News that never happened

News that doesn't exist is sometimes more revealing than news that does exist.

It’s been a month since we were shown a film by Arkady Mamontov about the English stone and valiant counterintelligence officers.

And even then it was strange.

For example, why, instead of catching the spy red-handed, we were shown a film in which this stone is carried away by a shadowy figure?

Or why, despite the fact that the spy took away one stone, and we saw it with our own eyes, another similar stone is presented to us by an FSB officer?

Or why was the stone needed at all? Why transmit radio waves through the cache? Why would two spies use a stone when they could use the same device to exchange the same amount of information while sitting in a traffic jam in two adjacent cars?

In short, what was shown in the film did not correspond to the structure of the news. There were no spies caught red-handed, no names of their agents, and the nature of the information they conveyed was not known. But it complied with all the canons of a feature film. The same stone, which before our eyes was carried away by an obscure figure, and which was then miraculously found by FSB agents, is a useless thing for a spy, but necessary for the plot.

And now a month and a half has passed.

And what?

And nothing.

No official requests have been sent to the British embassy. We never heard any names of Russian agents; Moreover, not only did the FSB not produce them, but, what is quite surprising, we have not heard any news from their lawyers and relatives. And finally, what’s amazing, this whole scandal, which reached the very top in a matter of weeks, even being commented on by the president, suddenly evaporated, as if this gigantic dough had been slammed with a pan lid and said: “sit.” The President visited the boards of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB and talked about everything except the English stone.

What I mean is that news that does not exist is more indicative in this case than news that does exist.

Indeed, at the height of the scandal, two scenarios of events seemed possible.

Scenario one: all this really happened. And now the FSB, having made a slight mistake (they didn’t catch the spies red-handed), will come to their senses, the British will be declared persona non grata, two Russian spies will be shown to the world, a big trial will begin against them, etc.

Scenario two: the whole story with the English stone is a special operation to introduce totalitarianism in Russia. Now, under the influence of this case, the indignant public will bring down the hammer of its anger on the imperialists, who are still trying to destroy Russia. NGOs, borders and liberal media will be closed, and...

And?

The spies have not been expelled, the borders have not been closed.

There is no news about English stone.

And here, as an explanation for this lack of news, I propose two complementary theorems.

First. The filmmakers simply did not expect such a resonance. And what? Look how many spies we catch! How many terrorist attacks are prevented! Only on the eve of February 23, a barrel of explosives was discovered in each Caucasian republic, and in Chechnya they proudly reported that with the help of the found explosives the terrorists were going to blow up a living house. These terrorist attacks, revealed for the anniversary, became so boring that no one even grinned at the topic of Chechen terrorists blowing up houses with Chechens.

In short, the guys were filming a low-budget action movie and weren’t counting on a political Oscar. Otherwise, at least the stone was dusted with snow before shooting (otherwise it’s inconvenient: there is a black stone, and everything around is covered in snow).

Second.

The Russian state now is a system that creates enemies. This is a completely understandable phenomenon. After all, Putin surrounded himself with people who, by profession, did not graduate from philology or physics departments, did not engage in business, but were engaged in searching for enemies. And now they are doing the same thing, both in order to increase their influence and in order to increase their property.

The corporation generates profits, Congress generates laws, and the Russian state now generates enemies, be it Khodorkovsky or those praying in Nalchik.

Sometimes this happens out of stupidity, sometimes by design. Sometimes he is the driving force of the system, sometimes he is its victim, sometimes (as in the case of the English stone) he clearly lets things go.

But no one, by and large, can do anything anymore.

No single person can break this system. On the contrary, this system breaks anyone, even a decent person.

Another thing is that a system that does not destroy enemies, but creates them, will end badly.