Victory Frenzy

The Russian quest for lost greatness

by Wolf Stoner
Russian correspondent

PUTIN’S RUSSIA, being a state without roots or identity, has always suffered from an acute lack of any existential purpose. Initially, Putin and his gang placed their bets on increasing prosperity and an expanding middle class. But, because of their corrupt and utterly inefficient system, they were not able to provide consistent economic growth. The whole “economic miracle” of his first two terms was based exclusively on high oil prices. Eventually, when disillusionment started to set in among the general populace, a protest movement emerged. The system was successful in quelling it in 2011-12 but it needed a long-term solution to prevent future outbreaks of discontent. Lacking any positive factors, and being unable to deliver further tangible increases in living standards, the system shifted its priorities to ideology. It started to hastily create some kind of ad hoc “national idea” based on Stalinism and imperialism. This allowed them to divert public attention and at the same time to legitimize its crackdown on dissent. Now, the system’s critics were seen not as enemies of the ruling party but as “enemies of the people” and “foreign paid provocateurs.” This ideological trick has allowed the state system to redirect public anger into a safe channel. From now on, anyone criticizing the regime was proclaimed to be an enemy and the main cause of all internal problems.

The cornerstone of this neo-Stalinist ideology is the fairy-tale version of the Soviet war against Germany in 1941-45. Putin’s propaganda machine has transformed this historic event into a never-ending, ever-present ongoing affair that dominates all spheres of public activity.

All year round, from the Kuril Islands to Kaliningrad (occupied Konigsberg), from kindergartens to universities, from prisons to military garrisons, the garish “victory” paraphernalia dominates the landscape. From dawn to dusk, 365 days a year, all state media channels constantly stuff “victory” nonsense into people’s minds. The methods of brainwashing are even more crude and aggressive than they were back in Soviet times. The mainstream crowd feels itself obliged to participate in this theater of absurdity. Most of them do it willingly; but even those who don’t especially like this frenzy, participate all the same because of fear being socially ostracized.

In Putin’s Russia you are not simply nudged into being a part of this frenzy, but aggressively pushed into it. Some strata of society have no choice at all; for example, prison inmates, military and law enforcement personnel, state officials, schoolteachers, and workers at many other state-owned agencies. The state continues to be the main employer in Russia, therefore it can easily enforce its ideology through this channel. You are simply sacked if you do not want to be a part of this “victory” frenzy and other state-sponsored public activities. All in all, these measures have created ostensible “majority support” for the Kremlin’s overall policies. There is simply no other way for tens of millions of Russians. The passive majority — the lemmings — simply accept this as a given reality; they don’t like to question any authority; they are happy to bow before any dominant force. And they are happy to feel themselves a part of this seemingly almighty state. This whole crowd voluntarily repeats everything that emanates from the foul mouths of the state TV propagandists.

Since 2014, Russian society lives in a parallel reality. After starting its clandestine invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin ratcheted up its propaganda to a level where it has lost any connection to actual reality. After that was done, there was no way back. Russian society, like a drug-addict, needed ever greater doses of narcotic lies to be kept satisfied and calm. And the most potent narcotic is the Putin state’s foundational myth: “Our Great Victory in the Great Patriotic War.”

The system sees this myth as its main leverage over the public mind — and is determined to guard this myth from any criticism or inconvenient questions. Any expressed doubts about the state-sanctioned version of the history of Soviet participation in World War 2 is punishable by criminal law. Every citizen of Russia must accept what state propaganda says.

So far, the Kremlin prefers to rely mainly not on law-enforcement but on creating a favorable (to its version) public atmosphere. The system tries to create an overwhelming public consensus on this topic; and it encourages all kinds of violent actions against any dissenters. Therefore, the Kremlin can suppress most of the dissent without immediate use of law enforcement. The police are used only when other tools don’t work. In most cases “mainstream” people are weak enough to be cowed through milder methods. The strong voice of a school principal is a weapon potent enough to keep 99% of students in line, and to exact near-full compliance on all matters relating to what I call Victory Frenzy. The same happens in the workplace. The heads of state enterprises are given orders from above about how many of their workers should be sent to any planned public action organized by the ruling party, and he eagerly executes those orders. Anyone refusing to comply is simply advised to quit. (It should be noted that in contrast to Stalinist times, people are not yet sent straight into death camps for simply refusing to support the party line; they are only denied an opportunity to earn money.) For military conscripts it is the same as it was in all times; the slightest disobedience is cured by ample beatings, to the point where the victim is happy to do anything he is told to do. These are the main social levers for enforcing social consensus in Russia on any political issue.

