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PRESS CONFERENCE WITH STANISLAV BELKOVSKY AND OTHER EXPERTS OF THE NATIONAL STRATEGY INSTITUTE
AIF PRESS CENTER, 13:20, FEBRUARY 8, 2005
www.fednews.ru

Moderator: Good day, dear colleagues. We are beginning our press conference. Our guest today at Argumenty i Fakty is the president of the National Strategy Institute, Stanislav Belkovsky, the director of the Institute's information programs, Mikhail Remizov, and Political News Agency analytical director, Yuri Solozobov.

Our guests think that a political crisis has begun in our country, that is a systemic political crisis, and that we need to adopt a new constitution in order to overcome it. They will tell us about the flaws of the old and about the advantages of the new fundamental law. After that we will take your questions.

Belkovsky: Good day, dear colleagues. The constitutional process is only a part, although important, of the overall program designed to overcome the systemic crisis that has swept not only our country but also the Yeltsin-Putin state. It is already obvious that Putin's state is a direct successor to Yeltsin's state, and all principles upon which our state is based and the management of the state, the principles of functioning and interaction between political and economic elites, have their roots in the 1990s and the 1993 Constitution as a means of formalizing the ideology and logic of the Russian Federation as the biggest debris of the Soviet Union.

Today when we hear the liberal camp wail about excessive concentration of powers in the hands of the Presidents and irresponsible use of these powers, we must admit that all this is a product of the power philosophy that was formed under Boris Yeltsin and that was formalized in the 1993 Constitution, a constitution that, as it is obvious now and as it has always been obvious, was not accepted by the majority of the people, and only slightly more than 30 percent of voters voted for it de facto.

Subconsciously and vaguely the presidential administration understands that the country is in a conceptual dead end because the state that began to form on the ruins of Soviet power in August and September 1991 and that took shape on the barricades in front of the Bely Dom in October 1993, the essence that was built into the Constitution formally adopted on December 12, 1993 in a referendum that, and my colleagues will speak more about this later, was held with serious violations, and the legitimacy of this referendum raised big doubts, this state -- the concept of this state boiled down one way or another to the transformation of Russia, this biggest piece of the former Russian empire and the former Soviet Union, into a civilizational and cultural appendix of the United States.

Clearly, such a colonial model of the state cannot exist long if this state seeks, formally or actually, to preserve its sovereignty. This is why the Kremlin is beginning to take the first steps towards elaborating a new constitution, and the presidential administration thinks that this constitution may be adopted on June 12, 2007 as a result of a certain process that presupposes the convocation of the Constitutional Assembly. The new constitution, the essence of which is not clear to the Kremlin yet, will be tested in regional public chambers and finally in the Federal Public Chamber. As a result, the public chambers will turn into something like a pre-constitutional assembly.

In our view, it is impossible to formulate a new constitution without determining a concept for the country, which is for what kind of a country and what kind of a state it is going to be written, and without elaborating the founding process as the basis for building a new state. We must admit that the state that emerged chaotically as the biggest fragment of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire has exhausted itself, conceptually and politically. We must go back to the notion of historical Russia, which is based on certain traditions that are as old as a thousand years and more. Based on this, we must formulate a new state doctrine, which will be imperial in essence one way or another because the model of a national state that Russia has been trying to build over the past 13 years cannot satisfy Russia historically and organically, and many irreconcilable international contradictions of the present state stem from this erroneous model for Russia. The Russian model is imperial in essence, but I would like to avoid using this explosive term that has been severely criticized by the so-called civilized international community, and instead we propose a new term: state- civilization.

We think that the very essence of Russian statehood is in formalizing certain civilizational identity and guaranteeing this identity for all those who belong to the Russian civilization irrespective of the place of actual residence. The adoption of this constitution should be accompanied by the creation of a new country as a state-civilization, which can be done in the form of the Constituent Assembly, the work of which was severed for technical reasons in January 1918. It would be reasonable to go back to this now and complete this constituent process that may as well take the form of Constituent Assembly-2 by the upcoming anniversary of the original Constituent Assembly at the end of 2007 and at the beginning of 2008.

The presidential administration is vigorously trying to make it clear that the opposition has no intellectual resources and no concept for development doctrines that could serve as an alternative to the doctrine of slow and inertial death, which is objectively represented by the Kremlin. It is certainly not so. One of our tasks is to show that only the opposition has intellectual resources that are necessary and sufficient for the conceptual formalization of new statehood. And we think there are all reasons to expect the emergence in 2006 of a responsible political entity that will be prepared to assume responsibility for the country and take it over from the existing power-wielding Kremlin corporation. This political entity will have two heads. It will consist of two key elements: one is new law, that is a party of orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality; and the other one is the new left that I would define as an alliance of Leonid Brezhnev and Che Guevara. And the new left will largely legitimize the whole structure in the West. And there will be no room in the structure for pseudo liberal projects of Gaidar and Chubais.

Today, as a result of thoroughly prepared steps of the Russian executive branch, all prerequisites have been created for the emergence of such a political entity: all communication between the federal elite and regional elites has been ruined completely, and they are no longer a guarantee of stability for the current regime; a result of benefit monetization mass criticism has shifted from the government, so to speak from the boyars to the kind tsar, whose role was played until recently by Vladimir Putin. In other words, the main essence of monetization protests in the past month boils down to desacralizing Vladimir Putin and turning him into a rank-and-file participant in the political process, who is as open to criticism as anyone was just yesterday. And this is one of the things that the Kremlin does not understand.

