In the following years, Chechen terrorist attacks became common in Moscow and in my teen years, it was a massive source of anxiety. I had tickets to the musical theatre performance, which I never went to because a week before my date, there was a hostage situation in that theatre with hundreds of people killed. There were subway attacks which made me avoid the subway for years. Yet by that point, I had never met a Chechen, and my only exposure was through media and social commentary on this omnipresent threat.

That's when I met Isa – a new guy who came into my class, Chechen. I was taken aback by how different he was from my expectations. Isa was not the brightest pea in the pod, and his Russian was not brilliant, as they just moved from Grozny, yet he had incredible politeness about him and a sense of proud humility. We became friends quickly, and I started hanging out at his house occasionally. He had three younger siblings and charmingly intellectual parents.

One day, we walked with a couple of kids from school. It had just finished raining, the spring sun was in full swing, and as we walked through the forest, our path was littered with lots of snails chilling on the warm asphalt. One of the kids said, "Watch me," and started jumping from one snail to the other, crushing them with his feet and laughing diabolically at their crunchy sound. Isa got furious, caught up to the guy and threw him on the ground. He then ran ahead, picking up snails and throwing them into the forest while shouting all the swear words he knew in Russian at the violent kid behind. He kept saving those snails from death for the rest of that walk.

In my teens, I was already smoking openly, while Isa had to use a contraption similar to chopsticks made from a small tree branch to hold his cigarettes so his hands wouldn't smell afterwards - his parents were very strict. At the same time, they were kind and loving. His mother was a lawyer who used to work in Chechnya's legislature, and his father was a close ally of Akhmat Kadyrov - the president of Chechnya at the time. His father always wore a suit and was soft-spoken and cheerful in his subtle way. He struck me as one of the most intelligent people I've met.

In our graduation year, as we were preparing for finals and university entry exams, Isa's father got blown up in a terrorist attack in Grozny. He was one of 10 people who died alongside Akhmat Kadyrov, who was the target of the attack. I was shell-shocked. I went to their house after the attack to offer support, but it's hard to find words for condolences when the act of violence is so obscene.

I remember vividly how Ramzan Kadyrov went for the first meeting with Putin on the evening of that day. The event was televised, and Ramzan struck me. He was wearing an Adidas tracksuit, had a huge beard and could barely speak Russian. He was the complete opposite of the Chechens I got to know, and he was being led to the throne by Putin. The attack by Islamic separatists was a smear on Putin's progress in pacifying Chechnya, and he had to deal with it resolutely and quickly. It seemed much easier to control Ramzan than a much more complex Akhmat, who had been a separatist and a Chief Mufti of Ichkeria (the self-proclaimed independent Chechnya) in his early career and switched sides only at the outbreak of Putin's Second Chechen War.

I have lost touch with Isa as we went to our separate universities. He went to the most prestigious diplomatic school (MGIMO), and I went to study economics in an external program at LSE. I also worked in night clubs and partied like an animal, while his circle consisted mainly of Chechen guys from his university. We crossed paths a few years later. We met up in an internet cafe near his university. He was rocking his tracksuit and was stoned, which was how he rolled those days. We sat down to play a game of counter-strike, and some kid in the cafe was kicking our ass and mocking Isa's noob moves. When it happened three rounds in a row, Isa got up, went to the kid and smashed his head into the keyboard until the keycaps popped. His friends laughed and hooted for Isa as he destroyed that kid's face.

The new Isa was very different from the one I've recalled. There was no humility or humanity left. His pride was of a different, much more violent sort. His language became worse than when he arrived, and his demeanour lost all signs of a good upbringing. In a nutshell, he was a lot closer to the image of Ramzan than he was to his late father's. I was heartbroken with his transformation, I couldn’t bear his choice of role model. I never saw Isa again.

Isaac Asimov's coping mechanism was to write sci-fi. In 1941, during a conversation with his editor, he came up with "psychohistory" - a fictional science predicting large group behaviour using history, sociology, and math stats. The first short story was published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine in May 1942 and, in a span of a decade, became the Foundation Series, which received a special Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966.

It's not easy to judge sci-fi that is set fifty millennia in the future on the merit of its predictions accuracy. Yet, it acts as a beautiful lacmus test on the state of society when it was written. Who at the height of WW2 would not want a series about a genius scientist who predicts the fall of an Empire and produces an infallible plan to guide all of humanity through it with minimal damage and in the shortest amount of time possible?

