15
Politically and personally, 2014 was a difficult year. Having seen his popularity falling over the previous three years, Putin seized Crimea and was now bathing in the warm glow of the people’s love. All those who didn’t share this joy were considered traitors.
On a personal level, matters were even worse. My younger brother, Oleg, a father of two children, and I were in court. The charge against us was even more ridiculous than the one brought against me in the first trial, but by now the legal system had been honed by Putin, and the members of it obeyed his every order. The prosecutors accused Oleg and me of stealing 26 million rubles from the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher, allegedly by increasing the cost of logistics services. The similarity with the previous case against me involving the Kirovles firm was obvious. Once again, normal business practice was portrayed as fraud. But whereas last time the police had come up with a supposedly genuine victim, Vyacheslav Opalev, the director of Kirovles, who gleefully agreed to challenge me in court, in this case there was no victim. As I wrote earlier, it’s very difficult to explain to people who live in a country governed by the rule of law how such a thing is possible, but in Putin’s Russia no one even bats an eye. The representative of Yves Rocher who had been called to the court (by the prosecution!) declared that he had no complaints against us, but this made no impression on the judge. The order had been given to find us guilty, so Putin’s machine did its utmost.
In February 2014, I was put under house arrest as a pretrial measure; it lasted almost a year. House arrest is insidious. You are not actually sitting in prison, so no one sympathizes with you, but in reality you can do virtually nothing. Under its terms I was forbidden to leave our flat, and no one was allowed to visit me apart from family members. Nor was I allowed to use the phone or the internet. I had an electronic tag fixed to my leg, which told the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) where I was.
I decided not to complain and to use the time to my advantage. I would spend more time with my children and exercise! I even bought myself an exercise bike. This was my second mistake. Within a week it had turned into a permanent clothes hanger.
My first mistake had been to expect some sort of idyllic family life. Almost immediately, constantly sitting at home turned me into a caged beast. And almost immediately I sent my children and my wife around the bend. Everyone was irritated, me included. After nine months I amused myself by consulting the map of Moscow and thinking about where I would go when all of this was over. Seeing me doing this, Yulia would ask ironically, “Ah, so you’re going for another walk?” It seemed to me that a trip with the children to the Lianozovo district on the northern edge of Moscow would be wonderful. In general, though, the limit of my dreams was the island at Kolomenskoye, not far from our home, where we used to go for walks as a family. It is situated on the banks of the Moskva River. While I was under house arrest, I happened to notice on the map that there is an island not far from the park. I began to imagine how fantastic it would be to explore it, and became jealous of everyone else, because they could go and do this any time they wanted. Later, when the court case and the house arrest were over, I set off for the island with my son, Zakhar, to fulfill my dream! The island turned out to be just an island, with nothing special about it…
The final court hearing took place on December 19. Oleg and I were allowed final statements. The judge announced that sentencing would take place on January 15. We went our separate ways (I was taken from my home to the court and back in an official FSIN car, in convoy). Almost immediately a group was formed on Facebook to hold a demonstration on January 15. It had been agreed beforehand that they would come out into the streets to protest the sentence; there was absolutely no question but that we would be found guilty. The number of those who signed up for the demonstration grew so quickly that it seemed to have the reverse effect: Putin could not allow a demonstration to take place like the one that had followed the Kirovles sentencing. So, out of the blue Oleg and I were told that the sentencing hearing was being brought forward to December 30, right before New Year’s, the main Russian holiday, a time when everyone is either up to their eyes in preparations for the celebration or already on vacation (the first week of January is a national holiday period).
I remember how the judge pronounced sentence: Alexei Navalny, three and a half years, suspended sentence; Oleg Navalny, three and a half years…I was waiting for her to add “suspended sentence.” Surely Oleg could not be given a harsher sentence than I had received. He was. As we watched, the court usher handcuffed him, and led him into the cage, which had been standing empty behind us throughout the whole case. Oleg’s wife, Vika, was in the courtroom. One of their children was three years old, their second not even one year old. The ushers led Oleg out of the courtroom, cleared the room of journalists, and Yulia and Vika started to transfer items from my prison bag into my brother’s prison bag. Your prison bag is actually a large duffel that you prepare beforehand, which contains all the essentials for the first few days and weeks in prison. I am (actually, to be honest, my wife is) an expert at putting together what is needed in these bags, because I’ve had them with me as I’ve traveled around Moscow’s detention centers, not to mention the jail in Kirov. Of course, Oleg also had one, and he had asked my advice on what he should put in it. But now that it proved necessary, it became clear that there was a lot missing from it.
