or is it going to go someplace else that we might find very unpleasant? >> security consultant who works for certain government agencies can buy the information and work out what your preferences are and it might get used as part of an investigation in ways that are not appropriate. >> how paranoid should we be? >> that is -- i think we need to demand transparency and accountability and we need to be aware. ..

this excellent talk and discussion. [applause] >> thank you also members of the audience for your questions and attention. i like to remind you that rebecca's book is available for sale or is it inc. and she'll be of able to sign copies right over there. thanks very much.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> for more information visit the office website, consentofthenetworked.com. >> on april 11, u.s. 11, the u.s. department of justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against apple and book publishers macmillan >> up next on booktv, masha gessen, a journalist based in moscow, talks about the rise and

continued influence of vladimir putin and russia. this is about an hour. >> thank you for the amazing introduction. i have to stand on a little box to reach this. i'm going to read from the epilogue to the book, which i was actually incredibly lucky to have been able to get in the book in the last minute. because otherwise it would outdated the moment it came out. the book is all different in tone, much more personal than the rest of the book. but i like it, and so i'm going to read from it. this is called a week in the summer. saturday, december 3. i am driving my family to see american economy in central

moscow. snow is late this year. the city feels like it is in plunged into prominent white darkness. excess of light on the gardening, the road that circles the city's center does little to change it and. i am struck by a giant illuminated structure. one might call it a post or billboard but neither description would do justice to the scale. it sits atop a two-story building from the century and it appears taller than the building. it is backlit and also eliminate brightly around the edges, sort of king kong photoframe. inside the frame, putin and medvedev, one wearing a red tie and another blue. look past each other over a giant caption. united russia, together we will win. tomorrow is the parliamentary election. that makes today by law atheists on. meaning any and all campaign is banned outdoor advertising include. i pulled over at the

intersection to take a picture of the monstrosity with my cell phone and uploaded to facebook. within an hour the picture click 17 comments, no world record but more reaction i expected on a saturday night. even more surprising, those commenting are not my usual gang of politically engaged friends. pigs. you think would've seen worse but still makes you want to throw up. i have not voted in a parliamentary election from and a dozen is because putin laws rendered in elections meaningless. political party could no longer get on the ballot without the kremlin's approval. members of parliament were no moderate elected directly, and the results were big but election officials anyway. but a couple of months ago when a group of well-known liberal writers, artists, and political activist called on people to go to the polls and write an obscenity on the ballot by criticizing the idea online as a losing tactic. the government had made a mockery of the elections but i argue cannot outfox them.

what we knew what a meaningful alternative to the mockery like perhaps a reason to vote. in the back and forth the following the publication of the people chimed in with reasons to go to the polls. first to make sure the party, how the ruling party is known, did not vote in your name. second, to build one of the party opposition parties on the ballot so that putin's united russia did not win a constitutional majority in parliament. amazingly these geeky extrication's went viral. having written her dissertation on elections my girlfriend woke up the other day and asked me, did i dream it or do you say you're going to vote? yes, i am going to vote. why? i can't quite explain it but i feel something is afoot. i said this because over the last few days i've had several discussions with my friends who are also going to vote. we've been trying to decide which party to pick. thousands of people employed a number of my friends have registered as volunteer officers

are either on their own or as part of an effort called citizen observer, organized by a scientist. we'll be spending tomorrow at the polls. people will be discussing the picture of putin. sunday december 4, i go to the polls a half-hour before the close as the geeks told me to do. so that i can catch the election thieves red-handed if they've already use my name to vote. but no, neither i nor my 91 years grandmother registered at the same address as voted. nor do i observe any other violations. i cast my vote uneventfully, photographic, posted to facebo facebook, and go to a former colleague's 40th birthday party to it is a mixed crowd. book publishing people, journals, designers and at least one manufacturer.

everyone is talking about the election. thirtysomethings coming to cling i voted for the first time in my life. after a while it gets predictable that anyone who reached lake maggiore after putin came to power will utterly disgraced within minutes of walking to the door. a couple of guests who worked as observers regaled us with tales of violation that young people who are paid to hide prepared ballots under their clothing and slipped in and along with their own, election officials to remove observers once the counting begin. tomorrow we will find out that many officials simply forged their final tally with regard -- no regard to the actual ballots. what is new is the backward talk about all this at a party late in the night, and that we all voted. and something else, to pick the election observers tell us their fellow observers include a schoolteacher, businessman's wife arrived in a range rover, under the people who are not like us.

