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- Lectures and spectacles: as the founders of the "Direct Speech" project They feed foreign agents and extremists
Lectures and spectacles: as the founders of the "Direct Speech" project They feed foreign agents and extremists
The creators of the popular lecture hall "Direct Speech" help runaway foreign agents earn money from content. As "Izvestia" found out, a legal entity with the same name is registered in Estonia. And it is this company that organizes concerts and meetings with Dmitry Bykov*, Anton Dolin* and Ekaterina Shulman*, who are wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, receiving hundreds of thousands of euros from their performances. The "Izvestia" investigation tells about who controls this project today and how it is connected with the Russian structure of the same name.
"Intellectual playground"
The Moscow lecture hall "Direct Speech", which hosts lectures and master classes on literature, psychology, history, music and natural sciences, was created by Tatiana Bulygina and Svetlana Shabalina (maiden name — Bolshakova. — Ed.) in 2010 and at the same time began to hold its first events. Over time, the project gained fame. Up to several hundred lectures and meetings were held annually, including at the venues of the Moscow Conservatory, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the Central House of Artists.
Prior to his lecture, Dmitry Bykov**, Ilya Kolmanovsky**, Artemy Troitsky**, Anton Dolin and Ekaterina Shulman collaborated with the lecture hall. Later, they condemned the actions of the country's leadership and left Russia, after which "Direct Speech" had to refuse to cooperate with them — but presumably only formally.
"Izvestia" found out that the founders of the Moscow lecture hall registered a company of the same name in Estonia as a legal entity Pryamaya OY and through it continue to organize lectures and public events with the participation of cultural figures. At the same time, some of them were added to the registers of terrorists and extremists in Russia and put on the wanted list.
For example, the website of the Estonian "Direct Speech" talks about the opportunity to attend the events of the same Kolmanovsky in Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna and other cities, and in the archive you can find announcements of events with Dolin and Bykov and buy a course of lectures by the latter. Both of them are wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation: Dolin — for non—fulfillment of duties of a foreign agent, Bykov - in the case of fakes and also for non-fulfillment of duties of a foreign agent.
There are also concerts on the calendar by composer and bard Yuli Kim, who also condemned Russia's actions after the start of his war. Here we are talking about a whole tour: he will present his program "Let's do it softly, Let's do it in a low voice" this fall in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Belgrade and Munich. In certain circles, Kim is widely known for criticizing the actions of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin personally.
According to the public statements of the Estonian Pryamaya OY, in 2024 the revenue of this company amounted to more than €1 million, and in 2025 it sank to just over €553 thousand.
Promoters for Vera Brezhneva
The activities of the Estonian "Direct Speech" are not limited to the support of foreign agents. The same legal entity acts as the promoter and organizer of Vera Brezhneva's concert tour in 2026, as described in the relevant section on its website.
In November, Pryamaya OY will hold a series of performances of the singer in Uzbekistan and Israel — in Tashkent, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashdod. The minimum ticket price in Tashkent is 2 million Uzbek soums (14.5 thousand rubles), and in Tel Aviv - 350 shekels (9.9 thousand rubles).
With all the sites fully loaded, the total ticket office may well reach € 1.2 million, "Izvestia" calculated based on the average cost of an entrance ticket for each of them. However, of course, we are talking about estimating the gross revenue of the tour, and not the income of the organizer himself.
Family contract
As follows from the Estonian registry, Pryamaya OY was established in 2023 in Tallinn, but not from scratch: Osahing Conmet Projekt previously worked using the same details, which was first engaged in trade, then construction, and in 2022 — before becoming a "Direct Speech" — acted as an architectural bureau.
Oleg Bulygin is listed as the manager of the Estonian company, and Olga Dudnikova is the owner. Both are relatives of Tatiana Bulygina, who was the co-founder of the Moscow lecture hall of the same name.
According to "Izvestia", Oleg and Tatiana Bulygin are husband and wife, and Olga Dudnikova may be Tatiana's mother. A curious detail: Bulygin indicates Ukraine as his place of residence in the Spanish documents, while Dudnikova indicates Latvia.
Divide and conquer
As for the Moscow wing, everything is more complicated here. The wife of Oleg Bulygin, who is on the board of Pryamaya LLC, Tatiana Bulygina, is the owner of trademarks both in Moscow "Direct Speech" and abroad.
