Andrey Vulf: “Today is not about personal growth, but about the opportunity to survive in this world filled with evil”

Andrey Vulf started with sports - from childhood he was professionally involved in football, then he entered the history department of Moscow State University. Then he became a journalist - first a musical one, and then - the host of the first sex program on Russian TV - "In Bed with Vulfe" where he talked on intimate topics with guest stars.

He was also a top manager of large private companies, a major federal official, and a State Duma deputy, was a member of the Union of Right Forces faction, even, according to Wikipedia, promoted the legalization of prostitution in the State Duma. And also - he worked as a vice president in the organizing committee of the Sochi Olympics, the largest project in Russia in the 2000s. In 2018, he became the author of the first motivational show in Russia - "Reinvention".

Media Loft talked to Andrey about how to survive difficult times - in emigration or in your own country; about what to do if you have to start everything from scratch and where to draw strength to move forward; and most importantly - about what his new "Reinvention" is for relocators, and how realistic it is to rebuild oneself in new circumstances.

"Change has been a source of vitality for me"

- Andrey, what is it like to be an athlete, journalist, official, politician and motivational speaker? How can all these things coexist in one person and how did you come to such a life?

- What's it like? Fun and interesting, and this, in my opinion, is the only criterion for life's meaning, because if life is not interesting, it's time to die. I have always been interested in life. And if it suddenly became boring, I changed the field of activity and started everything in a new field practically from scratch.

- But it's clear that it's one thing - to spend all your life in one profession, and another - to try to achieve success in a couple of years in a new one. How did you overcome this lack of time, compensate for it?

- And why is it necessary to overcome something, trying to "achieve success"? Can't you just enjoy what you do? Why is the only socially approved model - "achieving"? Although I really know many examples of a completely different life path, straightforward, for example, my parents, who have worked their entire working lives not just in one specialty, but also in one enterprise.

- Yes, it's a completely different paradigm.

- Yeah, a vertical story, an understandable path, a predictable career ... Our parents lived in such a world, and we ourselves until quite recently, and for the human mind it was downright ideal.

But I have bad news - this world was irretrievably destroyed by the scientific and technological revolution, the Internet and new communications, and it was replaced by a completely different one - with pandemics, wars and large-scale geopolitical crises. And that understandable and comfortable career model is not gone, but it has clearly ceased to be the only possible one.

For example, if previously you studied until the age of 22, and then capitalized on this knowledge and skills, whereas today you need to constantly upgrade them.

And you can do this in your usual field, or you can do it in any other, and replacing one vertical career with several career segments in different areas is a completely normal thing for a modern flexible person who wants a dynamic and interesting life. I always wanted this, so I changed my field of activity from time to time. And these changes were for me an elixir of youth and vitality, although someone else could choose a vertical career paradigm, and this is also a choice and a path.

- But these areas of activity were so different for you - sports and journalism, politics and business ...

- I know people who really radically changed their lives - they were oilmen, but became methodologists, for example, or they were salesmen, but became writers, and this is absolutely normal for today, that's why all kinds of additional education programs are popular.

But as for me, on the contrary, it seems to me that everything I do is related. I am still a pronounced humanist, and have always been in the field of media, education, culture, sports, or something similar. Although I have many entrepreneur friends, and I have heard more than once: “Let’s quickly launch this now, here you can make money ...” Well, make money, so what ?!

I'm not the most outstanding entrepreneur at all, to be honest, and money has never been a motivator for me. That is, it became a motivator at the moment when it ran out (laughs).

But I always thought that it would be better to make less money, but then life would be more interesting. Therefore, it would never have occurred to me to, say, produce masks during a pandemic and sell them for astronomical money. For me, this is from the series of doing business on "selling tickets to the bomb shelter during the bombing." It’s the moral opposite of what I believe in. But “let's try to build a football arena for boys” - yes, this is understandable and interesting to me.

"The calm reaction of my acquaintances to the monstrous events drove me to despair"

- But here's what still confuses me: after all, previously this career was a personal choice, but now times are such that external circumstances sometimes simply dictate radical change in life. First of all, I want to ask what happened in your life during this difficult time?

- It's true, and to be honest, for almost a year after February 24, I was in a very difficult emotional state: I had no advice to give, no decisions, no energy, no inner confidence and moral right to say something to people. I was confused and depressed, as were most of my potential listeners and readers. This was also preceded by covid, which brought serious financial losses to our team.

