EVENT TRANSCRIPT: Linking Forces: A Step Towards Future-Russia?
DATE: 4pm, 15 July 2024
VENUE: Henry Jackson Society and Online
SPEAKERS: Dr. Stephen G. F. Hall, Ksenia Maximova, Andrei Soldatov
EVENT CHAIR: Dr. Stephen G. F. Hall
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 0:03
Okay, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for coming both in person and online. My name is Dr. Steven Hall, I’m an Associate Fellow at the Henry Jackson society. And we’re here to discuss the third in three reports. The title is Linking Forces: Western Support for the Russian Diaspora. I’m joined today by Ksenia Maximova and Andrei Soldatov. Ksenia is the founder of the Russian Democratic Society UK, and also the Anti-War Human Rights Coalition, which is an umbrella organization bringing in many different organizations working towards a future Russia. So thank you very much for coming. And please, yes, enjoy. And then there is Andrei, who an investigative journalist, founder, Agentura.Ru, author of three books, all of which exist on my bookshelf. And so thank you very much for those and you are a senior research fellow at CEPA and working at King’s College London, the Department of War Studies, I believe, thank you very much. So without further ado, we’ll have 10 minutes where I’ll present the report, then Andrei will have 10 minutes, then Ksenia to finish for 10 minutes, and then the Q&A for the last half an hour, both in the room, and online. So without further ado, as I mentioned, this is the third of three reports looking at a future Russia, planning towards a potential for future Russia, ideally, a democratic future Russia. And as has happened in the past two reports, I must begin with something straight away. The first most important point that will lead to a democratic future Russia, potentially, is that Ukraine must win this war, that in order for any change to really happen in Russia, Western States need to do far more to support Ukraine to ideally win this war, to be able to go back to Ukraine’s borders from 1991. But at the very least, to be able to negotiate from a position of strength. And that, I have to say, is unequivocal in terms of what I argue in this report, and primarily, that, in order for planning for a future Russia, a more aligned western Russia, we need to start talking about the disparate Russian opposition, the different opposition groups, trying to understand their views, their policies, and whilst not necessarily uniting them in a coalition of the willing, for want of a better phrase, at least being able to get into a stage where they’re able to have common purpose, common ideas towards this future Russia to develop these ideas. And what I argue in the report is that primarily what needs to happen is at the beginning, creating two or three workshops on thematic issues, bringing the different groups together to try and get them to a point where they can agree on certain themes. One of the key points is that these workshops are not necessarily about uniting the opposition, that will take an awfully long time, but getting them to talk about human rights, about democracy, about where they see the future predictions, those sorts of processes. And this would be one way of working towards a common manifesto of intent of purposes. Again, it’s not necessarily about creating a broad coalition of different opposition groups as in some sort of government in exile. But the idea that they are working towards a common purpose at the moment, what I would argue is that the opposition is fairly disunited, and that they are working in their own silos. And what one needs to do is to get them to work towards common goals to have common aims. They may go about that purpose in their own way. But it is at least that process of having them working towards a common future and something that can be agreed on in regard to a manifesto, I think is particularly important. But this, of course, will take time. One of the things that the British government and also Western governments in general can do is create a safe haven for the Russian opposition for the diaspora groups to work in terms of being able to develop that plan, that process as well. This involves allowing visas, whether it’s a high potential individual visa as the British government has, or Western equivalents in terms of bringing the Russian opposition groups into London and using London as a base from which to develop this plan. At the moment, the Russian opposition, the diaspora is quite split across multiple countries, being able to bring them into one place I think would be beneficial in terms of sharing ideas, developing best practices. And this comes into something similar that’s happened with the Belarusian opposition as well, the idea of a democratic passport that we see that certainly, the need for Russians to be able to travel from one country to another, from London to Berlin, from Berlin onto perhaps Tbilisi, where have you, in order to have these workshops in order to develop ideas, there needs to be a chance to be able to travel across these countries. What we also see in terms of what has happened in Belarus is that increasingly, those who left Belarus after 2020, in order to renew their Belarusian passports have to now go back to Belarus in order to do it. Whereas before they were allowed to do it in Belarusian embassies globally, we’re seeing as well that some in the Russian diaspora have been refused the chance to renew their passports at Russian embassies, so creating a democratic Russian passport would give them the opportunity to add to reside in the West in a safe haven being able to travel to, as I say, London, Berlin, Washington, DC, Tbilisi, where have you, in order to be able to work together in terms of developing best practices. And so what I would also argue is, as Michael McFaul has argued, that there needs to be a Russian diaspora ambassador, as well, in order to help Russians settle in order to give them the opportunity to open businesses, in order even to be able to open a bank account, which at the beginning, was very hard for Russians to be able to do. One of the key things I think, is the role of the ambassador. And this also plays in to the Kremlin propaganda that the West is Russo-phobic by being able to say that actually, it’s relatively easy to open a business, it’s relatively easy to settle, it’s relatively easy to work together. Russians are able to phone up their friends, their family, and say actually, the Kremlin’s propaganda about the West being Russo-phobic is not necessarily the case. And this was also an important point. One of the arguments I’ve made in this report and other reports as well, is that there is a need for coordinating institutions. Now, I’m not saying that there should be a government in exile. I think that that certainly is a problem the Belarusian democratic opposition have had as well, that once you are out of Belarus, in this case, you lose an awful loss of legitimacy. But there does need to be a council in exile bringing the different groups together for common purpose, and at least if not uniting them, then at least being able to work towards a common trajectory in terms of a plan for a future Russia. Now, it’s not up to me to dictate how this council in exile will work. But ultimately, a big part of it, I think, does need