Oleg Bulygin was listed in the user agreement of the "Direct Speech" website in the .ru domain zone as its administrator and owner of the exclusive rights to the resource and domain name until last week. However, after a request from the "Izvestia" correspondent, his name disappeared from the document. Instead, Svetlana Shabalina, the founder of the lecture hall, appeared there.
According to the "Contour.Focus", Oleg Bulygin is registered as an individual entrepreneur in the field of publishing audiovisual works on magnetic, electronic and digital media. Svetlana Shabalina and Tatiana Bulygina have IP in the field of performing arts.
At the same time, sole proprietors Oleg Bulygin and Svetlana Shabalina appeared a week apart on February 12 and 18, 2019, respectively. In addition, they have the same phone numbers in their registration data, which may indicate their business connection.
According to lawyer Alexander Zorin, such a scheme can raise questions from the Federal Tax Service.
— In the described design, there may indeed be certain signs that in tax practice are usually investigated when checking for business fragmentation: a single brand, a common project, the distribution of key functions between several interconnected individual entrepreneurs and their application of a special tax regime, — he noted.
However, according to Zorin, according to Article 54.1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, the key question is whether such a scheme leads to an artificial reduction in tax liabilities. At the same time, Article 105.1 of the Tax Code requires taking into account the actual interdependence of individuals and their impact on each other's economic results. By itself, the distribution of responsibilities between them within the same brand is acceptable if it is not aimed at reducing the tax burden.
Both the Moscow and Estonian "Direct Speech" businesses are profitable. In earlier interviews, the founders of the Moscow Lecture Hall, Tatiana Bulygina and Svetlana Bolshakova, talked about 500 events a year with full halls for 150-600 people, as well as several major programs at the Conservatory and the Tchaikovsky Hall for about 1.5 thousand people. the audience.
According to them, about 80% of the income is provided by tickets, the average price of which was about 2 thousand rubles until 2022. Thus, with a lower limit of 150 spectators at each of the 500 events and a ticket price of 2 thousand rubles, gross revenue could reach 150 million rubles.
Shabalina's position
"" In a comment to Izvestia," "Svetlana Shabalina, co-founder of the Moscow-based Direct Speech, said that after starting her own company, she stopped doing business with Tatiana and Oleg Bulygin.
— Tatiana Bulygina and I have been involved in the creation and development of the "Direct Speech" lecture hall since 2010, and together we developed a trademark, which was then officially registered in the name of IP Tatiana Bulygina. Oleg Bulygin is Tatiana's husband. In 2022, the joint business was discontinued, and since that time, the "Direct Speech" lecture hall has been developing in Russia exclusively under my leadership," said Shabalina.
She also claims that she has nothing to do with organizing events abroad.
— Pryamaya OY is not a legal entity of the Russian lecture hall "Direct Speech" and was not established by me. I, IP Shabalina Svetlana, am not a participant, beneficiary or member of the management bodies of Pryamaya OY, I do not participate in the actual management of this company and its commercial decision—making, and I also do not participate in the distribution of its profits," Shabalina said.
According to her, she uses the trademark "Direct Speech" under a license agreement with the copyright holder Tatiana Bulygina. However, according to Rospatent materials, the agreement was concluded not in 2022, when Shabalina, according to her, stopped cooperating with Bulygina, but in January 2024, two years after the start of her work.
Shabalina also explained why Oleg Bulygin's name was mentioned in the user agreement on the Russian website "Direct Speech".
— Site administrator Pryamaya.ru I am registered on the basis of documents stipulated by Russian legislation. The circumstances related to Oleg Bulygin's previous participation in the technical development of the project do not mean his participation in my current commercial activities," she explained.
However, after the "Izvestia" correspondent sent requests to Shabalina and Bulygina on September 7, the domain in the .ru zone was re-registered, it follows from the Whois service data. It is not known who exactly it is registered to now.
Oleg and Tatiana Bulygin had not responded to "Izvestia"'s request about their participation in the Estonian company Pryamaya OY at the time of publication of the material.
* included by Rosfinmonitoring in the List of Terrorists and Extremists, entered by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the register of foreign agents
** entered into the Register of Foreign Agents by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation
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