After all, we invested in the creation and promotion of the big immersive show “Reinvention”, we wanted to roll it around the country, but we only held a couple of events, and then the lockdown happened. Meanwhile, we had invested in this not only a lot of money, but also a lot of effort and emotions - after all, I am over fifty, and all this is already more difficult.

Of course, I am a a wise old owl and I understood what was happening to me: at the very beginning of the pandemic, I, like many others, withdrew from the world. This is when the limbic brain turns on, you go nuts from what is happening, but you can’t do anything - you procrastinate or you walk like a somnambulist, unaware of your surroundings.

But, if during the pandemic this phase lasted three or four weeks for me, then with the outbreak of the war it dragged on for more than two months, during which time I kept thinking that all my victories and achievements in life meant nothing anymore.

After all, I tried to the best of my modest strengths and abilities to take part in the creation of the so-called beautiful Russia of the future, but apparently the Russia of the future turned out to be of no use to the Russia of the present.

Seeing the calm reaction of many of my acquaintances to the monstrous events, I fell into despair, and achieved nothing.

I thought: “So in the mid-90s I made the first program about sex on domestic television. And now, well, with censorship? Now, for this, they could probably imprisoned me...

In the State Duma, I was involved in projects to liberalize legislation, including criminal legislation, in the field of combating drug addiction, promoted “harm reduction” programs among drug addicts, and now all this has been swept under the carpet.

I was responsible for international cultural relations in the Ministry of Culture, and now they say to me: “What kind of cultural cooperation?! Cultural sovereignty, period!”, and Russian culture is being “cancelled” both inside and out, and many of the best artists and artists have left the country.

Then in Sochi I created this “image of the new Russia” during preparations for the Olympics, but it was destroyed by doping stories and all kinds of sanctions that followed them, and now national team is generally expelled from all international projects. ” It turns out that everything that I did with such enthusiasm - all this turned out to be unnecessary and useless to anyone!

- It sounds, to be honest, not inspiring at all ...

But I can be honest about it. My knowledge and experience, of course, cushioned the blows on the path of life but did not stop it, and it took me a year to pull myself together having felt like i was in a coma.

Many people suffered an emotional breakdown at that time because we all radicalized both externally and internally. Although for several years before that I had been engaged in spiritual practices and thought that I had reached Zen: I stopped labeling people, I accepted different points of view, I became more thick skinned and was able to calmly speak to anyone no matter their point of view.

And all this went kaput in February - alas, I wasn't invaluable anymore.

The world has become black and white again, although for me freedom has always been precisely in colors, halftones, in the fact that there are fifty shades of grey, red, green and so on. And now - be kind, choose sides!

I perceived this as a drawback to my inner development.

I also went through an attempt not to notice - this is also a form of life in an altered reality. Many media people and high-level managers with whom I worked as a consultant also pretended that nothing was happening. Many of them did not even notice the pandemic. "Fuck it, let's dance!" - remember, right?

But, this “dancing” is also a way of protection. Thanks to trauma, a person comes out of anabiosis, and thanks to “not noticing” he no longer feels traumatised. The passage of each of these stages, in principle, is a logical and natural human reaction to superstress, but it is very important not to get stuck at each of these stages.

Like in the movie “Don't Look Up” - ironically, I watched it just on the night of February 24, 2022. And went to bed late, at about four in the morning, when all this, in fact, began. And it seems to me that this film is just about how people ignore the obvious terrifying things that are happening, and it all ends in a world catastrophe.

"Relocation forces us to re-invent a new model of life"

- Andrey, in the near future you are going to speak to a Russian-speaking audience in Tbilisi and Tel Aviv, in the fall you plan to present the Reinvention program in Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Kazakhstan and other countries. I would venture to suggest that these meetings will be attended by people who have also experienced a number of losses lately. Who fled from the war, who was forced to emigrate. Can such tragic events become a point of growth?

- It is precisely because of these tragic events that everything I will say will not be about growth, since personal growth is for peacetime. Then it really was a person's choice: “I want to try such a life. I don’t want to - I do a boring job for (most often) little money.

