Автор: Анкап-тян

Police Russia of the Present, new season

Yesterday, the state carried out another act of violence against its citizens, raiding Navalny’s headquarters, as well as the homes and apartments of his staff, former staff, relatives of staff, and people who simply happened to be caught in the crossfire.

In general, political life in the country has become very lively. If I were watching this in a series, it would be clear that things are heading toward a climax and then a resolution. And, of course, I would find the series very strange if, after showing events like yesterday’s, I were then told that this had finally broken the spirit of resistance, the leaders had dispersed, the volunteers had returned to their everyday peaceful activities, and the tyrant ruled peacefully until his death, passing the throne to his growing son and leaving his loyal henchman Ramzan as regent. Instead, I would expect that in 2021, highly competitive elections for the State Duma would take place, preceded by a fierce struggle over the admission of non-systemic single-mandate candidates, and as a result, the parliament would acquire a rather diverse look, and with it, a certain agency; then there would be clashes over the repeal of the article in the election law banning Navalny from running for president, it would not be possible to repeal it, and quite unexpectedly for themselves in 2024, with Navalny’s support and to the outrage of the libertarians, Roizman would be elected. Now that would be a plot! Everyone would be eagerly awaiting the new season, which would certainly not be inferior to the previous one in terms of dramatic tension.

And although no one writes scripts for Russia, nevertheless, without satiety and the resolution of major internal problems, there will be no dull police stability here, no matter how much you raid Navalny’s headquarters or declare Open Russia an undesirable organization. Not the century, not the people, not the trends.

Smart Voting showed people that they are not just many, but very many. This means that it is possible to step out of the shadows. So now is the time for the visual capture of space. There is no need for extremist slogans, for it is enough to simply state a position rather than explain it; for explanations, there are internet resources protected from pressure. For example, Professor Solovey suggested mass-producing and selling cheap silicone bracelets with a simple inscription “help political prisoners,” and directing the proceeds toward that very help. Firstly, this benefits the prisoners, and secondly, such a thing is not shameful to wear, but it is shameful to demand its removal, as it is proof that a person personally donated a couple of hundred rubles to help those whom the state persecutes for their political views. Moreover, there is nothing extremist in the inscription. There is no need to try to invent a single symbol of protest—why do we need an alphabet of one symbol? After all, we live in a consumer society, which means there will be competition and a wide choice.

Of course, there will be street protests—how could there not be—but these are one-off promotional protest actions; however, for the “fronde” to become fashionable, people must also wear these conditional neck scarves a la fronde.

Thus, I envision the outlines of the next political season roughly as follows:

  • A continuation of the trend toward the normalization of protest, the everyday demonstration of one’s moods to everyone around in the form of wearable symbols. Protest becomes, if not prestigious, then at least mass-approved.
  • Close attention to the numerous ghouls and few decent people newly elected through Smart Voting. Public support for any correct gestures on the part of the elected, even if they were previously in the “ghoul” category: training implies positive reinforcement.
  • The departure abroad of a number of well-known opposition figures and the formation of permanent teams among them for the information support of “rocking the boat.” This is required by banal tactical considerations. The host of a popular YouTube channel must always be online, not sitting uselessly in a detention center. The studio must work, not be endlessly restored after raids by security forces. The coordination of the network must happen continuously. And so on. There is no longer any need to fear that this will negatively affect the image of the protesters: the myth about the State Department has gone stale. No one cares that something like Meduza is based in Riga, so why shouldn’t Navalny.Live, MBX.Media, and SVTV establish themselves there? One cannot be a generalist in an age of division of labor; street politics and media propaganda must be separated. The street politician should remain a guest on a stream, not a regular host of a show.
  • Media shaming of deanonymized security personnel is bearing its first fruits—rank-and-file employees are starting to resign, superiors are starting to apologize, and orders for the violent suppression of street actions occasionally begin to be executed without enthusiasm.
  • Ukraine demonstrates significant economic growth against the backdrop of Russian stagnation. Russian citizens begin to want things to be like in Ukraine.
  • The long-awaited global economic crisis hits. The regime takes a step that is correct from the point of view of self-preservation, opening the rainy-day fund and lowering taxes—but this looks like concessions to the demands of the opposition and only continues to weaken the regime.

As they say, remember this tweet.

