➡ In 2026, Riley Wagman and his partner Katya, both expats living in Russia, decided to escape city life and the impending health pass regulations by purchasing cheap land in a small, semi-abandoned village near St. Petersburg. They established the Edward Institute for Village Studies, a real place where they lived a simple life, growing vegetables and raising chickens. Despite the challenges of living in a remote area with no running water or shops, they found the experience rewarding and even organized a mock international economic forum. Their story is shared through a series of blog posts.
➡ The text is about a person’s experience living in a rural village, where they had a variety of animals and grew their own food. They learned a lot from the villagers, especially from a man named Andre. Despite some challenges, they found the experience rewarding and irreplaceable. The village, however, was mostly populated by older people, reflecting a demographic issue in the countryside.
➡ The text talks about life in a small, aging Russian village that was once thriving but is now home to only about 50 full-time residents, mostly over 65. The younger generation is leaving for cities like Moscow in search of jobs and a modern lifestyle. The author shares experiences of living a simple life there, including illegal fishing and interacting with unique local characters. However, the story ends with the author’s partner being deported from Russia for unspecified national security reasons, despite her positive contributions to the community.
➡ The speaker recounts their experience of living in Russia, where they faced unexpected challenges and had to leave due to security concerns. Despite the difficulties, they express gratitude for the experience and the lessons learned. They are now looking for a new community where they can apply their knowledge and live a simple life. The speaker encourages others to consider such a lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of community and mutual support.
➡ James wishes you good luck in all your future tasks.

Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to Solutions. Watch. It is 2026 and we’re going to hit the ground running with a fascinating conversation about a place that everyone is talking and buzzing about. Specifically, you know it as the Edward Institute for Village Studies, which has recently expired. And here to talk us, talk us through this, what it is, what’s going on is our good old friend riley wagaman of edwardaslavsquat.substack.com of course you follow the squat on Substack, don’t you? If you are cool, you do. And if you are, then you probably know what we’re talking about today already.

But if not, don’t worry, we’ll fill you in if you need any background about Riley and his work. Obviously, I’ve talked to him many times before. You can look him up on the website for our previous conversations on Georgian protests and Russian Covid and everything else, but here he is in the flesh. Riley Wagman, thank you so much for joining us again today. Thanks so much for having me on, James. It’s. It’s a privilege and an honor to speak with you, as always. Yes, he says sarcastically, drinking his coffee. All right. No, it is. The honor is all mine, really, because today I am privileged to be in the presence of the co founder, question mark of the Edward Institute for Village Studies.

I, you know, I’m, I’ve been following this saga on your bl, but you’re gonna have to fill me in on some of the details here. First of all, tell us what this Village Studies program you started was and where and why and how did this all come about? Well, I think co founder is definitely the correct title for me because to be honest, actually the, the real founder of the institute. Although she didn’t, she didn’t name it, the Edward Institute for Village Studies was my partner. She goes by the name moniker Katya, but she’s actually an American expat who had been living in Russia for basically her entire adult life, has a grown daughter who’s a Russian citizen who still is in Russia and studies in St.

Petersburg. We had actually connected through my blog during COVID and she had contacted me and just reached out and said, you know, I love your blog. You’re absolutely right. You know, this, the whole alt media, which is really just, you know, Kremlin shills are totally misreporting what’s happening in Russia right now. And we just started talking and we became very close friends and she. This was right in the autumn of 2021. So. Right. Like, this was Actually, at a time, nobody really knows this, but right before the SMO started in, in February 2022, Russia was proposing a nationwide QR code, like a health pass, you know, like a vax, which was hugely unpopular, even though, you know, Putin publicly supported it.

It was so unpopular they had to withdraw it. So we were in this situation where we were anticipating them pushing through this insane health pass, which thankfully did not happen. And Katya suggested, you know, I’m ready to get out of the city. I love St. Petersburg, but it’s time to go. I’m going to start hunting for villages, like in within driving distance of St Petersburg. So, you know, five, six hour drive max and try to find a spot where we can buy some cheap land. And, you know, do you do the things that we should be doing, like grow root vegetables and, you know, collect chicken eggs? And I was like, yeah, I’m on board.