Despite my being given a suspended sentence, the judge had ordered that I remain under house arrest. I had no intention of obeying the order. After Oleg’s imprisonment I couldn’t care less.
The FSIN officials had escorted me back home from the court, but that evening, when the demonstrators came out on Tverskaya Street, just as they had eighteen months previously, I violated my house arrest and joined them. I walked out of the apartment with the electronic tag on my leg and traveled into the center of Moscow. I couldn’t just sit it out at home while my brother had been sent to prison.
A lot of people had turned out, but not enough, because of the change of date of the sentencing hearing, it being the eve of the holiday, and the freezing temperature. I was quickly detained. Usually if you violate house arrest, you’re thrown into a cell, but the police simply escorted me home and posted guards outside our apartment. They sat on stools outside my door and remained there for several days. Putin understood that this would be much more painful for me. I was supposed to enjoy a limited “freedom” while my brother was being tormented in prison.
On January 5, I cut off the electronic tag with scissors and put a photograph of it on Twitter, adding that I was not going to obey the restrictions of house arrest. For the next couple of weeks my life resembled a comedy. Every time I left home the FSIN officers who were stationed on guard at the entrance ran after me, filming me and calling out, “You must return home immediately!” They didn’t dare to arrest me, though, and after a while they stopped running after me, too.
—
The fact that Oleg was in jail was a huge blow to my family. I had often said that no one should do what I was doing unless they had the support of those dear to them, and my family had always supported me: my parents, my wife, and my children. Oleg, too. They were all telling me that none of this was my fault, but I couldn’t not blame myself. I was the cause of Oleg’s wife’s tears. It was because of me that he wouldn’t see his children for three and a half years. He was in prison because he was my brother. He’d been taken hostage. I was prepared to be arrested; I understood clearly that I was laying myself open to that, and I’d already had the experience of being locked up for a few days. But Oleg wasn’t ready for that. It may sound pretentious, but it’s true that I thought about him every second of every day that he spent in prison.
Oleg had a tough time there. He spent two and a half years in solitary confinement, even though according to the law no one could be held there for more than six months. His cell was cold, and his coat was taken away from him so that he’d be even colder. He was frequently sent to the punishment cell. The prison administration got other prisoners to put extra pressure on him. If a prisoner’s privileges were taken away, for example, they would say, “You’re suffering because of Navalny, it’s all his fault.” The administration made Oleg’s conditions ever worse: fewer visits, fewer parcels. And they did it all because of what I was up to. Every time I pushed the button to publish another investigation, I realized that I was striking Oleg with my own hand.
Oleg didn’t complain once. Every time that his life in prison became worse, he wrote to me in his letters, “Don’t stop! If you were to stop, it would mean that I’m in here for nothing.” He knew that I was concerned for him, yet he constantly told me not to worry.
He served the whole three-and-a-half-year term. The hopes we had for the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights came to nothing. The court did rule on the case, saying that no crime had been committed. This meant that the Supreme Court in Russia should have annulled the sentence and immediately freed Oleg, but he was made to complete his sentence in solitary confinement.
The day he was released, we had a great celebration. But being in prison leaves its mark on your life even after you’re free. No one was prepared to give Oleg a job. No bank—foreign banks included—would allow him to open a bank account. In Russia he was considered someone who had served time in prison (and, what’s more, with a surname like his); in Europe he was a “politically exposed person,” someone who was linked with political activity. Both situations impose limitations. It was impossible for him to engage in any business.
But despite all of these hardships, Oleg has continued to support me, and we’re just as close as ever.
Alexei’s Final Words at the Yves Rocher Trial
How many times in their life is someone who has committed no crime and who has not broken the law given the chance to deliver the final word? Never. Zero times. Well, if they’re unlucky, maybe once. But over the course of the last year and a half, two years if you count the appeals process, this is probably my sixth or seventh, possibly my tenth, “final word.” I’ve heard the phrase “Defendant Navalny, you have the chance to say a final word” on many occasions. I have the impression that with your final word—for me, for anyone, for everyone—come your final days. You’re always being asked to deliver your final word. I say this, but at the same time I see that these final days don’t come to pass.