The government always tends to do its manicure with an angle grinder

Ancap for Grandmas

My team and I at Libertarian Band have released a new video, this time — about ancap. Back in winter, I wanted to write an overview text about how I see the relationship between the main currents of libertarianism (which differs from the traditional division into minarchism and ancap), but I never got around to it. Instead, this was achieved in a series of five videos, which finally concludes today.

The “Libertarianism for Grandmas” series will continue; in the second part of the cycle, we will focus on explaining individual key concepts for libertarianism. For now, as they say, subscribe, leave likes, and send bitcoins if you like what we’re doing. It’ll only get cooler from here!

And for those who wish to deepen their knowledge of ancap without waiting for new videos — you are most welcome to read our translation of The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, which is also still ongoing, but a significant part of the book has already been translated.

Video about specific risks when playing chess

Professor Khrennikov’s social laser and other crap

I was handed a series of two articles and asked to comment on them:

  1. Social Laser Against Colored Revolutions
  2. From Social Laser to Social Hyperboloid

The texts are extremely pseudo-scientific, full of fluff and appeals to authority, so I will give you a brief summary; you can check the original for reference.

Article Summary

First, the articles formulate an observation that is obvious to anyone with a minimal grasp of the conceptual apparatus of the Austrian School of Economics: that when attempting to use methods of natural sciences to describe the interaction of subjects, the researcher faces inevitable failure, because the actions of subjects are not determined, as they possess their own interests and free will.

Next, a step forward is taken, and it is said: look, quantum mechanics—there is no determinism there either, observation directly affects the result, and in general, it is very similar to the behavior of acting subjects. Why not apply the apparatus of quantum mechanics to praxeology?

Next, the conceptual apparatus is applied as an example to describe context-dependent choice (one of the objects of study in the currently fashionable behavioral economics), and it is shown that, look, it was successfully described, so now we will prove any subjectivism and irrationality to you using algebra.

Then the next step is taken. Now, quantum mechanics gave us the laser. Since we have applied the terminology of quantum mechanics to society, let’s construct a social laser. A regular physical laser produces a beam of coherent radiation; a social one should produce directed coherent social activity. A regular laser requires pumping to excite a coherent launch, and society requires pumping too. All that remains is to figure out how to correctly pump society, and then, by skillfully sending it a series of signals, one can obtain the desired action for the initiator at the output. It’s just a matter of funding, and those who hurried to act are already slicing up grants.

Furthermore, a grant is being sliced for some kind of “anti-laser,” whose task is not to excite society, but to calm it down by selecting signals in anti-phase or something of that sort.

Discussion

Now let’s talk about what is wrong with the proposed model of society and the possibilities of managing it.

A person constantly receives sensations through their sensory organs, interprets them, and draws conclusions. New sensations are interpreted taking into account previously drawn conclusions. When receiving information that is easier to interpret, or that helps the subject achieve their goals, they will be inclined to consider this source of information more authoritative in the future and try to verify things with it. Thus, everyone inevitably forms a set of preferred information sources for themselves.

When receiving information that sharply diverges from previous experience, or which led to unpleasant consequences when attempted to be used, a person tends to mark the information source as harmful and try to ignore further signals from it.

In principle, a person can be irrational (from the perspective of an external observer). They will believe in the absurd, do things that harm them, and put others’ interests above their own. But they will similarly form a certain picture of the world for themselves, which in this case means preferences for information sources, a set of prejudices, and behavioral patterns.

Saving mental effort, a person always gravitates toward information sources that are easiest to interpret. Therefore, they will prefer a popular science brochure over a scientific treatise, a journalistic article over a brochure, and a meme over an article.

Because of this, it is hardly surprising that the key source of the freshest and most trustworthy knowledge for humanity has always been gossip. With the era of social networks, gossip has made a qualitative leap, and now its influence compared to any other sources has grown even further.

So, a hypothetical Mr. Kiselev wishes to build a social laser and fire a coherent beam of social enthusiasm somewhere. He appears on a popular TV channel with a message that “Khokhols” want to feed Russians in Novorossiya to the lard. Prigozhin’s factory starts writing about lard on social networks, commenting and reposting each other, commenting on everyone who mentions anything about Ukraine, lard, any settlement in the region designated as Novorossiya in the manuals, or simply popular bloggers. Then, according to the author’s design, calls begin to go to Novorossiya to drive the “Khokhols” out of their moonshine. A certain number of people actually gather and go, where they are processed into black soil. The topic is discredited, and the channels exposed in this topic are too. The next attempt to build a laser using these tools will fail; a new topic must be invented.

