Memory of Derca Sauer

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Dear readers!

In gratitude for your support in 2023, we launched a special newsletter from The Bell - Elizabeth Ossetian * , Irina Malkova * and Peter Mironenko. In it, one of us analyzes the key event of the last months and shares what we ourselves think in this regard. This is a more personal letter than all our other mailings. And we are glad that many of you answer us. Communication and support at all times are very important. Today's letter is from Lisa Ossetian. It will be received by everyone who is signed to the paid newsletters The Bell, and those who support us by the donates.

* recognized in the Russian Federation in agents

Last week, in the main cathedral of Amsterdam, hundreds of people said goodbye to Dercom Sauer, the founder of The Moscow Times, the Independent Media Holding and the Vedomosti newspaper. Many world media, including the Financial Times and The New York Times , wrote about Derke, who played a colossal role in the formation of high -quality journalism in Russia in the last 30 years. He changed not only the Russian media industry, but also the life tracks of many people, including us, the founders of The Bell.

The Bell appeared in many ways as a response to the acceleration in 2016 of our team in RBC, where we came after Dercom - about the same as the acceleration of the “tape” in 2014 gave rise to “Medusa”. Moreover, Derk gave me a recommendation for Fallower in Stanford, which became a kind of incubator for our project.

If the 90s were the time of maximum freedom of the media, then the 2000s thanks to the emergence of international brands in Russia, which was cited by Sauer (FT, WSJ, to some extent and Forbes), became the time of the appearance of quality journalism in the country. Free from the censorship of the media of the 90s could not rebuild of the capitalist-oligarchs, who then gained tremendous strength, and give rise to quality standards for their industry. The capitalists themselves deeply despised “home” media, preferring publications about themselves in the Financial Times, and they dragged this injury through the years, continuing to look for understanding from the Western media after the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

The early 2000s demanded quick solutions: the Putin’s “economic miracle” needed new institutions, exchanges, investors, laws and independent media, at least economic, in addition. And Derck fantastically knew how to catch the moods that hung in society, and realized that now in Russia a business newspaper needed. Just as a few years before Vedomosti, he and his partner Annamari Van Gaal realized that young Russian women would need his own magazine, which would displace the Soviet brands “employee” and “peasant” - and so Cosmopolitan appeared in Russia , whose circulation at the best times for print media reached 1 million.

In the 2000s of the Dogmu Vedomosti (a document that described the basic principles of independent journalism, the rules for working with information sources and Newsmakers, and even the logical structure of texts, acquaintance with which the newcomer simplified the work) taught at the faculties of journalism and studied as an example of the best practices. Many of those who met this document in the student are creating independent media in exile today. So the pragmatic idealism of the founder of Independent Media spread far beyond the limits of one publishing house.

Sometimes it seems to me that it was this idealism that prevented Derca and many other foreigners who mastered the possibilities of economic growth in Russia, to understand Putin on time. In the late 2000s, Derk seemed to believe that Putin wants to live a beautiful life, like his friends like Silvio Berlusconi. In the 2010s, he hoped that Putin was interested in politics or family, and what remains outside this, for example, business and economy, did not touch him. In the rational Dutch consciousness, it did not fit that it was possible to bring people's lives and progress to the sacrifice of a non -existent threat and find the meaning of life in the war, as Putin ultimately did.

A few days after the death of Derka, the Fund, created by the founder of Vimpelcom, Dmitry Zimin, was recognized as an undesirable organization. Dmitry Zimin, his son Boris and their fund were one of the first investors who believed in the idea of ​​The Bell, when our media existed only in the form of a 10-line document and an electronic newsletter for a hundred subscribers. The fund actually was not engaged in the support of the media, but to educational activities. But our naive belief that we can build the best non -appropriate economic media of the country has worked - in general, they gave us money.

Like Sauer, the Zimins family gave a chance to a huge number of people - journalists who received the Red Carry Award, scholarships and scientists. Sauer and the Zimins are united by the fact that they helped to grow up to dozens and, perhaps, even hundreds of projects without any control and coercion. To do this, it was enough to observe the three conditions: they themselves confess the correct values ​​that attract certain people, give people a lot of freedom and autonomy and a certain amount, usually very few resources. These three conditions launched the mechanism of a self -reproducing system, which could expand endlessly.

But the trouble is that Russia has been on the opposite track for many years. In the Russian model of management in the first place - control, and in the second - rent from using control. And all these self -reproducing free systems do not fit there in any way. Especially, of course, this applies to media. It seems to many that censorship was introduced as a logical continuation of the war with Ukraine, but I think that the war only allowed to finally solve the issue of choosing between freedom and control, at once getting rid of symbolic “windows” in the form of “Echo of Moscow” and other rudimentary for the regime of bodies.

Possible peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine (the probability of which I personally evaluate as 70 to 30 in favor of “do not agree”) will not change anything in relation to independent media, as well as to any uncontrolled initiative. It is not for that against our colleagues that criminal cases are massively instituted for all possible articles - from non -compliance with foreign legislation to extremism and Stateizers, so that this whole machine unfolds and stops working overnight. The newly introduced fines for the search for “extremist” content (where the book by Alexei Navalny “Patriot” was immediately attributed to the road to persecute for consumption of unwanted information, no one will cancel either. And work on the sovereign Internet continues to boil daily.

In fact, the system of combating dissent in the form of point repressions showed itself as a very convenient thing: it is completely optional to punish millions, it is enough to punish several popular and famous ones, and the modern system of information distribution will do its job, reporting the possible consequences of the whole society. This system is useful to the Kremlin in the case of economic shocks that will wait for the country when giving up military rails, and in case of further confrontation with the West, which has no reason to stop. And in the case of transit of power from the aging Putin to the new leader, it will also be quite useful. So I would not expect any changes on this front in the near future.

It is difficult to find at least something positive for further thought in this situation. I am supported by the idea that the control system is a very costly mechanism that requires a large number of resources: and they are finite. Returning from the control system to the creativity system is quite simple, because only three conditions are needed: values, freedom and some money. Of course, the fruits will not ripen immediately, but the buzz from growing can still be obtained.