Well then, my friends, it’s time to reveal what’s really going on.
My presidential campaign has been running for just over seven months, since December 13.
On zombie TV (a derogatory term for state-controlled television), the rare mentions of my name are always accompanied by the twisted face of yet another “political analyst” shouting, “Where did he get the money?!”
Let’s talk about that: how much money we’ve raised, how we’ve spent it, and whether you should give us more.
So. In 7 months,
We raised 98 million rubles. You gave us that money—thank you very much. In total, more than 70,000 people have donated to the campaign. The median donation was 500 rubles.
During this time, we opened 63 regional campaign offices (which means we have premises in all of those cities), and we are continuing to open more. In other words, we are running a real nationwide campaign across the entire country. I personally opened 36 of those offices, and in each one I held a large meeting with volunteers, answering every question they asked me.
Altogether, 230 staff members work in these offices and at the federal headquarters—that is, they are paid employees—coordinating the activities of 130,000 volunteers. We run things as a meritocracy: to select office coordinators and staff on a competitive basis, we reviewed more than 6,000 résumés.
We organized two waves of major rallies: on March 26, in 84 Russian cities, with at least 60,000–80,000 participants; and on June 12, in 145 Russian cities, with at least 120,000–150,000 participants.
These were not, of course, official campaign events but anti-corruption protests, yet all organizational and material support came through the campaign headquarters.
We launched the live-streaming channel Navalny LIVE. A lot of people thought it was a ridiculous idea, but it now has 379,000 subscribers, and in terms of reach it outperforms most Russian media outlets—except, of course, the central TV channels. More about the channel here.
The total number of campaign materials printed during the campaign has exceeded 11 million copies (unfortunately, about 2.6 million newspapers, flyers, and stickers were illegally seized by police officers during a “special operation” on July 6–9); every week, campaigners distribute at least 100,000–150,000 newspapers and flyers on the streets of Russian cities, and a record was set during the “big campaign Saturday” on July 8–9, when, despite unprecedented police pressure, more than 3,500 volunteers distributed over 400,000 items. In June 2017 alone, our offices organized and held 209 mass campaign events in large and small Russian cities.
More than 560,000 people are ready to sign in support of my nomination, and as I already said, we now have 130,000 volunteers present in every populated locality in Russia.
Now let’s try to estimate how those 98 million rubles you sent us compare with the amount of work we’ve done.
Did we spend your ruble well? Efficiently? We believe the answer is obviously yes, but you want an objective picture, and you want comparisons.
Okay, we have something to compare it with.
Let’s take the data on state budget funding for Russia’s political parties for the last completed year—2016.
Each of these parties has said it will nominate a presidential candidate. So let’s see how much they received over the same period of time—7 months:
The Yabloko party received 144 million rubles over 7 months.
LDPR — 491 million rubles. A Just Russia — 557 million rubles. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation — 808 million rubles. United Russia — 2 billion 76 million rubles.
I’d like to write, “Let’s compare the campaigns,” but there’s nothing to compare. No volunteers, no canvassing, no debates, no broadcasts, no balloons, no campaign cubes (street information stands).
Nothing at all. And the police aren’t chasing them. Their newspapers aren’t being confiscated. Their pickets aren’t being banned. Their volunteers aren’t being detained. They’re allowed on television.
We are running a nationwide campaign under unprecedented pressure, on a very modest budget raised through voluntary donations.
We can run it, we know how to run it, and we will keep running it.
So yes, with pride in our entire headquarters team and every volunteer, I can say: we are spending your money very well. Rationally. Honestly. To good effect.
And we have proved through our actions that we can ask you again.
We need more money. Very badly. The network of campaign offices is enormous, and there are a great many volunteers. People can work for free for the sake of the cause, but they still need materials: newspapers, flyers, campaign cubes, stickers, and everything else you simply can’t get for free.
But you can buy all of it with money—if you send us some.
Please send it—this is our shared campaign. Go here right now.
Many thanks in advance.
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