Educate the majority who will choose your future

...and with the word “future” from the Russian language

the mice and the whole horde run out

nibble off a tasty morsel

memory that your cheese is full of holes

I. Brodsky

Our people do not know that they have no rights. Until a citizen himself gets into trouble with a long-term construction project, loses his deposit in a bank, falls under the wheels of a drunken official or the baton of a brutal policeman, he will not think about his lack of rights. A resident of the village of Verkhnie Sergi has no way to know that she has no rights: except for the TV, radio “Mayak” and the free regional newspaper, no one has access to her sacred ears. Unless some inquisitive neighbor turns up in Verkhnye Sergi, who is not too lazy to go to the regional center for “Novaya” and who is able to combine in his mind the complex passages of experts from “Echo of Moscow”. If there is no such neighbor, relative, or colleague, Verkhniye Sergi will remain in the dark for another hundred years until a landslide hits them or the village is demolished by an enterprising investor.

Our task is to present our fellow citizens with evidence of their complete lack of rights before they try out the delights of the new state system for themselves. Present, make believe and motivate to action.

Read. Write

I came to journalism against my will. My mother was sick a lot and I had to find money. I quickly realized that they pay more for one column in a large circulation than for cleaning a five-entrance house, and so I began to write. Even during my school years, I carried fictitious stories about the lives of high school students, their way of life and morals to local newspapers. Stories were published, money for bread and pocket money was not transferred. At university I wrote occasionally. The mother recovered, and teachers’ salaries began to be paid strictly according to schedule. It was decided to devote myself to study.

Then, at the very beginning of the 2000s, a person with a heightened sense of shame and justice could still live and study in peace - big problems that needed to be addressed by the whole world appeared occasionally in the city. The city lived, made noise, and grew smaller after the 90s. They didn’t imprison politicians, they didn’t drive students to pro-government rallies, there even seemed to be less torture in the police.

I studied quite comfortably until the third year. Occasionally, she earned extra money by reporting from regional beauty contests, agricultural exhibitions and student skits. She did not hesitate to give materials to regional newspapers, because her conscience did not give any bad signals from within - at that time, in 2000-2002, even the most notorious non-conformists did not see anything wrong with working for regional newspapers. And the newspapers were much more independent: they could reprimand the governor or take aim at the President himself.

However, in the middle of the two thousandth, the writers were covered in a haze. After a couple of years of Sobyanin’s power (his managerial talents were tested in Tyumen), the box office of major newspapers was filled with subsidies and grants, editors-in-chief came to government planning meetings as if they were going to work. Even to me, a lightweight student, it became clear: writing about cowsheds in an independent newspaper is not at all like talking about milk yields from the pages of well-fed publications. And life was such that there was no longer enough time to report on milk yield: housing and communal services reform, infill development, raider takeovers, bureaucratic wars...

On the newsletter

In 2004, I was invited to a new local newspaper. Nothing interesting - an advertising and information publication about the real estate market. However, in the eyes of the general director and editor-in-chief there was a clear hint: come on, let’s go, here is freedom, here we will do something.

And they started doing it. Defrauded shareholders, defrauded investors, land grabs, criminal HOAs. We were free. The only trouble is that only a few knew: the real estate newsletter contains eight text pages of high-quality, sincere content. We supported shareholders, asked bad questions about the city budget, were interested in the size of kickbacks in landscaping and the tender relationship of Sobyanin’s wife’s company with the city administration. We went to all the Duma commissions, rubbed shoulders with the administration, despite convincing requests from officials, we wrote about bills, criminal urban planning regulations, withdrawals of land, and the sale of municipal property. I even went to the State Duma to discuss the Federal Law “On Shared Construction”, “On Construction Savings Banks”... It happened that we took people to rallies (this is not good for the media, but it happened).

Walkers

After about a year of our work, people came to us: a mother of three children lives in a garage, because her house was not completed - someone liked the land and the land was confiscated. Grandfather’s dacha is being demolished and a cottage community is being built in place of SNT. A young family of fire victims ended up on the street - the investor who bought the land under the barracks decided to save on resettlement costs. People reached out and reached out. Someone managed to help - the reputation of an annoying journalist sometimes brought results, because back then they were afraid of such people.