to be elections, that there needs to be some form of democratic legitimacy, not just ideally within the Russian diaspora, but also within Russia itself, although the FSB will find make it very hard to be able to hold elections online in Russia, as we’ve seen with the Coordination Council in 2012, as well during the protests. But certainly, if the council in exile can be elected in some form, it gives far more legitimacy to the council in exile than it would to the acclamation that we saw this year of President Putin in the so-called elections in Russia. So that certainly I think, is important. Now, what I would also say is that the council in exile could also play a role in terms of, as I say, developing the plan for a future Russia, but also in terms of working with Western institutions, in terms also of being a vehicle whereas the West seems to be unable to provide Ukraine with Russian assets abroad, perhaps those assets could go to the council in exile, who could then disperse them to the Ukrainians. And what I would argue in the report is that this wouldn’t be done with the entire amount being sent to the council in exile, it would be various tranches. So if the council in exile was to refuse to provide the Ukrainians with the necessary assets, then it could also, the flow could be stopped. Now, that’s why the buy in again is something which we can discuss here. What I would also argue, according as part of the CIE, or council in exile is that there would be different panels with different committees in the CIE working on different plans and working with different parts of the plan on human rights, on democracy, on the future for Russia, on a narrative for the state as to what comes next, because the current narrative of Russia is very dark, to put it mildly. And we need, there needs to be a narrative that Russians can buy into, something that Yeltsin failed with, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that Putin has pushed in a very different way since then. So what I would also argue, along with the need for a council in exile is to have an independent Commissioner, again, to make sure that the counsel in exile is working towards the future of Russia, that it isn’t just trying to form a government in exile, that it is actually working towards developing a plan for the future, because ultimately there needs to be a plan ready for when, and it is when, Vladimir Putin loses power, the regime collapses. It needs to be ready, as I’ve argued in a previous report, to get a foot in the door for when the regime collapses. Now, that also requires that there is an effective communication strategy about and increasingly there has been an effective communication strategy, different groups have been working on it. And we have seen certain meetings in Brussels and again, in Berlin, as well. And that’s all well and good. But certainly there needs to be a three-way communication strategy towards the Russian diaspora, towards Western states, and eventually, towards those still living in Russia, because ultimately, those who are in Russia, who don’t necessarily support the war, and whilst we’ve all seen the polls, allegedly saying that most, the majority of Russians support the war, they support Vladimir Putin, I’m not necessarily certain that’s actually the case. And we can go into detail in terms of that. But ultimately, it is that a lot of Russians in Russia don’t, don’t support the war. And therefore, if the message can be got into Russia, they can be shown that they are not alone, that there is something working towards a plan for a future Russia. Again, this comes back to the manifesto as well, if the opposition can show unity, or some form of unity, that also serves as a purpose for developing the plan and for positivity. Now, I’ve argued in other reports, as well, that ideally, there should be a university in exile, not just for Russians, but also for better Belarusians, for Kazakhs as well and other peoples, in order to train the future. And what I actually found in this article, in this report is that many in the opposition different groups don’t necessarily believe that it should be laceration, in terms of similar to what happened in Poland after the collapse of communism, purely because that would remove too many people, that the institutions need to be changed that, but I would argue that a University in Exile would train the next generation because ultimately, this is a long term strategy. Unless Western governments are prepared to support Ukraine to win this war as quickly as possible, which should have been the slogan from the beginning, not to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, then this is going to be a long-term scenario. And the West needs to start planning and one of the key things to do is to start developing a plan for future Russia. In order to do that, there needs to be some form of unification, whatever that may be, in terms of the opposition, at least a unity and common purpose and manifesto. Of course, competition is good and different groups are important. And it’s going to be very difficult to unify groups that mistrust one another but being able to have a unity and common purpose. So I’d like to raise one more point before passing it on to Andrei. What I realize and appreciate is very hard to say. And one thing that I again have to reiterate is, when I say talking to the elite, I don’t necessarily mean the idea of what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1938, where Western governments and the Russian elite sit down and decide that this is how the geopolitical map of Europe is going to look. And then tell Ukraine, sorry, guys, you live in a bad neighbourhood, go and talk to the Russians and negotiate, especially when we see Vladimir Putin talking about negotiation only being capitulation for the Ukrainian side. But, for my own research on authoritarian regimes, and I’d love to hear different people’s views on this, there needs to be a dialogue with the elites. There needs to be a way to show that they will not necessarily, that there needs to be a way for them to be able to willingly give up power. This could mean that they are forced out of politics for a while, but they are brought back in. That’s open to interpretation, but very few autocracies decide to democratize because they decide, wake up one day and go, we’re going to hold free and fair elections. Today, we’re going to open up the media. They democratize, Daniel Treisman argues, because they make a mistake, or because they’re given a way out. And so this is also something that sadly, I think, increasingly, the West needs to be prepared to do, and something that I talked about in the report, and have done in the past. So this is very much, I think, a plan for the long term, unless Western governments are going to change their perceptions and supporting Ukraine to win this war as quickly as possible, but at least to be able to negotiate from a position of strength, providing Ukraine with the weapons systems they so desperately need, for the Americans, allowing Ukraine to be able to strike Russian territory wherever, this is going to be a long-term scenario. But we need to start talking about unity of purpose within the Russian opposition in order to work towards a plan for future Russia. Now, I’ll finish here and pass on to Andrei.
