Masha-Toling

The notorious ‘documentary-investigative’ film ‘The Traitors’ patched together by Maria Pevchikh* and a team of extremists from the Anti-Corruption Foundation ** (FBK), has not really ‘worked’ in Russia: Russian public has not provided millions of viewers on YouTube neither in Russia, not in the West. This has been admitted by relocants themselves. Yet, this film should not be called ‘investigative’ – as it is just a compilation from the time of the mobster 1990s, and there is nothing new in it for any person older than 40.

‘FATHER AND SONS’ OF THE BOLOTNAYA SQUARE

(swamp, marshy in Russian square in Moscow)

But, on the other hand, the film has caused a general tumult abroad. As in the ‘Swamp’ fairy tale: first the inhabitants of the swamp lived amicably and quietly, but then Croaking Masha started to croak so loudly through the whole forest that the spectre of the foreign agent Alexey Navalny* flew in and drained the swamp: ‘First died the fishes, then the birds flew away, and after that the beavers left the swamp. Toads and frogs lived for a certain time in the ooze until mosquitos disappeared and flowers withered’.

The first to move to another swamp was the ‘beaver’ Boris Zimin* — the sole open sponsor of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), who had started to support it from the time of the ‘Swamp Square’ revolution in Moscow and who is the son and heir of the founder of the cellphone company ‘Vimpelkom/Beeline. And here is what Boris Zimin said about the film ‘The Traitors’:

‘This is the political will of Alexey (Navalny) and all that stuff. And this, naturally, drives me into the blues. If this is a political will, then what it consists of? It consists of hatred. Alexey talked about values. He was very like connected with something like ‘thou shalt not steal’ and so forth’.

It seems that Masha’s croaking made the cup run over, the cup of the rich swamp Russophobe. Boris Zimin yearningly listened to the self-forgetful frog concert in three parts and stopped financing the Anti-Corruption Foundation as this organization, according to him, ‘has been screwing up its priorities, has been acting up, spending its capital somewhere in the wrong direction, strange side’.

Another swamp steward, the foreign agent Mikhail Khodorkovsky* even issued an ‘anti-Traitors’ manifesto in which he theatrically was asking the croaking Masha and other little frogs from the ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’: ‘And what you did in your thirties and forties? What did you do in order to break the backbone of Putin’s regime? You left yourself wide open for bullets? You served ten years in prison?’

Another words, the documentary film of Maria Pevchikh and company inserted into the swap a generational disruption, uncompromisingly divided the croaking relocants into ‘fathers and sons’. ‘Fathers are those who are now more than sixty: who in the 1990s ‘fucked up such a country’. The hope is now only of ‘children’, of those who are less than forty, who have not sullied themselves at least thanks to their age.

‘WELL-GROOMED’ LUXURY OF MASHA’S YOUTH

Maria Pevchikh herself (born 1987) stated not once that the film ‘The Traitors’ is ‘Alexey Navalny’s political will’ which he formulated less than a year ago in his statement entitled ‘My fear and hatred’.

‘I hate those who has sold, drank away, wasted in vain that historical chance that our country had had at the beginning of the 1990s’, ordained the swamp insurgent’. ‘I hate Yeltsin with ‘Tanya (Boris Yeltsin’s daughter) and Valya (her husband)’, I hate Chubais and all the corrupt family that brought Putin to power’.

Alexey Navalny (one should give credit to his consistency) hated all those who were in power and near power, and also ‘independent journalists’ as well as ‘tricksters whom we called for some reason reformists; and ‘authors of the silliest authoritarian constitution; and the ‘democratic public’ that allegedly tampered with the results of the presidential elections of 1996’, and others.

Testator Alexey Navalny about will executor Maria Pevchikh

While executing the will, the croaking executor Maria Pevchikh during three hours were producing hysterical sounds although their meaning and pathos were extremely simple: Russia was brought to naught by ‘swindlers, tricksters and thieves’ that that lived and came to power in the 1990s. And if, by chance, little frogs from the FBK, for instance, had been in the Kremlin, the country, would have flourished as a paradise swamp. And as if by all her appearance Maria Pevchikh would have wanted to say: ‘Well, look at me, I am a cool ‘chick/frog’ – nice, smooth and smart, right smack an icon of style, honor and conscience of the modern Russia!

However, Masha Pevchikh, until present, has not told the truth about how she became the way she is now thanks only to dirty money, made in the bloody and rapacious ‘aluminum war’…

Commonly known are the following facts of her biography: she was born in 1987 in Zelenograd (the satellite town of Moscow), graduated as external student the prestigious grammar school in the town Zelenograd No 1528, when she was 15 (in 2003) enrolled at the paid department of the insanely fashionable and prestigious at that time sociological school of the Moscow State University.

