CAROL SAIVETZ: Welcome,
I'm Carol Saivetz. I am the co-chair of our Focus
on Russia seminar series. And I'd like to welcome you to
today's Starr Forum and Focus on Russia Series. I'm really pleased that we
have for today two speakers who are going to talk about their
book, Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future? With a question mark at the end. I think that it is a
really important topic. We all know that
Navalny was poisoned. Navalny has been imprisoned. But I think understanding his
impact on Putin's future maybe, on Russian politics, is
really vitally important. And before I introduce
the speakers, let me-- let me just tell you a little
bit about what we're doing. You will have an opportunity
to ask questions. Please use the Q&A
feature on the Zoom. And please check occasionally
the chat, because we'll be posting links to people's
bios, to upcoming events, and information about
how to purchase the book. I'd also like to thank Michelle
English and Laura Kerwin, who have been helping us with the
technology and the advertising and are really responsible for
all of this coming together. So our two speakers today
are Morvan Lallouet, who is a PhD candidate
in comparative politics at the University
of Kent in England. He is currently writing a
thesis on "Navalny Liberalism and the Russian Opposition." Ben Noble is an
associate professor in Russian politics at
University College London, an associate fellow
of Chatham House, and a senior research
fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He conducts research on
legislative politics, authoritarianism, Russian
domestic politics. He has published
works in journals such as Comparative Political
Studies, Russian Politics, and The Journal of
European Public Policy. Please join me in
welcoming Morvan, who's going to speak first. MORVAN LALLOUET: Thank you very
much for inviting us to speak about our new book at MIT. And thank you very much,
Carol, for accepting to chair this event. So, who is Alexei Navalny? He's Russian, you already
probably knew that. He was born in 1976-- '76-- sorry. He was trained in
law and finance. Then he had a short and not
very successful business career. He then entered, in
2000, into politics. He became a member
of a Liberal Party. And he, as you already probably
know, made a name for itself-- for himself in fighting
against corruption on his blog into this, starting
from the mid-2000. And, of course, he is now the
most famous Russian opposition leader, though he is sitting
behind bars, probably for years to come. But who is exactly
Alexei Navalny? That question was on
many, many people's minds, and not only on
the minds of people who follow Russian politics,
who already knew him quite well, especially when
Alexei Navalny was poisoned in August 2020. And interest towards
Navalny shut up again when Navalny, working with
the investigative collective Bellingcat, claimed a few months
later that he had unmasked, and even called some
of the people who had tried to assassinate him. Interest shot up again when
in January of this year Alexei Navalny
returned to Russia and was immediately
sent to prison. And at that time,
when Navalny returned to Russia, many people around
us, friends, colleagues, and again, people who
are not necessarily that much interested
in Russian politics, were asking us that
question, who is that man and why does he
matter for Russian and even global politics? And at that time, Ben Noble
reached to me on Twitter and to Jan Matti Dollbaum,
who is the third co-author of the book, and who
unfortunately cannot be present at this event here, and he asked
us if we could recommend a good English language
book on Navalny. And our answer was simple. We cannot do that because
this book doesn't exist. It doesn't even exist in
the Russian language today. And after a brief
discussion to see if we were on the same page
about Navalny, let's say, we decided that we
should write the book. And so we found an agent,
we found a publisher, and we managed to write
that book quite quickly, in a few months. We wanted it to be out before
the Russian legislative elections, which took
place a few weeks before. So this is-- this
book is our attempt to answer that question,
who is Alexei Navalny? So, what's more
precisely this book? I'll start with
a big disclaimer. We are not investigative
journalists. We do not have special
access to the Kremlin or even to Navalny himself. He was already behind bars when
we started writing the book. And we're not
traditional biographers. We did not write a
traditional biography. Of course, in the
beginning of the book we do talk about Navalny's
childhood, where he comes from, his youth, but we did
not meet with his friends from high school. And this is not a
traditional biography ordered in a chronological way. So what's the general
approach that drove us when writing that book? I think one of the most
important things we tried to do is we tried to avoid,
as much as possible, the heavy and strong
politicization and polarization that was so obvious when Navalny
was poisoned and then returned to Russia. And in our view,
this polarization manifests itself
in two dimensions. The first is, of course, a
very black and white narrative surrounding Alexei Navalny. On the one hand, he is,
mostly in the Western media, and of course very supporting--
supporters-- excuse me-- a sort of white
knight in shining armor, a very brave man, willing
to take on Vladimir Putin, willing to take down the
Russian authoritarian regime. On the other hand, and
this is the narrative that you've probably most
heard in pro Kremlin circles or media, Navalny is depicted
as an ugly racist nationalist. So who exactly is
Alexei Navalny? We believe that he may be both. And we tried to tell his
story in all its shades of gray and in all its nuances. The other type of politicization
that-- and polarization that we witnessed at the
time, and still today, and which is in some
way a bit more subtle, is either on the
one hand to overblow Navalny's significance. When you read some media
accounts you get the impression that Navalny enjoys
huge support in Russia, that if he were to be allowed
to run against Vladimir Putin tomorrow in a free
and fair election he would easily defeat him. On the other hand, you have-- again, this is mostly a
pro Kremlin narrative, but you can also hear it
from other types of people-- Navalny is depicted as
only a simple blogger, someone who was-- who enjoys maybe some
support in the West, but who doesn't enjoy
much support in Russia, and who is only used by the