Andrei Soldatov 16:12
Thank you. Thank you very much Stephen. First of all, I want to say thank you for this report, because it is extremely important what you did. First of all, mapping the landscape of what is going on right now with the Russian political opposition in exile and actually described and worked out to, after two and a half years at war. I also only can completely support several of your ideas. For instance, of course, the idea of a Russian democratic passport. Because while many Russian activists and journalists now they found themselves in a position like me, for instance, being on the wanted list, and I’m on the wanted list of the Russian authorities, so I cannot actually go to the Russian consulate and ask for a new Russian passport. It’s forbidden by the Russian legislation. And in some years, a lot of my friends might, because of me, might find ourselves completely out of any documents. And it’s, it’s a problem we all are aware of. The other thing, which I completely support is that idea of a university. First of all, because we have at least one successful example of the interaction between the Western government and Russian political opposition, and it was in Czechoslovakia, between the wars, and the Czechoslovakian government created a university, a Russian University in Exile. And it was a success. This university had the best Russian philosophers, best thinkers, best Russian liberals, and they produced an enormous amount of really good papers and work. And I think it was, it is a legacy, which will stay from the past, and it’s a success story. However, there are several ideas in your report I feel a bit uncomfortable with if I may. First of all, I think you’re absolutely correct, saying in your report that the idea of a government in exile is not really practical. And we all understand why. Putin didn’t invade Russia and push the legitimate democratic government out of the country. And we also don’t have any Russian opposition leader who was able to take part in presidential elections in the country. So we cannot have a figure like in Russia, we just need to accept that. We have several former members of the Russian parliament in exile. Three, if I’m not mistaken, [inaudible] and Ilya Ponomarev, but it’s hardly enough to form any government in exile, which would have any legitimacy for the Russians in exile or for the Russians in the country. But I think we might have the same problem of a council of opposition in exile for several reasons. The same problem of legitimacy, how we can make it work for all these groups, which now have found themselves in countries as far as London or Australia or Germany or Kazakhstan and how we can make it work. But my biggest problem is, to be honest, is why we need this Coordinating Council. And to be honest, when I read your report, I noticed that you stressed several times, as far as I remember, I counted 26 times when you use the word unity in your report, and that is a need for calculation. And it seems to be a very important idea for you. But when I think why actually we need this unity and this coordination, I’m a bit alarmed. So, for instance, we all know that after the full-scale invasion started, most of the Russian opposition politicians, political groups and others moved to media activity, as the only sensible approach to stay politically active, because of the climate of harsh repression and zero tolerance to any political actions in the country introduced by the Russian government after February 2022. The only thing you can do actually is media activity. Yes, we did have a coordination council of opposition in 2012. But it was a period when it was still possible to have some manifestations, some protest rallies. In Russia, and we all know what happened to this council, most of the members of this council are either in jail or in exile, or just killed. And again, if we are thinking and we accept the idea that the most sensible thing to do for the Russian opposition is media activity. And here, I feel a bit more safe because I’m a journalist. So for me, it’s more comfortable to talk about these kinds of activity. I’m thinking why do you need any coordination when we are talking about media activity? I vividly remember March of 2014, when the Russian government introduced the online censorship and immediately blocked several Russian websites in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea. And we had this meeting at the software centre, it was still possible back then in Moscow to have this kind of meeting. And we got most of the editors of the Russian online media, people who would form and launch Meduza, [inaudible], all of us were in this room. And there was a conversation whether we need to do something together. And at some point, someone said we need to form some sort of continuity committee because we need to coordinate our efforts. And [inaudible], a legendary internet pioneer, he stood up and said, Look, guys, I don’t understand why, we have technology, we have the internet, we have social media, we all know each other, if you have a problem, we can easily fix this problem just talking to each other, why we need any type of politburo? And to be honest, what we’ve seen since 2014, is that a very good relationship between Russian media in exile and Russian opposition groups, [inaudible] and Navalny’s team, and it has a new documentary or a new investigation, about corruption, about anything else, it immediately gets picked up by Russian media and put out by Medusa, and we immediately had this kind of conversation. So to be honest, in terms of the media, we do not have do not need any kind of bureaucratic body to get those columns enacted. The other argument I hear a lot, and not only in your annual report is that we need this kind of coordination, because it would help us to start thinking and devising the plans for post-Putin Russia. And I think it’s extremely important. It is a job we need to do. But the point is that this work is already underway. Just two weeks ago, we got several Russian philosophers coming up with a project for a new Russian constitution. And again, we already have a discussion, you have a discussion on both sides of the border. So we have this project discussed in the country and also among Russian liberals. We already have a project reform launched by the Free Russia Foundation I think, even before 2020. And it is a platform where you can find discussions about what to do with different Russian institutions, how to reform them. I was asked for instance, to help deal with the project about what to do with the Russian security services. And of course we all understand that in the new Russia, we would need to completely remake Russian intelligence and security agencies. So this project is also very much alive, finally in alignment, we’ve had several documentaries