So really the truth is though, that Katya really put in the most legwork. She. She got a friend with a car to drive her around the neighboring oblasts around St. Petersburg. She found this incredible little village which was a. It was a former collective farm during the Soviet Union. So it was. It was this massive agricultural, you know, like, place at one point, which was now destitute and half abandoned. And the property there was just, you know, I bought a house there for about $3,000. Katya bought a slightly better, or let’s say a more livable house for a little bit more, and she settled in right away.

I actually ended up going to Georgia because just for a variety of stupid reasons. But to be honest, at that point in my life, I was really not sure if I wanted to stay in Russia. The SMO had started almost immediately after I’d purchased the property and just felt like everything was falling apart. Stayed in Georgia for about a year, went back to Russia, which was the best decision I’ve ever made because I moved into the Institute and it was just an incredible experience. I mean, we can get into the nitty gritty, but. So basically what we ended up doing was buying property in this little village.

It was in Novgorod Oblast, which is about. It’s like basically between St Petersburg and Moscow. So Saint Peterborough to the north, Moscow the south, and Novgorod Oblast is basically right in between. You can get there by train, technically of our car and. But we, we were out in the boonies. We were about 30 km from the nearest town. There was no shops in our village. There was a little truck that would drive through a few times a week and sell basic Goods. But there was a bus system, actually, amazingly, that would go through the village twice a day.

But aside from that, we were pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. No running water, really. I mean, no plumbing. So we had an ouse. We had a banya to bathe in. Yeah. So we ended up calling it the. I ended up calling it sort of, you know, as a. As a joke, a cheeky little joke. The Edward Institute for Village Studies. To be honest. You know, what inspired me to do that was I was so sick of all these, you know, like Strategic Culture foundation or all these, you know, Kremlin OP names, like these really official sounding names.

Well, this is the Edward Institute for Village Studies, and we’re a real place that does real things. And you know. You know what? Great. I. I am. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been following a lot of this on your blog, but I did not know until. Right. Just before we started recording of the Chickenhoff International Economic Forum. You got to tell people about that. Oh, yeah. Well, maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but yeah, the Chicken Hawk International Economic Forum is the premier international economic forum in Novgorod Oblast. It’s. It was. It was just actually me maybe just wandering around my.

My chicken coop, just yelling at a camera. But everybody showed up. All the cows, all the chickens. We talked about bricks. The real question is, did. Did that chicken go on the ventilation as you ordered him too, after applying. He did not. I was very disappointed. In fact, I don’t know if you catch. At the very end, I try to stick a Q tip in its nose, but, you know, alas, it doesn’t work. All right, well, that’s a good introduction for people who want the whole saga. You did a series of village dispatches that are all nicely organized on the blog.

I’ll put the link into that for people who want to read through all the different pieces, but let’s introduce people to some of the cast of characters. We’ve already been introduced to Katja, but perhaps you can tell us about Susan the misgendered cat and Trevor the bull and Andre the mentor and other people and animals that you encountered along your way. Yeah. So aside from Katja, who I have to say really is the. She’s sort of the. The puppet master behind the scenes. You know, she really organized it all, so props to her. But aside from Katya, we also worked with this incredible.

She’s a Russian. She wasn’t an expat or anything. She had also lived in St. Petersburg, worked as a teacher. Also was fed up, was disgusted. You know, all her colleagues were forced to get the vax and she refused to. By the way, I. I should mention this as an aside, little top, but Katya also, one of the reasons Katya decided to leave St. Petersburg is because she lost her job because she was required to get the vax, which, you know, again, very few people unfortunately talk about the realities of COVID in Russia. But whatever, different thing, different topic.

So this woman, I call her Irina on the blog. Irina on the blog. She, incredible woman. She basically we made this arrangement. She bought a property in the same village. It was a large, like, it had already some basic infrastructure for holding cows and livestock, although the previous owners apparently had to sell all of their animals. So her home was sort of used as the base of operations for the farm. We sort of supplied the money for the funding for the farm. And Irina was the, basically the farm manager. She was the one who was on the ground, you know, on site.