However, already at that time I felt: targeted help, grateful eyes, specific families who received their housing, their money - this is not what brings me greater peace. I understood that we were telling about the lawlessness in the city and country to those who, perhaps, would only learn about it from our newspaper. An old lady who bought a newspaper to sell her apartment and move to a nursing home will read about how farmland was stolen. A mechanic or finisher buys a newspaper, looking for a job through advertisements, and learns that up to a third of the city budget goes into the pockets of the Sobyanin-Rubinchik couple.

Snob under duress

Even then I felt that these, these are the people who need to be told. Moreover, tell it in their language. Tell them in such a way that they are not tempted to turn away from our reality. The Internet was not so populous back then. And his audience was enlightened. Prepared. An audience representing an electoral minority. I understood that in the end, power would be chosen for us by these very grannies, mechanics and carpenters - there are more of them. Propaganda will be targeted at them, they will sit on precinct commissions, and they will be forced to take photos of their ballots.

I don't idealize society. Moreover, I am not ashamed to say that we, more or less informed, capable of analyzing the actions of the authorities, are in the minority. In a very unfortunate minority. We live among those who watch “Let Them Talk,” pour mayonnaise on fish, drink beer from one and a half cups, kill relatives for a bottle and are zealously interested in the novels of Elena Vaenga. These people are the majority. And we hardly know this majority. Society has eaten its fill, scraped together some money and embarked on the path of demarginalization. More or less accomplished citizens settle in their own areas, they have their own schools, their own gardens, their own cafes and restaurants. Society is polarized, the gap between the minority and the majority is becoming wider. And it is stupid to believe that by moving only in their own circle, telling each other the latest news, going to rallies with the same group, the minority will be able to change something. It won’t be able to do anything, because the majority still votes. This is ochlocracy. There is no need to educate the minority - they are already on Twitter, listening to “Echo” and watching “Rain”.

In general, I realized this for myself back in the mid-2000s. And I tried to work in such a way that any manifestation of my professional activity could have a long-term result - a result in the elections. Yes, that's it, no more, no less. But in 2006 I left for the UK.

From there

Actually, I always wanted to do science. However, after university, I realized that I couldn’t afford the journalistic salary I had chosen for my PhD thesis from the provinces - we have neither literature nor experts, and you can’t get to Moscow-St. Petersburg on newspaper pennies. The cheapest option for me was studying abroad. Yes, our country is such that it is easier for impoverished youth to study on a grant at a European university than to survive as a graduate student in Moscow.

I quickly became disillusioned with foreign education, my interest in science faded and came to naught. But interest in what was happening in Russia only grew. When you visit a country once every six months or a year, the changes that come your way knock you off your feet. The change in life is seen more clearly, more clearly than the changes carried out in your presence. And since you, being abroad, learn all the news about the country and your city from the Internet, from the media in your bookmarks, your position becomes radicalized. And, most importantly, that same feeling of injustice and lack of freedom is growing. You read about the massive dispersal of the Dissent March, and then you go out onto the street, where a local policeman greets you warmly and treats you to coffee. You read about how your governor's family is rapidly getting rich, and then you pick up The Times, where they write about how a retired postwoman is demanding that Tony Blair account for where he got the money for his second mortgage. And poor Tony reports. But your governor is not. All this leads to impatience. “Impatience of the heart,” or something like that.

I lived well in London. Given the starting conditions I had (300 pounds in my pocket and no acquaintances), I settled in well. I had a beloved husband, a house, periodic work by profession, and not by necessity. But for some reason I couldn’t live in peace. There was something traumatic and depressing in the dissonance of two realities - the real British and the virtual Russian.

I occasionally came to Tyumen, sometimes staying in the city for a long time. I continued to work and realized that work was becoming increasingly crowded and dangerous. Now another colleague of yours has left the race: he transferred to a well-fed publication and writes exclusively about local culture. Another one received a “wolf ticket” and left the city. Calls from the government began with a request to “well, somehow remove the material,” friendly visits from the police, conversations about the fact that one of the colleagues was invited to preventive conversations. They started calling me on the carpet for posts on social networks: “Well, you understand that you are the face of the editorial office? You need to be softer." The first refusals to work with the wording “has a reputation as an opposition blogger” appeared.

