Dear Nyuta,
You are probably surprised that I am writing to you—and with a full public appeal, no less.
I realize myself that this may seem rather odd, but after reading Meduza’s extensive report on how United Russia (the Kremlin-backed ruling party) plans to deceive everyone by going into the election under the guise of “independent” candidates, and after your confirmation yesterday, I decided that I simply could not stay silent. Your name had appeared before in articles about United Russia’s plans, but now it has become completely clear that Moscow City Hall wants to use you for its own purposes in District 43 (Arbat, Presnya, Khamovniki).
It seems to me that we are dealing with a situation in which the interests of City Hall and *United Russia* run counter both to the public interest and to your own personal interests.
What we are dealing with is called whitewashing: officials, having realized that their party’s reputation has sunk so low that running under its own brand is simply impossible, have decided to use decent people so that those people pay with their reputations to preserve *United Russia’s* majority in the city parliament. These are the very same officials who raise the pension age, foster corruption, wage war on the internet, and impose fines for insulting the authorities. Their motto is: lie and steal. In order to keep stealing, they have to lie more and more. To remain in power, they are forced to deceive voters and hide behind people like you—behind you personally—during elections, so they can go on passing laws that harm the country’s development and continue lying and stealing.
There are several excellent candidates running in the Moscow elections. Professor Sonin wrote very well about the importance of their participation—please do read it, Nyuta. Sobyanin will try to keep each of them off the ballot, and if that proves impossible, he will use the “Nyuta tactic” against each of them. That is what it will later be called. To put up a civic activist—a decent person—against a strong opposition candidate, someone who will pay with their own life story and reputation by reducing the opposition candidate’s chances of being elected.
District 43 is especially important to them. Moscow Mayor Sobyanin is terrified of a victory by Lyubov Sobol, who is investigating the mass poisoning of children in the city’s kindergartens and schools and representing their parents’ interests in court. If Sobol becomes a deputy, it will be harder for City Hall to hand out billion-ruble food supply contracts, without any competition at all, to a single supplier—the notorious “Putin’s chef” (a reference to Yevgeny Prigozhin). To split the protest vote, they want to use you.
Nyuta, you must not help them. You must not allow the work for which you are loved and respected to be vulgarized and degraded in this way. You should not have to pay with your reputation for what Putin, *United Russia*, and Sobyanin have done to this country over the past 20 years. They know their own “achievements” perfectly well—and that is exactly why they are afraid to face voters directly in an election. Afraid to do so without hiding behind your back and your reputation.
You have nothing to do with their theft and corruption. But if you agree to play by their rules, you will deprive Muscovites of the chance to express their attitude toward the authorities through their votes. Instead of voting against the fact that Moscow’s healthcare budget is smaller than its beautification budget, they will be forced into an impossible choice: saving schoolchildren poisoned through Prigozhin’s food contracts, or the hospice patients of Nyuta Federmesser.
I understand that these are very difficult times, when many people have to decide for themselves where the line lies between what is acceptable and what is not. And I do not mean opportunists, but decent people who are doing something worthwhile and see that under current conditions they cannot manage without some degree of cooperation with the regime. The whole issue is where the line lies between compromise and conformism. Let me state plainly, once again, what exactly you are being urged to do in this particular case:
There is Lyuba Sobol—an incredibly brave woman who is constantly under attack, who takes risks every single day, and who is now devoting her entire life to fighting those who poisoned children in kindergartens and schools and then profited handsomely from it. She is going through an extremely difficult time, her family is facing real threats, her husband was attacked, and she is running for office in order to serve the public interest better and do her work even more effectively.
What have the regime’s servants come up with? They are urging you—a person of unquestionable dignity and merit—to throw all your authority, your entire reputation, into taking votes away from Lyuba, because to a large extent the same voters support both her and you. If you do this, it will no longer be a display of “non-opposition” and deference to the authorities; it will be direct participation in the struggle against democratic forces. Not compromise, and not even conformism, but genuine collaborationism. Please, do not do this. Very many people are watching how you conduct yourself in this situation.
The people who want to use you are villains, deceivers, and thieves. Now they want to steal your name as well, and take hostage the people you have been helping all your life. Please do not let them do it. It will cause great harm to you, to your work, and to all of us.