An important post. Please read it and vote at the end. And then take part in the experiment too. So, I had previously promised to write in more detail about the newspaper whose 100,000-copy print run was seized in our city of Kirov for “expert examination.”
Where did the idea for this newspaper even come from, and why did we start bothering with it? The idea came to me while I was watching another video in which a cameraman was interviewing people on the streets of Kirov, asking: “Do you know Navalny?” As usual: some people know me and view me positively, 80% don’t know who I am at all, and some dislike me. And there was also one elderly woman selling things at the market. She said flat out: NAVALNY?! HE STOLE ALL OF OUR VYATKA FOREST!
It’s funny in a way, but really it’s sad. A poor old woman is selling things at the market, surrounded by filth and decay. The roads are full of potholes big enough for her to drown in. She is being robbed and fleeced every single day. It’s her oil that Timchenko trades in, and that’s how he became a billionaire. It’s her gas that enriches only Putin’s developer friends, who skim money off Gazprom’s ballooned capital construction projects. It’s her mineral fertilizers that paid for a Greek island for an oligarch’s daughter. But she knows none of this, because the television told her: NAVALNY STOLE ALL OF OUR VYATKA FOREST. That’s what she worries about as she goes to her local clinic, where she won’t receive any decent medical care, despite the $3 trillion that has flowed into the country over the past 12 years from selling off her natural resources. Can you blame her for this? Of course not. She’s old, and she believes television. Have we made any real effort to explain things to her? No. For years I’ve been writing about our anti-corruption investigations in this blog, and there hasn’t been a single day when I didn’t get a letter saying: Alexei, the internet is great, but please think about offline campaigning too. So looking at that old woman, I remembered all those letters and thought that maybe I was wrong to delete them so decisively. We’re not going to create a TV channel. Or a radio station. Flyer campaigns are going quite well, but you can’t say much in a leaflet. What that old woman needs is a newspaper. A very simple one. Primitive, even. In plain Russian, persuasively but very simply, it needs to explain to her who exactly stole her Vyatka forest—and her oil and gas too. This is what our newspaper for Kirov residents who do not use the internet looks like:
Web version Print version Many people will say there are too many heroic photos of me in it, but remember the goal. Let’s set the content aside for the moment. Because we talked too much about it, it was seized and we still haven’t been able to distribute it—but that’s not the point. The financials look like this: Printing 100,000 copies 50,000 rubles total, 50 kopecks per copy. Delivery to every mailbox in the city of Kirov 34,000 rubles total, 34 kopecks per copy. Total: 84,000 rubles. Just 84,000 rubles, and a city with a population of half a million will be fully covered with campaign material. I never wanted to deal with newspapers because I assumed they were very expensive. The real figure surprised me and made me happy. What is 84,000 rubles? It’s 210 people chipping in 400 rubles a month. Can they be found in a city of 483,000 people where United Russia is widely disliked (in the State Duma elections it got 30% and finished third behind the Communist Party and A Just Russia)? Of course they can. With smaller cities it’s even easier, despite the fact that political life there may seem nonexistent. Take something like Elektrostal. Population: 155,000. Roughly 40,000 mailboxes. You need to raise 30,000–40,000 rubles. That’s 100 people giving 400 rubles each. Or 2–3 small business owners who are sick of United Russia can chip in 10,000 rubles a month. Nizhny Tagil? Population 360,000. 70,000 mailboxes. You need to raise 60,000 rubles a month in a city where, incidentally, fewer people voted for United Russia than in Moscow. So here is the experiment I want to launch: Once a month I produce a basic, very cheap newspaper explaining corruption in Russia in the simplest possible language. Four A3 pages. It will be provided in a print-ready format, so you won’t have to deal with any layout work. Those who want to take part in the experiment in their region find a printing house and a distribution company (there are plenty in any large city), calculate the budget, and open a Yandex wallet (with Yandex Audit connected)) so that, together with the residents of their city, they can finance the publication. Together we promote these wallets and help people find like-minded supporters in their city. Don’t want a newspaper with photos of Navalny? Great. Write to us saying what material you want removed, and give us the material (photos) you want inserted. We’ll take me out and replace me with your smiling photo and a story about how you exposed the local mayor or inspected the construction of neighborhood playgrounds. Everyone wins. Let me answer the questions you’re about to ask right away: Some crook will register a Yandex wallet and steal our money! -** We’re in no rush, and we won’t include unverified people in the experiment. I’d suggest trying this first in two or three places where it can be entrusted to local branches of the “People’s Alliance”. We know exactly who they are, and they are accountable. We’ll gradually expand the circle of participants. There will no doubt be attempts at fraud, but after the first one the crook will be exposed. The cops will seize the newspaper and our money will be wasted! -** Well, then it’ll be wasted—so what? In the worst case you lose 400 rubles. There won’t be anything so terrible in the paper that it could legitimately be seized. What happened in Kirov happened because the police there have basically been told to seize everything. How do we monitor the money? -** A condition for participating in the experiment is connecting the Y-wallet to Y-Audit. If the stated target is “50,000 rubles needed,” then we collect exactly that amount. Everyone can see how much money came in and how much went out. Not a single printer or distributor in our city will work with a newspaper