Writing for Radio Free Europe Viktor Yerofeyev, a novelist and a regular contributor to RFE/RL’s Russian Service, explains how neo-Soviet Russia is once again weaponizing paranoia so as to bludgeon the Russian psyche and subjugate the population:
Who financed the global financial crisis?
That’s the main, secret question the Russian authorities are asking. They’re certain there’s no such thing as accidents, or fate, or human conscience. But there are conspiracies.
Conspiracies targeting Russia. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was a conspiracy. And so was the Rose Revolution in Georgia. And behind all the conspiracies stands the United States. And behind the United States, what? International Zionism? And behind International Zionism, the devil himself?
But we are Holy Rus. And for our Holy Rus, the financial crisis is potentially fatal. But why is it tantamount to death particularly for Russia? Because it is unfolding against the background of another crisis — a crisis of confidence. In recent years the state has once again become, as it was in Soviet times, impenetrable.
Even if the Kremlin is being guided by beneficent notions of our national interests, officials do not discuss those notions in public. They just hand them down from on high, like gods. Deus ex machina.
