To Lev Kirilov

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IamLEAM1983
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To Lev Kirilov

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What's Russia like, in the Hopeverse?
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IamLEAM1983
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As Lev

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"Better in some ways, and worse in others.

I left Russia for America filled with the spirit of the October Revolution - and still naively believing that Rasputin would fulfill his promise to me in restoring my family to aristocracy and power. At that point, however, I'd left my home to further grandiose plans laid down by Stalin's more colourful allies - if not unmoored from reality. The ensuing decades would prove fatal to the figure the media had dubbed the Red Scourge, far moreso than any of Ethan's ramjet-powered right crosses to my jawline. The frustrated and envious aristocrat died in Siberia, the iron-fisted Bolshevik fell not to America's military, superpowered or tactical might - but to its kindness.

After the last of Elysium's trials occurred, I watched with both dismay and bitterness as apparatchiks in Russia tried their best to revitalize the Party, to rejuvenate its sword and shield, the KGB. I watched Mikhail Gorbatchev evade assassination attempts for daring to finally open his eyes and spread my home's arms for the world to embrace it, and I watched as Boris Yeltzin allowed the worst of Capitalism's excesses to poison our well. This had been a chance to strike a new balance, to carve out equal places for the free market as well as the needs of the people - but came to see the same billionnaires I witnessed take the reins in America. Some of yours were principled men, bloated by excess to be sure - but worthy of respect nevertheless. The old Amazo was of this number. I could find none like him across Moscow. All greedy swine, suckling at our plains' bounty, funding debaucheries the likes of which no worker could so much as dream of!

Then came Putin. A small man, in many respects. A filing clerk for a provincial desk of the country's Intelligence service, thinking he could play the spy. He began the new millennium playing the statesman, assuming the world would remain ignorant of his forces' exactions in Serbia. In Kosovo and Georgia. I followed his progress intently - and I did not approve.

Rasputin would solve problems by drenching their cause in were-fire. Rasputin would mend his dessicated flesh in an attempt to present a pleasing guise to the outside world. Rasputin would lie between his fossilized teeth in giving reassurance to all those I was so foolish as to capture or subdue. Putin, fittingly enough, was even less deserving of respect.

I spent years once freed, in attempting to create a generation of critical thinkers able to see through both America and Russia's respective propaganda. I've tried to teach Hope's children the very lesson I myself learned at a bitterly slow pace - which is that absolute power corrupts. Add setbacks to the equation, and corruption leaches into bitterness. Putin's resentment grew as he bungled efforts to rejoin his European brethren, as America did one of the few things it does well, and maintained a track record of who displayed a commendable democratic structure. Russia's oligarchs served as a dark reflection of the West Coast's captains of industry. America hobnobs its Senate and Congress, Russia poisons and deports whomsoever gets in its way.

Putin reached out to me, shortly after the incident with Gawain Machae. Things began congenially, as they often do with monsters. He sent me bags of sunflowers and jars of free-trade kompot, praised me for, and I quote, "Shaping Russian History". What started as first-class ticket back to the banks of the Volga to engage in fly fishing with a man who saw himself as a master judoka ended with a sickening offer.

A seat at the FSB, if I would only return all my assets to the Russian Federation. He wanted me to kill for him, to order men and women the world over, with cyanide tablets hidden away in umbrella tips and fountain pens."

He sighs

"I killed six hundred fish in twelve seconds, on that day. The Volga iced up around me, the shock reaching so deep the water froze to the riverbed itself, and reached out far ahead into the water's depths. In retrospect, I should have killed him, instead. Laid my hand on his shoulder in mock acceptance - and frozen him to the core. When I think back on my timeline and its iteration of 2022, not a day goes by that does not see me wish I had had enough rage to ignore his guards and freeze him solid.

Instead, I merely took the man's legs. Frozen solid, they were. I am well aware that I added to his resentment of the West, and likely pushed him further into crypto-Fascist readings of traditional Orthodox Christianity. I froze his guards' guns, took a few of their fingers in the process, and reduced their armaments to inert blocks of steel. I then fled - not too coincidentally, into Ukraine - and then hitched a number of rides to a then-free Sevastopol, in Crimea. From there, a Tobolensky freight shuttle took me into near space, with a drop-off back in Hope.

Twenty-four hours later, the Russian Federation promulgated its own superhuman and metahuman registration laws, making SuReCa seem pithy in comparison. Protests were organized, exosuit squadrons detained vampire, Fae and endowed alike. Thousands died. A new phobia had been instilled in the country's president - that of physical failure, of weakness. Augmentation has consumed Putin's wordly preoccupations, and now evidence suggests he has indeed lost touch with reality. His cadre of Orthodox mystics are sensing this as an opportunity to spread their own crypto-Conservatism - and Putin himself in Hope's 2027 is now little else if the suit-wearing attack dog of another cadre of insane, scraggly mystics that are consumed with the idea of weaponizing dead Hyperborean Warlocks to forcefully bring about their ballyhooed thousand-year Tsarist regime.

My homeland is in a grim state, following the demons' incursions. The selfsame idiots saw it fitting to court ambitious Fiends seeking alternative paths to power. The puppet bandies out his brainless and macho concept of the Statesman, and evidence suggests that not one, single solitary polling house from Moscow to Irkutsk can be counted on to offer real statistics on any issue. Nearly-deserted rallies are doctored and astroturfed to seem as if they had massive levels of attendance, and the same few tens of thousands of diehard supporters make a living following Putin's bi-yearly campaign bus. Industry is at a standstill, innovation has ground to a halt, with 2027's ELBRUS 4 processors barely equating Intel's flagships - from 2005. Hong Kong has a persistent smuggling problem with Mongolian truck drivers stealing NATO and UN-approved technology so that Russia's pithy black market for Western goods survives. Piracy is rampant - even native developers see their work fleeced away from them. The market of ideas has withered away, when it does not emigrate to America, Poland, Turkey or the United Arab Emirates!"

He grimaces.

"Behind the statistics, a nation is suffering. Whomsoever is not White, Orthodox Christian and heterosexual is on a watchlist. Human Rights organizations have to operate incognito, and my contacts have told me stories that have made steam rise forth from me. Transsexuals and transhumans are persecuted by a police service that hires glorified thugs. Resistance is stamped out and ruthlessly minimized - and Russia still dares to call itself a democracy!"

Lev looks down at his desk, realizing he's frozen part of his desk solid, and then punched its surface hard enough to shatter a large semicircle-shaped cross-section of the desk. Another sigh.

"Boszhe moi - another careless expense for the faculty. I - pardon me, please. I am a man of conviction, as others may have told you, and the fact is the fate of Russia matters to me. I live and feel safe and welcomed on American soil - but my heart and home still lie in Russia."
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