Necromancy Has Become a Form of State Analytics in russia

A pro-government russian socio-political publication has published a “posthumous interview” with vladimir zhirinovsky. The editorial team contacted a medium, who “summon the spirit” of the politician – and the spirit, without any unnecessary formalities, commented on the timing of the end of wars, assured readers that a global conflict was impossible, and advised them to plant potatoes. The piece was published without a hint of irony, in the full format of expert analytics, and the audience swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

This is not a marginal curiosity. It is a working media product for a country where television still shapes the worldview, while critical thinking has been methodically squeezed out of the public sphere for decades. Readers who watch solovyov every evening take an interview with a deceased person in their stride – the register is the same, the logic is no different.

In parallel, an exhibition dedicated to zhirinovsky has opened in moscow. Older visitors – the main demographic group of putin’s electorate – are invited to listen to “prophecies”, try on the politician’s jackets, sing karaoke and join the LDPR party. A separate display documents “fulfilled predictions” as evidence of almost supernatural abilities. There are queues.

An audience that has been consuming propaganda as news for decades cannot distinguish between mysticism and analytics, not because it is incapable of doing so, but because it has never had any reason to learn how. The state has seen to that.

In this context, another moscow attraction seems quite natural: right in the heart of the capital, an unburied, embalmed corpse has lain for decades – and none of the discussions about its burial has ever reached a conclusion. The dead in russia do work. Sometimes they even give interviews.