And there’s one thing in particular that convinces me of this. If I were to take a photograph of the three of you [the judge and the two prosecutors], or better still all of you together with representatives of the so-called victims, those people with whom I’ve been dealing in recent times, it would show people with downcast eyes, staring at the table. Do you realize that you are all constantly looking down at the table? You have nothing to say. [Judge] Yelena Sergeyevna [Korobchenko], what’s your favorite phrase that you use constantly to address me? You know exactly what it is. Investigators, prosecutors, FSIN officials, civil judges, criminal judges, you all address me with one and the same phrase: “Alexei Anatolievich, well, you understand…” I understand everything; all except for one thing: Why do you always stare at the table?
I am suffering under no illusions. I understand perfectly that none of you will suddenly leap up and overturn that table, nor will you say, “I’ve had enough of all this!” Neither will the representatives of Yves Rocher stand up and say, “Navalny has convinced us with his eloquent words!” People are made differently. The human consciousness compensates for the feeling of guilt; if it didn’t, people would constantly be throwing themselves onto dry land like dolphins. It’s impossible for you to go home at the end of the day and say to your children or your husband, “You know, today I took part in the sentencing of someone who was clearly innocent. Now I feel really bad about it and will always feel bad.” We don’t do that, because we’re made differently. Either they say, “Alexei Anatolievich, you understand how it is,” or they say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Or they’ll say, “You shouldn’t have messed with Putin,” as a representative of the Investigative Committee said recently. “If he hadn’t attracted attention to himself, if he hadn’t waved his arms around, if he hadn’t got in people’s way, more than likely everything would have just gone away.”
Nevertheless, at this point in the proceedings it’s very important for me to address those who’ll watch or read my final words. It is, of course, quite useless. Still, you people who stare at the table, this is effectively a battle taking place between those crooks who’ve seized power and those who want to change something. We are fighting for the hearts and minds of those who simply stare at the table and shrug their shoulders. People who, when all they need to do is not do something vile, they go ahead and do it anyway.
There’s a well-known quotation—nowadays everyone loves to quote someone—from the well-known book To Slay the Dragon. “Everyone’s been taught to do bad things, but you, you swine, how did you end up being top of the class at it?” This isn’t addressed specifically to this court. There are huge numbers of people who are forced to do a vile thing, but then there are those (and this is the most common scenario) who do a vile thing without anyone coercing them or even asking them to. They simply stare down at the table and try to ignore everything that’s going on around them. And our struggle for the hearts and minds of the people who stare at the table is to explain to them once again that they shouldn’t just stare but confess to themselves that, sadly, the whole system of power in our beautiful country, and everything that’s happening, is based on endless lies.
I stand before you and am prepared to stand here for as long as it takes to show you all that I don’t want to put up with this lying—and I won’t put up with it. The whole thing is literally lies from start to finish, do you understand? They tell us that the interests of Russians in Turkmenistan do not exist, but for the interests of Russians in Ukraine it is necessary to start a war. They tell me that no one oppresses Russians in Chechnya. They tell me that no one steals in Gazprom. I’ll bring you specific documents that prove that these officials have unregistered property and companies. They say, “There’s nothing of the sort.” I tell them that we’re ready to take part in elections and we’ll beat you. We’ve registered our party and we’re working hard. They say to me, “That’s nonsense. We’ll win the elections and you won’t even be taking part in them, not because we won’t allow you to, but because you didn’t fill in the forms properly.”
Everything is built on lies, on constant lying, do you understand? And the more concrete proof of something that we present to you, the bigger the lies that we come up against. These lies have become the whole modus operandi of the state; they’re now its very essence. We watch our leaders give speeches, and we hear lies from start to finish, be it on important matters or trivial ones. Yesterday Putin said, “We don’t own any palaces.” Yet we’re taking photos of three palaces every month! We publish them and prove it to the world. “We don’t own any palaces.” And we don’t have any oligarchs, either, who are constantly feeding off the state. Just take a look at the documents that show how the head of Russian Railways has registered half of the state corporations in Cypriot and Panamanian offshore zones.
Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion, but life’s too short to simply stare down at the table. I blinked and I’m almost forty years old. I’ll blink again and I’ll already have grandchildren. And then we all will blink again and we’ll be on our deathbeds, with our relatives all around us, and all they’ll be thinking about is, It’s about time they died and freed up this apartment. And at some point we’ll realize that nothing we did had any meaning at all, so why did we just stare at the table and say nothing? The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters.
