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Tim Sebastian: As President Putin flexes his muscles in the Kremlin, there are concerns in Russia that he may overuse his considerable power. My guest today is the former presidential candidate who heads the Yabloko political party, the democratic party of rights and liberties. Why does he believe that they are so much under threat?
Grigory Yavlinsky, a very warm welcome to the programme. You have warned that Russia is heading towards a corporate police state. What’s the evidence for that?
Grigory Yavlinsky: The Kremlin rejects all kind of criticism.
Tim Sebastian: Most governments do that, don’t they?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, but this government does it in a very brutal way, as we can see, for example, with some independent television companies, with some newspapers…
Tim Sebastian: Have they closed them? Have programmes been taken of the air?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, they were used to make everybody follow one discipline line. They were threatened seriously, journalists were taken to prosecutors, some of them are imprisoned, some of them are under investigation abroad. So it is pressure, this is a much more sophisticated policy than simply closing them.
Tim Sebastian: You could argue that it is a lot of pressure against those who owned some of the huge media interests in Russia, who have held Russia to themselves, who paid no taxes and who obeyed no laws. Here comes the President who says “I am in charge, I am going to flex my muscles”… So nothing is wrong with that, is there?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Right, but it is a symbol in Russia of what one may call a free press and a free voice, an independent voice – it is a symbol of all that. I would say that the fact that they were not paying taxes is natural not only for this kind of television, independent television, but also for state television and for 80% of all companies in Russia, for everybody. Why did President Putin choose to attack only independent television, the only channel to criticise the Kremlin? That is the main question.
Tim Sebastian: But you could argue that the media has been under assault in Russia for many years, it has been under the assault of vested interests, mafia bosses who have intimidated and killed journalists in the past and warned them what they can write about and what they can’t write – why did you not speak out about all that?
Grigory Yavlinsky: That’s right, but the problem we had before was the pressure from all directions ton say these things. But we had different sources. I am not saying that…
Tim Sebastian: What do you mean?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I mean that we had several sources of information independent from each other, and if you are listening to this information you could gain a sense about what was going on. If you are looking here and there, you could gain a picture of the whole.
Tim Sebastian: But my point is that the media barons have to obey the laws, have to obey the rules. In the recent past they did not hear them, did they?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Sure, but nobody did. And Putin at that time was not on the moon, he was in the same country and he was the boss of the KGB by the way. But independent television, the television of NTV, was the only one television to describe clearly what was going on in the Northern Caucasus: it described the war and questioned the explosions that happened in Moscow at the beginning of 2000: it was not supportive of the government of Yeltsin and Putin during the elections of 1999 and 2000.
Tim Sebastian: But is not it a little too early to claim that Putin is launching a full-scale assault?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I prefer to speak out slightly earlier than slightly too late. We have very tough and very long experience about what a closed mouth means. We have always had freedom of speech, but we never had freedom after the speech.
Tim Sebastian: You are also saying that he allegedly tried to take control over political parties and interfere in the internal life of parties in Russia. Has he tried to interfere with your party?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, he has.
Tim Sebastian: In what way?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Many people in my party had problems with the authorities and …
Tim Sebastian: What kind of problems were they?
Grigory Yavlinsky: …Students in St. Petersburg were expelled from universities after my presidential campaign, they were my supporters…
Tim Sebastian: On what grounds?
Grigory Yavlinsky: … On the grounds that they were not prepared to take exams, which was not true, and, in accordance with the law, they gave up time to support me at the presidential elections. And then they were inspired to spy against the Yabloko party: when they rejected this proposal they were expelled from university.
Tim Sebastian: You said the students were called in and told that they had to spy on Yabloko. Called in by who?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Called in by the representatives of the KGB or the FSB…
Tim Sebastian: Literally KGB officials…
Grigory Yavlinsky: Literally KGB officials came to them and said “You have to spy on the party”. They said “no”, and then they had big, big problems.
Tim Sebastian: Why did not you shout about that? Did you talk about that at the time?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, it was a very well known story, it was on television all last summer. It is a very well known story, nothing new there.
Tim Sebastian: How important, do you think such things are in a general context? Because that could be just a regional boss exceeding his authority? Could that not be the?
Grigory Yavlinsky: This is very important, because the corporate state is a very special case: this is a kind of a system which is not destroying the democratic institutions, but is trying to adjust the democratic institutions.
Tim Sebastian: But again every government does that, doesn’t it? Every government tries to use the system as it is. You find it in Britain, you find it in America, in every country.
