"Can you be a 'half-dictator'? And if you are starting a 'dictatorship,' why and how do you hope to keep it within 'bounds'? If it's a 'dictatorship,' don't hope for any bounds. Or don't start it... Oh, can't do otherwise? Well, then endure it. And don't be surprised that they shoot, imprison, and lie for salvation."
Lev Anninsky, "Monologues of a Former Stalinist," 1989
The situation is absolutely hopeless, and Putin is becoming more and more candid:
"...And of course, all our enemies, and there have always been many, always united. During Napoleon's time — what, was it Napoleon, France, that fought with us? No, all the countries of Europe fought with Russia then. And during Hitler's time? The same thing. Look at what happened under Stalingrad. By the way, under Stalingrad, Soviet troops suffered fewer losses for the first time than the enemy. But who fought there? From all European countries without any exaggeration, everyone. And now they are all coming at us and uniting their efforts. Including intellectual efforts..."
It doesn't matter that these words go against history and are in many ways offensive to those countries and peoples who are supposedly "intruding." They "intruded" with their direct foreign investments, joint projects, their technologies, factories, jobs, cultural ties, their, or rather, global education, with their borders open to Russians. They took everything they could from the "enemies" and once again built a besieged fortress from the remaining dirt and sticks — "they attacked us." What is important in these words is that a cornered Putin will leave only by dragging the entire population of Russia into the vortex of complete autarky — internet restrictions, economic collapse, and, more terrifyingly, demographics — this is just the beginning.
"There are many of them, a whole pack, but we are one, a united multinational people, one." It is not the people who are one, it is he, the lonely dictator, alone, solus rex. But he wouldn't exist if there weren't indifferent people who accepted him, if the "population" became citizens, if the elites didn't make endless compromises with power, if there wasn't a union of this power and capital, if the nation didn't agree to what it agreed to. Lev Anninsky wrote very accurately almost forty years ago about complicity:
"...Total war instead of peace — why was this better? Who decided this? <...> That's how it was decided, as everyone wanted. The majority. The mush, the mass, the magma, the dough, the flow, the force. "The average person"..."
The bad West, lacking spirituality. Only we — alone — are good. With highly spiritual sovereign missiles, with the power of trenches. The Russian natures are wide. Again, I will quote Anninsky from that old article in the collection "To Comprehend the Cult of Stalin" (circulation 100,000 copies, a short gap in history when at least part of the nation allowed itself the luxury of thinking):
"...Hatred for sedentary tenacity, practical foresight, narrow common sense, and everyday certainty, for everything associated with the word "limit," developed and deeply entered the soul..."
It became boring, there was a lack of overcoming limits and boundaries, and this turned into internal lawlessness and external expansion. Limits were overcome. There was a lack of "movement" — and it was initiated by one — one! — person. And everyone followed in his wake — some grabbing their heads, some with a fearfully indifferent look, some with the carnivorous enthusiasm of teenagers who hadn't played enough war — but they went. And then they got used to it, got involved, started playing along. And with such zeal that the autocrat convinced himself that he was not alone, that everyone was in a single impulse — with him.
Marina Neelova and Vladimir Putin, 2026. Photo: Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant
Another meeting in the Kremlin, besides the most important one, with participants of the SVO, on the same Russia Day — awarding various honors. As always, elderly defense workers — administrators and scientists, don't even remember that similar elderly scientists have been sentenced to deadly terms, accused of espionage in favor of "our" closest friends — China and Iran. Did nothing tremble from the feeling of dystopian absurdity? The outstanding actress Marina Neelova, ecstatically offering her chest to Putin for the Hero of Labor medal — my God, she played a brilliant role in "The Steep Route" by Evgenia Ginzburg in "Sovremennik"! How can such things fit in one head (and soul) — an anti-despotic play, long absent from the theater's repertoire, and an admiringly grateful playing along with the despot?
Because if there weren't these players, the same West wouldn't paint us all with the same brush, and Putin and his circles of varying degrees of closeness wouldn't feel "together with the people." A quote from a letter by Thomas Mann in 1945, which we have already cited on these pages, but it's worth reminding again in connection with these new award scenes — Konchalovsky with a cane and a helpless old man's smile and the confident Sadovnichy also with a cane, long burning with anything but shame, becoming laureates of state awards:
"...If the German intelligentsia, if all people with names and world names — doctors, musicians, educators, writers, artists — had unanimously opposed this disgrace, if they had declared a general strike, much would not have happened as it did..."
Don't refuse the Hero of Labor? You could refuse, and most importantly — they wouldn't shoot or imprison you. Maybe Neelova didn't want the fate of Lia Akhedzhakova, her partner in "The Steep Route," expelled from the theater for an openly human position? But during the awarding, she looked... happy. At the very moment when thousands of compatriots are on the steep route, just because they want to be free people and are ashamed of what the regime is doing.
"The Steep Route" by Evgenia Ginzburg at the "Sovremennik" theater. Photo: sovremennik.ru
The firm impression: many still haven't understood what happened to the country. And some simply forced themselves not to understand what happened. And they wait for "all this" to end. But Putin said it would never end because "we" — are alone against everyone. And as before, according to the apt remark of Siberian journalist Alexei Tarasov, the country will always be ready for war, but not for the heating season. Yes, this is Putin's personal choice — one person, but he himself, this one person, was chosen, even if not by everyone, even if under duress, but chosen by many. Forming the very "we" on behalf of which he conducts the eternal special operation, the special operation as a way of existence. And Marina Neelova confused the "we" shown in "The Steep Route" with the "we" that came to terms with the anthropological catastrophe of the country. Actors and directors play along with Putin. The players are the most important element of the dictatorship.
Such different photographs: Marina Neelova with Putin, 2026, Marina Neelova with Vasily Aksyonov after the play "The Steep Route," 1989...
"...On the right — an excited and happy Vasily Aksyonov, next to him — Marina Neelova. In the center of the table — US Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock with his wife. And the gray-haired elderly woman between Matlock and Aksyonov — Paulina Myasnikova, a friend of Evgenia Ginzburg, whom she met in 1936 in a transit prison..." Photo: Kazan magazine
*Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.