some thing has shifted. what you think will take for people to take to the streets, vladimir, a smart young leader asks those gathered in the kitchen? i'm not sure, i say that but if you like something isn't there. monday, december 5, driving the kids to school as a century ports of partial returns on the radio. united russia supposedly has just under 50% of the vote. i know this is not an accurate figure but it is considerably lower than the falsified results of the previous election when the united russia supposedly got 66%. perhaps this time the two numbers are so low that some local election officials felt he could take the light only so far. as i will also find that later today, some resisted altogether the pressure to cook the numbers. citizen observers 500 election

observers post a 170 precincts in moscow saw no major violations of voting procedures, but at 36 of them. when the result of those precinct were tallied united russia came in second with just over 20% of the, during the communist party. assuming this was represented, it would appear the official count more than doubled everyone to citizen observer also of course that for now% of eligible voters took part, far more than in any other recent russian election. i plan to go to a party. i do not want to. the way it works now, anyone planning to stage any kind of public rally or demonstration has to notify the authorities 10 to 15 days in advance to the city can deny permission for specific location at a specific number of participants. if permission is denied by the demonstration goes on, participants are likely to be arrested and roughed up in the process. if permission is granted the police set up court and market a

space for the expected number of participants and metal detectors at the perimeter. protesters have to undergo sometimes an unpleasant search procedure and then hold their rallies behind the please court and quite literally talking to himself but i dislike the gatherings even more than the illegal ones but even though i feel like i must go. this is one of those times the my friend instant messages me with a quote from today's new time article in the russian election. anna, who i met in kosovo, now lives in the hague. democracy is an action. she adds, if it wasn't so sad it would be quite funny. yeah, i respond to something is afoot but it isn't going anywhere. i go to the process. it is still unseasonably warm for moscow which means it is cold and miserable. temperature around freezing and pouring rain. who is going to break this kind of weather to fight the homeless fight for democracy?

everyone. at least everyone i know. i am approached the park with a protest is led to take place with two friends, and as we walk people attached to her small, two of my former reporters, the one she took turns calling him from the scene of the siege disaster nine years ago. one is now a radical art activist and has spent a fair amount of time into. the other recently quit his editorial job in a dispute over pre-election censure. he had been instructed to exclude critical articles. as we draw closer, we can even make up the metal detectors from the crowd. then word spread, the cordon office area has filled the. the police will not be letting anyone do. this means there are at least 500 people in the park, and that by contemporary moscow standards issued. we are walking along the street looking in over a low fence. there are not hundreds but thousands of people in the park. will find itself in an informal

setting. parked along the street our buses that brought the police here and waiting prison transport vehicles. we are blocking traffic, they will detain us. the police looked on in different as about a dozen of us going over the fence to join the demonstrators. the rain keeps coming. my hair is soaked and my feet feel like they're about to fall. i'm happy to be standing there freezing and embassy saying hello to friends if hearing from every direction. they are comes by then the photographer with whom i traveled the world that in the 1990s. they're arriving separately is his son, a college sophomore or in a year the soviet union collapsed. and now my editor more than 15 years ago. remember how we used to count the number of people at a demonstration in the '90s by mentally breaking the crowd into quadrants? i can't do it anymore. neither can i. i cannot remember the technique nor can i distinguish anything in the crowd in the rain in the dark. but i'm certain they're more

than 5000 people, estimates range up to 10,000 that makes this the largest protest in russia since the early 1990s. as the rally breaks up i invited her to my apartment with -- which is just down the block. the march is clearly legal and i fear they will be arrested. indeed, there will be about 300 arrests and it would be violence. but there was something else. in about an hour when i'm cooking a late supper in my apartment still trying to warm up, andre has just pulled his two younger brothers out of a prison vehicle. to others will be out my apartment embellishing the story of the prisoners rescued as they tell and retell it. i think i have seen this before. this is the moment the fearless, someone enters a prisoner transport vehicle to rescue his brothers and the police in riot

