This was probably the most anticipated video of the year: Ekaterina Schulmann had promised to give Mikhail Svetov an interview back when I was just starting my channel; six months passed, and the recording finally came out.
The stature of the participants in the conversation is practically equal. Both are popular video bloggers (Mikhail has a couple of tens of thousands more subscribers on YouTube, Ekaterina has a more promoted Facebook). Both are popular public lecturers (Mikhail has visited more provincial towns, Ekaterina speaks more often and is more embraced by the media). Behind Ekaterina are scholarly articles, co-authorship of a textbook, and numerous press publications. Behind Mikhail are two sizable rallies. Ekaterina holds a teaching position and membership in the Human Rights Council. Mikhail holds a leadership position in a rapidly gaining popularity political party and has a ten-day stint in detention. Both are political scientists by education, which means, theoretically, they should, if not speak the same language, at least understand each other well. Finally, both have a loyal army of supporters.
It is clear that the conversation was not a direct clash, otherwise I simply wouldn’t have known what to do with myself or who to root for. On one hand, Mikhail is closer to me ideologically, although we have many disagreements. On the other, Ekaterina is my role model, and it is terribly difficult for me to analyze her words impartially. But these were not debates, but a respectful communication between political allies about various subtleties and nuances, so I could root for Ekaterina without a guilty conscience.
Mikhail prepared magnificently for the conversation and also demonstrated an ability to think at least as fast as Ekaterina speaks, so he managed to interject with instant remarks during the pauses in her speech (anyone who has listened to Schulmann can imagine how tightly packed the words are in her phrases).
The most interesting part began in the last fifteen minutes of the conversation, when they moved from a dialogue about interesting topics to a targeted discussion of disagreements. Here, Mikhail surprised me again. He managed to pierce the armor of his interlocutor’s unwavering optimism by painting a not-entirely-fantastical scenario of clashes between Caucasian ethnic groups in the middle of the RF capital. Then Ekaterina quite skillfully regained her lost advantage during the discussion of Svetov’s signature topic—lustration—which she considers equally unlikely and unhelpful, while seeing more realistic alternatives to it.
After the conversation, Mikhail summarized the interaction on his Twitter roughly like this: Ekaterina is very useful in her place, specifically because the near-Kremlin public listens to her. Moreover, it’s not that she can facilitate a soft liberalization from above, but that she lulls the authorities with her sweet speeches, and when the thunder of revolution strikes, it will come as a complete surprise to the regime. This moment was also quite unexpected for me—exactly when Mikhail turned from a singer of libertarianism into a fervent revolutionary. He really spent the entire conversation unsuccessfully trying to get Ekaterina to agree with the thesis that Russia is about to explode and there will be a bloodbath; he did not succeed (with the Chechen caveat), and as a result, concluded that fine, let the authorities listen to Schulmann, but you, my little friends, listen to Svetov, he knows how it should be.