Something Ends, Something Begins

Russians With Attitude, and with a Substack

Well, it finally happened. After over five years of generating revenue for Patreon, they’ve banned our account for “presenting an elevated risk.” They “can’t share specific details” and their “decision is final”.

We never expected to last this long, to be honest. A popular, independent, crowd-funded media project run by actual Russians — the whole premise is preposterous.

Our continued survival always felt like a glitch, an oversight on somebody’s part. We used Patreon because it was convenient and because everyone knows about it; not because we harboured any illusions about its hospitality. Its track record on free speech speaks for itself. We always ran parallel channels for exactly this reason.

I’ve never been much of an entrepreneur. I really do lack the salesman genes. But I’ve always been proud of what we built with RWA — something people genuinely appreciate, something with real-world value. Call me naive, but I always saw it as a way to cut through the media fog, to bypass the propaganda bubbles and just talk to the world directly. That’s the part that mattered, and still does.

What can one say about the manner of execution? A form letter with no signature or explanation, no possibility of appeal, not even the courtesy of an accusation; one recognizes the style. When you get rugpulled like this, what is left is what’s actually yours — the work, the voice, the people who chose to listen: those are not stored on anyone’s servers. 

We’re not giving up. Русские не сдаются, as you’ve certainly heard.

We’re relaunching right here, on Substack — subscriptions are already live, all podcast episodes will be hosted here going forward, and we’re getting back to longform writing. We’ve only heard good things about hosting projects on here. So that’s what we’ll do.

We will figure out something cool to do with the RWA archives, too. A lot of formerly paywalled content will be available on here soon for free, in particular our “greatest hits” series: the “Putin’s Russia” short history of the last 25 years; the 8-hour “Spirit of 2014” documentary on the Donbass War. We’ll also continue the grand Romanov series on here, and, of course, our latest opus, the series on the Chechen Wars, already very long, but still not finished.

We WILL finish all of our historical series AND start new ones that will also take years. That’s a promise.

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Podcasting aside, writing has always been important to us, and Substack is probably the best platform for longform out there right now. Writing longform on X is not the most rewarding experience, and much of it is very ephemeral and gets lost easily. We might revive our “guest author” format from a few years ago, too.

You can expect more “traditional” RWA content on here, that is, not so much news commentary, but more culture, literature, history and philosophy. It will be great to put more emphasis on that aspect again — it’s always nice when people want our opinion on current events, but there are more important things sub specie aeternitatis.

It is sad to lose our Patreon, not so much because of the money, but because it was a passion project we’ve poured our hearts into for half a decade, and because it connected us to hundreds of real people all around the world — I hope we will succeed in replicating the community we had on there, and perhaps even surpass it.

On the other hand, we feel more motivated than ever: re-starting almost from scratch is the best occasion to put in the work. Adversity and spite drive the spirit greatly.

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