What's fascinating is the change in the author's toolset with the war's course. In his first short story, Isaac's hero is faced with a blind bureaucratic apparatus of his weak world that does not recognise and is incapable of dealing with an impending crisis. He then proceeds to solve it purely through diplomacy. Closer to the war's end, the following crises were averted by utilising technological dominance and economic relations. In the early post-war days, Isaac writes about a new kind of omnipotent enemy that could not be predicted and stopped by his world's rulers. He introduces a clandestine operation working quietly in the shadows to alter the enemy's mind, thus guaranteeing his world's dominance.

Isaac returned to his Foundation Series three decades later, in the early eighties. It became much more nuanced in it's assessment, finding many flows in the course of "the good guys", offering significant critique to those who control minds with pure intentions and coming up with a novel "shared consciousness" vision of a peaceful future that seemed like a good idea yet clearly troubled him.

Do writers like Isaac possess an otherworldly sensitivity to recognise the path of their society, or do they imprint their vision on the world that can not help but follow in their wake? And are we coming closer to the peak uncertainty of the past century now that Isaac's story finally made it to our screens after three decades of failed attempts by major film studios who spent millions on development and had nothing to show for it?

P.S.

Little of this will make sense if you watch the TV series and not read the book, as the storyline has been changed beyond recognition. It is a great TV series, but I recommend reading Isaac's books, too – they are very different.

Since I moved here five months ago, I have become a recluse. I came here to write, but the writing somehow never got going. In response, I have started spending less and less time outside my house so that I don't miss the inspiration when it comes. I have surrounded myself with all the creative tools I could dream of. I've set up an editing suite for my archive of video materials, a small sound studio for my new DAW-less hobby and all the notebooks and voice recorders for my main task of writing the autofiction I intended. All that was gathering dust, and I was mainly passively consuming the endless stream of podcasts and documentaries and playing video games.

At first, I thought that it was normal. I am a refugee once again; I can not return to my home in Kyiv even if I wanted to, and for the past year and a half, I have been bouncing around the world, trying to figure out my next steps. This house in Tbilisi is the first place I can call home in a long time, and it's only natural to take some time off to recover a sense of normality. However, as time passed, I saw no signs of improvement, quite the opposite. Most people I knew here were from my old life, and it was hard to spend quality time together due to a lack of my desire to bond through getting blackout drunk. The only couple I knew here had recently left to pursue a job in Mordor.

So I sank into this slumbering mode, where days turned into weeks and weeks into months of non-doing. I travelled outside Georgia every month to do a gig, have a date or deal with things that required my presence, and on the road, I was alive but too busy to write. Whenever I came back here, I had all the time in the world and no desire to do anything but idle.

Surprisingly, on this late summer walk, I was inspired again when a friend asked me how I was doing on the phone. And in that moment, something became very clear to me. But before I share it, I want to set the scene. There is a view of modern individuals' life in a society which interprets life as a tunnel. As soon as one leaves their cradle, one is locked into a tunnel of social institutions that form one's life. It starts with a nursery, then a decade in schools, then a choice of professional or academic education, eventually a career, a mortgage and a marriage for a few decades. Much later in life, when one retires and is free at last, they have amassed a plethora of responsibilities that keep them occupied until they're dead. Some people would argue that freedom comes with wealth, but that is the biggest myth of them all. The wealthiest people on earth have very little control of their own time and are, in many ways, more limited than regular people.

Hence, freedom is often interpreted as a lack of responsibility in this context. In the name of freedom, some people avoid responsibility so much that they end up in the ever-growing NEET club. And I unknowingly have fallen into the same path. It seemed that if I wanted to focus on writing my book, I needed to drop most of the things that took my attention and unencumbered myself from all unnecessary responsibility, leading me into my apathetic hole. Responsibility is a neutral force - it does not limit one's freedom of action per se. What does is knowingly or unknowingly taking on responsibility you do not want to. The difference is subtle, yet it is all-important.

True freedom is knowing what you want at all times.

Buddha would argue that true freedom is beyond wanting, but until you are fully liberated, you will have desires, both conscious and unconscious. Around you, people will want to play you to help them attain their desires. Unless you are aware of all of this, you will likely fall into a life of non-freedom and spend all your life being a victim of circumstances. The system is rigged to keep most people this way. It is hard to explain otherwise the planet-wide condoning of substance abuse, the rise of victim mentality and the degradation of privacy.

Responsibility is not the enemy, though; it's a crucial ally on the path of liberation. Only by taking on your desired responsibility will you have the consistency necessary to reach your goals. And with a tiny change in my life - by participating in a month-long writer's workshop, I could instantly notice how the flow of energy in all areas of my life got restarted.

