Is it possible to cooperate with authoritarian power? What gives a policy limited by red flags? Is it moral to be moral principles for the sake of “low benefits”? And is such activity effective? The leader of the United Civil Front Harry Kasparov and the head of the youth programs of the former ATP, who supported the idea of the right Kremlin project, Anatoly Ermolin, argued about this at The New Times.
Now the liberals have two different positions in relation to power. First: you can’t enter into any matters with this power. The other is defended by those who dissolved the ATP: the system can and should be changed from the inside. Your position?
Anatoly Ermolin: I believe that the creation of a “right business” is a serious compromise, a concession by the authorities. And I think that it is impossible to stop the dialogue with the authorities. It is impossible for people with right -wing beliefs to be not within this power, in executive positions.
Harry Kasparov: The authorities have already made more than enough to make it clear that cooperation with her is a priori immoral character. The moral beginning is what we rely on. People, even in a crisis situation, are still more likely to listen to those who occupy a fundamental position.
Desire and opportunities
Supporters of cooperation have pragmatic arguments ...
Kasparov: Is it possible to compromise with the authorities, change it from the inside, to influence power? But she also does not consist of fools. The authorities receive not just your loyalty in return, it receives a very important political resource. In the conditions of an increase in crisis, hundreds of thousands appear, and soon millions of people who really lose something. These people begin to look for guilty. And in response they hear: yes, power, of course, is so -so with us, but otherwise it will be much worse. The transitions to the side of the authorities were before. Krasheninnikov from the ATP went to United Russia. Quite a loyal and prosperous head of the committee. According to the laws adopted by the Committee, they plant my colleagues. Through his committee there are amendments that make opposition to criminals. And what is the difference between the prosecutor Kolesnikov and Krasheninnikov?
Ermolin: Can we change this political system? It is unlikely. Now we will not change it, they govern the country because they understand the soul of the Russian electorate. We have a paternalistic country. What alternative does the right movement offer? It is necessary to be entrepreneurial, not dependent on the state, to develop an entrepreneurial spirit. At least for the sake of this, you need to contact the authorities, participate in normal projects. In order to maintain influence on the elite, on entrepreneurs. At another political conjuncture, they will support us. Therefore, I believe that the task of right -wing political forces is to finish the bourgeois revolution.
How to do this in conditions when you can’t go behind the flags?
Ermolin: Regardless of whether I will work in the “right business” or I will not, I will continue to do what I have been doing for the past 15 years - work at universities, meet with youth, with middle -level managers ...
To do this, you need to participate in the Kremlin project?
Ermolin: If I am in a direct opposition, this greatly complicates the work.
You were in the Duma. What have you achieved?
Ermolin: I did not succeed publicly. But when I performed at work meetings when discussing the law on terrorism, at least a hundred people learned about what alternative models there were, and these were my colleagues from the FSB, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I told them how decisions are made in another way in managing a counter-terrorist operation. I did not manage to influence the legislation, but at least a hundred people now understand how this is done in the world.
Return to the theory of small affairs?
Kasparov: This is still a deal. You are trying to do something within power. Power for this receives your loyalty and complicity in meanings. How did we have a vote on the annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia? But there are a lot of decent people in the State Duma. Everyone voted - for. And Galina Khovanskaya, and Oksana Dmitrieva, and Valery Zubov, who, incidentally, did small things in the ATP, and now he feels more or less comfortable in “Fair Russia”. Small affairs - maybe. Although I have not heard of any successes in the field of housing and communal services, which were finished off Corus Khovanskaya and Dmitrieva.
How to pay?
But the Union of Right Forces did not have any electoral perspective, isn't it?
Kasparov: ATP has always been associated with the authorities. And now I hear the same argument again - it would be nice to have people with right -wing beliefs in power. Kudrin, or something, with right -wing beliefs? And how does Kudrin differ from Sechin - in that one takes the enterprises with the help of the FSB, and the second using a stabund? For me there is no this separation - security forces, liberals ... This is a criminal, corrupt, mafia regime. Now he is in a difficult situation, and any help is extremely necessary for him. I compared two programs - the ATP election program and the “right -handed” program. In the ATP, the words “bureaucracy” and derivatives are used 42 times, the words “oligarch”, “oligarchic” - 6 times. In the program of the “right -handed”, the words “opposition”, “bureaucracy” and “oligarch” are not used at all. This is the real price of the transaction.