Grigory Yavlinsky: I would not say that I am so happy about what the other governments are doing. I am creating my own country. I am doing this not to please you or do you a favour. I am doing this because this what is vitally necessary for my children and grandchildren.
Tim Sebastian: So it involves a fight, democracy which you say you are trying to achieve, which is the principle you say your party stands for is not the stance of grace, it is a constant battle, is not it?
Grigory Yavlinsky: That is what I am talking about. And I have very major concerns that the current authorities in Russia are trying not to develop democracy, not to develop the human rights issue, but to create a corporate police state, where the bureaucrats will be the main persons in the country.
Tim Sebastian: Why a corporate police state?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Corporate state, as I told you, means that you have democratic institutions, but you use them to adjust them to the system and to make them under control.
Tim Sebastian: Could you give me an example of an adjustment?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Easily. We have a Journalists Union in Russia, which is very critical of the authorities: the Kremlin is simply establishing another Journalists’ Union - which is called the Media Union - to replace the Journalists’ Union…
Tim Sebastian: To replace the assignment…
Grigory Yavlinsky: … to replace it, to replace – sooner or later.
Tim Sebastian: You don’t know for fact, you are assuming this replacement?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, I know my country pretty well. And I know what these political louts are doing, And that is absolutely clear. It is absolutely clear what they are doing. I can cite many other examples.
Tim Sebastian: So you are warning on the best of your fears, not necessarily on what has happened or is going to happen?
Grigory Yavlinsky: It is based on the facts that I can see in the country. It is not a total system yet. But it will be too late to speak afterwards. So I am not saying that everything done by Putin is taking us to a corporate police state. By the way you asked me what a police state means… A police state is a state where the bureaucrat presses the citizens, and the citizens are completely in the hands of bureaucrats…
Tim Sebastian: It means a state, doesn’t it? The laws, that it does not observe the laws, the Constitution?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Absolutely right. It means that the state is using the laws only selectively, when they need this law against somebody, or when they need this law to make somebody richer than he is. So it is not a law for everybody, and not everybody is equal.
Tim Sebastian: That is not what Putin says. Putin talks about “the dictatorship of the law”, that the law is pre-eminent or will be pre-eminent in Russia.
Grigory Yavlinsky: That is absolutely right. When you say “dictatorship”, and we know pretty well what a dictatorship of the proletariat means. Now the “dictatorship of law” is not much better, because we are using the “dictatorship of law” like the “terror of law”, because the law is used selectively. Because if you disagree with the authorities, local authorities or the government, or the President, I will use the law against you. If not, if you are loyal, and we created a “loyal economy” and “loyal citizens”, if you are loyal, this law will not be [used against you].
Tim Sebastian: Plenty of people disagree, and openly, with the government, plenty of people disagree, and openly, with the President, nothing happens to them, you look at the variety of publications on sale on an ordinary street in Russia: a huge variety of opinions are being expressed, more than in living memory in Russia. What is wrong for you?
Grigory Yavlinsky: The problem is that you never have a chance to explain your views constantly to the big public audience. When I was speaking about the adjustment of democratic institutions I was saying exactly what you asked me about. You said that you can publish your views in a newspaper with a ten thousand copies, but you will never be able to explain the views of your party which is supported by ten or twelve of fifteen million people constantly and regularly on state television, explaining what is wrong with the authorities and what is wrong with the powers that be. There is no such a possibility.
Tim Sebastian: We talked about “dictatorship of the law” a moment ago, and you said that Putin has dictatorial tendencies. You’ve met him several times, haven’t you?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I met him many times and I…
Tim Sebastian: …and spoke to him at length?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, that’s right, and Putin has advantages incomparable to any other leader in Russia or in the Soviet Union – he speaks to everybody. And that is his positive sign, the question is what is going on in the structures which one can call, in brackets, the “law enforcement system”. This system was created under the Soviet Union and the main goal of that system was to protect the state from the citizens of the same state.
Tim Sebastian: Are you saying that he wants to bring that back?
Grigory Yavlinsky: When I see him making the music (Ed. about the restoration of the national anthem of the USSR) which makes these structures alive, and these structures are very active, and he is not interfering in that…
Tim Sebastian: You mean symbols, he is bringing back symbols…
Grigory Yavlinsky: He is bringing such a symbol which establishes music which is very well known to these structures.
Tim Sebastian: Literally music in some cases, the tune, that was the anthem for the Soviet Union.