about the 1990s, and what went wrong in the 1990s. And I think it is an extremely important discussion we need to have, because the 1990s was the only period in Russian history where we had this tiny chance to do things right, we completely screwed up. But nevertheless, we need to understand what went wrong to not make the same mistake again. And again, this discussion is already underway. And finally, my very final point is a very specific one. And if I may, I would quote, you argued that the British government could appoint a commissioner to absorb the actions of the council of exile and committees to check that these structures are meeting regularly and working well. And this would help with this unity and momentum towards preparing a democratic future Russia plan and preparing for when Putin leaves the Kremlin. But to me, it sounds as a definition of interference in someone else’s internal affairs, to have a supervisor provided by the British government for the Russian opposition, when the Russian opposition is to understand what to do with their country. And even if we agree that the idea of a supervisor provided by the British government is okay, which I find very questionable, why the British government? Why not the US government? Why not the Ukrainian government, I think, probably that, given the fact that Ukraine is facing a horrible existential war, maybe they have a say about the future Russia. So why we need to limit it only to the British government? But to be honest, I think that, to have this kind of point, and to have this kind of supervisor, just invites the Kremlin to attack all of us as being puppets of, I don’t know, the British intelligence, and all of that. And I don’t actually understand why we need that. And again, would it help to make Russian opposition groups more disciplined, and easy to go to make to make them act together? And it gets me back to my main point – why we need to, to force them to act together. I think now, it’s a good moment for competition. All these groups, all these political parties, not that we have political parties, we have only groups, but they all need to start to talk about the plans for the future Russia. I vividly remember when Navalny was asked many times about his ideas about what future Russia might look like. It was always about Russia [inaudible], beautiful Russian future, which to be honest, always appealed to me as a as a way to respond, because it actually it doesn’t provide any ideas, but how they actually wanted to see the future Russia. Now it is time for all of them to compete, to present their ideas, to have a proper conversation, to have some sort of politburo and a council of, of wise men deciding what to do for the Russian diaspora. I’m a bit sceptical about this idea.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 28:41
Okay, that’s perfectly fine. We’re going to have a lovely conversation about this later. But we’ll come back to that. So Ksenia?
Ksenia Maximova 28:46
I think I might actually touch upon why we need it further down the line. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me here. It’s my first time at Henry Jackson Society and a massive honour. Thank you for the amazing research paper. I know how hard it is to get your head around us, essentially. So thank you for doing such a great job with it. What I would want to start with is a slight not even critique, but maybe a correction because when it comes to the Russian anti-war movement, diaspora is actually organizations that are based in different countries because there are there are diaspora organizations in almost every country around the world. So we call them the diasporas and then anti-war community, Navalny, Anti-Corruption Foundation, all of these, they’re kind of like the big organizations that kind of loom above us in a way. That’s why I guess when I picked it up, I was expecting to see all about diasporas and then I realize that it was actually about something else. But nonetheless, it’s really thorough research. So what I guess I’d like to say is that I would like to absolutely agree about the unity. I think it’s a very big point. Why would you need to start working together is mainly because it’s really hard to communicate to any governments if you don’t have a representation. Every government wants to talk to a representative. I had this point myself, when I started talking to the parliament in the UK, they don’t want, you know, they don’t even want a coalition. They’re like, who is your one person? And we don’t have that one person. And then they go, well, what is your, you know, mission? What are your aims? And, well, we do not know, we know what ours are as an organization, but we can’t speak for everyone else. And because there is no communication, we can’t form this mission statement, and we can’t verbalize it to everyone else. And hence, yet again, it’s kind of like a dark pit that everyone is trying to, you know, assess and make sense of. It helps to make us transparent, understandable, and easy to collaborate with, essentially. Then you can have internal competition as much as you like – competition, of course, it’s healthy, I don’t think anyone wants to, you know, erase the competition or to control the movement itself. The way I see it, if anything, it would be helpful to have a sort of like an ombudsman, I don’t know if there is a word like that in English. Okay, maybe commissioner just sounds a bit harsh. But essentially, it’s like a point person. And finally, for people like me, my life would be so much easier, because I would be like, oh, that’s my point person, we have something to communicate, that’s who I communicate with, you know, and it just makes it so much easier. In terms of the situation now, as a person who, you know, has been to Brussels, has been to Berlin, has been pretty much in every meeting, online or offline that there’s been, you know, there is a lot of work being done together. For example, from the main conference in Berlin, we walked away with an understanding that we do need a strategy. So that’s something that we’ve actually been working on. And there is a rough version that’s being voted on at the moment. And that one’s got a mission statement. Yeah. I don’t know in which form, it’s going to pass. But essentially, come autumn, we should have a strategy in place. Navalny’s team does not want to communicate, unfortunately, still, due to that. Coming back to the spring, I kind of had an idea to have a conference in London, because we actually haven’t had one here yet. A very kind of small event, you know, maybe 60 people – that’s counting other representatives involved, in the parliament, however, and I had to go to the parliament and actually ask them, “can you ask Navalny’s team to come because if we do it, they’re never going to show up”. So, you know, it kind of