This mental pressure is enough for the great majority of the people; especially in the kind of society that Russia has. The Soviet state was very successful in breeding a new type of universal slave, whose main task in life is to please his master. The infinitesimal minority of people with independent minds were kept under tight scrutiny by the strong state security agencies; these agencies were never hesitant about employing any amount of violence to achieve compliance.

Having briefly outlined the overall framework of Russian public consensus, I will now describe the phenomenon itself: the Victory Frenzy. As I said, it goes on all year round, 24 hours a day — but it has as its special outburst the period around the 9th of May. Previously, 10-15 years ago, the celebrations started about a week before the actual date; now it is about a month before and a month after the 9th of May when all kinds of public events are organized in “commemoration of our Great Victory against Nazism.”

The “fight against Nazism” surpassed its historical dimension and emerged as a present-day sick reality when Putin declared his “special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine” this year. From now on everyone in Russia is obliged to support this “struggle to eradicate Nazism and Fascism.” You can’t question the validity of these proclaimed tenets; anyone doubting them openly is punished with fines ranging from $500 to $1,000 (the average monthly income in Russia is about $400). And if someone tries to protest more vigorously, he is sentenced to a few years in prison.

As you can see, there is no option in Russia to have a different opinion on the topic of the Second World War.

The “mainstream” crowd are happy to be part of this glorious Victory Frenzy and employs all kinds of creative ways to please their rulers. People compete with each other to invent ever more insane styles of showing their devotion to the Victory Cult (see the video at the end of this article — if you can stand it). It is all outside of the realm of sanity and common sense; but it is the new normal in Putin’s Russia.

Official Russian historiography tries its utmost to bend facts to the prefabricated alternative reality. Hundreds of “history” books are printed each year that “reveal previously unknown facts” about “vile Nazis” and “treacherous Western allies.”

The mass media and the movie industry in Russia display even more egregious examples of departure from reality. They are even less bound by the necessity of preserving any kind of historical consistency and truthfulness, especially in films. Russian producers compete with each other in creating ever more disgusting and outrageously untrue stories. The period of relative artistic freedom in Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s is gone completely. Nowadays, Russian movies about WW2 are a bizarre crossbreed of Hollywood trash with early Soviet ideologically stuffed productions. They are even more disgusting and empty than late Soviet movies, with no artistic value whatsoever.

One especial trait of these modern Russian movies is that the quality of actors and directors is so low that they don’t even try to recreate the genuine setting of the 1940s. They use modern words and expressions, and sometimes even dress in clothing that was never used in those times. (And they don’t care a bit; the quality of everything in Russia has plummeted to the lowest depths.) They don’t need to represent any historical truth; that is not their task: Their task is to indoctrinate the new generation with the simplest possible set of state dogmas. These dogmas could be reduced to the following ideas: “Germans are the worst creatures on Earth; they are not even humans; they were always bad. Hitler was the worst German of all time. The whole of Europe is bad too, although not as bad as Germans — but, all the same, deserves to be incinerated completely. The Soviet Union was the best country on Earth; it freed the whole of Europe and the whole world from Nazism; but, despite this, the ungrateful Europeans, especially the vile Poles, continue to hate Russia for no reason. We should kill our enemies; we are the best of all on Earth and our army is invincible; anyone opposing us must be annihilated. Ukrainians were always traitors; they are not even a nation, but backward Russians who can’t even speak proper Russian — they should be reeducated, and the incorrigible ones must be done away with.” These are the ideological messages that are fed into Russian brains through movies and mass culture. What else could we expect when a crowd nourished by this pigswill invades one of the “enemy countries”? Everything that follows is predictable and inevitable.

Now I will recount some of the most repugnant features of the Victory Frenzy. It is all well known inside Russia, but is mostly unknown in other countries.