Life is full of these false dichotomies, and they are significant traps that are dangerous and often are so mainstream that it is hard to recognise them. You know what I am talking about. I mean, love equals attachment, or care equals control. Perhaps next time, we will delve into one of those.

I am grateful to Justin Murphy for the format and community he created. I am even more thankful to myself for recognising the problem. I have spent the last few years decluttering my responsibility stack and succeeded so much that there's almost none left. From now on, I vouch to rebuild it, yet with a clear understanding, to only take on things that align with my values and goals. And I abet you to run an inventory of your responsibilities. Is there an impostor there?

However, the precise meanings of freedom and svoboda feel slightly different. In my quest to pinpoint that difference, I dug into the etymologies of svoboda and freedom. Unsurprisingly, I found the definitions very similar: "exempt from; not in bondage, acting of one's own will" and deeply linked to the institution of slavery. Roots however tell the story of the subtle difference.

The old English freo- root is derived from root pri- "to love." The sense evolution from "to love" to "free" is perhaps from the terms "beloved" or "friend" being applied to the free members of one's clan (as opposed to slaves; compare Latin liberi, meaning both "free persons" and "children of a family").

The Slavic root is derived from Indoeuropean — "se-, sue-", which means belonging to oneself or a specific clan and has no mention of love nor distinction between free and non-free members.

This subtle difference was noticeable; I always felt that Slavic svoboda reflects a slightly deeper feeling than freedom. Not just not having a master, but being your own master, belonging to oneself. It may be since Babylon, in its full might, came to Slavs much later than the Romans, and they got to roam free in their pagan ways deep into the Middle Ages. It is hard to miss the irony of the word slave itself, appearing around 1300, derived from Slav because of the many Slavs sold into slavery in Europe by conquering Tatars and their fellow Slavs.

Even more ironic is that despite a much later start, Slavs eventually caught up and overtook the rest of the world in destroying personal freedom. Only in the IXth century did Slavic people start selling their enemy neighbors to Crimea for further trade. By the XVth century, a legal system of serfdom had made its way into Russia and legitimized the already mundane practice of owning people. During the period of abolishment of serfdom in Europe, Russian emperor Alexander I was considering abolishing slavery in the early 1800s. Still, many coordinated attacks by the secret police prevented him and later his son from going through with the laws.

Eventually, Alexander ll abolished serfdom under severe pressure of revolt in 1861. However, the law was poorly designed, and serfs had to buy their land and their freedom from their lords at an unjust rate and many remained enslaved well into the XXth century. Alexander ll was eventually murdered in 1881 by the pro-freedom movement during the tenth attempt on his life, 20 years after he signed the abolishment treaty – that's how shitty that treaty was. The pressure kept mounting until the Bolsheviks used it to overthrow and murder the last Russian emperor and his family and start the union of Soviet socialistic republics.

One would hope that freedom would finally come to the Slavic people with the start of a new state. Well, it didn't. In the following 70 years, most modern institutes of freedom were systematically destroyed by the soviet elite, starting with systematic imprisonment and murder of anyone who could challenge the Bolshevik party in the early 1920s into Stalin's great purge of the late 1930s and the post-war imprisonment of people returning from captivity and the cold war hunt on spies and collaborationists. Solzhenitsyn painstakingly detailed this genocide in his "The GULAG archipelago," but I could never read past the first hundred pages – the inhumanity of crimes against soviet people by its government being too close to my heart. I do recommend reading it to anyone who wonders, "Why aren't Russians speaking up?" or " Where are the protests?" today.

I was born at the very end of the Soviet state, during the final years of its decay. Growing up, I experienced more freedom than anyone who was born ten years before me or ten years after me. The government in the 90s didn't care to enforce a particular ideology. Of course, I was far from being liberated, as society kept repressing itself according to the patterns imprinted on previous generations. The school was still geared towards creating obedient servants of the state: my first grade was an F for behavior – I dared to stand up and greet the teacher too cheerfully in my first year. My poor mother had been summoned countless times to be disciplined for my bad behavior. I'd also been punished harshly in the nursery, with some teachers even resorting to physical violence - all in the name of order.

Our family kept moving around Moscow all my childhood, and every new kid's society had its own set of rules and order that had been taught to me, mainly through fighting and conflict. I've picked up homophobia - the omnipresent Slavic fear rooted in every man preparing for not being raped in prison. That also included a fear of going down on a woman or kissing a sexual partner that went down on you – both being "casus belli" for prison rape. I picked up xenophobia and racism from a new breed of nationalistic movements, such as skinheads, which held much power in my childhood streets. From the noosphere, I picked up an extremely acute fear of the police; police in my country always being bad news. I felt that all those fears were only ghosts of a past, so I kept rebelling, but eventually got ground down and accepted them as my own.

