I remember the general mood on the eve of the Sochi Olympics: no one believed in our national team's victory. The discussions were only about the embezzlement on the Olympic construction sites, inflated budgets, and missed deadlines; it seemed then that theft was the only reason to host the Games in Russia—just like everything else, as always.

The victory of the Russian team, its first place in the overall medal standings, was a real miracle. After a series of failures, we were once again preparing for disgrace—as a whole nation; we were ready to make embarrassed jokes, ready to publicly flog ourselves. But—quietly, secretly, without admitting it to anyone to avoid ridicule—we hoped.

And only when our athletes came first did the floodgates open. This was the first victory of the new Russia, the first major victory in decades.

And we then—remember?—felt a sharp, genuine pride for our country. No one was left out, not even the grumbling liberal intelligentsia. It turned out that we all desperately, incredibly wanted to be proud of our Motherland, but for decades the authorities had made us feel only awkwardness and shame.

It was happiness. Watching the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, we Russians, regardless of nationality, felt like a united great nation, deserving of this triumph. And we were happy then to be rising again on the world podium, to be returning to it peacefully, recognized by all as winners without coercion.

We didn't need to roll tanks into Ukraine then, we didn't need to scare the West with bombers, remember? We were satisfied with a sporting victory, we were satisfied with a symbol. We were so hungry for respect, we so passionately wanted to remember how we were once great! It was dizzying.

And now it turns out: that victory was not deserved by us. Our athletes won because they were pumped with doping. It was a manipulation, a scam, yet another lie. Our state—entire ministries, entire special services—cheated and falsified, covered up and lied, to deceive the whole world and all of us. They concocted this victory, tricked other countries and us—why? For whom? For us?

The Sochi triumph turned out to be an equally humiliating fake, an equally KGB-style special operation, like Medvedev's modernization, like our Silicon Valley in Skolkovo, like our democracy, like all our rebirth from the ashes. A Potemkin one-dimensional village, Sobyanin's European Moscow. A painted hearth that neither shines nor warms; and now we've been poked into it with our long noses from lying.

We just wanted to remember what it was like to be proud of our country; but we were intoxicated by that trickster victory and made to believe in a global conspiracy against us, perverted our feelings, smeared them with tar and filth, distorted them—and set us against our brothers. We didn't want to fight with Ukrainians, we didn't want to hate them, we didn't want to suspect the West in everything and fear it, remember? We just wanted to finally be recognized as equals. We wanted not fear, but respect.

Now we are losing everything. The cheat is caught red-handed. Medals are being torn from necks. They point fingers at us and laugh. We dreamed of respect, and we receive shame.

To hide the lie, they will lie to us even more. They will tell us again from all screens that it's a conspiracy, that it's geopolitics, that the rising superpower is being hunted, exhausted, bled dry. And we will believe the lie, because it's easier and because we can't do otherwise.

And it is precisely our desperate, furious unwillingness to hear the truth that will prevent us from being reborn. We cannot rise from the ashes, for we have not burned, and a phoenix does not rise from carrion.

Until then, all our victories will be feigned and deceitful. But we will shout that we believe in them, because such a Russia will not need to be loved, but to shout that you love.

These are the games we deserve, you and I.