To understand this phenomenon we must first remember that modern Russian society is the product of the two dominant mental factors: communist indoctrination, and post-Soviet Americanism with its rampant robbery of public property — and total collapse of morality, especially in sexual relationships. This last factor has left an indelible mark on all other aspects of Russian society. In the Soviet Union, despite of all its obvious faults, the basic social norms were left intact. People were allowed to adhere to traditional family values and were not swamped with moral filth of the kind which was spreading in the US since the 1960s.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the floodgates for this filth were fully opened; no restrictions whatsoever. Russia was inundated with every imaginable moral cancer, including pornographic materials that were forbidden open circulation even in America itself. But in the “new democratic Russia” of those years, everything was allowed. The Russian mind was absolutely unprepared to withstand such a tsunami. Russians were accustomed to perceive everything that came “from above” as something bearing a stamp of approval; it was inconceivable for them to suspect any foul play on the part of their superiors. They simply accepted this filth as the new normal. Certainly, there were feeble voices protesting this insanity, but they were drowned out by the approving howls of the degenerate and dehumanized crowd. The pace of moral decay increased tenfold. In a few years’ time Russians sank to the lowest depths, especially in terms of sexual morality. All kinds of the most outrageous vices had become commonplace, from top to bottom in our society. All of it was approved and encouraged by the Jewish media bosses, who were the main agents facilitating the spread of this filth.

Predictably, the number of abortions and sexually transmitted diseases increased many fold. Combined with worsening medical care in the increasingly defunct country, this descent into immorality substantially decreased the overall health of the population and increased its mortality. Alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, and vagrancy were related factors that pulled the whole society down the slope.

With this dismal background, Putin came to power in 1999. The state was in total disarray; society was rapidly disintegrating, the restive national minorities were trying to consume their share of the dying beast. All these factors left no doubt about the coming imminent collapse of the country — with unpredictable consequences in store. The ruling class started to understand that if there were a collapse, they would lose everything. To prevent this, they initiated a set of radical measures to reanimate the dying country. The events of those times are well known: the mysterious apartment bombings with the consequent war in the Caucasus. The war allowed the system to introduce additional restrictive measures in society; the power of law-enforcement was increased. The road toward the new totalitarianism was started. At first, it was almost imperceptible and almost harmless, but the overall dynamic was all too obvious.

In order to be succinct, I will write “Putin” in most cases when what is meant is “the system” or “the ruling group.” Putin isn’t a dictator in the literal sense of the word. He executes the collective wishes of the whole ruling group, and we can’t even be sure whether the man that is now shown as Putin is the same man that we had seen back in 1999. There are some well-founded doubts about this. But it is irrelevant to this enquiry. Therefore, I will write “Putin” even when implying the whole gang.

Putin understood that the Russian Federation was in real danger of disintegration. He committed all available military forces to quell the Caucasus rebellion. The initial onslaught was partially successful. But after the main Chechen separatist forces were defeated and driven deep into the mountains, the irritated chorus of the multi-national ruling class and regional elites started to be heard. They feared for their own fiefdoms and were ready to oppose the Kremlin’s infringements if needed. Putin was compelled to take this factor into account. The whole operation in the Caucasus was scaled back and transformed into an internal affair. Some Chechen clans were given power to subjugate all other clans. Together with massive financial infusions, this allowed gradual pacification of this restive region. But it created a very precarious balance, in which powerful Chechen clans could blackmail the Russian government and essentially wield unlimited power in their own lands. In essence, Russia only preserved its formal possession of Chechnya. All local affairs were managed by the Chechens themselves, but with central funding. In essence it amounted to tribute payments; it is why the Chechens see this whole situation as their victory. And it really is their victory.

Why have I devoted so much attention to this Chechen topic? Because it demonstrates perfectly the overall fake nature of all Putin’s “achievements.” The main purpose of Putin’s vaunted “reforms” was to produce a favorable impression on the general population, to persuade them that everything was going well and that the social order had been restored. Putin brilliantly succeeded in this task.

Afterward, all his actions were modeled on the same template; he didn’t care as much about actual results as about the external impression. He started to perceive reality as a contest of impressions; and it seems that he himself has lost the ability to differentiate between reality and false images.

The “restoration of Russian economic might” had the same essence as the war in Chechnya: the impression of victory within the reality of actual defeat. All remnants of Russia’s real industrial base were finally destroyed in the early 2000s, and in their place fake industries were established; they consisted of assembly lines for various foreign gadgets. These required neither highly skilled personnel nor elaborate planning of complicated logistical chains. The international corporations brought everything in a ready-to-use package. The only thing they needed was the permission to operate here. In such a way, an impression of an economic miracle was created. Putin was greatly emboldened by this, and it persuaded him that everything could be done in such a fashion.

