Ольга Романова Olga Romanova

"No, it wasn't a point of no return then. The point of no return is a good question. I think the point of no return is 1993. October 1993, the attack on the parliament. I was on Yeltsin's side then. I believed that the attack on parliament was entirely appropriate. Arresting the Vice President was, in my view, entirely appropriate. I also found it entirely appropriate that the authorities reacted so harshly. And now I am ashamed of that. Twice. When you talk about the guilt of the Russians towards Ukraine, I know exactly where my guilt lies. I bear the blame for 1993 and I bear the blame for 1996. Because I perceived the Yeltsin election, which I was rooting for, very well and I understood exactly what was going on, I saw exactly that it was a dishonest election. But nevertheless, I participated in it in every way I could on Yeltsin's side. The election led to Putin. It did. It's very hard to talk about history in the conditional, but if Zyuganov had come to power then, he would have been hit by 2008. There was a world crisis in 2008 - it was inevitable. Then, communism in Russia would have collapsed forever, I think. But again - that's conditional. Life just taught me again that you shouldn't lie."

"In 2011, when the protests began that I took part in from the very beginning as a rank-and-file citizen, Sergei Parkhomenko, an old colleague and friend from the beginning of my journalistic career, came and said, 'We need someone on the organizing committee to deal with money. You have the education, go for it.' That's how I got to join the Organizing Committee for Public Gatherings, the future Coordinating Council of the Opposition. All the future members of the Coordinating Council were there. Those were the best of times. There were no elections among the opposition back then and everybody was equal. On the staff were Nemtsov and Udaltsov, Kasparov and Navalny, Bilunov whom we all knew, and maybe Demushkin. I've forgotten what the nationalists were called, who were then arrested. There were a lot of people there. Yes, the nationalists sat with the liberals, the democrats sat with the communists, and even the Stalinists - Udaltsov is a Stalinist. Somehow it was all non-conflicting. When I listened to what Udaltsov was saying, I didn't see any contradictions in his positions, for example. Moreover, I remember very well that at that time, according to the polls and voting in the Communist Party, there were two leaders: Udaltsov and Navalny. And Nemtsov beat me by one vote in the election to the Coordination Council of the Opposition, which means we were equal then. Boris had a big negative rating. We should remember that, because death, of course, spawns many legends."