like this. -** Fine, then they won’t. Obviously in Chechnya or somewhere like Mordovia everything is locked down so tightly that this won’t be possible. In that case, your region needs to work differently—online only. No big deal. We’ll get arrested over a newspaper like this. -** No one will get arrested. It will all be very proper, even if tough. If anything happens, blame it all on me. The newspaper has to be registered. -** We call it a newspaper for simplicity. It’s a leaflet. Every issue is unique. No registration is needed. There is no editorial office. Today it’s called “For Navalny,” tomorrow it could be “WHO IS STEALING FROM OUR OIL?” The idea is good, but I hate you. How can I distribute a paper like this without your face all over it? -** That won’t work with the first issue—there are too many of my faces in it. Starting with the second issue, sure. Send us the right face (article), we’ll remove Navalny from everywhere and put you in instead. There is absolutely no need to love me. What matters is hating corruption and its main enforcers: Putin and United Russia. Is this a party project of the People’s Alliance? I’m in a different party. -** No, this is not a party project. It’s just that for now, activists from the People’s Alliance are participating more than anyone else. I’d be very happy if the paper were distributed by “December 5,” Yabloko, PARNAS, the Communist Party, and so on, with their own symbols added. The Nashi people (pro-Kremlin youth movement) will take the newspaper layout and print it in our name with articles supporting pedophilia and handing Sakhalin over to Japan. -** Well, of course they’ll do that. But they’re already pushing that kind of nonsense on television now. Nothing страшного. Tajiks will pull the newspapers out of the mailboxes. -** Some will be pulled out, some won’t. That happens in Moscow; in most small cities nobody has the resources—or the desire—to do that. Nobody reads newspapers like this. -** It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of publications like these. Obviously there are lots of them during elections and few of them now. Of course this is not the most effective form of campaigning, but it’s definitely better than nothing. We should add a new method, not replace the others with it. - We’re a group of citizens concerned about a particular issue in a particular region. Can we use this newspaper to carpet-bomb the region we need? -** Of course. For example, there are anti-plagiarism activists, and then there’s the Ryazan governor—a blatant plagiarist and crook. Why not centrally raise 100,000 rubles from Moscow’s academic community to inform each of the 528,000 residents of Ryazan that their governor plagiarized his dissertation? We would gladly design a front page for them on that topic. The same goes for environmental issues, construction issues, and so on. - Who decides what the newspaper-leaflet will be about? Who is responsible for the content? What if people don’t like it? -* There is no such thing as content everyone likes. So there’s only one solution: I’ll decide everything myself. If you don’t like the content, make your own newspaper—we’ll all be delighted. If everything goes well and this turns out to be interesting and fun, I’ll come up with some kind of collective way to choose topics. *We’*ll invite “respected journalists” and maybe even “guest editors.” But that’s for stage two; right now it’s important to work out the funding and distribution model. Who should people contact in your office, since it’s impossible to reach you by email or phone? -*** You should contact Anti-Corruption Foundation press secretary Anna Veduta at this email address: vedouta@fbk.info - What if the experiment fails? - Mmmm... let me think... a failed experiment... WILL WE ALL DIE? No, most likely we will not all die. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. No big deal—we lose nothing and gain only experience. For some reason I think it will work. *- Shut up and take my money. Where do I send it, and for which regions?
To begin with, we will try distributing the newspaper that has already been prepared. You can download it here. The following wonderful and civic-minded citizens have volunteered to take part in the experiment: Tula: Roman Aleksandrovich Golubev (head of the regional “PA”) Yandex wallet: 410011889126884 Yandex Audit: http://yaudit.org/yaudit/410011889126884 Vladimir: Alexei Nikolaevich Yefremov (“People’s Alliance,” regional branch) Wallet: 41001694080317 Audit: http://yaudit.org/yaudit/41001694080317 Moscow Region: Vladimir Yuryevich Sukhotin (“People’s Alliance,” regional branch) Wallet: 410011871034829 Audit: http://yaudit.org/yaudit/410011871034829 Moscow: Nikolai Nikolaevich Lyaskin (“PA”), distribution areas: Novokosino, Kosino-Ukhtomsky Wallet: 41001650297912 Audit: http://yaudit.org/yaudit/41001650297912 Moscow: Lyubov Eduardovna Sobol (“RosPil,” “PA”) distribution area: Tsaritsyno Wallet: 410011891571138 Plus, as a responsible resident of Moscow’s Maryino district, I am taking on the task of publishing the newspaper in Maryino (population 223,000). I’ll pay for the first issue myself. For each subsequent issue I will contribute 3,000 rubles and invite my neighbors in Maryino to chip in as well. Our foundation’s executive director, Volodya Ashurkov, as a proud resident of Kuzminki, is doing the same thing in Kuzminki, and is calling on the men and women of Kuzminki who have a couple hundred rubles and a sense of civic responsibility. Let’s try to get this off the ground. It will, of course, require some organizational work, but it should also be a lot of fun. And most importantly, we will finally reach that much-discussed offline audience—“those who aren’t online.” Our Kirov old lady will be pleased, will finally learn the truth, and will go to a rally to whack those thieving United Russia members with her cane. Now please take part in the poll. We need, like, feedback. I absolutely love this idea, but what if I’m the only one? [Error: Invalid poll ID 1915979] I would be extremely grateful if you helped spread this post and support the experiment informationally. Especially in the regions/districts where we are starting. And of course, thanks to everyone who contributes their hard-earned rubles.