Mikhail Svetov is a well-known blogger from the heyday of LiveJournal and a longtime activist of the Libertarian Party of the Russian Federation. Gradually, he gained more media influence than the party itself, after which he decided to implement reforms according to his own taste, leading to a split of the LPR into two. Subsequently, he attempted to promote an umbrella organization called Civil Society instead of the LPR, but he did not succeed. He then opened the “New Sincerity” club in Moscow, but the Russian authorities closed it fairly quickly, which was damn expected. He now lives in Rio and is primarily engaged in his media project, SVTV.

Throughout the lifetime of Montelibero, our activists periodically reached out to Mikhail during his streams with paid comments and asked about his attitude toward Montelibero. At first, Mikhail replied that he viewed it negatively (I analyzed his take in one of the Montelibero news episodes), but after the start of mobilization, he said that people should leave the RF even if it’s to the middle of nowhere, or even to Montelibero—anything is better than staying. In short, I was somewhat surprised when our guys said that Svetov immediately agreed to come to the fest. True, he wanted to simultaneously organize a large tour of the concentration centers of the anti-war Russian diaspora; however, a criminal case was then opened against him, it became unclear which countries he could safely visit, and his arrival at the fest became questionable.

Only when a targeted donation for Svetov’s ticket to Montenegro occurred did he give final consent. It was necessary to recoup the money as much as possible, so Mikhail was scheduled for two presentations at once, plus a bonus interview in the Montelibero podcast studio. Nevertheless, none of this guaranteed a decent media output: for example, I predicted that following the fest, Svetov would mention on his channel: “gave a cool lecture in Montenegro, definitely listen to it”—and not a word about the fest or Montelibero. Fortunately, the prediction did not come true.

The final version of the presentation is still not posted; I am providing a timestamp for the general broadcast from the point where the sound starts.

The main theses of both of Svetov’s presentations were as follows:

1. I don’t want to say anything bad about Montelibero, you’ve done well, but generally, trying to run away from the state and build your own little ancap on the fringes is a failing idea; you need to get into politics, not be afraid of populism, and come to power. I recall that the topic of the presentation was “what a Russian libertarian should do in emigration,” so an idea relevant to some Argentines or even Montenegrins was completely irrelevant specifically for Russians.
2. Libertarians are natural individualists who have no clue what is happening beyond their own fence, and we need a libertarian international. Here, there are essentially no objections—it is needed, so we are doing it. The fest is, among other things, about this very international. Now, within the framework of the international, we will be able to demand that Svetov cover the problems and successes not only of the “busty laborites” but ours as well.
3. You need to speak to people in the language of love; put away your logic, it gets in the way. And in general, read more leftists; they understand politics, don’t obsess over this economics of yours, the public finds it boring. He said this and then went to give an interview to Rabfak, to the leftists—commendable consistency. Unfortunately, by following leftist recipes, Mikhail managed to alienate quite a few like-minded people during his political career, and this slightly demotivates one from studying what those guys advise. At the same time, one really shouldn’t alienate sane leftists; cooperation with them is established perfectly. The criterion for sanity is that the leftist’s dislike for the state must be stronger than their dislike for inequality, private property, and similar leftist bugbears.

So, my prediction did not come true: Svetov was not just satisfied with the organization of the fest and the project participants he managed to talk to—he changed his opinion about the project as a whole and declared it publicly on several platforms: that he was wrong, they are good people, it’s a good project, and he feared for nothing. Respect. He worked off his ticket by about one hundred and twenty percent.

Of course, we would very much like to have a speaker of such a level in our ranks, but generally, our path is decentralization. Therefore, it makes more sense to strive for the emergence of a dozen speakers of Soz’s level and a hundred of my level than to look for a single champion.