Ermolin: Our power has a poor choice: either respond to the challenges of the modern world, or die. To answer, you need to engage in the modernization of the country. Provide a constant flow of innovative solutions. Such solutions are created mainly by people who vote for the right parties. These are people with creative brains. Such are not found in the verticals of power. Maybe that's why they compromised that there is no former oil resource. I am very counting on the fact that the crisis will force power to reckon with people who will ensure the survival of Russia, and with their values.
But it was already in the history of the country. A wonderful critic Arkady Belinkov wrote about the “fellow travelers” - about intellectuals who refused to protest, hoping that they would not have to participate in the meanings, went to cooperate with the Soviet regime. His second book was called “The surrender and death of the Soviet intellectual. Yuri Olesha. " The average is not given: either - resistance, or - surrendered. Hard power does not tolerate palliative ...
Ermolin: If we talk about Olesha, then the “three fat people” from the point of view of the formation of consciousness rendered a huge service to millions of people, including me. I did not know Olesha’s biography by a teenager, but his book certainly made me better, more sacrificial ... And this is probably one of the reasons why not the entire intelligentsia should be thrown into the embrasure, someone should write about the “three fat people” ...
Kasparov: In this concept there is a vulnerable place. It is clear that in Stalin's times, it was just about life and death. But even then many chose the honor. The 60–70s are more vegetarian times, nevertheless, they risked psychiatches, camps, and expulsion. And there were very famous people who did not want to risk their well -being, such signed letters against Sakharov. Their logic, I think, coincided with yours - well, we are doing a useful business. Anatoly raised a very important topic: the world is changing. And this means one thing - the regime is doomed. No need to try to repair it from the inside with small things. In the 85th year, when I brought a personal computer, one mine A friend, a computer specialist, said the phrase that struck me then. "The iron curtain will fall, the system is doomed." I ask: why? “But because slaves cannot assemble a personal computer.” This system cannot adequately respond to calls due to its corruption, incompetence, grinding ... What is the point of “improving” it? Everything that you are talking about requires free people, respectively, free elections. And Medvedev told the world: we remain under any conditions. Almost at the same time a letter comes from Chita - an attempt to comprehend the situation of Russia in the world. Khodorkovsky in prison does what those who are in power should do - to talk about the strategic development of Russia today. They cannot, such reasoning require replacement of incompetent people. And Sichin and Yakunin will not go anywhere. And I do not agree that for them an alternative is to die or fit into the world situation. They do not fit into the world situation, but in the world financial system, personally. They do not care about the country, they solve their own problems.
Ermolin: precisely because the world is changing, we must go into power and go in large numbers. Not on the Sechin seats, of course: no one will give them to us. And go to the power of the municipal level, territorial, regional, go as bourgeois specialists, if you want. There is another argument: if they really collapse in a year or in five years, where we will take normal people, how will we integrate them into this power? The street is not transformed into competent power automatically. You can go by accumulating a critical mass. It is necessary to end the bourgeois revolution, the essence of which is to change the single -subject model to multi -subject.
What is the mechanism?
Ermolin: The bourgeois format, figuratively speaking, is not in street protest, but in a palace conspiracy. Is there at least one example of a different way of changing the state course in our country? I don't know a single one. Except the 17th year ...
Kasparov: Palace coups are not carried out by idealists, but by very specific people with specific interests. As for the bourgeois revolution, it is impossible to end what has not yet begun. We had neither normal democracy, nor normal market relations. And today, people of paternalist views are convinced that liberals are to blame for all troubles. You can start building a new system of relations with the development of political competition. From my point of view, you need to build your parallel world. This work is ungrateful and dangerous, but it allows you to build a new political space in which people are in contact with each other. It is necessary to prepare for the moment when tens of millions of people in Russia will get the opportunity to make a conscious choice.