got to that point. And because we do want to work together, we just we were kind of like, we just need some help. And, you know, we got the help. We had the date and place where we’re supposed to have this meeting on 16th of September. And literally on the day when the date was confirmed, Rishi Sunak called the election. So four months of work done. So we’re going to have to start this all over again, with the new government now, but I’m pretty confident that, you know, either the end of this year or the very beginning of the next year, we will have this conference. And I’m very hopeful that someone from Navalny’s team is going to come. In terms of you know, people like Maxine Katz, they actually, he works with anti-war committee. He, of course, has his own kind of separate thing, but I wouldn’t say that there is anyone who doesn’t work together apart from Navalny’s team unfortunately, same with Ilya Ponomarev, the only thing is that Ilya Ponomarev is an extremely toxic character that, as far as I’m aware, is actually under investigation in the US as well at the moment. So you know, he also collaborates with the anti-war committee, but I don’t think, you know, I would probably avoid interaction until things are cleared up. So actually, I would say that there are kind of huge strides being made towards quality work together and some sort of building of some sort of representation. We have had discussions about having councils in each country. So I know that that’s on the way now. And we should probably have representatives for each country soon. And in terms of education, what you were saying, I think that is really important. And that’s another thing that was really hard to deal with. Because, for example, we have been trying to lobby a change in student visas because at the moment for the new students, for them to receive a student visa, they need to either go back to Russia, or they need a permanent leave to remain in another country where they could apply, you know, which basically means that essentially people who are coming into the UK now are likely to be oligarchs’ children, because they are in Russia, and they have no trouble getting all of the visas. Whereas people who have had problems with the government because of their political stance, you know, they probably ended up outside of Russia. And essentially, the poorer they are, the less chance there is that they will have these kinds of documents to apply for university. And it has been very hard to even get hold of people to start this conversation in the UK Government. And again, at the same time, I’m aware that until, you know, it’s clear to them who they’re speaking to, why would they even start this kind of conversation? You know what I mean? So that’s why the more kind of representable we look, the more we can ask for in in a nice way, and hopefully, we will be heard. Yes, I think that’s it. Thank you.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 36:38
Okay. Well, thank you, both of you. There are three questions that I can see that have appeared online. But before I open to the floor, I think we’ll take some questions from the floor first, and then ask the questions online. I would just like to raise a couple of points in terms of what you said, that I enjoyed reading your separate article on this this morning over coffee. So that was very enjoyable and thank you. Perhaps I used the word unity too much and I need to find another word, I need to go through my thesaurus and find another synonym for unity. What I was trying to say is it’s not necessarily that they all need to come together, and everyone needs to have an exact plan, and point by point this is how we’re going to develop a future plan. What I was trying to say is that it’s unity that we develop through thematic approaches, different perceptions. What appeared from an outsider looking in, it does seem to be, and I know that there’s been a lot on the forum and various others, that it’s almost shouting in the wind, different groups having different ideas, and nothing ever really comes together. Talking to people in FBK, the person that I interviewed who shall remain nameless, was “we already have a plan, we don’t need to discuss it with anyone else”. And this is certainly something that I was thinking about in terms of the unity. What I would say is, if Russia, the Russian opposition is to develop a plan for a future Russia, then there needs to be a unity of purpose and the sharing of ideas. That doesn’t seem to necessarily have been the case, primarily because the most famous opposition group, because of Navalny’s name, isn’t part of the process. Now, going back to the British Commissioner, again, perhaps I used the wrong word and I, again, needs to get my thesaurus out. Commissioner does sound very strong. I would also argue the Kremlin is going to say that the Russian opposition diaspora is a fifth column anyway, regardless of what happens. Now, why the British, not the Ukrainians, of course, the Ukraine should be involved in the process. And yes, it would be great to have a Ukrainian oversight. I don’t know I can’t think of the right word. But let’s go with commissioner for now, and I’ll think of something better later. But the reason why I said Britain is that ultimately we are in Britain. Yes, America could be involved but we are we are here in London, so that’s why I mentioned the British. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a Brit, I mean, I was thinking more along the lines of Paddy Ashdown and Bosnia as a governor, it’s a very different scenario, but it could be someone else. But again, this is very much an initial report, it was just putting ideas out and this is what we need to do in order to develop this plan. We need to find a way for the unity of purpose because the Russian opposition has managed to find new and innovative ways for many years to be disunited – that even though they dislike Putin, they dislike each other more so. And so coming to this stage, if we are to be ready for when the machine collapses, there needs to be this unity that, you know, we can come up with, but what I would like to do now because we are rapidly running out of time, are there any questions from the floor? Please.
Q&A 1 40:04
My name is Anthony Robinson. I used to be the FT correspondent in Moscow, and I helped to set up [inaudible]. And I’ve been following Russia for a long time, but I’ve just reread Richard Pipes’ Russia under the old regime, and Marquis de Custine’s visit in 1837. And what I’d like to know is, what do you think the great Russian narod wants from its politicians? I suspect somebody like Trump, or somebody like Putin, Putin has proved to be, for many years, extremely popular. What do you do about the Russian serf mentality which remains? How do you possibly, is Russia governable, except by the [inaudible]?