According to her classmates, ‘in the lecture halls of the sociological school were sitting girls in branded clothes with fresh manicure and were thumbing slick magazines. On the parking lot there were expensive cars in which personal chauffeurs waited for certain students to end their classes. In refectories one could find a steak of salmon at a price of a third of student’s stipend’.

Such an atmosphere of the ‘groomed luxury’ has been stuck in the memory of some graduates of this Sociology School who talked with the media outlet ‘Kholod’** (included in the Registry of media foreign agents). ‘The majority of students of the Sociology school were children of very well-heeled parents: entrepreneurs, civil servants, top-managers of foreign companies. They didn’t live in dormitories, they didn’t work alongside their studies, instead they travelled abroad for holidays twice a year: in summer they went to the sea, in winter to ski resorts’.

And even against this glamour background of inveterate silver-spooners Maria Pevchikh looked ‘well-stocked and pointedly rich’ – as a daughter of a top-manager of industrial companies and co-owner of several transport and tourist companies’ (We would like to note on the sidelines that her thesis supervisor at the Moscow University was Alexander Dugin, one of the co-founders of the National-Bolshevik party** (prohibited by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation’).

FAMILY MYSTERY OF THE PEBCHIKHS: ‘KOSTYA-TOLING’

The ‘groomed luxury’ for the young Masha was created, of course, by her parents: Konstantin (Kostya) Eduardovich Pevchikh (born 1963) and Natalia Georgievna Pevchikh (born 1964). Her mother (nee Frolova) graduated from the Moscow school No 842 and then the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technics (MIET).

Parents of the foreign agent: Konstantin and Natalia Prvchikh

Her father graduated from the Moscow State University (engineer-mathematician by specialization) in 1987 (we would like to remind that at that time came into the world his first daughter). On her page in Wikipedia it is only said that her farther ‘is a cofounder and owner of a number of medical firms). And in February 2020 ‘Konstantin Pevchikh became cofounder of the OJSC ‘Igla’ which deals with promoting the technology of microneedles SkinPort for painless delivery of substances through the skin. And this is all that Maria Pevchikh regarded as is needed to tell about her father.

Konstantin Eduardovich himself in his profile in one of social media gives more detailed description of his work history. So, after graduating the Moscow State University he taught math at the institute MIET (1987 – 1996). Then he headed various departments and directorates at the Russia auto dealer Musa Motors (1996 – 1999), worked as executive director of the company ‘Ruspromavto’ (1999 – 2001), managed a project at the company ‘IK Rinako’ (2001 – 2003). Was general director of the company ‘UK Gelendzhik-Kurort) and, at last, in 2015 he founded some OJSC ‘101-Akademia’ which is active in the field of entertainment industry. 

Screenshot of the profile of Konstantin Pevchikh in one of the social media

But how this former teacher-seller of differential and integral equations have managed to earn a quick buck? Can it be true that he made it on the bases of a small percent from selling foreign cars and Russian busses?  Who would believe that except for different ‘swamp sleazebags’. But what was the source of Masha’s ‘groomed luxury’?

The thing is that Masha’s father hid another place of his work. A businessman who asked not to disclose his name told about it — he had known Konstantin Eduardovich Pevchikh during those years when they had been calling him ‘Kostya-Toling’. Yes, it’s like that – ‘toling’, with one letter ‘l’. From the grammatical point of view, it would be correct to write it that with two ‘l’ – ‘tolling’ (from the English word ‘toll’): it is the name of a business-form of recycling natural resources that was rather widespread in Russia in the 1990s when there was neither toll nor VAT on give-and-take raw materials and export of end products. Particularly known this term became in connection with scandals around aluminum industry.

For a long time, the aluminum business in Russia was ‘protected’ by the crime boss from the town Krasnoyarsk with the nickname Tolya-Bull (Anatoly or Tolya Bykov). From this nickname, according to our interlocutor, came the name ‘Kostya-Toling’. Konstantin Pevchikh was allegedly acquainted with ‘Tolya-Bull’ and he, they say, organized transportation corridors for delivery of alumina and exporting of aluminum bars.

REVOLT IN A BROTHEL

At the disposal of our investigative agency FLB.ru happen to be payrolls of Pevchikh senior that are kept in the archive of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation. It turns out that Masha’s father regularly received payment at the company ‘Group ‘Siberian Aluminum’, starting from November 1999 (when Masha, we would like to remind, was 12 years old).