Or another example. A hypothetical Mr. Navalny releases an exposé film about the Prime Minister; the latter ignores the signal, and then the pumping begins: people are urged to take to the streets and demand a public investigation of the facts highlighted in the film. Hype, millions of views, people go out, get hit on the head with batons, and disperse. The movement becomes even wider, yellow ducks disappear from stores, Navalny’s circle of support grows manifold, and he begins a presidential campaign.

What is the difference between the two cases? The difference is that it is not enough to convey information to a person—the information must be confirmed by direct sensations; this is precisely what strengthens the authority of the information source. One could try to turn on an anti-laser and instill in people ideas about the successes of import substitution, but this information will be very poorly confirmed by direct data from the refrigerator. But a laser where the pumping focuses on the theme “everything was stolen” is perfectly confirmed by an empty refrigerator.

Therefore, the room for maneuver for representatives of the regime who do not wish to stop the looting is quite small—they will have to find some external or internal enemies responsible for the current dire situation. However, this is a very slippery slope:

Propagandist to the crowd:
– If there’s no water in the tap, it means the Jews drank it! Beat the Jews, save Russia!
And the crowd responds:
– Hey, brothers, look at him, his face is washed, which means there is water in his tap! Beat the Jew!

Summary

What is referred to in the articles under the fancy word “laser” is a completely ordinary hype-building campaign. Describing a social campaign in the language of quantum-like mathematics will not provide new understanding and will only confuse those who have to work on the campaign, because they will be working not with vaguely fixed “info-fields” and “social energy” measured in unknown units—but with themes, meanings, and concrete people. In short, pure humanities.

But let the grant-eaters in institutes with big windows try to calculate the vector of social tension and model a cascade of info-waves in media fields, and let the officials in offices with high ceilings wait for results from them that provide a magic key to managing the subordinate people—meanwhile, people will continue to go about their urgent affairs relatively calmly.

A quantum-like model for describing cognitive distortions during the sequential scratching of the right ear with the left heel and picking the left nostril with the right pinky

Juneman. The one who defeated Navalny

Vladislav Zdolnikov and Mikhail Pozharsky posted explanations as to why Navalny was categorically wrong in his support for Zhukovsky and his refusal to support Yuneman…

So, who are all these people, and why am I writing about this here?

Navalny is the Sole Unalternative Leader of the Opposition, who confirmed this title on September 8 during the single voting day by defeating United Russia (I don’t know about you, but the word “united” makes my eyes spin).

Zdolnikov is a former IT consultant for the FBK, who has just resigned from this important post due to ethical disagreements with Navalny.

Pozharsky is a classic liberal, a former national-democrat, and recently a vlogger and lecturer.

Yuneman is an independent candidate in the Moscow City Duma elections, whom Navalny did not recommend as part of the smart voting strategy, but who nonetheless took first place in his district in the offline voting. Quite a few libertarians worked in his headquarters.

Zhukovsky is a candidate from the CPRF in Yuneman’s district, recommended by Navalny as part of smart voting, and is the only Navalny candidate who took a shameful third place (the others took first and second places).

Right now Yuneman, who as I already said won the offline voting, is trying to overturn the online voting results, which clearly appear rigged. It is also known that electronic voting glitched for three hours on the election day itself, does not provide the ability to monitor the authenticity of results, and the decision to implement it was made in violation of the election law. Moreover, electronic voting has an irremediable flaw: it is either open, which allows for administrative pressure on the voter, or secret, which makes it impossible to prevent and prove ballot stuffing.

So, Yuneman defeated Navalny, and now he intends to defeat another extremely harmful innovation: electronic voting. Quite a feat, isn’t it? Navalny should now literally move heaven and earth to defend Yuneman’s victory, in order to make up for his fault toward him and regain the trust of many respected people. As for our task, it is to not forget to remind Navalny of this, which is why this story must remain at the top for a sufficiently long time.