And now our room for maneuver has been greatly reduced as much as possible. And as a result, the reinvention of oneself for a huge number of people turned out to be forced. Someone stays at home, someone leaves, someone tries to live in two or even three countries at the same time.

But all relocations, inside or outside your home country, escapism - force us to re-invent some kind of life model for ourselves.

So today it’s about the opportunity to survive in this world full of evil, not to hang yourself because of grief, not to lose yourself at the same time, not to self harm on yourself and not to become an alcoholic, and not to live a grey ersatz life: “Here I’ll turn around, and then ... ". No, guys, you have to start living now, because “later” will never come.

How can we make the most of the moment? Well, firstly, accept what is happening, because the first and most important sign of recovery is acceptance: the changes that have taken place are irreversible and they will never be the same as they were before. You will have to reinvent yourself, because otherwise you simply cannot survive.

Yes, sooner or later the war will end, the government will change - maybe tomorrow, or maybe in ten years. But there is no need to wait for these events, all the more, it is not at all a fact that after them it will immediately become easier for everyone.

So live here and now! You have to build your life. Try to understand what you can do well. Then - try to find people with whom you are comfortable. And choose a place where it is still possible. You can choose to leave or stay - choose.

Departure is inevitable - choose where to go for the first time. There are many examples where people did not leave even in the most tragic times and were able to be happy, remaining at home in the most difficult, it would seem, circumstances.

For example, Andrey Voznesensky, the great poet, whose reputation was destroyed by the authorities, but he still lived a wonderful long life, survived everything and everyone and became a classic of our literature. And Brodsky had to leave, but he also remained true to himself and managed to do a lot in exile.

In general, it is unlikely that you will be the first to make mistakes.

This does not mean that you will now learn everything from these other people's mistakes - no, you will have to take most of the blows yourself.

But before that, you need to understand that in your life there are always things that you can rely on, that all your resources are still with you: intelligence, flexibility, resilience, perseverance, creativity - at least you definitely have some of this. Then you need to determine what you want to do and what is now needed in life, the market, the new circumstances in which you find yourself, a new country, perhaps. It makes sense to learn more if what you already know is not enough.

- Does it matter, by the way, what you call yourself - an emigrant, a relocater or an expat, for example? I notice that many now choose such slightly euphemistic options.

- Yes, emigration has had a certain negative connotation since Soviet times. Sometimes it's scary.

On the one hand, without calling ourselves an emigrant, it’s as if we don’t fully accept the circumstances, and this is already a little bit about the fact that “now, in two months, the Bolsheviks will leave, and the maid will feed our cat for now.” So what? After all, all these people, with rare exceptions, are today buried in those places where they ... hmm ... "relocated". So there is something to think about here.

But on the other hand, if it is more convenient for someone to call themselves a relocater - well, okay, for example, it’s convenient for me. But I have lived in several countries for many years. Just now the distribution has shifted a little.

- Which way?

- I spend more time in Spain, where my relatives and part of my family are now, and in Israel, where I have citizenship and some business affairs. The rest of the time in Moscow, where my already elderly parents live, also my corporate clients, my friends, my football team.

But for you to understand, my position on all ongoing events is clear and unambiguous, I have always voted against Putin, against amendments to the Constitution, against United Russia, and even more so now.

Am I ready to work in the current circumstances in Russia? I no longer cooperate with state organizations for various reasons, including in order not to expose my friends and colleagues who still work there to my position. But I still actively work with private business, with corporate and personal clients. And if I had such an opportunity, I would be happy to speak as part of open lectures and seminars for those people who chose the option to stay and whose lives are now especially hard.

Is it possible? Don't know. But I want to emphasize that when doing something in Russia, I am aware that I am in the Russian legal field and I am trying to comply with it, although I do not agree with this legal field.

"The Olympics was an immovable deadline, everything had to be done through super efforts"

- Andrey, I want to recall one, as it seems to me, an important moment in your biography. You were on the organizing committee of the Olympics in Sochi and later admitted in an interview that when the Olympics ended, you felt devastated. I want to ask, is it normal that personal crises happen to people, as it is fashionable to say now, with positive thinking?

- Not that it's normal - it's necessary. Taleb says that the absence of manageable crises leads to unmanageable crises. That is, any system should not be absolutely antifragile, because the guarantee of its strength is just the ability to break it yourself and then fix it.

