At the same time that the Ukrainian centre for treating young cancer patients was being bombed, an exhibition glorifying “Russia without end” was being closed in Moscow (and then reopened permanently). While the internal successes are praised, the external extermination is commented on with cynical indifference: “It’s war, there’s nothing special about it.”
At the same time that the Russian bombing of the Okhmatdet children’s cancer hospital in kyiv was taking place on July 8, the exhibition “Russia: Hits of the Putin Era” was coming to an end at the Vdnk exhibition in Moscow. The exhibition had opened the campaign for the presidential elections in March on November 4 last year with a concert in front of the Peoples’ Friendship Fountain by the most “patriotic” Russian singers: opera singer Grigory Leps, Soviet singer Oleg Gazmanov, rocker Shaman and rapper ST. The president liked the exhibition so much that it will be turned into a “permanent mausoleum” with the name “Russia Never Ends,” announced its director Natalia Virtuozova. The exhibition was due to end in April, but after its reconsecration, Putin decided that it would remain open until the summer “to allow millions of visitors to appreciate the beauties of Russia.”
On the banks of the Moskva, next to the pavilions of the great parade of Soviet conquests, a new and grandiose building for “the preservation of the heritage of modern Russia” will be built on Krasnopresnensky Promenade. It will house the expressions of more than a hundred regions of Russia that have matured during Putin’s quarter-century, under the direction of the great adviser Sergei Kirienko. One of the presenters of the final event, the Latvian-born showman and Soviet celebrity Valdis Pelšs, explained with great enthusiasm that “many visitors to the exhibition are willing to stay for days on end so as not to miss these treasures… it is not always the case that one is lucky enough to see the unique beauty of our country, from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, all in one place.” “Russia without end” is precisely the plastic definition of the idea of a “Russian world” that transcends all borders and unites all peoples.
Putin did not attend the final concert, but the next day he met with all the people who had helped, who gave him “three boxes of thanks” from the visitors, and he congratulated the winners of the contests “Our Family Things” and “The Strength of the Family”, saying that “for the state there can be nothing more important.” During the election campaign and even afterwards, Putin visited the exhibition several times, expressing his great satisfaction on each occasion and also inviting all foreign diplomats living in Russia to see it: “This way you can see for yourselves how our country is growing and developing, and you won’t want to leave.” According to official data, the exhibition was visited by more than 17 million people, more than 10% of the population of the entire Russian Federation.
A special place was devoted to new facilities designed for the Arctic area, with an “electric Arctic bus” and maps of the new towns to be built north of the Arctic Circle. Each regional stand offered virtual tours of the most representative places, such as monuments, castles and industries, and each offered craft fairs and local specialties, with tastings of typical products. All the leading propagandists and many politicians took part in public meetings and speeches, from journalist Vladimir Solovyov to Margarita Simonyan, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and many other ministers and senior officials, praising the “special world” created by Putin and listing the figures for all the records he has achieved. Every hundred thousand visitors received a prize for the last one to arrive, so much so that someone mischievously observed that many returned several times to guess the “perfect number.” Moreover, Vdnk Park is one of the favorite places for Muscovites to take a walk.
One of the most popular pavilions was the Tsar Bomba, the AN602 thermonuclear bomb produced in the Soviet Union between 1956 and 1961 by a group of nuclear physicists led by the legendary scientist Igor Kurchatov. It was a demonstration of the Soviets’ ability to compete in atomic warfare and is considered the most powerful explosive weapon in the history of mankind, so much so that it even appears in the Guinness Book of Records. Many visitors were busy comparing stands from neighbouring regions to see who could best showcase their artistic or technological capabilities, and children flocked to the Children’s Army stand, where they could play video games to learn about the special operation in Ukraine and other wars of the past and present. Many regions invested huge sums in the exhibition, which were not covered by the budgetary needs of their own citizens. Krasnodar spent 146 million rubles (one and a half million euros), Vladimir 50 million and Kuzbass 23 million. Many ironically recalled the “Potemkin villages”, the facades that were painted for the visit of Tsarina Catherine II at the end of the 18th century.
The aim of the exhibition is the same as all internal propaganda in the life of Russia: to show only the positive side and the “great advances” in every corner of the country. You could go around the entire fair with the “tourist pass” Travel with us, taste Chuvash or Buryat cuisine and take part in sports competitions – all of which are now impossible to experience outside Russia, in an outside world that deserves only contempt. This is the task of “carrying our traditions into the future”, as has been repeated at hundreds of round tables on patriotic themes and “youth politics”. Now the new mausoleum will be called the Russia Centre and will have branches in all regions; many have dubbed it Putin-Centr or “the new infrastructure of the Kirienko bloc”, where those who consider Russia’s heritage also to be Putin’s heritage will be able to access unlimited funding in a future that is currently impossible to predict.
The apotheosis of Putinism, which exalts a grotesque reality based on propaganda lies, is even more impressive when compared with the umpteenth tragedy that was taking place in Kiev at the same time. The reason for bombing a particularly sensitive children’s hospital is probably to destroy large independent generators, precisely like those in clinics where electricity cannot be cut off, in order to “reduce the lives of Ukrainian citizens to nothing and silence.” And while internal successes are glorified, in Russia external destruction is discussed with cynical indifference: “It’s war, where everything happens, there is nothing special,” as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The most “high-ranking” propagandists tried to attribute the Okhmatdet tragedy to Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire, but most of them calmly admitted that “Russia is doing its job,” and repeated the same refrain, “there is nothing special.” The Orthodox-Patriotic Tsargrad channel aired a report on the topic “The Children’s Hospital in kyiv is not an accident, let’s admit it and stop being afraid.”
In Russia everything is wonderful and special, outside Russia everything is miserable and uninteresting, no matter how terrible or impressive what is happening is – this is the pattern of the narcosis of the consciousness of Russian citizens. They constantly repeat that there is nothing special, so there is no need to think about it; denial of reality knows no bounds, and unfortunately this is a feature of many political systems and various ideologies around the world. Many allow themselves to be caught up in the spirals of lies, many pretend to accept them, but it is not so much the conscience that counts as the behavior: if there is nothing special, there is no reason to worry or protest. To avoid unpleasant consequences, they are ready to deny not only the suffering of others, but also their own, even pretending to be swimming in pleasure and abundance.
Those who still support anti-war positions in Russia, who have not fled the country or fallen under the axe of persecution, are forced to adapt to a situation that seems impossible to change in any way. To the “there is nothing special” corresponds another refrain: “one must go on living anyway,” because Russian society cannot control power, but only hope that it will not actually last forever. A great scientist and intellectual of the Soviet era, the philologist Yuri Lotman, as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, proposed a “warlike” way of living for many years under totalitarian rule: “we must act as if we were on the front line of war, fleeing from enemies, hiding from trench to trench, from tree to tree, without deluding ourselves that we can make plans for the future, but only trying not to lose ourselves.” The world changes, and Russia changes too, often radically and unexpectedly: if one manages to survive, perhaps one will be able to see a new world.
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