She would usually, I mean, almost always do the milking in the morning. I guess I should mention we ended up by the end of our saga. We had two dairy cows and three bulls. Fortunately, every single time one of our cows gave birth, it was a boy, which was really frustrating. But the peak of Edward Institute, like madness. We had something like 30 animals between all three, you know, the whole commune or whatever you want to call it, like, I mean, including chickens and dogs. But it got really, really insane at one point because we, one of our dogs had given birth.

We had 10 puppies, like three cows, 20 chick, like. It was. It was madness. It was absolute madness. And she also was kind enough to take on responsibilities for helping to homeschool my son, Edward Jr. So she was an integral part of the Edward Institute. And without her contribution, it also would have been absolutely impossible. We also just had like, there was all sorts of people. We would interact within the village itself. I have to say some of the villagers did not like us very much just because they didn’t like that we had animals and they would complain about it.

But for the most part we had really good relations with the other villagers. As you mentioned, I had a sort of unofficial mentor named Andre, who very tragically passed away basically right before I had to leave Russia, which was. It was a very, very difficult few weeks for me. But Andre was this sort of this absolute character, this big, bigger than life fellow, you know, late 60s. I’m pretty sure he’d been to prison maybe once or twice in his life. He would just come and grab me from My house and just order me to, like, do stuff for him, you know, like, cheat clean my bonyo or like, take my boat and we’re gonna go out to the lake and check my fish traps and.

But the thing is, you know, it was this bizarre relationship where I was basically his, you know, I was basically his servant. But I learned so much from this guy. And every day, like, every time Andre, you know, came and picked me up, I didn’t know what we were doing or what would happen, but I knew that it would be like an adventure, that Andre would teach me something new. So I, you know, it was one of those, like, love, hate relationships. Was like, oh, God, Andre is back. Like, what does he want now? But by the end of the day, I was like, that was a great day.

That was awesome, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, honestly, it sounds like fun. It sounds like work. It sounds like a learning experience in so many different ways. But set the scene for us. Are you. Have you had a lot of experience out on the farm? Did you grow up on a farm or are you a city slicker? Born and raised? Yes. So, you know, I’m from Southern California. I wanted to be a baseball player when I was young. That’s all I thought about. You know, I know I had absolutely no meaningful experience, experience on a farm or working with animals or anything like that, but you just, you just learn.

It’s. That’s just how it happens. You just have to jump into it. And if you’re lucky, there will be people who know you know more than you do, and they’ll share your. Their knowledge and experience. And that’s exactly what happened. You know, the whole village, in a way, was like that because you’d have neighbors who would come over and say, hey, you know, you’re not doing that, right? Like, here, let me show you how to do that. Like whether it was, you know, splitting wood or how to grow your potatoes and, and, you know, weed properly or, you know, we had, for example, because the village we lived in was a former farm, there were still people in the village who had worked on this farm before it closed.

So there was actually a retired veterinarian on the farm, sort of. Yeah, sort of like a vet. And so when we had problems with the animal, she would come and show us what to do. Like, there was a lot of, you know, I’m 30 kilometers away from the nearest town, but my neighbor can help me out. You know, whether a car broke down or anything like that, people really did help each other out, not just us. You Know, it was, everybody would help each other out for the most part. I don’t want, I don’t want to over romanticize it because sometimes there was some, you know, disagreements and grumpiness and feuding.

But in general, I think it was, it was an incredible experience to see how instead of sitting cloistered in your little, you know, IKEA pod in front of your screen, there are other people outside who can help you and, you know, you can experience life with. It was great. You know, I, I wouldn’t, I can’t trade it for it. It’s an irreplaceable experience. Yeah, well, well, okay, so itemize that for us. What, what did you grow there? What did you, what kind of animals were you keeping? And what was a daily chore routine for you? Like what, what kinds of things were you doing on a day to day basis? So Katya was at least for our, you know, each, every, basically all the parts of the little, of the institute had their own little vegetable thing going on.

