In this column for Gazeta.ru, independent political commentator Sergei Shelin warns against trends in military spending and economic policy that are heavily reminiscent of Soviet times.

Per Stalin’s Wishes
By Sergei Shelin
September 5, 2012
Gazeta.ru

Just like any collective that’s headed towards a dead end, the Kremlin team has been directing its thoughtful gaze back to a time when, as it sees it, everything was good, correct, and even ideal. For them, those times were the years of Stalinism.

Their instinctive draw to precisely those times and those experiences has already become simply impossible to camouflage. There’s too much at stake now to darken or mask their own archaism or to feign a sense of balance or even a contemporary outlook. There’s no longer any possibility for balance today.

The appeal to Joseph Stalin for a recipe that will save them has been sounding out across the entire problematic front.

And Putin’s prescription for the siloviki and military industrialists “to carry out as powerful a breakthrough in modernization of the military sector as we had in the ’30s” – this is only one of the latest examples of the leaders’ return to their roots and origins. But this example might also be the most characteristic one. For it’s precisely the Russian military complex that has been chosen to prove to the people – and, if it’s useful, to the entire world – that our old government not only knows how to spout off rhetoric, but also still understands something about these matters and is capable of implementing at least some sort of grand projects.

It was not for nothing that at this same session of the Security Council, Vladimir Putin once again guaranteed 23 trillion rubles in financing for our weapons program, regardless of its obvious impracticality, and as a compelling point remarked that, for “the past thirty years,” the Russian military-industrial complex has “missed several cycles of modernization” due to a lack of financing.

“The past thirty years” instead of the “past twenty years” that comes to mind – this is an innocent oratorical trick. Otherwise it would turn out that two-thirds of this era of decline occurred during Putin’s own rule. But the main thing in this speech was not that, but the plan it included to reset military industry, with all its concrete provisions.

Their structural, and in some cases textual, similarities to Stalin’s respective provisions bring about the same sensations as one gets from watching an old newsreel.

Stalin had “six conditions” for industrial development. Putin does as well. True, he only has four (three that are enumerated and another supplemental one about conditions for making analogs for us of foreign weapon designs). But in discussing, for example, the cadres, we can say that the two leaders quote one another.

“The slogan ‘the cadres decide everything’ demands that our leaders show the utmost concern for workers, for the ‘little ones’ and ‘big ones’…raise them, move them up and forward…” (Stalin)

“A word or two about cadres: it’s an extremely important question, and at all levels, at that – beginning with the rank-and-file worker and engineering cadres up through those of the company managers… We’ve done a lot to upgrade the working cadres, but if it hasn’t been enough, we’ll continue this work…” (Putin)

Incidentally, it’s possible that these aren’t quotes of each other, but just a similarity in their directions of thinking. With the difference that Stalin knew how to achieve the goals he set, while Putin, it seems, just doesn’t sense what it is in the 2010s that differs from the 1930s.

Nothing that Stalin’s modernization relied on still exists today.

During Stalin’s first five-year plans, from 1928 to 1940, the number of people employed in the industrial sector tripled, and in heavy industry even quintupled. The working ranks were filled up by peasants fleeing from collectivization, women (whose representation in industry rose from a fourth to nearly half), and people from the decimated urban private sector. In today’s Russia, there’s no way to help any large sector of our economy by force of numbers.

The price of modernization in the 1930s was radical, as was the catastrophic decline in the standard of living – particularly in the villages, but in the cities as well. In 2010, no demographic in Russia would agree to sacrifice itself for the sake of “modernization” in general, let alone for the “modernization” of the military-industrial complex.

The motivation of workers, from the “little ones” to the “big ones,” in the 1930s was a mixture of panicked fear and fiery enthusiasm. None of our workers today, “from the rank-and-file worker and engineering cadres up through those of the company managers,” naturally, share either of those sentiments.

One more detail that people don’t always remember. The most important driver of Stalin’s modernization was competition. For example, the competition between aircraft design bureaus, which proposed various fighter plane models. Or, conversely, the fight over resources between military factories that manufactured the same types of products. But Putin’s economy is a place where monopolization is not only imposed, but imposed with ferocity. In short, there are no points of convergence whatsoever.

