When I read about Navalny’s poisoning, I felt completely hopeless. This year, ruling regimes all over the world have finally gone off the rails and have already managed to cause an unimaginable amount of damage to people. And it’s only August! And there is no reason to believe that 2020 is just an anomaly and that things will settle down later. In short, I wanted to fully retreat into internal emigration. To a place where there are no political news, where you have no idea what new orders the disposers of other people’s lives are giving, where there is only a market around—peaceful, cozy, and benevolent. To the place where all decent people actually belong.
I beg you: please, do not feed yourselves to the Leviathan. Stop with these pickets of yours, for which you will be fined—one; jailed for a day—two; given a criminal case—three. Stop the performances with Putin dolls and other risky nonsense. This will not shame the bandits in power. This does not help the victims of the bandits. It simply forces the security forces to turn their extremely unfriendly attention toward you, with a predictable result. You cannot be proud of being a victim of the regime. You should be proud of causing damage to the regime with impunity. But be proud in silence, otherwise, the impunity will turn into a failure.
One should act openly only when backed by power. Until then, we are partisans in this war declared upon us by the state. We must not be visible. Only grotesque rumors should be known about us—that we are everywhere, that 90% of the country’s economy is in the shadows, that no one follows the regime’s orders except for completely naive weirdos, that only suckers keep their money in fiat while the right people keep it exclusively in crypto, that official employment for a normal person is just a smokescreen for shadow earnings, that a normal person has contacts for every occasion, and it is thanks to them, not the state, that he peacefully prospers.
Of course, it is not like that now. But such rumors and beliefs have the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why it is useful for us to broadcast them. This is a far more effective struggle against the regime than rallies or, Lord forgive me, anti-corruption investigations. Against any regime, not necessarily Putin’s. Against the phenomenon of political power as such.
