Komsomolskaya Pravda, 24.12.2020

The leader of the Yabloko party shared his views on the ending 2020.

The leader of the Yabloko party has always had a special critical view of what was happening around him and had his own recipes how to fix it. He shared this special view of the outgoing 2020 in the Vladimir Vorsobin’s programme Civil Defence on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

“CRITICISM IS NECESSARY SO THAT THE COUNTRY DOESN’T FALL APART”

Question: How you describe 2020 in one word?

Grigory Yavlinsky: The year of strength tests. The year testing people, health systems, and politics.

Question: And how strong did the Russian system turned out to be?

Grigory Yavlinsky: I will give you one figure. The population of Russia in 2020 will fall by 352,000 people. This is ten times more than last year. That’s the estimate.

Question: But the American Democrats also curse Donald Trump. And in Europe, they are severely criticising the leaders of the countries who at the beginning of the year did not know what COVID was about. How do Russia’s mistakes of Russia differ from the world’s ones?

Grigory Yavlinsky: Well, not all countries have experienced such a population decline. Sound professional criticism is a prerequisite for the normal development of society. The USSR collapsed because of the old notion that there should be no criticism, but only praise and applause.

Question: – But the USSR collapsed just when criticism was allowed.

Grigory Yavlinsky: When they allowed it, it was too late. Similarly, the issue of a safe change of government has not yet been resolved in our country. If I ask you now: what will happen to the economy in two or three years? An honest answer is: nobody knows it. Then I will ask you: what will happen to healthcare in two or three years? You will not be able to answer. You can only tell one thing – who will be the President.

PM MISHUSTIN WAS UNAWARE…

Question: You were the Vice Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers of Russia. In your opinion, did the replacement of Dmitry Medvedev by Mikhail Mishustin this year bring something for the country?

Grigory Yavlinsky: The concept of power in Russia is such now that governments must be technical. All major decisions are made by the President. And the government is an executive body which you can hold accountanle, for example, why prices are rising. Therefore, I do not see any big difference between the Cabinets. Mishustin’s Cabinet, by the way, is the most technical in the row. It is assumed that due to digital technologies it will solve some problems of economic growth. However, we should admit here that when the government was being formed, no one suspected that a pandemic, a recession in the world economy, and a drop in oil prices would occur soon. The government got in a very difficult situation…

When they say prices are going up, ask yourself why? Because the devaluation of the Russian currency this year is 25%. It is a raw materials based economy. There is high corruption, poor investment climate? large technological gap. There is no effective judicial system. There is excess government spending. I can innumerate all this for a long time.

Question: You have been innumerating all this for twenty years. But they don’t listen to you. Apparently, the authorities have their own strategy.

Grigory Yavlinsky: Good point. I will give you two arguments here. First, our economy in 2020 will constitute already less than 10% of the European and 7% of the American. Given that we have a population of 146 million, and we are the largest country in the world, the richest in resources. Second, if a person keeps saying that twice two is four, is he stupid? Or principled?

WHAT IS THE USE OF THE GOLD AND HARD CURRENCY RESERVES?

Question: The government was criticised for the lack of support for people during the pandemic. But now the country has a lot of gold and foreign currency reserves and almost no debts.

Grigory Yavlinsky: And what is the use of this? The economy has not been growing for many years, and the incomes of citizens have been falling. In Western Europe, in the United States, up to 20% of GDP is spent on supporting the population and businesses. We spend a little over 2%. Despite the fact that the National Welfare Fund has 10 trillion roubles, and the gold and foreign currency reserves amount to 38 trillion roubles.

In March, we proposed a programme to support citizens in quarantine.

We believed that 80% of the salary should be paid to workers of the enterprises that stopped working,  30% of utility bills should be compensated, 25% of the mortgage should be taken over by the state. The programme was sent to the government, we received feedback from all ministries. If this programme were launched, there would not have been such drop in income. And the economic downfall would have been much less… But in the end the government went in a different direction: pretending to help without spending too much on it in fact.

Question: What does the government base upon?