West because they like his ideas or want to bring down
Vladimir Putin's regime. So we attempted to avoid
these different pitfalls. We attempted to tell
Navalny's stories in the most objective way. We, as I said, are not
traditional biographers. We are not investigative
journalists. We are Western
academics, who have-- who tried to tell the story
in the most objective way that we can. And the way we did
that is that we divided Navalny's activity,
Navalny's career in three strands,
which are Navalny the anti-corruption activist,
Navalny the politician, and Navalny the protester. And then we move on
to examine and assess Navalny's place in
Russian politics, and how the Kremlin and Navalny
have shaped one another. But Ben Noble will then
develop these points. And in doing so, we also attempt
to answer that question that's also on everybody's minds,
which is, is the Kremlin really afraid of Navalny? And to conclude before
I hand over to Ben, I'll just tell a few words
about the sources we used. We have used
Western, but mostly-- also mostly Russian
press sources. There is still excellent
journalism in Russia, even though journalism is, of
course, under a huge threat in Russia today. But also, more
importantly, we have used-- and I think this is one of the
most important contributions of the book, if I may say-- we have used the research
that Jan Matti Dollbaum, our co-author has conducted
over the course of this PhD research, and which
is made of survey data and also many interviews from
activists in Alexei Navalny's movement. So we hope that
the book provides for readers a view about Navalny
from the ground in Russia, from Russia's regions,
and it doesn't tell only what we
might think of Navalny, but what people who have
chosen to support him might make of him. And on that note, I will
hand over to Ben Noble. BEN NOBLE: Thanks, Morvan. And thanks, Carol,
for the invitation to speak at this event. And also, thanks to
Michelle and Laura for all of the
technical support. As Morvan mentioned, one
of the motivating reasons for writing the book was to make
sense of Navalny's complexity, especially in a media
environment in the West in which the narrative
was very black and white, about presenting Navalny,
as Morvan put it, this white knight figure against
the villainous dictator Putin. But let me read a
couple of paragraphs from the book to give
you a sense of how we try and grapple with
that complexity. So "Navalny is different
things to different people. To some he's a democratic hero,
a figure willing to stand up to Putin's authoritarianism. Some even call him the
leader of the opposition. To others, he's a traitor,
a CIA paid agent of the West who's betraying the motherland. To others still, he's a
nationalist or a xenophobe. Even a quick glance at
Navalny's words and deeds makes clear why people
might be confused. He's a liberal who has
made nationalist, even racist statements. He's an anti-corruption
activist, who himself, has been
convicted of embezzlement. He's a Russian patriot
who calls for sanctions against Russian authorities. He's an avowed Democrat
who leads his movement with a strong hand. Navalny wants
Russia to be happy, but attacks opponents
with scathing comments and rarely backs down." So in the book, as
Morvan mentioned, we try and make sense
of that complexity by following three
strands of Navalny's life, as an anti-corruption
activist, politician, and protest leader. And we also look
at how the Kremlin has adapted to the
challenge that Navalny has presented over time. So I'm going to speak
a little bit more about those three
strands, as well as how the Kremlin has adapted. Many of you, I imagine,
will have heard or maybe even watched the
"Putin's Palace" investigation put together by Navalny's
Anti-Corruption Foundation and put on YouTube at the
beginning of this year. It currently has more
than 118 million views. In a couple of weeks
after its release, Levada, a polling agency, and
independent polling agency in Russia, presented
evidence that up to a quarter of the
adult population in Russia had watched it. And so that's-- for many people,
especially internationally, they will associate Navalny's
anti-corruption activities with that video. But his anti-corruption
activities began many, many years ago. So when he, in the
early to mid-2000s, was an emerging member of
the post Soviet middle class in Russia, he decided to invest
his money in stocks and shares. But then quickly he worked
out that he couldn't get the information
that he would like, such as who else own stocks
and shares in these companies and also what's happening
to the profits being made by these companies. So he had the courage to stand
up in shareholder meetings and ask difficult questions
in a way that made him stand out from the crowd. It also became quickly
clear that he was eloquent, charismatic, and that he was
able to command the attention and respect the people. So as well as causing a bit
of trouble in these meetings, he made it clear to an external
audience what he was doing. He started blogging
using the LiveJournal Blog, which was very popular
in Russia at the time. And that's an early
indication of how Navalny has used social
media to engage people on topics that some people
would dismiss as being boring. When you're looking
at corruption, it can be quite a
dry, dull, gray topic. But Navalny has a knack
for making it interesting, for framing it in a way such
that the information can go viral. So because of his
blogging, Navalny quickly became one of Russia's
most famous bloggers. And he rose to prominence. And he was increasingly seen
as an influential figure. So he started to
build a team in order to help him carry out
these investigations. Because he was quickly, with
this increased prominence, being inundated with
information, people saying, well, you need to look
into this particular case. They alleged some corruption
and he would look into it. He couldn't do it
all by himself. So he assembled some
competent people around him, including investigators
and lawyers. And what's interesting
is that at this moment he almost stumbles into
anti-corruption as an activity. But he also quickly
realizes that it can be a useful political platform. Because it's difficult
to think of somebody who supports corruption. It's one of those
issues that can put-- draws together people
a very different ideological backgrounds. And so we can see
Navalny shifting from this
anti-corruption activism into an increasingly
political role. So in chapter 2 of the
book, we explore Navalny as anti-corruption activist. We discuss the broader role