So Irina had her own thing going on. We also had some very close friends who I would say were part of the, you know, the institute and they had their own garden. We had our own garden. Katya was primarily in charge of growing, although I helped begrudgingly when I had to. But she grew like a lot of potatoes, turnips, onions, we even did corn. Like we had wild strawberries that we were able to harvest. Lots of berries actually just grew naturally where we were. Carrots, obviously, parsnips, a lot of root vegetables, things that can grow in the cold.

I’m missing tons. But she also grew all sorts of herbs and things like that. So it was a lot, a lot of peas, beans, things like that. And we had, like I said, we kept cows, chickens, goats, a lot of dogs and cats. As you mentioned earlier. We had a, a beloved cat of the, the mascot of the blog, Susan, who we got as a little kitten, this little white ball of fur. And we were told that it was a girl when we got it. And then it grew up and it was definitely not a girl, but we had called it Susan.

So. And, and he only responds to Susan and everyone. You have to change his name. He’s Susan. Like that’s his name. He was great. Yeah, he was a funny. There you go. Boy named Sue. Yeah. You know, thankfully again, we, when we, I had to leave, I mean, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. But when the Ed Institute was forced to shut his doors, maybe temporarily, hopefully, but who knows. Susan, our other cat, Sabrina and our dog Tosha, which is short for kartoshka, which means potato in Russian, they all went to Irina. So arena is, basically has adopted our animals.

We had to sell our cows. Unfortunately, she still has some chickens, but it was, it was quite a operation. And, and as a, you know, a daily routine for me, I was spent many, many hours a day just fixing stuff around the farm, building lots and lots of fences for the cows. You know, one of the challenges that we did have was because keeping livestock now is actually quite a rarity. Even, you know, where we were in Russia, you can’t just let your animals graze anymore because people nearby, people, you know, neighbors will complain or they’ll eat their garden.

So you got to fence everything in. But that wasn’t necessarily the case, you know, 30, 40 years ago when everybody had cows and you just, everybody took turns, you know, shepherding animals around. So that’s, that was disappointing. Like in some ways we were creating sort of artificial infrastructure to do what we wanted to do, but if we had done what we were doing 40 years ago, it would have been, we wouldn’t need any fences really, you know. Well, a lot of people, it sounds like you were living something of, you know, a bygone era’s dream or something like that.

Perhaps that reflected in the fact that I noticed in one of The Q&As you did, one of the people asked about the demographics of the village and you said that whatever, 75 of the people were over the age of 60 or something like that. I’m assuming there aren’t a lot of young people in the Russian countryside at this point. Yeah, the reality is, and obviously Russia is not, this is not just Russia’s problem is that you have a very, very serious demographic problem. And specifically with people who live in the countryside. I mean, these villages are dying.

Like the, the drive to our village from the nearest town 30 km away, you pass through five or six villages which are completely abandoned. Like, we’re just talking about, you know, the ruins of what was formerly probably a very productive agrarian little community, like gone. In our village itself, you know, probably at its peak there was a few thousand people living there when the farm was operating. Now it’s maybe like 50 full time residents, not including, you know, people who come for the summer for, to their vacation homes. And yeah, the, the vast majority of the population is probably over the age of 65.

So it’s a, it’s a dying. Yeah, like this way of life is dying in Russia. It absolutely is. All the young people because there’s no. There’s no jobs. There’s no opportunities. All the young people want to go to Moscow and work in it and, you know, get their food delivered to them by robots. Like, that’s the dream. And it’s not. Again, it’s not just in Russia. I understand that, but Russia suffers from that same problem. It’s like a. It’s a. It’s a mindset, you know, like, this is what. This is what good life is. Convenience, you know? Yeah, like, people want convenience.

Well, all right, so tell us about some of the. The exciting adventures that you had there. For example, I noticed you got into the. The counter economy a bit. The fike nets, the fishing nets that you were talking about earlier were technically illegal. Really? Yeah, they were technically illegal. So we lived. It was actually a really beautiful area. The village we lived in was between two large lakes, and so it was a very popular spot with fishermen, although there wasn’t actually a lot of. You want to see a lot of fishing poles? Everybody use these fishing, these fishing traps, these fike nets.