gear moved aside and letting but it is a tiny move of great change. the young men each. i'm going to fast-forward a couple couple of days. from monday to the following saturday. saturday december 10, driving in from where the children were, i listen to the radio. so what if 35,000 people have stayed on facebook they will go? i have heard of people getting 700 facebook rsvp for party and not a single actual guest. it is the weekend after all the people will be freezing, will be feeling lazy. they will want to sleep in our state home and go figure someone else will go to the protest. as i get closer to bolotnaya square i see people flowing through from every direction but in groups and couples alone, young, old, middle-aged. people wearing white ribbons, white scarves, white hats,

caring why pollute the white carnations but it still has not stowed so the white that they wear and kerry has to come to see. i meet up with a group of friends. at the metal detector the police are calm and polite. inside would wander into the square, scanning for from the faces. at monday's protest i knew everyone was there because i could see them all. today i know that they are all here because i cannot see them for the current. the volume exceeds the capacity. we talk at homemade banners people have brought. one features the official results of the senate election committee overlaid with a banner that tells the real story. we don't trust you, we trust others, referring to the mathematician who gave the world the bell curve. i did not vote for these apples claims another dedicated by a

young man. i voted for the other assholes. i demand a recount. [laughter] there are so many people here a young man shouts into the cell phone, and they are all normal. i've heard like a million jokes and they are all funny. if you've spent years feeling as if your views were shared by only a few of your closest friends, being surrounded by tens of thousands of like-minded people feels like hearing a million funny jokes all at once. summer in the distance is a stage. i cannot see it but i can hardly any of the speakers. one of my friends removes a trick from the early 1990s when people would bring portable radios to rally and use them to listen. she turns on the radio and her cell phone, cellular service may be overtaxed by the square features free wireless. we look around and occasion join in chance. new election, freedom, russia without putin. the speakers include the best selling writer, he made from the

south of france in time, the well loved long blacklisted television anchor and assorted actress. her father speaks about election fraud. they have not yet gotten the message that power has shifted away from the criminal. and anticorruption blogger is still in jail. switcher lets read his address to the protester. the billion who suspended his political career to much ago is still silent. on monday will announce his running for president, but by then it will be too late to win credential with the revolution credit he will be branded. im wearing thermal underwear, two jackets and boots. there's no way to stand still and russian winter. after couple of hours we decide to lead. of the people are still arriving. walking away from the protest i stopped on tape edition bridge to look back at the crowd. there are a lot more than 35,000

people. later us with the range as high as 150,000. we take a large table at a restaurant. friends and strangers are shedding the latest is across tables. on to is the first read a couple of lines from your website. the protest is drawing to a close. police represented has mounted the stage and he said, today we acted like bullies of a democratic country, thank you. there's applause. at our table but a momentary silence. this is great, all of us start saying and looking at one another. this is great. how long has it been since in of us was able to say unequivocally this is great about something happening in our city? i leave my friends at the restaurant returned to my family. i tried over the big stone bridge, the largest bridge over the moscow river just as the police leave bolotnaya square. there are hundreds upon hundreds of them.

moving along the sidewalks the length of the bridge. for the first time i can remember, i do not getting not in my stomach looking at police in a riot gear. i am stuck behind a truck with a snowplow. i am not sure what the truck is doing out industry but i noticed a white balloon tied to the corner of the plot. in the evening putin's press secretary told journalists the government has no comment on the protest and promised to let them know if a comment is formulated. a few minutes later i'm at the television station taken away from vladimir putin 10 years ago and is an accident report on the protest. i watch it online, it's been years since i had a working television and now, and a recognize something i've observed in other countries when i covered the revolution. there comes a day when you turn on the television and the very same goons who are spouting proposition -- propaganda at you

yesterday, against the very same backdrop start speaking human linkage but in this case though this woman gives my head an extra spin because i can still never these journalists before they became goons. as i approach it it starts to snow. five more inside the countryside will be covered with white. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. [inaudible] today is march 8. march 10 looks to be a major rallying time. could you speak about some of your anticipation regarding that?

