Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. On January seventeen, twenty twenty one, Russian politician and opposition leader Alexander Navalni, better known as Alexey, was arrested on his re entry to Russia. This was his first visit back to Russia after being poisoned months before an attempted murder which journalists have linked to present
Vladimir Putin's intelligence services. A Russian judge ordered Navalni to spend more than two years in a Russian prison labor colony, and his arrests and imprisonment have set off some of the widest protests Russia has seen in years, not to mention a movement for sanctions in the West now, Navalni is a complex figure. He is portrayed in the West as a staunch advocate of democracy and press freedoms, and
in many senses he is. Yet it's also true that in recent months there's been renewed scrutiny of some of his nationalist and even xenophobic public comments from about a decade ago. Amnesty International decided on the basis of those comments to remove his designation as prisoner of conscience, because they say you have to not only stand out for
good ideas, but also not express hate to qualify. This is a complex and tricky issue, as is the question of what Navalny's return and the protests mean in Russia. To better understand it and to hear more about how the news is covered by the free Russian press today, to the extent that it still exists, we decided to interview one of Russia's leading journalists. Diana Kachalova is the editor in chief of the Saint Petersburg bureau of Novaya Gazetta,
a Russian newspaper known for its investigative jurnalism. Three decades ago, she helps start the first post Soviet independent daily newspaper. She carries out her job in a country where independent investigative journalism carries real personal danger. She's here to talk with us about Navalni and also about the press and the meaning of protest for Putin's Russia. Thank you, Diana
for being here. I want to begin with a question that may seem very obvious to you, but for American listeners, even those who listen to the news carefully is perhaps a little less clear, and that is why does Vladimir Putin treat Alexey Nvalni as the kind of threat that he appears to be treating him as. Why not just let him come back to the country and more or less ignore him on his arrival in Russia. I think Vladimir Putin believes that Russia is absolutely surrounded by enemies.
And it's not that he just hates him because he doesn't believe naval No something he absolutely trusts in the papers which are put on his table every morning. You know, the guy does not use Internet. He trusts on the papers which his secretaries or someone is preparing for him and bringing. That's why, that's his picture of reality. And he absolutely believes that Russia is surrounded by enemies and that Navali is one of them and his foreign agent
and paid by CIA and everything. If someone is attacking you, that's because he's an enemy and he wants to destroy him and his country. Let's imagine in his worldview Navali is a paid CI agent. Does Putting actually worry that his own support in the country is so weak that Navalni could gain substantial number of adherents on the ground. Is Putting so nervous about his own grip on power. You know, I cannot say what's in the head of Puttin.
I can just tell you a few days ago we had in Saint Petersburg, the meeting with our governor of Saint Petersburg. It is much lower level of deureaucracy. But we were talking about the last riots which were in Saint Petersburg and in Moscow in the end of January beginning of February, where a lot of journalists were beaten and arrested. But his reaction was, maybe there were not the journalists, maybe there were just pretending to be a journalist.
His reality and his picture of what's happening in his city is absolutely different from what's happening in the streets. And when I mentioned that police is beating journalists and you're telling this to the guy and he's like, no, you're wrong. And I think the problem is that this is partially Putin's fault, that he surrounded himself with the
people who are not delivering him the right information. It's not like in Stalin times when the people were saying, oh, you know that Za doesn't know what really happens that everyone is in the prisons, everyone is tortured in Gulag, and Stalin does not know here is more or less the same situation because he doesn't understand it from my point of view, Can I ask Diana you refer just now to the events of January and February, the public
response to Navali's return to the country and to his arrest. Can you say more about what you think really happened, and also about whether the people who were turning out there were doing so because they really actively support Navali or because they're frustrated with other aspects of Putin's government,
or whether they're worried about underlying economic issues. What drew people into the streets, What was happening in Moscow, in Saint Peter's book was for a long time, because for a long time, since two thousand and eleven and twelve, when there were a lot of protests in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, nothing like this happened. There were a lot of people, and there were much younger audience, and the reaction of the state was different from ten years ago.