We do not need to repeat Stalinist modernization. If we have to remember it at all, it should only be in order to do the opposite. To renew today’s Russian economy, we need not socialism, but capitalism; not growth in military spending, but its reduction; not cuts in educational spending, roads, health care and in general everything that would make the country more modernized, but an increase in this spending.

Perhaps Russian society is not quite mature enough for this kind of renewal. But still, Stalinist modernization would be categorically unsuitable. Just as other characteristic aspects of that way of life would be unsuitable.

The romantic nostalgia of Putin and his circle for those past times is, for them, perfectly natural. This is their spiritual foundation. But every successive attempt they make to build contemporary political policy on this foundation only reminds us of the deepening inadequacy of our government representatives to do what’s possible and desirable.

According to Sarychev, the fact that emergency repairs are often needed for unsafe bridges and roads in Russia “is connected with our poverty.” Even before any new roads are built, he said, routine maintenance of the existing transportation system would require one trillion rubles a year – about $32.2 billion.

“At the very height of development, in 2008, 300 billion ($9.67 billion) was spent on repairs and 270 billion ($8.7 billion) on construction. Automobile owners’ share of this sum is 200 billion ($6.5 billion),” said Sarychev.

The director went on to say that the management system for road repair and construction itself needs to be modernized. As an example, Sarychev noted Leningradsky Highway, which has been suffering daily since June 26 from traffic jams that stretch on for miles at a time due to emergency roadwork. The traffic has been particularly problematic due to the fact that the highway leads to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

Moreover, the construction of Moscow’s central ring road, or TsKAD, was “mistaken,” said Sarychev, proposing instead that roads be built that stretch from one side of capital to the other to solve the region’s transportation problems. Raising the number of roads in Moscow thrice over and reworking the rules for automobile usage in the city would also be a partial solution to the problem, he said.

The cost of such new roads would approximately fall between $15-55 billion per lane, the same as they cost in Europe and the United States, said the director.

Russia has long suffered from a lack of proper transportation infrastructure and the deterioration of what has already been built. Critics blame the government for failing to use burgeoning oil and natural gas revenues to invest in a modern, country-wide infrastructure. Not a single highway or expressway has been built in Russia over the past two decades, and the smaller roads that have been constructed are very few. China, which is commonly given as a comparison, has laid more than 40,000 thousand miles of high-volume roadways over the same amount of time.

A telling photo essay of the single federal road that leads to the Siberian city of Yakutsk can be viewed by clicking here.

In remarks today at the official opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev spoke about his goals for Russia’s economy and how state policy would be shaped to achieve them, Interfax reports.

“Russia,” the president said, “must become an attractive country that people from all over the world will aim for in search of their dreams. In search of the best opportunities for success and self-realization, which Russia can give to everyone ready to heed this call and love Russia as their new or second home.”

“Such are the goals of our modernization – they are realistic and achievable,” Medvedev asserted. He added that favorable conditions for modernization are currently developing in the country’s economy. He also said that state fiscal policy would be shaped with this in mind.

The three-day forum, which began Thursday afternoon, brings together European leaders, representatives from international corporations, economists, and other global policy makers to discuss modernization and development in emerging economies. A range of topics, including energy and security policy, are expected to be covered.

A presidential aid had stated earlier that Medvedev’s speech “will be mainly dedicated to Russia and the way we have changed.”

The Russian president singled out inflation in his opening remarks as one of the primary issues faced by his country’s economy. He also said that the inflation rate has fallen over the course of the year and is now hovering at about 6%.

In his turn, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged that inflation would not rise above 5-7% over the next three years, with the top target for next year set at 6.5%. He stressed that citizen trust in state policy was the key factor for successfully overcoming economic difficulties, and that Russians do indeed trust the ruble and their domestic banking system.

Former Economics Minister and Scientific Director of the Higher School of Economics Yevgeny Yasin said that the figures cited by the prime minister are realistic, but that inflation in Russia must necessarily fall to around 3-4%. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy, he also stipulated that the best time for prices to fall – the crisis period – had already passed.

While Russia has reported a decline in inflation each month since August 2009, some analysts say that the government’s reliance on consumer prices to calculate the rate presents a false reading of actual inflation. “Consumer prices,” says political commentator Sergei Shelin, “only make up a part of all prices. All the remaining prices are growing, and seem to know absolutely no shame.”