of corruption in Russia and how it's changed over
the post Soviet period. We also look at his
motivations, the allegations made against him that he's
purely a pawn for higher up elites particular gains. We look at the construction
of the organizations that he made over time, which
were, when we were writing the book, being
deconstructed rapidly in real time, which made for
an interesting writing process. We also look at some of the
important investigations before the "Putin's
Palace" investigation, including a very high profile
study into Dmitry Medvedev. And we also look, at
the end of that chapter, at how law enforcement
was increasingly closing the net around him,
his team, and his movement. So that's in chapter 2. In chapter 3 we move on to
Navalny, the politician. And this, in many
respects, is one of the reasons why we
needed to write the book, to make sense of Navalny
as a political figure. And also, how his
political statements and his political positions
have changed over time. Now, he has shifted
in the policies that he's backed, in the
sentiments that he's expressed. So we chart his early days
in the Liberal [NON-ENGLISH] Party, where it quickly became
clear that he had the ability to rise through the ranks as
a very competent intelligent person. But he also had a very
strong personality and he clashed with
the party's leadership. We also chart in the
chapter his engagement with nationalist sentiment,
with nationalist figures. And we look at
some of the darker pages of his political
career, but also of his life. It's one of the reasons why
we wanted to write the book, to place those
statements in context. Not to forgive him, not
to apologize for him, but to make sense of them
in the time in which he said them and also in
the broader context of Russian society at the time. So in that chapter, we
also look at his attempts to run in electoral politics. He stood in the 2013
Moscow mayoral election. And surprisingly, the
Kremlin allowed that. It seems shocking now, given
where he is, behind bars. But that was still
possible in 2013. We contrast that
with his attempt to run in the 2018
presidential election, where he tried to
stand, but was barred. He wasn't allowed on the ballot. And so it gives--
the chapter gives a sense of both
his shifting ideas, but also his shifting
organizational affiliations as a politician. And when we finished
writing the chapter, we stood back and thought,
well, this is quite confusing. There are lots of
twists and turns. How do we make sense of this
for ourselves, never mind for a readership? And so we really end the chapter
by focusing on this idea of, is Navalny inconsistent? And I'm going to read a few more
paragraphs that summarize where we end up in this chapter. "The story of Navalny's
journey as a politician can be bewildering. We were, in fact,
bewildered when we finished writing the chapter. At some point he's called
for the liberal opposition to unite. Then he opted to go alone. Regarding elections,
he sometimes called for boycotts, but
then for the fielding of opposition candidates
and then for protest voting. Sometimes slogan is essential,
but other times they're rejected as simplistic. Then they're back
in favor once again. How should we make sense
that these zigzags, of this inconsistency? One may well call Navalny
inconsistent and an opportunist for these turns, like his
less pragmatic colleagues in the liberal opposition in
Russia have constantly done. But in reality, they appear
to reflect Navalny's readiness to subordinate both tactics
and substantive demands to the one thing that
he has been remarkably consistent about,
and that is the need to fight an
authoritarian system that uses corruption and repression
to secure its power." So that's how we end
the chapter looking at Navalny the politician. In chapter 4, we then move on
to Navalny as protest leader. And as Morvan
mentioned, this is when we can draw on the
brilliant research done by our co-author, Jan,
where he interviewed, along with colleagues, activists
and supporters of Navalny in the regions between
2017 and this year. And lots of people
outside of Russia maybe saw coverage of
Navalny in The New York Times as a protest leader, at the
head of hundred thousands of people calling for
Russia without Putin. But the movement that we saw
that he was able to build, that crescendoed and that has
been deconstructed this year, was built up slowly over time. When he was first seen at
the head of these crowds by many people, especially
around the 2011 and 2012 protests, following the
disputed national parliamentary elections in Russia, he
sort of fumbles a bit. He has an ad hoc approach. He finds himself a
leader of protest, but he doesn't necessarily
have a well-developed strategy. But he learned quickly. And he also got the
right people in his team, including Leonid
Volkov, who ends up being his chief strategist. And they decided,
and they realized that they could use protests
for their political, as well as their
anti-corruption-- their political ends and their
anti-corruption activities. And so you can see these
three strands of the same life all coming together. Fast forward to
Navalny's attempt to run in the 2018
presidential election and he sets up a network
of regional offices across the country
that can be used to coordinate local protests,
to coordinate protests across the country, as
well as coordinating other political and
anti-corruption activities. In the fifth chapter we then
turn away from protests then and look at how the Kremlin
has adapted to Navalny. Because often in
coverage of the Kremlin, it can be portrayed as
this monolithic block that never changes, all powerful
and can't move and adapt. But what we show in the
book is that the Kremlin has adapted the challenges
presented by Navalny, his team, and his movement. We can look at, for example,
technological changes. So the Anti-Corruption
Foundation would find a way to
exploit the information environment in Russia
to point out corruption within members of the elite. The Kremlin would realize
that and they would block off these particular avenues. And so, if we can look at the
Kremlin's adaptation, what you see is that
the Kremlin deals with Navalny, his
team, and his movement in different ways over time. And that Navalny has shifted
between these three threads that we trace
throughout the book. But that over time, and
especially over the last year, the number of spaces open
still for Navalny, his team, and his movement to
operate in have reduced. And the Kremlin has again been