What has happened shows that the inertia-based scenario, on which the Kremlin pins hopes, will not be implemented. They can discuss anything in the public chambers, but it will remind one of discussions on the new Soviet constitution in 1990 in the CPSU grassroots-level organizations. Much the same way as it was back then, big guys will go to regions and say that the Communist Party will not allow this or that. Having suffered a complete fiasco in Ukraine, the near-Kremlin analysts are beginning to talk about what Russia will or will not allow in Ukraine where it has lost everything. But this will have little relation to the real political process because the fate of Russia and its policy will be decided in the next year and a half to two years not by bureaucratic offices and not by the fully degraded, intellectual and morally, ruling elite that claims today to build a long-term vector of Russia's development even though it has no resources for that.

Before I give the floor over to my colleagues, I will say a few more words about the main points of the power model that is offered in the draft constitution. This draft already exists. We haven't released its full text yet because we only want to initiate a broad discussion on the concept and only after that on the text of the new constitution, but the two-headed political entity that will claim power in 2006 and will be quite ready to take this power by the spring of 2007, certainly through the revision of the old Constitution, we put a special emphasis on this, it should certainly have a constitution as one of the key elements of its doctrine of establishing and building a totally new statehood in Russia.

One of the key elements related to the power model is that the supreme power, it is a model of uncrowned monarchy, so to say. The supreme power should be singled out from the political process. The president, to be the bearer of the supreme power, should be above the political process. The president cannot be a party leader or a corporate leader expressing the will and the point of view of one social group.

The main mission of the president, with account of Russian historic traditions, traditions of our statehood, is that the president should form the sacral nucleus of power and act as a guarantor of integrity, meaningful integrity of this national space.

Therefore, we believe that the term of office of such a candidate could be unlimited. The minimal term of office could be seven years, but the presidential election should be announced by the Federal Assembly not necessarily in seven years. This term can be indefinite actually. That is, if the Federal Assembly announces the election, it does take place. If the Federal Assembly does not announce it, the presidential election does not take place.

Moreover, the function of nomination of presidential candidates cannot belong to political entities. A presidential candidate can be nominated either by an incumbent president or one of the chambers of the Federal Assembly or some intercorporate entity, such as one including labor unions and other organizations of that kind. In this sense, the president cannot be an occasional figure. Therefore, there should be a rather rigid set of formal requirements. Ideally, the president should not be elected by a popular vote. A model that is in line with Russia's historic traditions in terms of election of the country's president is, in our opinion, the Zemstvo Assembly.

The president should not deal with the management of the economy, should not take part in the current political struggle. All those functions should be delegated to the cabinet formed by a parliamentary majority, while the parliament itself should be certainly formed on the basis of a general vote by direct secret ballot.

This is the power model we find appropriate in concept terms for the country as a country having imperial nature, as a civilization, as a state for which blossoming complexity is the foundation of foundations. In this sense, a new constitution, a new state model should inevitably let it regain the lost achievements of Russian federalism, get back to the election of regional leaders. It should widen the rights of ethnic territorial units in Russia, including by granting all languages of indigenous ethnic groups of Russia an official status and letting representatives of those ethnic territorial units participate on a wider scale in the formation of federal government bodies -- naturally, this doest not concern the president, in this particular case, as the president is outside the framework and logic of this government system, while remaining the guarantor of stability on this territory, the supreme political arbiter.

We do not believe that the course aimed at sweeping juridical and legal unification on the Russian national space, which President Putin has chosen, is adequate, because the national state doctrine does not call for unification of this sort. There may be rather substantial differences in legislation in various regions of the country. We cannot see anything bad in this approach for the country. If, for example, men are allowed to have several wives in Islamic regions, in line with Islamic traditions, this will only strengthen and cement federalism, this federal state as a blossoming complexity, rather than threaten its integrity. On the contrary, any attempts to unify anything, such as those being made now by some interesting individuals like Dmitry Kozak, a classical Putin bureaucrat who is unable to realize what he is doing, yet is doing this with fervor, ruining and sweeping away everything on his path, including the Russian Federation itself. This is an unproductive approach proceeding from the lack of understanding of where Russia comes from, de facto, rather than in line with the ravings of a madman characterizing some of Kremlin bureaucrats, and their inability to understand where Russia is going.

Thank you. I would like to give the floor to Yuri Solozobov, who will speak about problems of the existing Constitution and the need to deal with them.

Solozobov: Stanislav has mentioned already that the Constitution of the Russian Federation adopted in 1993 is a provisional regulation for a transition period. It was drawn up particularly as such a document. It was prepared hastily. You may recall that after October 1993 its preparation was completed within a month. It was glued from fragments of the American and French Constitutions.

Along with the fact that it was written in a slipshod manner, it was also adopted in the same manner. The problem is not that less than one third of the population of the country voted for its adoption. The problem is that as soon as another political crisis breaks out, this skeleton will be constantly taken out of the cupboard, and people will endlessly accuse the Yeltsin team and all and any successors of that power of illegitimacy of the existing state power.

Besides, in a number of key regions of the Russian Federation such as Chechnya and Tatarstan, the referendum on the 1993 Constitution has not taken place at all. As a result, any attempts by the federal power vertical to establish uniformity of the constitutional law have faced rather correct remarks by the constitutional courts of Yakutia, Bashkiria, Tatarstan -- they said the Constitution of the Russian Federation was in effect in the framework of the limited sovereignty concept. Besides, Tatarstan referred to the fact that the referendum had not taken place there. And everywhere the main argument in favor of the limited sovereignty concept has been the human rights concept of 1948 signed by the Soviet Union and Russia.

Second, analysts at our institute, having analyzed approaches fixed in this Constitution, arrived at the conclusion that this transition regulation pursued three main goals. What are those goals?