It was much more suppressive. It was much more police ross Guardia Amon you know, all this enforcement power and there were much ruder, there were much more people arrested. There was like the whole city I'm talking about, Saint Petersburg was paralyzed, absolutely paralyzed because they closed most of the streets. You cannot go even if you're going to the theater, cinema anywhere. And what was interesting, it was
absolutely different atmosphere. I do remember the protests ten years ago and there was a lot of slogans, a lot of humans are a lot of jokes, but these times they were kind of almost gloomy atmosphere. And this time the people came on the streets to show even not to support navalny. They wanted to show that they sick, they're tide of this and they don't want to be treated like that. But the atmosphere was kind of on
this protest were kind of gloomy because the people. It feels like the people did not have so much to say anymore. They were just walking and showing that they hear and they don't like what's going on seen from the outside. That's really fascinating and of course very sad as well. You know, a gloomy protest is one where the protesters don't have a realistic expectation that they can
change the underlying state of affairs. And that implies that the government efforts to suppress the protests were effective, right that if they've communicated to ordinary people who are brave enough to go into the streets that you're just doing this symbolically, it has no chance of succeeding, then that would imply that from a purely machiavellian perspective of preserving his own power, Putin has handled this whole process with
the return of Navali very successfully. Is that your interpretation? It was not necessary to be so cruel, It was no need in such a cruelty. But the whole goal of this was just to threaten the people who came, to threaten the people who were thinking maybe to come, and to send them the message don't move. If you'll not move, maybe you'll be more or less a key. And you know, a lot of people were afraid to come. You know, in Saint Petersburg, how many people came, ten
twenteen or maybe twenty five thousand the most. The population of the city is fire million. In Moscow it was the same percent of the population. It's nothing, it's not so much, and if you'll ask the majority of people who were not there, maybe we are thinking that, you know,
these protests are useful, but will not go ourselves. And what can these twenty thousand crowd with nothing, nor Rus nothing, what they can achieve just to show that they don't like it, and that's all They're helpless, We are helpless. What do you think and what do other Russians whom you speak to think about the possible effects of sanctions placed either on Puttin or on people around him in the past and also in the present in a consequence
of the Navali imprisonment. Do those sanctions seem to you meaningful and do they send a message of support? And will they be likely to have any effect at all on the Putten regime or government? Or do you see them as rather too a little too late, or empty, emptily symbolic and unlikely to affect put You know, we're surrounded by sanctions since two thy fourteen, if I'm not mistaken, and they're more and more, and I think that people
are just getting confused. I'm talking about ordinary people. They're just getting confused which sanctions will were and for what particular reason. People are a long time ago confusing who is sanctioning award and a message on TV is not that America or European Union are sanctioning particular people who are involved in naval in a case like you know, from investigative committee, from the police, the other you know, the people who are involved in this are all the time.
On TV there is a send a message that these sanctions are against Russia, not against particular people, and a lot of people believe in this. You know, there are two audiences in Russia, like probably everywhere else. There is a TV audience which believes what first, second, and the third channel is saying, and then there is a Internet audience, which is more advanced. But I think a big majority
of the population of Russia is using internet. But if you'll see how they're using they're not reading political news. They're finding the recipes for cooking, for meeting, for everything like this, to send each other flowers electronic one. They're not reading political news. That's why what they were told on TV they would believe. That raises a really fascinating and important question that I think we in the West don't have a good understanding of for the most part,
including people who try to follow news about Russia. And that is what is the practical reality of press freedom in Russia today. I mean, we understand that Russia is ranked very low under Press Freedom Index. I looked it up and as of twenty twenty, it was one hundred and forty nine out of one hundred and seventy nine countries. So that's pretty low. But here you are. You your paper Novaya Gazetta, does publish I also read online. I don't know if this is true that six of your
journalists were murdered in the past twenty years. You'll tell me if that's correct or not. But what is the day to day way that you can think about what press coverage you're allowed to provide, what you're allowed to say, what will provoke consequences? How do you do your job every day? The number is correct now about how we're doing that's a pretty high threat. That's a that's a very high risk position that you're in. Your by definition, it extremely a brave person. I can start with a
kind of joke. In the Soviet Union, and many many years ago, of course, the Soviet Union was accused that the Jews are treated very bad in Soviet Union. Yeah, That's why in every organization in a high rank because issues,
there was at least one very important Jew. And for example, in a military in the headquarters of the army, there was General Dragoonski, the General Dragunski, And when anyone was trying to accuse Soviet Union on you know, treating the Jews bed and not allowing them to get some ceiling in their career and everything like this, they were saying, oh, what we have General Dragunski, what do you want. We're not treating Jews bad. You see how high he is ranked.