Some people crave power, fame, or wealth the most; others strive for knowledge, and a few aim to live a life of destruction and pain. For me, svoboda is the ultimate value. Sure, I would like my share of power, fame, and wealth. I love knowledge and wouldn't mind a pinch of destruction, but the ultimate goal has always been freedom. The priority of that value became conscious around ten years ago, after my first vipassana retreat.

I have worked tirelessly for the last ten years on my svoboda. I have peeled layer after layer of fear, guilt, and conditioning from my formative years. At first, it felt like fighting a dragon – I chopped one head off only to discover three new ones. I have practised martial arts and meditation for years. I had an intense romance with psychedelics for a while and then emerged teetotal. I went into therapy, and when that was not enough, I trained with professional actors to liberate myself. And with each new shackle being released, I rediscovered the world afresh. There is still a long way to go, especially if the aim is Buddha's total liberation. However, the progress is already known and felt.

It's a powerful feeling – to attain a little more svoboda. It's a high that few drugs can match. It's also very tricky because freedom often means a set of new responsibilities. But that's a story for another time.

By the time I went to a boarding school I decided to try a different approach of doing as little as I possibly could. I got really good at it, in fact I got so good that I failed the entry exams to my super-competitive university. Nothing a bit of bribery couldn't fix though.

It was unexciting to go back to working hard, so I decided to embrace a new approach - politics. At some point in my second year we've heard that as students we could form something called "a student's council". It was meant to be a vehicle for conversations between the school and the students on important matters, such as scheduling, rules of conduct, extracurricular activities and most importantly for me - events.

My mind went "ka-ching" the moment I heard that there was going to be school budget allocated for events. So for the next six months we went back and forward with the school, that tried to make it sound like this was an unimportant bureaucratic matter that we shouldn't get to hung up on, which only made me push harder for it in a student forum.

Eventually the format was agreed, the composition of the group established and the election procedure scheduled for early next year. Little did I know that on my third year of studies I'm going to remain a second year student. It wasn't even due to my excess partying, I was just too smart for my own good. Following the core principles of "doing as little as humanly possible to pass" I've found a hack to my main exam. Turned out if you knew the most complex topic really well, one could pass with flying colours. Sadly for me I wasn't the first to notice and after a few years of abuse my year was the year they changed the format.

Anyhow, here I was in my second year again, figuring out all the ways I'm going to benefit from being one of the two people elected to represent my class in the student council, when I'm told that my class can't vote for me. Turns out in our original negotiations we set it up in a way that each class could only vote for its representatives.  As I fell behind a year, I had about a week to harness the support of classmates, whom I haven't really met. My attendance was never great, but after realising I had to wait a full year just to have another go at the exam I failed, I stopped going to the school altogether.

For a moment I thought there was no hope, but life handed me a lucky break. Turns out that the day prior to the election, there was a celebration of some anniversary and there was a student party. That party was hosted in a space where we used to organise events a long while ago, meaning I knew all the staff in there. After a short consideration I decided that simplicity is king and went for a very straightforward last moment campaign execute.

My whole campaign was literally a two step process.

1. Step one - announce on the student forum that I'm running for a spot in the student council and I promise to take great care of my classmates especially when it comes to parties.

2. Step two - buy enough vodka for my classmates to vote me in.

I didn't give it much thought, however my gut was telling me that it was a strong setup.

On the night of the party, I brought in three or four bottles of vodka. My history with the place allowed me to buy it in store instead of paying the full bar price. A strong politician is as efficient as his campaign and boy was I getting bang for my buck. As the night grew momentum I felt that the party was nearing its peak, after which the people were going to start bailing out. I asked the bartender to pour all the vodka into a battery of shot glasses that covered the whole bar.

As he was doing it, I asked my partners, who were famous in Moscow for their parties to introduce me. I was quite nervous so while my Greek friend was rambling from the stage about me, I downed 3 shots from that battery and stumbled upon a stage.

"Democracy is essential to a successful society and tomorrow we are having our very first election. We better not fuck it up." - was my opening - "Students of the second year. You might not know me very well, but I know you. And if you vote for me tomorrow, I promise to make sure that it's not just work hard in our school, it's also play hard. And to give you a glimpse of what's about to come I welcome all of you to the bar, those shots are for you." - to complete the cheese fest, I dropped the mic and walked off the stage.

The next afternoon the count got in and I was the second most voted student-elect in my class by a big margin from the third place. It secured both my position on the council and my understanding that democracy is easily manipulated.

