Slowly but surely, he’s stealing my publicity and glory. I really need to find a way to edge him out.
Tireless OptimistThe Alpha and Omega of Vladimir Ashurkov Full text He graduated from Russia’s top university, then from one of the world’s best business schools. He worked for one of the country’s most successful corporations. His annual income was about $1 million. When he had to choose between business and politics, he chose Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, where he works from morning till night without earning a penny. Who is this man, who does not fit the Russian stereotype of how one is supposed to live? The New Times tried to understand Vladimir Ashurkov’s story and motives. The New Times has published a long, fascinating profile of him. Give it a read if you want to know who really runs our Foundation while I’m serving 15 days in jail or hanging around at endless “protest action organizing committee” meetings. And from the article we all learned how much he used to make at his previous job, so now we keep following him around with the classic line: “Give us a million.”
Vladimir also gave an interview to Expert today: ...By 2008, I had formed a firm view of our government: that the people who had gained power were holding on to it only because that power allowed them to control the country and engage in theft and corruption with impunity. And the procedures that in a normal society are supposed to ensure the rotation of power—for example, that a person should not serve more than two terms as president, and elections in general—are being replaced with formal procedures. An imitation, a farce. So when I met Navalny, I felt a strong desire to help him. Read it—it’s interesting. It seems to me that Ashurkov speaks for an incredibly important group of people: those who never had any blat (connections or patronage), who became successful and accomplished through their own work, who could be successful and accomplished in any country, but who are determined in principle to win the chance to live normally and comfortably in Russia. People like him reject the real ideology of the Kremlin crooks and all those United Russia party types: Russia is just a gray zone for making money, an open hunting ground, while the place for comfortable and safe living is cozy Europe, where we’ve moved our little children to save them from this “cattle-like populace.” And they will never accept it. There are more and more people like that. It’s just that Volodya is one of the first to say it out loud rather than in corporate backrooms. That’s why he’s such a good man.