Fear

I came and left, came and left. On the pages of the Tyumen media there was less and less truth - either a lie or nothing. “I have children, my husband left, I can’t.” “The loan is hanging, otherwise, yes, I would show them.” “What are you talking about, we signed an agreement on information support with THEM. Let's write about this congress somehow... somehow. Somehow."

Writing about crimes and negligence of the authorities without fear of being “asked” from the editorial office has become hardly possible even on blogs. The most intractable ones, those who continued to post online exposes of corrupt officials and werewolves, quickly became known in the city as rabble-rousers. "Without a king in my head." Of course. Fool, not afraid. To make the image of the holy fool (the true attitude of the Russian people towards the holy fools have already been forgotten) better read, at the headquarters of the “Young Guards” hired scribblers began to creak in zeal: throw mud, drag journalists’ underwear inside out, start rumors, spam a good article, overwhelm them with false comments, cut off the editorial office’s telephone numbers. .. Sometimes they were afraid not only for their work, but also for their reputation.

And I was returning to London. I wrote on a blog, I wrote for Poles, I wrote for everyone who wanted to publish. And suddenly I realized that I was not afraid. That there were also scandals with involvement in cases of extremism, there were “mask shows” in the editorial office, and lying in wait at the entrance. There were threats, personal explicit photos were pulled from the computer. Not many of our journalists poked their noses into budget arrangements, government procurement and takeovers of enterprises - there were enough provocateurs and slanderers for everyone. It was not necessary to be considered an important bird in order to get in trouble from power.

Everything was there. And there, sitting in London, I realized that I was not afraid. Are you afraid of the “Wolf Ticket”? I've seen poverty, you won't be scared. If they declare non grata, I’ll move. I have no children who need to be fed and can be taken away. No loans. The family, in general, is foreign, and even that one fell apart. Having worked in provocative journalism, I am not afraid of scandals against myself.

No, seriously. It was also for these reasons that I returned to Russia in 2010. I suddenly felt that times were rolling over the country when anyone who could talk and was not afraid had no right to remain on the sidelines. It's not about heroism. I'm afraid of airplanes, I'm afraid of night alleys and robbers, but I'm not afraid to lay out dirt on the governor. There's nothing to be afraid of. I have lived in such a way that nothing but freedom can threaten me.

Stripping

I returned to Tyumen, to my newspaper. Walkers again. Deceived borrowers, shareholders, investors. They demolish houses, profit from communal services... However, they didn’t manage to work for long. During my travels, the founder’s main business grew considerably and became a tool for putting pressure on the editors. The founder was taken to conversations, he was brought to his senses, and the publication began to turn into a corporate wall newspaper. I had to leave.

In 2011, with the reputation of a journalist who does not even systematically expose, but only shoots occasionally, there was nowhere to go. They could take you to regional government newspapers, where you are helpless anyway. In publications where there were still sharp-tongued editors-in-chief, that is, where such a journalist could prove himself, there was an order not to take them. The opposition newspaper, which happily published me, was bought by Spravednoross, whom I publicly disliked several times - and it immediately became clear that it was not worth sending materials there, so as not to put the editor in an awkward position.

People's newspaper

And then Sergei Mostovshchikov came to the publishing house “Provintsia”. And our “provincial” newspaper began to turn from a leaflet for gardeners and gardeners into the only toothy publication... of the region. That's where I went. A national newspaper with a good circulation. In almost 30 capitals across Russia, Mostovshchikov made an interesting product: attracting a mass audience with catchy headlines like “Mother killed her son with an iron” or “A half-meter parrot escaped from a bird market,” he allowed the audience to be deafened by serious “social issues” and politics. Between the crime news page and the lunar calendar, we wrote about extremist cases, arrests at rallies, torture by the police, deception of fire victims, cuttings, and state employees herded into the square. Some doubted that readers would be interested.

The management of the publishing house looked at Mostovshchikov with caution: they say, you are writing for yourself, not for them, the reader wants to know about the killer irons, the sale of potatoes and the new husband of Lolita Milyavskaya. The fact that our circulation did not fall, but only grew, was not an argument. The management of the publishing house did not know that the phones in the editorial office began to ring off the hook with calls: “God, I had no idea that so much was stolen during the construction of the underground passage. And I also wanted to vote for them.” “Daughter, is it true, what kind of demonstrations are they imprisoning now? Is this like under Stalin?” The management did not know that they began to recognize us, journalists, on minibuses and thank us for our silence. I didn’t know that the editorial office was inundated with tearful complaints about the police, building managers, social workers, and kindergarten directors. I didn’t know that we spent days making requests, contacting human rights activists (there were no human rights activists left in Tyumen - they left or joined the People’s Front), we sorted it out, intimidated officials who gave the house to the fire victims “for show”, and then took it away, or took the entire department to prison. Putin's standing. The editorial office carried out a lot of pre-press work. Only a tenth of the available materials were published.