After seeming success with the above-mentioned problems, Putin started to deal with the following issues: the educational system, military reform, law enforcement, and public morality. I have written about the fake nature of the measures intended to create a mighty army, efficient law enforcement, and functioning public education. There is no need to repeat that here. On each occasion, the campaigns were loudly trumpeted — but they invariably turned out to be yet another fake. Those spheres were not improved, but deteriorated even further, on Putin’s watch.

The issue of public morality deserves special attention, because the whole Victory Frenzy is predicated on the supposed high level of spirituality in Russian society. At first, Putin placed his bet on Orthodox Christianity. It was widely promoted and given preferential treatment. But even this sphere was subject to the same failure as others: producing artificial impressions rather than actual content. All kinds of dubious personalities were enrolled into the priesthood. Quantity was put above quality. These good-for-nothing creatures, in a matter of a few years, destroyed the whole reputation of the Orthodox Church, scaring away decent people from this community. Orthodoxy was transformed into a state religion, with inevitable ossification of the real spirituality that existed among Orthodox adherents in the late 1980s through the early 1990s. (I should note that, in the long run, this failure of Orthodoxy, as well as of all other Christian branches, serves us well — because it eliminates our competitors in the field of genuine spirituality.)

When real troubles came in 2014, Orthodoxy abjectly failed to deliver perceptible political results and was relegated to the second row. Militant Stalinism ascended to the role of unofficial state ideology. Since then, Orthodoxy serves only an auxiliary role.

Putin understood that a morally depraved society cannot withstand stress of war and cannot create a foundation for social and economic development. This understanding impelled him to start his drive to restore family values. But, as usual, the main effort was made in the field of appearances, not substance. All media started to trumpet the idea of family values and the sanctity of traditions, without specifying what those things really mean. This campaign brought the admiration of American conservatives and traditionalists, who took this trash at face value.

Maybe Putin really wanted to do all those good things, but each time it turned out to be yet another fake. And it is unimportant whether those intentions were genuine or not; the final reckoning is made by results, not intentions.

The process of moral decay that started in 1990s has never stopped. Putin’s system created only an appearance of improvement in this sphere. The spread of sexual perversions, prostitution, drug addiction, sexually transmitted deceases, alcoholism, and overall deterioration of behavioral standards among the people never stopped under Putin. Russian society now is worse on all those counts than it was at the start of his rule. The sum total of Putin’s 22 years in office is absolutely negative; there is no positive counterweight against all the faults of his rule.

I expanded into this field of moral decadence in order to depict the background within which this whole fake theater of “official patriotism” is orchestrated.

The mainstream majority in Russia are not better in terms of morality than the mainstream majority in the US. A crash course in the “sexual revolution” was forced on Russian society in the early 1990s. The famous Russian intrinsic qualities of decency, chastity, and honesty, especially among women, were successfully eliminated (with a few rare exceptions). Modern Russians are soaked with the same set of materialistic ideas promoted in the West — an unbridled craze for money and hedonism dominates all; nothing else matters. The only difference between now and the 1990s is that now the system tries to create an appearance of a traditional, decent society.

Despute having all this dirty baggage, Putin’s Russia has engaged in a moral crusade to become a beacon of moral hope for the whole world. And chosen as the linchpin of this crusade for moral values was “The Great Victory of the Soviet People against Fascism.” Yes, Putin placed his whole bet on this myth. All aspects of Russian society were tied to this myth. It is the system’s main tenet, that everyone must repeat and to which all must pay obeisance. The crowd of slaves obediently regurgitates this hogwash — and try to please their masters by inventing ever more garish ways of “honoring our war heroes” and “glorifying the immortal feat of Soviet soldiers.”

And how do they do it? Here comes the funny part. It is well known that each man is inclined to do everything according to his own image. That is precisely how it goes with this whole public campaign of “honoring war heroes.” How, for example, could a prostitute “honor war heroes”? Obviously, by stripping naked; or by offering “discounts” for veterans. This is no joke; there were banners put out by some of Moscow’s night clubs with just such advertisements a few years ago. For readers with strong stomachs, see the video at the end of this article for more lurid garbage like this.

We see underwear with red stars, black-orange ribbons, and even with the image of Marshal Zhukov; all kinds of other goods decorated with Soviet military symbols and images. All stores in Russia overflow with such goods; you can see these symbols everywhere.

