In the Johnson’s Russia List translation there are some exceptions made by the translator. The full version of the Yavlinsky’s interview in Russian is here: http://www.yavlinsky.ru/theme_of_day/index.phtml?id=3231

Question: Public politicians and media outlets are traditionally inseparable. We feature articles about politicians, and you read us. What is your impression of Russian media outlets at present?

Grigori Yavlinsky: I’m not one of your dedicated readers. I read sparingly and selectively. I have aides to do that. As for current news, I keep track of the latest developments online.

Question: You don’t feel somewhat detached, do you?

Grigori Yavlinsky: I haven’t been getting television coverage for the past four or five years – and I don’t regret it at all. Some serious changes began in 1996, but Russian television has been crude and downright moronic since 2000 or so. Television is no longer professional. It is a propaganda tool. The Kremlin views the powers it wields as a PR action. My voters write me letters asking how come they do not see me anywhere. I understand these questions. The Russian media nowadays is shaped by Channel One and Channel Two alone. Once a year I do appear on television in some broadcast that has been mercilessly edited and censored, but that doesn’t change anything. It’s just a means of showing my voters that I’m alive. Ten seconds on air on one channel, ten seconds on another – no more than that. It doesn’t have anything to do with systematic presentation of an alternative policy on key issues of domestic and foreign affairs.

Question: Are you saying that the people who support you have no prospects – at least in the next several years?

Grigori Yavlinsky: That’s an odd question. Prospects are something that should be created. The process may take years. Sure, unless some positive changes take place in Russia within the next 15 years or so, they may never take place ever afterwards. Russia will be different – a Third World country, something on the outer rim of globalization.

The system established in Russia is thoroughly authoritarian. Without public politics, without political competition. Even elections are about to cease being a political event. Yabloko is a European parliamentary party. Apathy and disappointment of the majority of the population make us look like a sailer immobilized by absence of wind. We are trying to row – but it is a sailing ship, not a galley with oars. It needs a good wind – public disposition, it doesn’t need slaves in chains. Why there is no wind is of course a different subject altogether. To remain standing under the circumstances such as we are seeing requires a lot of guts… A decent and serious political newspaper cannot have a print run of millions nowadays. Similarly, Yabloko cannot count on 50% of the vote, no matter how free and fair the election may be. It could get 10% to 15%, no more. To poll more than that, we need a different public atmosphere, and that takes years.

Question: What is Yabloko’s numerical strength at this point?

Grigori Yavlinsky: We have 63,000 members. We have grown by 7,000 members over the last twelve months. Life is hard on our activists. Membership of Yabloko costs them harassment or even their jobs. They are bluntly told to join United Russia or remain out of any and all parties as long as they quit Yabloko. Our legislation pertaining to political parties and elections is absolutely reactionary. Many citizens who value their careers find themselves unable to participate in actual politics. It is vitally important for us that at least 60,000 people in Russia are not afraid of saying what party they belong to, what their convictions are, and why they are against Putin.

Question: But Yabloko is not alone. All this is true of many other parties of the opposition. Unification of democratic forces has been talked about for… how long?

Grigori Yavlinsky: Whoever wants to go in the direction we are going, for the objective we are striving, are our allies. Whoever chooses any different course aren’t. Forget the illusions, why don’t you. It’s just talk that there are some “powerful democratic forces.” There are none.

Question: What about the Union of Right Forces (SPS)? The idea of unifying Yabloko and the SPS was once broadly discussed.

Grigori Yavlinsky: The SPS is moving in an entirely different direction. It is neither an opposition party nor a democratic party. I’d call it a neoconservative pro-government party. To all practical purposes, it is headed by a key manager from the inner presidential circle.

Yabloko on the other hand is an opposition party, a social- liberal democratic party.

Question: Why don’t you try to get the SPS to see it from your angle and join you?

Grigori Yavlinsky: That’s a naive idea if ever I heard one. Political parties are about interests. The SPS represents the interests of big business, inseparable from the state we are living in. Take a look at Chubais’s interview he gave to Prokhanov. He is absolutely plain: we intend, he says, to offer Putin “democratic support.” We will convince the voters, he says, to support the idea of a third term, a fifth term, a successor, a new “triumphant” war for the empire – whatever. And we will be believed, he says. If they do not believe us, we will buy their trust.

Question: But there is more to it that Chubais… There are voters as well.

Grigori Yavlinsky: Yes, that’s who we should never try to deceive. We spent a year discussing key political issues with SPS leader Nikita Belykh with nothing at all to show for it.

Question: And yet, the SPS is being disqualified from elections as well.

Grigori Yavlinsky: Parties are disqualified for different reasons. It doesn’t matter. We live under the pressure of an impertinent administrative system. In fact, parties are often disqualified from regional elections on the governor’s whim. It doesn’t necessarily a corollary of the party’s political position or ideology.