Ksenia Maximova 41:06
I have a thing to say, I think. I think first and foremost, it would be, I think everyone is really not looking at Russian people as… in Russia, there is actually this thing that they say, [inaudible]. And we have been talking about how much we should probably step away from that, because just because people are living in regions further out in Russia, that means that they are essentially uneducated, and uncapable of kind of, you know, quality decision making. I, for example, myself come from[inaudible]. So it’s not, you know, I mean, it’s not Siberia, but it’s not, you know, super close. And I can’t say that anyone in my kind of even distant relative family are not capable of understanding what is going on around them. So I’m kind of happy to see that in opposition at the moment in the anti-war movement, that’s not how Russian people are being seen. And this is actually part of the strategy. And I think that’s the hardest part of the strategy that is going to take time. Because we kind of start trying to see what could be done, and we started burning ourselves right off the bat, is working with Russians within the country. Last year, when I kind of, you know, was coming to similar kind of meetings, and people would be telling me, well, why are you not working with Russians inside the country? I was saying, well, first, we need to empower Russians abroad, the ones who fled, you know, because they’re the ones with links within the country. And I feel like that has been done, that has kind of settled, I mean we could have had more help with that, probably would have been faster. But now we are in a position where we could start working with people within Russia. The only thing is that it immediately puts them in such danger, that we have to be super, super careful and calculate things really, really well. And also at the same time, you know, obviously, we need to understand first, exactly what your question is, what do they expect from us? What do they want from us? What can we give them but not in a sense, like, oh, we’re looking from up down onto you. And we assume that this is what’s the right thing for you. It should be the backward conversation, it should be them communicating to us what we can do for them before we even move a finger. Because the thing is, we have the elections coming up now, the regional elections in September. You know, I found myself, I don’t know if any of you have heard the case recently, there was a head of staff of one of the candidates who got arrested. And, you know, we basically had to evacuate him from the country and make him escape from a psychiatric hospital. That was the only way for him to avoid jail. So, you know, and this candidate was not even outwardly supported by anyone. He just had an anti-war stance, wide-open anti-war stance, but it’s commonly kind of considered that the [inaudible] people are protected. Well, apparently not so much anymore. And I’m kind of, you know, scared to think what’s going to happen the closer we get to the election, how many more of these people we’re going to need to get out? And so yeah, I think you know, these are really baby steps, we need to be extremely careful. What they want, we are going to have to find out gradually and slowly. In terms of whether they want the war, I am very confident to say that the majority does not want any war. You know, what they want an economically stable country. And you know, this government is never going to give them that. And how they see themselves achieving that, you know, is another question. And it is an extended conversation.
Q&A 1 45:10
As we saw with Stalin, as we saw with all these other regimes, once these regimes are in place, you know, it’s a deadly business. You know, you’re here, because you know how deadly it is. I mean, it’s, I’m not trying to make, you know, a point. Just, it is that. what the brave thing that you are trying to do is really important. But it just sounds so similar to what was going on with the, you know, the [inaudible], all those groups in pre-First War Russia, you know. And, you know, just, I don’t know, I find it very difficult to imagine a democratic Russia. Certainly in its present borders, maybe a Russia west of the Urals, possibly. But with the rest of it? No.
Ksenia Maximova 46:15
Well, I’m happy to hear that you think that the Urals are going to be in, that means my family can stay!
Q&A 1 46:24
But even mentally, I mean, I know there’s only 30 million people east of the Urals anyway, I mean, it’s basically Northwest China now economically. So, you know, so things have moved on. But, you know, it’s really you know, what kind of, is it possible to have a nation state and not an imperial structure, which is what we’ve always had, and always come back to?
Andrei Soldatov 46:48
Okay, it just, I think, first of all, it’s an argument, which Putin has been always making that Russia is completely unique, its history is completely unique so if you need to understand anything about Russia, you need to go back to the Russian history, they can’t get any lessons from any other countries’ experiences, which I find very appalling, because Russia is not such a unique country. That’s the first point. The second point is that, well, let’s go a bit lower from this philosophical horizon. When we talk about Russian society, we need to understand that Putin started by crushing political culture in the country. You were there, you probably remember that [inaudible] you helped to launch didn’t have a political department, and they refused to report on terrorist attacks in Russia, they didn’t have any coverage of the Beslan massacre in 2004 just because they found that convenient. And I don’t remember any American or British journalists ever say anything about that. So maybe when you blame everything on the uniqueness of the Russian character, which is all about serfs, and all of that, maybe we need to look at when, well, some Western politicians and journalists and media just decided to cooperate and to not pay attention to things which Putin started doing immediately in 2000. Because, well, back then there was a united front against terrorism, and it was absolutely okay to have a second Chechen war and to have no criticism whatsoever. I remember 2005, British police and British Army inviting the generals of the FSB to London and to Northern Ireland to share experiences of how to deal with the problem of Northern Ireland. It was not about Russian sentimentality. It was about something else, Right. So maybe, so maybe it’s a bit more complicated. And I think, I think the problem is that when you have two things in society, first, there’s lack of political culture, no political debate for more than 20 years. Remember that no Russian presidential candidate no Putin, no Yeltsin ever took part in any televised debate? Because they always found it insulting for them. Right. And it’s still the case. And you add to this calculus fear, which is extremely, extremely important. People are really fearful. I think it’s quite amazing. But we got so many protesters on Russian streets once war was started – 16,000 people protesting. It’s a lot.
