Soviet Union, Redux

Boris here, Comrade Clerk. Get operations on phone. Heads will roll. Or maybe just careers, if they’re lucky. Oh, for glorious days of past when Soviet Union was complete, before the greatest geopolitical calamity of our time: its fall. That’s what President/Prime Minister/Whatever He Wants To Be Putin called it.

Is this operations? Get me, please, Viktor and Sergei on conference call. Yes, wait please, until I close door . . . . Now then. Have you two lost your minds?

No, we are not happy here. Comrade Putin gets nearly 90 percent of vote? Were my instructions not clear? When vote goes over 90, it becomes Saddam Hussein territory, and world laughs. Have you no acumen in political arts? Stupid operators! Useful idiots we like, but only in West. Not on our side!

This is stuff of sham election. Yes, yes, we will put out usual: Comrade Putin appreciates the “trust” and “hope” his people put in him. He faced “fierce” “competition” from “rivals,” and Russians want him to continue his quarter-century administration.

Did we not say we would be satisfied with 80 percent, even 75 percent? When you steal election, it must look unstolen! Or you give away whole operation. You make it look like we do not know how to pull off legit election fraud. Where do you think this is, Chicago?

And this was supposed to be a protest vote! There were calls somehow allowed on social media to protest by voting against Comrade Putin! So you give us 90 percent?

Thank goodness for some in the Western press. I saw one euphemism of our election: “Carefully managed result.” But it could have been more carefully managed, if you two get drift.

Remember 2018? We got 77 percent for Tsar Putin. That was fine. Three-quarters is fine. But 90 percent for sacred referendum? We must improve our PR classes at Kremlin.

The voice of the Masses must be heard. Overwhelmingly.

But not this overwhelmingly. Like the Brits say, we must keep up appearances.