It is not enough to repost this whole story right now. We must continue to be interested in it, spread news about it, and if necessary, take part in protest actions. This is a long-term theme, like the fascinating voyage of the Yakut shaman, leaving rallies behind him and sowing panic among the higher-ups.

Navalny is 43, is starting to lose his grip and lose out to youth like this

Resuscitation of vkontaktika

For some time, I had an unofficial mirror on VKontakte. However, it is well known that this jurisdiction has a rather unpleasant administration policy regarding the handing over of its citizens to the Russian Federation administration. Therefore, some security measures were taken regarding the public page (I have no idea exactly what they were, as I personally avoid that place), a side effect of which was the loss of all subscribers and history.

So, if for some reason it is more convenient for you to be on this particular social network, you can subscribe to the public page again. Just in case, I do not recommend liking posts — it is stupid to be imprisoned for a like; be imprisoned for reposts at least.

Planting the ancap flag on shaky ground

Mechanics of Freedom. Part 2, Chapters 1-2

After a long break, I finally got around to editing the accumulated translations of individual chapters of “Mechanics of Freedom”.

The second part of Mechanics of Freedom, “Libertarian Deriban, or How to Sell Off the State Piece by Piece,” is dedicated to various ideas of liberal reforms that do not require the abolition of the state to be launched, but significantly reduce its role.

The poem “Paranoia”, which serves as the epigraph to this part of the book, was quite difficult for me due to its nightmare of a meter. Of course, from an academic standpoint, I should not have used a profane rhyme there, but rather left an ellipsis, as the author did, rhyming the necessary word with “bed,” for example. But, being a feminist, I limit the use of the word “yebat” [fuck] only to idioms, like “yebat vola” [to waste time] or “yebat mozg” [to mess with someone’s head]; as for voluntary sex between people—only “yebat’sya” [to fuck], and nothing else. That doesn’t fit the meter, so the word was tucked into the middle of the line, which, in turn, required its use in an explicit form. Thus, political correctness defeated propriety)))

In the chapter “Selling Schools”, Friedman presents the concept of school vouchers, which since its original utterance has been quite widely publicized, entering, in particular, the program of the Libertarian Party of Russia, but seems to have never been fully implemented anywhere—the state desperately clings to its right to fuck children’s heads.

In the chapter “Radical Critique of American Universities”, Friedman took the easy way out and entrusted the critique entirely to the famous 18th-century economist Adam Smith. Smith, having subdued time and space, condescended to the request and thoroughly blasted mid-20th-century American universities.

Anonymity, protest, division of labor

A post from the Telegram channel “IT criminal cases SORM rossiyushka” is actively spreading across the network about how important it is for everyone to set the correct privacy settings in Telegram, after first updating it to the latest version. The update was made following the outrage of protesters in Hong Kong, who discovered they were being deanonymized by adding all possible phone numbers to the contact list, after which Telegram’s friendly interface immediately gave up the activists’ accounts by phone number. The hole has now been patched, but the old settings are still there by default; they must be changed manually.

Not long ago, I also mentioned a post from the Cryptoagora channel about how to obtain fake bank cards and SIM cards without intermediaries (spoiler: realistic silicone masks are used).

And very recently, Bitarch spoke out regarding the fact that automatic facial recognition systems are inevitably doomed to false positives, meaning that one can not only cover their tracks this way, but also try to feed the opponent members of their own gang: other security forces, odious officials, and so on.

In light of the fact that the Russian authorities are actively purchasing cameras for facial recognition at mass protests, the opportunity arises to provide the press with headlines like: “Zhirinovsky threw feces at a Rosgvardiya officer,” or “Three Putin doubles urinated on a cop.” But—no.

The complication of the protest and the tightening of the screws by the regime currently dictate a clear maintenance of the boundary between legal and illegal actions. During a legal protest, whether agreed upon with the city administration or not, a person limits their toolkit and also expects other protest participants to do the same. Any other behavior will logically be perceived by them as a provocation. At the same time, at other times when the streets are not flooded with security forces, nothing prevents anonymous individuals from carrying out well-prepared actions that discredit the regime, appearing on camera in the images of, for example, Petrunko or Kusyuk.