>> i wish i were there. that's my strongest feeling about it. i'm worried, because what putin clear he thinks is that the election on march 4 was his final argument with the protesters. he expects, first of all, he expects the protesters all. and it it doesn't dissolve that i think he expects the police to break up the demonstrations. even though the demonstrations on march 10 is legal, whether there was a legal demonstration and march to, which was brutally broken up towards the end. so that's part of my conservative the part of my concern is i am worried some people have been very demoralized by the election on sunday. it's sort of we didn't expect any better but is still

depressing. >> okay. any questioners from the audience? okay, we will come back around again. i have a bundle of them myself. i wonder if you could talk a little bit, too, about the making of this book, and actually the timing of it. because indeed you have been working on this for a while. you haven't completely anticipated that you would be segueing so simply and eloquently with the timing of an election. >> well, actually the book's publication was planned for the election. we just didn't realize it would be such an influential election. ism code would run for election again this year. this was a clear when the book was scheduled. so that assumption proved correct but i did not count on

the protests. >> all right. one thing i meant to ask you before, and this is slightly off-topic, but i wonder if you would care to comment about the odd cultural organization that we have encountered around your called -- >> or do you want to just set that aside? >> i would like to set that aside, thank you. >> are a. question here, and if you can just -- they will get a microphone around to you. [inaudible] >> i just read a book about the russian revolution, and it appeared from the book that it was the bolsheviks that were the solidifying force that completed that revolution. the czar was the enemy but there was that political force.

do you see the possibility of some political force coalescing in russia that would indeed change the situation where at least it would be, a democratic country? >> it's a little early to talk about political force because we don't yet have a political space in which this force could exist. what has happened over the last 12 years is about all democratic constitutions have been destroyed, the media has been taken over by the state, and there's been no public conversation. so as a result there are no politicians. so what we need is a transitional government for at least a year or two, after putin leaves and before real elections can actually take place. now, that was needed in 1917 as well that didn't end so well. the transitional period began in february but by october the

bolsheviks revolution had occurred. >> a question here and in another one slightly further back. >> what's the relationship between the police and the fsb and the point my question is, how far do you think the police will go, going forward in calling for protests to? the police and fsb are two independent agencies. the fsb, unlike the soviet kgb, does not have a sizable armed force of its own. so putin will have to rely on the police and the interior troops, which are part of the same ministry but separate agency from the police, in order to quell the demonstration. he clearly doesn't trust the police and moscow and st. petersburg square. they've given every indication of being too cooperative with the protesters, and the last

weekend interior troops were brought in to control moscow, because moscow police are not trusted. so when he the interior troops to come over to our side as we well. >> and follow-up question the are you worried about her own safety when you go back to? >> i worry sometimes. i mean, i don't want to overstate it because there are people, and the people i know, who have actually been really attacked and threatened in the last couple of years, and i'm not one of them. >> do you think the protesters might at some point turned violent at one point x. in one

of the protests he was speaking in front of, threatened to take the kremlin, you know, we have enough people to take it. >> all this rhetoric has a way of getting away from him. and i think it was very clear that he didn't, he couldn't believe he was saying what he was saying, and he was rather remorseful afterwards. there's always that risk, and certainly one thing that has happened, a woman has been radicalized, significantly just sense beginning three months ago. too much for people come out for fair elections and it was very clear during the first large protest that are described that happen on a summer camp that they're a lot more people who are willing to chance along with reelection or new elections and people who are willing to chance

along with down with putin. then putin made his remark that white ribbons of the protesters reminded of condoms, and you could just feel the mood change. and at the next protests on december 24, they were just as many people who are willing to shout down with putin as the were people who were just coming out for fair elections. that process of radicalization is continuing, and the brazenly in which the election was stolen on march 4 is certainly contribute to that. and even though the movement has been consistently peaceful and that's always ever talk about is using peaceful tactics, i worry that i may be under as many sort of the radical potential along the very many young people who are involved in the movement,

whose stations have started running out. >> what do these protesters expect to involve the united states government, the obama administration has a poor track record when it comes to providing at least a vocal support to protest movements in other countries. so what could they possibly expect from the u.s. government today? >> nothing. but actually, it's -- putin has accused the movement of being funded by the state department, which is not true. the protest movement is funded completely domestically. i've covered protest movements that were funded by the state department. this is not one of them. at this point is extremely

important for the protest movements credibility to be perceived as domestically grown and domestically funded. so, in fact, i don't see we need to train the government to do or to say anything in the foreseeable future. >> i notice your use of social media when you're talking about your epilogue. has that changed how communication between groups are going? and is that limited to the cities, because that's where most of the wi-fi might be? and have even disappointed or pleased with how news media across the world has reacted to the russian citizens, meetings, and has that the nature and accurate representation, in your

view? >> social media, first of all, the city's question, right? russia is an urban country. rush is limited to the cities. statistically russia is 80% urban but, in fact, the rural population is so dispersed and so for the most part either older or in a drunken stupor, unfortunate view. mostly people live where there's broadband internet at this point. social media is important as a tool, but i think, you know, there's this romantic notion that social need to create something where nothing existed before. that doesn't happen. it helps people connect to our already connected to it helps make those connections more efficient and more effective.

