Vladimir Chichikov

 Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin sailed to victory in yet another "election" with a predetermined outcome. Among the various red flags that this was not in fact what any of us should consider a "free and fair" vote were that the leading opposition figure recently died while serving time on political charges in a Russian prison, most other forms of overt criticism of Putin's regime have been criminalized and silenced, and international observers were not allowed in most locations to monitor the polls. 

Yet, as an article in Politico makes clear, perhaps the most glaring indicator of the bogus nature of this process was the fact that the vote totals in some areas did not match the actual population count. The conclusion was unmistakable: in Putin's Russia, the dead rose up to vote. 

The article refers to this as Putin's "voting army of 'dead souls,'" a sly reference to Gogol's novel of the same name, in which the schemer Pavel Chichikov roams about the Russian countryside buying up the rights to count departed serfs as his own property. This was made possible due to the lag in official state registers, which were not always updated to reflect the real current demographics of an area. 

The allusion is apt on multiple levels. Not only is Putin relying on a similar legal fiction to keep himself in power—pretending that the official counts of the population of a given district are still accurate, even if they include many people who have actually perished or left since the last official census. But Putin is also a kind of Chichikov—the banal dictator, the philistine autocrat. In the languid, complacent way in which he orders murders and assassinations, he is the embodiment of poshlost. 

Of course, Putin might have won the election anyways, without relying on such dirty tricks. It is an increasing tendency of our times that people can become autocrats by public acclamation; they can ride to power as "illiberal democrats," winning the approval of the majority of the population through invoking nationalism, xenophobia, cultural populism, and the false proposition that strongman rule will solve the country's problems. But still, Putin perhaps felt that it was better not even to risk it. 

Putin must, after all, have noticed that many of his own citizens are not happy with his war or his decision to imprison or kill so many of his most popular opponents. The extent of this discontent is impossible to measure, since Putin has silenced all vocal dissent and jailed people for protesting his government. But, it is evident in small ways that many people throughout Russia disapprove of his executions and invasions. He would not need to clamp down so viciously on criticism if they did not. 

And so Putin apparently decided that he would rather have the dead vote, in this last election, than take his chances with the living. Unsure of what real people would decide, he preferred to opt for the fictitious. Instead of holding an election to determine the next ruler of Russia, that is, he preferred the topsy-turvy approach that Brecht sardonically attributed to the postwar East German regime: he decided it would be simplest to "dissolve the people and elect another."