Sometimes I feel like this General Dragunski, nowagas yet exists as this General Dragunsky to say that what are you talking while there is no freedom? There's plenty of freedom we have that that that that the online they're published. The problem is that for a long time it was a popular number eighty six percent, eighty six percent of the population who is supporting Putin. I think now there's number is lower, but there was a lot of jokes
about this, and it's still high means. But this eighty six percent, they don't read Novagaiata, they don't listen to Etho of Moscow. They are not on a Facebook. They even not in a telegram. They're in a social media called aDNA Klaisniki. Classmates. There is nothing about politics there. This is the majority of the population in Russia. And the problem of the media kind of like Novagaziata, we don't know how to talk with them. We are not
reaching the biggest audience. We are talking with each other. You know, we can agree or not agree with the Navali as a politician, but he is amazing in propaganda, in delivering his message. The way how he's putting and how he's delivering this message is going out of this circle of elite liberal media. From my point of view,
that's the biggest achievement of what Navalny is doing. That's really fascinating because if I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is that your paper and the other small number of papers are essentially what we would call in the United States tokens like General David Abramovich Dragunski, who was kind of you're saying, a token, the token Jew whom
people could point to. I just looked him up. I see him with his twice awarded titled Hero of the Soviet Union, with his medals, so your tokens and therefore you can be tolerated because you're not seen as posing a very great threat because not that many people are listening to the stories that you're telling. But then, what made an Aviolei distinctive is that he's a skilled disseminator
of information. So he takes a story that you've already covered, and what he did have the effect of getting people to look up and take notice who might not have taken notice previously, and that made him a threat. Do you ever worry that if you're if you started to reach a broader audience, then you wouldn't be useful tokens anymore, and then you would be in danger. Our slogan is we're writing about the facts which everyone else is silent about. And I think for a lot of people, we are
the last hope. And I think we need to do the job we are doing daily we cannot not do it. One thing that might help me, at least to understand how you do it is when you're thinking about covering a given story, do you find yourself asking yourself, how will the government react to this? Or do you think to yourself, our paper is recognized as critical and so we can say whatever we want and we don't have to worry on a minute to minute basis that reporting
the wrong story will land us in trouble. You know, if I'll be thinking every time before thinking about the story, how the government will react, probably will not publish anything. That's why. That's why I think the main concern is the story exclusive, is the story interesting? Is that they're
raising a real serious topic what we are doing. They're very careful putting the words together, very careful, and I think in the last few years I'm spending more time sometime with our lawyer, reading and trying to find the ways how you want to deliver this information. But you know that after this you will be in court how to deliver it, that it will be not like immediate case for the court, And I think I spent more time with our lawyer than sometimes with our journalists discussing
that we'll be right back. One of the aspects of the coverage of Navalni that has been confusing for lots of people watching from the outside is that his own politics are not necessarily the ones that people on the outside imagine that would be the politics of someone who's a critic of Putin, For example, Navalni seems to be a serious nationalist, and indeed, Amnesty International shocked and surprised a lot of people by withdrawing his status as a
prisoner of conscience in their category on the ground that he had in the past said things in a nationalist vein that they considered to be offensive or discriminatory. Tell us a little bit first about the backstory here. What are Navali's political views and where do they fall with respect to mainstream Russian opinion on the question of nationalism. You know, Muslim, anti gastarbeiters, yet guest workers, all that
kind of stuff. You know, he was never saying, recid Le Ruski as I do remember Russia for Russians, but I think it was kind of like what the polites. You will not say such things in a polite society. Yes, but it was a long time ago. The people are changing. In the last few years. He never apologized for what he said. He never mentioned this fact, He never said that he was wrong. But in the last few years the way how he talks changed and he never was accused.
In the last years in the same kind of saying. Did he do his own purpose just you can get in his brain right in what he thinks, but probably he understood that it's not the correct things to say. One of the main accusations of Naval Nay from Kremlin is that he doesn't have any suggestions how to lead country to the future. His program was published and he
doesn't sound like something outrageous. It's kind of relatively democratic program of what he would like to do and how he would like to change this country, improving the situation in you know, in bureaucracy and all this corruption, because those sound like the issues that most people are most bothered by, That the government seems to be pretty corrupt and spending a lot of money on itself, and that
that affects them on a daily basis. You know, this is unfortunately, I think that's not so much true that the people are thinking about the corruption on a daily basis. If you'll ask what they're bothered about, the corruption will be not the biggest priority in that What will the biggest priority be. What is your sense of what the biggest priority is? I think right now will be rising the prices of food, quality of medical the quality of
life in general. The problem is the people understand these particular small problems are you know, for example, here is a very bad clinic, local clinic, yes, but why it's bad, why it's so poor, why there is no modern equipment there. They don't put it together with the fact that that's the because of the corruption, because this money was stolen
from somewhere. The food prices they're growing like crazy. Even on TV they're saying that, you know, this is the third of the fourth time when putting is making the order to stop prices to grow. How you can tell the prices not to grow, but why they're growing, that's not the people sometime are putting together. You know, for a long time it was very funny to watch the Russian news because first news was about how everything is bad in Ukrainian. Then it was about how everything is
