I’d like everyone to take a look at this brief confession from ACF office manager Olga Bulaeva. In its own way, it’s also a document of its time.
It offers an excellent opportunity to assess the moral standards both of the authorities themselves and of those who protect them from us. What those singing “officers, officers, your heart is under fire” are willing to do in order to shield the people robbing the entire country.
The very fact that people are trying to recruit ACF employees and volunteers, that they are trying to plant informers and provocateurs among us, is not surprising. After all, nothing has changed since the days of the tsarist Okhrana (the secret police of imperial Russia).
But damn it—finding out that someone’s mother is seriously ill, that she’s in such a difficult life situation, and then using that, blackmailing them with it?
It would be one thing if they approached people and said: inform for us, and we’ll pay you huge sums of money. But no, their approach is different: inform for us, because otherwise how are you going to pay for your mother’s treatment?
And this is in a country with “free healthcare.”
Anyway, Olya did the right thing by speaking out. Follow her example if someone approaches you with something like this—or already has, or even if, foolishly, you initially agreed to cooperate.
We will file a complaint with the interior minister and the head of the FSB over violations of privacy and documented acts of intimidation.
By the way, Bulaeva trained as a choral conductor and worked for several years as a school music teacher. After the launch of our public-sector salary project, she decided to build a trade union for cultural workers and fight for the promised wages for her former colleagues. I think she’ll make a good union leader. Get in touch with her if you want to join. Her Facebook, her VKontakte, or you can also write here.