And once again, I want to draw attention to how wonderful Evgeny Chichvarkin is.
He understands the main thing:
it’s very good to send money to the campaign
- even better is to organize a mini-fundraiser and persuade other people to send money to the campaign
A lot of people simply don’t believe in the power of their own persuasion. They think their personal appeals won’t impress anyone at all. Like, I’m just an ordinary person. Not a politician, not an activist. I’ll post a receipt for 500 rubles and a call to donate, and people will just laugh at me—there’ll be no point to it at all.
Oh, there absolutely will be. We’ve studied this over and over again. The most valuable, the most important, and yes, the most effective posts for us are the ones where people write: “I’ve donated—now you should donate too.”
Even better is when someone says, “I want to raise 20,000 rubles for Navalny’s campaign; I’m putting in my own 700—who’s in?” It works: people do what the people they know are doing.
And Chichvarkin has gone even further: he’s collecting money through his own PayPal (account: evgeny@hedonism.co.uk) and will transfer it to us without any fee.
This is hugely important for us for two reasons:
There is a huge Russian diaspora abroad. They are all Russian citizens and, by law, have every right to finance our election campaign. In London alone, there are close to 300,000 of our fellow citizens. They all have credit cards, and almost all of them are used to a culture of charitable giving. For many of them, sending £10 a month to a nonprofit is completely normal.
All that’s needed is an energetic organizer, and Zhenya can play that role perfectly.
Let’s be honest: there are people who want to donate a couple thousand rubles to us, but they’re gripped by paranoia—the post-Soviet person’s best friend. What if something happens to me because of this? What if the Kremlin finds out and then I’m not allowed back into Russia? And so on.
These fears have absolutely no basis, but if this makes anyone more comfortable, here is Chichvarkin’s PayPal: evgeny@hedonism.co.uk
He’s a millionaire, and there’s no doubt that he’s not going to steal your 777-ruble transfer. What’s more, he’ll cover the fee himself so that our campaign headquarters receives exactly that full amount.
In short, good for him.
Please help—this is our shared campaign. You can do it through Evgeny Chichvarkin’s PayPal.
Or you can use our regular donation system. It accepts cards, PayPal, and Bitcoin.