Mayoral Candidate Navalny Answers Questions on his Past

by Ben Sigelman on Friday, July 26, 2013 1 comment comments

Navalny Answered an Open Letter On a Question about Nationality

The deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets Aider Muzhdabayev published an open letter on his Facebook page to the Moscow mayoral candidate, Alexei Navalny. In it he asked a few questions, “to which the wider public has not yet heard clear answers”. All of them concern the politician’s nationalistic views that he doesn’t hide. These questions especially bother Muzhdabayev as a “minority” and a “non-indigenous Muscovite”.

Navalny, by his own recognition, answered unwillingly, but efficiently, as his pre-electoral staff insisted on it, and “patiently undertaking clarifying work is his direct responsibility as a candidate in the elections and a politician in general”.

For a start Muzhdabayev was interested in whether Alexei called a Yabloko party colleague from Azerbaijan “blac…k” [Note: the ellipsis here refers to a common racist slur], as is being written about on the Internet, and if so, then has he expressed his apologies to her. To which he received a negative answer. “It looks like you’re a journalist – ‘this is shown on the Internet’, turn to the primary sources,” added Navalny, providing a corresponding link.

In this way, he showed that this story surfaced in the memories of another colleague in Yabloko, Eneglina Tareyeva.

“A relatively sweet babushka, formerly a member of the party and having seen me a few times in the office after my work attracted a bit of popularity, she decided for some reason to write memoirs connected with me. In the memoirs she writes that she ‘worked with Navalny for a few years’, which, let’s say straightforwardly, is an exaggeration in that any of the thousands of Yabloko’s members ‘worked with Navalny for a few years’. In particular, she wrote some made-up stories about ‘Navalny’s devilish and icy charm’, about how she fed me borsch, how she was in love with me, and how she once heard about how I offended an Azeri girl,” wrote Navalny.

And here another former comrade in arms in Yabloko Semen Burd caught him lying. “Here he lies and blushes. I was a few times a witness of Engelina Borisovna and Alexei’s long conversations in room 101. She worked a lot on the 2005 elections, worked on the telephone, and told Alexei about her results weekly. There was a commission on party building where Engelina Borisovna was the most active participant. Navalny was the leader of the Moscow Yabloko staff and couldn’t be kept away from this work. Engelina Borisovna was a member of the regular council, in which Alexei Navalny was a deputy. But now she’s become a babushka seeing him a few times in the office. This is how he lies about his past. Even now, not having created anything except for a blog on the internet”, he wrote on the same Facebook page.

So the story with the Azeri girl might turn out not to be fake.

Answering another question, Navalny acknowledged that he called Georgians “Rodents” after the start of the war of 2008. “Yes, I called Georgians ‘Rodents’ in the post on the war, about which I regret,” he wrote. [Note: “Rodents” and “Georgians” sound very similar in Russian].

Muzhdabayev was also interested whether Navalny considered participants of the Russian March, in front of which he presented, his political allies and whether he intends on working with them if elected to the post of mayor.

“Russia’s citizens and Moscow’s residents go to the Russian March. Government bodies, which the mayorship is, are obliged to work with all of Russia’s citizens and Moscow’s residents, and even more so if they’re holding marches,” he received as an answer.

Well, finally the journalist asked whether Navalny regrets any other statements and deeds done in the past. The candidate for mayor wrote as an answer that he’s a regular person and just like the rest of people he has a tendency to make mistakes.

“A concrete list would take up too much space and time. And there’s little time now,” Navalny added.

In his turn, Alexei also asked Aider one question: “When will we all be able to find out the answers to your “hot” “unpleasant” questions for the other candidates for the mayor of Moscow?”

We note that Muzhdabayev’s letter is written with the maximum of politeness, while Navalny’s answer is written with “humor” that borders with blatant rudeness.

Comments from Ridus.ru

Soprichastny:

Sobyanin’s [Note: incumbent mayor] team’s initial scenario was simple: we lead a campaign, we don’t let this Navalny go anywhere, and we’ll beat Mitrokhin [Note: another candidate] and show that Navalny, haha, didn’t even come in third place. Then the scenario changed, so we’ll register Navalny so that there won’t be questions over legitimacy. He’s marginal – we’ll let him collect signatures – and let him go to the elections. We’ll even organize signatures for him. And then unexpectedly, Navalny gathered support when he gave in the documents. On the same day that they released him. And as a result it turns out that Navalny is stepping out onto the role of Sobyanin’s main opponent. And if the campaign’s initial scenario was built by the plan “Sobyanin vs the rest”, now it looks like “Sobyanin vs Navalny” or even worse – “Navalny vs the government”.

MAKHNO:

The government are weak against Navalny, like their teeth have been pulled out.

MAKHNO: (responding to above)

Generally the authorities should be ashamed, first they’ll call Alexei Navalny a liberal, sold out to the US, then an ardent nationalist, then sold out to the CIA, then sold out to the Kremlin, then a thief having stolen all the Kirov Forest, then an agent of the US State Department… This only shows the swaying and confusion in the upper echelons of government, unable to understand that on Russia’s horizon a new political star has risen and eclipsed all remaining politicians. There is no other magnitude comparable with Navalny in modern Russia, that’s a fact.

asinch: (responding to above)

Makhno, don’t spout saliva. Navalny’s a political airhead with the ways of a little rascal, which he would seem to be, judging by the results of his work.

Proletarij: (responding to above)

What are they so afraid of if he’s an airhead? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJgbtYl77E

asinch: (responding to above)

Where’s the fear? Who’s afraid?

MAKHNO: (responding to above)

Perhaps this is hysterics from fright. When Bastrykin mentions [anti-corruption organisation] RosPil [in the video], his voice actually shakes from fear.

asinch: (responding to above)

Makhno, you’re a big fantasizer. Who has this RosPil bothered?

MAKHNO: (responding to above)

I don’t rightly know what to tell you… Did you watch the video carefully?