Bread instead of bombs and Mironov

A very interesting incident occurred in St. Petersburg the other day: the city administration gave free food to beneficiaries. Trucks arrived from which the cadets handed out “vitamin kits” to everyone who wanted them, without requiring them to provide documentary proof of their orphanage and wretchedness—5 kilograms of potatoes, carrots, beets, and a cabbage. What is surprising, of course, is not the very fact of distributing free food to the electorate a month and a half before the elections, but the fact that it was not accompanied by any campaigning for “United Russia”. This is no longer necessary. Therefore, we note in parentheses, there is a need for price increases.

Strictly speaking, in some cases, people wearing blue and white vests with the logo of the party in power were seen and even photographed distributing vegetables. Well, perhaps the pensioners who were called and invited to buy free potatoes were informed that the sponsor of the action was United Russia. But these are little things that do not hide the main thing from us: the connection between everything good that happens in life, on the one hand, and the president and his favorite party, on the other, is firmly rooted in the consciousness of grateful subjects. Any grandmother, without any prompting, knows thanks to whom the country’s GDP is growing, and she has a pension, who defends the sovereignty of our homeland in the face of world imperialism, etc. So if they call her and say that she can get 5 kilograms of rotten potatoes for free from the state farm fields of the Leningrad region, there is no need to specify that this is an election gift from United Russia. And who else, one wonders, could it be from?

The idea that United Russia is absolutely good is certainly good and correct. But it is not enough for elections. Because it is static - well, good and good. Dot. And in elections you need action, drive, at least minimal. So far, the Kremlin has mastered the simplest technology for creating drive - fighting an insidious enemy. We know examples of Chechen terrorists (Elections 99) and werewolves in uniform (Elections 2003). This time, Sergei Mironov was simply asking to be an enemy. But this is a special case. The enemy cannot shout at every corner that he loves President Putin. In addition, no matter how the role of A Just Russia changes in the light of recent events, it cannot be put on a par with international terrorists, corrupt officials and British spies with their secret stones. That's not why mommy grew the flower.

I will not argue that the sharp increase in prices for bread and milk saved us from yet another pre-election explosion. Still, the rates now are not the same as eight years ago. But if this rise in price did not exist, it would be worth inventing it.

At first, looking at how actively state channels were promoting the seemingly electorally dangerous topic of rising prices, I suspected that this was a cunning multi-step. That an oligarch of non-Russian nationality has already been stored somewhere, having bought up the entire grain harvest, which the keen eye of the ex-chief cop Boris Gryzlov will discover closer to December. That a bill has been written and is waiting in the wings, abolishing VAT on “socially important varieties of bakery products,” or introducing fixed retail prices with execution for profiteering. But you never know what the imagination of the people who came up with “Putin’s Plan” can give birth to.

But in fact, no second step is needed. The rise in prices is necessary in itself, because it is the only thing that is happening in Russia today. Without him there will be nothing - only absolute, static good in the form of “United Russia”, something non-absolute in the form of a “fair” Russia, and also those guys whose names on a decent TV channel are embarrassing to name. And here - what an abyss of opportunities to express yourself. If you want, catch speculators in retail chains, if you want, change duties, if you want, fix prices. Here it is, the drive! A public discussion, the need for which the president spoke so much about. Free exchange of opinions!

And when the task of revitalizing public life is completed, the rise in prices will stop. They will say on TV that in some regions there are still residual phenomena, but overall the situation has returned to normal. And they won't remember it anymore. And blessed Stability will return to our exhausted homeland again.

Saint Petersburg