Sergei Yushenkov is the founder and co-chairman of the Liberal Russia movement, which makes a point of opposing President Vladimir Putin. More than six months ago, exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky joined the movement, becoming a co-chairman of the party and providing it with financial support. Yushenkov spoke to The Russia Journal about his movement's aims and prospects and about Berezovsky's role.

The Russia Journal: What prompted you to set up a systematic opposition to Putin?

Sergei Yushenkov: Our movement was founded in 2000 as an opposition to Putin and the government. We didn't see Putin as a candidate representing democratic views. What's more, we thought that voting for Putin would be dangerous for the country's future.

RJ: Why exactly?

SY: It was clear from his words back then that Putin's three guiding principles are "wipe out your enemies, stand by your friends, and make your enemies your friends, and vice versa, if need be."

When Putin became acting president, a lot of what he said was enough to set one's hair on end, but people heard only what they wanted to hear. Putin talked about the dictatorship of the law. Wonderful, but no one stopped to think about what law he had in mind. Lenin's later works also talked of the rule of law, of patriotism and other things that seemed perfectly reasonable when taken out of context.

There were signs of a real change in the atmosphere; fear was in the air. Now the secret services have crawled out of their hole again and are telling everyone what to do. We, a small group of SPS deputies and politicians, decided we couldn't let SPS become a party formed to support Putin. Still within SPS, we tried to set up a movement that would support not a particular personality, but a liberal ideology. Benjamin Franklin once said that if people have a choice between security and freedom and choose security, they end up losing both.

RJ: But surveys suggest a large part of the Russian public definitely prefers security.

SY: It's not so clear-cut. Serious sociological studies show there are a lot of people who place a high value on freedom and could be called "latent" liberals. The difference with Western democracies is that people aren't always entirely conscious of their choice.

RJ: But if it's liberal ideology you support, the authorities also claim to follow liberal policies.

SY: No, the rhetoric has changed. Under Yeltsin, all major documents proclaimed that citizens' rights and freedoms were of the greatest value. The authorities today place the highest value on the state's interests. Before, you could say the authorities said one thing and did another, but now the authorities' actions are in keeping with their words.

The biggest lie is that Russia is implementing liberal economic reforms. The main criterion is the 13 percent flat personal income tax rate. In the Soviet Union, the personal income tax rate was 12 percent, but no one saw that as a sign of a market economy. If you add the 36 percent payroll taxes to the 13 percent rate, you get taxes of almost 50 percent, and what businessman is going to pay 50 percent? Nobody. That's not to mention VAT and profit tax, a stack of other taxes, high customs duties and much more. Business is forced to stay in the shadows. The number of small- and medium-sized businesses has decreased sharply since Putin came to power.

RJ: So, you're suggesting that big business, in supporting Putin, is trying to ensure itself a quiet life under state-oligarchic capitalism?

SY: Absolutely right. Russian big business naturally tries to create monopolies and keep competition down. Big business will cooperate with Lukashenko, Hitler, whomever. They are the most authoritarian part of society, and the only thing they bargain over with the authorities is how to serve the authorities better and what the authorities can do to incite them to serve better.

RJ: If all influential people are trying to avoid conflict with the authorities, then whose support are you counting on?

SY: On the latent liberals I mentioned before. People are already waking up, and if we had even half the media access that the party of power and its satellites have, we'd win the support of a good number of voters. People say that Berezovsky has his own media outlets, but from our point of view, it would be better if they weren't there. They won't publish anything about us because they're afraid people will say they're taking sides. Berezovsky says that as an owner, he can change the general director, but he won't meddle in editorial policy.

RJ: What's Berezovsky's role in Liberal Russia?

SY: When we founded the movement, we were on opposite sides of the barricades. Berezovsky supported Putin, financed his election campaign and worked on creating the Unity party. We opposed all this. When he saw that the people he'd supported weren't going to build a liberal state, Berezovsky tried to get out of it all, but he couldn't do that. It sounds paradoxical, but he sincerely feels a personal responsibility for what is happening in the country. He knows that his own, his children's and grandchildren's lives depend on what kind of country Russia will become.

When I said that we had to create a genuine opposition party, Berezovsky's representatives contacted us. We met and agreed in 90 percent of our views. I hadn't realized to what extent Berezovsky actually believed in the views he declared. We know, of course, that he's no angel, that our interests happen to coincide at the moment, and that the situation could change. Having Berezovsky on board has its pluses and its minuses.

RJ: It gives you some publicity.

SY: Yes, though of a mostly negative sort. But when we drew up our program documents, he took part and I saw that he is a responsible politician.

For example, we were preparing actions to support TV6, and when the TV6 team simply "dumped" Berezovsky, who had been financing them, I called him and said it probably didn't make sense now to hold our actions in their support. But he insisted we go ahead and that we be even more active in our support, saying: "We need to keep a team that goes along with everything the authorities say."

That is, he knows how to subjugate his tactical interests to strategic interests. Though, of course, time will tell.

RJ: So, you trust Berezovsky?

SY: Yes, of course. What's interesting is that he asks for Liberal Russia's statements, which go to him for approval as one of the co-chairmen, to be made less sensational.

RJ: Do you value him more as an experienced politician or is it that you have obligations to him as a sponsor?

SY: We have no obligations to him. He has obligations towards us. The situation in Russia today is such that anyone who decides to finance an opposition movement within the country is going to come under serious pressure. So our only obligation is to fulfill our own program and stick to our own ideology. Berezovsky could have just abandoned Russia if he wanted; his business in the West is quite enough to give him a perfectly comfortable life.

RJ: Finding financing must be a real problem, though.

SY: As far as big business goes, yes. But small- and medium-sized business hasn't been as frightened into submission yet.

RJ: So you do have other sources of financing?

SY: Of course. Berezovsky came to us last summer, but we existed without him until then. Now, someone decides to pull out, and someone else says, "Oh, you've got Berezovsky. That means it's worth putting money in to this business."

RJ: Do you get open support?

SY: Some people support us openly, others provide moral support or material support. Many people are coming to us now, many just out of a sense of protest, realizing that there should always be an opposition in society. We support or don't support policies, not people. We immediately welcomed and gave our full support to Putin's statements supporting the anti-terrorist operations [after Sept. 11] for example, when many pro-Kremlin deputies still didn't know how they were supposed to react.