First, it is the goal of divorcing the Soviet Union, forming a post-Soviet space. In this case, we see the heritance of the Soviet Constitution in the form of such an empty entity as the multiethnic people. This was almost fully inherited from the Soviet Constitution. This innocent transition has had long-term effects, because this entity proved absolutely empty and meaningless. If we take a look at the preamble, paragraph 3.1 of the Constitution, we can see that there is as if the multiethnic people of power -- that is, there is the ruling consortium and a certain unknown multiethnic people has emerged, which acts on behalf of the power and is the only subject of power, under the Constitution. Such an important segment as the Russian people is not represented in this Constitution. It is negligible in legal terms. It does not exist at all under the current Constitution.

The rights to mineral resources are not realized in this Constitution. Besides, this is a Constitution of a secular state. This is the inheritance of the Soviet Constitution. This is the first specific feature.

Second, this Constitution was intended for carrying out liberal reform, while using authoritarian means. Failures of liberal reform that followed and a wave of protests in connection with the monetization of benefits have shown that this plan has also flopped.

Third, the 1993 Constitution was a transition regulation from the point of view of establishing a center of power. Stanislav has mentioned the American project as such an outside center. But our law analysts, having analyzed the legislative field that goes along with this Constitution, have found that Brussels is the matrix for legislation adopted in line with this Constitution. That is, our bureaucrats have virtually proceeded from the need to harmonize legislation with that of the European Union. It is a different matter that the European Union does not agree to integrate the whole of Russia as an entity that would exist in the EU framework. A statement made by the Constitutional Court Chairman Zorkin during a meeting with Vladimir Putin on the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution serves as an indirect confirmation. He said that the Constitutional Court behaved so well that the Strasbourg Court would not scold them, even though he admitted that the Strasbourg Court was above Russia's Constitutional Court. He thus recognized that our sovereignty is limited.

And another important element of this constitution is that this transition period is coming to an end before our eyes. We are witnessing the borders that emerged within the former Soviet Union are turning into full-fledged state borders. A revolution has occurred in Ukraine. The new Ukrainian government is copying the exact structure of West European governments. It has proclaimed as its priority accession to the European Union. Therefore, the thesis of a Slavic state that will make administrative borders in the former Soviet Union unnecessary and irrelevant is in limbo, just as is Eurasianness that used to be some sort of euphemism in bilateral relations between Russia and Kazakhstan. We used to have the world's longest land border of 7,500 kilometers, absolutely transparent. Now we have carried out the delimitation of the borders, to be followed by their demarcation. The same was done with Uzbekistan, and it led to bloodshed and armed conflicts.

Since the border with Kazakhstan passes only 1,200 kilometers away from the world's largest Samotlor hydrocarbon fields, it becomes clear that this naive stage of administrative borders is coming to an end, as is the 1993 Constitution. In principle, I can speak long about the flaws of this Constitution, but I think that cosmetic measures, like changes in federal laws or additions to the existing Constitution, will not resolve the systemic constitutional and conceptual crisis. I and my colleagues think that this crisis can be resolved only if a new state is created, if new founding principles are adopted that are based on the thousand-old traditions of Russia.

Remizov: I also think that there is no need to concentrate on the systemic flaws of the existing Constitution. It would be much more productive to try to outline them by speaking about our positive vision for a new constitutional system in Russia. But before I do that, I would like to speak in detail about what Stanislav Belkovsky spoke, namely, about the concept of the state.

Before I do that, however, I want to say to Yuri Solozobov that the transitional regulations, and that's what the Constitution was created for, and we should pay tribute to historical justice because these transitional regulations played an important positive role because it reflected the position of Russia between two disintegrations -- the disintegration of the Soviet Union and a possible disintegration of the Russian Federation. But it has not solved the problem of historical integrity and legitimacy of states, but merely put off the solution. And today we are at a road fork so that this constitution either becomes meaningless in the course of political and territorial disintegration or a new fully-fledged state, a historical Russia is created.

Stanislav Alexandrovich has briefly explained why the Russian Federation is not a historical Russia. He attributes this to the fact that the model of the nation-state is conceptually unacceptable. First, I would like to give you a simple political example to show that the model is not workable. This model makes us think of our state as a splinter of the Soviet empire and not as a nucleus of a thousand-year-old state. An example of such an approach is Russia's position on unrecognized states. Russia is proving unable to distinguish between centrifugal and centripetal impulses in the post-Soviet space. It is stuck with the principle of the mechanical status quo and mutual recognition of borders. But this principle does not guarantee sovereignty to anyone in the modern world. In the modern world the status quo and mutual recognition of borders is a very shaky foundation because the world structure is undergoing important tectonic shifts. An imperial boss is emerging in the world who is revising the principles of non-interference. You know what I mean.

What are the main features of the nation state model that is not workable. First, it is a bureaucratic-administrative concept of a nation. Within the nation state model, it is not the nation that creates borders, it is not the nation that guarantees borders, but, on the contrary, the borders create a nation. The nation is created by including people within the jurisdiction of a certain state. This is a colonial principle that was implemented in Africa and that has, unfortunately, been implemented in Russia. The manifestation of that principle is the notorious formula of the multinational people of the Russian Federation which is the totality of the citizens of the Russian Federation which miraculously founds the Russian Federation.

Unfortunately, this tautology underlies the present statehood and it prevents us from being an evolving state that is capable of upholding its sovereignty.