closing in on him, his team, and his movement. And as Morvan mentioned, we
discuss in the final chapter of the book whether Vladimir
Putin, president of Russia, is afraid of Navalny. It's a question that we often
get, that we still often get. And our response
is that, while we can't get inside Putin's head-- we're going to have to
wait until he writes his autobiography or we can
get inside the archives, or insiders turn into
outsiders, and then they reveal the private
sentiments of Putin regarding Navalny, but what
we do do, and what we can do is look
at how the Kremlin and how Putin have
responded to Navalny. So I'll finish my
presentation before handing back over to Morvan to speak
about the recent elections and Smart Voting, which is
team Navalny's tactical voting project, by discussing
our conclusions regarding is Putin afraid of Navalny. We might not know what
Putin thinks of Navalny, but we can draw conclusions from
the president's dogged refusal to use Navalny's name in public. His admission that
Navalny was indeed being followed by
security service personnel before falling ill
in August 2020. And his insistence that Navalny
is an agent of Western powers. We might not know how
troubled the authorities are by the Anti-Corruption
Foundation's investigations, but we can draw conclusions
from the official orders to take down YouTube videos,
the frequent law enforcement raids on the foundation,
and finally the destruction of the FBK itself. We might not know how seriously
the Kremlin takes Smart Voting, but we can draw conclusions
from the reports it's setup a spoiler initiative
called Smart Vote to confuse voters, the mass detention of
municipal politicians in March 2021, and the full frontal
attack on Navalny's campaign offices across the country. All of this suggests
that even if we don't know Putin's
personal view, it's unquestionable that the
Kremlin takes Navalny extremely seriously, that they see
in him and his team's activities a clear threat to
the current political order. We finished writing the
text in around April-May. And we clearly show the
direction of travel, but we, of course,
haven't updated it to what's happened since. And I imagine what has
happened since, if we were to revise the
text, it would really reinforce those points that we
make of the Kremlin deciding that they're going to change
the way that they deal with Navalny, his team, his
movement, but opposition more broadly, shifting away from
maybe softer management to more overt brutal repression. So with that, I'll end
my comments and hand over to Morvan to speak
about the elections. MORVAN LALLOUET:
Thank you very much. So as Ben mentioned
a bit earlier, Navalny cannot
participate in elections. He ran once for
becoming mayor of Moscow and he was in a
way so successful that he wasn't allowed
to run again ever. His movement cannot
run in elections. Before it was outright
banned in Russia, it could not register as
a political party, which is almost a precondition
to participate in elections in Russia. So how do you even do
politics when you cannot run in elections? The answer is you
have to be creative. You have to be smart. And Navalny, when you look at
his already long, 20 years, political career, has devised
many strategies in order to keep influencing
politics without being able to do what most
politicians do in the world. His latest initiative
was called Smart Voting. And it's an attempt to
coordinate opposition votes in Russia. The principle is quite simple. It's the idea that
opposition minded voters, people who
oppose Putin, must unite behind the strongest
candidates regardless of ideology. So what Navalny's
team has been doing is collating
information that is-- I must make that clear,
it's not public, it's a discretionary decision
that Navalny's team makes, and chooses district
among district who is the best placed candidate
from the opposition that is legal, that can participate
in elections in Russia, who's the best place candidates to
defeat Putin's party, United Russia. And, of course, the strategy
has been quite controversial, especially among liberal
democratic minded opposition parties or voters, because
they argue that why should we, democratic minded voters, vote
for these pseudo opposition parties that are most of
the time of an ideology that is quite far from
democracy or liberalism? So this-- and the
proof of that is that most of the candidates
that were endorsed by the Smart Voting initiative in the latest
legislative elections in Russia came from the Communist Party
of the Russian Federation, whose leader has been in place
for almost 30 years now and who advocates sometimes
outright Stalinism. But what Navalny's
team has been arguing is that these
ideological disagreements are irrelevant as of today. Russia finds itself
in a situation where you have a first
stage of politics, which is first to keep
politics alive in Russia, and to defeat the regime
of Vladimir Putin. And then once,
hopefully, in the future a democrative regime
is in place in Russia, people will have the
opportunity to vote according to their political preferences,
according to their ideology. So the majority of these
candidates that were endorsed came from the Communist Party. The majority of those
who were elected with the support of
Smart Voting were also from the Communist Party. This is a fairly small number. And which leads us to
the question of how-- what kind of impact
can this have? Of course, it is difficult
to assess that impact because it actually amounts to
betting on the better horse. So it's hard to say whether
people have been voting for the Communist Party
because they like that party or because they follow Navalny
himself and his movement. What we can though,
is that there has been some academic
studies of Smart Voting in the past in local contexts. And it shows that, at
least the big cities-- this study was conducted,
if I remember well, in St. Petersburg--
this initiative can have some impact. Can this allow Navalny's
team to retain some influence over Russian politics? I think is hard to say. Of course, by definition
it's a strategy that he can only
use in elections. And now the next nationally
scheduled elections are only the next presidential
elections in 2024. And what we're
witnessing right now is a tremendous closing
of opportunities for opposition in Russia. Anti-corruption investigations
are still possible, but we can be doubtful that they
might have a very strong impact in the future. And it's quite possible
that these investigations have diminishing