Snob and enlightenment

And the authorities didn’t know that all these people then came to us with gratitude. Moreover, sometimes they thanked not only for a specific result (saved from prison, returned to the kindergarten queue, insisted on major repairs of the house). People were grateful for the enlightenment. What I believed in and what was always ridiculed as a utopia has acquired visible features. Pensioners, working people, and villagers still wanted to know what was happening in the country, but apart from television, an old radio and newspapers, they had no access to any other sources of information. I know for sure that in the remote villages of the Abat region or in the farmsteads of the north of the region, people could only learn about the lawlessness in power and their own lack of rights only from our newspaper. They, of course, saw that their roads were broken, that young people were addicted to codeine, that the chairman of the village council had a huge mansion. But!

Here it is worth making another snobbish digression. Our people often do not know how to draw an analogy between a broken dam, the thievery of the head of the administration or the refusal to admit a cancer patient to a clinic and... and Putin, “United Russia”. There is some kind of breakdown in the ability to build analytical connections. Explaining this connection to them is another challenge.

I repeat again: our society is not at all the sum of enlightened God-bearers with a broad soul and extreme ingenuity, as would-be patriots convince us. The interests of the majority of our fellow citizens have been so closely reduced to everyday comfort, personal gain, frail but stability that many years of not sticking their heads out of the hole have discouraged many intellectual skills. Grandmothers vote so that their pensions are not taken away. Rural youth are grateful to the authorities for a loan for a plasma TV. A hard worker bought a “horse” with his maternity capital and drives around at night. They are integrated enough into society to know that they can live better. And they even know how they can live better than personally (extensive path: work more or steal more). But they do not know exactly how they can improve the life of an entire country. There is no idea about civil duty - there is only knowledge of your "I". There are a people, and they are power. And it is not clear how to establish influence.

Association of initiative grandmothers

I am sincerely convinced that the journalist cannot be engaged with any political, social movement. It is not good for him to collect rallies, organize people in interests. However, in 2010, I joined the Council of Initiative Groups and Citizens formed in Tyumen. It was created in the wake of protests against the Aerodromdorstroy affiliated with Sobyanin, which ate up to a third of the city budget on road works. There was a moment in the fall of 2010, when suddenly people united against one problem. Before that, anarchists, communists, liberals were rally along the streets of groups. Ramed with courts, country communities, garage cooperatives. But together they gathered only for a rally against road cuts. It was then that the idea came to combine the initiative groups of TOS, cooperatives, two on the incense of the breathing trade union ... The goal indicated mutual support in solving each problem. It was dreamed that a picket against the point development of the microdistrict would come out with all advice. And against the demolition of garages will also be rally with advice. It was planned that the council would include all local protest groups. Developed a methodology of civil training. They wanted to teach and unite. The council included activists, ecologists, corruption wrestlers, journalists. They taught and helped to look for information, draw up claims, organize pickets, control power. They established a system of support from the media. The work boiled.

In the first meetings in the halls it was impossible to push through. When the first political case on the 282nd arose in Tyumen, the whole council went to the rally and brought a couple of hundred friends. The case was taken control. Even the grandmothers from TOS went to the courts, participated in pickets, told the neighbors about political examination. Pensioners began to start blogs, go on social networks. In parallel, they studied documents on scandalous construction sites in Tyumen. We also went to the courts, demanded financial records. Grandmothers came to the department of roads and asked the director why the underpass cost the budget of half a billion rubles.

They took up the budget itself. For the first time in history, at a public hearing on the budget, two hundred ducks were diluted by ten protestingly voting. They wrote about the forces at the hearings, about the criminal formation of the budget. Our “initiatives” who came to the Council to solve their problem specifically (demolition, cutting of the park, building a skyscraper, closing the garden), suddenly learned that the authorities did not respond to citizens' appeals that there is no mechanism for citizens of power in the city, That public hearings are a fiction and that we have, in general, we are sluggish, because only members of the Council come on the adoption of the most important documents for the city-the draft budget, the general plan and development-only members of the Council come. Grandparents recognized and told the neighbors. They also learned to unite, resist the court, administration. They stopped being indifferent.

