Denial of the Second Wave Holds a Mirror up to Our Orwellian Society

Ilya Klishin is a Russian journalist and media consultant and the former editor-in-chief of TV Rain, Russia's only independent TV station. He has contributed to Russia's most prominent independent press outlets, including Vedomosti, Snob, OpenSpace and others, and to the English-language Moscow Times, and had a central role in anti-electoral fraud campaigns after Russia's December 2011 parliamentary elections. 

In a guest post for IranWire's ongoing series about disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, Ilya Klishin writes of Russian people’s willingness to accept official denials of a second wave of Covid-19 in the country.

In terms of coronavirus, Russia in the autumn of 2020 is living simultaneously in two divergent realities: the official version and the real one.

In the official figuration, the TV screens constantly show us officials who, if you listen to them carefully, are talking complete rubbish. For example, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has appeared on state TV to say: “There’s no second wave as such. Why not? Because reinfection is usually called the second wave. We don’t have that (...). There are hardly any people who have become infected again.” He juggles words and re-interprets their meaning, and the journalist nods his head obediently, because the journalist is paid by the same state for which this municipal chieftain is working.

A couple of weeks later, as infection rate is growing higher every day, the same Moscow mayor appears before the cameras again. This time, he solemnly announces: “The situation is completely different. It’s better and better every week. I doubt there will be a second wave. There might be slight setbacks, but they don’t change the situation.” His words describe the absolute opposite of reality, but again, no one even thinks of pointing this out.

It’s not just the top representative for the Russian capital that is making such remarks. The same mantra – “there’s no second wave”, “it’s all fine”, “it’s actually getting better” – is being repeated by Russian officials across all strata of government, from the lowliest district clerk to the president of the country himself.  

This, for example, is what Vladimir Putin had to say on the matter at a recent meeting with senior government heads: “We aren’t talking about some kind of second wave. The first wave is only just arriving in some regions, according to the experts.”

In the “real” reality, however, things are very different. Throughout the summer the daily number of infections in Russia never fell to lower than 4,000 to 5,000 (the state introduced a strict quarantine on these indicators in the spring). But from the beginning of October, the figures surpassed even the peak of infections in spring (more than 11,000 cases on May 11) and by early November, were averaging around 18,000 new cases each day.

And yet no one is sounding the alarm, no one is panicking, no one is even closing the cafes (in Moscow, though, a QR code scanning system has been introduced for people visiting nightclubs and bars). What’s more, Russia is even opening up to new countries for travel – recently Serbia, Japan and Cuba were added to the “safe” list.

While publishing these worrying statistics every day, the Russian government goes on to placate the population by appealing to different emotions and different interpretations of words. They say that everything's fine and even getting better. And there is a flipside to the coin: very few people in Russia argue back. It’s not just the journalists working for officials who nod, but everyone. Practically no-one is trying shouting themselves hoarse: “Listen, this isn’t true, it’s wrong! Look at the numbers!”

This isn’t a fairytale, like the one in which the emperor who had no clothes, which everyone knew but didn’t say it until one young boy blurted it out loud. Here, in fairness, anyone you ask – from the president to an ordinary janitor – more or less understands what’s going on. This is, rather, a situation of cognitive dissonance straight out of an Orwellian dystopia. It’s easier for the government to proffer an optimistic lie, and it’s easier for the people to accept this lie, although both the former and the latter know that it’s a lie.

Both groups have their rationales for engaging in this farce. The Russian government is primarily concerned about the economy; the state made a huge fuss about giving out money in the first wave (and then only to people with children), and clearly doesn’t want to dip into the public coffers again. The Russian people’s reasons are exactly the same: they understand that if they blurt out the reality they’ll have to shut down their businesses again, which means millions will go without an income, and there’s no guarantee that the government will help them. So it’s better if we all pretend, and at least don’t die of hunger.

Everyone is tired of coronavirus in Russia. But no one is prepared to openly state the eternal Russian fatalism: “For God’s sake, whatever will be will be, let’s live how we have always lived.” So instead, most people pretend that everything is fine, to the point that some have even come to sincerely believe it. And not only when it comes to coronavirus, either. Everyone is still pretending that Putin will be here forever, and that there’s no sense at all of an impending storm: even as the winds are blustering stronger and stronger around us.