The creative bureau mastered the funds of various large companies and organizations, including state ones – the mayor’s office of Moscow, Sberbank, Yandex and others. The result of the work was mainly small thematic sites that did not receive wide popularity.
The sole owner of Free History Creative Studio LLC is journalist Mikhail Zygar*, however, the company that worked under the History of the Future brand was rather family-owned. Judging by the information on the company’s website, the PR director of the project was Zygar’s current “husband” * Jean-Michel Shcherbak (their marriage was registered last year in Portugal).
The site of the audio performances “Mobile Art Theater” lists the partner of the project – Discover Moscow, this is the brand of the Moscow City Tourism Committee.
For 2017-2021, the revenue of Free History Creative Studio LLC amounted to 239 million rubles, as follows from the data of the Kontur.Focus database (information for 2022 has not yet been received by Rosstat and business databases). In 2020, 12 million rubles passed through Wake Up Production LLC, which belonged to the company – it was planned to shoot a series about the victory of Boris Yeltsin in the presidential election in 1996, but it never came out. Wake Up Production is also closed by the tax office from November 2022.
Thanks to the connections of Mikhail Zygar, his Russian business structures could continue to develop budgets for “creative”, but in October 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice included him among the foreign agents. According to Russian law, foreign agents cannot receive state funding, but in fact there is also a taboo on the cooperation of private domestic companies and foreign agents. Zygar* left for Germany in 2022, which is currently supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army.