Independence declaration

179 businessmen were not afraid to support Alexei Navalny

The list of entrepreneurs who openly supported the candidate for mayors of Moscow from the opposition Alexei Navalny has 179 names . Businessmen promised him financial and reputation support, in return they expect to “protect the rule of law, support for independent courts, and real accountability of officials to society”. Who are these people and why they are not afraid of the Kremlin - the New Times found out

“It is often said that businessmen are outside politics, but we consider this position to cowardly and hypocrisy” - this is said in the text of the first letter signed by 38 businessmen and they called a “social contract”. Signers call themselves entrepreneurs of the "Economics of Knowledge". The annual turns of their businesses are calculated by tens of millions of rubles, some, like Boutique.ru Denis Belov - tens of millions of dollars, but the businessmen who supported Navalny prefer not to talk about the financial indicators. Someone-to-hearing companies, like Headhunter, Yuri Virutz, the general public learned about many for the first time.

The youngest of the signing contract, Mikhail Trofimov, who came up with the IDEAFX cloud service, is 23 years old. The oldest, Anton Arnautov, general director of the FutureBanking project (new technologies for banks) - 50. For the majority - for 30, as the very Navalny. Everyone has an excellent education: Moscow State University, MGIMO, HSE, MFTI, MGTU named after Bauman, magistracy of Harvard, Stanford and leading foreign business schools. Someone, like Stanislav Sazhin, the owner of a social network for doctors “Doctor at Work”, has long been in a protest movement. But many would prefer to stay outside of politics, if it were not for the feeling of "it is impossible to endure anymore." Most of the signatories know each other: friends, colleagues, partners, clients. Now they are united by one more thing: they have overcome fear in themselves.

The politician is involuntarily

“Politics is not interesting to me,” says Venture Investor Sergey Filonov. “But I am forced to politicized.” You can not like to drive, but if your bus with a drunken driver rolls into the abyss, you have to do something. ”

Sergey Filonov did not want to go into politics, but had to

He is a terribly busy man. The New Times correspondent managed to intercept the businessman in the Semiramida Gardens restaurant for an hour. Filonov is lean, dark -skinned, gray hair is breaking through in black hair. There are jeans and a blue T -shirt on it, it moves around the city with Google Glass glasses (portable computer in the form of glasses, obeying vocal commands. - The New Times), which are not yet on free sale. On the wrist of the left hand is the Fitbit bracelet, which counts the steps during the day and burned calories. He also has a Tesla electric car, but Filonov tries to walk more. He speaks about himself simply: “I am a Muscovite, I am 42 years old, and for the past 10 years I have been engaged in the helicopter business.”

In business, he is actually longer: he founded his first company in 1993, immediately after the end of MSTU. Bauman, where he received a diploma of the system of systems.

His companies were sold by radio stations and pagers, created corporate communications systems and made development in the field of electronics. In 2003, Filonov founded the Aviamarket helicopter center: rent and maintenance of helicopters, helicopter craftsmanship lessons. A month ago, he left this enterprise and is now investing in biotechnological and IT projects, works in a group that develops an innovative diagnostic complex: “A person will wear such an electronic bracelet as on my hand, and this thing will diagnose and detect diseases at the earliest stages.”

Answering the question why he supported Alexei Navalny, Filonov first thoroughly talks about his vision of the situation in the country. His speech is dry, the words “society”, “system”, “competition”, “transactions” flash in it every now and then. In short, the main thing for him is the ability to work effectively, but in Russia, where “the system of feudal relations operates, when everything determines only strength and access to resources”, this is almost impossible. And he gives an example: “We could not bring flies for our research: from America the larvae were very quickly shipped, but then for two months they lay at Russian customs and died. So those flies that our experts are now being explored now are already the fourth or fifth package. And so in everything - the state does not that do not help, but interferes with work. ”

He does not like a lot: the aging president and his yielding vertical of power, a poor healthcare system, “Orthodox homophobia”: “The authorities are engaged in the trolling of the population. When you come abroad, now you have to make excuses that you are Russian. And I want to talk about the case abroad, and not about politics. ” Filonov scolds the education system-his 18-year-old son is thinking of sending to study abroad.

"

“Any people who can effectively resist the forces of evil who occupied this territory are allies for merchants. And we must support them "

"

The businessman became interested in Navalny two years ago and in 2012 decided to offer financial assistance. “Any people who can effectively resist the forces of evil who occupied this territory are allies for merchants. And we must support them, ”he said. So Filonov ended up in a group of 16 businessmen and representatives of the creative intelligentsia, who in May last year publicly announced the financial support of the Corruption Fund. “And when Navalny was almost put in jail, he became a man in my eyes, professing a samurai principle: you are going to kill - be ready to die,” the businessman admits. “I transferred a million rubles to the mayor's campaign to show others: firstly, there is no need to be afraid, and secondly, to be greedy because you do it for yourself.”