A panel entitled “Finance after the Crisis” was held in the same room after Medvedev’s remarks. There, according to the newspaper Vedomosti, influential global financial analysts discussed whether or not the presidents’ goals were achievable. The newspaper reported that of those present at the panel, 61% believed that the Russian financial system faces stagnation over the course of the next 2-5 years. About 5% expect another crisis, and the last third are optimistic that Russia will see a speedy rate of growth.

At another panel later in the day, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the task of cutting the budget deficit is harder for Russia than other European countries. This, he explained, has to do with the fact that the state treasury is highly dependent on the oil and gas sector. Kudrin reminded his audience that the current cut in Russia’s deficit is happening as a result of high oil prices – not because of the efforts of the government.

The finance minister also said that a rise in the retirement age would be an unavoidable result of the budget deficit, and confirmed plans for substantial increases in taxes on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco.

Khodorkovsky, known as an oligarch who was once Russia’s richest man, is currently facing new charges in a second criminal case against Yukos. He and co-defendant Platon Lebedev are accused by the Russian government of embezzling oil products in the sum of $27.5 billion, a charge the defense says is absurd and refuted by obvious, undisputed facts. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers are now planning to call on the prime minister, who is widely believed to have personally ordered Khodorkovsky’s arrest, as a witness in the case.

“Your prosecutors claim I ran Yukos not as an official chairman, but as the leader of an organized criminal group,” Khodorkovsky asks Putin. “When you discussed Yukos’s problems with me, with whom did you think you were talking?”

“Your prosecutors accuse me of stealing Yukos’ production from 1998 to 2003. When you, in 2003, personally congratulated Yukos for its successes in commercial and social activities, is this what you were referring to?” he goes on.

Responding through his lawyers, Khodorkovsky told the Independent that he believes Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to be sincere in his stated desire to fight corruption, as well as to reform the country’s law enforcement agencies and judicial system. “But reasonably soon, the president’s actions will bring him to a boundary, after which specific changes will not be possible without modernizing the political system as a whole,” he stipulated. Khodorkovsky added that whether or not Medvedev can successfully implement such modernization remains unclear.

During the interview, the imprisoned oligarch categorically denied rumors that he had been offered release under condition of leaving the country or staying out of politics.

Despite all talk of corruption, Khodorkovsky said that he does not believe the outcome of the current case against him to have been predetermined. “But whatever happens, I am going to defend my position and my innocence,” he said. Asked whether he was prepared to spend another twenty years behind bars in the case that he is found guilty and handed a maximum sentence, Khodorkovsky asserted that he doesn’t plan to despair.

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, told the newspaper Vedomosti that the prime minister would be informed about the letter but was unlikely to read it, let alone answer it. He added that Putin usually does not enter into dialogue with convicts.

For the Independent article in its entirety, click here.

The commission’s report is part of a program between Russia and the European Union dubbed Partnership for Modernization, and was prepared in response to an appeal from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the Russia-EU summit in Stockholm last November. At the time, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso personally stepped forward with a promise from the commission to aid Russia in its process of modernization.

The resulting report specifies that first and foremost, Russia must succeed in creating a state based on the rule of law. Without “the supremacy of law,” it says, no modernization can hope to be achieved.

The report adds that the European Commission is prepared to help Russia in its ongoing battle against corruption, improvements to its climate for investment, the process of modernizing non-governmental organizations, and Russia’s transition to European standards and technical regulations.

The document is currently in Moscow for review by the federal government, which so far has given it a mixed reaction. On the whole, the report is being called a positive “intellectual contribution” to the process of modernization. However, the Kremlin would prefer that their European partners focus more on the economic and technical aspects of modernization, and not so much on the topic of a state based on the rule of law.

“The program should have an application-oriented character, without broad discussions of the advantages of European values,” says Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s permanent envoy to the European Commission.

Russia has designated the Ministry of Economic Development to handle its own side of preparations for the joint project. So far, the amount of money to be designated to the Partnership for Modernization and the deadlines for its planning and implementation have not been specified. Civil servants interviewed by Kommersant indicated that more will become clear after the next Russia-EU summit in May.

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.

Therefore, Yezhednevny Zhurnal recently sat down with Kasparov for another interview, in order to extend the discussion of why European integration is necessary for Russia and how current political posturing on economic and political reforms will inevitably come to naught.

Garry Kimovich, in your opinion, do the nationalist and leftist wings of the National Assembly support the idea of European integration?