And so Andre, who I mentioned earlier, had, I don’t know, five or six of them strategically placed around the lake. And I remember one day he came and got me, and he. He ordered me to help pull his, you know, his inflatable little dinghy, his little boat, you know, put it on his tractor. We drive to the lake. I help him unload it, and I. He orders me to start paddling. And he’s like, all right, stop here. And it’s this little cranberry bog in the middle of the lake. He’s like, all right, get off. Like, what am I doing on here? He’s like, all right, I’ll be back, like, later.

He paddles away. It starts raining. I’m just sitting on this cranberry bog in the middle of the lake, and so I have nothing else to do, so I just start picking cranberries, you know, eating them, filling my pockets with cranberries. Andre comes back 25 minutes later, and there’s just a big bucket of fish. And I’m like, oh, okay. And so I guess the problem, of course, is that the fyke net, the location, is a very closely guarded secret. So he wasn’t sure if he could trust me with that knowledge, you know, of his. Of his. His.

His fish traps. But eventually I gained his trust, and so he would have me paddle him out to all his spike nets, and I would help, you know, haul in his winnings. And then he was kind enough, he would split The. The fish with me, and I’d take them home and feed him to Susan. But, yeah, I mean, like, just stuff like that. Like, there was always. I don’t know, like, all sorts of weird stuff would happen. I’m just trying to think off the top of my head now. Like, we would have. I don’t know. There was one great guy, total character.

I don’t know. I guess I’ll call him Sergey, who was an elderly gentleman. He was a former electrician. And he would just, like. He would just get drunk and then drive around in his car, like, through the village and just, like, stop at people’s houses and knock on their door and talk, you know, for like. For like an hour. You know, you just sit and like, oh, like, Andre’s come, like. Or Sergey’s coming, like, quick. And he, like, knocks on the door. We’re talking, talking. He’s hugging us, you know, like, telling us all is, you know, pouring his soul out to us, you know, trying to hit on Katya.

Like, it was just. I don’t know, it’s just so many. You know, I really gotta sit down and write it all out because there are so many just fascinating people, such characters and, like, just incredible people that you could talk to and learn from. And there was another woman we would sometimes visit with who. Yeah, she, like, lived all alone. And I mean, this woman, incredible. Like, she would, like, chop her own wood. And she was, like, 80, I think. And, you know, she also didn’t have any plumbing. So she’s basically just living in this cat, like this cabin, you know, stoking your own fires, making the borsch.

Every day she would just sit and watch though tv, like state tv, which is kind of sad. And she would tell us, you know, we’d come and visit her and she’s like, oh, they’re talking about the war again. And I started crying, like, it’s so terrible. I don’t know. It’s just like. I. I don’t know how to really describe it. It was just. It’s just a different, different world, you know? Totally different world. And when you are in a place like that, like, the things that become important, like the things that you wake up and say, okay, these are the important things in my life.

Like, it’s so different than modern day living, you know? Like, for me it was important things, like clean water, which I would walk to a well to get, like some, like a kilometer or more, you know, making sure we got enough potatoes for the evening, you know, getting. Getting the milk from arena back to the house. And it’s just. Just very simple, simple, basic existence and just interacting with other humans. It was. It was wonderful. It sounds wonderful. And I hope that people are starting to get a sense of what it was like and what you were going through there.

But I guess the inevitable question is then why and how did it end? Yeah, well, basically what ended up happening was in July of this year, or, sorry, last year, 2026, in July, I. We had gone to the United States for my son’s birthday. So Katya, myself and my son, I flew back to Russia with my son. Katya flew back separately a few days after us. And when she arrived in Moscow, landed in Moscow, she was basically flagged for additional questioning. And the FSB went through her phone, you know, saw our private messages on telegram, which was of course, like, we weren’t plotting.

There was nothing bad about anything we were saying. We’re just talking about Russia and sharing our views. Like, she wasn’t. She didn’t do anything illegal. You know, that’s the most incredible thing. He started questioning her. And they actually initially said, okay, yeah, like, you’re free to go. Just wait for us to process your documents and you’re free to go. So her passport had a stamp saying, you have, you know, you’ve entered Russia. She, instead of getting her passport back, she had to wait several hours. Something happened between her being told, you’re free to go. In that moment, I guess they, you know, decided, oh, we’ve got something really juicy here, you know, like, oh, got you from the Edwards Institute.