Acceleration of grandparents

A year later, when the Council, it would seem, gained strength, fed up in the bureaucracy and gained fearlessness, he began to bend. The initial disputes about whether it was worth taking the party and political movements to the council not in favor of those who warned the speculation on the Council by politicians - democracy gave fruits, and the Council voted as the politicians were sagited.

Since the summer of 2011, the council began to take more and more into the political sphere. Members of the Communist Party, RKRP were choked at meetings. They demanded that the Council support their shares, their leaders. It seemed to be inconvenient to refuse members of the Council, and therefore at first Sigg was intensively rallyed on political actions. And tired ... Politics ate civil initiative.

Last fall, it became clear that people can and are ready to unite, teach each other, help each other if we are talking about specific problems. The people showed that they react very subtly to any attempts to speculate on his activity.

On December 5, many members of the council came to the spontaneous rally. I was the applicant of the rally and - to my shame - I could not prevent the occupation of the rostrum by local politicians. The Communists of different crowds all performed and performed. They talked about themselves, about their deception, their birthmarks. And the people began to disperse. The Tyumen people did not want to listen to those who are broadcast from year to year. On the Web, in personal conversations, they spoke more and more about the violence of politicians, their annoyability and unsuccessfulness.

The protest activity went on decline. Local party leaders did not want to accept the will of the majority and go into the shadows, so as not to discredit protest and not to take it to decline. They - local policy pensioners - all climbed and climbed into the rostrum. The attention of members of the Council to political rallies faded away. It was just right to return to local work, but the party members who seized advice with general voting insisted on political activity. And the Council was bent. All the same pensioners from the RKRP, the leaders of the Communist Party, several anarchists are sitting in it. They themselves affirm the plan of events, they themselves go to them - for the city, the Council with its politicization died.

Unbelief

From the mournful sunset of the Sigg of conclusions, I made a lot for myself. Firstly, yes: the people still do not see the connection between politics and their personal well-being. And if he sees, he does not believe in the opportunity to influence politics, to form it. Secondly, people cannot resist speculations. And without leaders, unfortunately, he also cannot. The council was planned according to all the traditions of the anarchy, the Council had to have strictly horizontal connections, but its members could not work without authorities. It is sad to realize that people are not ready to listen to the sober advice of their unprofitated fellow citizens and believe forecasts. The people are in a limited state: on the one hand, they are not ready to follow party leaders, on the other hand, he does not recognize the authority of independent, in any personalized political activity of unheated people. There are no prophets on the ground. No one believed when I said that the parties would drive Sigg. All voted for the inclusion of parties in the council. Everyone wanted to stand side by side with political activists, and no one assumed that he would be behind them. This is perhaps the worst. People do not believe their neighbors, do not believe friends. Do not believe journalists with a crystally clean reputation. There is no faith to anyone, but there is hope for a happy combination of circumstances and complete inability to withstand speculations. How these people will defend their future, I do not understand.

Escape

It so happened that our council was bent and at the same time the editorial policy in the Province Publishing House was replaced. The publishing house was headed by Oleg Nikanov. The owner considered it appropriate to return the newspapers to the concept of the early 2000s. With irons, cut off their heads and a lunar calendar. “We do not have censorship, except for the market,” said Nikanov, “we are“ let them say ”in the press.” According to the new director and editor, our reader is so little prolonged that he is uninteresting and incomprehensible to news about the looting of the budget, arrests, corruption and the arbitrariness of the police. The reader wants blood, soap operas and repair tips.

There was nothing to do in such a newspaper. The newspaper could still be used as a cover to help the “walkers”: requests, journalistic control. Only the time for this was less and less-someone should also write about the heads and ironing. In addition, I, with my pride, are still not human rights activist. Moreover, underground. The newspaper became bored and cramped. And in the city it became crowded, because it is no longer found honest work in the media. Yes, and the “wolf ticket” that I was not afraid of and who mixed me so, was somehow imperceptibly awarded to me. I did not want to work as a federal publication: to take on serious investigations, work on anti -corruption, criminal topics throughout the country and at the same time not to have protection in the form of membership in the party, belonging to a major movement has become unsafe. Tested. Each performance criticized by local Bonz on the federal channel was accompanied by calls and invitations to friendly conversations. Threats, exposures, discrediting. It's time to leave again.