but it can't create connections where they didn't exist before, and that has been one of russia's problems with the destruction, the systematic destruction of public space that has occurred over the last 12 years. information hasn't been flowing. so people have wanted apparently to break through the information barriers. and that's where special media came in handy. again, your second question was? [inaudible] >> right, the news media around the world. i have been happy that the press has covered widely and has taken very seriously, which i think is largely further consequence of the recent example of arab spring. but i think a lot of the reporting has been lazy and traffic stereotypes that have no

relationship to really. the most destructive of those stereotypes is the middle-class revolution, which is actually a stereotype advanced by the clinton. this was the kremlin's first reaction to the protest, not putin himself but has been right hand man who said this is a protest of irritated urbanites. and, in fact, it's not a protest of irritated urbanites, unless you count the fact that all of us are urbanites. is a really broad-based movement than surveys have shown, that involves people of all income levels, all education levels. a sickly people of working age all over the place. and there's also this stereotype that the protest movement is limited to the two capitals, moscow and st. petersburg, which is not altered. as i said, there's a protest in 99 russian cities in the center. that number went down by couple by february because i stopped

getting permits. so they took things like stage protests. unlike some pictures of the people put out some toys and place little tiny banners in their toy arms him and planted them on the lawn in front of city hall, which had denied them permission to demonstrate. so since then the one city band toys protests. [laughter] there's also, the example of the town, another town, when i say 99 cities, right, russia actually is very few large city. that are only about a dozen truly large cities. the rest are small towns. there are places like that down a couple miles outside of russia, really backwater town

because moscow sucks at everything. from this 10 to 120 people came out to protest. in a town like that come these people expect to be personally known by the people who pass them on the street. so this is either extreme courage or extreme confidence that the sentiment is shared by the people around them. >> i believe there is a questioner over here and then we will come around to the gentlemen here. >> you might have answered this but i was going to ask if you could speak about the people of the interior. the ones who are willing to be bussed in to show support for putin and the ones who don't join the protest, and what is their mood or what their motivation? >> what is there what? >> their mood or their motivation, or what do they want to? >> well, that's actually a great

big potential army of protesters. because these are mostly people who have been forced to take part in these pro-putin rallies, or putin gate, as we call them. they are state employees, or they are students, college students at state universities. and they've been threatened with expulsion or with firing if they don't take part. so reports from the pro-putin rally, the victory rally, just outside red square in moscow on sunday were that at one point trying to break through the court and to get out of the rally. at one point they did break through and a large group of them just headed for the subway to leave. so i think the general mood is

that they been humiliated and forced to do something against their will, and this is an extremely short sighted strate strategy. >> i have two questions. one about russian billionaire, prokhorov. based on your knowledge and experience, what do you think in the current circumstances how far he is able to go to become an independent politician? what is your feeling about him? that's one question. and the other question might be even more difficult, if how long putin spar may last in the country? >> that's an easy -- a few months to a couple of years. not more, i think. but prokhorov, prokhorov is

interesting. he is an example of the russian superrich who have been can each of whom have been personally humiliated by putin, and prokhorov is a very good example of that. he was asked to get into politics last year, asked by the kremlin, to take over this dormant right liberal party. and this is sort of the standard kremlin practice, to get some parties together for puppet election, and then sort of let them lie dormant for a while, and then breathe new life into them just in time for the next election. so he was handed one of those parties, called the right deal. and he got serious about it very, very quickly. he is a guy who actually has a

lot of trouble doing something halfway. so we started doing it all the way. he was looking -- he was holding policy meetings every weekend. he was calling on local leaders to join the party. he was won by the crewmen that this was more activity than expected of him. [laughter] didn't listen, and showed up to his own party congress in september own to find himself locked out. the party, the kremlin had a party and then it taken aback. so prokhorov organize part of his party, and gave an impassioned speech saying that he would fight this, he would fight the kremlin puppeteers. he would go all the way and he would come back and he promised to come back in 10 days with a specific plan for a fight, and then he disappeared. completely disappeared from public eye for two months.