The stamp was annulled in her passport. She was told that she was being deported. She wasn’t told if she had been banned from Russia. She was put in a room for about 48 hours, deported back to the place where she flew into, which was Egypt, Cairo. We then hired a lawyer in Russia to find out what was going on. So we sent an official request to both the fsb, which is, you know, basically like the Russian FBI, the former, like the. The new KGB total spooks, and also the Russian Ministry of Interior. So, like, the cops, the Ministry of Interior got back to us, like, within days, saying there’s no ban.

Like, Katja can re. Enter whenever she wants. We had to wait for the FSB to get back to us, which took about a month. And when they did, they said she had been banned for 25 years. They did not explain why. They didn’t give any, like, incriminating evidence. They said it was because for national security purposes, but that why it’s a national security threat, is a state secret. Right. So we’re protecting this, this, the state with this state secret. Very convenient and safe. Safe and convenient as always. Apparently raising chickens and, and enjoying village life is illegal or a threat to the Russian Republic or something.

You know, what’s so incredible about it, specifically with her case, is that not only is her Russian beautiful, she speaks Russian beautifully. She had actually made an appearance on Russian state television just a few months prior to participate in a game show where she just blew the competition out of the water. It was like with other fellow expats who had moved to Russia and spoke Russian and she just absolutely dominated everyone else. And then, you know, apparently now this woman is a threat to national security, even though she was on Russian state TV answering questions about Russian culture, you know, just like a few months prior.

So, you know, we don’t, we don’t know really what happened, to be honest, if we’re going to be perfectly honest. I mean, we can make some assumptions, we can speculate as to why she was treated this way. But so at that point, you know, we realized, well, when she had been initially deported, actually, I started getting very, very scared. And I just made the decision, like, it’s time to shut this down. This is, this is becoming like there. We had had several smaller episodes before this. Although it was nothing, it was nothing where I really felt like it was manageable, let’s put it that way.

But at this point it was like, well, things have gotten out of hand, like they’re acting crazy and, you know, I don’t know, like, what could, what could happen? What could happen to me? Like, what could happen to my son? I don’t know. We gotta get out. So actually at that point, so it was the end of August, I left Russia. My son was with his mother in Moscow. I later met up with him about a month and a half, two months later in Georgia, picked him up and we flew back to the States. But that was, that was the end, unfortunately.

We had to ask, we had to ask arena to sell the animals, downsize, and we had to close things up. And I should mention too quite interesting is that we had this lawyer in Russia that we were working with. We hired him, we asked him to file an appeal to this 25 year ban. And he got back to us recently and said, I can’t get into the specifics, but he basically said that he’s been encountering unexpected, let’s say, roadblocks toward, you know, while filing the paperwork just to appeal. Right. This so apparently, someone in the Russian government doesn’t even want a legal.

A totally legal legal proceeding to go forward. Just asking for an appeal to this decision, which is very, very curious. And in fact, our lawyer, he said it’s got him even more pumped up. He’s like, this is crazy. Like, I can’t believe this is happening. I’m doubling down. It’s. I mean, this is. It’s really. It’s embarrassing. You know, I like when I think about it, it’s. It’s sad that we lost the institute. Although I’m. I really feel grateful and privileged I had the opportunity to experience something like that. But really, it’s just. It’s horribly embarrassing that the Russian government would do something so petty and cowardly.

And as you mentioned, you know, I guess we’re guilty of raising chickens and having a laugh, which of course, the, you know, status hate and, you know, just. Just trying to live a very, very simple life. Apparently you’re not allowed to do that. Interesting. Well, I’m sure many lessons have been learned, but what are the next steps? How do you apply those lessons going forward? That’s. That’s a really good question. Katya is actually going to be going to the People’s Reset Conference in. In Morelia, Mexico, which is being held at the end of the month. It’s the Derek.

Derek Bros. Right. His thing. And hopefully we’re going to meet up with some people who can give us some ideas on what to do next. I mean, we would love to find a community or, or something that. Where we can apply, you know, what we learned somewhere else in the world. Obviously not in Russia for the time being, but, you know, it would be. It would be difficult to recreate, I think, what we had just because it was sort of, in a strange way, it was just like the perfect combination of extremely cheap real estate people who are willing to just go all in.