Fifteen years later Donald Trump pulled off a large-scale reenactment of my straightforward approach. The day after the results were announced, I found LA residents shellshocked and in disbelief that his campaign worked. I observed them struggling through their day in disbelief and couldn't help thinking: "How could it not?"

In the swirling madness of it all, I had this urge to create something meaningful. And that's when it hit me that we needed a political rally. But then, I decided to gamify it, give it some extra oomph. It was like a reminder to the Russian burners in Bali of what was happening back home.

I came up with this wild idea for a virtual rally simulation, a kind of political performance art. Participants were invited to shout out loud anti-war and anti-government slogans like "Putin Khuylo" or "Net Voyne." But here's the kicker: they had to wear a shock collar for dogs while doing it. The collar would randomly shock them with increasing intensity as they shouted, and the amount of pain they could endure determined the NFT they would receive. It was like a modern-day gladiator game, where people had to push their limits and take a stand against tyranny. I called it "Sack the Tyrant," and it was a real trip.

It was wild to see the impact it had on people. Out of the 33 people who participated, about 20 of them were deeply moved. I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices during pre and post-interviews. Some of them even broke down in tears. The common thread was this realization that they were scared, and they didn't want to be scared anymore. It was a transformative experience for them, and for me too, man.

I don't know how it happened, man, but I got this hypothesis, you know? Like, maybe something I felt before, like the pain in my throat when trying to speak my mind, is something others feel too. Maybe getting zapped on the throat woke them up to that block.

For some, just realizing it was enough to break through, to cry and let it out. There was this one girl, man, her experience was pure beauty. I gave people the option to wear masks, since I was filming it and all. Some folks preferred to hide behind masks, while others bared it all. And there was this one girl who had a breakthrough in the middle of the game, tears streaming down her face, her mask doing little to conceal the rawness of her emotions. But as she sobbed and trembled, something inside her shifted. And in that moment of vulnerability, she ripped off the mask and declared, "I'm not afraid." With every word that followed, she shed her inhibitions and bared her soul to the camera, a true testament to the power of art and human connection.Her eyes were shining, and she was beaming with this newfound freedom. She said that for the first time in her life, she felt like she could say whatever she wanted to say, and nobody could stop her. It was a profound moment, man. It reminded me that art has the power to change people, to make them see things differently, to break down barriers.

And that's what I'm trying to do with my storytelling, too. I want to break down the barriers of fear and silence, to share my own story and to inspire others to do the same. We need more truth in this world, more honesty, more vulnerability. That's the only way we're going to get through all this shit, man.

I tell ya, this new chapter in my life is like a wild ride on a psychedelic rollercoaster. My anger is like a bubbling cauldron of potent emotions, ready to explode at any moment. And let me tell you, I have every damn reason to be angry at the government. They're like a bunch of soulless vultures, preying on the innocent and weak. But I'm not gonna let them win. No sir, my path is the path of creation, the way of the poet and I'm gonna share my anger in a way that lights a fire under people's asses.

I want people to realize that they're living in fear, and it's time to break free. It's time to take back the power and be angry, be inspired, and do things differently. I believe that the internal shift is where the real magic happens. And that's why I took it upon myself to initiate a shift in others, even if it was just a silly prank at a festival. Hell, if it works, it works. And I feel like I've made a dent, a small but significant dent.

So listen up, folks. If you're feeling the fire in your belly, don't be afraid to do something about it. Don't let fear hold you back from creating something truly powerful. Take a page outta my book and own that anger, baby. It's time to ignite a revolution.

Carrying my Russian passport like a cursed talisman, I couldn't stay in Ukraine. Some people grew accustomed to the constant fear, the sound of sirens, and the knowledge that death could come hurtling from the sky. But for me, it was a reminder of the underlying fear that had haunted me for years.

As I left, it hit me that this fear had been with me far longer than I realized. The fear of my own government, even as I lived outside its borders, even as a victim of its tyranny. There was a suffocating sensation, like a vice around my throat, preventing me from speaking my truth, sharing my experiences and the scars they left, all because of the ever-present threat of retribution. But rockets, they're very real, and they serve as a brutal reminder of how easily order can turn to chaos, and how the rules we abide by can change in an instant.

Fear is a ubiquitous and insidious force, and its roots can be traced back to the Soviet Union and Russia in particular. It infects the psyche of the masses, often unbeknownst to them, festering like a malignant tumor in the depths of the subconscious. Despite my long sojourn in London and my quest for spiritual enlightenment, which included the rigors of Vipassana and the wonders of psychedelics, I was still unable to confront the terror within and begin the journey towards true liberation.

