Letter From the Editors

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities were a hit this week. While the image of a refinery cover flying into the air made for colorful memes (“Russia is so rich that it can afford to shoot down drones with oil refinery lids!”), drivers did not appreciate the hours-long waits at gas stations. Is this the first sign of the Apocalypse for the regime?

Hardly. Economist Nikolai Korzhenevsky argues that the government may use the drone strikes as a convenient pretext to end subsidies that kept pump prices low and let prices catch up with the market. The consumer will just have to lump it. Moreover, the actual damage to Russia’s oil production is hard to assess, since almost all data is classified.

At a special meeting on the fuel crisis, Putin assured citizens: “All critical infrastructure facilities damaged by the Ukrainian Armed Forces were being quickly restored.” But Novaya gazeta tracked a shadow market of fuel sales on Telegram and Avito, so reality begs to differ, and the war is clearly taking a bite out of Russia’s economy. As Republic writes, Russia ended up in the same situation as the cartoon dog Sharik in “Summer in Prostokvashino”: He’s drowning because he refuses to let go of his hunting rifle. When a beaver tells him to drop the rifle and swim to the surface, Sharik replies: “The rifle is expensive but my life doesn’t cost anything.” Dismal, but unfortunately accurate.

While Sharik may be dumb but honorable, another Russian literary character, Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov in Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog,” offers a more sinister reflection of attempts to convert ideology into reality. Transformed from dog into man by the eminent Professor Preobrazhensky (preobrazhat being Russian for “transform” or even “transfigure”), the experiment creates a brutal, base and narcissistic creature that says all the right words but lacks any heart.

Bulgakov’s work focuses on the Soviet obsession with creating the “New Soviet Man.” Today, the battle to embody the “new person” is being fought by parties vying for influence in the September Duma vote (even though Sharikov was famously against “congresses,” due to his mistrust of Germans, meaning Marx and Engels).

Noviye Lyudi, aka New People, have that aspiration in their name. The party has been walking a tightrope with the authorities while trying to tap into the progressive urban electorate (or what remains of it). Besides inviting rappers and influencers to its congress this week, it is pushing support for small businesses and women’s rights. According to Deputy Ksenia Goryachova, who presented a “Manifesto of Russian Women,” this agenda is “not based on our illusions, but on requests that we receive.” Similarly, Sardana Avksentyeva, the former mayor of Yakutsk, said: “Every entrepreneur once simply believed in their future. And it is very important that the state does not become the reason why they stopped believing in it.” But will the party – which voters still see as the number one force fighting for digital freedom (sorry, RFCP) – be able to move past cute memes and promises?

Given an ominous interview by one of Russia’s chief hawks, Nikolai Patrushev, these aspirations are about to meet a wall of resistance. As Nezavisimaya gazeta editor in chief Konstantin Remchukov dissects the thick ideological stew of Patrushev’s musings, he sees similarities with the mood of June 1941. The tone is “disturbing, mobilizing, scary,” notes Remchukov. And coming from one of Russia’s top conservatives – who has the president’s ear as an adviser – this is hardly just a bureaucrat blowing hot air. In “Heart of a Dog,” Professor Preobrazhensky ends the experiment and turns Sharikov back into a dog. Alas, transformations don’t come as easily in real life – and unlike Bulgakov’s professor, today’s “transformers” have no intention of admitting mistakes, let alone reversing course.