It is also worth considering in advance which role in the protest suits you best and not striving for versatility. You can sit anonymously on the internet and write articles of a quasi-extremist nature, or you can speak from a podium—but it will be very difficult to combine both functions, as attention to a known activist increases the probability of deanonymizing their persona. You can attend agreed rallies, appearing on surveillance cameras and in cell operator logs, but it will be difficult to combine this with posting flyers or smashing police windows, deanonymized using Russian Elephant. Finally, you can donate to projects you like, although earning money for this may not leave you, for example, with opportunities for serious offline activism.

There will be no post tomorrow; in my offline incarnation, I am going to observe the elections. But if the whim of running for office myself had entered my head, I would have had to hand the channel over to someone else. There is no helping it; every choice entails costs. So let’s drink to the hope that tomorrow we will not regret the choice we made today!

Put on a mask — don’t get caught

The Russian state has learned the word “panarchy”

In Tyumen, three schoolchildren decided to distribute leaflets advertising panarchy. They ordered a print run from a printing house; the printing house tipped off the police, the print run was seized, and the leaflet is now being checked for extremism. If it is found, a criminal case will be opened. If not, it is presumed they will return the people’s property and leave them alone.

Let’s help the experts make the right decision and explain to as wide a circle of people as possible that:

  1. The stationary bandit theory is scientific mainstream
  2. Panarchy is a fully academic direction of political thought
  3. The transition to panarchy can only be peaceful

So far, only znak.com has written about the incident. If anyone has contacts in the media, please use them to spread this information. I would also be happy to talk about panarchy to any publication that decides to educate its readers on this matter.

As for those who wish to use such a tool as leaflets to educate the public, I recommend using a printer; furthermore, it is better to distribute materials not by pasting them on bulletin boards or putting them in mailboxes, but by handing them out person-to-person at political events.

The object of the Tyumen police’s curiosity

AI will help the authorities fight against oppositionists… or the other way around?

Bitarch’s column

Supporters of authoritarian power sometimes frighten libertarians with artificial intelligence (AI) systems. They try to prove to us that after their implementation, all our struggle will become meaningless, because the state will be able to instantaneously detect and nip any oppositional activity in the bud.

However, AI, like any other technology, is a double-edged sword — just as a stationary bandit can use it against us, we can use it against the authorities. The use of AI for the deanonymization of security forces by projects like “Scanner” and “Russian Elephant” is only one possible example.

Also, such systems are prone to false positives. This insurmountable property of AI can be used intentionally by introducing false targets to overload the system. Not the neural network itself, but the investigative bodies and security forces, who will have to spend effort investigating fake cases, overlooking real oppositionists. And if politicians are substituted as false targets, the entire system of the stationary bandit will fall apart.

Why “erroneously”?

Russian elephant. Interview.

Today is my debut in the interview genre, and I think it turned out quite interesting. I hope to replenish this new section with fresh materials from time to time. So, today I am not answering questions, but asking them. The one answering is the Russian Elephant.

There is a lot written online about your project “Russian Elephant”. Officially, you state that the project’s name was chosen because an elephant is distinguished by its intelligence and long memory for grudges. However, to many, the allusion to the abbreviation SLON — “death to cops by knife” — popular in the Soviet criminal world, is quite obvious. It is unlikely that you did not consider this circumstance. Could you comment on to what extent the expectations of those who interpret the name of your project in this key might be justified?

Someday in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, we will tell the whole story of how the Elephant was created, and we assure you, it will be a truly fascinating tale. Right now, such a story is impossible for obvious reasons.

Anyone can interpret anything however they want, but developing this thought will inevitably lead us to such delightful (not) moral puzzles as “Do people who play computer shooters want to kill people?”, “A song by such-and-such a group is about rape. Does this group call for rape?” and other attempts to stretch Columbine into allegory.

However, the official position of the Russian Elephant remains the same: we do not call for violence in any form. We call for the revival of the institute of reputation in Russia, and it is clearly impossible to do so without a long memory for grudges.

How do you comment on the recent video by Mikhail Pozharsky “The Mask of the Beast”, where he points out that de-anonymization is needed primarily for the police officers themselves, so as not to lose their human face?

Pozharsky is delightful in almost everything he does, and this video with a reference to Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” is no exception. From an ethical point of view, one can indeed agree with the position outlined in the video.

Moreover, it’s funny that this publication of ours practically coincided in timing with the release of a new video from Whalesplaining.