Man, I had to totally reprogram myself to not fear the pigs bustin' down my door just 'cause I was gettin' high in my own damn house. It was like, a whole different set of rules in this society, man. But even after all that work, that fear was still there, like, deeply rooted in my soul, ya dig?

But then, on February 24th, I made a vow to myself, man. A vow that I wouldn't be scared no more, that I'd speak my truth and tell my story, no matter what. 'Cause there's other cats out there, other families like mine, who went through the same shit. But you don't hear much about it, man. Ain't no one willing to spit the real truth, the whole truth, ya know? About how the government screwed us and we had to fight just to survive.

As I found my footing in the world of storytelling, it struck me that I'd never really spilled my own beans. Sure, my buddies knew the lowdown, and we'd made the press, so it wasn't exactly hush-hush. But never had I wielded my newfound gift to shine a light on the twisted saga of me and my kin.

No script, no goddamn blog post. It was like I had blinders on, not even realizing I'd skirted around the issue. Fed up with London, I hightailed it to Ukraine and found myself smitten with Kiev. Five years back, I dug my heels in – buying property, launching a company, and wrapping up the film that had kept me busy. I immersed myself in a community, and for the first time in eons, it felt like I'd stumbled upon home.

Travel used to be my thing, but I found myself planted in Ukraine, soaking up the land and the folks. I got Ukrainian blood in me – part of the clan hails from Crimea, and part from the region where I set up shop. So here I was, delving into those roots and getting lost in a culture with a history as deep as the sea.

And then... Bam. Just a year back, everything flipped on its head. I was in London a mere fortnight before the shitstorm hit, and all my pals there were gabbing about a war on the horizon. I scoffed, "You lot are just buying into the media circus. Everything's peachy back home in Kiev. I should know – I live there!" Property prices were on the up and up, and I figured we'd have a heads up if trouble was brewing. On February 20th, I touched down in Kiev, and my folks were all, "Have you lost your marbles?"

I was hell-bent on insisting we were safe, but come the 24th, I was jolted awake by rockets exploding too damn close for comfort. It was a surreal sensation. There I was, in the apartment I'd spent a year renovating and beaming with pride over, now shaking like a leaf. My safe haven had turned into a house of horrors overnight. That cozy nest I'd built for myself was now a nerve-wracking cage, and the comforting walls that once embraced me now felt like they could crumble at any moment.

The cunning entrepreneurs of modern-day Russia often found themselves forging their own tiny fiefdoms. They'd have their own chief of security and top dog of healthcare, their own hospitals and havens. But it was a treacherous game – crossing the line into the realm of politics was a fool's gamble. For instance, in 2003, when Khodorkovsky announced his mad dream of running for president, Putin's shadowy government swiftly pounced, crushing his company, Yukos, like a beetle underfoot, sending a stark warning: keep your nose out of politics, or suffer the consequences.

Then, in 2008, the great global financial maelstrom struck, its tendrils reaching even into Russia. Before this calamity, the nation had basked in the glow of economic fortune, fueled by the black gold of high oil prices. I found myself immersed in the world of entertainment, orchestrating debauched parties and events in the dimly-lit, smoke-filled dens of nightclubs. We were awash in filthy lucre, and life was a wild ride.

During the early 2000s, Russia was awash with obscene wealth and hedonism. Corporate shindigs featured the likes of Shakira pocketing millions for a performance, and Moscow's nightlife scene outshined anything the world had ever seen. I recall bumping into a Californian artist in L.A. a few years back, who happened to have lived in Moscow during those wild times. The moment he realized we both shared that outrageous epoch, his eyes blazed with excitement. He grabbed me, practically shaking me with enthusiasm. "Man, I can't even talk about it with anyone here, 'cause they don't bloody know! They're completely clueless about the sheer magnitude of luxury and sultriness that went down in Moscow in '07. Hell, Studio 54 is like a kiddie's morning party compared to those debaucherous days."

But, like all good things, it screeched to a halt with the 2008 financial crisis. The economy took a nosedive, and the decadence of yesteryear vanished into thin air. More critically, the rules of the game changed, and my family found ourselves in the crosshairs of the new old regime. Putin's lackeys, who used to leech money from the economy, suddenly found themselves with a shrunken income and turned their greedy gaze inward, eager to devour the fortunes of others like a pack of ravenous wolves. Our family's prosperity became a shining beacon for the underworld, and we had no choice but to adapt to this twisted new existence. My father ingrained in me the importance of always carrying a "go bag" – a satchel containing the necessary documents, cash, and essentials for a hasty exodus from the country.

