Simple Truth About Russia

Reflections following Putin's "inauguration", which gradually grew into a "hell-victory" holiday.

If you think about it, the level of syncretism and attempts to combine the incompatible in all this multi-day action simply went off scale. On the one hand, there was the "inauguration" of the president, which took place as a result of the "elections". An explicit reference to democratic values, which have already been mocked, but for some reason are still not eliminated legally. That is, formally, the Russian leader is still the "same" president, elected by the people for a certain period as in France for example.

Against this background, there are a lot of hints of a religious-monarchic ritual. Including the patriarch, who wishes the ruler that his power lasts as long as his life will last. Oriental luxuries, quasi-religious attitude to the ruler.

And in addition to all this — "hell-victory" under red flags and in Stalin's uniform. This is also an important element of political religion — the militaristic cult of a distant victory, through which they now want to prove the right to everything.

So, in one bottle there are hints of democracy, religious monarchism, and Soviet totalitarianism in its militarist-conquering form. Some kind of total syncretism. New Age political religion.

But this syncretism reflects the main thing. They were never able to come up with a decent ideology that would serve as a justification for neo-imperialist plans. They feel that ideology is needed, but they cannot come up with something decent, so they grab literally everything they can reach.

In general, the Russian regime has recently sought to imitate totalitarianism. After decades of authoritarian rule (which even at certain stages was sometimes called hybrid), they frankly want to build totalitarianism. What's the difference? Totalitarianism seeks to control all spheres of public life. In particular, they are very far from politics. That is why various cases of "naked parties" arise, and their participants are forced to solemnly repent. The persecution of artists far from politics for "wrong art" is a bright sign of totalitarianism, which they really want to build in modern Russia.

They want to, but they are not quite successful. They can mechanically recreate individual totalitarian institutions. For example, the system of denunciations, which is now successfully flourishing in Russian realities. But they lack the main thing — ideology. At least commensurate with Soviet communism, for which thousands of people could really die at one time.

They are trying to make the ideology by putting Tsar Nicholas next to Stalin, sprinkling all this with holy water from the patriarch and social populism. It turns out not so good.

Yes, the Russians still go to war easily, but not because they believe in tsars or general secretaries, but just for money. The scheme — to make the majority of citizens poor in the richest country — turned out to be quite viable. At least for a little while.

The Russian leadership has discovered a simple truth: political and military miscalculations, corruption and lack of ideology can be made up with factors that do not have a decisive influence if you try to cover up all the "holes" with huge amounts of money.

The successful world situation, prices for hydrocarbons, the absence of costs for "social capital" — all this gave the Russian authorities the opportunity to receive huge, astronomical money. And they spent all of them and they are keeping spending them to wage the war.

The good news is that Russians will not be able to overcome all problems forever by simply pouring money into them. Hydrocarbons will either run out or lose value in a world dominated by thermonuclear fusion. And they themselves are well aware of this. And so they hurry.

Hence the bad news — the Russians are in a hurry to capture and destroy as much as possible until the moment when they no longer have the resources to do it. And the main object here is Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is a monument to the neo-imperial Herostratus, who thus wants to perpetuate himself and the empire. That's why they don't spare any resources. Therefore, they are waging an irrational war, from the point of view of Ukraine's Western partners, pursuing irrational goals. What rational goals are possible here?

Recently, I have seen in our information space a lot of regular laments on the topic of "Why did the Russians attack us?" Of course, it all boils down to the traditional Ukrainian devouring of themselves.

The answer is really simple. The Russians attacked because they could. Because they had a lot, a lot, a lot of stupid money, and except for wars of conquest, they did not know what to spend it on. Moreover, they understood that the time of availability of this stupid money is limited, and therefore it is necessary to hurry to "at least" destroy, for example, Ukraine.

If Russians were in the same miserable state as in the 1990s, they would not dream of any Crimea. So, the West "pumped" them with money. What were they waiting for? That Russians will rush to build highways and airports? They decided to deal with the wrong people. There is only murder, genocide and blood. And this is even more disgusting, because this time they could not even come up with a coherent political ideology to explain their bloodthirsty encroachments.

Petro Oleshchuk, Facebook