Question: But old leaders of the SPS stepped down.

Grigori Yavlinsky: Don’t you believe it. They all are there – all these old members of the SPS Political Council – Chubais, Gaidar, Gozman, Nemtsov, Nadezhdin, and others. Khakamada alone withdrew to join Kasyanov. I’m convinced that it is the political forces which were ruling Russia throughout the 1990s that are responsible for the state of affairs – corruption, economic crime, degradation of science and education, deterioration of the Army and Navy, and (what really matters) for the people’s disillusionment in democracy and European values. Speaking of the political forces in this context, I mean the SPS. It is this party that should be held accountable for the criminal privatization, for events of 1993, for encroachments on the freedom of the media beginning in the 1996 election, for the 1997 auctions, for the short-term state bonds pyramid, for the 1998 default, and for the war in Chechnya. The SPS is one of the most dangerous and destructive groups in Russia. We hoped that with Belykh running the party and after the election in Moscow it would finally abandon its former erroneous ways, formulate a new program, and rid itself of odious individuals. We entertained the hope that it would finally understand that cynicism and disdain with regard to the people and endless lies are not reforms, they are neo-Bolshevism. Regrettably, it never happened. They are not changing, and the regional elections plainly show it.

Question: And to listen to the other side, everything is thwarted by Yavlinsky’s personal ambitions. Grigori Yavlinsky: They do not even understand what they are talking about. Ambitions or whatever do not matter. What matters is that so many people paid with their lives for the policy of this group. Want to know how come there is no wind now? Let’s refresh your memory then.

The war in Chechnya began in 1994, privatization was carried out in 1995, Yeltsin was elected the president by unprecedented manipulations in 1996, pyramid of the short-term state bonds was built in 1997, crisis, default, and devaluation occurred in 1998: the already rich were made even wealthier, and the rest were made paupers. Another war was launched in 1999… The population is fed up with it. Society’s shock is such that if you care to talk to people nowadays, they cannot even see their own lives from the standpoint of the opportunities open to them now. They evaluate their lives only from the standpoint of what was done to them in the 1990s – and would agree to anything at all, as long as that is not done to them again. That is why people do not think in terms of the future. They think in terms of yesterday’s fears. The country is not making any progress – it is moving sideways. Well, people have to be told what really happened, right?

Question: You have with the president on more than one occasion. Do you perceive any results?

Grigori Yavlinsky: The only result is that one may tell the president everything he thinks on this or that key issue. The president only responds to whatever he wants to respond. He wouldn’t discuss everything, you know. He doesn’t want to discuss Schekochikhin’s death with me – and he doesn’t discuss it. Even though I’ve been sending him letters about it all these years.

Say, I asked him at a meeting about why they would want us disqualified from the election in Karelia. The president admitted that it had been wrong and promised to look into it. “But the election took place two months ago!!” I told him. “It’s all right, there will be other elections,” he replied. And bingo – we were disqualified in St. Petersburg as well.

Question: Is it true that liberals in Russia have only two options – wait for the wind to change, or decide on a compromise with one another (like they did in Ukraine) and thus hopefully come to power?

Grigori Yavlinsky: An Orange Revolution was possible in Ukraine but in Russia it is impossible. The history of post-Soviet Ukraine is different from history of post-Soviet Russia. It was spared Chechen wars, or privatization like in Russia. It doesn’t have oil or gas. National political consensus there is possible, and much can be achieved on this basis. Russian politics is more rigid, divided, antagonistic, and uncompromising. A compromise is when two people met each other halfway. All over the world, that is. In Russia, a compromise is understood differently. I’ve told you what I want and you’d better give it to me. Make us chairmen, change the name, and we will come to run and rule you… We have 77 regional branches and hundreds of representatives in regional and local government bodies. Yabloko as a party has a recognition rating of 97%! We have a framework of convictions that took us years to form in the first place, we have an impeccable political biography. Few others could match it, you know. No, we did not always win, but we never deceived our voters and we never stole anything from them.

Question: Some people hope that liberal changes will be orders from the upper echelons.

Grigori Yavlinsky: That’s how they are always set in motion in Russia. That is why they are ever so shallow. Serious changes, fundamental changes require a combination of the movement at the top and support below.

Question: In any case, there is a part of the population that will vote for Yabloko and thus express its attitude towards what it sees all around.

Grigori Yavlinsky: Yes, there is. It is very important for us. Voters frequently tell me that they want us to participate in elections no matter what. We understand how the system works, they say, but you enable us not to be ashamed of our choice. That’s what counts. When the situation is finally different, what we are doing nowadays will be of paramount importance. Or else, we will have to start from scratch.

Author: Alexander Kolesnichenko

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Translated by A. Ignatkin
Johnson’s Russia List
2007-#48
27 February 2007