The good: A full house — maybe a little smaller than at the Shenderovich-Kashin debate, but still packed to the point where you could barely move. Our policy of attracting not just the LiveJournal crowd is gradually paying off. There were whole groups of graduate students from MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) and other universities who came because of the announcements. There are tons of reactions on LiveJournal, people are putting together their own photo selections and link roundups — which means the debates are really grabbing people. Most of the feedback is positive. Parker wrote about us on Vladimvladimirovich, and they say Pavlovsky himself was actually there — the project has genuinely become part of the country’s political life. Not so good: It seemed to me that the middle dragged a bit. At least people up in the back rows were openly talking among themselves. People say I was obviously on Chadayev’s side and a couple of times, when Khakamada was speaking, I rolled my eyes demonstratively. Apparently something like this. **What Chadayev should have done to win: **Of course, beating Khakamada in a debate — someone who has spent the last 20 years doing little but debating — is hard. Especially since this was almost certainly the biggest audience Chadayev had ever spoken in front of. But: I don’t know how it looked from the audience, but it seemed to me he was good when he got worked up. There were a couple of moments when he started pounding his fist on the chair and shouting. He shouldn’t have held back. He shouldn’t have tried so hard to sound clever. He clearly overdid it with the quotations. It would have been better to throw out a couple of prepared jokes. Khakamada really does not like tough questions with personal criticism. No wonder she went after me so hard when I said that no democracy would suit her if she didn’t get to live under it in Barvikha (an elite Moscow suburb associated with wealth and privilege). He should have CRITICIZED HER, not tried to prove himself right. Then she might have lost her temper and not looked quite so glamorous. Khakamada had clearly prepared for these debates EXTREMELY WELL. A professional. kerogazz_batyr didn’t do that. But in any case, Chadayev did well. He wasn’t afraid. He went ahead despite a 99 percent prediction that he would lose. Just like Kashin did in his time, by the way. All in all, it leads to an interesting observation: among the representatives of the Bloody Regime™ only the younger generation — Parker, Kashin, Chadayev, the Young Nashi activists — are brave. Everyone with any real status is scared stiff of contact with a hostile audience. That will be their undoing. And Khakamada — she’s a formidable woman — agreed right away and didn’t set any conditions. I was sure they were going to tear her apart, especially since the comments about her BEFORE the debate were, to put it mildly, skeptical. She genuinely changed people’s opinion of her after the debate. Right now everyone is in a kind of hysterical delight. By the way, it wasn’t her who arrived in the Mercedes with a flag on the license plate that people have been writing so much about. We’re preparing the next debate. I think it’ll be interesting.