizens and finally repay old debts. This would include, for example, holdings kept in Sverbank and other Soviet credit institutions.

That question will be of interest to people in the 40 to 50-year-old generation. What about your project could attract young people?

We invite young people most of all to participate in the creation of a normal state, one that you don’t have to run away from. A state interested in its citizens. A state in which bureaucrats don’t just stand on the path of freedom and social development, but work on it. What I’m talking about requires the cooperative work of a massive number of people. Will we have this? I don’t know; nobody can guarantee that. If young people want to get everything for free, then let them go work with the Nashisti. There they give out t-shirts and tell you what needs to be done. That’s one algorithm of behavior.

I’m appealing to conscious people who think about what’s going to happen next with their country. All I’m proposing is a new structure of government that has no limits on citizen participation. We don’t want talented, intellectual people to leave our country. We want to give them additional opportunities and make perspective work available in different areas of study, whether it’s road or bridge construction or designing and launching spacecraft…

And this is all within a single political and legal realm that would stretch from Lisbon to Vladivostok…

Show me someone who can demonstrate a different way to keep Siberia and the Far East as part of Russia. Left to fend for itself, Russia winds up face to face with China in the east and radical Islam in the south. Only by integrating Russia into a single expanse with Europe can we maintain our territory and stop Chinese expansion.

That said, a Russia integrated into Europe would have an increased weight in world affairs. Only through integration and cooperation with Europe will Russia begin to solve its problems. It seems to me that this is an acceptable option for the overwhelming number of Russian citizens, since they are related by blood to Europeans.

Is this the key idea of your project?

This is not a project for the next 50 years; this is what we need to do now. Bringing Russian legislation into compliance with pan-European laws needs to start immediately. It is completely believable that Turkey’s inception into the European Union, which I also see as a positive development in world politics, will become a reality within the next decade. That said, Turkish society will have to overcome a much more elementary gap with the European Union because of a combination of historical, religious and social factors.

Are you saying that Russia’s current leadership is not trying to enter the European Union?

If you’re talking about the country that they’re in charge of, then to our general misfortune, it turns out that of course they are not. You can only see that aspiration in a personal capacity – by looking at bank accounts, purchases of soccer teams and real estate, and so on. Many civil servants’ children, including Putin’s, live there. I’m talking about the integration of our country, not of the individual families of billionaires.

And is Russia awaited within the European Union?

In its Putin-Medvedev version, of course not. Currently, the legal system in Russia is different from the norms of the European Union. Its political and legal structure makes it alien. We need a new vector of development. Infected as it is with corruption, Russia cannot become a full member of the European Union. Nevertheless, it’s easy for Europe to see the possible benefits of reconciliation. It makes it possible, within a single framework, to use the industrial strength of Europe to open up Russia’s vast natural resources. By and large, Russia has a gigantic territory and is poorly populated, whereas Europe has been resettled. The general concept of development based on new technology in the decades ahead, creating a united network of highways all the way up to Vladivostok, will allow for more unified job distribution. Many Russian citizens that left the country because they saw no prospects for themselves will be able to return to their homeland. The weight of the European Union will also increase with Russia becoming a part of the European expanse.

Why doesn’t Europe see all of these benefits to itself?

If you have to deal with corrupt authorities, you wind up forced to speak at arm’s length. When Russia makes a clear declaration of a course of reconciliation with Europe, it will be met there by open arms.

By and large, there are two major geopolitical players in the world today – the United States and China. The European Union is too fragmented to resist both the United States and China by itself. But a European Union that included Russia – that’s a powerful player, and it would be counted right alongside the United States and China. As a matter of fact, it would alter the world map dramatically. Such an incredibly powerful political and economic union would bring the world ballast and stability.

Interview conducted by Olga Gulenok. Original version in Russian available on Ej.ru.

Exclusive translation by theotherrussia.org.