Wealthy philanthropists

How are the reports of several charitable foundations published on April 25, the skirmish between the Prime Minister's press secretary and the head of the last independent sociological agency in Russia and the mutilation of oppositionist Alexei Navalny connected?

On April 25, the reports of the Gradislava, Sotsgosproekt, Dar funds and the Olympic Sports Support Fund appeared on the website of the Ministry of Justice in open access. The event seems to be quite ordinary, but there are two "buts". First, the accounts of the funds are published for the first time in their history. And secondly, these are not just funds. These are the funds that appear in the investigation film of the Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny "He is not Dimon to you." The Milovka estate in Plyos was registered to Gradislava, and the dacha, which Navalny calls “a gift to Medvedev from Alisher Usmanov” (Usmanov himself considers this statement slanderous and is going to sue), to Sotsgosproekt. The mountain dacha in Psekhako belongs to the Olympic Sports Support Fund, and the Gift has a lot of other properties and real estate mentioned in the film.

In general, it is not surprising that Alexei Navalny turned out to be the most attentive reader of the reports. And he found that in total, charitable organizations spent more than 3 billion 600 million rubles on their own maintenance last year. This is more than the annual expenses of the most famous of the charitable organizations in Russia - the Podari Zhizn fund of Chulpan Khamatova (2.3 billion rubles).

The inevitability of reaction

The media became interested in the funds immediately after Navalny's investigation, but no one was able to get their statements. The press service of the Olympic Sports Development Fund, for example, bluntly called requests for reporting "insignificant." And then suddenly the documents appeared in the public domain.

This is an important point: the opposition agenda is no longer reactive. After the March 26 protests, the authorities are simply forced to respond to the questions asked by society. It turns out to be bad to react meaningfully: the publication of reports of funds, which the FBK considers to be part of "Dmitry Medvedev's corrupt empire", reinforces rather than weakens the accusations against their owners. Medvedev's classmate Ilya Eliseev, who controls the activities of funds, is already giving interviews. He says that Dar alone has spent 11 billion on charity in recent years. But it turns out that, according to the law, charitable organizations have the right to spend only 20% of the funds on their own maintenance, while Dar, for example, in 2015 had salary expenses, business trips, the purchase of property - about 800 million rubles, and for charity - 1.3 billion.

"Dar" is not a charitable organization at all, Eliseev unexpectedly says. And what? And what kind of charity, on which billions are still spent?

It is simply unthinkable for the authorities to conduct an honest dialogue with society. Corruption for this government is not a problem, but one of the essential, basic elements

This is the second important point: it is simply unthinkable for the authorities to conduct an honest dialogue with society. Corruption for this government is not a problem, but one of the essential, basic elements. Therefore, attempts to portray transparency only lead to an increase in the number of lies, multiply confusion and look frankly pathetic.

Dialogue Formats

But if you can’t keep silent, but you can’t talk honestly, then you need to look for other ways to conduct a conversation. In April, the Levada Center published a survey on confidence in the prime minister. According to sociologists, 18% of those polled are in favor of resignation, and another 27% are in favor. In total - 45%, almost half of the Russians. The authorities are not silent: the press secretary of the prime minister, Natalya Timakova, states bluntly: "The Prime Minister does not attach much importance to the data of opinion polls, especially those conducted by the Levada Center on a very specific political order." That is, they are forced to react, but no reactions, in addition to swearing, come out. Recall the meme from Dmitry Medvedev about Navalny's investigation - "nonsense, papers and compote."

The head of Levada, Lev Gudkov, was offended, stressed that the study was carried out on the initiative and at the expense of the Center, and said that Timakova should apologize. And in vain he was offended - yes, this is a direct political order. A direct political order from the citizens of the Russian Federation for an honest, reasoned conversation with the authorities, which for the authorities is tantamount to suicide.

Well, as if so that no one would have questions about the formats of dialogue that the authorities consider acceptable, on April 27 in Moscow, an unknown person attacked Alexei Navalny - doused him with green paint. Zelenka got into the eye, the politician got a chemical burn. The police are in no hurry to start a case, some miracles are happening around. At first it turned out that all security cameras near the business center where the attack took place were not working. Then the police simply refused to seize the data from the cameras, which nevertheless were found.

When the words run out, greenery comes into play. But this, apparently, is not the last argument of the authorities in a dispute with society.

Photo: Evgeny Feldman for the This is Navalny project, http://navalny.feldman.photo/