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As our readers realize, we underwent a staff transition at VQR over the past two years and at times had only one employee, Ted Genoways, selecting and editing the magazine’s content. Thus, it is remarkable that VQR received three National Magazine Awards nominations this year, including one for general excellence. Today we announce Ted’s resignation to focus on completing book projects and writing for OnEarth, Mother Jones, and Harper’s. As writers ourselves, we understand the importance of Ted following this calling.

Ted Genoways

“I look back on my nine years as editor with pride, but I also hope that the new staff will not feel in any way encumbered by that legacy,” Ted said in the University of Virginia announcement. “VQR is theirs to steward and re-imagine now, and I hope they will be able to build on and exceed past successes.”

The VQR staff congratulates Ted on an outstanding editorship. Effective June 1, Donovan Webster will be the interim editor. This summer we will launch a national search to fill the position.

As Ted has said, he did not run VQR alone in 2011. Our contributing editors, guest editors, and far-flung contributors made important contributions to the creative endeavor. The Office of the Vice President of Research provided invaluable support on business, administrative, and other matters over the last couple of years. We’ve appointed a superb new Advisory Board with national scope and broad expertise. And now new VQR colleagues are in place to ensure a smooth transition.

Our staff has been focused on our forthcoming special issue on American poetry—the perfect subject on which to conclude Ted’s tenure. More formal words of appreciation for Ted’s long service and leadership will come closer to May, as we say our farewells. But for now, we commend Ted as an editor and writer and for his singular vision for this magazine.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) today honored the Virginia Quarterly Review with three nominations for its prestigious National Magazine Awards—the magazine world’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. VQR, edited by Ted Genoways, was named as a finalist in three categories: General Excellence, Fiction, and Photography.

With three nominations, VQR was among a select group with multiple nominations. The only publications with more nominations are The New Yorker (6 nominations), New York (6), GQ (5), and Wired (4).

“Under Ted Genoways, Virginia Quarterly Review has become one of the most widely admired magazines in the country,” said Sid Holt, chief executive of ASME.

The General Excellence category recognizes overall excellence in magazines and honors the effectiveness with which writing, reporting, editing and design all come together to command readers’ attention and fulfill the magazine’s editorial mission. Also named as finalists in the Thought-Leader Magazine category are The American Scholar, Aperture, IEEE Spectrum, and The New Republic.

The Fiction category recognizes excellence in magazine fiction writing and the quality of a publication’s literary selections. VQR was nominated for Maggie Shipstead’s story “La Moretta” in the fall issue. We have made the story available online for free. Along with VQR, the other finalists are from The Atlantic, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Zoetrope: All-Story.

VQR’s nomination for Photography represents a first in our history. Other finalists are GQ, Interview, National Geographic, and Vogue.

The full announcement can be found at ASME’s website.

As publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review, it’s my pleasure to announce the appointment of Jane Friedman as Web Editor. Friedman, the former publisher and editorial director of Writer’s Digest, will join our staff in June to develop online and digital content and a larger social media presence for VQR.

I had the pleasure of watching Jane serve on a National Endowment for the Arts funding panel, and I can state from firsthand experience that she is gifted, energetic, and deeply knowledgeable about publishing and new trends in the field. We are particularly excited about her leadership in developing a greater community of online readers for VQR.

A nationally recognized expert on blogging and social media, Friedman has spoken on writing, publishing, and the future of media at more than 200 events since 2001, including South by Southwest, BookExpo America, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Jane says, “VQR’s quality contributors, historic archives, and strong brand offer a rich foundation for online community and new media growth. I couldn’t have asked for a more ideal publication or respected group of colleagues to work with.”

She is currently an assistant professor of e-media at the University of Cincinnati. She received her B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Evansville and M.A. in English from Xavier University in Cincinnati. You can read more about her background at her website, where she has an award-winning blog for writers. We are delighted to have Jane join the VQR staff.