Grigory Yavlinsky: Look at the budget structure. The priorities are the defence spending and police spending. Because our economy is state capitalism. What is state capitalism? This is when the income is private and the expenses are public. Some groups of comrades receive most of the income, while the costs are borne by us – society and the state as a whole.

WHY EVERYONE WANTS TO RUN AWAY FROM US

Question: This year, people took to the streets with protests in Khabarovsk and Minsk.

Grigory Yavlinsky: These are completely different stories. In Khabarovsk [in the Russian Far East], people are offended that their choice was ignored [when elected Governor Furgal was imprisoned and dismissed from his post by Moscow under a pretext that he was a criminal]. When a new system of electing governors and all these municipal filters were introduced, Moscow said: we cannot allow criminals to get into power. Therefore, we must “filter” all candidates. Otherwise, the mafia will take over the leadership positions. The question arises: where was Moscow and all these filters, when the candidate for Governor Mr. Furgal was allow to run in the elections?

Question: Is Khabarovsk a bell for the authorities or just an individual case?

Grigory Yavlinsky: An individual case, albeit unpleasant in different ways.

Question: People in Minsk were insulted too.

Grigory Yavlinsky: But in Belarus it is completely different. I express my personal solidarity with the people who have been protesting against lies, arbitrariness, falsification and violence already for the twentieth Sunday in a row.

Question: But there is another logic: Lukashenko, roughly speaking, is a son of a bitch, but he is “our son of a bitch”. It seems to me that Moscow proceeds from this.

Grigory Yavlinsky: That is why Russia is also responsible for what has been happening in Belarus.

Question: But what were the options? To allow Tikhanovskaya to become the head of Belarus? Belarus would have gone to the West, and 80 per cent of our citizens would not like it. Even now they are ready to forgive Lukashenko for his sins, since, again, he is ours.

Grigory Yavlinsky: The economy of Belarus is completely tied to Russia. Nothing terrible would have happened if the banker (Ed. presidential candidate Babariko), who was put in prison, would have won.

It is better to think about why, as soon as people are given freedom, they want to run away from us, Russia. Such are the cases of Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova. Maybe we are doing something wrong?

“WE EXPELLED ALEXEI NAVALNY AND DID NOT REGRET ABOUT IT”

Question: What do you think about the mysterious case of Alexei Navalny’s poisoning?

Grigory Yavlinsky: I don’t understand this case. As soon as this happened, Russia itself had to initiate an investigation with the participation of international experts so that to close the topic.

Question: But we don’t trust them. And they don’t trust us.

Grigory Yavlinsky: This is the state of a cold war. There is nothing good about that.

Question: Is Alexei Navalny an independent figure?

Grigory Yavlinsky: He has been a Yabloko member for a long time. We parted with him, we expelled him. Because his policies did not suit us. We never regretted it. We have a completely different political line. But I wish him good health. What is happening to him is humanwise very hard.

Question: I know that you are not very fond of talking about Navalny. But all the same, is he a traitor, a character inconvenient for the authorities or an agent of special services?

Grigory Yavlinsky: I have a counter question. Why didn’t they make such an international journalistic investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov, but did it into the poisoning of Navalny? I don’t know the answer. And you?

“ONE SHOULD NOT HASSLE WITH EVERYONE” 

Question: What Russia should expect from Biden’s presidency?

Grigory Yavlinsky: There are very disturbing developments taking place in the US. The country is almost split in two halves: 74 million people voted for Trump and 81 million for Biden. And we will have a difficult time. And this is not about the United States. We need to work out the most beneficial foreign policy for Russia. Do not hassle with everyone saying “you are all bad, you offend us”. Nobody owes us anything. We need to find a common language with the world around us, but the most important thing is to understand our national interests.

Question: What are they? Tell us.

Grigory Yavlinsky: In short, they are in the growth of the welfare of our people. We are responsible for its future.

Question: But on the one hand, a Russian person would like to live well, and at the same time look proudly, like a great country. And one have to pay for the greatness. How to connect it all?

Grigory Yavlinsky: Considering our culture, our history, our scale and the qualities of our people, we are a great country anyway. We, as a people, are no better than others, but we are no worse.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.