The strategic vector of Russia’s future development is, of course, a question for national discussion. At a time when a new global consensus is developing, Russia’s own interests force it to determine who its strategic partners are. It is possible that, as before, part of the left will look towards China. They think that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will implement the correct scenario for the country’s development.

However, in my opinion, if Russia focuses so recklessly on the East, it will inevitably cause our country to lose geopolitical subjectivity. Nothing will come of Russia’s own role, most likely becoming a purely raw-exports role for its active eastern neighbor. China is a very strong player, constantly driving economic expansion. By steadily expanding the limits of its influence, it has already established hegemony over practically the entire Asian expanse.

It is possible that there are some nationalists who, believing in Russia’s divine destiny, will say: “But we don’t need anyone – we’ll handle it ourselves.” I think that all of these utopian theories will come to be rejected as a result of discussion. I do not doubt that in the end, both the nationalists and the leftists will choose the vector of European integration.

Do you think that all Russian citizens support this geopolitical course?

Unlike the United States or China, which have a potentially negative connotation in the Russian consciousness, Europe won’t be rejected outright by Russian citizens. Europe is a related culture with high standards of living and free movement across the continent without the need for a visa. Where do our citizens turn to when they are disappointed with Russian justice? To Strasbourg. Many consider Europe to be a source of judicial justice. On the other hand, there’s a danger that people will get high expectations and hope that integration will solve all of our problems. The integration process is long and requires the introduction of legislation to bring us in line with basic European norms, and also to balance economic conditions and social safety nets.

Over the course of the integration process, the situation in the country should fundamentally change, of course, for the better. It is obvious that industries are beginning to move from the West to the East, closer to sources of raw materials, and that the qualified work force is catching up with them. Indeed, Europe today is suffering from overpopulation, and Russia has a great deal of undeveloped territory. If Russia becomes part of a common European expanse, we will be able to have European technology for, among other things, Russia’s gigantic farmlands. We will come to share such high-tech European projects as Airbus. With European integration, situations like the failed deal between Sberbank and Opel will become impossible. These issues will be resolved without the influence of political factors, even if the Americans don’t like it.

Is it just coincidental that several Kremlin political consultants have recently introduced projects that, in one way or another, promote the idea of European integration?

It is important to stress here that the Kremlin’s projects differ fundamentally from the processes of European integration as we understand them. They would base the integration of Russia with the Western world on alliances, including military-political ones, with various governments in Europe and America. For example, Director Igor Yurgens of the Institute for Contemporary Development proposed forming a military-political alliance with America together with his coauthors in a project entitled “A New Entente.” The United States could choose to enter into an alliance with Russia for their own tactical reasons – to move Russia away from China and to prevent China from creating a raw materials base in the Far East and Siberia. In doing so, the Americans would close their eyes to the lawlessness and absence of democracy in Russia.

The situation with Europe is more complex, but it could also enter into other types of elite arrangements. For example, former German Councilor Gerhard Schröder has already worked for Gazprom’s sister company for quite some time. The former Finnish Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen, also works for Gazprom. Silvio Berlusconi makes no attempt to hide his close business contacts with Putin. This is precisely why the propagandists from the Kremlin are trying to formulate such projects, so that they can maximally integrate the Russian elite with the global elite. Such plans would ensure that there would be no interference from the West in our own matters, and would preserve the patriarchal-feudal system of the Russian government. Even Dmitri Rogozin has spoken publicly about the use of integrating Russia into NATO. These projects are pure ostentation, and the authorities have absolutely no desire to discuss the process of real European integration that would demand a change in the inner substance of our state. Such changes would be fatal for the government, since they would have to introduce electoral legislation that corresponds to European norms.

Are the experts from the Institute for Contemporary Development, who are often critical of the government and promote various proposals to modernize the economy, really not potential allies for the opposition?

As a matter of fact, they are our antagonists; our ideological opponents. And they are all the more dangerous – in contrast with open fans of authoritarian and totalitarian forms of governance, they put on a show of multi-layered, ostentatious rhetoric to hide their actual refusal to accept political liberalism. That the very meanings of “democracy” and “liberalism” have been cheapened in the eyes of Russian society has been their “contribution.”