Q&A 1 49:24
Very brave.
Ksenia Maximova 49:27
Can I just add to that, I think you know, what you were saying now about people kind of not being used to being politically active and all of that. Basically, we can’t really have them being politically active. We can’t ask that of to them openly because that puts them in imminent danger. But what our thinking was, is that to kind of locate the various issues around the country, I mean, there are great resources for that. There is a [inaudible] for example, that monitors all of that, you know. Basically, there are a lot of young people that come from [inaudible]’s teams that were active at the elections now, but you need to understand that they’re extremely young, so a lot of them are not quite aware, they’re like super idealistic, you know, and they can put themselves in danger as well. But then there are a lot of ecological groups, all sorts of things. So kind of pinpoint the issues around the country that are not political, that you can gather and rally people around that, you know, no one can really say anything like, okay, you’re being active but it’s not about politics, so you can’t really arrest them. But at the same time, kind of flexing that muscle, the kind of activist muscle within people. So they kind of, it keeps them active in that sense, and they don’t forget what it is like. So when the time comes, they are kind of mentally ready to participate in whatever future that might be. Yeah.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 51:02
That’s a good point. I mean, certainly teaching my class on democratic transitions, where we look at Samuel Huntington, I’ve never bought into the idea that some countries simply can’t do democracy. And that’s always Huntington. I mean, he died in 1993. But it’s always the Huntingtonian analysis. Russia simply can’t do democracy. I think that that’s, you would argue that lots of countries can’t do democracy – there is literature on Spain, that Spain would never be able to do democracy. And this, I think, goes back to Russian exceptionalism, potentially the exceptional thing is that Russia is not exceptional. And in parts, I think this also fits in with Portuguese exceptionalism as well, that yes, of course, the geography is very different. Portugal did have integration with European elites in terms of its Portuguese diaspora going and working in Germany, primarily, which created links, but it also led, I would argue, the fact that Portugal lost a war in Angola, a country that it considered to be part of Portugal, just exterior.
Q@A 1 51:10
Excuse me, that’s not correct. Because Portugal did not lose a war in Angola. The thing is, they had they had, well, the army, the army decided that the war was not winnable, that’s for sure. But the fighting, the real struggle took place in Angola and Mozambique, I was in South Africa. You know, the coup when Brezhnev sent in 70,000 Cubans, basically rented the Cuban army. I mean, that’s when you started having a war. Portugal was already out by then.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 52:51
My apologies, I was under the impression that they left in 1974 but I apologise for that.
Q@A 1 52:56
Well, they realized that the war wasn’t winnable. You’re right. No, no, I’m saying, no, you’re right. I mean, the war was lost. They recognized the war was lost. But the real war took place when Brezhnev sent in 70,000 Cubans.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 53:11
Okay, it’s an interesting point and there’s certainly more we can say. Now are there any questions in the audience, because I’ll turn to the online questions? So I think we’ve touched on Charlie Bruce’s question about how Western governments can identify and support the most credible opposition groups. So we’ll get to you in a minute sir. So in terms of what the report tries to do is look at the democratic opposition, the groups on the right, the groups on the left, it doesn’t, I admit, manage to look at every group. And there are a whole cascade of lots of different groups, some are individuals. So that’s also difficult in terms of that. What the West can do, and I think this does come down to why there is a need for some sort of wider organization and umbrella organization, is that it does provide Western governments with people to talk to, and therefore to actually start developing their relationship and those sorts of things. Now, Emma Sheridan asked what lessons can be learned from past transitions in other countries that might be applicable to Russia? That’s a bit of a different…
Andrei Soldatov 54:32
That’s probably for you.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 54:34
Thank you. In terms of what Russia, I mean, for me, it is simply that Russia has never, Russia is not undertaking a transition in the same sense as the collapse of the satellite states in Eastern Europe, the independence of Azerbaijan and Armenia after the collapse in 1991. It is very much the case of supporting different groups in order to be ready for when the collapse of the regime happens if it does, and I believe it will be a case of when. It’s supporting Ukraine, and one of the things I think is important in terms of why Western governments should be supporting Ukraine to win this war quickly, or be able to negotiate from strength, be supporting the Russian opposition is that when the regime collapses in Russia it will also provide opportunities for Belarus, potentially for Kazakhstan and other places as well. So there is certainly that. Now, the transitions that we can learn from, I think that this comes down to the idea, again, of the need for a patched transition, that there are always going to be different groups within any transition and getting them to agree to a certain pathway, I think is important. And that’s certainly the case, I think, for an awful lot of transitions in general, getting the elites onside. And that comes down to where, as we saw, I think, in the Baltics, in 1991, in Poland in 1989, most of the elites they had an idea as to where they wanted to go in terms of that trajectory, I think that’s where we need to get the Russian opposition groups in terms of this common idea. Now, they could all be working on how to do that in their own silos. And that’s perfectly acceptable. I agree with the competition. But there is a need to get the elites, the so-called elites towards an idea as to where they want to see Russia going towards. And I think that’s important in terms of the plan for the future of Russia. But that’s just my…