The next point is dependence on international mutual support. A nation and a state always exist as a system. They arise in a system. They arise in the situation of post-imperial Europe. Formerly the imperial center played the role of arbiter which reserved the right to decide whether certain sovereignties were legitimate and whether certain social-state entities were legitimate. In a situation of rejection of that imperial hegemony the nation states created a symmetric international system of mutual recognition which enabled them to guarantee their sovereignty. But they surrendered the key to their sovereignty as it were, to a certain international system. That is very important.

And the third feature is the priority of the Enlightenment principles of the French Revolution. Nation states are like-thinking states that trace their origin to common ideals, the ideals of human rights and liberal democracy. I am not speaking about the profound crisis affecting the system of these ideals because of the post- modernist degradation of Enlightenment, the system of Enlightenment. Suffice it to mention a more tangible, political thing, namely, that the community of ideals is developing into a mechanism of deprivation of sovereignty. Let me remind you of the words of the new US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice which she said several years ago. When criticizing the concept of the multipolar world, she cited the community of ideals. The common values that are shared by all nation states. Today it is becoming an important mechanism, a lever. The matrix of old nation states is becoming meaningless, but it is a fertile environment for building up imperial sovereignty, with precedents springing up before our eyes.

All this boils down to the fact that the model of a nation state includes the principle of limited sovereignty. As for Russia, unfortunately, its sovereignty in the framework of that model is not only limited, but it is a second-rate kind of sovereignty because it is not part of the civilization nucleus of states that link themselves to the French Revolution and Enlightenment.

So, I would say that at this point in time we as a state are users of a licensed product to which the license is held by an external owner. Each time this mechanism misfires or breaks down, each time the system is renewed, the holder of the license, the holder of the civilization standard has the decisive vote. He controls the very criteria of our legitimacy. This is a path of dependent development which in a modern world cannot be anything but underdevelopment.

This is precisely why the Russian Federation has been unable to assert itself as a nation state. As we approach the task of devising a constitution, we must proceed from the assumption that the system of state institutions responsible for sovereignty must, first, be based on internal civilizational standard and second, should be burglar-proof. It should have a means of protecting itself against a Houston court. It means that the basis of constitutional development should be a fundamentally new concept which we call the concept of civilization-state.

In line with the above three parameters it means the following. First, Russia was evolving not as a civil nation, but as a historical project that was implemented by an alliance of peoples of which the Russians were the nucleus.

Second, Russia is part of the international system but it does not depend on it for recognition of its legitimacy and its sovereign status. Secondly, it sees itself as the guarantor of stability in the post-Soviet space, that is, it seeks to form a local international system within which it itself is capable of becoming a legitimizing center.

And thirdly, Russia is not a state that has its roots in the French Revolution, and it is a local civilization. But a clarification is in order here. It is connected with the possible criticism of the concept of local civilizations. It is true that we accept that concept, we believe that local civilizations coexist in the world. They represent in different ways some fundamental principles of the ordering of human life, the relationship between the individual and the world, the individual and society, the individual and God.

Belkovsky: They exist objectively.

Remizov: They exist objectively. And these dominant features of world view exist irrespective of whether or not we are conscious of it. And in my opinion, quality culturologists demonstrate this.

But it is not enough to say it in order to install a strong political language, including the language of international relations. In order to do so it is necessary to take the next step and say that superimposed on this level of organic local civilizations is the level of civilization projects. The level of civilization projects that may be created from various building materials.

For example, the European civilization project, as we can call it today, differs substantially from the historical features of Europe as a local civilization. It is simply a phenomenon of a different order. The European civilization project is secular in principle, it is technocratic, it is technical and individualistic. During the course of its crystallization, huge resources and the possibilities of a different Europe were cast aside, a Europe based on different conservative or social values, because in my view the EU project is basically neo-liberal.

Belkovsky: And by the way, this explains the crisis of the European Union that we are observing, the conflict between old and new Europe which may in a few years time develop into anything, including a disintegration of the whole structure.

Remizov: Yes, in fact Europe claims the souls of other civilizations because it has in a way given up the soul of its own civilization. It is only against a pledge of Europe abdicating itself that Westernizing European projects of other civilizations are possible. But this is debatable and we are not going to delve into that. But the point I want to make now is that Russia has a direct bearing on these unrealized possibilities of another Europe.

Russia has in a certain sense developed the Byzantine legacy throughout its history. Russia as a power was a patron of conservative Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 20th century it was a patron of socialist Europe. We are convinced that in creating its civilizational project, and the time for this has come, Russia must use and is using the huge resources of the other Europe.

This has found a reflection in the theories that we have used in developing the constitutional project and the constitutional principles. Such are the general prerequisites, shall we say, of the concept of state-civilization. Not to trespass on your time and to leave more time for exchanges, I will now briefly sum up the application of this concept to the constitutional principles from which we proceed and which we propose as the basis of a future constitution and a future state order.

The first principle has partly been presented by Stanislav Alexandrovich, let us call it the principle of separating power and management. I would like to stress that it is politically important that unlike a lot of talk about a parliamentary republic that we currently hear, our model is aimed at strengthening supreme power. But only in order to assign to the supreme power the role that it occupies in the Russian political culture, the role of the center of society and even to a degree, the center of the terrestrial world, the role of the guarantor of legal and ethical order. Institutionally it should be raised above management and above political debate.

I would like to stress that it cannot be said that the President is outside politics. Rather, he is a guarantor of politics and is a political subject of the first order, a political subject responsible for the sovereignty of this state as a political organism. All the other political parties, corporations, may act as political subjects of the second order. This is very important because one is impossible without the other.

The status of the head of state need not envisage any limitations on the number of terms. Stanislav Alexandrovich has already cited an example of destructive immersion of the sovereign in the sphere of current management and current debate. Unfortunately, we can all witness it.