and during this period, we have to assume that he was threatened sufficiently to do something that i think would be humiliating. especially humiliating for somebody who is so used to having his way, as prokhorov is, and just to be forced to disappear. must've been extreme humiliation. then when he apparently, he apparently fell back in line, he was yanked out again and told to run for president. and he has run a very subdued campaign for president. what's interesting is that despite the fact that he has run anything but a vigorous campaign, exit polls showed he came in second. second to putin. i think he feels that he has real potential to take putin on.

he has clearly been testing the waters. on sunday night he conceded very quickly. but then the monday he said the election hadn't been there. and on monday he actually spoke at the demonstration. if he keeps going like this, if he feels that he can without extreme risk to his own life, and his fortune, keep going like this, i think is great potential. and he clearly wants to. >> would you comment on the relationship between the kremlin and obama pitch in the uk, as one of several of the of the people who seem to have escaped with many millions of dollars that seem to have no problem over it with the uk government, or the russian government? >> well, obama pitch is another interesting case in point.

he is a putin crony who accumulated extreme wealth during the early putin years. clear he did not feel safe keeping that money in russia or even keeping himself in russia. so despite his apparently have a relationship with the kremlin, took his money and moved to london, where he is been living for the last nine years. he was recently in court with his former business partner who is suing him for billions of dollars, alleging that obramovich with the kremlin's help forced him to sell him his assets for below market value. and obramovich's testimony in court has really been his only public statement, ever. he's another one of those guys

who really doesn't like to really have a face. his testimony was incredible. i mean, he confirmed everything that we have ever heard about kremlin corruption, and it was very clear that, he assumed that his audience was in the courtroom, and i see clearly new in russia, people were following the trial very closely, that his audience was prepared to hear how corrupt the putin system was. and it's also clear that he's probably not going to be going back to moscow anytime soon after having made those statements. >> had an interview i think lastly on charlie rose, you talked about how big a journalist in cash to have been

a journalist and moscow is not only dangerous but frustrating and what it's like to proceed in the absence of a freedom of information act, journalist here take for granted i wonder if you could comment on that was to tackle this story book length knowing what the obstacles would be to researching and writing another shape the way you tackled it as a writer? >> it's a trap because what the system i am trying to describe it is a closed system that doesn't let information escaped, but, of course, that doesn't let information escape it's a very difficult situation to describe. so ultimately i did a lot of interviews and a lot of reporting for the book, obviously, but i don't think that's the most vital part of the book. i think the colonels of new information are of interest to some russia geeks, but what i think was a much more important thing to do was take information

that had been out there in some form or another, somehow been published in russia, some of it had been pushed, was available in russian, and it hadn't been systematically analyzed. the story hadn't been told, and that's what i tried to do. i tried to take information that demanded to be organized and interpreted, and tried to organize it and interpret it, as best as possible. that's actually part of my regular work as a journalist in moscow. i sort of made this accidental discovery last year that what was most successful among my readers were long detailed stories of corruption stories that they were familiar with. it was like, when we were

talking earlier today, don made this wonderful comparison, trying to make out shapes in a fog. and he sort of know what's happening to you. at this general idea this is happening. someone lays that this is okay, this is how it is done, this is the structure, this is the scheme of things. this money goes there and then he did that and then there. at all falls into place. and it works because it affirms your general impression of what's going on around you, and it also helps you articulate. >> actually two questions.

first, could you follow up a bit on why you think putin's time is limited to two years, you say? and second, what structural change do you think needs to be made to the russian political system to prevent another reoccurrence of where he is at, or the the country is now? >> what structural changes -- what? >> what structural changes to the political system and russia would prevent russia from being in a similar position in another five years or 10 years. >> the reason that i think that putin is not going to build hold onto power for very much longer is that sort of the other side of, the flipside of what he has done to russia, by destroying the democratic institution is he has deprived his own regime of any source of legitimacy, other than fear and the cooperation of the population.

