DM: You mean, link the demand for the annulment of the Duma election results to the forthcoming presidential election?
MG: Let me explain: we can trust with our votes only those candidates who raise the question of annulling the Duma election results.
DM: ‘Raise the question’ or annul them?
MG: Annul them! Give a commitment to annul the results of the Duma elections. We cannot tolerate for five years a Duma elected in this manner.
DM: I have another question: who are these people who will come out again to the square to protest? In addition to the fact that these are free people who love their country and are protesting for Russia, who are they for you?
MG: A new generation. They are voters. They are already a powerful civic association of voters!
DM: With a lot of different views, not members of United Russia, but people with a constitutional human right to a fair election?
MG: I will say without any ifs and buts, those voters are patriots!
DM: The social networks – Facebook, for example – are voting for who should speak at the 24 December rally, and they are not choosing spokesmen for the current regime or the present opposition. The networks are preferring Leonid Parfenov, Boris Akunin and Yury Shevchuk. Citizens, not politicians. Nobody trusts politicians, and not just those in power. Why?
MG: Because many politicians are not prepared to listen to citizens. To take an example, Gennadiy Zyuganov is calling the protesters, people who are standing up for their constitutional rights, ‘that orange plague’. He is saying that oppositionists who are not part of the system have no right to speak out and should be ignored. He is comfortable in his parliamentary seat and to hell with all the rest of them. They are outside the system. That is why politicians are mistrusted.
As for the regime, look at Putin’s talk on television after Bolotnaya Square. The whole purpose of the show was to mislead people. It was embarrassing, and disgraceful. I feel ashamed now. I feel associated with Putin, in the sense that initially, when he first came to power, I actively supported him here, and abroad – everywhere… And now?
DM: The regime is giving the organizers of the rally, social activists, newspaper editors, to understand that ‘if blood is spilled, the opposition will be held responsible’. As if it is not because of the regime’s own machinations that people have rallied in the square!
MG: It is the duty of the state to ensure that people are safe. The people have begun to be personally involved in important matters of state. That is their right. So, protect them!
DM: The meeting will be held on Saturday, then the New Year holiday will begin, people will go away. Christmas trees, presents, hangovers… And then what? Do you think the rally, which is going to be on Sakharov Prospekt, should set up some kind of permanent organizing body?
MG: I would say that is absolutely essential. The people who were on the organizing committee that took the initiative in the first place could head it.
DM: Don’t you think they will squabble among themselves, Mikhail Sergeyevich?
MG: Well, they haven’t as of now. Perhaps this will be the beginning of democrats managing to cooperate.
DM: Up till now they have only been capable of splitting into factions.
MG: Yes. But now there is a situation which will enable other things to grow through. All these outmoded, purely ideological attachments will wither and the issue of elections will be central. Whichever way you look at it, this is a serious issue, in fact the top priority for Russia right now.
DM: The current government is claiming that free elections would see the Communists or Nazis come to power, and then we would realize how much better the present regime was. That’s their argument.
MG: In every country, in every society there are nationalists. I think the concerns of normal nationalists are feelings for which there should be a place in a different social climate.
DM: Do you actually know any normal nationalists? I don’t.
MG: A normal nationalist in Russia is a person whose heart bleeds for his people, but who understands that Russia is a country of many worlds, of different cultures, a complicated state, a society formed over centuries and which, incidentally, existed and developed as such.
DM: Well, for me the modern nationalists are the people who killed our journalist, Nastya Baburova, and the lawyer Stanislav Markelov, people who knife Tajiks and migrant workers. That’s who they are.
MG: I cannot agree that those are nationalists: they are criminals.
DM: Nevertheless, that is the regime’s scare story: if it does not stay in power and maintain what it calls stability, the Communists or nationalists will come to power.
MG: They are trying to impose the same false alternatives as in 1996, when people were told to vote for Yeltsin or the Communists would get in.
DM: And do you think it would be better if the Communists did get in?
MG: They got away with that scare then and want to use it again now. It is a false choice! If elections are fair, you do not need to be afraid of the results. If there are fair elections you get a change of governments.
DM: Well, back to the rally on 24 December. What needs to happen?
MG: The first thing on that day is to approve the slogan, ‘For new, free and fair elections!’ The condition for supporting any presidential candidate will be for him to agree to that slogan. The second thing is for a Voters of Russia organizing committee to be set up and a day agreed for a Congress of Voters of Russia. These will be people with differing political views but who have in common a conviction that elections must be fair, the press must be free, and the government must be accountable to society.
DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, still, do we or do we not have to be afraid of the unpredictability of the results of fair elections?
MG: We do not. And we should take part in new elections after annulment of the sham ones.
Society awakens
The rally on 24 December took place. There was truly a mass turn-out: on a cold, dank December day, tens of thousands of people gathered at Sakharov Prospekt. It was a sight such as Moscow had not seen for many years. It was determined, but peaceful, a protest demonstration to demand fair elections. It was clear that politics in Russia could not stay the same; the authorities would have to respond to the demands of the people. How would they react? That was the big question.
Their reaction was ambivalent. In his final address to the Federal Assembly, President Dmitry Medvedev proposed a number of changes to the political system, including a move to direct election of regional governors by local residents; a simplified procedure for registering political parties on application by 500 people representing at least 50 per cent of the regions of the Russian Federation; reduction of the number of voters’ signatures required to stand as a candidate in the presidential election to 300,000, or for candidates from parties not represented in parliament to 100,000. Although the detail of how these changes would be implemented was left unclear, they could be a step forward. Even more important was the fact that the outgoing president had shown a willingness to listen to people and, judging by the style and tone of his speech, he did not see those who were dissatisfied as enemies.