Belkovsky: The destruction of Putin, his direct involvement in the monetization of benefits and other --

Remizov: The destruction of Putin as the guarantor of confidence, and as the sole political institution that has existed in the country. Putin personally was the sole political institution that existed in the country and unfortunately he misconstrued the logic of the functioning of that institution.

Belkovsky: Never understood it.

Remizov: That is a psychological question. The principle of the separation of powers is implemented only at the level of the managerial subsystem of society. And I would like to stress that it is very important that the sphere of management, somewhat separate from power and occupying a place beneath power should not be technocratic, as it is now, but should be connected to the mechanisms of public debate. I think this should be guaranteed by the institution of the parliamentary majority government.

Moderator: We should leave some time for questions.

Remizov: Okay, I will just briefly name the main principles.

Belkovsky: We should wait for the seventh principle.

Remizov: And if you get interested in something particular, I will dwell on it in more detail. The second principle, then, is the principle that sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable. The principle of indivisibility is directed against certain interpretations of federalism that assume that the sovereignty of supreme power is the result of such power being delegated by the subjects of the federation. That is not so. Sovereignty is indivisible.

The second principle is inalienability of sovereignty. That principle is aimed against possible supranational integration and supranational control. Slava has already said that the present constitution was created with an eye to a possible, hypothetical integration into the European Union, so, it presupposes supreme jurisdiction instances, higher jurisdiction than the supreme power of a given state.

So, that problem must be solved and the mechanism of its solution should be the premise of supremacy of the constitutional law over international law. Because we will have somehow to harmonize the international treaties already concluded with the founding principles of the new state.

Solozobov: For example, WTO.

Remizov: Second, or rather third, is the principle of the supremacy of civil freedom over human rights. And this brings us to the question of the control of the state-civilization over the criteria of its own legitimacy. The principle of the supremacy of human rights is an element of the Western civilization standard, but this is not the reason why we don't like it. It is not that the concept of human rights is Western and we allegedly do not want to have shared values. Simply, there are some common values that justify the right to interfere and there are common values that rule out the right to interfere.

Our state must be built on common values, universal human values of the latter kind. So, the supremacy of human rights gives rise to doubts, but the need to recognize basic rights is not in doubt. This concept, unfortunately, has a built-in systemic mistake. The mistake consists in that the legitimacy of the state is derived from the basic human rights. Human rights must be respected and recognized, but the meaning of the existence of the state is not reduced to this and the legitimacy of the state is not reduced to this.

Russia won't be able to justify its relevance as a state if it proceeds from that concept. Because it is impossible to explain why the rights of the inhabitants of the Kuriles can only be ensured by Russia and cannot be ensured by Japan given certain guarantees; it is impossible to explain why the basic and inalienable rights of the people of Kaliningrad can only be ensured by Russia and cannot be ensured by Germany, and this only begins the list.

Another aspect of the revision of the principles of human rights, the concept of human rights is connected with its inherent flaw. The Enlightenment concept of natural rights omits one link that is very important for our civilization, and that is religious premises. Human rights are not natural because rights simply don't exist in nature. The only justification of their inalienability are religious ideals of the human individual.

Belkovsky: So, a lion, a wolf or a bear have no rights?

Remizov: The recognition and exercise of inalienable human rights are premised on religious identity of the community. Another aspect of revision is the awareness that this is the minimum included in human rights, a minimum of individual autonomy, that is, freedom from oppression. Freedom from oppression is not the supreme and complete freedom. Standing above this kind of freedom must be a positive concept of freedom. The positive freedom can only be realized in the framework of a civil status, the status of man as a member of a certain political organism or community.

And this brings us to an important difference. The package of civil freedoms includes such an important criterion as the sovereignty of a given state because it is the basis of civil freedom and forms part of a person's identity as a loyal member of the political community.

Civil freedom is an example of the value that is shared with other civilizations that does not justify the right to interference, but expressly rules it out.

The fourth constitutional principle of the state is that peoples are legal subject. The multinational people of the Russian Federation cannot be the founder of the state, as has already been said. In our view, the following should be the formula of national identity in Russia. The source of sovereignty in Russia is the Russian people in alliance with indigenous peoples of Russia.

It is a matter of principle that the alliance is open to all the peoples of the historical Russia. I think the constitution should include the concept of historical Russia harking back to the borders of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire and their common traditions.

I will now just name the remaining principles without spelling them out. The fifth principle is the state as asylum. It is realized in some countries. It means that any Russian, any representative of an indigenous nationality of Russia, any representative of a people that has no homeland outside Russia can obtain Russian citizenship as a mere technicality, that is, he is recognized to be a Russian citizen a priori.

The sixth principle is the development of the institution of associated membership. This is not in the press release. Development of the institution of associated membership reflects the fact that we rule out a scenario of creating multinational bodies. But we must create a sufficiently flexible state structure so that it could integrate the peoples and the elites that are ready for genuine integration. The institution of associated membership refers above all to a state that is not recognized at a given moment.

And the seventh principle is the public status of traditional confessions, the possibility of a concord with traditional confessions that could assume part of the public competence in the socialization of citizens.

Moderator: Thank you. Regarding the press release, I must say that we also have radio and television here and we have to accommodate them too. So, thank you for the detailed explanation. I think that, rather than anticipating, it has provoked more questions. Now for your questions.

Q: BBC. A question for Mr. Belkovsky. Unfortunately, I couldn't make head or tail of what the actual structure of the constitution is to be. Could you elaborate, please? What will the document consist of? You have outlined the concept, but what will it contain, articles, chapters?

Belkovsky: An article can be found for anyone, as we know since the Stalin times. But seriously, the structure of the constitution is fairly standard, and there is no point on dwelling on this.