A crisis is a necessary part of the journey, and it must be overcome in order to recover.

In my life it was not only after Sochi. It happened for the first time at 16, when I finished playing football. Then I was dropped at the turn of the 90s and millennium, when I realized that I could no longer be in the media and show business - it was a full-fledged crisis of a thirty-year-old man who within five years became a popular presenter, earned his first million, communicated with stars, oligarchs and politicians from TV - and suddenly felt like in a merry-go-round of endless parties, events, presentations, clubs, alcohol, sex, money. And it all stopped making sense to me.

That's why I went into politics - I wanted not only a new challenge for myself, but also, no matter how pathetic it may sound, to help people. In politics, five years later, there was also a crisis - we lost the elections, I left the Duma.

- Loss of elections - do you mean the Union of Right Forces?

(SPS is a right-wing liberal political party that existed in the Russian Federation in 1999-2008, whose co-chairs were Yegor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais, Sergey Kiriyenko, Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada - ed.)

- Yes, we lost the second election. And I just became a deputy, I got the greatest pleasure from the process, I was one of the public politicians in the party and did not expect this at all. And my whole new model of life fell apart in a moment.

Then I either went into business (worked in various top managerial positions), then returned to the civil service - I spent four years at the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications - and this was also a super experience. Then again business - probably, it was some kind of compensation: as they say, okay, it didn’t work out here, so at least I’ll earn money.

The sphere of private business for me has always been a change to other projects - you earn money and you can do something else, for the soul.

- Work in the organizing committee of Sochi-2014 was for the soul?

- Still would! When I was asked to discuss participation in this project, I had a valid contract with a large commercial structure, where I was vice president, and my contract provided for the payment of an annual bonus equal to the annual salary. And the salary I received was obscenely large - I myself would not pay such a salary to anyone, to be honest (laughs).

And so, the year is coming to an end, and I receive an offer to join the organizing committee from its leader Chernyshenko. And although they were ready to wait for me as long as necessary, I immediately quit my previous job, without waiting for January. Well, that is, I actually refused all these annual bonuses, losing a very large amount of money by my standards.

- So why did you quit – you could just finished this unfortunate month …?

- Well, this is about the dream job - I really really wanted to start it faster. The amount of money I missed was about half a million dollars. But by that time I had lost interest in that work so much that I was simply ashamed to continue going there for another month even for this money. Although it probably looks pretty idiotic now… (smiles).

- But if the Olympics were so significant for you, then I’m even afraid to imagine the scale of the personal crisis that it provoked when it ended ...

- Oh yeah! I remember that at that time, together with my former colleagues from the organizing committee, we made one of the first motivational programs - “Life after Olympus” - where, together with the audience and invited experts, we discussed how to find new motivation in work and life after such a large-scale project.

I remember that I honestly tried to get a job, I was(head) hunted, I went to interviews - but all this seemed small to me after the Olympics, and employers, of course, felt this and were also not enthusiastic about the idea of hiring such a tired and burnt-out snob.

After all, what was so good about the Olympics was an immovable deadline, everything had to be done very quickly and through super efforts.

People get used to such a regime and become a kind of drug addict - they need to constantly feel stress and pressure, and only this gives the feeling that they are riding in the most beautiful high-speed train - and this train is life.

And as soon as they stop for a second in this career path, they get the feeling that they are on the platform, and life is rushing past. I was the same and felt exactly the same.

- And how did you manage to get out of this state?

- Trite - I just changed my point of view. And now I understand: in order to see something, on the contrary, you need to go out onto the platform or get off this damn merry-go-round - as you like.

Because the carousel may be good, and the music in the park is beautiful, but, in fact, in front of you on this attraction there is always the same picture - the back of the horse that rides in front of you.

And while you were rushing towards a brighter future - this backside could grow old and start to peel, and there is no longer any strength to look at it. It's time to get down, in a word! (smiles)

In general, it seems to me that any process, even a super-successful one, becomes this backside of the horse, in the end. And show business became it for me at 30, and politics at 40, and even the Olympics. Although it was the perfect team of super professionals, that hadn't been done in the country for the previous thirty years.

But after that, I returned as if from heaven to earth: to ordinary managers, to officials who had to sit out until retirement, to businessmen whose task was to make the most of today, as if there would be no tomorrow.