returns, especially after the last-- their last
victim with Vladimir Putin. It can only go down
to lesser figures. As we have already repeated,
not only cannot be a normal politician, his party or quasi
party is banned in Russia, he cannot also be a protester. We have seen in the
past year the most wide-ranging repression of
demonstrations in Russia. So the only thing that
Navalny can for now rely upon, or when I say Navalny, I
mean, of course, his team. Navalny can communicate through
his lawyers, but of course, he cannot appear on
YouTube, which was-- had turned to be
his main platform. The only tool that he
can use is the internet. And of course, as you may have
heard the tech giants that provided Navalny with
that tremendous platform, be that app stores, for example,
either for Google or for Apple, you could get this
Smart Voting application on your smartphone, they-- so these applications
were banned. So the-- Navalny's
team finds itself quite over-reliant on the internet. And the future of the
internet in Russia, of the free internet
that had in a way guaranteed Navalny's
impact, Navalny's success in the past years, it
looks quite bleak now. So the only glimmer
of hope, as-- I mean, yeah, the picture-- the overall picture, I'm
sorry, is quite bleak. The only, I think,
glimmer of hope in this quite bleak
picture is the hope that people who were
inspired people, who were members of
Navalny's movement can, in one way or
another, continue their political careers,
their political activism in other platforms in Russia. And I will stop here and
welcome the questions. Thank you very much. CAROL SAIVETZ:
Thank you very much. And just as a reminder, if
you have a question please put it into the Q&A function on
the bottom of the Zoom screen. But I'm going to usurp the
prerogative of the chair and try to frame some
of the conversation. You talked about
the three threads in Navalny's career, the
anti-corruption, Navalny as politician, and
Navalny as protest leader. It strikes me that what
Putin seems to be afraid of-- and again, I'm couching
this because you didn't come down on either side
of that issue really-- is the anti-corruption
piece and the protest piece. That as a political
personage, they can make sure that he doesn't
run again for mayor of Moscow. They can make sure that he
doesn't run for president. But if we assume that
this is a system that's based on corruption, and
that with the pandemic and with the decline in
Russia's economic fortunes, that this idea that somehow
Navalny can galvanize political opinion
against the corruption, and he or his followers can
lead the protest movement, it seems to me that that's
what Putin is most afraid of, is this sort of perhaps
galvanizing the population, but it's a threat to
the political order, at the top of which-- on the top of which
stands Vladimir Putin. So let me just-- that's sort of my take on what
you guys have been saying. BEN NOBLE: It's interesting. I think for all for the--
for the three strands that we look at there is
a deeply personal element to Putin in all of them. So I suppose I'm reluctant to
say that Putin dismisses-- not that I'm saying you said
this quite like this, but I'm reluctant to say that
I think that Putin dismisses Navalny's chance
as a politician. Because when Navalny
announced that he was going to run in the
presidential election, the 2018 presidential election, that
was, what, end of 2016. And he did lots of his
campaigning in 2017. And according to
investigations by Bellingcat and partners, the FSB
assassination squad that they claim put Novichok on
Navalny's underpants-- in Navalny's underpants
in Tomsk in August 2020, they started tracking
him around the time that he announced
that he wanted to run in the presidential race. And so one reading
of that, and I think quite a plausible reading,
is that this was Navalny standing up and
challenging Putin directly for the top job in the country. And Navalny, when he
announced his candidacy, put out a video on
YouTube, because he couldn't go on main
state TV, to say I'm running for the top job. And so I think that was
the directly personal confrontation. When it comes to
anti-corruption, "Putin's Palace" is the
ultimate direct attack, linking Putin directly to
these broader allegations that Navalny has
been making over time to, yes, senior officials, but
not directly to Putin himself. So another sort of-- the
second very personal element. And then with protest,
I already mentioned that Navalny was often seen
at these protests chanting, shouting with all his might,
"Russia without Putin." And so, these are very
direct personal challenges. And it's difficult to escape
the conclusion-- if we don't say it this directly
in the book, and maybe Morvan
on can push back if you doesn't agree
with this as well, but I think it's a very
personal confrontation. I imagine, if we were to
get inside Putin's head, he would be annoyed by Navalny. That's one way of putting it. Threatened in terms of
worrying that he would win a presidential election,
if free and fair elections were to take place, maybe
less so, because Putin is aware of the polling data,
as well as the polling data that probably gives a sincere
reflection of what Russians think, albeit in a media
environment in which Navalny is framed as an agent of the West. So I think there are
very personal elements to this story. And so, if somebody
were to force me I would say that Putin
is afraid of Navalny. And that's why we've seen the
lengths taken against both him, his team, and his
movement this year. CAROL SAIVETZ: OK, Morvan,
did you want to weigh in? MORVAN LALLOUET: Just a quick-- a quick thing, is that so we-- when we say-- we talked a
lot about how Navalny wanted to be a normal politician,
to run in an election, to lead a party, et cetera. But I think one of the
important factors when we consider all this
is that Navalny wanted to be a national
politician and not a Moscow politician or a
St. Petersburg politician. That is, he was--
and I think this is what makes him stand apart
from other liberal democrative politicians in Russia
and that he really started when he launched
the presidential campaign at the end of 2016,
is that he wanted to build a national network. And that he-- more broadly,
he was never content with saying I'm
going to represent a minority of
intelligentsia voters in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. He has always said
I want to represent the majority of the Russian
people in small cities, in the provinces or the regions. So this is, I
think, the dimension where his more traditional