In early 2009, we got word that our heads carried a price tag, and our only option was to disappear immediately. Half a year later, we slunk back, clinging to the hope of salvaging our wrecked lives and getting back on course. Before the crisis, I'd dabbled in a range of burgeoning ventures, but now I found myself thrust into the role of crisis manager. My father wrestled with the goons who had us in their sights, while I scrambled to keep our floundering businesses afloat as they sank deeper into oblivion. We faced unending threats, with gun-toting individuals barging into my office like clockwork each week. In the midst of the mayhem, I couldn't bring myself to fully blame the government for the calamity that unfolded around us. It was a wild, terrifying period, but it also served as an indelible lesson I'd never forget.

After weathering an incessant fucking storm of threats, we had no choice but to abandon Russia for good. Initially, we sought refuge in Moldova, where we had a bank, but those vicious fuckers eventually tracked us down there too. Forced to scatter, my parents found sanctuary in London, while I hunkered down in Munich, running a company.

In 2012, during a presidential election in Russia, I found myself casting a ballot in Bali. I remember voting for Prokhorov, in one of those old people resorts in Nusa Dua, where the consulate had set up a makeshift voting booth. We felt like we were making an impact, a bunch of naive fucking idiots, only to realize later we'd been helping Putin get reelected. After casting our votes, the consulate staff expressed their gratitude for "our support" and treated us to goddamn vodka shots. Yeah, those fuckers were brazen, completely unapologetic about their intentions. In a world where deceit and manipulation were commonplace, their utter lack of subtlety was both shocking and terrifying.

What followed was an even more twisted, dark-as-fucking-nightmare odyssey. An assassination attempt on my father's life in London left him clinging to life – all because the stubborn old man wouldn't back down or shut up about the bastards targeting us. Shot eight fucking times, he miraculously survived. He spent months in a coma and endured a brutal, nearly two-year recovery that tested the limits of human endurance. During this goddamn mess, we were pretty much textbook refugees. The British government had the nerve to fight our refugee status, but that's a whole other clusterfuck of a tale. Throughout this nightmare, I was seething with rage.

We were entrepreneurs who'd built solid businesses in Russia. Our banks had financed loads of badass residential developments in and around Moscow. And we didn't stop there - we were knee-deep in all kinds of tech projects. We built a kickass banking system that we licensed to other banks, and our payment system was the first to integrate traffic fine payments. We made life easier for Russians, boosted local budgets, and even helped curb corruption, if you can believe it. But no, we were targeted for being wealthy and not having the right fucking connections. At first, I was pissed at the individual shitheads who were after us. But eventually, I saw the bigger picture: they were just pawns with no real agency in a fucked-up governance system that let this kind of behavior run rampant. The real problem lay in the rotten core of a system that incentivised such twisted cunts to flourish.

Entry 0.1

I dropped into existence in 1987, just as the Soviet Union was on its last legs. My earliest memories? Loads of queuing for basic shit and my family's badass entrepreneurial drive.

Only a few years before I popped into this world, my old man was doing some pretty regular retail shit – which was hella illegal back then. He could've landed his ass in jail just for buying jeans, jackets and sweets from tourists in Moscow and then reselling the damn things. And get this – if his parents, those devout Soviet engineer types, ever found out he was hustling and making some side cash, they'd rat him out faster than you can say "perestroika." They'd be all like, "You're a freakin' disgrace to the family, man. Off to the slammer with you!" It's bonkers to think about now, but that's how shit was back in the day.

My first ever photograph lives in my memory: amidst the snow my mom is holding me like a burrito, donning a puffer jacket that my dad whipped up while she was busy givin' birth. That jacket was a symbol of their early hustle in the Soviet Union, where they were kickstarting fashion startups, back then called "cooperatives." Their thing was puffer jackets and jeans. My old man had this wicked trick for turnin' crappy jeans into slick threads – he'd boil 'em with dye to turn ordinary denim into some fresh-ass gear. That ballsy, inventive spirit is something I still look up to today.

So there I was, fresh into this mad world, and suddenly my family had to, you know, find a way to make their income stable. What does an entrepreneur do in such a situation? They scale, man. They search for ways to scale, they look for capital. But in the early nineties, the only source of capital was goddamn criminals. Banks? Yeah, they lent money, but they were mostly owned by those same thugs. So our family's story was pretty much this: borrow money from criminals to start a business, the business fails 'cause of the crazy volatile economy and everyone's lack of experience, and then the criminals start breathing down your neck. You end up on the run for a couple of years, hopping from one flat to another. But hey, that was just everyday life, nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Like, our first apartment, which my dad's engineer father was gonna leave for his son, had to be given up to some scumbags who were threatening the family over a debt related to scaling up that puffer jacket production. That's what business was like in post-Soviet Russia in the early nineties. And we went through a few cycles of this shit. The second go-round was my favorite, though, 'cause it brought this bloke German into our lives. It's a right odd coincidence, 'cause my dad's name is also German, and it's proper bloody rare.