Q: But this is precisely what I would like to know because the Russian constitution has a structure. Chapter One is about rights and freedoms, then follows the state structure, then transitional provisions. And what will be your structure?

Belkovsky: Our structure? The constitution should first of all define the concept of the state and introduce the concept of the historical Russia. Then, of course, there will be all the provisions on rights and freedoms. But we simply don't want to go into a discussion of the formal aspects and details of the text because that will take us --

Q: But that is what I am asking you to do.

Belkovsky: Well, I am answering your question. I have a human right to respond to your request as I see fit.

Moderator: Under the current constitution.

Belkovsky: Yes, under the current constitution and the next constitution. Because, you see, the formal aspect, where to put a comma and so on, will divert us from the discussion of the concept of the constitution and this is the most important thing now, and from the discussion of the political subject that will be its proponent. The concept of a constitution is a formal and standard thing. The constitution we are talking about begins with a definition of the historical Russia, definition of the concept of the state, that is, the state to which that constitution belongs. Then follow the rights and freedoms and everything you are speaking about.

Q: Because we are not dealing with the text of the constitution, but only with the ideology, I have an ideological question. This project has obviously an isolationist character.

Well, isolation cannot be absolute. How would you describe the limits of this isolationism?

Belkovsky: It is not about isolationism, it is about self- identification. We must determine what kind of state we are. Are we a state at all, because from the point of view of Russia's integration into some kind of civilized world community that has been preached since 1991 without a clear definition of the civilized world community, are such ancient civilizations as India and China part of that community or are they accidental phenomena which are about to be integrated into a far more civilized, reasonable and beautiful world community? It is impossible for a state to identify itself because individuals, natural persons, for example, Roman Abramovich, are quite happily becoming integrated into this community, buying Chelsea and so on, while the rest of the Russian population can follow its own path into the Arctic Ocean and vanish not to impede the civilized world community in its integration quest.

So, it is very important to understand whether our civilization is a value of the state. The civilization that exists objectively. It has not been invented by historians, just like other civilizations. So, it is not about isolationism, it is just about whether we exist or not. And this was what the revolution in Ukraine was all about. Yes, it is primary self-identification, the first step toward creating its own political nation. Yes, whether we exist or not. And as to how we differ from the others is a question that every individual answers upon reaching a certain age. It is a question that Russia must answer after it reaches a certain age after the disintegration of the USSR.

Remizov: Just a small addition of a substantive nature. It is isolationism only in one sense, in the sense that we intend to put a barrier in the way of the imperial ideology of interference. Perhaps, the implication of that question is that the very attempt to put a barrier in the way of imperial ideology of interference will lead us to de facto international isolation? I hope this is not so. Why? Because it is wrong to divide the world into the center and the periphery. Along with the center and the periphery there exists a very important link of what might be called semi-periphery or the second world.

The second world are the states that can be economically self- sufficient, that are big enough and have their historical traditions of statehood and that are interested in taking on board the model of state-civilization. The state that rules out, on the one hand, external interference, that is based on its own civilizational standard and that on the other hand has a fairly flexible internal structure.

So, Russia's political allies in implementing that project will certainly be the countries of the second world such as Latin America which seeks civilizational meta-national integration and countries such as India.

Belkovsky: Brazil, China.

Remizov: Yes, India and Brazil. So, if we can build that model, it will be not our project, but it will be a model for getting out of the crisis. For Russia to be a world power means to demonstrate that it is possible to be a sovereign power. That would suffice.

Q: You began by saying that the Kremlin is beginning to think or work on a new constitution. Who is working on it, what is the current status of the work, what is the goal and are you involved in this work, and may this result in a change in the term of presidency? And could you repeat when the new constitution is expected to be approved?

Belkovsky: The President's administration has no idea as to what kind of constitution there must be. There is only the understanding that the existing Constitution won't do, that we need a new one. There are many people in President Putin's team who believe that he should stay in power after 2008, for example, through transformation towards a parliamentary republic.

I find this scenario absolutely fantastic, first, because Vladimir Putin himself wants to no longer be responsible for the country after 2008. Naturally he would be glad to retain levers of influence on his successor, and a very dull and manageable figure is considered as a successor, such as Boris Gryzlov, but he would rather no longer be responsible for anything and would stay outside this political economic space, outside the system of responsibility.

I think that four or five drafts will be prepared in the Kremlin and around it in the near future, but they will all not mean more than -- drawing an analogy with the Soviet Union again -- than any projects calling for transformation of the Soviet Union, which existed in 1989 and 1990. It's just that there exist historic preconditions for the abolition of the existing regime, rather than for extending its existence. The regime does not have intellectual or moral or personnel potential to survive 2007, not 2008.

Q: What makes you think that Vladimir Putin does not want to stay in power after 2008? In connection with your proposals concerning a new Constitution, what is being done now -- the President's representative functions, relations between the center and regions, I mean governors -- is this being done for two or three years again?

Belkovsky: Yes, certainly.

Q: (off mike) ... he does not want to stay in power?

Belkovsky: Well, I have been Vladimir Putin's biographer throughout most of my life. I have studied any materials about him, any statements by eyewitnesses, evidence of all sorts.

Q: He personally... (off mike)...

Belkovsky: No, he has not told me personally. He must have been shy. I believe that Putin is an individual who regards power as a very heavy responsibility. He was brought to power in 1999 not on a tank. He has not seized power. It was handed to him by individuals who decided that in psychological terms, Putin is a figure who could best guarantee their interests, because he does not have leader qualities. Those individuals were Roman Abramovich, Tatyana Dyachenko and Valentin Yumashev. And we can see that any political crisis dumbfounds Putin, be it the Kursk submarine, Nord Ost, Beslan or any other thing. We have never seen Putin in public at such moments, even though such moments give any leader a chance to show his qualifies as a leader.

