How The Plain Old Truth Became Sovereign

Olga Shcheglova (Boris Bidyaga)

SOVEREIGN APOCRYPHA

THE TALE OF HOW THE PLAIN OLD TRUTH BECAME SOVEREIGN
A tragicomedy in four acts

ACT I
The Non-Aggression Pact

The office smelled of school chalk, old linoleum, and an approaching thunderstorm. A cuckoo clock on the wall, its cuckoo silent for years, counted the third hour of the night.

Vasissualy Ivanovich, chairman of Polling Station No. 1234, stood before a grey metal safe, poised as if about to leap into the abyss. He wore black desk-sleeves over his blue three-piece suit, which was looking rather threadbare at the elbows. In his hands he held a utility knife and a brand-new, faux-crocodile leather official briefcase.

Vasissualy Ivanovich looked at the dark window, where poplar trees rustled outside, and quietly sighed into the empty room:
— Perhaps this is just how it's meant to be? Perhaps this nightly act of penance is where the plain old truth of Russian statehood truly lies? In the triumph of order over chaos?

He knelt in front of the safe. His knees buckled with a dry, almost biblical crack.

The safe refused to budge. The plastic seal felt to Vasissualy Ivanovich like the mark of the Beast, blocking his path toward absolute harmony.

He called to mind the literary classics.
— Lokhankin... — Vasissualy Ivanovich whispered, prying at the seal with the tip of his blade. — Vasissualy Andreyevich, my brother in soul-searching and suffering! I despise you. You were a thief. Let’s call a spade a spade — you sneaked around at night, shamefully pinching pieces of boiled chicken from someone else’s pot. Just to satisfy your base, fleshly desires. Petty selfishness, utterly unworthy of a Russian intellectual!

The blade slipped, and Vasissualy Ivanovich pricked his finger painfully. He hissed but kept his eyes glued to the safe, a spark of true, otherworldly selflessness igniting in his gaze.

— But look at me! — He pressed his bleeding finger to his chest, right over his heart. — Do I steal? Do I take home even a single miserable penny of the taxpayers' money? Or even one lousy ballot? No! My hands are clean; my mission is noble and exalted. I’m not a taker — if anything, I’m a giver! I bring to this safe what it so desperately lacks: completion! I enrich this poor, mute iron box with the warmth of human care. I am the hand that feeds, not the hand that bleeds!

Vasissualy Ivanovich took a trembling breath, wiped the sweat from his brow with a clean handkerchief, and pulled a sealed bundle of pre-marked ballots from his briefcase. He felt like Atlas, lifting the falling sky.

At that very moment, the classroom door creaked softly, and the silhouette of a sharp-eyed observer holding a flashlight appeared in the doorway.

— Nikita Sergeyevich... — whispered the chairman, turning pale as a ghost, already imagining the absolute roasting he would get at tomorrow’s committee meeting.

Caught dead to rights, he froze mid-stride like a startled heron in a marsh.
— It’s not what it looks like, — Vasissualy Ivanovich stammered nervously. — This is an act of pure altruism...

The nighttime intruder, a student observer named Nikita, stood just three steps away. Instead of a smartphone, he was holding... the exact same kind of utility knife, and an empty backpack.

A long, highly dramatic silence hung in the air.

The chairman was the first to break the ice, dropping his voice to a tense theatrical whisper:
— Nikita... Is that you? But what about... your credentials? The democratic process? Total transparency? Have you come here to tear down the very fabric of our system?

— What system, Vasissualy Ivanovich? — the student smiled bitterly, hopping onto the teacher’s desk. — I came to clean house. To seize this garbage, this fraud, this so-called "plain old truth" of yours. I wanted to save the final tally, to scrub it clean of corruption! To fish out of this iron box everything you stuffed into it during the day!

Vasissualy Ivanovich dropped his foot and bristled with indignation, his fear vanishing for a split second:
— Fish it out?! Desecrate a sacred trust? You're a vulture, Nikita! You're no better than Panikovsky, plotting to rob an underground millionaire! I am pouring my heart and soul into this! I'm not stealing, I'm adding value! I am sowing the seeds of stability, and you want to tear it all down? Leave us with nothing?

— Your “stability” is a sham! — Nikita fired back, stepping toward the safe. — I’m wiping the slate clean to restore the absolute purity of the people’s voice!

— Over my dead body! — Vasissualy Ivanovich threw himself in front of the grey metal safe. — If you empty this out, my books won't balance! Antonina Petrovna will bury me alive under the nearest highway!

— And if you stuff more in, my principles go out the window! And my report to headquarters is dead in the water! — Nikita lunged for the safe handle, but the chairman grabbed him by the wrist. The two men grappled.

It was by far the most absurd, low-stakes scuffle in the entire history of elections. They didn't throw a single punch. Instead, they just politely jostled each other with their elbows, trading sharp whispers and breathing heavily. One kept trying to cram the bundle into the safe, while the other tried to yank out what was already inside.