And then this other German bloke shows up, a proper shadowy character. You know? He smirks, "Got a drill in my trunk." I ask, "Oh, you're into DIY?" He laughs, "Nah, mate, it's ace for kneecaps. Gets the dosh back dead quick, you know?"  So, I had this playdate with shadow-German's son, a little bugger, three years younger than me. I was around seven or eight, and he must've been four or five. He asks to play with my Tetris, my prized possession, right? At that time, my parents were flogging clothes. Mum would fly to China every month, grab a ton of garments, and hawk 'em at the market. She brought me back this mint Tetris toy with a bunch of games, like 10 games or something. It was bloody brilliant. I was chuffed to bits with it. And this kid, this little toe rag, comes over for a playdate, borrows the thing, and then just legs it with it, the cheeky git.  And I'm like, "Oi, mate."  And he goes, "It's mine now!" The little blighter is half my size, you know? You get the picture. And I'm just like, "Fine."

That's when I realized there are different paths in life. You can either do the entrepreneurial thing and build stuff, or you can be like  shadow-German and just nick things, saying "It's mine now!"

That was a proper early life lesson.

It’s been a few years of big promises on how NFTs are going to revolutionise the royalty world. Today there is an unfathomable amount of digital marketplaces for images, that sell randomly generated shit. There is about fifty music NFT publishing platforms, every single one of them doxxing their artists and most of them requiring artists to pass their curation test before being able to publish their work. I haven’t found one decent video NFT publishing platform, nor a podcast destination.

For text there’s an abundance, but mirror.xyz is doing a great job of keeping it simple.

For now, the problem of ownership and direct relationship with a fan remains unsolved. An artist is forced to use web2 platforms for exposure, not being able to own his content there, nor monetise it directly.

Until someone comes along with a simple way of minting your content, self-hosting and publishing it, I came up with this toolset for my artistic practice.

I am going to publish my stuff on web2 platforms and then mint entries on mirror with links to my content.

That way, if someone wants to support me, they can do so by collecting the mirror.xyz entry.

This is the first one, here I am publishing a link to my podcast.

iActivism: overcoming fear.

This was recorded during the decompression event after Lampu, a Bali Burn event where I have built an interactive political rally simulator: “Sack the Tyrant”.

I am sharing my vision, my path and the importance of recognising the subconscious fears, that govern our lives without our knowledge.

If you want to support my future artistic work - collect this entry. All the money will be donated to a charity restoring Ukraine and I will have another reason to carry on.

My name is Vlad Svoboda. I am a film producer, a degen and an immersive artist. My favourite medium is interactive performances that push the boundaries of what can be done within an artistic experience. A few years back I made a work that was a commentary on the phenomenon of career building and workaholism. Recently I published a short film about it, you can check it out here:

At this moment I find myself in Bali, being displaced from Kyiv by a war. There is a local burn happening, organised by a Russian burners community in which I am revisiting the pain infliction performance technique.

This time it’s called “Sack the Tyrant”. I am planning to invite people into an enclosed immersive space where they’re going to find themselves in the middle of a big political rally. They will be wearing a shock collar and they will be encouraged to express themselves vocally. They will get electrocuted with increasing intensity for their expression and eventually when they decide they’ve had enough be extracted out of the rally into a police van. At that point they’ll get a physical object to commemorate their achievement of overcoming the pain and fear to express themselves as well as an NFT. Depending on the amount of shocks they can endure, they will have dropped a particular tyrant.

I am self funding this piece and I am asking for your support here. Please donate whatever amount you can to make this experience better. After the event I will make a film about it and publish it for all backers to see. I will include every address that donates in the credits no matter the size of donation.

Thank you.

You can donate directly to: ETH: 0x52e80cF2b97974e4935A1e1273a1971F70aB1Cb3 BTC: bc1qrtxvsct6g7exrax8cvqjhhjsjnt9arj4kqxd760ehrtqc7qyj6csydlv8j USDT (TRC20): TLYUu9LodkLnnQGVPNCNJrupWgKELt8Y3v

Or you can collect this entry for .03 ETH by pressing a button below.