The trauma must have been severe, because its effects are still felt today. The need to display status symbols – and the kind that were customary to possess 20 and 30 years ago – is astounding. In fact, the president’s press secretary cannot boast of a watch worth a house, and the head of a giant state corporation cannot seriously claim that attempts to find out the size of his income are an attack on the safety of his family. The fact that absurd stories of this kind are not surprising in Russia is a symptom of the disease.

The disease is not in the need to demonstrate symbols, or even in the quality of these symbols (a matter of taste). Riding a bicycle to work and going shopping in person at the supermarket is also a demonstration.

The disease is elsewhere. Once, in difficult times, the compensation of senior civil servants was divided into a minimal above-water part and a large underwater part, the formation of which the state itself did little to do. This underwater part is regulated only by conceptual norms, which can depend on the personality of the patron, and on the nature of the business tacitly entrusted to the official, and on the spirit of the times.

Hidden real earnings were once a matter of state importance: it was a deeply mistaken way to keep people with the state, so that they would not be bought off by enemies, so that they would not be given bribes. Let them receive a certain share of natural rent or business income, but with the permission of the supreme authorities.

Striving, let us assume, initially for the good, the creators of this system destroyed everything that usually ensures the health of state-public relations. They intertwined power and property, erased the boundaries between private and public, and even destroyed the time frame of service. After all, with such an approach, leaving the service is a small death. So extravagant manifestations of passion for demonstrating status are only a visible and almost funny part of the problem.

Officials without borders