And in the days leading to the “sacred” date of the 9th of May, all Russian celebrities and all lower-grade workers in public entertainment, education, and culture are engaged in organizing concerts, open-air shows, and other mass events dedicated to the “victory.” Everyone is involved; the state wants to engage as many people as possible in this process; the illusion of national unity is created for a few days; it seems that everyone is happy beyond limits about the fact that some decades ago his forefathers died in order to save the very life of this planet. It almost sounds as if it was a Martian invasion that threatened to kill off all humans, to hear them tell it. And an absolute majority accepts this illogical outlook as undeniable truth. They’re incurable.

Some activists in this field are so eager that they are ready to go even beyond the existing limits of morality (however wide they are). Some years ago, there was the case of a dance teacher who prepared a “victory” performance with her young student girls in which they “danced” in Negroid “twerk” style. Yes, girls 10 to 14 years of age, dressed in black-orange tight swimsuits, performing sexually explicit gyrations — with the whole show dedicated to “The Victory Against Fascism.” This produced an uproar among more conservatively minded Russians, and they started to write complaints to various state agencies. The teacher was reprimanded and the whole affair swept under the carpet. She later jumped from the initial “Victory Day” bandwagon and asserted that the performance was unconnected to the celebration; her group of girls continued to perform this kind of “dance” without any further complaints from the public.

This episode was deemed inconvenient only because the performers were too young. In many other cases, young women perform all kinds of striptease dances at night clubs on the “holy” occasion of “Our Great Victory Against Fascism.” This blood-sanctified pornography is accepted as something normal; no one seems to be ashamed or embarrassed by it.

Another aspect of this Victory Frenzy is the obligatory participation of all educational institutions, from kindergartens to universities. All students must perform songs, re-enact combat scenes, march in military uniforms of those times, and so on. Teachers compete with each other to find yet more extravagant ways to show their patriotic ardor and score points with their superiors. This drive produces some bizarre examples. For example, there were many cases of small children, sometimes as young as three years of age, were paraded in kindergartens in military uniforms. Some parents oppose this insanity, but an absolute majority prefers to drift along with the prevalent current.

Local authorities try to compete, too. Each year, mayors and governors of all towns and cities spend substantial sums of money from local budgets on organizing “victory” celebrations and on abundant paraphernalia, such as flags and huge banners. Municipal buses and cars are painted in black-orange patterns, with red flags, hammers and sickles, red stars, images of various WW2 “heroes,” and sometimes even Stalin. Any attempt to oppose this patriotic overdrive is met with threats of criminal persecution under the criminal code article against “rehabilitation of Nazism.” According to perverted Putinist logic, anyone opposing this insanity is automatically considered to be a “Nazi sympathizer.” And to be suspected of being a “Nazi sympathizer” is perceived by “mainstream” people as the worst thing that can happen in life. It is like being accused of sorcery in medieval Spain. And the only way to dispel such suspicions is to show off your Soviet “patriotism” in the most ardent ways.

It is worth noting that, despite all of this “patriotic” activity, the level of historical knowledge among general population is extremely low; especially among the younger generation. The main source of “knowledge” for them are the movies. Their whole understanding (really, misunderstanding) of WW2 could be described in a few sentences: “Hitler was the worst man in history; he took power in Germany, militarized it, and conquered nearly the whole of Europe. But that wasn’t enough for him, so he invaded the Soviet Union. Then our peaceful country destroyed evil Hitler and freed Europe from the German yoke.” I have expressed it in a more or less coherent way; usually, Russians do it with more words but with even less actual content. It would be correct to describe their historical knowledge not as absolute zero — but as a negative digit, because if they simply knew nothing, it would be better. Instead, their heads are stuffed with the most incongruous and mutually exclusive absurdities. In most cases it is impossible to rectify; the mental damage is permanent.

One of the absurdities that Putinist propaganda machine floated in the last few years is the idea that America helped Hitler and incited him to invade Soviet Union; and that Lend-Lease aid to USSR was only a smokescreen to deceive Russians and played only an infinitesimal role in the war. The Kremlin’s propagandists try to rewrite history according to their current needs. If now America is an enemy, then, it must have been an enemy always, including in WW2. But however absurd each new version of “history” may be, they all are believed and accepted as absolute truth.

This lack of historical knowledge sometimes produces very funny situations. There have been multiple cases in which Victory Day banners depicted photos of WW2 German soldiers in combat; the people who prepared those banners thought that they depicted Soviet soldiers. The same happens with images of military hardware. All too often, photos of German tanks and trucks are shown as if these were Soviet ones. Some of those incidents were even investigated by police, on suspicion of being conscious informational sabotage; but it always turned out to be simple lack of the most rudimentary knowledge about WW2. In most cases these banners are prepared by young female advertising designers who take the first photos they find in an Internet search and insert them into their work; they have neither time nor desire to research a subject so alien to them.