A protester at the February 4 rally in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. (Max Avdeev)

As usual, there were lines at the metal detectors to get into the protest; this time, though, the pandemonium was more unexpected, given that the temperatures had hovered around, and occasionally dipped below, zero all week. Instructions on how to dress for the demonstration, aimed at the fashionable crowd that has constituted much of the power behind the anti-election-fraud rallies, were posted on social networks ahead of the Saturday gathering. They recommended thermal underwear, warming shoe insoles, an extra scarf around the waist, mittens instead of gloves, and, in one case, “a dead animal from the Mustelidae family tightly pulled over” your head. They also advised against drinking before the rally, which started at 1 p.m., and warned that thermoses would not be allowed beyond the metal detectors. One could buy tea along the protest’s route for 50 rubles (about $1.50).

Saturday’s event, sanctioned by the Moscow government after the by now-habitual negotiations over location, took the form of a march. Walking, the organizers reasoned, was more suited to winter weather than standing. The rally started at the Oktyabrskaya metro station (so named after the October Revolution) and ended at Bolotnaya Square, where the first such demonstration took place in December. The main drag of the protest, Bolshaya Yakimanka Street, was closed to traffic, and the police had blocked off all side streets. Demonstrators could either begin at the Oktyabrskaya metro or show up at Bolotnaya to hear the speeches. Along Bolshaya Yakimanka, people watched the march from their windows and balconies; some spectators waived white ribbons in support.

Protesters make their way through the Oktyabrskaya metro en route to the rally. (Max Avdeev)

Protesters walk the Bolshaya Yakimanka Street parade route to Bolotnaya Square. (Max Avdeev)

Along the parade route, supporters gave protesters white ribbons to pin to their coats and white balloons to release when they reached the square. (Max Avdeev)

It only takes a half-hour to walk the protest’s route, but the organizers had allocated an hour. Then, at Bolotnaya, the rally was supposed to go on another hour. The march was peaceful, journalists omnipresent, the police calm and cold. All the usual factions, from the Rainbow Association of Russia to the nationalists, had shown up. Although the demonstrators walked at a leisurely pace, mixing snow and de-icing chemicals into a gray-brown slush beneath their feet, the square was full by 1:30 p.m.—half an hour ahead of schedule.

If the walk felt brisk and crisp, at Bolotnaya people were starting to feel the weather’s bite. One man was carrying a felt blanket neatly folded up inside a plastic bag; I later spotted another protester wrapped in one, jumping in place to keep warm. Small icicles had formed on countless beards and mustaches. Walking through the square, the demonstrators were watching their step carefully, trying to avoid the muddy puddles that would mean frozen toes later on.

Plummeting temperatures left protesters with frozen toes and icy beards. (Max Avdeev)

A band of Buddhist drummers was performing on a patch of untouched snow in the middle of Bolotnaya. The loudspeakers blasted classic Russian rock songs, many of them the soundtrack of Perestroika, including the legendary “We want changes!” by the 1980s band Kino (which had been recently banned on the Belorussian radio). Flags, animated by a slight but cold breeze, occasionally wrapped around protesters’ heads. A plethora of trenchant banners and posters, the trademark of oppositional rallies, filled Bolotnaya, invigorating the protesters who quoted choice slogans to their companions. Many of the signs poked fun at the rival pro-Putin demonstration that was taking place simultaneously in another part of Moscow. One poster read, “I am a teacher and I am here,” referring to the alleged government recruiting (under the threat of being fired, some reported) of state employees, from managers to mailmen, for the anti-opposition rally; another said, “I paid for this protest, not the other way around.”

The music ended, and speeches began crackling from loudspeakers on stage. We tried to get close but were pushed back by dozens of people going the other way. A moment of panic followed, as protesters stumbled backward onto one another, and for a second it seemed we would all fall into the slush. “Why is everyone walking back?” a man in his forties, his glasses fogged up and his face white from the cold, asked. Then we heard “Prokhorov! Prokhorov!” Video operators with giant cameras were bumping into protestors while their colleagues tried to interview the newly-minted presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov. The owner of the New Jersey Nets soon appeared, towering over the crowd and looking tall enough to be a basketball player himself. As he exited the rally, calm returned, and we made our way forward.

Protesters line the wall along the frozen Moscow River. One sign compares Vladimir Putin to Montgomery Burns on the American TV show The Simpsons.