Like, without Irina, you know, working basically around the clock with the animals, it would have been very difficult to make this happen. I sort of went schizo with, like, fence building. You know, like, there was just a perfect. The perfect mixture of everything. Like, everybody brought something to the table. I mean, Katya was incredible with coordinating and organizing everything, but we would love to do it again. You know, like, I. I want more. You know, this is. Hopefully this is just the first step. We. Yeah, like, we want. We want more. It was great. All right, well, then let’s wrap up with some advice or, or words of wisdom for the audience.

And I’m going to turn a question of yours back on you, because way back In March of 2023, you started, even before the institute was a twinkle in your eye. You started a a Q and A question, an answer with Katya about living in the Russian countryside. And you started that with the question, should you sell all of your belongings and move to a remote corner of Russia that has yet to be 3D hologram mapped by Yandex? And the response, sure, why not? Well, let me throw that question at you. Should the people out there sell all their belongings and move to a remote corner of Russia or wherever they may happen to be residing to, to live out this, this type of life? Yeah, sure, why not? You know, like, at a certain point you got to ask, what do you, what do you really have to lose? I guess is what I would.

I mean, your stuff. I guess you would lose your stuff. But if you are, even if you don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff, if you are able to connect, I mean, you need other people. That’s the thing. You know, it’s so amazing how people don’t realize, like, I mean, you know, you always hear about like human resources, you know, in the corporate world, but we really need to find a way where, you know, like minded people can realize. Like, we really need to be able to learn from each other and help each other in a more like, in a less like in a system that basically isn’t serving the state.

You know, like, that’s really, I think that’s really the problem here is trying to create communities that aren’t, you know, bowing, you know, a bunch of status bootlickers where we just take care of each other and aren’t, you know, I don’t know, like life in the United States, for example, being back here, it’s like everything is about, you know, everything. Everything is the. Your whole existence is about basically getting nice stuff and staying comfortable and you just really miss out on the, you know, the dirt under your fingernails. Joy of life, you know, and life could be so simple.

You just have to be able to find people who are willing to like, get dirty with you. Like, that’s it. You know, when people say, like, it’s not plausible, I can’t do it, like, you can definitely do it. It’s going to be painful. You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. You’re probably going to end up yelling at each other. But if you want to do it, you absolutely can. And I would really, you know, if you have the means, obviously you’re going to have to have some kind resources in order to restart your life. But you really don’t need a lot depending on where you go again.

The place where we were in Russia, I mean, it was exceptionally cheap, but there are, there are middle grounds. You know, you don’t have to like buy multi million dollar plots somewhere. I’m sure you can find affordable land in many parts of the world and you know, just try like, why not? Why not? Well, that’s the question that we’re putting out there on the table. And people now hopefully at least are aware of the Edward Institute and could go through the backlog of village dispatches to find out more about your experiences. But you know what? I think I figured it out.

I think I know why the FSB has labeled you guys such a national security threat. It’s the illegal fishnets. They found out about them. It’s the illegal. They found out the fake nuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure they confiscated them. They’re in like the, you know, the evidence bags. Yeah, that’s why they don’t want the appeal to go. They don’t want to, they don’t want, you know, during the legal proceedings, they don’t want to share the, the top secret fakenet evidence they found. This is it. This is it. Well, the truth is out now. We’ve exposed it.

All right, so for people who don’t know, how can they follow you and your work Foreign basically only on Substack, which probably is not a good idea as things become increasingly more controlled, but it’s edwardslav squat.substack.com occasionally I post a telegram. It’s the same name, Edward Slav Squat. That’s pretty much it. That’s pretty much it. And occasionally I will appear on podcasts and talk to people such as yourself, which I’m very grateful for. So, yeah, excellent. Well, I am grateful for your time, for your efforts. It sounds like an incredible experience, so I’m thankful for you for sharing that with us.

Riley, best of luck to you in all your endeavors coming forward. Thanks so much, James.
[tr:tra].

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