Andrei Soldatov 56:38
If I can add just one thing, I think it’s extremely important that we need to be really careful about the lessons of the Second World War, because it seems that the idea that somehow the history of the Second World War might be applicable is, is a very good lesson we got from the Cold War, because it affected the US policy thinking for four decades. Already until the late 1940s there was an idea entertained by lots of people at the State Department that maybe if we get any changes in the Soviet Union, the biggest political actor would be the Russian army, the Red army and the Soviet army because again, the argument was because of what happened in 1941. Because when the Germans invaded a lot of Russian soldiers, soldiers and officers, they switched sides and despite all the atrocities committed by the Nazis, nevertheless, lots of people, thousands of them decided to fight for the Germans. And the argument was that if they were so desperate that despite the choice, nevertheless decided to side with the Nazis, well if we get a really big war Between the States, the United States and Russia, in this case, we got Russian army defecting in big numbers, it never happened. And we also see that the State Department believed in this idea, even at the time of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and that there was a huge program to try to get Russian Soviet soldiers to defect in Afghanistan – at the end of the day, they got 16 soldiers relocated to the United States and Western Europe. And yes, the KGB tried to hunt them down, they got two soldiers back to to Moscow, and they imprisoned them, and they were quite obsessed with the threat posed by the defectors. But it was never a political problem. It was never, it never became really a political, big political problem for the regime. The other idea entertained by lots of people in the United States about what might be, who might be the next big actor, of course, small independence movements, especially in Central Asia. And again, we all saw that, in 1991 when we got the Soviet Union collapsing, it was not Central Asia, which wanted to have a big change, right? Kazakhstan wanted to remain in the Soviet Union. It was about Moscow, it was about Kyiv, it was, of course, about the Baltics, but it was not about Central Asia. So sometimes we get obsessed with the history of the Second World War. We see that argument about the lessons of the Second World War, that we need to prevent another [inaudible] from happening, is being played and on and on. And I think that sometimes it’s very unproductive. For instance, we have this argument, and I’ve been to so many discussions about, for instance, why the Global South and why in Africa, they do not listen to the Ukrainians about this war. Well, it’s partly because of the language, because you cannot actually use an example of the Second World War when you talk to Brazil or to African states. It just doesn’t work for them. They had their wars to think about, right, they had their experience. And you cannot actually use this terminology which we immediately understand because we are Russians, and you are in Britain, that for you, the legacy of the Second World War is of utmost importance, but for other regions of the world it’s not that important. And we just need to recognize that, and not to blame them immediately of being puppets of the Kremlin regime, because it’s, again, it’s not very productive, we need to find the language, how to talk to them.
Ksenia Maximova 1:00:30
Can I add a little comment, as like a person who is kind of constantly on the inside, sometimes I wish I was a little bit less, maybe, you know, there are so many different groups that are like writing, what the [inaudible] is going to look like, we kind of call it like the normal [inaudible], we just have like a normal regular one. That’s enough, really. And everyone’s writing, and everyone’s constantly researching, and everyone’s debating it, and bla bla bla, bla, bla bla. And I kind of, you know, and then Prigozhin, like, starts, his march to Moscow. And, I mean, I just remember what kind of chaos it was and how everyone was just bickering so hard. Because [inaudible] came out, made a statement, we all just came back from Berlin where we signed this declaration so everyone’s saying, you can’t really be making statements because we were all just sitting at the same table, we all just signed the same declaration. You say something, it sounds like it’s coming from all of us. Some people lost their funding because of that, well, temporarily, then we kind of cleared it up. But you know, it’s just like the unpreparedness to it. I think that’s, you know, the world is crazy, chaotic. It’s going at a different kind of speed, like, how many historical events are we having every week? You know, it’s like, please, and I’m not, you know, definitely not as well read as the gentlemen here. But there is this amazing book [inaudible], it’s a professor from St. Petersburg, he’s actually still in Russia. I was like, how could you write this and still be there, he wrote this amazing book called Political Regimes and Transformations, just came out this year, only in Russian, unfortunately, I really hope they translate it. Super thorough and detailed historical analysis, I read the whole thing, got to the end of it, and I was like, okay. And that was literally the anniversary of Prigozhin marching. And there was this amazing meme. Do you know this meme? When someone’s falling asleep? And the brain goes, Are you asleep? And the person goes, yes. And the brain goes, What if Prigozhin got to Moscow? And that’s kind of, I believe that that is really the state of Russian opposition right now. You know, that’s all of us falling asleep each night, all thinking, who might do what tomorrow that is just going to create something unpredictable that none of us could have ever imagined. So I think it’s more about the state of us, rather than the possible scenarios. Are we going to be ready for that? Or are we going to be running around like headless chickens like we did, that’s kind of my thinking.
Dr Stephen G.F. Hall 1:03:12
Okay, and on that happy note about the Russian opposition being headless chickens and waiting for an event to solve the situation, I think we can end here. Thank you very much for attending, in person and online. There will be other questions, no doubt, so we’ll be here. So thank you very much for your time.
Ksenia Maximova 1:03:33
Thank you.