There are some optimistically minded people out there: Tonya Samsonova and Sergei Guriev.
They believe that by 2020, the Two from the Casket (a sarcastic reference to Russia’s ruling duo) will somehow be gone. They’ll dissolve themselves, fly off to colonize Mars, or be torn apart by a peaceful unarmed demonstration. And so Russia will be governed by new people. Samsonova and Guriev have already chosen these people, written their names down on a piece of paper, and assigned them positions. They came up with 100 people. They plan to invite all of them onto their Echo of Moscow radio station program “The Day After Tomorrow” and interrogate them sternly. But not just interrogate them. The person in question must do more than blah-blah-blah: they have to identify a problem and outline ways to solve it. If it sounds convincing, Samsonova and Guriev will allow them to govern Russia in 2020. If not, they’ll cross them off the list. Soon they’ll be interrogating me too. So my proposals on the issue I work on have already been posted on Echo. How to turn Gazprom and Rosneft into something respectable in six simple steps. These proposals were developed by me together with my assistants—the Kind Monsters of corporate governance. Until 2020, they want to remain anonymous—just in case. Anyone who wants to ask questions, comment, criticize, and so on—welcome to the program’s blog. But remember: if I’m not crossed off the list, then by 2020 I’ll become very influential, and those who criticize too actively will be punished. IP addresses are being logged.