In an ordinary high-rise building in Vladivostok lives billionaire Dmitry Alekseev — No. 154 in the ranking of the country's richest businessmen according to Forbes. He did not acquire a palace, or an 80-meter yacht (and this is in a seaside city!), Or even a golden brush. But when it snows, he goes out to clean the yard and the stairs near the house, bakes pies himself, grows potatoes and honeysuckle in the country, masters aluminum welding. But the main thing that Alekseev likes for hundreds of thousands of ordinary Primorye residents and infuriates a few “difficult ones” is his civic position.
In 2018, before the scandalous gubernatorial elections, he organized the Right to Elections movement and even developed an app of the same name for observers so that falsifications could be stopped. He publicly spoke out and wrote guarantees for those arrested on ridiculous charges — the scientist Alexander Shcherbatyuk and the deputy Artem Samsonov. For a long time he beat out the ground, and in the summer of 2021 he gave Vladivostok a whole Nagorny Park. He shows a great many examples of freethinking and at the same time love for his native city. Many people told how Alekseev and his partners made their fortune. «Novaya» talks with a strange oligarch about politics, the development of cities and the hinterland, the normal life of a rich man and the fear that they will «come for him.»
Dmitry Alekseev. Photos from the personal archive
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Alekseev Dmitry Yurievich. 47 years old. In 1996 he graduated from the Far Eastern State Technical University (Faculty of Electronics and Radio Engineering, majoring in electrical engineering). CEO and co-owner of DNS, which he founded with partners in 1998. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2021 was about $750 million. Member of the Political Council of the Party of Growth.
“Money is mine, but politics is not mine”
— I am not an oligarch! Dmitry Alekseev laughs in response to my remark.
— I knew you would say that, I checked the dictionary. Of course, the oligarch. A person with great capital and influencing politics.
“By the way, I don’t influence politics with money. I know the «red lines» and do not invest money in politics.
— What about the Growth Party?
— I give three kopecks, and then the whole political party is angry with me and considers me a big miser. Before each election, everyone starts: «Alekseev squeezed money for political technologists.» I not only squeezed, I just really don’t spend much of them.
— Why don't you spend it, by the way?
— Who will let you spend it? It's possible on a yacht. Politics is not allowed. Because the money is mine, and politics is not mine.
Why do you need this Party of Growth then?
— Politics is the art of the possible. I do exactly as much as I can. But in a good way, I want the country to have a normal political system, a public discussion, including on political issues. So that it somehow influences public administration …
— Is there really no discussion? Look how many people go to rallies.
“Unfortunately, that's all we have left. Yes, and we have not had rallies for a long time. Besides, it's not a political process, it's like… Look. Philosophers say that people differ in that they have learned to form joint beliefs and ideas, a vision of the future, which is ultimately realized by joint efforts. Here politics, in my opinion, is just a tool for the formation of joint beliefs, trends, and ideologies. Which leads to creative joint action. And our politics, unfortunately, has turned into a kind of instrument of difficultly restrained joint hatred. Some hate the government, others hate liberals, others hate anyone else. And it does not lead to any constructive action.
The relationship between the government and the people should not be «love». There must be a consensus on some action. And now we have problems with this.
Distrust is cultivated in society. Yesterday my child turned on Ren-TV. It's kind of dark. Conspiracy theories are hard to describe. With a serious face, it was said that the Americans found the Holy Grail, flew to the moon to fill it with lunar soil, and this ensured their success in the development of the country. Something I have lost the habit of this …
— Perhaps there is no dialogue between society and power, because there are no real institutions of civil society, and the existing ones are mostly simulacra?
— And what does not fall into this paradigm becomes a foreign agent. Well, yes. Politics is a connection between the «customers» of the process in the form of citizens who must want something and agree on what they want — and the executors, that is, the authorities.
In general, the stupid word «power». What kind of power is she? These are executive bodies with their own functionality. They have been delegated some of the powers in certain areas where we must act together. To develop the public good is the goal of the public administration system.
One of my favorite linguistic researches: there is still a difference in the words «manager» and «manager». In the first, an element of domination is heard: he is the boss, the clerk. The second is a coordinator, an organizer.
What we call, for example, municipal government, is municipal management. He performs his functions, but this is not possession, not domination. And so it is at all levels.
We need a market and freedom
— Do you think that the state normally supports business during a pandemic?
“I don’t like the wording “support business” itself. You don't have to support it! We need to make sure the markets work. And it is not necessary to plant entrepreneurs. We need to support people, not businesses.
