Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Alexey Druginyn/RIA Novosti/EPA
18 September 2014 (
Mikhail Shishkin theguardian) The formula for saving any dictatorship is
universal: create an enemy, start a war. We are back in Soviet times of total
lies. I remember
that as a child I read about black holes in a popular science magazine about
space and it scared me. The idea of our world being sucked into these breaks in
the universe kept bothering me until I realised that it all was so far away
that it would not reach us. But then a black hole tore our world very close to
us. It started sucking in houses, roads, cars, planes, people and whole
countries. Russia and Ukrainehave already fallen into this black
hole. And it is now sucking in Europe in front of our eyes. This
hole in the universe is the soul of one very lonely ageing man. The black hole
is his fear. TV images of the demise of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and
Muammar Gaddafi were messages that fate sent him from exotic countries. Protest
rallies that gathered hundreds of thousands of people in Moscow ruined his inauguration and signalled approaching
danger. The disgraceful flight of Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych earlier this year set off alarm bells: if
Ukrainians could oust their gang, it could serve as an example for the
brotherly nation. The instinct of self-preservation kicked in immediately. The
formula for saving any dictatorship is universal: create an enemy, start a war.
The state of war is the regime's elixir of life. A nation in patriotic ecstasy
becomes one with its "national leader", while any dissenters can be
declared "national traitors".
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