Do you have to swallow when you suck? This question has recently resurfaced with new urgency among the Russian intelligentsia.

When power falls into the hands of impostors, they have two ways to ensure they never lose it again: through lies and through violence. By violence, we don't necessarily mean mass repression—targeted actions can be quite effective. Through a demonstration of force and the ability to use that force without hesitation to protect their power, the impostors try to intimidate and demoralize any opposition. The year seventeen is not thirty-seven; in the age of television, night raids and the GULAG are excessive. It suffices to kill a couple of prominent opposition figures and imprison a few well-known freethinkers to make the rest of the opposition behave more modestly and for freethinkers to hold their tongues. This is the advantage of an information society over an industrial one. But lies, which we understand as total disinformation of the population, are an even more effective tool for usurping and retaining usurped power in an information society.

Lies are not just a distortion of information about what is happening in the country and the world. It is not only the deliberate confusion and deception of the population, opponents, and even one's own supporters regarding one's intentions to thwart any attempts at resistance. It is also the creation of a virtual mythological environment that impostors use to replace objective reality. Deprived of access to a truthful picture of the outside world, the population receives a simplified, distorted picture, with incorrectly placed emotional accents—yet extremely powerful ones, tied to national and cultural myths and archetypes—so strong that they can completely block an ordinary person's ability to critically analyze the situation. By creating, inflating, or imitating a war with a new or eternal enemy (fascists, Chechens, Jews, liberals, nationalists, homosexuals, Americans, Albanians, Serbs, Armenians, Tutsis), impostors can very quickly switch mass consciousness into wartime mode, where the population is forced to think in terms of "us or them" and choose "with us or against us." By leading this war, impostors consolidate the majority behind them by demonizing and oppressing the designated enemy, whether real (Tutsis) or symbolic (Americans). This is done every time exclusively in the interests of the impostors and to maintain their power. War becomes a source of legitimacy for the impostors. No one elected them, but wartime does not presuppose elections. Here, it seems simple: there are oppressors (even if in the modern world oppression is reduced to the usurpation of state resources by a group of random individuals) and there are the oppressed (even if they are simply deprived of their legitimate right to a share of their country's wealth). The oppressors disorient the people, trying to hold onto power for as long as possible. The people live in an imaginary reality and fight an imaginary enemy instead of realizing the true source of their woes and the reasons for their deprivation.

But there is a third element in this system, which in our country is customarily called the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia, thanks to education and professional skills in critical analysis, understands exactly what is happening in the country. Although it was raised in the same cultural, historical, and archetypal context, it is not its hostage. It knows what a myth is and can distinguish it from reality, especially when this myth is a crude and tasteless new creation. It can tell the difference between the fascists in Kiev in forty-one and the "fascists" in Kiev in two thousand fourteen. It knows the word "Anschluss." It has a longer and more accurate memory. The ability to draw historical parallels prevents it from being surprised by each new twist of power and taking it at face value. Its closeness to power and an approximate understanding of its mechanisms prevent it from treating power as something sacred.

In short, the intelligentsia approximately understands how everything is actually arranged. With fewer details and more romantically than those in power understand, but more objectively and detachedly. That is why the intelligentsia poses a particular danger to the authorities: the most important tool for impostors to retain power—lies—works much worse on the intelligentsia.

Moreover, without the help of the intelligentsia, the authorities will not be able to recreate and apply this tool. The ordinary usurper—whether militarily straightforward or cunning like a secret service agent—is usually not a creative person. He cannot synthesize or spread myths. The last figure in our history, for example, who combined both beginnings was Vladimir Lenin. His predecessors and successors needed the help and support of the intelligentsia (at earlier stages, the clergy) to deceive, stupefy, corrupt, and subjugate the people.

The well-worn literary plot of selling one's soul to the devil is precisely so common because any intellectual living in an authoritarian state, who has understood as much as possible the injustices of the world order and has gained some fame as a master of thought, one day receives an invitation. He is offered to abandon attempts at critical analysis and put his talent at the service of the "Fatherland"—that is, the group of people who currently hold power in it, oppressing and disinforming the people.

The devil as an image, chosen by subtle creative natures to describe their temptation, is very accurate here—and it comes precisely from the fact that they, the bastards, understand everything perfectly. They understand from whom to take money and from whom to accept orders, at whose corporate events and victory concerts to sing. From whom to accept blows with a broom instead of a whip. They understand for whom to campaign—and against whom. All journalists-artists-painters-directors-writers understand this. Museum curators, media speakers, historians, lyricists, and physicists. These are all smart people; they were not born into the intelligentsia, they became it. And if they managed to achieve enough success in their highly competitive environment to be noticed by the authorities, it means they have enough intelligence to understand what exactly this power wants from them.

It wants them to close their eyes to lies and violence, to help lie more convincingly and gracefully. To oppose themselves (following the authorities) to the people and turn against them. And finally (which makes this pathetic comparison quite accurate) to believe in the lie themselves, having renounced their former selves. This is real devilry, without hyperbole.

Not all of them even hesitate: many themselves knock on the doors of power, like salesmen going from office to office with their soul, looking for that department of hell where they will be interested and offer a comparable price. And those who are overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance find themselves justifications and explanations. It's all just a matter of time, and for arguments, a smart person who understands the complexity of the world order and can put everything in context will not be lacking. Especially since the alternative to a broom blow is a whip blow. It's enough to whip one for others to think twice.

So should we condemn the lousy intelligentsia? No, we won't. Everyone wants to live, and everyone wants to live well. And for personal heroism, you need very serious reasons: if the enemies, for example, burn down your native hut—then yes, then you'll have to; but if it's just a tele-dictatorship, like ours—then it's nothing terrible, then cognitive dissonance is quite tolerable. We'll sing, dance, steam, and promote.

But at least we can be honest with ourselves, right? At least with ourselves? To kind of sell your soul, but not unclench the middle finger in your pocket? This middle finger in the pocket is the most popular form of resistance to impostors and usurpers here.