Watershed

On March 4th, he walked across the country, dividing it into three parts: those who don’t care, those who are against and those who are for. There is no point in clinging to numbers and percentages; Putin made the most of the full potential of the state machine, bringing to the polling stations everyone who is in any way dependent on the state: state employees, military personnel, students, and most importantly the six-million-strong bureaucracy.

Govorukhin’s speech immediately after the announcement of the first results looked especially cynical, saying that (for some reason) it seemed to him that Prokhorov would be ahead of Zhirinovsky in terms of results, clearly letting slip what he knew for sure.

Probably, Putin’s tears of happiness were absolutely sincere, but to me they seemed like the tears of a man saying goodbye to his Motherland forever, and the refrain was the march “Farewell of a Slav.”

What now? After all, the Ozero cooperative, the palace in Praskoveevka, all these Timchenkos, Rotenbergs and Kovalchuks, this entire list of billionaire friends, the shrinking population, the growing army of officials, strangled small and medium-sized businesses, the severe dependence on the price of oil have not gone away. and gas, the dying industry, energy and road construction have not gone away, the outflow of capital and brain flight have not gone away.

With this, will we continue to build a new Russia? The foundation of the state, laid over 12 years, is by no means granite, but is a hastily assembled masonry made from materials of very dubious quality. And the walls and roof are generally made of papier-mâché, painted with duroscope rays to look like brick and galvanized sheets.

I think we still need to live for several years in stagnation and stagnation in order to finally be convinced that yesterday we were not able to get onto the highway, but rushed straight from the side of the road towards the thicket and impassable swamps. Well, our path has never been simple and easy, we are no strangers to it.