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, this is the example. And this is a very serious example.
Tim Sebastian: You said, you have accused him in fact, of a very, very dirty fight for power, you said that he had fought and used the most repulsive campaign tactics in the history of Russia. That is quite an accusation, given the repulsive methods some of your leaders have used over the years, it is not an exaggeration.
Grigory Yavlinsky: It is not an exaggeration, because the war in Chechnya was one of the main arguments during the campaign of 1999. The war where people were killed, a war which is still going on – dozens of thousands of people were killed. And that was the campaign base which brought all the parties which were supporting the war to the parliament. And then the same military hysteria was one of the main factors during the presidential campaign as well.
Tim Sebastian: Are you trying to say that it just got a popular support, gained popular support?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I am saying to be very precise that he without doubt used that for the popular support. He used all that for victory in the elections. But that is one of the most bloody approaches during our history.
Tim Sebastian: Is this not sour grapes, because you lost the elections?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, it’s a fact of the war. It’s a fact, that’s happened. I am not saying that he created the war in order to win, that must be proved. I am not saying that he started all this operation in the Northern Caucasus to make the military hysteria and then to win, but what I am saying for sure, that he used it for his own political purposes.
Tim Sebastian: And he would say that it was an anti-terrorist operation, that Russia cannot withstand the kind of attacks that the Chechens were launching against Russia, and Russia had to do something and do something finally.
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, to do, and not “something”, but something which would help, not simply “something”, instead of an anti-terrorist operation it was simply a war. It is a war against everybody there, not against the terrorists: the terrorists are still there, no one terrorist is in prison, no one terrorist has been killed. The war has continued for a year and a half, even more, but everything is still in place, everything is still there. So I am concerned that the underlying tendencies of creating in Russia a kind of a corporate police state is very dangerous for my country, as it would divide the country inside and it would make a wall between Russia, Europe and the Western world, which would be a real drama for the Russian future.
Tim Sebastian: If you hate this war in Chechnya so much, why did you form a political alliance with Sergei Stepashin who was former boss of the KGB and as a general took an active part in the fighting in Chechnya? Why did you form an alliance with him?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Because Sergei Stepashin was involved during the operation in the Northern Caucasus when the terrorists were in this hospital: maybe be you remember it was an operation when the terrorists came to the hospital and took the entire hospital with everybody there–hundreds of sick people, including a maternity ward – and all of them were in the hands of the terrorists. And there was a suggestion from the Russian secret services to blow up everybody there…
Tim Sebastian: But he was a general…
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, and he was the man who stopped that…
Tim Sebastian: But he supported the war…
Grigory Yavlinsky: And then he resigned. He was the man who stopped all that and afterwards he resigned.
Tim Sebastian: So you got him on the rebound for that.
Grigory Yavlinsky: I gave him a position because of his resignation and because he prevented the explosion of the hospital.
Tim Sebastian: It was not just a political compromise that you felt you had to make?
Grigory Yavlinsky: In Russia there are always compromises: the issue is how far you go in compromises. We have no other people in the country, because in 1990-1991, unlike in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary and other Eastern European countries, where a democratic revolution took place, in Russia the “nomenklatura termidor” happened.
Tim Sebastian: What do you mean by that?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I mean that the same people who were in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, members of the Politburo like Yeltsin, and others who were the top officials of the Communist Party, once again came to power.
Tim Sebastian: But they are gone now.
Grigory Yavlinsky: No they are still there.
Tim Sebastian: The elite, the top – in Moscow, perhaps in the regions…
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, no, in Moscow – no, I am insisting on that. Look…
Tim Sebastian: …Putin is new, Putin came from nowhere…
Grigory Yavlinsky: Just one second. Ten years Yeltsin was in power, a member of the Politburo, he had eight prime ministers in ten years – all of them, without exception were members of the Communist Party or members of the Politburo, right? All of them were members of the communist Central Committee or representatives of the KGB. All of them.
Tim Sebastian: But you yourself in the period of 1991 wanted to keep the Soviet Union together, you worked on an economic plan to unite the republics?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, that’s right…
Tim Sebastian: So you felt that the Soviet Union was worth keeping?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No I was thinking of ways of making a common market. I was trying to do what you are doing in Europe. I was trying to establish a common market between the Soviet Union republics, because the larger the market the more effective the economy. That was what I was doing.
