The Russian state versus the individual in search of the future
Russians were promised a high-tech future. What they got instead is a form of total control, not authoritarian, but totalitarian, reflecting the Kremlin's definition of “the sum of technologies”, namely missiles and drones, as well as surveillance and monitoring equipment.
Life for Russians is increasingly conflicted following the introduction of new repressive measures, including new controls and limitations on mobile networks in what Novaya Gazeta columnist Andrey Kolesnikov calls a “conflict between the state and the individual”, with a final showdown looming as the development of artificial intelligence (AI) advances.
For Kolesnikov, “No classic Theatre of the Absurd could describe a single day in today's Russia. Imagination is simply missing, and life doesn't just cowardly imitate artistic fiction, but flattens it.”
One example is the description of the state of the Russian economy. Instead of bordering on the ludicrous by saying “The upward deviation from the balanced growth trajectory is decreasing”, it would have been much simpler to talk about "negative growth”.
Another example comes from Senator Anatoly Artamonov, who allegedly found a way not so much for cutting public spending as for what he calls the total militarisation of public spending, with a neologism, prioritisation (Приоритизация, prioritizatsiya), by abolishing nursing homes and shifting the elderly to family care, to "save money”.
The director of the Eksmo publishing house, Yevgeny Kapiev, has popularised Iishka (ИИшка), a portmanteau word for artificial intelligence, Iskusstvennyy intellekt (Искусственный интеллект), putting together the acronym II (ИИ) and the suffix SHKA (шка), often used as a form of endearment for children.
Publishers now systematically use it to check literary works for "lice", i.e. "narcotic substances" in texts, such as the harmful substance in the surname of writer Denis Dragunsky, whose root "drag” means "drug" (but also "medicine") in other languages.
The dream of a sovereign Orthodox AI, perpetuated by the sovereign Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, has thus come true.
Judging by this example, the domestic neural network, trained like a German shepherd in a field to identify enemy targets, replicates the brain and consciousness of the average bureaucrat, banning Dragunsky's books as "prohibited substances”.
Since the practice of publishing playbills and theatre programmes without the author's name has already become widespread in modern Russia, books can also be published without the author's name, or by obscuring the letters of the word drag with black ink. Publishers are in fact resorting to blocking it out, both as a form of self-censorship and as a protest against censorship.
Indeed, Russia has already sunk into anti-utopia, and "the worst thing is that we've begun to adapt to it," says Kolesnikov.
Of course, disconnecting the Internet and texting apps is a shocking experience, but on the other hand, no one is particularly surprised that it has come to this, as the state has now penetrated the very depths of Russians’ consciousness.
Life in Russia has turned into a permanent civil war between the state and the people, and the illusion that state authorities can offer society an ideal and artificial well-being is now being overcome, as it morphs into an increasingly systematic and invasive dictatorship.
The Russian Federation’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media plans to increase the capacity of technical countermeasures to 954 Tbit/s by 2030, allocating 14.9 billion rubles (US$ 195 million) to this project.
This will build capacity to scrutinise all RuNet traffic, with room for natural growth, the expansion of blocking measures, and the emergence of new methods to circumvent them.
A high-tech future was promised, presented as a form of total control, no longer authoritarian, but totalitarian, while the Kremlin's definition of "sum of technologies" means missiles and drones, as well as surveillance and monitoring equipment.
People are increasingly tired by the endless adjustments, adaptations, and challenging psychological conditions. After a four-year, artificial surge of passion, emotional decline inevitably has set in.
According to research by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at the start of 2026, some 42 per cent of respondents reported symptoms of depression, while 27 per cent suffered from anxiety attacks. The causes are prolonged "conflict" and economic and financial uncertainty.
Russian society is tired, a society of survival, not development. The classic, cursed Russian question arises spontaneously: "Why?" Is it really impossible to live normally? In fact, it turns out that it is impossible.
The logic of the existence and self-development of a rigidly authoritarian political regime, with its spectral imperial pains, presupposes the degeneration of authoritarianism into a non-classical form of totalitarian practices, a hybrid totalitarianism that tends to continually perfect itself, expand, and take over consciousness.
Are there developmental limits to dystopia? Are there red lines? For now, they are invisible due to this absolutely limitless capacity for adaptation.
Moreover, no artificial intelligence – not even if it were three times Orthodox and emulated the minds of Alexander Dugin, Konstantin Malofeev, and Zachar Prilepin combined – can foresee the course of events in a society where the state spends incredible sums on "finished metal products" and the "capacity of technical means to counter threats," and is interested in nothing else.
Last week, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (Всероссийский центр изучения общественного мнения; ВЦИОМ, VTsIOM) organised the 16th International Grushin Sociological Conference in Moscow, named after the Soviet and Russian philosopher and sociologist Boris Grushin, who passed away in 2007, to seek answers on "how to build Russia's future” drawing many sociologists and other experts.
The meeting began with the declaration that the future, which until recently was synonymous with the romantic word "dream” in official statements, is no longer "abstract futurology" nor the exclusive preserve of science fiction writers, although they did play a significant role in the session.
The construction of the future is now presented more concretely, as a matter of national security and the sovereignty of consciousness. Particular attention was paid to young people, who, faced with economic uncertainty, still tend to shy away from the future.
As one of the participants, Sergey Volodenkov, director of the Institute of Social Architecture, stated, we live in an era of profound change, "and under such conditions, the image of the future is becoming a key tool for national development."
It is no coincidence that today's information wars are fought not so much over territory as over "the image of the future”, Volodenkov noted, who explained that the "sovereignty of consciousness" today depends on who constructs images of the future, and how.
The spontaneous construction of images of the future, especially when accompanied by negative assumptions about them, can lead to social destabilisation. Judging by Volodenkov’s presentation, the same happens when negative images of the future are imposed from abroad.
"The winner is the one who is able not only to respond to challenges, but to shape the horizons of the future," Volodenkov said. In his view, "today we must raise this issue to the level of national security” because "in the 21st century, a new type of power is emerging: the power to shape the future. Whoever controls the image of the future controls the present."
Another speech caused a stir, that of State Duma Member Alexander Borodai, who stated that "we have entered an era of war; it will be a long and bloody war; war will soon become the norm, no longer the exception," or to put it another way, "war represents the maximum pressure on all forces of society."
At the same time, according to Borodai, "war forcefully pushes forward progress – technical, organisational, and social."
The emphasis is once again on the fact that this is a war for the future, and with such views, Russia is celebrating the mystery of Christian Easter, seeking rebirth in the artificial future created by the Kremlin.
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