"It was very impressive when several thousand people gathered for the demonstration and we marched through the entire centre of Prague and filled the entire Old Town Square. And, what is particularly important to stress, it was people from Russia. It often happens that Belarusians, Ukrainians and Czechs come to similar events. They were there, of course. We were actively using the new symbolism - the blue-white-white flag - and it is clear that the people who went with such flags - of course, they were from Russia, what would a Ukrainian go, even with the new Russian flag, or Belarusians - they have their own symbols. That's why the whole square was covered with white-blue-white flags, and I also made little signs, also white-blue-white, and some of them were typographed: "Moscow against Putin", "Ekaterinburg against Putin", "Novosibirsk against Putin" and so on. I made another twenty blank so that they could be written on. And people took them and wrote small towns on them: 'Naberezhnye Chelny against Putin' or 'Bratsk against Putin'. And so on. And it was very impressive that there were so many of those people and it was important to them that they wanted to emphasize: 'Russians against Putin' - it was very important at that moment".
"There's a very specific episode that I created with my own hands: it's a debate, a direct debate on one side of Navalnyj, on the other side of Němcov and Kasparov. It was on October 1, 2011, at the Last Autumn Forum. I came up with this debate. I was Kasparov's guy and I was the organizer of this forum, so a lot of people thought that since I was doing all this, I guess everything was being done so that Kasparov would win. Maybe Kasparov himself felt that way deep down, I don't know. But I was just doing it because I thought it was important, not because I wanted to engineer Kasparov's victory, but I just thought it was important. The content of this controversy was what should be done in the Duma elections in December 2011. According to Kasparov, it was necessary to boycott the elections. Němcov suggested a different kind of boycott: to come and write "nah-nah" on the ballot papers, which is still essentially a form of boycott. And Navalnyj, on the other hand, said that we should participate and we should vote for any party except United Russia. And that was a pretty fundamental argument. And I thought it was particularly important that this dispute was resolved in a public confrontation. I think we managed to organize it at a very good level. It brought together a lot of people who later played an important role in the social and political life of Russia: Zhenya Chirikova, Petya Verzilov, libertarians and so on - a whole precipitate of social and political energy came together at this Last Autumn Forum to hear the debates between Navalnyj, Kasparov and Němcov. And Navalnyj won that debate handily. And that, of course, was the turning point. And then, most importantly, on December 5, 2011, two months after that, it was Navalnyj who started leading, or rather because of him, young people started coming out in huge protests.
"And first they took us to what was left of the school. And we went there and they knew almost everything - where their child had died, and they went to their place and started crying. You know, that kind of Caucasian crying. And it was very emotional and very hard to feel. From there we went to the cemetery. 334 graves. Graves with children's toys. That's a strong emotional charge. Kasparov stood at each grave for several minutes. In total, we were there for hours. I'm sure he - and I - got emotional: This, you know, can't be forgiven. You realize not by reason, but by instinct: the people who allowed this - they lie to these women: about how it happened, who gave it and what orders. You realize that you are involved not only in a socially important cause, but in a very just cause. It's a situation of confrontation between Good and Evil. It's no longer a question of career or conviction. It's something much more important. There was simply no question of whether we should do this or something else, but we were already on this path and there was no turning away from it.
Denis Bilunov is a chess player, historian and businessman who became a politician during the Putin regime. He was born on May 3, 1969 in Moscow, his mother was a chess champion of the RSFSR, his father was a professor at Moscow State University and an employee of the Central Committee. The witness graduated from the faculty of history at Moscow State University. In the 1990s he was engaged in business - he organized tourist shopping trips to Italy for Russians. Since 1996 he has worked with world chess champion Garry Kasparov, headed his Moscow office and created the Kasparov.ru website. When Kasparov entered politics, he became his political manager and speechwriter. Since 2010, he has been an independent political technologist - the official organizer of mass protests against electoral fraud in the Russian Federation, founder of the democratic movement Solidarity and many election campaigns. In 2015 he went into exile with his family, first to Malta, where he became a master blitz chess player. He graduated from business school in Rome, majoring in political marketing, enrolled in postgraduate studies at Charles University and moved with his family to Prague. Here he has been involved in public work in the Russian diaspora - he is one of the founders of the Prague Russian Anti-War Committee, organizer of the Prague Congress of Russian-language civil societies and leads a chess club for children of Ukrainian refugees.
Family album page. Participants of the Second World War: grandfather Nikolai Vasilyevich Bilunov and his sons and a certificate of the medal "For brave work in the Great Patriotic War".
Family album page. Participants of the Second World War: grandfather Nikolai Vasilyevich Bilunov and his sons and a certificate of the medal "For brave work in the Great Patriotic War".
Motivational Letter from the Dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University to History Students to Honorably Perform Their Duty to the Motherland While Serving in the Army, 1987
Motivational Letter from the Dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University to History Students to Honorably Perform Their Duty to the Motherland While Serving in the Army, 1987