So, Putin wants to retain his influence and have absolute guarantees for his property, economic interests after 2008. Naturally, he does not intend to go away from the arena.

But the burden of power is virtually intolerable for him. Perhaps, some individuals in his inner circle perceive the current reality under Putin as endless. They cannot see historic processes. They cannot think in historic terms at all. They find that it is enough to have a direct phone line and the right to sign documents and they can sit there for 50, 70, 80 years and divide something. But they do not understand that history is not made this way. They are different processes.

Yes, they would like Putin to stay in power. But even the inner circle, Putin's bureaucracy tend to become catastrophically displeased with Putin because any individual who is not involved in the sharing of financial flows of natural monopolies, who deals with real crises in real situations, be it at the federal or regional levels, realize that Putin's power machinery is not just catastrophically ineffective, it is approaching a stage of real disintegration.

This explains why the views of Putin and many those in his inner circle coincide in many respects. They agree in general that it is time for Vladimir Putin to have a rest.

As for relationships between the center and regions, we have warned that this will not lead anywhere, this can only lead to the loss by regional authorities of their role as a social buffer softening discontent with the federal authorities. The first social crisis has shown this. Therefore it is clear that this reform will not for long. Thank you.

Q: Could you expand on the political entity, the double-headed entity, which will be born next year? Perhaps, I have misunderstood something.

Belkovsky: It is possible to say that there will be two centers of that political entity -- the right and left ones. But the right one will not be as we understood it in the 1990s. It will be a conservative right entity. Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, and today's Motherland will make its nucleus in some or other form. Some segments of the Communist Party, other parties will also join it. But we should not focus on existing parties, because it will be an entity that will not be linked with the existing party system.

It is important to understand that no formal procedure can be an effective regulator for this entity. Ukraine's experience tells us that an entity that was not registered, the Maidan, played the decisive part in the transfer of power., This will also be the case in Russia. This is the logic of historic transformation.

The other entity will be the new left. This will certainly be a party of social justice, a Soviet-style party of modernization, but it will not rely on Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, so to say. It has yet to be formed from segments and organizations which are outside the political sphere today, from broad layers of the sub- elite, that is, from people who by level of their development deserve the right to govern the country. There are lots of such people in Russia, because there can always been lots of talents in Russia. They are now totally excluded from the political process for that reason that they do not belong to any clans which, in line with the logic of Putin's statehood, have exclusive right to take part in the political process. The leader of those new left has yet to emerge. But I believe that we know the potential leaders of the new right and the new left forces. Still, it would be premature to publish their names. This synthetic political entity will emerge from this broth.

Q: Does this mean that the Kremlin will promote the emergence of a new party the way it promoted the emergence of the United Russia party?

Belkovsky: The Kremlin will promote anything. The level of intellectual degradation in the Kremlin today is disastrous. It is similar to the level of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee in 1990. The Kremlin cannot give birth to anything. And they main thing is that we should forget that the Kremlin will try to do something. Let it first try to win the election in the Nenetsk okrug, let alone Ukraine. If they manage to do this, let them engage in party construction.

Q: You have spoken about the social nucleus of the Russian power. The record of its emergence is well know, as well as the concept of power. But power should be granted by the people. So, in your opinion, who should bless the authorities in Russia? God or the people?

Belkovsky: Undoubtedly, God. That's simple. Power vested by the people is a pure legal formality which we cannot avoid. But when the power was deconsecrated in Russia, it fell into a period of disintegration and bloodletting. This was the case in 1917, this was the case in 1991. So, if we want to avoid great shocks which would hit all of us present here first and foremost, the representatives of the middle class, we should do everything possible for the sacral nature of his power nucleus to be restored, for the people to have no doubt that the supreme power cannot be blamed. But for this to be done, it should be totally moved out of the sphere of economic and social policies.

Q: In what way will it be sanctified? The hierarch of the Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Synod does this with the emperor, but in what way will this be done with respect to the President? Should all traditional religions have their say or will there be any other mechanisms for that?

Belkovsky: This is a Constituent Assembly mechanism. Actually, after this happens it will be the Zemstvo Assembly, in which representatives of all religious confessions will be represented. The authority of the Constituent Assembly, from the sacral point of view, is relative, but we proceed from the assumption that it will be unconditional at the moment it is held.

Remezov: Let me add briefly. The thing is that the concept of God blessed power and the concept of sovereignty of the people do not contradict each other. In Europe in the middle ages they coexisted quite well. In this case, if one interprets your question in a radical way, not just as a method for doing this, the people as a sovereign will certainly give the crown.

Q: Then the next question: What should be our attitude to the experience of the Reich, when they gave the crown to Hitler?

Remezov: He wasn't given the crown.

Q: But he ruled Germany for 12 years.

Remezov: The Reich experience is very unsuccessful for a number of other reasons.

Belkovsky: Well, we are discussing other things now. The Reich will, perhaps, be the topic for our next press conference.

Q: What mechanism could be used for convening the Constituent Assembly? What other groups will be represented, along with religious associations?

Belkovsky: Social corporations will be represented there, from labor unions to creative unions. We do not know this mechanism in detail today. To a great measure it will depend on the configuration of that responsible political entity which will assume responsibility for the country in the coming two years. The mechanism itself is not part of the Constitution. It should be elaborated as the historic day approaches. We still have about a year and a half to deal with that.