It was hard to hear what was being said on stage; Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko Party who had recently been denied registration for presidential elections, made a short speech that met with the crowd’s approval. So, too, Leonid Parfyonov, a news anchor. The six speakers had been allotted only three minutes each. Mostly, we could only make out the usual slogans, “Russia without Putin!” and “Freedom to political prisoners!” To my left, a group of young women chanted, “Our feet are not frozen!” while hopping in place. A couple of men in their twenties were searching for a comfortable place to stand. Surveying the banners of the Rainbow Association, one of which read, “You too are queer,” they mumbled to themselves and walked on.

Half an hour ahead of the rally’s planned conclusion, there was a momentary lull in the speeches from the stage, and the demonstrators began to disband. Then Yury Shevchuk, a rock star well-known both for his music and his dislike of Putin, began singing his 1990s hit “Motherland.” The crowd halted, and enthusiastically joined in on the chorus: “Motherland! Let them yell that she’s ugly! But we like it, although she’s no great beauty!” The song’s end signaled the conclusion of the rally; the sea of banners resumed its movement toward the square’s exit. The organizers thanked the protesters for attending, the police for their service, and the government for sanctioning the rally. Once again, the neighboring restaurants overflowed with well-heeled demonstrators trying to regain feeling in their extremities. Meanwhile, ten kilometers away, over a hundred thousand people who had attended the pro-Putin rally were trying to do the same.

A police officer stands in front of a blocked off Triumfalnaya Square ahead of the arrival of protesters on New Year's Eve in Moscow, Russia. Opposition protesters, organized by Strategia-31, planned to gather in Triumfalnaya Square on New Year’s Eve as part of their monthly protest but arrived to find it closed and surrounded by police.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Running toward the escalator at the Mayakovskaya metro station, I glimpsed a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. It might be more correct to say that I spotted a familiar figure: an elderly woman in a fur hat, leaning on her walker, surveying the station from a bench. Her picture had appeared in a number of news articles about last week’s protests (including my own). “Do you know you’re all over the Western media?” I asked the woman. She leaned in to hear better, her white protest ribbon and her World War II decorations intertwined. Her eyes widened with surprise, then pleasure. We chatted. “I’ve already been to the protest today,” she said, “but I’m not going back. It’s full of police.” Someone might get killed, she thought, if not by the police, then because the law enforcement would be distracted by the protesters.

Half an hour later I was being pushed down the street by a line of riot police who were attempting to clear the sidewalk. As I tried to squeeze into the wall of people, a helmeted officer edged me forward with his elbow. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he instructed me impatiently. As the shoving subsided, I found myself pushed up against another line of policemen. I could not see any protesters around me; it was all journalists, cameras flashing and rolling. I made my way back up the street, climbing up a few steps toward the door of a fast food joint to get a better view. As I settled into my new position, surveying the crowd, I was startled by a walkie-talkie going off next to me. It turned out the people I had assumed to be passersby or fellow observers seeking a better vantage point were plainclothes police.

Protesters and journalists face off with police on the street near Triumfalnaya Square.

A protester is moved to a police bus after being arrested.

The atmosphere was pregnant with anticipation. A couple protesters had been pushed into awaiting police buses. The arrests were amazingly swift: an opposition member would wave a banner or shout a political slogan (mostly in support of Taisia Osipova, an activist who was sentenced to ten years of prison for alleged drug trafficking this week); a few riot police would surround him or her, pushing them toward the bus; the press would follow, blinding flashes in their wake; the police would frisk the activists in a split second, and then the arrested would disappear into the bus, pulled in by the well-trained arms inside.

As I was looking over the scene, another sweep of the street was starting. A group of young riot policemen—they seemed to be in their early twenties, some shy and others seemingly emotionless—were preparing for the march. As they awaited orders, one picked his teeth, despite photojournalists taking pictures all around him; another smiled slyly and waved toward where I stood. A woman in her sixties, with perfect grey curls and a sparkly beret, rushed past the police and toward the metro.

A pedestrian walks through a group of police organizing a line to push protesters off the sidewalk.

Police push back protestors and journalists, in an effort to keep the sidewalks clear for pedestrians.

This time, the police did not overlook those perched on the fast food restaurant’s stoop. Two cameramen, one holding the other, were separated and pushed down, hard; I raised my arms in the air, hoping to avoid the rough treatment. The policeman barely looked at me, but spared me the push-and-pull. In the meantime, the officer leading the charge screamed, “Do not hurry!” to his subordinates.

