A reader offers a second translation from the work of the Russian heroes we identified in our Sunday Photos installment two weeks ago. First he gave us Yevgenia Albats on Anna Politkovskaya, and now he gives us Yulia Latynina on Russian paranoia. All LR readers owe this contributor a debt of gratitude, especially non-Russian speakers, for opening a window into Russia we would not otherwise have (the photo at left originally accompanied the Russian article).

The chief heathcare worker in Russia, Gennadiy Onishchenko, has discovered the cause of the recent mass alcohol poisonings. “This was a pre-planned action,” announced Onishchenko. It was thought up by enemies who wanted to disrupt the efforts of the government to bring order to the alcohol market – enemies from none other than Georgia and Moldova. More precisely, they were “the producers of beverages until recently delivered into our country from countries that are well known to you.” It’s obvious: Georgian wine was banned, YeGAIS* is broken, and the attempt at sheer, incompetently executed extortion of the alcohol market resulted in a horrific flood of substitute products – so who’s to blame? Enemies!

Russia is nowadays surrounded by enemies.

Beslan, as everyone knows, was also inflicted on us by those “who believe that Russia still presents a danger to someone.” A Third Force, as Senator Torshin called it.

President Putin, having departed on September 1 from Sochi for Nalchik, turned his plane around and headed for Moscow, thus giving the signal: “I do not want to take responsibility for this”; investigators to this day cannot say who commanded the headquarters and where the figure of 350 hostages came from; after the building was stormed it was cordoned off in three rows (which it was not beforehand) and truckloads of evidence were hauled away, so that it became impossible to tell what had been blown up and how. Regarding the use of Shmel flamethrowers, the prosecutor general explained it three ways: a) they were used only by the terrorists; b) they were not used at all; c) nothing was burned by them anyway. In a word, the investigation to this day does not know not only what the terrorists did, but also what Pronichev and Anisimov did. By the following day, however, Putin already knew exactly who planned the terrorist attack and why.

He probably knew while his airplane was still turning.

Anna Politkovskaya, as everyone knows, was also killed by the enemies of President Putin. With rare carelessness, so characteristic of these scoundrels at the full peak of their concentration of power, two men and two women followed Polikovskaya, not worrying whether they would come into the view of television cameras. They were enemies, of course.

Incidentally, Marina Litvinovich was also beaten unconscious by enemies of President Putin. Remember? They hit her from behind so that, heaven forbid, she wouldn’t fight back, but when she came to 40 minutes later, two young men were casually standing over her, one of whom said, “You need to be more careful, Marina.” In all fairness one must add that they were standing there, clearly, out of concern that Marina would misplace her tongue and thereby die, so in a certain sense they were saving her life. Of course, in their pockets were special identification cards: “Enemy of Russia Number One”, signed by Berezovskiy or Nezvlin. And if any cops had come up to the young men standing over the unconscious woman, they would have produced those scary ID cards and they cops would have backed off.

We have enemies everywhere. Enemies threaten agriculture, as was made clear in a speech by Minister of Agriculture Gordeyev; enemies threaten national projects, as was made clear in speeches by Gref and Kudrin; and Graf and Kudrin themselves are also enemies, as is made clear in the weekly airs of Prime Minister Fradkov.

The search for enemies in NATO led to the heroic act of the pilot Troyanov, who got lost in the skies above Lithuania; dedovshchina (abuse of recruits – TN) in the army, as is well-known, begins “from kindergarten”, and not in the army itself, so the ones to blame for it are the kindergarten teacher-enemies, or whoever else is convenient, other than the Minister of Defense.

Regarding the Caucuses, there’s nothing to say. It would be silly to suppose that a young Chechen becomes a suicide-terrorist because the federal troops killed his family and raped his mother, and he found the body of his half-decomposed wife in his basement, with a half-decomposed child inside her. These are triffles – he actually becomes a terrorist because the enemies of Russia and his masters in the West paid him two hundred dollars and with this money, apparently, he plans to weasel his way into Heaven.

Or let’s take the West itself. We give them our heart and soul! For how many months has the Kremlin been explaining what they, the West, should do. They need to hand over the Kovykta and Sakhalin-2 projects to Gazprom, forget about the billions of dollars they’ve already invested, after this invest even more money in the Shtokman project, and for the privilege, such as it is, of investing in Shtokman they need to hand over the European gas distribution network. And what do they do? They don’t want to do it, you see. It’s obvious – they’re enemies! What did you think? How could they turn down such offers? Do they think this is unprofitable, to lose money on one oil field, invest more money in the same place, then give away their distribution network for the right to invest even more? It’s simple, stupid – they couldn’t possibly be calculating that way, they’re refusing because they’re enemies!

We recall that not so long ago, in the time of Yeltsin, Russia had a pile of problems and mistakes. But we had no enemies. Now, just as the concentration of power is being completed, the enemies multiply and multiply. The stronger the concentration of power, the more enemies.

And most importantly – it just sends shivers – they’re so audacious. Go figure, after six years of concentrating power – by appointing governors, gaining full control of parliament, and having a prosecutor ready to fulfill every desire – look what they’ve cooked up!

They’ve drilled a tunnel, with the help of Georgian saboteurs from the Dzhavskiy region, from Pankisi to twelve regions in Russia, and then with the help of Nevzlin, Berezovskiy and Mossad they’ve begun poising Russians with alcoholic beverages!

Thank God, Gennadiy Onishchenko and Minister of Health Zurabov were alert and uncovered this unheard-of wickedness!

* YeGAIS - (ЕГАИС - Единая государственная автоматизированная информационная система), The Unified Government Automated Information System, was designed to automate government control over the production and sale of ethyl spirits, alcohol and alcohol-containing products. (http://www.egais.ru)