The time Putin’s stooge called me a liar
Until Election Day 2022, I am going to focus on getting good candidates elected. Because I want them to succeed, I want most candidates in my circle of influence to use my reliable system for getting elected. It is called “There Is No Substitute For Victory.” That is only most candidates I know. For the candidates with awful anti-freedom ideas, I hope you delete this email without reading it. For all the other readers, this next month you are going to get a snapshot into some of the unique ways I view elections that have made me such an asset to candidates in the past.
After I finished school, I move to Bratislava, Slovakia to teach English Literature. I lived those days in a communist housing project, though it was long after communism had ended.
The wallpaper, appliances, fixtures, and tile remained from communist times. Locals who came to visit walked into my apartment and felt like they had stepped back in time.
One winter morning, in that apartment, I sat down to have a look at The Economist. I saw that Russia’s presidential elections were coming up.
As a side note, though I dislike many of the opinions presented in The Economist, it remains a good way to see what the globalists are up to, so I sometimes read it. It is the periodical of choice for the international managerial class. Lynn Forester de Rothschild is effectively the publisher. Her third and current husband is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. There was a time when that family would not brag about their connection to such an important publication. Times have changed.
I noticed that the upcoming Russian elections coincided with a break I had from school.
“If there are elections,” I figured, “then there must be something kind of group going to observe the elections, right?” Immediately I began to ask myself who I might find to sponsor me as an election observer.
I made a simple enough form letter (which I sent by email) introducing myself and asking if the recipient of the letter knew about election observation projects in Russia that I could join. I sent it to many election observation organizations. I think I even sent it to Jimmy Carter, who was big into election monitoring at the time.
Without then realizing it, I was simply looking for a solution that satisfied my wants and that also satisfied an organization’s wants — any time you can find this sweet spot, of fulfilling your wants and the wants of another at the same time, you are going to operate fairly effortlessly.
The big projects wanted to know who sent me and what experience I had in such international projects. They wanted my globalist bona fides. They eventually came up with artificial deadlines. I went with a different kind of group, someone a little scrappier, less controlled, and more my style.
A group out of Michigan sponsored me. They sent me a few bucks, but it didn’t even cover the cost of my plane ticket if I remember correctly.
I wasn’t looking for their money. The money was an added bonus and one they were probably surprised I wasn’t more pushy about.
This is what I got out of it — I got the imprimatur of being sent to Russia by an international election monitoring organization. I was happy about that. But it wasn’t about the pizazz of that at all, it was about the relationships that they could create for me. Those relationships meant that this election monitoring project could be a success for me in a way I could never accomplish alone.
They knew people on the ground in Russia that I did not and got me in with the right group. I got to spend a week training in Russian election law, then I was dispatched to observe the elections. Do you know how cool it is to not just be a tourist on the ground doing tourist things but to instead spend a week studying Russian election law?
“Election tourism” is what I like to call it. It has become one of my hobbies.
In retrospect the Michigan organization got something far more valuable out of it. Their organization was a project that a pair of graduate student at Ann Arbor had put together that was not much more than a few policy papers and a website. For the cost of peanuts, some stranger (me) who had called them out of the blue was sent to Russia as their international election observer. Boy did they get some mileage out of that one.
There wasn’t a big search. They didn’t need to put together a big budget. They didn’t even need to come up with the idea. They didn’t have to go through any of the things it often takes to organize an election monitoring project. I just fell into their lap at exactly the right time because I was willing to reach out to a stranger to propose something to see if it would work.
My guess is that they even applied for grants and were able to pocket most of the grant money writing papers off of my notes from the elections. Plus, they, to this day, get to say they have organized election monitoring in Russia.
This really was a win-win that benefitted all involved. Again, that type of scenario is the sweet spot of effortless cooperation. There’s no arm twisting, no guilting anyone. It really is the ideal.
In the days leading up the election and on Election Day, my team and I visited polling places and election-related facilities. Though I was the only American in the group, one of the youngest, and the least experienced in international election observation, I had grown up in Chicagoland politics. I was very effective when in the fray.
The interpreter assigned to me was a local activist. My interpreter and I formed an impressive team. We both had some pretty sharp elbows and knew how to maneuver tense situations. Boy was that fun. I also spoke enough Slovak by that time to understand Russian, which meant I understood the conversation well enough before my interpreter translated for me. It takes twice as long to have a conversation using an interpreter, which, done when right, really buys you time to think. As he bought me time to think, our pointy elbows and some of that brash Chicago style chutzpah during each exchanged helped get us through locked doors to see things that Jimmy Carter’s crew could only dream of seeing.
Accordingly we saw real violations.
We were shocked by what we saw.
Russia has amazing election laws on paper, far better than anything in the United States. Way, way better. In that election those laws were not well followed very well, however.
Once the ballots were tallied up that night, the globalist organizations put their seal of approval on the election and gave the most bland press conference.
We had a different story. We hosted a press conference also attended by international media. I personally noted more than a dozen election irregularities. We issued a report. I filed a complaint with the oblast (regional) election authorities. We made a splash.
Mind you, this all started two months earlier by merely reading The Economist. Then sending a form letter. Then showing up and being my brazen self, and asking the tough questions that would be normal for anyone who trained at the knee of my father.
Well, the post-communist apparatchiks had no idea what to do with my south side of Chicago political ninja moves, but they knew how to throw water on trouble — and why not, I was some outsider causing trouble. Where had I even come from? Did I not know that the US State department had already pre-determined the reports of the election observers? How would I have the audacity to call a press conference and why would international media even bother to show up? Who had possibly introduced me to my translator, a local dissenter who had been a constant thorn in the side of the authorities? We were like two piles of uranium moved too close to each other and we were quickly becoming annoying as we began a chain reaction.
After numerous bureaucratic boondoggles, I returned to Slovakia with an official complaint filed with the Russian authorities. Each day, I eagerly watched the mail for their response.
I knew it would come any day now.
A speedy response was certainly not in any Russian oblast bureaucrat’s best interest.
Any day now.
Any day now.
Any day now.
Six months later, after I had moved onto other pursuits and long after anyone would take any interest in the Russian presidential elections, I received a letter to my mailbox written in the Cyrillic alphabet.
I hurried to my colleague Nadezhda, who taught the students Russian after school. She would be able to translate.
She read the letter to me aloud in Russian one sentence at a time, probably translating it into her head in Slovak, then spoke the English words to me.
Dear Mr. Stevo . . .
. . . We have received your concerns . . .
. . . After a thorough investigation . . .
. . . No evidence of wrongdoing . . .
. . . This concludes the matter . . .
What !?!!
No evidence of wrongdoing?
I looked at the calendar. Summer was here. The international election group had disbanded by this point and had largely lost contact. No one was interested anymore in what happened back then. The media that came to our press conference didn’t care anymore. Everyone had moved on. This letter, calling me a liar was the last item needed to complete the picture, just so I could never write them and say “Where is my response?”
Water had in deed been thrown on that fire.
Very well done.
Communism did not last 70 years in that land without an adept managerial class to keep the proles in control.
That was a lesson I was experiencing first-hand as Nadia held that letter in her hand looking at me.
“So basically they called me a liar?”
Only months later.
And after the cameras had been turned off.
And after everyone had gone home.
Well played Russian bureaucrats!
I’ve been through these fights a few times. I’ve won some and lost some. Let my experiences be helpful to you.
I want to help you build an organization that can win you electoral victory and can outlast anything a bureaucrat can throw at it.
Join “There Is No Substitute For Victory” by tapping here.
Allan Stevo