Payroll of Konstantin Pevchikh for 1999

As of today, it’s difficult to say for how many years Konstantin Pevchikh was engaged in aluminum business, but the FLB.ru has also managed to find out the same payment slip for the next year 2000.

One thing is evident: the head of the Pevchikh family had been conscientiously hiding his relations to the business, that was reputed at that time as being bloody and rapacious, as in his resume – from November 1999 up to September 2001 — he indicated the company ‘Puspromavto’. And in 2003, when his daughter went to the Moscow State University, he, abruptly, drops this, apparently dangerous but very lucrative business and switches over to less nerves health resort activities.

So, it’s quite possible to suggest that the former teacher of math has managed to make his main capital on nonferrous metals. He came to this semi-criminal business when the so-called ‘second aluminum war’ was being started in the country. It was of a life and death struggle. At that time, in 1999, on the different sides of the government rout that is used by federal civil servants to get to their offices appeared big billboards with mutually exclusive calls. On the left: ‘Ban tolling. No more robbing of Russia’, on the right: ‘Ban tolling means to ruin Russia’. The government was deciding the destiny of tolling.

Slogans of the ‘second aluminum was’ (Moscow, 1999)

The National Anti-Corruption Committee, in December 1999, declared that ‘tollingers spend for buying Russia civil servants about 30 million dollars for prolongation of preferences relating to tolling. The profit of tolling was so mind-blowing that acceptable were any ‘overhead costs’ (We would like to remind our readers that, as early as in 1994, Russia went from zero to the first place in aluminum export). The owner of ‘Sibal’ Oleg Deripaska publicly promised at that time ‘in the coming two or three years to fully legalize all turnovers within the framework of the consolidated company’.

In this dirty mega-war for fortunes worth of billions ‘Kostya-Toling’ was not an ordinary fighter, nor was he, admittedly, a general. He was, rather, a senior officer at the General Stuff. He participated in the decisive battle at the end of the 1990s and beginning of zeros for ‘Russia Aluminum’. During this decisive battle of life and death collided predatory Western traders, bandit groups, native business and civil servants. This was that deadly ‘mixture’ which, after a quarter of a century, the daughter of the high standing employee of the company ‘Siberian Aluminum’ would denote with a sharp word ‘Traitors’.

Konstantin Pevchikh with his new wife

And regardless of whether Masha Pevchikh wants it or not, she has to call her own father ‘a traitor’ with a capital letter. Certainly, she will be completely furious: yes, yes, my father is a traitor, but he betrayed only my mother! Yet it’s impossible to deny that the author of the scandalous film came to fruition and prime of life with the money of this ‘traitor’.

‘The ‘steward of opposition’ Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his telegram-channel rather cynically resolved the generation conflict: ‘Some of you studied thanks to our money at good universities, learned to use social media, and when our time came (the first Bolotnaya square revolt, in case someone doesn’t remember, — then there was a chance) … They didn’t take their chances… I propose to you to <…> take your chances next time, I propose to those who are in their 30s now. Not to us, who are 60-70 years old. For yourselves, not for us. For us it’s already too late. But we can help. Not for the sake of ourselves. For your sake. We hate you and love you. You are our children…’

Another words, a steward of a brothel, surrounded by aging and worn-out mamas, came out before protesting priestess of love: ‘Hush, you sluts! Stop setting yourself up as virgins. You and us have the same road, same destiny – to service foreign masters!’
Author: Alexey Chelnokov

See the Russian version at: «Маша-толинг. В 90-е отца Марии Певчих* в «алюминиевых» авторитетных кругах Толи-Быка знали как Костю-Толинга»

* Pevchikh Maria Konstantinovna – born 15.08.1987, on 05.05.2023 was included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 592;
* Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny (born 04.06.1976 – died 16.02.2024) – on 25.01.2022 was included by Rosfinmonitoring in the list of physical persons connected with extremist activities or terrorism with No 8398;
* Khodorkovsky Mikhail Borisovich, born 26.06.1963, Identification Number of a Taxpayer (INN) 770200035117, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 168-196-008 95, — on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a physical person fulfilling functions of a foreign agent. Included into the Registry of foreign agents with No 389. In 2015, Russia put Khodorkovsky on international wanted list because of his involvement in the murder of the mayor of the town Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov and attempted murder of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Rybin;
** ‘Anti-Corruption Foundation’ (FBK) – was included in the registry of NKOs fulfilling functions of a foreign agent, by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation of 09.10.2019 the Organization was acknowledged as extremist, its activities are forbidden on the territory of the Russian Federation by the Ruling of the Moscow City Court of 09.06.2021.