My homeland is rapidly transforming, in just a few short months, from a quasi-market, pseudo-democracy stuck in a transitional phase—with its civil liberties, let's say, shattered but at least its personal freedoms untouched—into a horrifying, embittered, paranoid North Korea, as if bitten by rabies, with eyes forever veiled in red, hunger, fever, and saliva dripping from its fangs. A country where political enemies are fed alive to the dogs. Where there are nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, but never enough rice to feed a terrified populace that hasn't known anything else for half a century.

And we have our own North, described by Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn, which should be remembered and feared—but we are drawn to it, towards it, into it—why?!

Why, I ask myself, are Russians so eager and joyful to give up their freedom? Why do they applaud so wildly when they are forbidden to gather in groups of more than three and when they face five real human years in prison for reposting critical comments on social media? When internet access is tied to passport identification? Why are they moved to tears of joy when we are forcibly saddled with a meaningless Crimea, which just six months ago nobody wanted even as a gift? Why do they suddenly believe again, with such childlike trust, in the most talentless, crude, clumsy lies from the television, as if they weren't taught in the late USSR not to trust state lies? Why are they willing to fight to the death for the pocket banks of the president's friends? Why do they rejoice when the president punishes our enemies by forbidding us to eat? Why are they so eager for a clash with the West, where does such hatred for it come from, such distrust and desire for revenge? What is there to avenge? And why, for the sake of this revenge, are they willing to give up the freedom to say what they please, the freedom to travel abroad, and even basic food, and the small change that has just started jingling in their pockets?

I speak with my neighbors, my school friends, fellow travelers on trains and planes, the old ladies at the entrance of my building, and I ask them: Have you all gone mad? I understand very well why this whole New Cold War charade is necessary for the group of people in power: to stay in power as long as possible. But why does the populace, whose life in the impending North Korea will be hungry and unfree, rush headlong into it, why are they so drawn to the icy and grim world behind the barbed wire?

I talk to neighbors, old ladies, cops, businessmen, financiers, patriotic writers, propagandists from the TV, and I realize: I am frighteningly distant from the people. It seemed to me, idiot that I am, that my beloved country would be better off if the state removed the collar from its citizens. If it entrusted each person with their own fate. If it allowed people to live, create, provide for themselves and their loved ones, and—by building their lives with all their might—together build a new country, free, caring for its citizens, because it is made up of them—and powerful.

But people, I understand now, were unhappy in a market democracy. People were desolate without a meaning a million times greater than the mundane, everyday meaning of their short couch-and-garden existences. People were afraid to make all the decisions for themselves in the tumultuous world of consumer capitalism. People sought a Leader, in the primitive sense, the Indian sense, the communist sense—because they found it hard to find their own way. They were unaccustomed and clumsy at thinking for themselves—and they dreamed of the television thinking for them. Finally, people needed an enemy, because living without an enemy and without a Leader was as difficult as living without meaning. Because our democracy, even if of Vietnamese tailoring, and our freedom, even if accidental and desperate like a yard dog that has broken free from its leash, and our market economy, even if it stems from the rotten Cherkizovsky market—still appeared to people as immense, terrifying, and empty as the cosmos.

We ran and ran through the tundra, but by evening we returned to our tent and sat at the entrance. We found we had nothing to do with this freedom. We hadn't asked for it, by the way: the leash simply wore out. But what we want is a leader, a common harness, to have the wind in our ears, and the wind in our heads, to tear wolves to pieces, to fight for frozen fish, to feel the warm side of a friend next to us, and to race endlessly into the icy sunset.

I thought we were people. It turns out—we are Laikas.