When Putin was offered to gut the effigy of the Great Victory, to stitch a court political technologist inside it, and command him to march, dance, and bow to the tsar, he did not think long.

They smashed a museum display case, took out the exhibit, dusted it off, emptied the sawdust, and stuffed some swindler into this skin. At first, they chuckled at how cleverly it was done: the people liked the resurrection (they generally like resurrections), Victory fervently saluted the new Commander-in-Chief, as if seeing no difference between him and the previous ones; the revived deity could be led around on a leash, scaring enemies and inspiring awe in believers.

It was very convenient, and the intelligentsia, who kept lamenting that such use of relics was a desecration of the shrine, were ignored. Moreover, those who grumbled about the desecration of shrines were themselves accused of desecrating them.

Apart from the intelligentsia, no one argued that twenty million people died not for the Motherland, but for Stalin. Except for the intelligentsia, it seemed to suit everyone that "this should never happen again" somehow turned into "if necessary, we will repeat it." And the transformation of the day of memory and peace into a militaristic carnival seemed to bother only the little intellectuals, the Western hirelings.

The people can be understood. They dress up for May barbecues in faded military shirts and pilot caps to feel a connection with their ancestors, to sense the non-randomness of their poor and vain existence, the justification and meaning of everyday hardships. People cosplay as front-line soldiers because they want to feel like the continuators of the deeds of those who had a great and clear mission—to protect their family and liberate their Motherland from a ruthless enemy.

And the authorities can be understood too. Every day they dress in Zhukov's tunic to hide their insignificance, their lack of ideas, their thievery, their complete moral bankruptcy. The costumed generals also pretend to be heirs of the front-line soldiers, but in reality, they are heirs of the NKVD, continuators of the blocking detachments and convoys that drove soldiers liberated from German captivity into Soviet camps. So their "we can repeat it" turns out to be a repetition not of combat feats, but of blocking detachments'.

The authorities squeezed everything out of Victory; when one jester was exhausted, they shook him out of the effigy skin and stitched the next one in, while others stood around throwing ideas—what else could the gutted deity perform. It turned out to be kind of trained, it could do any tricks. It was tasked with election magic, explaining Crimea, burning distant Syria, devouring the opposition at home, and the effigy Victory handled it all. Until it was ordered to whip up a replica of the Great Patriotic War.

The task was not simple. We had to play for our side but act like fascists: start the war with night bombings of Kyiv, right according to the song's lyrics, and convince people that they attacked us; seize foreign land and stitch it to ourselves, but prove that we are liberating our own. Finally, push Russian people, even with Ukrainian passports, into mass graves, precisely in an SS manner, while making everyone on this side of the TV believe that the Nazis were exactly those they came to liberate. Complicated, in short, don't ask. Even the effigy, though nothing original was left in it but moth-eaten skin, had its hair standing on end.

But no matter, they smoothed it down, hung fake orders on it, pulled the pilot cap deeper, and sent it to feed the people. The people hesitated at first: it seemed like the patriotic war was theirs, not ours? But they doubled, tripled the effigy's airtime, and those who didn't want to be hypnotized by its glassy gaze were promised a term if they spoke up. And somehow it worked.

On this side of the TV, it worked. But on the other side, something unforeseen began. On that side, the war turned out to be truly Patriotic. Their enemy, from a mock, hypothetical one, became the most real, ruthless—and most importantly, senselessly cruel. And the whole world, no matter how the jesters danced, for some reason didn't believe that the effigy was alive. It became clear that the tsar could not win this war. That there would be a defeat—sooner or later, more catastrophic or less—but Victory would inevitably turn into Defeat. But it was already too late to turn back.

I want to reassure myself, and I tell myself: maybe this defeat will be a liberation for our people. Because the effigy skin is already bursting at the seams and will soon burst. And only when it bursts will people understand that they were deceived. That inside the effigy were hiding crooks and charlatans. That it was not a miracle of resurrection, but a vandal's outrage over the body of a saint.

There are things that cannot be explained to people. On paper or on YouTube, they seem nonsense, or it's completely unclear what they're mumbling about: how is it—not Nazis, how is it—not that war, how is it—they're not waiting for us there, how is it—the fascists are actually us, oh come on! Some things you won't understand unless you live through them.

Maybe it's good that now our authorities exploit the memory of those fallen on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War in this—the most vile, the most cannibalistic, and the most tasteless way possible—in line with their own tastelessness and cannibalism. Maybe it's good that at the height of this necro-chapiteau they will disgrace themselves in the middle of the world arena, only then will the unfortunate skin burst. Only then will people finally understand something. Only then will the depatrification of Russia occur, and we will stop dancing with skeletons, letting the spirits of our ancestors rest in peace.

But it's incredibly sad for the tens of thousands of people killed for nothing. Sad for the flourishing cities erased from the face of the earth. And also sad that the phrase "Russian soldier" will for a long time be associated not with the defense of the Motherland, but with raped women, murdered children, white ribbons with which people's hands are tied behind their backs in excavator pits, and with stolen goods that the poor army sends to the poor homeland to poor relatives.

The tsarism decided to break the museum display cases in vain. It was easy and good to make the effigy dance and bow to oneself—and nothing else was done to captivate or even entertain the people, and feeding them was somehow not convenient. The people's faith in Victory at least somewhat cemented the eternal swamps on which stands the gaudy palace of Putin's regime, consumed by rot. When the power itself destroys and corrodes the faith in Victory completely, this palace, a monument to provincialism, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, and the megalomania of its inhabitants, who have in no way deserved to rule a great power, will shudder, sway, and sink into the quagmire of Russian timelessness.