Part 1 - Why Freedom Became My Obsession


It's funny that one of my core personal values came from a video game. In Assassin's Creed, you fight against totalitarianism across centuries — liberating cities, dismantling corrupt power structures, protecting people from those who would control them. The Assassins live by a maxim: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." It sounds nihilistic, but it's not. It means society's foundations are fragile constructs. That individuals must be architects of their own actions and bear the consequences of their choices. That freedom requires wisdom, not just desire.

When I was liberating Italy and France in those games, I felt something real — like I was doing the right thing, making the world around me better. The French Revolution storyline fascinated me. People sacrificing everything for change. Ordinary citizens rising against tyranny knowing they might die for it. The games showed me how usurpation of power slowly kills a country, draining its resources, suffocating its people.

Then I'd turn off the game and see the same thing happening in Russia. Except there were no Assassins. Pro-freedom politicians were a minority — and they were being killed. Literally. Not in cutscenes, but in real life. I read Boris Nemtsov's books. Watched his interviews. Here was a man who understood exactly what Russia needed — democratic institutions, rule of law, integration with the world. He articulated a vision for the country that made sense. And I found myself inspired, thinking maybe change was possible. Then he was shot dead on a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin. The right path for Russia — just gunned down on the street. That's when something shifted in me. Not just disappointment. A deeper understanding that in some places, fighting for freedom isn't a metaphor. It's a death sentence.

Around the same time, I read Orwell's 1984 — a novel about a totalitarian state where the government controls not just what people do, but what they think. They rewrite history daily. They twist language until "freedom" means slavery and "peace" means war. The hero tries to rebel, to hold onto his own truth. In the end, they don't kill him — they break him. They make him love the system that destroyed him.

Part 2 - From Philosophy to Practice


And it made me question: what does freedom actually look like — not in games or books, but in real life? Job, family, religion, government, social media, money — all of it heavily influences our lives and the decisions we make. Are we loving and living how we want to live, or are external forces shaping us without us even noticing? Being born and living most of my life in Russia, freedom became my central philosophical question. I always saw people working jobs they hated, knowing that speaking against the current politics would make no difference in the best case — and in the worst case, you'd end up in jail or dead.But even escaping that doesn't guarantee freedom.

In America I've seen high earners who aren't free at all. Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs. You have money but no time to spend it. A title but no control over your day. A salary that looks impressive but requires 80 hours a week in an office someone else owns. All of this made me think deeply about what life I actually want to live — and more importantly, how I want to get there.

So I made absolute freedom my lifetime goal. Not as an abstract ideal, but as a concrete framework I'm building toward:
  • Financial Freedom — Earning from businesses and investments you own, not from a job where you can be fired. You own assets, not sell time.
  • Geographic Freedom — Ability to live and work from anywhere. Business isn't tied to location, visas and residencies let you choose where to be.
  • Time Freedom — Control over your schedule. No one dictates when you work or rest. You decide how to structure your day.
  • Personal Freedom — Living in a country where you can say what you think, where rule of law exists and your rights are protected from arbitrary power.
  • Social Freedom — Independence from others' opinions. Not adjusting to expectations of family, peers, society. Living by your own values.
  • Creative Freedom — Ability to work on what interests you, how it interests you. No corporate constraints or compromises for someone else's goals.

But I won't pretend this path is easy or purely positive. Freedom demands sacrifice. You need high risk tolerance and the understanding that you can lose everything if you make mistakes along the way. Geographic freedom and online business often mean loneliness — fewer social interactions, difficulty forming deep emotional connections. It's still possible, but it's hard.

So for me, it's a trade-off: stability and predictability on one side, deep internal desires on the other. Most people choose comfort. I chose uncertainty with purpose.

I don't know if I'll ever feel fully free. But I'd rather spend my life chasing it than never trying at all.