Navalny Quotes

Everything will be all right. And, even if it won't be, we’ll have the consolation of having lived honest lives.

When corruption is the very foundation of a regime, those who battle it are extremists.

We must do what they fear--tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most power weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.

All schooboys had been to the stores and had noticed the long queues, and knew that the most used word in the Soviet lexicon was "shortage.

A serious political leader cannot simply decide to turn his back on a huge number of his fellow citizens because he personally dislikes their views.

The hero of one of my favite books, Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, says, "Yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison.

We must do what they fear -- tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.

What are AJkraine's borders with Russia? The same as Russia's with Ukraine, which we internationally recognized and defined in 1991. There's nothing to discuss here. Almost all borders in the world are more or less accidental and cause someone discontent. But in the twenty-first century, we can't start ward just to redraw them. Otherwise, the world will sink into chaos.

Other terms used to describe the Putin regime were 'kleptocracy' and 'crony capitalism'---variations on Navalny's theme of the "Party of the Crooks and Thieves." A Hungarian sociologist named Balint Magyar rejected these terms because, he stressed, both 'kleptocracy' and 'crony capitalism' implied a sort of voluntary association---as though one could partake in the crony system or choose not to, and proceed with one's business autonomously, if less profitably. The fate of Khodorkovsky and the exiled oligarchs, as well as of untold thousands of jailed and bankrupted entrepreneurs, demonstrated that this was a fallacy.

If you have a criminal conviction, you are barred from running for office.

The politics of an authoritarian country are structured in a very primitive way: you are either for the regime or against it. All other political options have been completely obliterated.

achieved what we watched Czechoslovakia, East Germany, China, and South Korea achieve. That is a comparison about which we can only feel sad. This is not some abstract exercise, but thirty years of our lives. And God knows how many more such lost and stolen years lie

I love the Russian language. I love the melancholic landscapes, when you look out of the window and want to cry; it’s just wonderful. I feel great, because all of this is close to me. I love our sad songs. I love our literature and cinema. It’s always about anguish, contemplation, suffering, melancholy, and self-reflection.

While these tactics were aggressive and crude, they confirmed that our legislation had touched a nerve. I wasn’t the only one who recognized this. Many other victims of human rights abuses in Russia saw the same thing. After the bill was introduced they came to Washington or wrote letters to the Magnitsky Act’s cosponsors with the same basic message: “You have found the Achilles’ heel of the Putin regime.” Then, one by one, they would ask, “Can you add the people who killed my brother to the Magnitsky Act?” “Can you add the people who tortured my mother?” “How about the people who kidnapped my husband?” And on and on. The senators quickly realized that they’d stumbled onto something much bigger than one horrific case. They had inadvertently discovered a new method for fighting human rights abuses in authoritarian regimes in the twenty-first century: targeted visa sanctions and asset freezes. After a dozen or so of these visits and letters, Senator Cardin and his cosponsors conferred and decided to expand the law, adding sixty-five words to the Magnitsky Act. Those new words said that in addition to sanctioning Sergei’s tormentors, the Magnitsky Act would sanction all other gross human rights abusers in Russia. With those extra sixty-five words, my personal fight for justice had become everyone’s fight. The revised bill was officially introduced on May 19, 2011, less than a month after we posted the Olga Stepanova YouTube video. Following its introduction, a small army of Russian activists descended on Capitol Hill, pushing for the bill’s passage. They pressed every senator who would talk to them to sign on. There was Garry Kasparov, the famous chess grand master and human rights activist; there was Alexei Navalny, the most popular Russian opposition leader; and there was Evgenia Chirikova, a well-known Russian environmental activist. I didn’t have to recruit any of these people. They just showed up by themselves. This uncoordinated initiative worked beautifully. The number of Senate cosponsors grew quickly, with three or four new senators signing on every month. It was an easy sell. There wasn’t a pro-Russian-torture-and-murder lobby in Washington to oppose it. No senator, whether the most liberal Democrat or the most conservative Republican, would lose a single vote for banning Russian torturers and murderers from coming to America. The Magnitsky Act was gathering so much momentum that it appeared it might be unstoppable. From the day that Kyle Scott at the State Department stonewalled me, I knew that the administration was dead set against this, but now they were in a tough spot. If they openly opposed the law, it would look as if they were siding with the Russians. However, if they publicly supported it, it would threaten Obama’s “reset” with Russia. They needed to come up with some other solution. On July 20, 2011, the State Department showed its cards. They sent a memo to the Senate entitled “Administration Comments on S.1039 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law.” Though not meant to be made public, within a day it was leaked.