This Victory Frenzy coexists well with the overall Americanized mentality of modern Russian society. An absolute majority of Russians wear jeans and other Western clothes, but assert their devotion to “traditional values.” It is especially funny when females of loose character decorate their indecent clothes with black-orange “Saint George” ribbons and recount how all of their great-grandparents “fought Nazis” and “freed Europe.” This theater of the absurd is the everyday reality of Putin’s Russia. Some of the most incongruous expressions of this fake patriotism are impossible to describe in words; they must be seen.

Obviously, this fake patriotism has absolutely no intrinsic value; it is as empty as all other aspects of Putinist society.

One of the most prominent features of the Victory Frenzy is the so-called “Immortal Regiment” event, when hundreds of thousands of people in all major cities in Russia gather and march with portraits of their ancestors who fought in WW2. This event is presented as something coming from the people’s hearts, but in reality it is an event organized by governmental agencies and heavily promoted by all state media. Mass participation is the key to the success of this event. But in the last few years there were ever fewer genuine participants. Therefore, government organizers employed their usual tool of administrative coercion and enticement by money handouts. School and university students were simply ordered to attend; the same with many government employees. Other people were offered small sums of money plus free food at the event sites. As usual, this proved to be the most effective way of gathering Russians. Five hundred rubles given for a couple of hours at a mass gathering is more than an average Russian can earn at his regular work in the same time period; therefore, it is a good deal for many.

Here comes the most interesting part: The real attendees of the “Immortal Regiment” event must prepare beforehand the hand-held posters with photos of their ancestors/soldiers; it is the crux of the event; they must proudly walk holding those posters, thereby displaying their devotion to their grandfathers who “freed the world from Nazism.” Obviously, the crowd of student loafers and paid vagabonds would not bother to make such things; therefore, they are provided with prefabricated posters depicting random soldiers and officers of the WW2 period. Certainly, they are not their relatives. After the event concludes, all those posters are thrown out in the nearest garbage collection box, where they lay in mass for all to see. The pictures of those scattered posters were the butt of many jokes about the “Immortal Regiment”. People teasingly call this event “the grandfather impaled on a stick” (because each poster is attached to a stick for a handle).

The overall Putinist drive to create a war-like mentality among the Russian motley population has failed; people are willing to comply with any insane initiative pushed by the government, but do it exclusively because of conformist considerations. Certainly, there are many of those who are susceptible to this insane drive and are ready to “fight against the enemy to the end,” but these are far from being a majority. At least half of the population disagrees with what happens, but prefers to remain silent in order to evade possible troubles; this passive conformity allows the system to claim overwhelming support for all its measures. And so far this scheme has worked perfectly.

But it is sure to start to crumble under the ever-increasing war burden. People were willing to participate in this patriotic theater of the absurd as long as it seemed an innocent play; but now, when they are asked to pay for it with half of their income and even with the blood of their children, these same people start to rethink their position and to doubt their allegiance to this bloodthirsty system. Chickens come home to roost; what yesterday, for many, seemed an innocent undertaking, “rallying around the flag” requiring nothing more than a two-hour attendance at a government-sponsored event, now turns out to be a demand to sacrifice their own lives in order “to save our country and to defeat Nazism.” And it is a bit too much for modern Russians; they have become too soft to accept a prospect of feeding lice in trenches for years and having thin porridge as the only available delicacy. It all was good as a play — but not as a hard reality.

Here starts the ever more obvious rift between the system and its subjects; there are signs of growing discontent everywhere. It is the main reason why Putin didn’t proclaim mass mobilization so far. He fears mass revolt; the seemingly loyal crowd could become a hateful wasp’s nest when faced with a prospect of dying in a foreign war. It is the gravest dilemma for Putin. What to do next? It is the situation like the one described on a signpost (road stone) in many Russian fairy-tales: “if you go to the right — you will die; if you go to the left — your horse will die; if you go straight forward — both you and your horse will die.” Putin is now at this very crossroads; any choice is fatal and there is no going back. But, whatever troubles there may be, the system has its universal answer: “We defeated Nazism and will do it again….”

PS: I have compiled a short video presenting some examples of the ongoing collective madness in Russia. It is disgusting and crude in many places; sensitive souls may want to skip it. As I said, it is beyond any rational description; it must to be seen.

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