"Stalingulag" officially found a name and face: a popular Telegram blogger in Russia for the first time showed himself and told about himself (video)

At the end of 2008, at the oldest Russian forum on Internet marketing Searchengines.guru, an entry appeared on behalf of the user Aelexandryo, who was interested in the question of what profit his blog would receive if you invest 50 thousand rubles in the promotion. After 10 years, a person hiding behind this nickname became one of the most popular Russian bloggers in Telegram. Aelexandryo did not reveal his name: three hundred thousand of his subscribers knew him only as “Stalingulag”.

Today, the Stalingulag project combines accounts in three social networks: Telegram (more than 300 thousand subscribers, there are small posts of a journalistic nature), on Twitter (more than 1 million followers, short comments are posted there) and Instagram (there are photos from Moscow and London restaurants and theater reports and reports about flights in business classes and business classes and business classes and reports etc.)

In March 2019, Stalingulag took second place in reading among all political channels. Since September 2017, advertising is published in the channel, the cost of one post began with 150 thousand rubles.

Until recently, the name of the author of "Stalingula" was not known to the general public. Only in the summer of 2018, RBC named the name of the author - Alexander Gorbunov. And now the 27-year-old Gorbunov gave his first interview with the British television and radio corporation BBC .

I am Stalingulag and I am no longer anonymous https://t.co/1pelronicm

- Stalingulag (@stalingulag) May 2, 2019

The telegram is wildly cool, somehow otherwise the brain perceives this social network, has revelations. Sign, Karoch https://t.co/z4dhc1buh

- Stalingulag (@stalingulag) April 21, 2016

“He says a quiet voice of a person who is listened to. A well -read, educated, dressed as a professor at the European University, Gorbunov gives the impression of a confident and restrained person,” writes BBC correspondent, noting that he creates the exact opposite image in the Telegram channel.

Gorbunov spent his youth with his parents in Makhachkala, where he studied as a lawyer. But the young man (spinal muscle atrophy, which leads to the dying of spinal cord cells), chained from childhood to the wheelchair from childhood to the wheelchair), devoted to trade in financial markets in Moscow. And "Stalingulag" appeared by chance.

“I just wanted to write. Maybe there were some personal experiences. Maybe there was some disgust, because I worked a lot then, I practically did not leave the computer, because I had nowhere to go particularly. I lived in Makhachkala, this is the city as unleashed for life in a wheelchair. Computer, the Internet allowed to look at what is happening in the world. And I watched all kinds of political programs from childhood, I have always been politics. attracted, ”he recalls.

“I started working at the age of 13, when my father, who was the only breadwinner in the family, fell ill. My mother could not work. In childhood, they drove me to the doctors, for all kinds of physiotherapy, which they constantly told me how important it was to work on myself ... My disease progresses, but in childhood I could raise my hands, and the doctors believed that I should do some physical exercises for several hours a day. When you can do for five or six years, as you can, as much as you can. To understand for hours, if you want to take a walk?! But my father always said: you should only rely on yourself in this life, because you are all alive with your mother (I am a late child in the family), you will not come to me at all.

And he “turned” his attitude towards himself and to life about the disabled children living in the boarding school: “I looked, saw all these horrors, saw how they barely move around the floor, all this fierce hell and a nightmare. I was shocked. And I realized that this could not be allowed. Never. So, I should become independent, and independence gives only money. And I started to think about it.

At first, he was engaged in network marketing and the spread of bio -orders - earned $ 150-200 per month. At the age of 15 he was invited to Moscow. “I went for the first time and was shocked by this city ... I was amazed that there are ramps on the streets, albeit uncomfortable. It turns out that it happens. It turns out that the sidewalk is not half a meter with potholes, you can move around it. I realized that I need to move to Moscow,” Gorbunov says.

However, he was able to do this only when "a certain financial pillow formed when I realized that everything was stable." Poker and trading helped in this, which now remains for him the main source of income, since the Telegram channel does not bring much money as it seems.

Some time ago, Gorbunov even thought about creating his own fund. In 2018, he began negotiations on this score, but everything collapsed after the release of the same article at RBC that he is the author of Stalingulag. "Any contacts on this topic stopped with me:" Are you a fool? No institutional investor will never bring you a ruble again. "I remained a private trader,” Gorbunov shared, noting that a business in Russia is trying to be away from politics.

“In our country, if a person says something wrong, then he immediately becomes a foreign agent, a“ state deputy hire, ”a spy. And the whole financial world seeks to minimize the risks as much as possible,” Gorbunov explained to the British BBC to reporters.

Now Gorbunov lives in Moscow with his civilian wife and considers himself a “generally wealthy person”, especially when compared with life in Makhachkala: “Now I am the middle class of Moscow, which can afford to go somewhere and go to the theater and restaurant.”

According to BBC, a police came to the house where the parents of Gorbunov in Makhachkala live in Makhachkala. Employees of the bodies said that from the phone of the Gorbunovs "there was a call on mining objects in Moscow." “It is still not known whether this was a search,” he recalls. The press service of the information and public relations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Dagestan did not comment on the verification of the relatives of Gorbunov.

As the BBC reporter noted, when Gorbunov came in an interview on a minibus, he was followed by a white Ford. Gorbunov said that this was surveillance, he connected it with the events of the last days - mysterious visits of law enforcement agencies to his parents and relatives.

When asked why the organs are so annoying his Telegram channel, he found it difficult to answer, but suggested that Stalingulag is the only popular Telegram channel that writes about how everything is actually. ”

Answering the question whether he fears any troubles due to the fact that his name became known, Gorbunov said that "he did not harm anyone, and is not to blame for anything."

“I’m not afraid for myself, I can’t do anything - it is impossible to apply any restrictions on me, given that I have them from birth. It’s also impossible to cause bodily or physical harm to me, because pain is with me, it is always present. I have no illusions, I have no hope for some old age, I understand everything perfectly - roughly speaking a year earlier - what does it mean on the scale of the universe? Temporary, why is it possible to worry about something temporary? You can’t sleep for three days, and then do not want to sleep in principle, you can’t eat it so that you will never live, we will still want to live longer. ”