Alexei Navalny

An old Soviet joke from a modern Russian prison

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Here’s a Soviet joke for you:

A shy, unathletic, bookish boy is walking across a snow-covered courtyard in Moscow, past a group of kids who are playing football.

The ball rolls to the boy’s feet. He decides against habit to join in the game. He kicks the ball awkwardly, and it veers off and crashes through the window of the janitor’s apartment on the ground floor.

The janitor emerges. He’s a huge, bearded man, who has clearly been drinking. He roars and starts to chase the boy.

The boy runs for his life, thinking to himself, “Why do I need football in the cold and the snow? I should be at home, safe and comfortable, reading a book, conversing with my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.”

Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway is in a Havana bar, drinking rum, with a salsa band playing next to him. It’s hot. Hemingway thinks to himself, “God I’m sick of this heat and rum and salsa. I should be in Paris, the center of the world, drinking Cavalos with my great friend Jean-Paul Sartre, and discussing philosophy.”

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre is in a Paris cafe, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’s taking part in an abstract but heated discussion that means nothing to him. “God how I’m sick of all these cigarettes and cafes and empty discussions,” thinks Sartre. I should be in Moscow, talking to my friend, the great novelist Platonov, about things that are real and mean something.

Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard. And he growls through his gritted teeth, “God I swear if I ever catch him, I’ll kill the little bastard.”

That’s from the memoirs written by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Navalny wrote down the Soviet joke above — “my all-time favorite joke” — while in prison in the Pokrov correctional colony.

You might know Navalny’s story. Back in 2020, he was poisoned by the Russian secret service with a nerve toxin, almost died, but somehow made it to Germany to get medical treatment.

He recovered over the course of months. During this time, he cold-called Russian secret service agents and tricked them into revealing how they had poisoned him (I wrote about the crazy story ​back in December 2020​).

In spite of the assassination attempt, Navalny decided based on his principles to return to Russia.

He was promptly arrested as soon as he landed at the Moscow airport. He was then charged with embezzlement, fraud, and extremism, and was tossed in jail.

That was back in 2022.

Navalny never made it out of jail. He died earlier this year, on February 16, at age 47, under mysterious circumstances in the “Polar Wolf” prison, which sits in Western Siberia above the polar circle. “All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results,” the prison statement read.

I’m telling you this because somehow, during all this, Navalny remained cheerful and optimistic, in spite of the fact he was in prison in Siberia, in spite of the fact he had a 19-year sentence, in spite of the fact he knew he was really in for life, one way or another.

All that’s to say, if you think that whatever you’re writing about is too serious for joking, that your audience cannot and will not stand lightheartedness, that certain topics are sacred, well, it might be worth reading some of Alexei Navalny’s posts from prison. They are fascinating, inspiring, and well-written. Plus they might give you a change of mind on some things.

In case you’re curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

When authority and urgency fail…

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Yesterday, I wrote about a remarkable piece of persuasion:

Assassination survivor Alexei Navalny cold called one of the secret service officers behind the assassination attempt.

Navalny used some standard persuasion tricks to get the secret service officer to reveal all sorts of behind-the-curtain info during a 50-minute call.

So how about those persuasion tricks?

There were some obvious things. First, there were the trappings of authority.

Navalny called from a spoofed phone number, which made it seem he was inside the secret service headquarters. He claimed to be an aide to a high-ranking security official. And he seemed to have a lot of insider knowledge — such as names of people possibly involved in the assassination attempt.

So that’s one thing.

The second thing was urgency. Navalny, in his assumed alter ego, insisted this needed to be done here and now, because the big boss was waiting.

But that wasn’t enough. The guy on the other end of the line didn’t budge in spite of the authority or the urgency.

If you read the transcript — available online — you can hear the secret service officer dodging Navalny’s questions. “I don’t have this information… why don’t you call this other guy… I am at home with coronavirus.”

So how did Navalny finally get the secret service guy to break down?

Simple. He said the following:

“Let me help you. On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you assess Alexandrov’s work? I understand that he is your colleague, but nevertheless…”

The secret service guy said, “I assess him positively.”

Navalny then asked a few more 1-10 questions.

​​The secret service guy answered.

And then Navalny started asking more probing questions. As I told you, he finished some 50 minutes later, having squeezed the secret service guy for a lot of classified, inside information.

The technical term for what happened to the secret service agent is commitment.

You get somebody to commit to a small thing… and they will be more likely to commit to a big thing after.

It’s like a big and heavy chain sitting on a massive ship. The chain is way to heavy for you to lift and toss overboard. But if you start just one or two links down the side of the ship… then the whole thing might uncoil and come hurtling down into the water.

That’s commitment. It’s how you can persuade people to do crazy things.

The Navalny story is one example of it. But there are plenty more, all around you. It’s why the headline and the lead of a sales letter are so important… it’s why a customer who paid you $5 will be more likely to buy a $1000 course than somebody who never gave you any money… and it’s why people who have been burned on a get-rich-quick scheme will get burned on a second and a third.

​So what’s my takeaway for you?

Nothing. I’m just glad you read this email all the way to the end. By the way, would you like to subscribe to my email newsletter for more content like this? If yes, here’s where to go.

Spy thriller persuasion in the real world

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It sounds like a scene out of a Jason Bourne movie:

A man survives a near-fatal assassination attempt. After months of recovery, he decides to figure out exactly who was responsible and how and why.

Being rather clever, he has a hunch of where to start. So he picks up the phone, and starts going down a list of secret service agents who have been trailing him for years.

He calls the first person on the list. No response.

He calls the second person, and introduces himself using a fake name.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I know exactly who you are,” the other man finally says. Click.

The assassination survivor calls the third name on the list.

“Hello?”

“Konstantin Borisovich?”

“Yes, yes!”

“This is Ustinov Maxim Sergeevich, aide to Nikolay Platonovich Patrushev. I received your number from Vladimir Mikhailovich Bogdanov. I apologise for the early hour, but I urgently require 10 minutes of your time.”

“All right.”

50 minutes later, the assassination survivor has milked the secret service agent for the names and methods and dates behind the failed assassination.

Like I said, it sounds like something you would see in a movie. But it was real, and it happened only last week. The assassination survivor was Alexei Navalny, a leading Russian opposition politician, who was poisoned on a plane back in September.

All in all, this was a pretty spectacular piece of persuasion and social engineering. To put it in context, just ask yourself:

How would you go about tricking a trained secret service agent to open up and reveal secret assassination stuff to you on an unsecured line?

It might surprise you that Navalny did it through standard persuasion techniques. Stuff that’s straight out of Robert Cialdini’s Influence.

I won’t list all the techniques Navalny used. But if you like, I will write about one of them in more detail tomorrow. It’s how Navalny finally got poor Konstantin Borisovich to break down and open up… and it also underlies all of direct marketing.

If you’d like to read tomorrow’s article, you might like to subscribe to my email newsletter.