Psychologist Kira Merkun states on Radio Svoboda that “war is accelerated old age”. Despite the quest for eternal youth proclaimed in the 2000s, Russian citizens have been considerably worn down during the “special military operation”, abandoning their youthful protest.
Merkun recalls the ‘Operation Sodom and Wallachia’, described a hundred years ago in a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, in which Professor Preobrazhensky cynically used monkey ovaries to rejuvenate a dubious clientele during the regime change; among his clients were those who could issue the ‘final document’, but this did not save them.
After all, even the ‘Kremlin dreamers’ use war as a rejuvenating agent to boost their adrenaline; the drug of war has renewed their blood, but it will hasten their demise. Life under the influence of war lasts no longer than the war itself.
Another scholar cited by Merkun, the Soviet professor Vladimir Frolkis – a world-renowned gerontologist and member of the New York Academy of Sciences, who spent his entire life in Kyiv – believed that ageing was a slow death caused by stress. Ageing and stress have similar mechanisms and consequences, a phenomenon known as the ‘stress-ageing syndrome’.
The imposed expectation of the end of the world and the certainty of going to heaven, instigated on several occasions by Vladimir Putin, is transforming the lives of Russian workers on the home front into a state of ‘accelerated ageing’, with psychological symptoms including pessimism, depression, anxiety and social phobia, as well as hair loss, tooth loss, and a decline in intelligence and memory.
The stress caused by the war can be actively countered or avoided. Or one can adapt, resign oneself to it, if the alternative is death. People adapt to stress as the norm, becoming aggressors on principle (“I’ll kill them all!”) or victims (“What can I do?”). Stratification based on role expectations creates a tense and toxic environment, with a high risk of encountering aggression in the most unexpected places. Unconscious aggression is more terrifying than conscious, controlled aggression.
Accelerated ageing mainly affects those who have chosen a form of ‘learned helplessness’ in the hope of securing clemency from a cruel fate through submission, thereby becoming invisible to its watchful eye.
The victim’s strategy is to buy their way out, to withdraw, gradually giving up their life and achievements in exchange for a brief period of peace. Like the elderly, Russians who are still vigorous have rushed to hide within comfortable informational and social bubbles to remain in blissful ignorance.
For a face to smile again, genuine social interaction is needed. Older people are advised to do their own shopping, in silence, resisting relatives who try to order home-delivered meals for them, as was the case during the pandemic. The expressionless faces on the street are frightening; the lack of reaction from the person you are speaking to is disheartening.
Is this the result of a ‘spiral of silence’ – the desire to hide true emotions and thoughts in order to please the majority? And who can know what the majority thinks if they too remain silent? People used to chat casually; now they scrutinise carefully, judge with tension and look for faults.
Studies have shown that even 60 years on, children of war still display deep mistrust, regardless of whether their country won or lost. They live their whole lives as if they were old, willing to forgo joy in the name of personal peace.
During the war, teenagers develop a perception of a ‘dangerous world’ and psychological barriers to communication. In adverse conditions, they become aggressive and vindictive, and increasingly wonder how to deal with bullies, classmates and teachers.
Most Russians still do not recognise themselves as victims of the home front, seeking the causes of their own misfortunes in unhappy love affairs, a hostile atmosphere and genetic engineering. Feelings of anxiety and guilt over general misfortune seek an outlet, echoing past experiences of failure.
The ‘victims’ suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder not because of the ongoing war, but because of old parent-child conflicts and romantic dramas from their youth. People from their past are demonised and blamed: parents, ex-lovers, old friends, and colleagues with whom they have had conflicts.
The war has brought to light an abyss of unresolved personal traumas, with devastating consequences. The terror of imminent death ages everyone, and the elderly become cruel.
Just as in the 1987 Soviet thriller *Ten Little Indians*, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin – which only achieved enormous popularity during the Russian war in Afghanistan – the plot has become a recurring theme of life on the Russian home front.
The protagonists are trapped with a madman on an island far from the mainland. The story taps into Russians’ deepest fears, and the desire of post-Soviet citizens to deal with madmen and swindlers of all kinds, in pursuit of profit, fame and privilege.
In the story, an elderly judge experiences one last, great triumph by sending ten hand-picked subjects, including himself, to the afterlife.
It is the typical fantasy of an old man, on both sides of the Kremlin wall: to lock up all the important people alongside himself and go straight to heaven or hell – what difference does it make? The others will die anyway.
The key scene and the symbolic line ‘This is the end, and you know it!’ come from the lips of the old warrior, General MacArthur, played by Mikhail Gluzsky.
As the film featured famous actors, family members and loved ones, Gluzsky portrayed the first – and, to date, only – civilian general as ‘one of our own’ in Russian cinema, who ultimately repents bitterly, accepting the verdict as a relief.
When the mind is unable to process the present experience, reflection is reduced to dredging up bad memories, rummaging through old trinkets.
This is what happens to lonely elderly people, who try to mentally restore justice, belatedly defending their rights: flashbacks, obsessions, the same monologue every evening, fateful conversations that never took place and never will, with those who have long since departed, far away, gone, dead.
The war has served as a pretext not only for dredging up classic Russian national resentment, but also for the personal regression of citizens who have lost the prospect of a normal life, even one that is only remotely meaningful.
The collapse of their sense of the future is perceived by most people as the approaching end of the world, an excuse to settle scores with those who have wronged them.
At times this resembles a gypsy dance with a grand finale, as people try to feign victory to avoid taking inner responsibility for what they have done in life.
When asked the diagnostic question: “What do you think about when you look in the mirror?”, Russian patients began to reply, “We don’t have a mirror” or “I don’t look at myself”.
They started to avoid the question, or even to hide mirrors behind chests of drawers or turn them towards the wall, as if there were a dead person in the house. The mirror is an external eye, gazing reproachfully, humiliating; it is a source of suffering.
One young couple declared that mirrors are vulgar, the sort of thing only insecure people use. It is thought that they were removed from the Kremlin even earlier, replaced by white screens showing old recordings.
Judging by people’s confessions, they have also started disabling doorbells and intercoms, to feel invulnerable at least within their own homes, and couriers are going mad, unable to deliver a present or a bouquet of flowers to some rather eccentric birthday boy or girl.
Those who shut themselves away at home develop Diogenes syndrome: a loss of basic communication and hygiene skills, including the habit of washing and brushing one’s teeth. And why bother?
No one can see them – indirect evidence of this is the drop in detergent consumption. Growing poverty has added austerity to all the misfortunes of the Russians; but first and foremost, there is chaos in their minds.
When Russia returns to greatness, it will appear to the world as a wild, embittered, unkempt and aged woman, and that will surely be the end.
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