Twenty minutes later, completely wiped out, they both collapsed onto the floor right in front of the security camera, which had luckily been neatly turned to face the wall.

— Whew... — Vasissualy Ivanovich wiped his brow with his sleeve. — Alright, look. If you empty it, I’m toast. If I stuff it, your reputation is ruined. Why are we tearing each other to pieces?

— Fair point, — Nikita panted, catching his breath. — If I pull everything out, they’ll just throw out the results for the whole station. My three days of roughing it on a cot will go down the drain, and we won't prove a thing.

— And if I add any more, — the chairman reasoned, — the regional board will see we have a 102% voter turnout, and they’ll string me up anyway. For sheer incompetence.

They traded glances. You could practically smell a backroom deal cooking in the room.

— Nikita, — Vasissualy Ivanovich said, completely earnest. — Let’s face it: the system is fragile, and we’re just tiny cogs in the machine. What if we just... keep things as they are?

— Meaning what?

— You leave the inside alone, and I put what I brought back in my briefcase. We fix up the broken seal, you go back to your cot, and I go down some heart medication. The numbers stay exactly where they were yesterday. A draw. Perfect harmony.

Nikita looked down at his empty backpack, then at the chairman's exhausted, weary face.
— Screw it, Vasissualy Ivanovich. Fine. Let’s leave well enough alone. In the grand scheme of things, this one safe won't change a damn thing anyway.

They shook hands like men to seal their truce and called it a night.

ACT II
The Dressing-Down

The morning meeting of the Regional Electoral Board was a storm of biblical proportions. The board chairwoman, Antonina Petrovna — a lady with a beehive hairdo and the cold eyes of a veteran tax auditor — was ripping Vasissualy Ivanovich to shreds. Not over his morals, mind you. What really set her off was his monumental, jaw-dropping stupidity.

Vasissualy Ivanovich stood by the blackboard, looking thoroughly beaten down, as if he’d just survived a brutal hazing.

— Oh, look at our resident highbrow intellectual! — Antonina Petrovna slammed her fist on the desk, making the water pitcher rattle. — Our tragic little scholar! The whole team is popping sedatives like candy because of him, and he’s standing there without a care in the world! We only have one question for you, Vasya: how on earth did you manage to get caught?!

Vasissualy Ivanovich opened his mouth to launch back into his grand speech about "the hand that feeds" and the "plain old truth," but the chairwoman shut him down instantly:
— Everywhere else, people know how to play the game! They do it quietly, professionally, with a little finesse, and strictly behind closed doors. But this idiot had to put on a midnight amateur theater production! Fine, you slipped up. But explain to me, for God's sake, why on earth do you even have observers hanging around your station?! Any competent chairman would have run those nosy little do-gooders out of town days ago! You forge a doctor's note, you call the cops on a "suspicious package," or you just cover the chairs in grease. There are a million ways to skin a cat! But what do you do?

Antonina Petrovna took a deep breath and let out a glass-shattering shriek:
— You let this student move into the classroom!!! He basically lives there now! Why didn't you just roll out the red carpet and serve him tea on a silver platter?!

From the corner of the room, a supervisor from the mayor's office chimed in, lazily spinning an expensive Parker pen:
— Quite right, Vasissualy Ivanovich. In this business, you’re supposed to pad the numbers and lose the witnesses. But instead of doing basic math, you're giving us poetry and God knows what else.

— And to top it all off, he goes and signs a peace treaty! Playing the diplomat! The master strategist! A legendary statesman from the gutters! — Antonina Petrovna’s voice shook with pure, unadulterated rage. — Look at this refined gentleman! He held a global peace summit in a biology lab!

Vasissualy Ivanovich adjusted his glasses, which had slid down to the tip of his nose, and made a feeble attempt to stand his ground:
— Antonina Petrovna, it was a compromise... He wanted to take them out, I wanted to put them in. We found a happy medium in neutrality. We maintained the status quo! The final count didn't budge, and heaven knows how badly it could have ended otherwise!

— I don't give a damn about your status quo! — Antonina Petrovna slammed her fist so hard the pencil holder pulled a backflip and scattered across the desk. — Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Vasya?

Vasissualy Ivanovich soured, muttering under his breath:
— You’re a monster, Antonina...

Antonina Petrovna stood up, glaring daggers at the chairman:
— What was that, you bleeding-heart intellectual? A mole has set up shop right under your nose in the biology classroom, right under a poster of a crawfish!  And you're signing midnight friendship pacts with him! You’re wrestling with him on the floor by the safe instead of throwing the little punk out on his ear. And then you call it a draw! I have targets to hit, I have quotas to meet, and this clown can’t even stuff a ballot box without causing a public scandal... It’s pathetic!

