He saw Lenin

President Dmitry Medvedev gave the first

Russian publication, and not just some servile one, but Novaya Gazeta. The conversation about this interview started back in January, when Medvedev, admittedly, somewhat belatedly and awkwardly expressed condolences to the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov in connection with the death of journalist Anastasia Baburova. At the same meeting, the newspaper’s shareholder, the first and last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, invited Medvedev to give Novaya an interview, and he agreed.

It must be admitted that Muratov did not ask Medvedev the easiest questions. He started with one of the most pressing ones - the elections in Sochi. The president said that “yet” he does not know “who was filmed and how” in these elections (what is he reading on his Internet, one wonders), and was glad that a “full-fledged political battle” was taking place there. “The more such bright events, the better for the electoral system, for democracy in the country,” Medvedev said. And, they say, candidates are being removed everywhere.

The president said a lot of beautiful and glorious words about democracy, about civil society (on April 15, the day the interview was published, Medvedev is holding a Council for the Development of Civil Institutions and Human Rights), about the social contract (which, it turns out, is rooted in our Constitution) , about control over the bureaucracy (the president was very happy about officials making their income public), about the independence of the courts. Muratov asked Medvedev a question about the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and he stated that “for civil servants and for the president there is no predictability in any trial” “and there should not be .” Medvedev said that he was not going to join United Russia, that it was unlikely that anyone would establish control over the Internet, that democracy was a supranational category.

The president also spoke about charity, praising the corresponding Sberbank project with payment cards that donate a percentage of any expenses to charity.

In some cases, it seemed that Muratov was not conducting an interview, but was sharing his experience with the president or talking about something, waiting for a reaction. Medvedev praised the idea of ​​Novaya Gazeta and the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers to distribute mobile phones to soldiers, which helped reduce the number of cases of hazing. The president took the story of how roads were paved and garbage removed in the Kabardino-Balkarian city of Maisky because of a rumor that Medvedev’s grandmother lived there, or simply did not attach any importance to it, starting to wonder where such information could come from.

Let us remember that Medvedev’s address to the Federal Assembly also contained many bold, humanistic and democratic statements, but came down to extending the term of office of the President and the Duma. Whether Medvedev's interview should indicate any significant changes in policy is, apparently, too early to judge. But it is important to note, for example, that his predecessor and current prime minister did not give any interviews to Novaya Gazeta or other media outlets that criticized him.