he is not accountable to the voters, but the voters are also not obligated to consider him legitimately because they didn't vote for these tragic, they voted for the other assholes. when a system like that begins to disintegrate, it actually happens pretty fast because people lose their fear and people stopped cooperating in the daily work that perpetuates the existence of the regime. journalism on state television stopped reporting stories in the way they're expected to. the police don't follow orders that they don't think they should be followed, that's already started happening. local bureaucrats don't do their part for the large corruption machine to edit also starts to disintegrate which is i think what will happen in russia.

now, what needs to be done is democratic structures need to be restored. putin has, over the course of his eight years, during his first two terms in russia, completely decimated the electoral institutions. very systematically step-by-st step-by-step. just destroyed them. in the first year of his presidency, he also basically enable the executive branch to take over a to g. so there's no independent judiciary. immediate have been taken over by the state. all of that needs to be restored, rebuild, built from scratch. is there a guarantee that the structures will be able to be destroyed again? no. but the reason he was able to do this was because he of the

complete, full cooperation of the russian population for quite a long time. maybe this time we will be wiser and we will not cooperate with another dictator. >> we will have time for probably just a couple more questions. the gentleman here and one year. -- and one here. >> what's the meaning of the button you're wearing? >> it says we will come again. and it's a white ribbon in the form of a sign, meaning it alludes to the voting. and this has been one of the popular chance that the process, we will come again, because there will be more of us. sounds better in the russian. [laughter] we try to print up as many of

these buttons as is possible because we have the hope, there's always the counting problem, so i had this idea that we would print up hundreds of thousands of these buttons, and actually get out one button per person at the protest. and that we would know how may buttons we got rid of. but there's the capacity in moscow to carry out the project. we handed out about 20,000 of them, and also we wanted people to leave the protests with something that they could then wear to show that they had been there, to signal to other people, to feel like participants. that's what it says we'll come again. it's the sort of thing you can wear from protest to protest.

>> in the last few years russia has done very well in terms of the cost of energy throughout the world. and we know that the oligarchs, the cronies, hockey players and women tennis players are doing fine. how is the general population doing? have they reaped the rewards of any of these good fortune to? >> yes. i mean, statistically the country as a whole has benefited a great deal from the wealth. and i think that's part of what accounts for the longtime that putin went unchallenged, because it's hard to talk about how bad things are when things are really very, very good. very good in the sense that people's standard of living changed exponentially in the early 2000s.

people were able to afford completely new kind of clothing, completely new lifestyle. restaurants in moscow were opening up a dozen a week. good food, good wine. all of that sort of has a way of making life sweeter. at the same time, russia has not mitigated any of the many disadvantages of sudden extreme wealth, especially when it is related to the natural resource. the ruble is too strong for most people to live comfortably at this point because everything is just so expensive. everything is imported because there's no point in manufacturing anything in russia. so that's part of what accounts for the extremely high prices of living.

people have been -- everyone but the superrich have been priced out of moscow real estate. [inaudible] >> exactly. well, imagine that most of the country lives in manhattan, or wants to live in manhattan or works in manhattan and has to commute. the explosion in the number of private cars has been a disaster. it's not unusual for people to spend two, three, four hours a day in traffic. so the infrastructure can't keep up. and, of course, the gap between the superrich and the rest of us is huge. and its ostentatious that moscow has the highest number of mercedes in the world. not only are you sitting in

traffic in your little trashcan of the car, but you are also seeing all those mercedes with flashing blue lights, which we can have for a lot of money, passing you by as they rush in order to do their important rich business. >> is there anything else? i think will have the last questioner here. >> i'm curious about, i noticed the protest movement in say, libya, egypt, you know, north africa, or even here, occupy wall street, do you have -- they seem to spring up and then they kind of get, they kind of disappear or they get kind of co-opted by come in egypt case, the military, and libya i'm not sure, and in tunisia, i'm not

sure what happened there. in russia do you have a progressive political party to aspire to? is there a traditional political party that the protesters would consider joining? or is it a kind of a vacuum at that level? >> there's a vacuum at that level because there are no political parties because the political party system has been destroyed. in the sense that offers us something of an advantage over, say, occupy wall street. because there are no structures to co-opt the movement. it can't be swallowed up by political parties because both political parties don't exist. i mean, obviously the danger of fizzling is there, and i'm scared of it. but the danger, not so much.

>> okay. thank you. we wish you all good things to thank you all for coming. [applause] we will reconvene out in the lobby and there will be books available for sale. thank you again. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a look at some books that are being released this week.

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