Russian security forces are massively resisting their de-anonymization; in other words, they insist on bearing collective responsibility instead of individual responsibility. Does it not follow from this, as well as from your agreement with the main message of Pozharsky’s video, that projects like the Russian Elephant should de-anonymize not only those security officers whose crimes have been recorded, but actually everyone who, as a representative of security agencies, hides their identity?

Given how low the standing of police authority (previously: militsiya) is in Russia from the perspective of the institute of reputation, this proposal sounds completely reasonable. We have a historically strong (brrr!) slave mentality that “the boss is always right” and other “all power comes from God” notions, and unfortunately, this also applies to police officers, although, one would think, it is just a job, like being a banker, a cashier, or a taxi driver.

And when every day you read news of the series “Anapa police officers from the anti-corruption department convicted of bribery,” “police planted drugs,” and “Rosgvardia officer killed a two-year-old boy,” you naturally get flabbergasted and, yes, definitely desire more protection from possible violence, in this case — state, monopolized violence.

This is from the same series as “When I walk through Paris, I can approach a police officer to ask something, or almost just to chat. When I walk through Moscow and see police officers coming towards me, I prefer to cross to the other side of the street.”

The Rosgvardia, however, is in principle a crime by Putin against the people of Russia.

You answered the first question quite vaguely, so let’s clarify with a concrete example. You post the personal data of a certain security officer, indicating the crimes he committed, and after some time, this officer’s car is burned, or a window is broken, or the lock is filled with expanding foam — in short, an anonymous prank is played, of the kind that they love to use against opposition activists in problematic regions. How will you officially comment on what happened on your website and in social networks?

Not at all. Even if this was a consequence, we did not call for it. If someone is “just following orders,” or, which is much worse, truly believes in all the propagandistic bullshit about the State Department, Maidan, and the orange threat, and furiously beats a person lying on the ground with a baton, then let them not be surprised that one day karma may send them a boomerang.

I remind you that during the protests in Magas, 13 Ingush police officers refused to carry out orders and go against their own people. Now they are being tried.

Let’s talk about technical details. Can you briefly tell us about what the Elephant’s “innards” are? Is the computer magic based on your own engine and capacities, or does it depend on third-party services? What is the share of manual work? What is the percentage of identification errors, and at what level of confidence that the perpetrator has been correctly identified do you decide to publish their data? Do you check the authenticity of publications from other projects like yours, for example, the sensational publication by Scanner about the identity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs employee who punched a girl in the stomach? Do you collaborate with related projects?

The computer magic is based both on existing technologies from various giants like Amazon and Google, as well as on our own developments. We are also closely integrated with a number of projects using technology similar to FindFace, which NTechLabs is currently successfully selling to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Accuracy is quite high, although for extra confidence, we check information using other indirect data. Naturally, no one is immune to mistakes — for this purpose, we are recruiting a quality control team to identify such situations and react to them. I will be happy to provide specific figures a bit later.

On the website, you promise not only to provide the necessary evidentiary base for prosecuting perpetrators according to the law, but also funding for human rights defenders and lawyers who will handle the criminal prosecution of these lawbreakers. Do you intend to initiate criminal prosecution yourself by hiring lawyers, or only to support such initiatives of private individuals? If the latter, how is the quality of work intended to be controlled? Could it not happen that, at your own expense, the authorities use fictitious lawsuits to cut off the possibility of actual prosecution?

Not necessarily private individuals, if a lawsuit is filed on behalf of some organization that already has successful experience in countering state violence and repression, we can join their initiative, thereby creating a synergetic effect.

As private individuals, we already actively donate to human rights protection and political activism. Redirecting the specified part of the donations that the Russian Elephant receives / will receive to the same goals seems to us the most reasonable. We are spending our time and taking risks, and all that other stuff — but those innocently convicted, such as Egor Zhukov and other figures in the case under article 212 for July 27 and August 3, need this help significantly more.

So far, the project exists in the form of a brief description on the website, as well as channels on Twitter and Telegram, where the data of de-anonymized security officers is posted from time to time. When will the project be considered officially started, and what functionality will it include at that time?

The current state of development can be well described by the following slogan: MAKE A ̶D̶E̶S̶T̶R̶O̶Y̶ DEPLOY.