And all the time I thought: will something with the scale of the Olympics happen again in my life? And I understood that most likely not, because it is extremely difficult to find a similar offer. And I'm already hooked on this constant drive. Where can I get it now? And then life, by and large, led me to come to myself through this crisis, to turn inward.

And I began to think: why do I feel high? What do I like? Maybe I will find something smaller in terms of money, not of this magnitude, but it will be cool and interesting for me?

Many are faced with this. Professional athletes after the end of their career, for example, or immigrants. You were a champion, a favorite, a professional, a champion. And suddenly you're nobody, you're an ex.

So many people lose their motivation to live because of this. But there is life after Olympus, and it can be even more interesting, it’s not for nothing that many former corporate bosses turn to their own startups, small “boutique” projects, to education, mentoring, or there, they open their own restaurant for the soul. I used to perceive all this as a pension, downshifting. And now I understand - but it's a thrill!

"Robbins is thirty years of success, for me he is an indisputable figure"

- Just then, after Sochi, you went to a motivational seminar with Tony Robbins, for which you paid almost 10 thousand dollars. Was it worth it?

- Definitely. I ended up at his seminar in Miami, I was brought there by a 100 percent business dude, my friend, he said: “Andryukha, you need this now.” Along with me, among the participants of the seminar, by the way, there were many cool characters, in particular, the Oscar-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins. I don’t know about him, but I got a lot of important insiders for myself.

Perhaps if I had been in a different state, this show would have passed me by. But after all, the right events often occur in our lives at the right time, and they help us change something.

Another thing is that we are not always aware of these meetings. So, that seminar with Tony helped me recognize such an encounter. And it happened just when I returned from Miami to Moscow. I was at a friend's birthday party, where a completely unknown person sat down next to me. Outwardly, he looked like the actor Alexei Panin, which added to the irony of the situation, since Panin was then at the epicenter of all kinds of scandals (well, you remember what kind).

But the conversation that we had - as far as I was concerned - became the most significant in life - a kind of conversation with God, I call it. God in the image of Panin, can you imagine? (laughs). I couldn't either.

However, this man sat down next to me and asked who I was and what I did. And then he began to ask me completely “coaching” (as I now understand) questions, including asking who I work for and with whom I communicated at work. “With idiots,” I answered sadly. "For what?" - the question followed. "For money!" - was my answer. And then God-Panin asked if I really couldn’t earn the same money without talking to idiots. And I was literally struck! I thought: “God is a coach, really!” (laughs).

Joking aside, I still think those two stories pushed me to my current life - Tony Robbins, who shook me, and that dude from my birthday. By the way, I later tried to find this God-Panin - but, as it turned out, no one knew him, and he seemed to have disappeared into the Moscow fog!

- Andrey, often, hearing the words "coach", "motivational speaker", people grimace skeptically - they say, isn't this all esoteric? Isn't it cheating? How can you overcome this skepticism?

- If you are prejudiced, nothing will help you. It was not for nothing that I said that the first seminar with Tony occurred at the right time in my life - it is quite likely that at another time I would also have decided that all this is complete bullshit.

But in general, Robbins represents thirty years of success, for me he is an indisputable figure, not only as a speaker, but also as a philosopher and writer. At the same time, the program that Synergy once brought to Moscow and which was widely hated and rightly criticized - it was simply marketing and communication incorrectly presented, and therefore did not live up to people's expectations. But all the same, even if the program is successful, the result depends on your readiness to perceive the information.

If a person came to a brothel in search of pleasure, then, excuse me, you need to take off your underpants, otherwise there will be no sex (laughs).

I subsequently listened to and learned from, besides Tony, Eckhart Tolle, Marshall Goldsmith, Sadhguru, Joe Dispenza, Itzhak Adizes, Nassim Taleb. These were all events of a very different format: from personal to group and one off events, including huge shows in thousands of halls, like Tony's.

And, of course, I understood that in the format of several thousand people in a hall I could not and should not receive any specific personal advice, but I could get insights and energy, break some of my patterns and overcome limiting beliefs. And in order to subsequently make some practical decisions, this is quite effective.

- And how can an ordinary person who does not have money for Tony Robbins not get Elena Blinovskaya in return?