If you were to ask me whether I hate Vladimir Putin, my answer would be, yes, I hate him, but not because he tried to kill me or put my brother in prison. I hate Putin because he has stolen the last twenty years from Russia. These could have been incredible years, the sort of period that we’ve never had in our history. We had no enemies. We had peace on all our borders. The price of oil, gas, and our other natural resources was incredibly high. We earned huge amounts from our exports. Putin could have used these years to turn Russia into a prosperous country. All of us could have lived better. Instead, twenty million people live below the poverty line. Part of the money Putin and his cronies simply stole; part of it was squandered. They did nothing good for our country, and that is their worst crime

Having spent my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone exactly the same thing I shouted to those who gathered outside the court when the guards were taking me off to the police truck. Don’t be afraid of anything. This is our country and it’s the only one we have. The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. That we will surrender without a fight, voluntarily, our own future and the future of our children. Huge thanks to all of you for your support. I can feel it. I’d just like to add: This year has gone by incredibly quickly. It seems only yesterday I was boarding the plane to Moscow, and now I’ve already completed a year in prison. It’s true what they say in science books: time on earth and in space passes at different speeds. I love you all. Hugs to everyone.

The Navalny case is a rotten egg momentum. Fine.

By mid-2010, a thirty-four-year-old attorney named Alexey Navalny was drawing tens of thousands of daily hits on his blog,

I guess when you die in prison, you can't fall out of a window.

I guess that there's more than one way to silence the opposition to greed and lies.

I guess that if you're afraid of a little opposition, then you're not the person who you portrayed yourself to be.

Heroes don't have an ego, but dictators do.

Because of Putin, hundreds now, and in the future tens of thousands, of Ukrainians and Russian citizens will die. Yes, he will stop Ukraine from developing, he will drag it into the swamp, but Russia too will pay a high price.

Needless to say, anybondy traveling abroad - a boon wholly beyond the reach of 99.9 percent of Soviet citizens - was under a moral obligation to acquire foreign-manufactured gifts for everyone.

Tik Tok, skimming through it I feel ashamed for the whole of humanity. But it works!

The crucial source of ideological sabotage that subverted me and turned me into a little dissident was music.

I firmly believe that all the best things on earth have been created by brave nerds.

Eindhoven Strijp. Period. End of the Station.

I. Hate. Your. Pe-Nis.

Everything will be all right. And, even if it isn’t, we’ll have the consolation of having lived honest lives.

When corruption is the very foundation of a regime, those who battle it are extremists

The Russian prison system, the Federal Penitentiary Service, is run by a collection of perverts.

We must do what they fear—tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.

The gist of my political strategy is that I am not afraid of people and am open to dialogue with everyone. I can talk to the right, and they will listen to me. I can talk to the left, and they too will listen. I can also talk to democrats, because I am one myself. A serious political leader cannot simply decide to turn his back on a huge number of his fellow citizens because he personally dislikes their views. That is why we must create a situation where everybody is able to participate on an equal footing in fair and free elections, competing with each other. In any normal, developed political system, I would not be a member of the nationalists’ party. But I consider attempts to discredit the nationalist movement as a whole counterproductive. Without question, those who organize pogroms should be called to account, but people need to be given the opportunity to demonstrate legally and express their opinions, however much you may dislike them.

What they inspect most closely are the books. I noticed this long ago, and it is plainly a legacy of the U.S.S.R. Books are a source of instability and dissidence. In a prison it is conceivable that your jacket will not be adequately examined and a mobile phone will be overlooked. You can be sure, however, that every one of your books will be taken away, listed, examined, stamped “Checked for Extremist Content,” and only then given back to you. Such is the power of the written word.

But now I know a secret: the disapproval of the masses is fabricated and is just one of the same lies as the television programs, the election results, and everything else in Putin’s Russia.

Nineteen years in a maximum-security penal colony. The number of years does not matter. I understand perfectly well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence. Where “life” is defined by either the length of my life or the length of the life of this regime. The sentencing figure is not for me. It is for you. You, not I, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your country without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves, and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist.

My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches.

Life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. And the day will come when speaking the truth and advocating for justice will be commonplace and not dangerous in Russia.

And there we were, breaking lances and talking ourselves hoarse about reforms when there was nothing there. Zilch. Yeltsin’s entourage were a bunch of crooks, some of whom called themselves patriotic statesmen while a similar bunch called themselves reformers. The reformers did more thieving but looked more presentable.

In Russia, power doesn’t change because of elections. This was a phrase I used in an interview in 2011. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that in the buildup to elections the public’s attention is focused on politics, and we have to make use of that. Moreover, at such a time the authorities are always very vulnerable. We saw this in 2011, when United Russia won the parliamentary elections thanks to vote rigging, and this immediately led to mass protests.

But I will not give up either my ideas or my homeland. My convictions are not exotic, sectarian, or radical. On the contrary, everything I believe in is based on science and historical experience. Those in power should change. The best way to elect leaders is through honest and free elections. Everyone needs a fair legal system. Corruption destroys the state. There should be no censorship. The future lies in these principles.

People who, like me back then, turned a blind eye to the lawlessness, the lies, and the hypocrisy and saw it all as a case of the ends justifying the means and as necessary backing for a particular team.

Summoning a demon would be a violation of the prison regulations

inculcate

In every period, the essence of politics has been that a tin-pot tsar who wants to arrogate to himself the right to personal, unaccountable power needs to intimidate the honest people who are not afraid of him. And they, in turn, need to convince everyone around them that they should not be afraid, that there are, by an order of magnitude, more honest