It’s precisely because of all this that I’m in this rather distressing position. This cunning but distressing plan that the Kremlin has chosen in its battle with me, when they try not only to lock me up but to drag other innocent people into it. Pyotr Ofitserov with his five kids. I have to look his wife in the eye. I’m convinced that those whom they threw in jail after the protests on Bolotnaya Square[*1] hadn’t done anything wrong. They arrested them simply to try to scare me and others like me who are the leaders of the opposition. Now they’re going after my brother. He, too, has a wife and two children. Now they’re going after my parents. All of them understand what’s going on, and they support me. I’m very grateful to my family, but it’s just…
I’ll admit something: you can pass it back to them that, yes, it does bother me that innocent people get thrown in the same boat as me. And maybe this is wrong, but I’ll say it: they won’t stop me even by taking hostages. Because nothing in life can have any meaning if you tolerate these endless lies, if you just agree to everything, especially when there is no reason to. Just to agree for the sake of saying, “We agree.”
I shall never agree with the system that’s been constructed in our country, because this system is designed to rob everyone who’s in this courtroom right now. Everything’s been set up in such a way that what we have now is a junta. There are twenty people who’ve become billionaires who control everything, from state procurement to the sale of oil. Then there’s a further thousand who are feeding at this junta’s trough. No more than a thousand people, in fact: state deputies and crooks. There’s a small percentage of people who don’t agree with this system. And then there are the millions who are simply staring at the table. I’ll never stop my fight with this junta. I’m going to continue fighting this junta, by campaigning and doing whatever it takes to shake up these people who are staring at the table. You included. I’m never going to stop.
I have no regrets about calling on people to take part in an unauthorized demonstration. I mean the demonstration in front of the Lubyanka,[*2] which was the start of all this. Yes, I acknowledge that it didn’t succeed. But I don’t regret for one second that I did it. I don’t regret for one second that I set out to do battle with corruption. A few years ago my lawyer Vadim Kobzev told me something that I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Alexei, they’re bound to put you in jail. You stir things up so much that they won’t stand for it. Sooner or later they’re going to put you in jail.”
Once again, though, our human consciousness comes to terms with this. You can’t carry on with the idea in the back of your mind that they’re going to put me in jail. I simply put it out of my mind, yet at the same time I’m aware of everything that I do. And I can tell you that I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done. I shall keep calling on people to take part in collective action, including carrying out the right to freedom of association.
People have a legal right to rise up against this illegal, corrupt power, against this junta that has grabbed and stolen everything it could, that has siphoned trillions of dollars out of the country in the form of oil and gas. And what benefit have we gained from all this?
I’m going to repeat in this court the final words that I said at the end of the Kirovles case. Nothing’s changed since that time. By staring at the table, we’ve allowed them to rob us blind. We’ve allowed them to invest this stolen money in Europe somewhere. We’ve allowed them to turn us into cattle. What have we gained? What have they paid you while you’ve been staring at the table? Nothing! Do we have health care? No, no health care. Do we have education? No, no education. Have they provided us with good roads? No, they haven’t given us good roads. Let’s ask the secretary how much they earn. Eight thousand rubles a month. Maybe 15,000 with bonuses. I’d be very surprised if court ushers receive more than 35,000 or 40,000 rubles a month.
The paradox is that dozens of crooks every day rob us and you blind—and we allow this to happen! Well, I’m not going to stand for it. I say again that I’m going to remain on my feet however long I have to, be it one meter from this cage, be it one meter inside this cage. I’m going to stand tall. There are more important things in this life.
I want to say it again: the trick worked, with my family, with those dear to me. Nevertheless, don’t forget that they support me in everything. But none of them intended to become political activists. So there’s absolutely no need to send my brother to prison for eight years, or, indeed, to send him to prison at all. He didn’t want to be involved in politics. You’ve already caused our family enough pain and suffering because of this. There’s absolutely no need to take it further. As I’ve already told you, taking hostages won’t stop me. But at the same time, I fail to see why the authorities think they have to kill these hostages now.
Maybe this is going to sound naive, and I know it’s become the norm to laugh ironically and sneer at these words, but I call on absolutely everyone not to live by lies. There is no other way. There can be no other solution in our country today.
I want to thank everyone for their support. I call on everyone not to live by lies. I want to say loud and clear that they may put me in isolation, they may imprison me, but someone else will rise up and take my place. I haven’t done anything unique or difficult. Anyone could do what I’ve done. I have no doubt that there will be people in the Anti-Corruption Foundation and others too who will continue in the exact same way as me, whatever the courts decide—the courts whose only purpose is to give the appearance of legality to this process. Thank you.