My first article for the eXile is now online. Here is an excerpt from “A Russian-Watcher’s Fairytale“:
Russia and the world were stunned by the assassination of Vladimir Putin as he walked out of a midnight mass at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow on January 7, 2008.” This line is not out of Brad Thor’s spy thriller State of the Union or Robert Ludlum’s historical dystopia The Tristan Betrayal. This fanciful scenario can be found in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ new report “Alternative Futures for Russia to 2017.” More specifically, “A Shot in the Dark … and True Dictatorship,” the second of three “alternative scenarios” Kremlinologist Andrew Kuchins, formerly of the Carnegie Endowment, predicts for Russia over the next decade, a report which caused a minor shitstorm in Russia last week.
Predicting Russia, however, is more than just an academic venture. It is a genre in and of itself. A sort of “social science fiction” where the Socratic Method is employed to weave fanciful and farcical tales about the Great Bear. And like any literary genre it posits a narrative filled with heroes and villains, climax, and foreshadowed resolutions. All that is historically contingent is flattened. All that is seemingly unexpected is, by the plot’s end, all too expected.