By the police barricade where I ended up, things were relatively calm. Journalists were debating the number of those arrested. (Twenty-one seemed to be the final consensus.) At the protest as a whole, the number of reporters far exceeded the number of activists; the former were, in turn, significantly outnumbered by the police, who had cordoned off the Triumfalnaya Square where the demonstration was supposed to be held, and who lined the streets around it. The police were asking the “dear citizens” to clear the street for traffic and move along. “Everyone is walking just fine—relax!” an activist shouted while walking by the barricades. “This event is not sanctioned by the government,” was the refrain of the omnipresent loudspeaker announcements.

Pedestrians, many dressed up and carrying gifts on their way to New Year’s Eve parties, make their way through the crowd of police and protesters.

Two men, one wearing a button for the group Strategia-31, watch from a distance as protesters struggle with police. Both men were arrested at a protest on December 5 and feared rearrest.

The protest was, indeed, one of a series never approved by the government. It was coordinated by a group that calls itself Strategia-31, in honor of the thirty-first article of the Russian constitution that mandates the right to free and peaceful assembly. Strategia-31 largely consists of nationalist Bolsheviks, whose party, headed by the infamous writer Eduard Limonov, has been outlawed in Russia since 2007. This particular demonstration, though, was dedicated to Taisia Osipova, and many thought that it might turn out to be better-attended and more politically diverse than previous Strategia-31 events, following so closely on the heels of two large and peaceful protests. While the police arrested most of those actively protesting—those screaming “Russia will be free” and “Freedom for Taisia Osipova” or waving large banners, including one that proclaimed DEATH TO THE KREMLIN OCCUPIERS—they did not seem interested in being overzealous. A group of women in their sixties holding anti-Putin banners was never bothered by the law enforcement; they gave interviews and chanted freely, to the surprise of passersby, many of whom were trying to get to concerts and New Year’s parties.

Much, if not most, of the protest turned into a game of cat-and-mouse between the police on the one side and the activists and media on the other. Streets and crosswalks would be blocked off, then reopened; the crowd would be directed to the right, then to the left. Thanks to the constant nudging of the riot police, the demonstration proceeded farther and farther away from its original location, until finally only a group of about fifty people was left. They, too, were quickly separated and dispersed. As a few dozen activists and journalists lingered, wondering whether this was really the end of the protest (barely an hour and a half after it got started) a loudspeaker announcement came on. “The event is over,” the policeman said. “The event is over,” he repeated, and then added, “It is time for us to set our dinner tables.” He then wished everyone a Happy New Year, sounding a little taunting.

“It is time for us to set our dinner tables,” an officer called into a bullhorn, as police dispersed protesters and journalists.

Police remove barriers from Triumfalnaya Square after the protest on New Year's Eve.

Next to the metro, where the remaining crowd was directed, a group of policemen were joking around. One was petting a German shepherd, who seemed completely placated by the officer’s touch. Searching his pockets for a treat, the policeman finally offered the dog some gum.

The Maine lobster industry has developed a reputation as one of the best managed fisheries in the world. At a time when fish stocks across the globe are depleting at an alarming rate and natural ecologies are reeling from overfishing, many in the industry believe that Maine is getting it right. By giving the responsibility to self-manage the industry to multi-generational fishing families, Maine has ensured that lobster fishing is performed by small, personal operations with the incentive, in a region with few other economies, to carefully manage the fishery. But few have considered how this ethic is enforced—through a fierce brand of self-interested territorialism that can occasionally turn violent—or how the fishermen’s plan to protect oversized lobsters and egg-bearing females has produced a denser lobster population that may be increasingly vulnerable to a catastrophic die-off.

This multimedia slideshow, reported with photographer Travis Dove in Spring 2011, seeks to explore these social and environmental issues through the lens of the Head Harbor lobstermen of Stonington, Maine.

Click below to watch Jesse Dukes’s audio slideshow “Consider the Lobstermen.”

To learn more, read Jesse Dukes’s essay “Consider the Lobstermen.”