Ermolin: We have not mutually exclusive positions. Just everyone should do their own business. People who consider themselves the right asset are unlikely to be customers of the street. I expect that now, maybe, they open a certain crack to express an independent political proposal. I don't know what will happen from this. Maybe really another puppet theater. And if not? The Kremlin is also not a single whole. Suddenly it will be possible to drive a wedge into this slit?
Purpose and means
Should there be morality in politics? Or does the goal still justify everything?
Ermolin: The goal cannot justify the means. And if we built the Great Soviet Union, then the White Mochanal, Gulag and everything else were smiled there with huge blocs. I tried to be a moral politician. And I will adhere to the same position. I am not afraid to tell the truth to Putin, nor Medvedev, nor Surkov, nobody. Although, when I was expelled from United Russia, a huge number of people who said: everyone, you are no longer a politician, because you are unfiner.
Kasparov: In a normal political process, a politician must demonstrate natural flexibility. But we are in an abnormal situation. We counter the authoritarian regime. Here, any rejection of a moral position is a severe defeat, because only from moral positions can authoritarian power be criticized. This is for me - Sakharov’s lesson.
Ermolin: In the beginning of summer, I met with Yakemenko, the main “youth”. The resume was about this: the programs are cool, ready to help. There are three conditions: no West, no scouts, and we determine the whole policy. That is, no space for contractual relations. What to do with our youth projects, with unique technologies, with everything that millions of yukos dollars were invested? I developed them for my country and I want to give them to my country. But I'm not a footman and are not going to be it. I think that you can agree on which part of the case to be given - even if the existing system, realizing that this will be replicated for normal families, to normal youth, to normal children. Not everyone controls them as much as it seems to us. There are levels where the “bony hand of the Kremlin” will not reach.
Kasparov: So far you are not touching anyone's interests ... And these are not necessarily the interests of Putin, Sechin or Surkov. These may be the interests of Luzhkov, Gromov, and there may be local bandits who put their mayor. And as a result: the editor of the Khimki newspaper Mikhail Beketov - with a broken head and interrupted legs in the hospital. I have no doubt that you are pursuing good goals, and there were many worthy people who also thought. I just think this is an absolutely non -working model. As for the new Kremlin party - people do not hide that they will have financing, the opportunity to solve their problems. They chose for themselves: the main thing is to remain in power. It seems to me that for the most part we are dealing with a typical conjuncture, and most of these people, unlike you, Anatoly, are not interested in moral -ethical problems.
Ermolin: There are too many assumptions. I traveled a lot around the regions, I saw a lot of businessmen who created their own business. They participated very honored in a farce called the elections. They burned offices, arrested accounts, beaten. These people are not all heroes. I believe that the decision that is made now, first of all for them. They have no skins in power to stay, they want to do business ...
Kasparov: So do your job! Do not create dummies! Do not climb into the political space, where you really help the Kremlin preserve what you supposedly fight against.
Do you think that the liberal party, if it is in the opposition, has a future?
Ermolin: I think there is. For two reasons. The first reason is wild disloyalty to the Kremlin, even inside this inflated "United Russia". And the second is the global crisis. People who understand how to save the country will be in the opposition.
Kasparov: In the opposition you can only be outside the system. In the country, of course, real opposition parties will soon appear. Today they are not, there are dummies: Zyuganovsky, Mironovsky, Mitrokhinsky, “right -handed”. Therefore, the response to the challenges should be innovative not only technologically, but also politically. It should be associated with normal political competition. It seems to me that the exhaustion of the regime is not a distant historical prospect. Next year, not just cracks will appear, pieces of this monolith will begin to fall off. It is important that as many people as possible understand that the transition is impossible without political purification. I think this is a matter of the near future.
Harry Kasparov is the 13th world chess champion, which became a politician in the 2000s. The leader of the United Civil Front. One of the initiators of the "marches of the disagreement."
Anatoly Ermolin is a former KGB officer (Vimpel detachment). He was engaged in youth programs in Open Russia Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was a deputy of the State Duma of the fourth convocation from United Russia. After exclusion from the EP, he was in the ATP.
