Hello. This is Navalny from Matrosskaya Tishina (a Moscow pretrial detention center). There’s a television in my cell. On TV they briefly said that small protests took place in a couple of cities on Saturday. The American embassy, using “TikTok fakes,” lured teenagers there. It seems to me that things were not like that at all.
I want to say two important words right now: Korney Chukovsky.
When you were children, you were all read his poem about the terrifying cockroach that shouts and twitches its whiskers. That is exactly how the cockroach brought all the animals in the forest under his control. They were frightened: what if he really does eat us?
That is a very accurate description of what is happening in Russia right now.
In the tale, the cockroach stroked his gilded belly and said to the animals: “Bring me your little children, beasts, and I shall eat them for supper tonight.” The animals fainted in terror. Even though deep down they understood that the cockroach could never eat a hippopotamus. Not even a small one.
Now a handful of thieves, having decked themselves out in uniforms, shoulder boards, and epaulettes, and having seated their Tsar Fly-Open on the throne, declare to a nation of 150 million people: “We are the law here. Anything we do not like, we declare illegal. And we will jail everyone who speaks out against us.”
And people are afraid. They bow to Fly-Open, even though deep down they understand: you cannot jail everyone.
The investigation into Putin’s palace has already been watched by 100 million people, and if just 2% of those viewers take to the streets, it will be enough to bring all the regulars at the aqua disco to their senses. They will immediately stop menacingly twitching their whiskers.
I greet and embrace everyone who understood this simple arithmetic and went out into the streets on Saturday, remembering their rights and forgetting their fear.
Keep coming out, and be afraid of nothing. No one wants to live in a country ruled by lawlessness and corruption. The majority is on our side. Let’s wake it up.
Yours, Alexei Navalny.
Join on Sunday, list of cities.