In July 2011, I embedded with Third Squad, First Platoon, Blackfoot Company, 1/5 Marines, in Helmand Province’s Sangin District. While there, I shot diptych portraits of the young men of this one Marine squad—in uniform in color, out of uniform in black and white—and interviewed them, in the middle of their seven-month tour, about their thoughts on Afghanistan, the dangers they faced, and what they had learned about the realities of war. By the time, they returned to Camp Pendleton, California, three months later, First Platoon had suffered 50 percent casualties—including three deaths and a half-dozen traumatic amputations, all caused by pressure-plate IEDs. The slideshows I have produced, with the assistance of Jesse Dukes, document Third Squad, as they coped with the sorrow and stress of war.

* * *

In the first segment, “Life in Sangin,” four of Third Squad’s Marines describe daily life in one of southern Afghanistan’s bloodiest districts.

* * *

In the second segment, “Danger and Death,” four of Third Squad’s Marines reflect on living with the constant threat of death and dismemberment.

* * *

In the final segment, “What We Know,” three of Third Squad’s Marines and their Navy Hospital Corpsman talk about what they’ve learned at war—and what they’ll share with friends and family at home.

In the 1960s, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers were diverted by the Soviet Union to irrigate cotton plantations. Deprived of its two main tributaries, the shores of the Aral Sea, which spanned from the North in Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan at its Southern tip, began to recede—taking with it the fishing industry, as well as much of the sustainable agriculture of both countries. The damming also left behind miles of desert where fresh water had once flourished, with sandstorms now becoming frequent during the increasingly hot, dry summers. And what remained of the waters of the Aral was turned into an hyper-salinated pool of agricultural pesticides, killing off most remaining fish and surrounding wildlife as well. Health problems and unemployment pushed droves of people into neighboring cities and towns. Such was the case with Tactubek. A once thriving fishing town of more than a hundred houses near the water’s edge, it now rests twelve kilometers away, with just twenty houses occupied primarily by fisherman and their families.

In 2001, though, after years of failed attempts by locals to construct a manmade dam, the World Bank together with the Kazakh government responded with the thirteen kilometer Dike Kokaral, an $86 million project, designed to raise the water level of the Northern Aral Sea by containing flow into the severely diminished Southern part of the Sea. Extirpated species of fish were reintroduced, and a Danish NGO donated fishing nets to local villagers. But catch levels are still very low, with yearly production projected at 10,000 metric tons for 2012. The main fishing plant, a sleek new structure, sits behind a large wrought iron gate, seemingly out of service for the moment. Just across the sandy road, camels graze around a pool of water crested with brown foam. From here the sea seems far from returned.

This multimedia presentation, produced with Paulo Siqueira, asks the question: can a new dam reclaim a lost sea and restore a way of life?

Click below to watch Nadia Shira Cohen’s “The Lovely Sea.”

The image of Canada as an untouched pristine wilderness is a myth. In the world of mining, it is a land of giants—home to massive deposits of almost every mineral and metal bought and sold on commodity markets throughout the world, a global leader in extraction and processing. Nickel, copper, silver, zinc, cobalt, rare earth metals, and the list goes on. The world’s largest gold producing company, Barrick Gold Corporation is based in Toronto, not New York or London. Canada has long been a natural resource pillar in the worlds of production and the trading of commodities. From the hammering of the jackleg and jumbo drills underground to the ringing of the stock exchange bells, corporate empires have been built on the riches extracted from the Canadian Shield. And within that rich geological formation, straddling Northeast Ontario and reaching into Northeastern Quebec, is a region the industry has dubbed the Golden Triangle—a hard rock mining Mecca stretching from Val-d’Or in Quebec, west to Timmins in Ontario, and south to Sudbury, one of the world’s largest and oldest nickel mining capitols. It has attracted just about every mining corporation in the world for over one hundred years. It beckons legions of miners, shaft sinkers, and diamond drillers known throughout the industry for their skill and unmatched determination. It is said they would tunnel to the center of the earth if asked.

The new multimedia slideshow presented here, with production by Jesse Dukes, is culled from thousands of images shot over a twelve-year period, during which I toured more than eighty mines and smelters in the Golden Triangle. As the son of immigrant laborers, I have always been fascinated by the politics of work and commerce. Underground mining of gold and uranium in this region produces high silica content in the air—and an overwhelming number of miners suffer from the severe lung damage known as silicosis—but these communities also have given rise to some of the most militant labor unions in North American history. By examining the social issues surrounding workers and market economies, we gain a clearer understanding of the symbiotic nature of the global economy we all participate in.

