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“In the 1990, there was a rock band in Russia called Bakhyt-Kompot, and they had a song that was musically terrible but an important expression of punk philosophy that articulated one of my own main preoccupations. The chorus went like this: "How come the Czechs have cracked it, but Russia hasn't hacked it? How come the Poles have cracked it, but Russia hasn't hacked it? How come the Germans have cracked it, but Russia hasn't hacked it?" All the countries of the Soviet bloc and the Baltic republics were managing to "crack it," but not us. We had the oil, the gas, the ores and timber, infrastructure of sorts, and industry. We had a lot of highly educated people but it didn't help. I'm not talking about "like in America"; it wasn't even like in Poland. According to current official statistics, 13 percent of people were living below the poverty line; in terms of the average wage, we had been overtaken by China, Lebanon, and Panama. Someday I believe it will all work out and everything will be fine, but we have to face the fact that from the early 1990s to the 2020s, the life of the nation has been wasted moronically, a time of degeneration and failing to keep up. There is good reason why people like me, and those five or ten years older, are called a cursed and lost generation. We are the people who should have been the main beneficiaries of market and political freedom. We could have adapted readily to a new world in a way that was beyond the ability of most earlier generations. Fifteen percent of us should have become entrepreneurs, "like in America." But Russia didn't crack it. No one doubts we are living better now than we were in 1990, but, excuse me, thirty years have passed. Even in North Korea people are living better now than they did then. Scientific and technological progress, whole new branches of the economy, communications, the internet, ATMs, computers . . . Those who claim the rise in living standards relative to the 1990s is due to the exertions and achievements of the Putin regime re like stock joke characters saying, "Thank heaven for Putin! Under his rule the speed of computers has increased a millionfold." The comparison should not be between us as we were in 1990 and us as we are now, but between how we are now and how we could have been if we had grown at just the average global growth rate. We would easily have achieved what we watched in 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 ahead. For as long as Putin's group is in power, we will count the missed opportunities and be noticing how other countries have overtaken us in per capita GDP, and how those we have always looked down as little better than beggars have overtaken us in terms of their national average income.”

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Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“I finish writing the emails and send them. I check that Yulia has access to the banking apps-a fairly pointless exercise because all my accounts have been frozen for months by lawsuits filed by "Putin's chef," Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man who, in the days of the U.S.S.R., was convicted of aggravated robbery but has now become, thanks to his friendship with Putin, "a successful entrepreneur" with a monopoly on the food supply to the day cares and schools of Moscow. We are running out of time. One more meeting is scheduled. I call Leonid Volkov, our chief of staff, Maria, and Kira. Yulia joins us. We briefly discuss the plan of action for each possible scenario: we get home without hindrance; I am arrested at the airport and jailed; I am detained, then released, and the Kremlin waits for the indignation to subside and then has me arrested; nothing happens, but I am arrested in a couple of weeks on a different charge, and so on. These scenarios are approaches the Kremlin has already used on us. In the twenty-first century you are confronted not just by the machinery of a repressive state but by the PR machinery of that state. Public opinion is what matters to all the players. The same action performed in subtly different ways can either leave people unmoved or enrage them and bring them out onto the streets to demonstrate. Everything has to be taken into account, including what day of the week it is and the weather.”

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Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“Putin and his advisers don't understand the power of public opinion in the West. They believe in conspiracy theories and that someone is orchestrating a malicious campaign against Russia. They don't realize that even conservative politicians have to react when newspapers and artists express their concern on such an issue.”

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Author:Alexei Navalny
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