The narrowing space of political choice is increasingly offered to society by the authorities to compensate for by the illusion of choice in purely symbolic areas. Without a real opportunity to choose the authorities, society can choose the names of new missiles or, now, airports. But these are elections among proven, pre-selected candidates - there is no place for amateurism and protests here either.

On Monday, the expert council under the Public Chamber approved the list of names of Russian figures after whom 47 international airports of the country will be named. The final list includes 124 candidates – 3-4 per airport, mostly military personnel, government officials, people of science and art, pilots and explorers, the winners will be determined by voting on the website "velikieimena.rf". This is the final stage of the all-Russian competition, which in its presentation resembles a TV show, and in its procedure – voting in elections with a regional bureaucratic filter. The selection of finalists took place through two channels: VTsIOM conducted surveys in 39 regions based on lists prepared by local public chambers, and at the same time, it was possible to nominate candidates and vote for them on social networks.

The finalists were figures who were a consensus for the government and society, whose image in the mass consciousness had long been “canonized”: symbols of Soviet heroism (Sergei Korolev, Valery Chkalov, Alexander Pokryshkin), classics of Russian and Soviet culture (Anton Chekhov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Ivan Shishkin), rulers who embodied the power of Russia (Peter the Great, Catherine the Great). All of these are reliable candidates, time-tested, unlike Ilya Lagutenko (for Vladivostok) or Yegor Letov (for Omsk), who were leaders in the first stage on social networks, but did not make it into the final list - one is alive, the other is too controversial, said Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky. This is understandable: it must be difficult for a member of the government to imagine the arrival of an official delegation at an airport named after the author of the line “Kill the state in yourself.”

The choice of airport name is not the only democratic entertainment of recent years. In the spring, Vladimir Putin announced a competition to name a combat laser complex (the winner was Peresvet), a cruise missile with a nuclear power plant (Burevestnik), an unmanned submarine (Poseidon), and the Central Bank announced a competition to choose a landscape for new 200-ruble and 2,000-ruble banknotes. In 2008, Joseph Stalin almost won the TV contest “Name of Russia,” but in the end he was beaten by Alexander Nevsky and Pyotr Stolypin. The president’s name was not on the final list of the airport contest – although, it would seem, what could be more logical in a country whose elites think in terms of “There is Putin – there is Russia”? In the absence of the first person, politicians of lower rank are participating in the competition: the airports of Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk will compete for the right to bear the name of the former governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Alexander Filipenko, and Yakutsk – the first president of the republic, Mikhail Nikolayev. Both of them won gubernatorial elections more than once, but now they are elected for life.

What can you choose when there are no choices?