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Akimov: In the Wild West, exceptions survived. Those who did not have the will, they were killed by the Indians, tortured by bureaucrats, destroyed by bandits, and the exceptions survived.

Sokolov: Not at all. Those who were able to agree on the rules of the game survived. They first sailed there to escape based on the new rule. But what is your farmer's categorical imperative that this can be a general rule?

Tsvetkov: He has an economic interest, why does he need a categorical imperative? Land, chickens and weapons.

Akimov: The general rule is freedom of an economic entity and freedom of creativity. This is where man is like God, is in the ability to create. These people who create change the reality around them for the better.

Sokolov: And in my building, free people are doing such things that they are only getting worse year after year. Maybe we can first agree on the rules and then provide freedom?

Akimov: I think that those who show the greatest will will agree on the rules. I hope that the people I’m talking about will both show it and come to an agreement.

Sokolov: Then you need to seat Ramzan Kadyrov at this table, he will be your last interlocutor. Do you like him, Boris?

Akimov: No, I don’t like it.

Sokolov: Why? Absolutely free, he does what he wants, he does not recognize any rules. The tax office came and kicked the tax office out. The FSB men came and kicked the FSB men out.

Akimov: If only because it is an extreme manifestation. Any extreme is dangerous.

Pryanikov: We have a wonderful historical experience that the settlers to Alabama did not have. But we can predict what will happen if the farmer kicks out the tax office. And what will happen if an even stronger farmer comes and drives out that farmer? Your hero, of course, is good, but he’s just marginal.

Akimov: That's normal. The minority creates all historical phenomena.

All: For the marginalized! (Clink glasses.) Pryanikov: Western Christian civilization is built on contractual relations. This is the fundamental principle of everything. If there are two of you on the island, you have agreed to delimit fishing in this way. If there are ten of you, it means you are still trying to come to an agreement, but it is more difficult.

Sokolov: If we take not the appearance, but the fundamental parameter of the structure of our society, then it is structured by force.

Tsvetkov: Because there are two ways to mobilize people - by order from above or by arranging competition between them. There are no other ways.

Sokolov: I look at this as an observer and as a journalist from the middle and from the thick of events. The country lives, essentially, according to concepts. A concept is a primitive way to minimize

damage from the real power distribution of statuses, resources and everything else. Essentially, the distribution is forceful. Yevtushenkov was released today. So, I gave everything I had to. Here is a typical power structure. Either we will come to a contractual structure, when people do not push through, but come to an agreement, or there will be another oprichnina, another Cheka. I would like the general public to finally understand this and stop trusting those who fool them with social equality, the national idea, the Black Sea straits, and Chersonese shrines.

Tsvetkov: Without the promise of social equality, there will be no mobilization now.

Akimov: What do you need to fool with so that the public stops believing in what you don’t like and believes in what you like?

Pryanikov: I’ll tell you what needs to be done: this is the law on lustration. In this we are well helped by history, historical experience, including that of Eastern Europe, our neighbors in the Baltic states and now in Ukraine. FSB officers, members of the CPSU, United Russia have limited rights only as members of the executive and legislative branches. Please live as you want, but you cannot be a representative of the new government.

Akimov: It’s terribly undemocratic to deprive people of their rights.

Pryanikov: Well, how democratic is it now to restrict the rights of people who were imprisoned for extremism?

Tsvetkov: This is a logical defeat of rights, because another group of society won, it created other conditions, and there is a losing group. In every social situation there is a loser.

Akimov: No, maybe I’m not even against it. But I don’t understand where the freedom is. Or do you want to live in a free society and offer absolutely unfree things.

Sokolov: It is impossible to ensure freedom for society without banning the political activity of those who destroyed this freedom.

Pryanikov: If we return to what is happening here and now and to the declared return to the nineties, then I believe that the whole point is that oil under Yeltsin cost 10 dollars per barrel, and under Putin on average 80-100. If oil now costs $10, I think the nineties will seem like paradise to us. Because the social infrastructure has been destroyed.

Sokolov: Those archaic instruments that made it possible to survive the nineties relatively painlessly no longer exist, and new instruments have not been created and do not exist.

Tsvetkov: Because it was not in the interests of the hundred families that led the country. I am sure that the only thing that can save Russia is the growth of self-organization of hired workers: at the level of normal trade unions, at the level of normal civil movements. This is a rejection of delusional patriotic mythologies in favor of awareness of one’s class interests. I am sure that Western European civilization exists only because it, within its own

The market capitalist system has a powerful counterweight in the form of people who are self-organized in a thousand and one ways. The masses must be taught to socially blackmail the elite.

Pryanikov: What Alexey is talking about is correct, but in general it’s throwing people at bayonets. If you say: guys, join the union, then in two weeks the head of the union will be planted with drugs and imprisoned.

Tsvetkov: This is how Solidarity existed in Poland for a long time.

Pryanikov: I think that what is happening now will not last long. This may take a couple of weeks or a couple of years, but definitely no more. And under economic pressure there will be a revolt of the elites. It will be relaxing. And here the main thing is to understand that I do not support Alexei’s romanticism, because the people in Russia have never been subject. And it definitely won’t be for some time. Of course, you have to believe in something good, be a romantic, but you have to be objective: the revolution will happen from above. Of course, maybe a miracle will happen, and suddenly the people will rise up and organize themselves. But we have the example of Bolotnaya Square, which clearly showed that there is no self-organization - even among the Moscow educated public, let alone some organized trade unions in the outback. There is no need to create illusions. Change will come from those same

dissatisfied elites, there will be a split, there will be conspiracies. Because the main aspiration of the elite for the last 25 years has been to integrate into Western society. What, in simple terms, Putin has now hammered home and said, no, you will live here. But they don’t want to live here, this is evident from their deeds.

Sokolov: The main thing that a historian can tell modern society is that the only lesson of history is the lesson of freedom. This is how people see fit, this is how they do it for themselves. And there are no matrices, patterns or justifications. As you decide, so it will be. And we, Russia, have entered a period of severe crisis; this, of course, is always a difficult and difficult time. But these are new opportunities, this is the collapse of old stereotypes. As a historian, I must say that no path is closed for Russia.

Tsvetkov: Do you know what the Chinese character for “crisis” looks like? “Danger” from above and “opportunity” from below.