bad in Europe. Then it was how everything is bad, sorry in the United States and somewhere else everywhere is bad. Then we're coming the news very modest, how it is good somewhere in Russia. The people, if you'll be telling them that everything is bad in America, they will believe you if you because they were never visited America. If you'll be telling them that everything is awful in Europe. They will believe you because they were never in Europe. But you cannot tell them all the time how good
it's around them, because these they can check. Oh, they're telling me that it's great, and I see that's that's not good at all. Tyler, let me ask you a last question in light of that rather depressing picture that you've you've painted. If people are gradually coming to realize that things around them are crumbling, and if you can't hide that fact from them, what's the scenario that you see emerging in the next five years, in the next ten years, in the next twenty years in Russia with
respect to the political structures. Do you see a world where over time people become sufficiently unhappy that they seek out either a different form of government or different leadership, or do you see the Putin regime being so robust through its suppression of speech and through its limitation on political action, that things could kind of continue along on this path going forward, as they after all did for
a very long time under the Soviet Union. You know, unfortunately we don't have the immunization for dictatorship because we were living in a Soviet Union and the people were accustomed to be absolutely like conformists. And I think the conformism is the biggest safeguards for today's put in the regime because the people who survived like early nineties, when everything now you know what's going on. They're threatening all the time on TV. You want it to be like
in nineties. In nineties it was really bad. There was problems with food, problems with any goods and everything like this. There was freedom, but there was no supplies. You want to be like in nineties, and the people are afraid to change something because they afraid that it will be worse. And you know, I'm afraid that we'll have to live in what we are. I don't know how long, because I don't see any reason why it will change in the next two three or even maybe more use Right now,
I don't see any possibilities for any changes. I hope I'll be wrong, Hopefully it will change sooner, because this tagnation is more and more feels like we're going back to what was at the end of seventies early eighties, and it's kind of it's kind of sad, kind of said, and I think it's kind of depressing because there was only months since there were all these protests in January, and the society is now already distracted and thinking about something else. It was a big I'll use the word
right again, because it was big, like splash. And then the people got distracted and went back to their homes and went back to their problems, local ones. But Navalni. For Navali, the problem is he said his last speech. It was an excellent speech in a court. And now he will be quiet for two and a half years at least unless they will give him more for something else. And two and a half years it's a very long period.
Ten years ago when there was Sergei ud Altsov, whom they put to prison, he was kind of on the same level of popularity as Navalni. They put him to prison for a few years, and in a few years everyone forgot about him. He is free now, but who remembers him. Who knows what will happen with Navalni two and a half years. I think we now need to talk not about him in particular, but about his legacy.
He is alive and I hope he'll live a long and happy life, but he will be out of the political landscape for at least two and a half years, maybe even longer, and we need to understand how to keep this atmosphere and how to deliver the message which he was delivering kind of great to the people, that they will understand that the country need the changes. Fanna, thank you so much. This is incredibly helpful and really
really fascinating. I want to express my own admiration for the very hard work you're putting in every day at significant personal risk to get the news out. You know, we in the United States have had challenges to press and they're serious and need to be taken seriously, but they pale compared to what you're dealing with on a daily basis. I really want to thank you so much.
Thank you. Okay, bye. I learned a huge amount from listening to Diana, and I don't know about you, but my feelings over the course of our conversation alternated between feeling moved and impressed by her bravery, the bravery of her colleagues, and the bravery of people who went to the streets to protest the Putin regime, and feeling dejected and depressed about what Diana sees as the rather limited prospects for meaningful change in the near future. In Russia.
Protests that arose after Navalny's revelations about one of Putin's palaces were the largest that we've seen in years, and they reflect, Diana thinks, real genuine public dissatisfaction with the way the government is doing its job and with the extent of corruption that exists in the government. At the same time, Diana was quick to add that most people in Russia don't spend their time thinking about systematic corruption.
They think about the limitations and their quality of life and the problems in their economy, much like people do everywhere else in the world. Similarly, when it comes to the status of the press, I was moved and impressed by the way that Diana describes her role and that of her colleagues in reporting the truth and continuing to
do so no matter what the consequences might be. Yet I was dispirited by her observation that most people in the public don't bother to listen to the news that she reports, and her own honest self assessment in which she had compared the status of the free Russian media to that of a token Russian Jewish general in the
senior ranks of the Soviet military. My ultimate takeaway from the conversation is that those alternating feelings of being inspired and being depressed are what happens when you get the truth from somebody doing her job under very difficult circumstances. Clearly, Diana would not do what she does if she did not believe that it had a purpose and a goal, and that purpose and goal went beyond just telling the truth but also extended to making permanent change in Russia.
Here's hoping that her aspirations are as accurate as her investigative reporting tries to be. Until the next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo laboord our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and our shore runner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Cott, Heather Faine,
Carl mcniori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and if you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. This is deep background