A filthy sense of helplessness when you are forced to leave your city in order to live in conscience and even survive. There is no fear for freedom, life and health (I do not suffer from persecution and I understand that the chances of getting to the millstone are still low), but there is concern for my conscience. In addition, I have already grown enough to have time to understand - I cannot but do what I have been doing in recent years. I saw the world, saw money and even very good money. I had a chance to scoop up a little fame, to amuse self -love. All this in my life was enough to understand: I am not ready to sell for the sake of stability, safety. Not ready to go to a government newspaper or an advertising magazine. Better an empty belly than a shuttled mouth.

I do not see myself cassandra, I do not consider the Savior. To tell people about their life, their rights and lawlessness, to stand on their side, showing that the power in the unification, to teach them to fight for themselves is not so much for them as for me. So I get out of the sense of helplessness to the state, before the system, which has absorbed me. And I convince myself that the enlightened people will still try to resolve the current political conflict as non -violent means. I convince me to convince, but I do not believe.

I will go out to go to St. Petersburg. That's how it happened.

"Do not touch the village, huh?"

Of course, there is a temptation to get a major online publication. To poke your nose everywhere, compete in speed and wit. Only this is the same empty work on their own. You do not need to educate an Internet audience-it can only be heated to the limit. A couple of degrees, and the readers of the Echo (here's a joke) will be released in the square with the whole list.

However, in Moscow there is no million intelligentsia and middle class. In St. Petersburg there are no such and 300 thousand. How much the minority will not perform at least its full composition, while the majority does not know anything about the country, all the performances will end in tough accelerations. The inaction of the majority and its indifference perceives the authorities today as a factor in its legitimization.

How have free newspapers been combated in recent years? They are erasing press kiosks from the streets and connecting all regulatory authorities. The authorities are afraid of newspaper men, because only they now (and political leaflets) have access to the widest and most unenlightened audience. Television is controlled, radio is a difficult source of information for the average person to perceive. In the language of the villagers, no one talks about corruption and lawlessness on the radio. There is no more terrible media for the authorities than the people's newspapers, which open their mouths, because they are read by the unenlightened.

Honesty for sale

With my available data, the best that I can do to awaken citizenship in our people is to go to work in a fearless newspaper. The newspaper, which is read in the subway, is delivered to the villages, carried to cottages. I do not know how to start a crowd, I am uncomfortable on the rostrum, I have a poor diction and a quiet voice. Public performances are given to me hard - I'm worried. I am a bad organizer, I do not sit in the Duma. I'm just learning to write so that they believe me. I really hope that right now, at this troubled time, readers need journalists sincere, decent, incorruptible. I am not a very decent person, I am weak in front of the temptations, prone to squabbles, often I am arrogant and fussy. But I am honest, the journalist. I see, I clearly see that our people gradually began to understand the conjuncture. They feel a catch, manipulation, dishonesty. They want to see sincerity, although they are just learning to distinguish it, look out in a piar and venality in a pour. During elective unrest, I was constantly pulled into the organs. They came themselves, called, were interested in health and plans. I could not understand such attention, because I did not drive a column. Later, one police colonel explained everything to me. “You see,” he says, “we have not left any of such people who have not been smeared. If something rumble, we, like Bergholz, will put you to the microphone-you will stop people. ” They also believe that we control and control the protest - this is bad. They already know that the people will no longer go behind the villains - this is good.

I do not want to be a villain, I do not want to be sold for calm and protection. I want to wait for the time when honesty will enter the price.

I can’t leave here. Swimming - we know. I know that I can’t in exile. Unlike many of their acquaintances, who establish compensation abroad, I know that emigration is painful for me. I decided to live here, among these people who live the lives of stars, vote like everyone and kill for a drink. Either I and hundreds of thousands of those like me will change them, or they will pull us in the Middle Ages. Information, legal education is not a self -propelled and self -valuable altruism, such as populist exits to people. This is a struggle for the future. For his own, not for their future.