Day 4: 26 million 773 thousand 135 rubles.

We did it!

I don't know if there will be another day like this in my life. They were happy and very happy - when ..., and when ..., and when, of course, the midwife showed me on her hand this wet, dark-haired creature, still connected to me with an umbilical cord - it grew up and became my best friend, Lelka, and also that a limiter that never allowed me to step in - about the fact that it’s worth living in such a way that “so that it’s not embarrassing to look children in the eyes”, I always remember.

And today, moreover, one of the translations came with a note: “Sergei Gennadievich: I remember the feat of your father” - probably Sergei Gennadievich read my essay about the military youth of my parents https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/97810/ .

And even today it turned out that the Far East finally heard about our problems: “Kamchatka is with you,” the SMS bank reported. And then Sakhalin, and Primorye, and Amur stood next to us.

I do not know what happened the night before, but instead of the gathering slowing down sharply, as experts predicted, it, on the contrary, intensified to the maximum. Transfers only to Sberbank went every 15 seconds. They walked all night without stopping: by morning there were 19 million 553 thousand rubles in the accounts, by the middle of the day - 21 million. the famous Canadian McGill University Maria Popova (she is from Bulgaria) transferred more than $ 27 thousand in two days - colleagues from the American media also joined the campaign, and we bow to all of them for this. It would seem - what do they care about the Russian-language edition on the other side of the Atlantic, but no, it turns out, there is.

I did not have time to stop Novaya Gazeta - Muratov called and said that they had transferred 330 thousand (of course, we will transfer them back to our colleagues). I couldn’t do anything at all on this fourth day of the collection, because at first something happened with the Alfa-Bank card, and a lot of people wrote to all social networks and to the email address of the magazine [email protected] , demanding that we solve this problem . They decided, and here serious sums fell into the accounts of both Alpha and the Fund for Supporting Freedom of the Press - 123 thousand, 600 thousand, 1 million. They were from people they knew - for example, from Irina Dmitrievna Prokhorova, were - from complete strangers. And at 16:30, almost exactly at the end of the fourth day from the start of the collection, we not only collected the required 22 million 250 thousand, but also with a plus of a couple or two million. And the money kept coming.

By the way, in the previous report , I wrote that I would like to ask the question "why?" people I don't know at all, but who transferred large sums. Irina Eduardovna Rappoport responded - I received a warm letter from her.

It turned out that Levan Emzarovich Gorozia is the famous rapper L'One , I will try to contact him and personally thank him. However, it does not matter at all what the amount of the transfer was - we are grateful to everyone and for any amount: sometimes thousands of rubles are emotionally more important or more useful than hundreds of thousands or even a couple of million rubles.

And then calls rained down - from the pro-Kremlin media, including. The latter were interested - ridiculously - only in the loot. “What will you do with the money if the fine is canceled?” they asked. Not the fate of the magazine, not the fate of the media in Russia, and not even the fate of the Fatherland - loot, and only that. What do we do? Let's wait for the fine to be canceled - and then we will decide, ask subscribers and supporters. We have an appeal ahead - November 20, at 9:30 am, Tverskoy District Court of Moscow, if Judge Zatomskaya does not hear us, then the decision will come into force and the counter will turn on - within 60 days, before the last day of payment comes fine, we need to try not only to file an appeal with the Moscow City Court, but also to reach the Supreme Court. And then, if everything goes badly, before the Constitutional and European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

However, these four days were not only and even not so much about us, but about Russian civil society. Before our eyes, it gasped, rose and began an action of civil resistance and disobedience: according to my estimates, plus or minus 20 thousand people transferred their 100, 200, 500, 1000 rubles - the most frequent amounts of transfers - to the Sberbank account alone. I am waiting for a detailed extract from Sberbank (I ordered it, but have not yet received it) - this will be an extremely curious analysis, including the geography of this resistance movement.

It seems that the protest expressed in voting “although for a bald man”, but against the candidate of power in the elections in Primorye, Khakassia, and so on, is not limited to economically depressed regions or vulnerable sections of the population, who were outraged by the pension fraud. It seems that the protest also has a broader social basis. “All businesses keep a fig in their pocket,” one interlocutor from the media frontier told me. Everything is not everything, but it is obvious that the government is losing its legitimacy. To be afraid - yes, but also to be afraid of not having time to jump off the Kremlin train, which is rushing towards the cliff - too. Being a fellow traveler of the authorities becomes not only unprofitable, but simply fraught with sanctions, criminal cases, freezing of assets and real estate in the West, and in the East too. We did not agree on this with Putin. And besides, doing business in a country where almost all the most important institutions have been destroyed, from the institution of presidential power (there is no mechanism for its transfer) to the institution of law and justice, is not an occupation for the faint of heart. For whom they will come, from whom they will be taken away - the lack of rules, even conceptual ones, makes it impossible to count on insurance and roofs. And so, too, business is beginning to look around, this is at the level of instinct. "It's time to break the ice," wrote one of the sponsors on the transfer receipt. Comes.

Finally, one thing became absolutely clear after these crazy 4 days: we, the supporters of the democratic development of Russia, were written off too early by local and foreign analysts and classified as losers. We are alive, alive and protest. The main thing is not to fall into hibernation again.

And the last thing: once again I want to thank everyone who transferred money, who shared our details on social networks, who argued with those who believed that nothing needed to be done. Something from what I had to read touched me, something offended me, a lot made me think. No matter what happens next, it is obvious that The New Times needs new people who understand the Internet business better, and just with fresh brains. I certainly need a new team.

I am open to suggestions (only from professionals). I am waiting.