politician aspect is not necessarily to be discounted. But I'll stop at that. CAROL SAIVETZ: OK,
so I'm going to start looking at the questions here. So I will lump some
of the questions together if they follow
along the same line. So one of our viewers
writes, looking at the long history
of Russian leaders why would we assume that
a Russia under Navalny would be better, say,
than Putin's Russia? And then a parallel
question in my mind is, would it even be
credible to expect that an open, free
and fair election, if there were such
a thing in Russia, that Navalny would win it? BEN NOBLE: In the
book we certainly don't assume that Russia
would be better under Navalny. What we focus on
is what Navalny has said about what Russia
would look like if he were given the opportunity to rule. And it's a really good
question because I think it raises a
broader point, which is when thinking about the
level of support Navalny has in the country, why, if
he is embracing such a topic that can unite people
of very different ideological backgrounds
as fighting corruption, why are his approval
ratings not higher? One of the responses is
the media environment. He's framed as this
unpatriotic, treasonous person who's doing the
bidding of the state department, Western powers. But another is that people
have heard this story before in relatively recent
memory in Russia, of somebody saying I'm going to
introduce reforms and the world's going
to be much better, the country is going to have
this brilliant golden future. And that was Boris Yeltsin at
the beginning of the 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, he promised reforms. But for most Russians who
lived through the 1990s, that was a desperate decade
for the vast majority of economic misery, of chaos. And so, I think even
for those people who are sympathetic to
what Navalny thinks and his policy
positions, they might be reluctant to support
him because they fear the instability
that might ensue. And they might even
have their own doubts as to what type of politician
he would be if he won. But I'll let Morvan respond
to the question about whether he'd win if there
were credible free and fair elections. MORVAN LALLOUET: I think
that at the national level, probably not. But Russia is a very diverse
country with big cities, with different
political cultures, with an educated middle class. And I think that,
in my mind, it's completely possible that not
necessarily not only himself, but people close to him,
people representing his view, if allowed to run freely
could win in big cities. They could win some
votes in the parliament, even at the regional
level, or, that doesn't seem like science fiction to
me, at the national level. And what we see-- and if Navalny or
people around him were able to snap a few
victories in big cities, seats in regional
parliament, seats in the national
parliament, then you have a political picture
that changes completely. And I think that's-- what we have seen
is that the people in power actually
in Russia are not willing to let even that happen. And what I would add also is I
think that we shouldn't maybe set the bar too high for
the Russian opposition. We are now in a situation where
there is no liberal democrative force in the Russian
parliament or even-- you can find some in
regional parliaments. But if that influence were
to grow, if only a bit, I think that could achieve
some political changes. And what we saw, for
example, and that was one of the effects
of Smart Voting, is that when Navalny supported
mostly Communist candidates in the parliament for
the city of Moscow, the municipal council
of Moscow, you could see that these people
became vocal opponents of what was going on in Moscow. And that this may be,
in the medium range, can possibly change things. CAROL SAIVETZ: If
I can just jump in. I got a text from
a friend of mine in Moscow saying that she
was shocked at herself. That was the first
time she had ever voted for a Communist candidate. But of course, that's whom
the Smart Voting had targeted as her as her candidate. So that's exactly what went on. So we have two-- go ahead. BEN NOBLE: Sorry
Carol, I just wanted to say that we should also
make clear that there were lots of members of the opposition-- opposition minded
voters in Russia who just didn't get on
board with the project. They couldn't bring themselves
to follow the instructions to vote for
candidates who weren't aligned with them in terms
of policy, preferences, and ideology. So we should be very
careful in making it clear that team Navalny wasn't
able to convince everybody. But it seems, though, they
were able to convince some. And I also have personal
stories of people saying am I really going to
be voting for a Communist? Is this really what
I should be doing? And so Smart Voting is
a non-obvious strategy. It required a bit
of explanation, but that's certainly
something that Navalny was really good at, and
educating people in politics, in clear language, and
making it clear, look, this is where we are. The system is called
electoral authoritarianism. There aren't any
ideal solutions. We have to deal with
this at the moment and tactical voting
is the best option. CAROL SAIVETZ: Right. So we have two
other questions that are related to each
other-- is why did Navalny go back to Russia? Surely he knew what awaited him. And then the second part of
that question from somebody else was, and why weren't
there huge protests? Given that there had been
larger protests earlier on, why weren't there huge
protests once indeed he was arrested
and sent to prison? MORVAN LALLOUET: So, that's
a very good question. And well, I'll start
again with a disclaimer. We don't have access
to what happened, either in Navalny's head
or in his inner circle, and what was the
decision making process that led to that decision. I think that what can be said
is that Navalny has always said that he was a
Russian politician and that he was
not going anywhere. And that he found
himself in Germany because this is
where he had to be treated when he was poisoned,
but that this was not his choice. So-- and he has also
made an argument that I think it's quite
powerful-- is that in his view, in most people's minds in Russia
if you leave the country it means you gave up and
that's your choosing the comforts of the
West over the hardships of what people are actually
going through in their country. And I think that-- and I think that this was--
the answer was already in the question, is that
what better way is there to show that Putin is
actually afraid of me, that Russia is actually