Click below to watch Louie Palu’s slideshow “The Golden Triangle.”

To learn more, read Louie Palu’s “The Underground Giant: Life in the Hard Rock Mines of Quebec and Ontario.”

Protesters roam the streets of Moscow at the end of the December 10 gathering in Bolotnaya Square. (Max Avdeev)

At the end of 1989, when the Soviet Bloc was in its death throes, a miraculous healer appeared on TV. His name was Anatoly Kashpirovsky, a Ukrainian-born psychotherapist and self-appointed guru. His “tele-séances” were broadcast on the main channels in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe, entrancing 300 million people hungry for deliverance. Pirated videotapes of his appearances circulated among friends and neighbors. In Bulgaria, I remember my parents watching him in the evenings in our tiny apartment, highly skeptical of his methods, but nevertheless curious to see the famed man who claimed to cure, through hypnosis, every disease imaginable, including diabetes, tuberculosis, baldness, impotence, as well as cancer and AIDS. Dressed in black, with short-cropped hair and a mesmerizing glare, his voice a smooth baritone, he was the Rasputin of the television age, the last priest of the Soviet Empire.

A screen capture of one of Kaspirovsky's tele-séances in the late 1980s.

“Some kind of power is keeping you glued to your seats and no one can leave, even the skeptics,” he would slowly say, staring directly into the camera, his forehead furrowed. A maudlin soundtrack would play in the background, as if Kashpirovsky was delivering a dramatic movie speech. “Don’t worry if you don’t feel anything… One, two, three, four… For many of you pain has already disappeared. And for many of you, when you encounter pain tomorrow, you won’t feel it anymore… Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… I’m just counting, so you don’t think about the meaning of what’s being said.” By this point most people in the audience would have closed their eyes, swaying lightly in their seats.

It was a strange thing, the teachings of a mystic healer officially televised in the land of atheism and scientific progress. Could it be that, with the Soviet system morally and financially ruined, with the myths of Communist ideology dispelled, the leaders of the country were eager to keep people stuck to their seats at all costs, even if that meant hiring a medium. Quackery has always been popular in time of calamities and national tragedies, but in turbulent 1989 it was needed more than ever. People felt the need to grab onto something—anything—as they were quickly losing the ground under their feet. All the old doctrines—an entire worldview—was coming to an end.

“At the end of this séance, those of you who can open their eyes will open them. Others will keep them obediently closed,” Kashpirovsky said.

Kashpirovsky’s star disappeared from the Soviet sky as quickly as it was born. Even his soothing voice and unblinking gaze could not avert the impending disaster for too long. Perhaps this is the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago: the hypnotic spell was finally broken and people opened their eyes to see they had been cheated out of their money and freedom by a party of charlatans.

The reality, though, proved too cruel to bear for long. The plunder of public funds, the quick and shady privatization of state companies by party apparatchiks and former state-security agents, the bloody war in Chechnya, the collapse of the social system, the loss of moral compass: the 1990s in Russia were a time of chaos, when the wealth and natural resources of the biggest country in the world passed into the hands of a few oligarchs, while the vast majority of the population was left in a state of penniless misery. It was against such background that Vladimir Putin, the most able political hypnotist of our time, rose to the office of the presidency in 2000. Overwhelmed by nostalgia for the “good old times,” Russians were eager to start dreaming once again, and Putin was the man whose voice they heeded.

Demonstrators gather to protest election fraud on December 24 on Academician Sakharov Avenue in Moscow. (Maisie Crow)

Whether the recent protests in Moscow and around the country represent an awakening from Putin’s lengthy séance still remains to be seen. The crowd of 120,000 people (according to organizers) who showed up on Academician Sakharov Avenue on December 24 is perhaps the biggest civic event in Russia since the early 1990s. It is bracing to see Russian citizens finally put behind their apathy and skepticism of the political process to take matters in their own hands. They’ve been manipulated by con men for far too long. The fear of another economic and political vacuum, however, is still great, and many prefer to continue watching Putin perform on television rather than get up from their seats. One term, two terms, three, four… Counting has always had a calming effect on the human psyche, for one does not have to listen to what is being said.

Meanwhile, Kashpirovsky has returned to the stage.