The working functionality of the Russian Elephant, which everyone is expecting, will be available in the coming days, and perhaps, by the time this interview is published, it will already be available. Moreover: a so-called “roadmap” will be visualized, where all the stages of what we intend to do will be shown. This is also an example of the institute of reputation — if you promised something, be so kind as to do it, or you shouldn’t have promised in the first place.

Regardless, what is currently being posted in the TG channel, Twitter, and Instagram is, in fact, just attracting attention and maintaining interest. None of these services provide sufficient functionality for our goals, therefore a custom one is being developed.

The Elephant has many predecessors who hoped to somehow harness the institute of reputation. For example, Navalny runs the Black Notebook. In your opinion, what was lacking in earlier projects so that the institute of reputation in Russia could truly work as a real force influencing the behavior of government representatives in terms of preventing illegal actions, and how do you intend to fill those gaps?

One way or another, protest is indeed moving into the moral-ethical field, and when a singer like Manizha says: “I refuse to perform at such-and-such a festival, I’m not about politics, I’m the about music, and music should unite, not sow discord” — that’s one thing; when meanwhile the group Splin (despite all their undeniable talent and contribution!) doesn’t see a problem with their performance at that same festival — that’s quite another. The market, as they say, will decide, and the institute of reputation is its prophet.

In Russia, a civil society is indeed beginning to emerge. And it depends on all of us — young, proactive, capable, who can, among other things, “vote with their wallets,” whether it will form fully or wither halfway.

By what criteria do you intend to evaluate the success of your project? How public will your evaluations be? As you understand, for those who decide to invest money into something, it is important that the investment proves effective.

Perfectionism is inherent in us to a sufficient degree — to get involved in something average = wasting your time, therefore aut Caesar aut Nihil, or be the best, or why do this at all?

Accordingly, our goal is the maximum coverage of the Russian Elephant’s activities, so that people know about us, talk about us, publish about us, so that our symbolism, which was thought out four times over, is visible, so that it be recognizable and, in professional language, viral.

The more people know about the Russian Elephant, the more people know about those associated with state violence, aiding in the usurpation of power and propaganda. The more people know about these people, the closer we are to a fully functioning institute of reputation. That’s exactly what we aimed for initially, right?

As an example: our Instagram has been around for 3-4 days (the interview was taken on August 23 – Ancap-tyan). On the second day, a news aggregator account with 30k followers subscribed to us — and our call to tell people about the Russian Elephant was heard — a repost, a couple of stories with an additional call “from themselves”…

In general, 500 followers in these 3-4 days, and, based on experience, it only gets easier from here; reach metrics grow exponentially.

What will be your estimated budget by the time you reach the expected performance? How long can you work in such a mode before you start receiving donations in the necessary volume?

Why this attempt to look at the Russian Elephant from a commercial perspective? But, by the way, since you’re trying — would you buy shares with the ticker SLON, if we went IPO? 😉

We are capable of maintaining the project’s functionality at our own expense for an unlimited amount of time; the entire Elephant team, to put it mildly, are not dependents or idlers. The business of Alexander Litreev is absolutely public: as an advertisement — Connecto VPN — your choice for safe and anonymous surfing at the price of a cup of coffee per month. By subscribing to Connecto, you support the market and the institute of reputation.

However, if (let’s imagine for a second the most negative, but fortunately absolutely unrealistic variant) the Russian Elephant does not receive a single kopek of support over its entire time of operation, then this would signal that society simply does not need the counteraction to state violence and the revival of the institute of reputation. Do you feel indignation while reading these lines? That’s correct — it is indeed an unrealistic variant. Society is ready for change, moreover, society is actively demanding them.

Therefore, we are not worried that the Russian Elephant may not be appreciated to its full value (it has already been appreciated and will be appreciated even more). We are worried about justifying the high expectations placed upon us.

As Confucius once said a long time ago (and was popularized in 2007 by Pavel Durov): “Do not worry about not having a high rank. Worry about whether you are worthy of having a high rank.”

I think if such a project went IPO, I would be more concerned that its creators might be trying to make money through blackmail. I was interested specifically in your ability to fully realize and promote the project with your own strengths, and I am very glad that you have such an opportunity..

Thank you very much for the answers, and good luck to your project!