Rehabilitating liberal thought in Russia would require overcoming the inertia of a massive consciousness that still include proponents of the views of Gaidar and Chubais. Andrei Piontkovsky devotes much consideration to this important topic in his impassioned articles, constantly pointing out how these types of Russian liberals are incorporated into the infrastructure of the oligarchic regime. The National Patriots, who have shown that they are prepared to work with other ideological groups and abandon current stereotypes, did an interesting comparative analysis of the position of liberals and neo-liberal “liberasts” on key socio-political issues.

Not long ago, Yegor Gaidar made a very important confession. In an interview with Novaya Gazeta, he said that while we had indeed created a market economy, “we did not solve one of the important problems – the separation of power and property.” Herein lies Yegor Timurovich’s trickery: that the problem of the separation of power and property was never solved. We never had real market reform because the market, most of all, presupposes a systematic battle against monopolization in every sector, and not a formal division and privatization by the very same oligarchs of companies such as the Unified Energy System.

In her new book, “The Lonely Power,” Lilia Shevtsova writes that Russian “reformers” came under criticism in the 1990s by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, then-Senior Vice President of the World Bank. “Privatization is no great achievement,” Stiglitz mocked the “privatizers,” “it can occur whenever one wants – if only by giving away property to one’s friends. Achieving a private competitive market economy on the other hand is a great achievement but this requires an institutional framework, a set of credible and enforced laws and regulations.” Stiglitz convincingly proved that privatization in Russia occurred “in an unregulated environment,” and instead of doing what was needed to creating the environment “to curb political intrusion in market processes, an instrument was created to be used by special interest groups and political forces to preserve power,” Shevtsova concludes.

The oligarchic method of governing – that is to say, the seamless interweaving of power and property – will sooner or later lead to the abolition of democracy as such. Nobody will give up their power if they risk losing their property. Obviously, the ideal of the Medvedev wing that Yurgens represents is the liquidation of various excesses from Putin’s administration. But in doing so, it may not touch the oligarchic essence of the state. The Russian liberals that are incorporated into the system fear free elections like fire, since they inevitably lead to the abolition to the oligarchic model of government rule. Among these people, genuine liberalization brings about a real allergic reaction.

Why, then, was Igor Yurgens present at the conference of the Public Anti-crisis Initiative, expressing his intent to sign a measure that would promote political demands to modernize the political system?

First of all, signing a demand and managing to fulfill it are very different things. Secondly, the political reforms proposed by this group go, at the very most, only halfway. Without a doubt, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Sergei Aleksashenko and even Aleksandr Lebedev can potentially be our allies, but they have never before crossed the line necessary to challenge the system.

What do you think of the idea of gradual democratization of the system, which many have put their hopes in?

An anti-democratic regime can be neither reformed nor modernized; it can only be dismantled. All the hope that goes into finding a way to somehow reform or perfect the current system is in vain. It’s impossible, because the essence of the system will remain the same. Yegor Gaidar was precise in defining this: it’s power and property mixed up in the same bottle. Our situation will not change while the question of the separation of power and property remains resolved. This is a purely political decision. There exists no other way of reforming the system, such as with free elections. The five-second rule doesn’t apply to free elections – they’re basically saying that “we cannot allow irresponsible people to come to power.” We take a directly contradictory stance: “Give the people freedom, and you need not worry excessively about their elections.”

Do you think that the government’s apologists will convince the public that the discussion of unfair elections is a thing of the past, and that now, like they say, the new president is working to curb the “administrative games” of United Russia?

As a matter of fact, Medvedev has said nothing about honest elections; I don’t need to speak on his behalf. Twenty years ago, this was a beloved pastime of Western experts, who based their conjectures on their readings of Gorbachev in translation. Thank god we listen to Medvedev in Russian! On the contrary, he maintained the status-quo, saying: “We shall not rock the boat… We shall not allow the balance to be disrupted… We shall put this to an abrupt stop… We shall put them in jail.” Add to that the fact that the authorities took this as a direct order and put Limonov in jail for ten days for standing up for citizens’ right to freedom of assembly. Nothing in Medvedev’s speeches indicates that the Russian president wants real change. So, let’s leave him alone.

The apologists from the “Medvedev Majority” don’t say anything about free elections, either. This remains the case even when examining very different people. For example, the same Igor Yurgens who talks about the possibility of democracy “from above.” He proposes creating two political parties – one under Putin and another under Medvedev, and making it so that they can replace each other from time to time. Are those really free elections? This is a mask for the regime, unapologetically suppressing any impulses that threaten the bond between power and property. And free elections are a direct threat to the oligarchic method of managing the economy.