Photo from personal archive Dmitry Alekseev
— It is clear that your party is not a party in the classical sense, it does not fight for power and does not try to compete with the same United Russia. But this is quite an institution of civil society, you have access to people who make decisions. Why did Rost still not protect entrepreneurs during the pandemic? After all, this covid brought a feeling of complete absence of “rules of the game” to business. Today your restaurant can be open until midnight, tomorrow until 10:00 pm, the day after tomorrow it is closed, then the QR-code mess begins, in January they will ask you to bring snowdrops …
— That's not news. This was the case for us even before the pandemic. Businesses are used to working in such conditions. Entrepreneurs need a market and freedom. And the functioning of the markets needs to be monitored. The opposite movement “ban everything” is also a force. He must be fought. We are fighting.
— And how?
So-so. The economy is arranged in such a way that everything is highly centralized in our country, this is a problem. There are quiet backwaters, to which the state has not yet reached. The same cafes and restaurants — there is still a market economy.
— You don’t live in a palace, but in an ordinary house in the center of Vladivostok…
— Well, this is a good house … I bought an apartment there a long time ago, in 2001 or something. Say how much — everyone will shed a tear. Around $600 for a «square». I feel comfortable living like this. And normal people don't live in palaces.
— Well, you can’t invest in politics, but you can invest in a yacht. Where is the yacht?
— I tried it, at first it was interesting, then it seemed like I swam everywhere. But there must be a captain on the yacht, sailors … And I can’t treat them as a function, and not as people. I had a small boat, I did it myself. For me, it is much more comfortable to live an average-normal life.
For an entrepreneur, money is not golden brushes, but a tool that you work with.
The newly born entrepreneurial class does not distinguish between dough and capital . And these are different things.
Wage labor became very expensive, and it became expensive and unfashionable to maintain all this. The butler, the cook, the driver, the groom — these are strangers to me, why do I need them? At work, I interact with a large number of employees, but at home I want to be with my family. Is it difficult to wash the dishes yourself? I also have a small dacha, I plant potatoes there and not only. That I work with people, that my wife. And on weekends I want to work with potatoes.
Photo from personal archive Dmitry Alekseev
— I can't name a single seaside capitalist who in the last 10-15 years has invested not in a temple, but in a park. You built Nagorny Square in Vladivostok.
The park is expensive. And it's hard to do that. And so it is not easy to find meaning in this, but together it requires a certain agreement, coordination. For myself, I can come up with a goal-setting, but the wider the circle of people, the more difficult it is to agree. I'm lucky, I can get and spend 250 million. This is a lot of money for me too. A gold toilet is not so expensive. Yes, and the palace — if someone has «free» 100 million, then the person will probably build you a house. And no one can be blamed for it.
— So after all DOM.RF (a financial institution for housing development. Established by a decree of the Government of Russia — Ed.) I didn't want to give you this piece of land for a park.
“We have been arguing for a long time. It worked when this case was included in the package of election promises of [the governor of Primorye] Oleg Nikolaevich Kozhemyako. Remember that atmosphere when it was necessary to elect Oleg Nikolayevich by any means? And under this case, they were ready to do anything. As usual, take advantage of the opportunities that are available. In Vladivostok, you understand, any construction project is a difficult quest when you are trying to find opportunities.
Sputnik is a good idea
— You built a whole microdistrict in the Nadezhdinsky district. The start of Sputnik city is practically.
“It wasn't easy either. There was a military town there, and it was not clear what was to be done with it. There were no interested parties, it was handed over to the municipality — and we bought it for rather big, but sane money. And this is one of the examples of the normal development of the city: you buy land, the money goes to the budget of the municipality, and he does something useful with this money (boiler houses were rebuilt with this money, houses were built for settling barracks). But when DOM.RF sells the land and the money disappears somewhere … They don’t get into the budget, if anything. This is a joint-stock company, of course, but it is 100% owned by the state!
Again, I understand where this comes from. During the times of wild capitalism, the wild development of our state administration — the 2000s — land and property were also sold, and the money also did not fall into the budget. And the implementation of DOM.RF is based on the concept “Anyway, they will plunder on the ground. Let's just put it all in one place.» And the story that it’s better not to pull everything apart, but still organize the right institutions for municipal self-government and the development of the region, has not yet worked out that way.
— By the way, about the mentioned city of Sputnik — do you think it's a good idea?
— Under the current conditions, this is one of the best undertakings. You need to build cities somehow. The Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East took up a specific project. The modern economy is not about the fact that a factory was built, but barracks around it. It develops differently.
People concentrate in those places where they want to live. And because they live there, the economy develops.
— Key words “want to live”. And who, of their own free will, wants to live in the city of Sputnik? From Vladivostok, they fly away by planes.
— Not true. An excellent survey was conducted — mail.ru did — where would Russians like to go to live. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Sochi. Vladivostok is in fifth place. So the fact that people are flying away from Vladivostok by planes is not true. Primorsky Krai — yes, it is declining. Vladivostok is not shrinking. And he would grow up, but he simply cannot physically — there is simply nowhere to live. All square meters where a person can be accommodated are already occupied. It's just that physically more than 600 thousand cannot fit. And the high cost of housing is a reflection of the fact that people want to live here, but cannot.
