As you of course know, dear internet users, our internet is being strangled from all sides.
And that’s not even mentioning the traditional media and the people who rely only on traditional media. Things are completely bleak there.
And yet this is exactly the audience that matters most: they vote dutifully, and they’re the ones with old tires lying around in their garages—the kind they’ll carry over and set on fire outside the local administration building once they find out how much money the head of that local administration has stolen.
That is precisely why we created and are distributing the excellent newspaper Popular Politics. It explains what’s going on to grandmas and grandpas in a clear, accessible way.
Let’s look at a simple example. As we all know, grandmas and grandpas love news about gardens and vegetable patches. About garden beds and greenhouses. And we’ve got exactly that kind of news!
In the new issue of Popular Politics, we tell the story of one distinguished gardener. His name is Vyacheslav Volodin, and in his spare time away from gardening he moonlights as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration.
He also coordinates censorship, lies, and election rigging. He has a modest country estate with a house and a small pond, worth 152 million rubles.
Volodin’s relatives, understanding how interested Russians are in the life of one of their rulers, sent us several photos of this man’s everyday surroundings.
Now, thanks to Popular Politics, hundreds of thousands of pensioners can learn that you can take Volodin out of Saratov, but you can never take Saratov out of Volodin (forgive me, people of Saratov—I don’t mean to offend you, and I’m sure you’ll take these photos in good humor).
What does an official do when he has (in my personal opinion) stolen enough money for a huge country house? That’s right: he slaps in a massive pond, and next to it greenhouses and hothouses, so he can have his little tomatoes and cucumbers.
What does an outrageously brazen official do when he has (in my personal opinion) stolen so much money that he no longer knows how else to stand out? That’s right: he builds not just greenhouses and hothouses, but MARBLE GREENHOUSES AND HOTHOUSES.
Original photo #1 Original photo #2 (We allow everyone—media outlets and journalists—to use the original photos without any restrictions.)
So that at a meeting of his party, *United Russia* (colloquially known as “the party of crooks and thieves”), he can say:
- these, guys, are from my personal greenhouse, so you, damn it, know that I’ve got a marble greenhouse at my country house. Brought it in all the way from Italy. Flew it over by plane. That’s the kind of, damn it, cucumbers you get. Crunchy. Stuff yourselves quick, because I’ve got to head soon to a meeting of the supervisory, damn it, board of the Higher School of Economics (a major Russian university). I’m going to present my scientific, damn it, theory there.
And the guys will immediately understand who’s the big shot here. And pensioners, after reading *Popular Politics*, will also come away understanding something important.
So there you have it—I hope my example has convinced some of you.
Each of you can become part of this universal force for good and help distribute it. If you want to become a coordinator for the newspaper project, you can read the details here.
If you have any doubts about whether this works, our answer is: it does. Our sociology department conducted a panel study in the Moscow districts where the newspaper was distributed.
Here’s how it worked: the study was conducted in two stages. First, our wonderful volunteers carried out a street survey among residents of selected buildings using a two-stage probability sample (that means we first divided all the buildings in the district into subgroups, and then randomly selected units within each subgroup).
A week after the first survey stage, the newspaper was distributed throughout the district in general, and in the buildings we had selected in particular. We checked distribution especially carefully in the buildings that were included in the sample.
Another week later, we conducted a phone survey among those respondents who had left us their phone numbers and agreed to take part in the second stage of the survey (a little more than half did so).
What exactly we asked respondents on the street and over the phone will remain a little secret for now. Soon, when we finish the second panel study on the newspaper’s second issue, we’ll write a separate post about it.
But even now we can already say that a) it works! and b) not a single Foundation employee was harmed in the course of the study, even though fresh issues of the publication magazine (sorry) *Star Life* had to be bought and read specifically for the survey.
At the moment, 24 regions have joined the project:
<font color="#d00">BLOCK NOT SUPPORTED [table]</font>
*status as of April 22
The simplest way you can help is to find your city in the table and chip in a couple hundred rubles.
The awesome folks in St. Petersburg and Vologda have already raised the necessary funds and printed the newspaper. Tula will be picking up stacks of freshly printed papers from the press very soon.
Here’s St. Petersburg:
and Vologda is already distributing its print run.
They’re now raising money for the second newspaper, the one where we write about the marble garden beds.
Take a look—it’s even better than the first one: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0B6dlm1Y4iIZ9dEJXMGVLVTBMRnM We’ve already distributed it across Moscow, this time with a print run of 490,000 copies. We’re conducting a panel study on it as well. If you want to know how newspaper #3 will be distributed, follow Navalny’s team on Twitter, @teamnavalny. The third issue is already waiting for its moment.
Believe me, it’ll hit harder than the previous two.
Join in. As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said, a newspaper is not only a propagandist, but also a collective organizer.
Getting organized matters. If you have any questions about the newspaper, write to gazeta@navalny.ru.