a full-blown dictatorship than coming back to Russia
and forcing that regime to take that decision. Because if you put
that man in jail, if you ban his whole
movement, in a way it's admission of guilt,
admission the fear, and admission that the country
is a full-blown dictatorship, and not a hybrid regime
or some sort of democracy with Russian specifics. And last point I would make
is that many people ask, oh, did he miscalculate? I think that from
what we understand, most people,
including ourselves, expected him to end up in jail. The people in power had
made that quite clear. What none of us,
I think, expected was the extent of the repression
against this movement. And it's possible that Navalny
believed that, well, maybe I'll go to jail for a few
years, but my movement will be able to tread on. And we saw what
happened-- it wasn't. And the same thing
with protests-- why weren't they bigger? And I think that the answer
is that the repression against demonstrations
in Russia has never been that massive since the
fall of the Soviet Union. You had more than
10,000 people who were arrested after a few
days of demonstrations. And when you saw
pictures of Moscow and the heavy police
presence that looked like as if the city
was under siege, I think that it's quite
natural that people would fear turning out to the street. And this is not talking
about the criminal cases that were brought after arrest
against dozens of activists who participate in these protests. CAROL SAIVETZ: Right. BEN NOBLE: And I'll add to that. I agree entirely about
the point regarding people not being necessarily
enthusiastic about the prospects
of being beaten up by the police, or riot police,
or members of the National Guard. Another thing that
we should mention, and I don't think we
have given this detail, is Navalny's approval ratings. I've mentioned-- I've
sort of hinted at them, but we can put some
numbers on that. When he was poisoned the
Levada polling agency put the percentage of Russians
who approved of his activities at 20%. And with these figures,
we should always bear in mind the media
environment in which Navalny is presented, but it was 20%. When he returned to Russia, it
was 19%, so roughly the same. And so in the book
we're not making it-- we're not making
the argument that we think that Navalny has the
majority support of Russians, definitely not. But then we can update the
picture regarding the approval ratings for Navalny. When the Levada Center
last asked Russians whether they approve
of his activities in June, with the
results reported in July, it was down to 14%. And then the question
becomes, well, what explains that drop off? Is it because now that
he's behind bars people have lost hope. They don't see the
future in Navalny and they have
decided that they're going to move their
support elsewhere? Or might it be that people
are afraid-- there's another manifestation
of people being afraid. That they don't want
to be associated, even with an anonymous response
to the Levada polling agency, with an individual
and his organizations that have been labeled
extremist because they're worried about the
law enforcement ramifications for them. So it's a very good
question about comparing numbers and protests and
what that tells us more broadly about support levels. But we shouldn't forget
the extraordinary coercion and repression. And we should also make
clear that we're not trying to make the case
for Navalny in the book, if that's one way of putting it. We're not making it seem
as though he should be the one in power and not Putin. We tried to remain objective. We're Western
academics who aren't involved in Russian politics. So we have the luxury
to be able to speak about these things, to make
statements that point to areas of sort of shades of gray,
without those statements, our statements, being
politicized necessarily, which might happen for
individuals who are involved in the process, who are involved
on the ground in Russia. CAROL SAIVETZ: One
of our questioners asked whether or not, as he
put it, whether Putin had been sort of permanently shut up. How would each of
you gauge the future of Navalny and his
movement I think is the import of the question. Whichever one of you
wants to go first. BEN NOBLE: Well, I
mean, so if we assume-- if we agree with the
evidence put together by Bellingcat and
partners that it was the Kremlin behind
the assassination attempt on Navalny, they tried
to shut him up permanently, it just didn't work. And we discuss in the book
maybe why that was the case. One of it could be as
mundane as the paramedics who dealt with him when he got off
the plane after the emergency landing in Omsk gave him
atropine, because they thought maybe he'd overdosed
or they thought something else was going on. And with that
injection of atropine that could have saved his life. Another reason
could be because he was evacuated to the
Berlin Charity Hospital and treated there. But given that the
assassination attempt didn't work, what do the
authorities do with Navalny? And at the moment it
seems as though they're in a bit of an equilibrium
that suits them. He's behind bars, he's not dead. And that means that the
international community-- yes, they've made objections,
but at the moment things are quite stable. But he's really
away from YouTube. As Morvan has suggested,
YouTube has been his life. It's given the oxygen. Its
been the way in which it's been able to get his message out. Now, he can get messages
out to the outside world through his lawyers,
but far less. So he's been able to put some
information on social media after the elections,
including calling out big tech for what he
sees as then buckling to pressure from the Kremlin. He's been able-- he was able
to put out an op ed discussing his views on corruption that
was published in The Guardian in the UK and other newspapers. He was able to give that
interview to The New York Times to speak about his
conditions in prison. But his ability to speak to
his movement has been reduced. And so I think for
the Kremlin, they've shut him up as much
as they need to. And with these additional
criminal charges it's likely that he's going to
be behind bars for many years to come. And more broadly speaking,
his organizations have been destroyed,
quite spectacularly, with breathtaking speed. I mentioned that
this is happening when we were writing the book. As well as being worried
that the book was going to be out of date as
soon as it was released, we were also deeply
concerned that an organizational ecosystem