In my view, the development of a country is competition for people from different agglomerations and cities. Citizens want to live in comfortable, good, big cities. The bigger the city, the more amenities, variety and opportunities.
Photo from the personal archive of Dmitry Alekseev
The struggle between administrative resources and hatred
— It's all good in the presence of a balanced political system that outlines plans and regulates their implementation. In fact, every year it is more and more difficult for the state machine to “make” the election results. United Russia and the parties that joined it are losing, the president's rating is in doubt, Moscow's proteges on the ground are losing. And you, for example, in the infamous 2018 for Primorye (when the election results were canceled after the scandalous victory of a communist deputy), you organized the Right to Elections movement and developed an application for independent observers. But do you understand that if the elections are held as honestly and transparently as possible, the balanced system in which you place your hopes will collapse?
— Yes, unfortunately, a situation has now formed when there is a struggle between administrative resources and hatred for everything. The Communists absorbed this hatred and, so to speak, embody it. This is really a story not about development, not about creation, I don’t really like it. In 2018, I worked with independent observers and at the same time actively campaigned for Acting Governor Tarasenko.
There are short-term decisions, and there is a long game. Yes, I understand that, from the point of view of momentary decisions, it is necessary to choose a person at any cost. What did Tarasenko lack? He probably would have been a normal governor. Yes, I could not organize a full-fledged drive of voters and lost the elections.
— You say that like it's some kind of common place. Well, just think, the drive …
— So I explain. There is a dilemma between short-term goals and long-term ones. Imagine that you are an interim governor, supported by the authorities, or a political strategist. And you understand: if not the drive, then they will vote for Ishchenko …
— So what?
— What's good about that? In the short term, the victory of a protest, non-systemic candidate will lead to the fact that he will be cut out of the existing system of state administration in the country. What distinguishes a good governor from a bad one is that a good one can extort money from Moscow, but a bad one cannot. When the capital once again saw that Primorye was a protest region, Kozhemyako's victory «cost,» say, 20 billion rubles to the regional budget. And Ishchenko's victory is conditional, minus 10 billion. From the point of view of long-term trust in the authorities and building institutions, it was probably necessary to let people make a mistake and elect Ishchenko. Because the inhabitants of the region would understand that nothing good is happening. If you want to experiment, please.
Had the communists defeated us, the region would have entered into a struggle and confrontation. Yes, in the long run, this is probably the right way. This would form the right political culture, when people voted not just out of spite.
You see, the people of Primorye chose Ishchenko not because they liked him, but because they wanted to show a fig in their pocket. And from a long-term perspective, people should be given the opportunity to vote out of spite.
Citizens should determine their own destiny. They show off a lot because they're not allowed to choose.
Photo from the personal archive of Dmitry Alekseev
Big City Economy
—Elections are not rigged in big cities. The whole hinterland is redrawn with one stroke of the artist's brush. All the best is always in large cities, this is logical. But the outback will simply die out at such a pace.
— In Russia, about a third of the population lives in more or less large cities. Another third are in towns. Another third are in the villages. In order to maintain modern agriculture, to service machines, 2-3% of the population in any country is enough. You can't even name a branch of agriculture that has not yet been industrialized. Poultry farms, cowsheds, pig farms, vegetable growing … All this is no longer in the farmer's garden. In Soviet times, people in the villages were kept artificially, subsidized. A sharp transition in the 90s, when they stopped subsidizing, caused the collapse of agriculture. As a result, citizens do nothing, live by subsistence farming.
One of the national tasks is reform for the third part of the people living in the villages. We started talking about the fact that the hinterland will “die out” — and so, of course, 30% of the population should not live in the villages. First of all, they should be given the opportunity to move to the cities. Including pensioners, let them live closer to their children and health care, and they will be able to sit with their grandchildren, if anything. It's better for everyone. What is more important for you: to keep the territory occupied evenly, or that people, firstly, feel good themselves, and secondly, they would be included in the economy themselves?
The modern economy is the economy of large cities, where there are many people who correctly distribute activities among themselves.
The defect of the system
— You constantly come out in support of people arrested for ridiculous reasons— communist deputy Samsonov, who is obviously not ideologically close to you, or the scientist Shcherbatyuk, who is on trial for cooperation with Shanghai University. But it is clear that the state is now playing against these people.
— Just in the story with Shcherbatyuk, I believe that the state is not at all against him, but for him. There are some flaws in the system that led to him spending some time in prison. The system is skewed in favor of power management and is not balanced by civil society. And power management is not equal to the state.
And against Samsonov — not the state. In my opinion, this is a harmful, bad flaw in the system. The idea “why get involved in politics, let's better jail competitors” is a bad one. It harms the state.