In the public support of the opposition, he does not see anything terrible. He says that, firstly, the authorities will not be able to get to everyone, and secondly, he can always go abroad, because his business allows us to work from anywhere in the world-many research for his projects are already conducted in cooperation with foreign laboratories. However, he thinks about leaving without any threats: “If in the next year some positive trend does not outline, the business climate will not change, I will leave. Because, although I provided myself until the end of my life, for me life is work. ”

Aesthetic disagreements

In the Capital Tower business center on the 1st Brest Street, everything is strictly: security, system of electronic gaps, cold office interiors. President of Paraclassics Anton Gopka corresponds to the place: a gray suit, a blue shirt, dark brown hair is neatly combed. The partner of Gopk and the general director of the company - Elena Ihsanova, with whom they supported Navalny - a beautiful fair -haired woman in an elegant black dress. The office of Paraclassics is located on the eighth floor, a conference room was chosen for an interview: a room with white walls and white chairs around a light oval table. Gopka puts a tablet computer in front of himself, enters the Paraclassics website and includes one of the broadcasts: the signal goes to the projector under the ceiling, which gives the image on the white screen, which occupies one of the walls of the hall - the orchestra, a close -up of the violin, the music quietly plays.

Anton Gopk has many claims to the current government, including aesthetic nature

Paraclassics conducts direct Internet broadcasts of concerts of classical music, operas, ballets from concert halls and theaters in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Novosibirsk, as well as from the halls of Europe and the USA. Muscovite Anton Gopke is 31 years old, he graduated from MGIMO with a degree in international economic relations, then he worked as an investment banker, and in 2011 he completely devoted himself to his long -standing hobby - classical music. “I myself have not learned how to play,” Gopka admits. “But he came up with a project that makes cultural events available.” His partner Elena Ihsanova is a lawyer. He doesn’t talk much about herself: he says that in the early 2000s she had experience a lawyer in regional elections, and then went to business, and until 2011 was the head of the mergers and acquisitions in the AFC System.

It was not easy to make a business from a hobby: we needed a team of professional directors and operators with a musical education and knowledge of English, equipment and the latest technologies. The first major success of the company is the broadcast of the International Competition named after P.I. Tchaikovsky in June 2011, which was made by the Russian-American team. The customer of the project was the Ministry of Culture. Since then, the business has gone uphill. The company receives income from sponsors, as well as from orders that make concert halls and festivals. All materials on the site are absolutely free.

In December 2011, Paraclassics shot a rally on Bolotnaya Square. “We understood that the first marsh is a historical event,” says Ihsanova. - The shooting led from the balcony of the house on the embankment, the broadcast went on the sites of Echo of Moscow and the Yabloko party. Anton invited musicians from the new Russian quartet to this balcony, it was cold, they played gloves. Classical music in combination with a significant event gave a very powerful effect. ”

December 10, 2011, the first rally on Bolotnaya Square. On the balcony of the house on the embankment are played by the musicians of the "New Russian Quartet"

In July this year, Paraclassics organized another “political” gesture - the broadcast of the performance of the pianist Andrei Gavrilov, dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “Imagine the eighth sonata Prokofiev, a concert hall on Mokhova, Gavrilov plays on a wonderful piano Fazioli, and all against the backdrop of a darkening Kremlin,” Gopka smiles. He says that in politics for him in the first place is culture and its development. And with the authorities he has an aesthetic break: “Putin actually called the condoms of many of my friends who went to Bolotnaya. And this thieves vocabulary, like “slap a two -legged”, has long come down to other spheres from politics. For example, the director of one cultural institution says to me: “But don’t tell me about music, I’m going to the bathhouse now.”

"List of Navalny"

Ilsanova and Gopka say that for them the turning point was an announcement of the castling of the Putin -Medvedev tandem in the fall of 2011. Since then, dissatisfaction with power has grown rapidly. They call Navalny a “compromise option”: “He is an educated person, has a good chance to go into power. At the same time, he has no breakthrough ideas in the development of culture, education, health care, but he can gather a team of professionals around him and engage in hygiene of power. ”

They decided to openly support Navalny in connection with the Kirovles case, when, having studied the documents, they realized that anyone who is engaged in commercial activities can be condemned. How much money they transferred to Navalny - they do not say, but they believe that there should not be risks for business, because they support an officially registered candidate. “But even if there is a risk,” says Ihsanova, “Russia is a country where any person can suffer from power, regardless of what kind of political beliefs he has and whether he has a business. You never know what even a collision with the police at the household level will turn out for you. So standing aside is also not a way out. ”

Already 179 businessmen decided for themselves that signing up in support of Navalny is not scary

The New Times interviewed several more businessmen from the Navalny List, asking them the question of why they were not afraid to openly support the opposition.

23-year-old Mikhail Trofimov, the founder of IDEAFX, said that he has a startup and financial risks so far small. 28-year-old Alexei Lankin, the creator of the supermarket for Wallstr companies and offices, says that it is better to get problems from some action than from inaction, and claims that he would support any politician who would advocate an open, honest and transparent business system in Russia. Stanislav Sazhin, a 29-year-old general director of a social network for doctors at work, said that since the manifesto signed, many of his friends-both businessmen and even officials-told him that he was a hero. And since 2007 he goes to the “Marshs of the Disagent”, he considers the signature a trifle and is not afraid of sudden tax audits, but that his business will like to someone and no court will protect. 36-year-old Roman Korneev, editor-in-chief of the online magazine Kinokadr.ru, said that he would think about risks when the thunder was awaiting.

And the 50-year-old Anton Arnautov, the general director of the Futurebanking project, says that he supported the manifesto, because this is the only way to support the very idea of ​​elections-there are no other alternative candidates: “And you know, I simply have no sense of fear. Although, maybe I'm too optimistic. ”

Victoria Charochkina took part in the preparation of the material

Photos: Vedomosti, screenshot Paraclassics, Alexander Astakhova, Elena Palm/ITAR-TASS, Personal Archive