This is also characteristic of the regional governments, where the families of governors and state prosecutors control large spheres of business. So the regional elites aren’t interested in free elections, either. But Medvedev’s apologists won’t manage to fool the people. Russia’s main “liberast,” Anatoly Chubais, generally sees these tricks as an empty waste of time, and is calling directly for economic reform, putting a stop to these unnecessary discussions of political reform.

One more apologist from the “modernization majority,” a, is trying to hoist the same agenda upon us, but hiding it behind the name of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. Such attempts are typical for the more active Russian “liberasts,” and are especially immoral because they use Sakharov’s humanitarian legacy to justify a purely technocratic approach to governing the country, one based on the innermost contempt for its own people.

Then what does it tell us when, for example, prominent United Russia member Andrei Makarov announces that the Internal Ministry needs to be liquidated? Did he not, in fact, state your proposal?

That’s the spontaneous revolt of individual people who are sensing the dead end ahead. Anyone not completely hardwired into the system is protesting. And within the system, this protest is gaining momentum. “Sartre’s nausea,” as Andrei Piontkovsky writes, is approaching. The Brezhnev generation might see the question of when everything will come tumbling down as a rhetorical one, but for the 40-50-year-olds who make up the basis of the current government, this is not a theoretical question, but a practical one. Today, these people want to understand what will happen tomorrow. They still have the strength and desire to not wind up beneath the wreckage of the system.

And indeed, the system is not going to collapse just because I write that it will – all I do is expound upon the fears and dangers that a lot people are experiencing. I think that the process of the system’s collapse is going to gain momentum. At the end of the day, the stumbling block will be the question of political liberalization.

It’s possible that all of these people will put their hopes in Medvedev until the very end…

But he isn’t planning to introduce any corrections into the political system. After a year and a half of Medvedev’s tenure as president of Russia, Putin’s authoritarian regime has only become more severe. The Internal Ministry now has a special new subdivision for the war on extremism – Center “E;” cases of extremism have begun to appear, demonstrations have begun to be broken up more severely, and political activists have begun getting beaten.

In addition, today we have come face-to-face with a new and extremely dangerous phenomenon – the sharp growth of street violence between neo-Nazi and anti-fascist groups. Violence is pouring out onto the streets, and the thieving, cowardly government tries to use violence to its own ends. All of Medvedev’s attempts to play an independent role are connected with a desire to preserve Putinism without Putin. Further thoughts on this are worthless. Putin and Medvedev are representatives of a single system, one where power and property are combined. This renders the whole conversation about economic reform meaningless. The monopoly in politics and the economy doesn’t go together well with free elections.

Would you, then, recommend those who aren’t hardwired into the system to wait for the regime’s collapse?

In any case, I don’t advise them to participate in Medvedev’s various initiatives – that’s an attempt to shift his civic duty onto somebody else. Such attempts may bring about an opposite result and only prolong the agony of the regime. No attempt to play along with Medvedev’s initiatives will benefit anyone. The citizens that want free parliamentary elections have been effective in uniting into their own networks.

Is this where you got the idea to transform the National Assembly into a series of networks?

Yes, we are planning to reform the National Assembly. We want to make it available for all Russian citizens to join, and also to create regional branches for the National Assembly. The new structure will respond to the demand to represent a maximum number of different ideological trends on the basis of our common values. We hope that the existence of such a wide-ranging structure will help us support the country at a time of catastrophe, and implement a range of necessary actions during the transitional period while the country is preparing for elections – which will be held with clear, transparent rules. Right now, nobody knows where they’re going to be working, whether in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches; we can develop an objective procedure for elections and a system of checks and balances that would suit everyone.

In your opinion, will the National Assembly be the only force vying for power when the system collapses?

Undoubtedly not. A variety of forces will come to the surface during the moment of chaos. The advantage of our organizational structure is that it includes all colors of the rainbow; all political spectrums. The National Assembly is a place to form a new political expanse. We have an important trump card – nobody has learned better than us how to negotiate the most complex issues. And it is only possible to rescue the state during a moment of crisis on the basis of a wide consensus.

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

Exclusive translation by theotherrussia.org.