Read Zhora Alburov’s long (and funny) report on the “daching” event he organized — a mass picnic near the Sosny dacha cooperative, where officials live in palaces and have not the slightest explanation for where the money to build them came from.
They started checking all of the driver’s documents. It seemed like they even asked for his birth certificate and the licenses for mining the aluminum ore the bus was made from. They said the reason for the stop was a terrorist threat. Apparently, terrorists had somehow chosen the exact same moment as us to head to the Moscow region by bus.
_But despite the terrorist threat, buses kept passing us one after another, while the number of traffic police crews was growing rapidly._
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An actual lieutenant colonel climbed onto our bus and started checking the headlights and the fire extinguisher. Yes, yes — in case you didn’t know, that’s exactly how terrorists are identified: by faulty headlights and fire extinguishers.
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At the same time, news started coming in from the other vehicles: it turned out that most of them had been stopped under various pretexts.
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We decided not to wait for tanks and helicopters and set off on foot. That seemed to throw the traffic cops badly off balance. Later it turned out they had asked the driver to take us, on this very same bus, to the police station. On our own bus, paid for with our own money, to the police station. Brilliant work, guys.
http://alburov.ru/2014/05/win/
I want to add a few things of my own:
Thank you to everyone who took part in the picnic, and to everyone who supported it by spreading the word.
I want to argue with those who claim that visiting officials’ dachas is some kind of version of Nashi-style activism (Nashi was a pro-Kremlin youth movement). For example, Alexei Venediktov takes that position.
The essence of Nashi-style politics (and United Russia-style politics as well) is endless lying and hypocrisy: picketing your enemies for something — real or imagined — that you yourself constantly and happily engage in. A perfect example is the report in the “newspaper” *Izvestia* about United Russia activists picketing *Echo of Moscow* and accusing it of censorship.
Our daching, by contrast, is about making those “diamond loaves” real and visible. Putin’s officials have made themselves very comfortable: they steal, amass fantastic wealth, and simply fail to declare their Russian and foreign real estate. And when you catch them red-handed, as happened with Zhirik (Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s nickname) or with Babakov, their own United Russia commission says: we’re not going to investigate anything.
What’s more, this brazen pack of crooks is once again operating on the principle of, “If you don’t like our elections, take it to our courts.” Now Neverov is going around telling everyone: I beat Navalny in court, the court confirmed that I’m right, and I don’t have a dacha!
You see, the dacha exists, but the court said it doesn’t. So we’re supposed to believe the court. In our new video, you can see that “simple miner” Neverov has already landscaped a little pond (the size of three plots owned by a real miner), and his trendy flat-roofed house is nearly finished.
And there’s not a damn thing about it in his disclosure. And where the money came from is anyone’s guess.
There’s supposedly nothing there, but photographing that “nothing” is strictly forbidden. No, that won’t do. The dachas, the palaces, the cars, and the other “diamond loaves” are real. This lifestyle is real. Even in the details: just look at the cars that drove into Sosny over the course of that one-hour picnic.
These “simple miners” rob and loot us, brainwash people with talk about “Gayrope” (a derogatory propaganda term for Europe) and a special path of development, while building themselves a Monte Carlo in the Istra district.
So our task, as responsible citizens and patriots, is to document all this and let the whole country compare reality with what’s officially declared.
This picnic brilliantly demonstrated how all these Putins, Volodins, and Neverovs understand the purpose and function of power. In their view, power and state institutions in Russia exist first and foremost to guard the warehouse of property they have stolen. Just think about it: to stop people from photographing officials’ dachas, they mobilized the entire district police force, the traffic police, and the criminal investigation unit. They even declared that an anti-terrorist operation was underway, and so on.
That is precisely why the picnic also clearly shows the goal of our struggle: to change the state system so that its institutions, including the coercive apparatus, work in the interests of all citizens and for the country’s development.
We will keep doing this and think about how this experience can be extended to the regions.