Q: Given that your plan is rather revolutionary, why have not you consider the possibility of making numerous amendments to the existing Constitution? Why do you insist that there should be a new Constitution?

Belkovsky: The reason is that the constituent process is important here. We believe that the current political and economic elite has exhausted itself. The concept of the Russian Federation we have spoken about has also used up its potential. Therefore we need a process of instituting a new state, a process of radical modernization of the political elite. Simply speaking, we need to replace it. No amendment to the Constitution can ensure any of those. This would be just a way to preserve the existing order.

Solozobov: Suffice it to take a look at the post-Soviet space to understand that the idea of changing the political regime by shifting to a parliamentary republic has been purposefully realized in Ukraine, and they have also adopted relevant legislation in Kyrgyzia.

Belkovsky: Yes, attempts have been made to do this.

Solozobov: Attempts have been made, and they are forming the National Committee for Election Democracy in Kazakhstan. The mechanism and technology is the same everywhere: they have tried to establish a parliamentary republic, to have some unpopular successor elected to be able to extend the power of the incumbent leader, at new functions.

Not long ago a good man, the country's president, died somewhere in Africa, in Togo. He failed to complete his term of office, and they named his son as his successor. The parliament voted for that. They said that he would stay in office for two or three years until his father died. Why not? But such things disrupt the legitimacy of existing power.

Just imagine that a constitutional majority in our Federal Assembly would have extended Putin's term of office a year ago and they would have voted for that after the monetization of benefits. We are witnessing the degradation of the power institute, of the executive and legislative branches of power. It's legitimacy tends to decline. Therefore, any attempts, as Stanislav has said, have been quite unsuccessful. They faced opposition such as the revolution in Ukraine. They have now faced strong resistance of the future tulip revolution in Kyrgyzia. Non one can predict what will happen in Kazakhstan. Let us wait and see. They have tried to move the date of presidential election to December 2005. But there also are opposition plans.

So, this is not an attempt of fake bankruptcy. This is not an attempt to form a certain limited liability company, Russia-2007, for instance, and get hold of assets. It is an attempt to establish a new state on the principles accepted by a majority of the people which would allow restoring our traditions having existed for a thousand years. This is important.

Belkovsky: As for legitimacy, the Russian authorities, like the previous authorities in Ukraine, have no clear idea of what legitimacy means. They have been overburdened by three types of insanity. First, it is juridical insanity. They believe that if something is written on a paper and sealed, this is reality.

If it is fixed on a paper that Yanukovich is the winner by a 3 percent margin, he is the winner. But then a revolution breaks out and everyone forgets the paper. But this process can be explained in terms of juridical insanity: Why? There is a paper with a seal.

The second type is statistical insanity, whose bright example we could see a couple of weeks ago when Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the people, as it turned out, favored monetization of benefits because just 2.5 percent of pensioners took to the streets, which means that the rest 97.5 percent supported monetization.

The third type is economic insanity. There is a certain set of parameters indicative of the country's development. If they are observed, they believe that everything is good. For example, our GDP was up 6.1 percent. But they are not concerned about the fact that we have virtually lost fundamental research and a certain share of the population has died out. The main thing for them is to say that a "Laurence-Laurence coefficient" has grown and everything is perfect.

This is the main problem of the current authorities, as they cannot be transformed from inside. It is impossible to add a new brain to those authorities. It is necessary to radically replace the elite.

Remezov: Briefly about the difference of an amendment mechanism and the adoption of a new Constitution. The answer is simple. A package of amendments is a bureaucratic procedure. Establishing a new constitutional system is a procedure in which everyone is involved, including analysts and journalists who are present here. This is a process which allows mobilizing society's intellectual resources outside the state machinery. This is a big difference. This is the sense of this event, at least partially.

Q: Stanislav, you have drawn an analogy between the Kremlin in 1990 and in 2005. You have said that the intellectual weakness of the party apparatus in 1990 made it possible to accomplish reform in 1991 and 1993 --

Belkovsky: And has led to a revolution.

Q: But along with that -- perhaps it was a side effect or the main goal, I don't know -- the state disintegrated. Cannot it happen that the creation of a new Constitution will serve as a catalyst for the dismantlement of the Russian Federation?

Belkovsky: The authorities' moves have served as a catalyst. The disintegration of any state is not always caused by external factors. For that reason I find funny the statements that the United States accomplished revolution in Ukraine. I was in the heat of events there and I can tell you that the United States actually prevented the most radical events in this revolution such as the storming of the presidential administration on November 23 and of the cabinet building on November 30. I have no doubt that both would have been successful. Their guards were ready to leave or shift sides and join the people.

But it was important for the United States to have other sources of legitimacy for the new power, than the revolution. For that reason they prevented those moves. When people say today that wise Yushchenko won it all in the Supreme Court, they forget that there would have been no Supreme Court meeting had there been no real threat that the people would seize administrative buildings.

Revolutions always happen for internal reasons, the degradation of the ruling elite and crisis of national planning -- that is the loss of understanding of where the country moves -- being the most important ones among them. This was the case in the Soviet Union which stopped building communism, while having failed to start building anything new.. For that reason, constituent republics immediately realized that staying in the fold of that state would be senseless for them. Why? They can join NATO and do without Russia or they can join other organizations without Moscow. So, it was absolute degradation of the ruling elite. Its most important function is creating models for everyone, but today we see Alexei Miller or Dmitry Medvedev as such models. Does anyone intend to follow them? This would mean having no respect for oneself.

So, this problem objectively exists in Russia. The goal of a new Constitution and constituent process is break the trend and mobilizing resources existing in the Russian sub-elite to be able to bring the nation together and prevent the country's disintegration. Thank you.