that we have been-- we were constructing the
narrative of its creation year upon year, all the
effort that went into it, and yet it was being
taken down so quickly. That was quite staggering. So I think to
answer the question, the authorities have shut him
up as much as they need to now. CAROL SAIVETZ: OK. Somebody else asked
about whether Navalny is perceived as being elitist. And I think this would
go to whether it's an urban or rural
phenomenon, how widespread it is throughout the country. Do you have any sense of
who his supporters were-- are? Are they just the
intelligentsia, as you said before? And I think that
that's a big question. And it may also help us gauge
how widespread a phenomenon he really is or his
movement really is. MORVAN LALLOUET: So Navalny
comes from a not so elitist, elite background. He was born in the suburbs,
the deep suburbs of Moscow. But he's clearly from
the middle class. His parents were-- his father
was a career officer in the Red Army. His mother was an accountant. And then they took over a
fairly successful business in the 1990s. And he has lived in Moscow-- excuse me-- since the
beginning of the 1990s. So of course, he's
perceived, I think, as somebody from the upper
middle class, whatever that means. There's a lot of caveats
around that word in Russia. But from somebody--
and I think he's quite conscious
of that-- who has a lifestyle, a living
standard that was clearly above most Russians. And he's a man who is
globally connected. He was a member of the
Yale World Fellow program. He speaks English. So clearly, he's not a
worker-- a factory worker from a small town in
Siberia, that's for sure. And it's-- he also comes from
the fairly liberal background, which has in Russia that
association of any elitism centered around Moscow,
centered around St. Petersburg. And this is
something that he has tried to overcome by
having a more, let's say, laid back style, using
a more relaxed language. He's clearly not intelligentsia
figure in that respect, even though he is, of course,
well-read, well-educated. And I think that if we
look at his support, it's clear that his core
constituency will be people who live in big cities
and who are educated, by virtue of what
his program is, which leans fairly right wing,
even though in recent years, I think, again conscious
of this limitation, he has tried to put
forward a more left wing, more social platform in order
to appeal to less elite Russians let's say. But I think that, of
course, this is what he is and the people he directly
speaks to first and foremost. CAROL SAIVETZ: Ben, do
you want to add anything? BEN NOBLE: I was just going
to add that one of the reasons why we wrote the book is to
try and present a picture that was intelligible to a Western
audience who doesn't follow Russia all the time, but to
use that opportunity to show Navalny from the bottom up. And so when we, in
chapter 4, look at Navalny as protest leader and we
draw on Jan's survey data, you get firsthand accounts
of how his supporters and activists view him,
and including supporters and activists outside of
Moscow and St. Petersburg. And you really
get a sense of how Navalny was successful
in moving outside of the usual strongholds of
the opposition in Russia. And maybe that's one of the
reasons why the Kremlin saw him so much as a challenge. Because he was breaking
down those barriers, the concentration of the
opposition within the two capitols. And so it might be, if
we return to the idea of whether the Kremlin is
afraid, whether Putin's afraid, they might not have been afraid
of this current strength, but they saw the
direction of travel. They saw what he could become. And so decided to nip it
in the bud when they could. CAROL SAIVETZ: That's great. We have about one
minute left, so I'm hesitant to ask
another question. So let me do this. Does either of you want to
make any closing remarks, sort of being forward
looking in terms of where you see Navalny-- probably still in
prison, but a year from now where you
see the phenomenon. Is it just going to
fade away at this point? Is Putin-- what do you think it
says about the regime and maybe the 2024 presidential elections? That's a small question, but-- BEN NOBLE: Well, so
Morvan has already said that it's difficult
not to be bleak, and yeah, I'd echo
that sentiment. But I think repression
is going to increase. But we need to hear from
what team Navalny say. So people like Leonid Volkov,
who are outside the country, they're yet to present
their vision going forward, but we can expect that
that is going to happen. Because without that
direction, it's not clear what the movement will
do without that sense of leadership from the top. But let me give
Morvan the last word. MORVAN LALLOUET: I
think that, of course, I'll concur and say that the
future looks pretty bleak. But at the same time, I
think that even though we can expect more repression and
a more authoritarian regime, I think there remains-- and this is something
that Navalny said in this last interview
to The New York Times, that there remains
a deep problem in the Russian political
system, is that you have a middle income country with
a fairly strong educated middle class and that
these people do not have political representation
in Russia today. And this is something
that in the long run can make maybe a bit optimistic
for the future of Russia and pessimistic for that
political system that allows-- that created this situation
in the first place. CAROL SAIVETZ: That's great. So let me take this
opportunity to thank you both. Again, if you look at the
links that are in the chat, the book is available
for purchase. I also wanted to remind you
that our next Focus on Russia seminar will be on November 9th
at, I think, 11:30 to 12:30. And it's more foreign
policy oriented. And it's entitled "The Future
of US-Russian Relations: More of the Same or
Something Different?" And our speakers will be Barry
Posen, who is professor at MIT, and Dmitri Trenin, who
is a major commentator on Russian foreign policy-- thank you for putting
up the slide-- and the Director of the
Moscow Carnegie Center. So with that, let me thank
you all for attending and let me again
thank our speakers. And please tell Jan
that we missed him and we're sorry he
couldn't join us today, but you guys did a great job. And I think it's
a topic that we'll need to continue to watch as
we go-- as Russia goes forward and as we go forward. So thank you very much. BEN NOBLE: Thank you, Carol. MORVAN LALLOUET: Thanks a lot. This was a very
nice conversation. CAROL SAIVETZ: Thanks, guys.