- You can focus on the opinion of friends and relatives whom you trust, as it was in my case. There are a large number of well-known and not so well-known speakers and experts who certainly bring knowledge, skills and benefits.

But of course, you need to understand that no speaker at a group seminar will ever make a detailed personal roadmap for you - only info-businessmen do this in mass programs. I don't like info-business and I don't believe in it much. I believe in wise books, I believe in the energy of live speakers and recognized experts, I believe in mentoring, mentoring, coaching and consulting, in psychology (although I don’t really like psychologists), but in favor of endless online marathons of ‘very success’ and desires, sorry, I don't believe it.

It is especially funny when a family psychologist is a man with six divorces, and, we are told how to earn a billion by a 23-year-old boy who came to the training by tram.

"The most discouraging, breakthrough ideas that change our lives - do not usually carry any new information for us"

- Well, let's say that we refused the services of info-businessmen, accepted the unsightly reality, realized our strengths and weaknesses - what else do we have to do before reinventing ourselves?

- Reinventing yourself includes three levels.

The first is the level of the mind, consciousness, which just helps us understand what we can do, where our strengths are, and what, perhaps, we still need to learn.

The second is the level of the heart - our emotions, the subconscious. Usually we come to it when we have already recognized in our minds everything that provides basic needs - housing, food, security, and so on, and now we can think about who we are and what we live for. And this is also very important, especially for those who have recently moved, because they are, in fact, reassembling their identity.

And the third level, which, in my opinion, is the foundation of the first two, is the level of the body. We just often forget about it, especially in situations of crisis. But if something is wrong with our physical shell, the development of the mind will not function, concerning ideas and spirit.

And to be healthy, what do we need first of all? Proper nutrition, physical activity and sleep.

A traditional healthy lifestyle or newfangled biohacking - anything will do. People in a state of acute stress and struggling to survive are usually not up to what to eat , when to go to bed, how long to sleep for. In a coma like state people are unlikely to be fit and healthy and this is understandable.

But when, finally, the phase of acceptance and the search for opportunities comes, then it is necessary first of all to take care of your body, because there can be no psychological resilience without physical resilience - only if we are physically healthy, will our body be able to fully provide for our mental activity.

So I always put everything related to health into my organizer along with business tasks and time for family and friends.

Therefore, to summarize: only an integrated approach works at the junction of all directions - body-heart-mind - and if one thing starts to falter, the whole system also fails, breaks down.

This happened to me at the beginning of last year, when I stopped caring about everything and followed only the news agenda - and it took all my energy. But in early December, I went to Spain, where I rebooted and very quickly returned to my usual physical condition.

I recently turned 55, but all the tests and analyzes that I regularly take determine my biological age and body resources at the level of 37-38 years old.

- On the site of your "pre-apocalyptic" "Reinvention" there are 11 rules that must be followed in order to become happy. For example, these are: live in the present, focus, stop conforming, do not criticize, manage emotions, communicate with strong people, work immersively, move constantly and so on. It all sounds too simple, doesn't it?

- This is because everything ingenious, as you know, is simple (smiles).

When seven years ago I began to engage in spiritual searches, I suddenly realized: the most discouraging, breakthrough ideas that we accept as a revelation and that subsequently change our lives - do not usually carry any ground breaking new information for us.

The answer is that you should be informed or reminded of them at the right time in your life.

These rules, familiar from an early age, are like commandments in world religions: they do not open up any new universes for you, but simply provide an important guide.

Therefore, it seems to me that insights are simple things, but either you accept them, appropriate them for yourself; or pass by. And here, the simpler they sound, the better.

There is great art and great power in this - in formulating simply and in detail, while at the same time immediately aiming into some kind of human pain.

Our task (I mean all people who are "helping professions" - from psychologists and coaches to mentors and business consultants) is precisely this - to hit a person's pain for sure. And in this regard, we are no different from politicians, religious preachers, writers, journalists or artists: we need to appear in time and give a simple, good, bright idea that will definitely get into the head and fall on the soul of a person, something in this soul / mind / body will change for the better - and the person will make some important decision in his life, which, perhaps, will help him become a little happier.

At the end of April, a series of open seminars and public talks by Andrey Vulf with a Russian-speaking audience in countries around the world will start:

April 30 - Tel Aviv, Israel;

May 6 - Tbilisi, Georgia.