Of course, everyone already knows about Ivan Vyrypaev’s excellent open letter. I was late to the party while on vacation and ended up reading it last.
But I’ll write about it anyway—because the letter is long, and you probably didn’t read it all the way through, just skimmed the opening lines or caught a brief summary in the media. I still recommend reading the whole thing.
Besides the fact that Ivan is a brave man and said out loud what people in “creative circles” have only been whispering quietly, he also very accurately described the three most important things needed to defeat this regime of deranged thieves:
- Do not cooperate;
- Do not support them;
- Do everything possible to drive down their approval ratings (that is, campaign against them at every opportunity);
Point 1 is problematic for many of the letter’s intended readers, because in a country where the state has swallowed up 85% of the economy, there is almost no money—other than state budget money—to fund creative work.
Vyrypaev understands this perfectly well, knows people will object that “it’s unrealistic,” and makes a special qualification:
So this first point is for the most enterprising and courageous. But the last two, at the very least, absolutely must become the rule. A hard-and-fast rule.
There is one thing in the letter that I think is wrong—the phrase “you can change everything without even going to rallies.” Well, technically you can, of course, but from the standpoint of political strategy, rallies are the most important mechanism for persuading people and lowering the regime’s approval ratings. When people come out to any public event, they do so openly, without fear, and fully aware of the consequences. It is a way of showing one another that the resistance movement is not marginal and is not some tiny dissident movement made up of just a handful of people.
This is enormously important, because even if you believe Putin-era polling—and you shouldn’t—14% of the country’s population refuse to support him. That is not a small number at all. Just think about it: that’s 20 million people who have not been brainwashed over 18 years. These are people giving such answers to questions from the state-run VTsIOM polling center, fully aware that their response is now socially disapproved of and unacceptable to the authorities.
And in reality, there are an order of magnitude more such people. And if you ask people about specific issues—from corruption to roads, from healthcare to wages—Putin’s support turns into a minority position. Only the most unhinged types are in the camp of “I’m fine with underfunding our education system and handing over my salary to support the Assad regime, ’cause that makes Russia great.”
In short, give it a read. It’s a good letter.