The city supervisor in the corner gave a weary sigh and threw in his two cents:
— Yes, Vasissualy Ivanovich. Nobody wins here. The observer is sound asleep on a cot, the chairman is living on heart medication, and the final tally looks as if the election never even happened. Getting in bed with the auditor — now that’s a classic move. But why is he living in your biology room? You’ll need a crowbar to pry him out of there now.

Vasissualy Ivanovich hung his head in shame. He realized that his grand truce between opposing sides had found zero appreciation among the higher-ups.
«Perhaps this is just how it's meant to be, — he mused. — Perhaps this is where the plain old truth lies? There is no redemption without suffering, and through suffering comes clarity. So maybe the punishment itself holds the answers? But if the punishment is the plain old truth, then where does that leave the tragedy of the modern intellectual?»

ACT III
The Official Narrative (aka Sovereign Truth)

For a moment, Antonina Petrovna froze like a statue, her index finger pointing dramatically at the ceiling. In her eyes, which had been flashing fire and brimstone just a second ago, a stroke of pure bureaucratic genius suddenly sparked.

Her fury melted away into a warm, almost motherly glow. She looked at the silent Vasissualy Ivanovich as if he were a divine messenger who had just brought a blessing from above.
— Pure genius... — the chairwoman whispered, slowly sinking back into her chair. — Vasya, you’re no fool. You’re our greatest strategic asset!

The city supervisor in the corner stopped spinning his fancy Parker pen and sat up straight.

— Antonina Petrovna, what are you getting at? — Vasissualy Ivanovich asked, looking thoroughly exhausted.

— Local-level geopolitics, Vasya! — Antonina Petrovna slapped the desk triumphantly. — We’re not going to sweep this mess under the rug. We’re going to weaponize it! Why hide the fact that your little student was messing around with a box cutter by the safe? We’re going to turn this into a national scandal! We’ll tell the public exactly how opposition saboteurs sneak around at night, break into our secure facilities, and cynically hijack the democratic will of the people! From this moment on, your clumsy compromise is dead, Vasya. We are creating our own Sovereign Truth, and the public will swallow it whole!

The office instantly turned into a war room.
Within an hour, local TV stations, a dozen political social media channels, and the morning papers were breaking the story of the "nighttime desecration of the biology classroom."

Reporters were zooming in on the scratched safe lock and the blissfully unaware crawfish on the wall poster. Breaking news alerts screamed about a "loathsome plot to steal the votes of vulnerable seniors and decorated veterans."

Nikita, waking up on his folding cot, found himself blinded by TV cameras and cornered by an angry mob from the local PTA, who immediately berated him for stealing their children’s future.
Their little midnight truce shattered into a million pieces under the wheels of the state media machine.

Standing in front of the cameras, Vasissualy Ivanovich wrung his hands dramatically, weeping about the "assault on our core values" and the moral decay of modern reformists, feeling immensely proud of his new role as a guardian of the state.

Yet deep down, a quiet doubt gnawed at him. He thought: «The punishment never came, which means the suffering was called off. If this manufactured Sovereign Truth is all that matters now, then where on earth is our plain old truth hiding?»

ACT IV
The Grand Sovereign Truth Victory

Sunday evening arrived — the moment of truth, the counting of the votes. The entire electoral board sat on the edge of their seats before a massive screen displaying the live incoming data from the national electronic voting system.

Antonina Petrovna was nervously sipping her tea, the city supervisor was cross-referencing his spreadsheets, and Vasissualy Ivanovich stood quietly in the corner, praying his fragile balance wouldn't break.

The numbers started rolling in. The column for the ruling pro-government party surged upward so fast it looked as if it were being propelled by divine intervention.

Antonina Petrovna stared at the screen, wiped her glasses, and let out a triumphant laugh:
— Well, what do you know! Vasya, take a look at that! Our party's numbers are through the roof! Your little midnight wrestling match didn't make a bit of difference! They’ve won a landslide victory with such a massive margin that your student could have blown that safe sky-high — and the whole school with it — and the needle wouldn't have moved an inch!

The city supervisor snapped his leather planner shut with a look of deep satisfaction:
— Outstanding. The opposition has been thoroughly dragged through the mud, and the public's loyalty has been delivered exactly as ordered. A total victory for the establishment over a cheap box cutter. Behold the triumph of the Sovereign Truth.

Vasissualy Ivanovich let out a long sigh of relief. The plain old truth had been ground into dust, but the newly minted Sovereign Truth had carried the day, sweeping away any hint of reality.

He walked over to the window, watching the sun dip below the horizon, and whispered to himself:
— Perhaps this is just how it's meant to be? Perhaps this absolute, ironclad predictability is the true calling of the intellectual class — knowing exactly when to step aside so you don't get run over by the train of history or — by
the Sovereign Truth?

Feeling completely at peace, Vasissualy Ivanovich gave a nod of blessing toward the safe, pulled his shiny blue jacket around himself like a regal robe, and drifted off into a sweet, peaceful bureaucratic sleep.

#OrthodoxMilitaryPutinism