Tim Sebastian: But it was not just the market, was it? I mean that the Soviet Union was the whole entity…
Grigory Yavlinsky: I was making an economic plan for the market.
Tim Sebastian: Who did you have to make deals with to support that? Conservative forces inside the Communist Party?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, inside the Communist Party the conservative forces said “no” to my plan, definitely “no”, because they understood their interest in a different way, they wanted to divide the country into pieces and to have their own pieces of land and their own pieces of property. That was what they were doing.
Tim Sebastian: What about now? What should the West be doing? We have a new administration in the White House which is not so keen on dropping huge sums of money into Russia. What should the West be doing? How can the West influence developments in Russia?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I think that the task that the West faces in this sense is very difficult. You must have a transparent, clear and honest policy towards Russia. I am not sure that you are able to establish such a policy.
Tim Sebastian: You have a transparent, clear and honest policy, Russia has one till…
Grigory Yavlinsky: Russia has not, but you are asking me about the West.
Tim Sebastian: Are you saying that it is not transparent or clear?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, I am saying that, because your policy has always had two starting points: one of them is the human rights, and the other one is the…
Tim Sebastian: Now it is no longer used as a lever against Russia. President Clinton did not do that…
Grigory Yavlinsky: I am speaking about a different case. For example, in Europe you have always had two starting points, which are perpendicular in your minds: human rights, saying stop the war in Chechnya in, let’s say, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Next morning the Council of Ministers of Europe said to us “Don’t worry, it is not serious.” And you made such steps every time, you disorient everybody.
Tim Sebastian: Disorienting with the billions of dollars of the IMF, the World, Bank, countries like Germany and America have given to Russia?
Grigory Yavlinsky: You were giving that personally to Gorbachev and to Yeltsin. Personally, you were never able to…
Tim Sebastian: Yeltsin maybe, but the IMF loans did not start until April 1992 to Russia, did they? Since the billions have been given…
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, the billions were given directly to Yeltsin, even when Yeltsin was engaged a war in Chechnya. Is not it true?
Tim Sebastian: And you said the money should not be given?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I said on a number of occasions it was senseless. Now we have the whole policy implemented from that point of view, and it was wrong. Simply wrong.
Tim Sebastian: So, are you happy with the Bush policy that says money [to Russia] should be cut?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I don’t know what the Bush policy will be, it is not clear to me at the moment, simply it is an open question to me. What I can say now clearly is that if is necessary to create real help to Russia, the best help will be tough talk: telling the truth, being transparent, being open and being understandable. Base your policy on real human rights and freedom [policy] and do not try to establish personal relations “president to president” and “boss to boss”. Having these relations as in Yalta when the bosses were dividing the world (Ed. the summit meeting between Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War in Yalta, Crimea)
Tim Sebastian: So, you would be quite happy to see conditions attached to further financial aid to Russia?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, I am not asking for aid at all, I will be happy to see a clear and understandable policy not between the bosses in the Kremlin, because what I see at the moment is that the Western elite has a strong feeling that the Russian people do not understand democracy, market economy – anything. So the main task is to have a friend in the Kremlin who will have a strong hand to keep those Russians at bay and you’ll be friends with him. This is the wrong policy.
Tim Sebastian: Are you going to try again to be president?
Grigory Yavlinsky: We will see.
Tim Sebastian: What does that mean? What will this depend on?
Grigory Yavlinsky: This means that I want President Putin to finish his term first.
Tim Sebastian: Are you disappointed that you did not become president?
Grigory Yavlinsky: No, I understand my country, and I am fighting, and this is a long fight.
Tim Sebastian: Do you believe that you can win in the end?
Grigory Yavlinsky: I am changing Russia rather than fighting for the presidency.
Tim Sebastian: Changing Russia, you want to keep a lot of what Russia has had in the past, don’t you?
Grigory Yavlinsky: Yes, because I am proud of the culture and traditions of my country.
Tim Sebastian: Grigory Yavlinsky, it was a pleasure having you on the programme.
Grigory Yavlinsky: Thank you.
Tim Sebastian: Thank you very much indeed.
See also:
BBC World
Yabloko and the Grim Symbols of the Soviet Era
Yabloko under Suspicion?, June 16, 2000
FSB Orders Students to Spy on Yabloko
By Vladimir Kovalyev, The Moscow Times June 21, 2000
Interview of Grigory Yavlinsky on Sergei Dorenko’s programme, June 17, 2000
War in Chechnya (1996-2001)
Treaty on the Economic Union
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