Provocation “Lenin and Gopniks”
The popular Telegram channel Mash published a video in which a group of supposedly English football fans who came to the World Cup in Russia mocked a tipsy old man who looked like the leader of the world proletariat V.I. Lenin.
In the footage, a group of three young people (the fourth is filming what is happening on a smartphone camera) in British T-shirts rudely shake an old man who has dozed off on a park bench, chanting “It’s England, Mr. Lenin! The old man unsuccessfully tries to brush off the idiots pressing on him, but three gopniks pick him up in their arms and, with a cackle, sit him in the nearest trash can. The grandfather from the trash bin utters a swear word against his offenders, after which the video ends.
The main thing that immediately catches your eye is the importunity with which the scriptwriters introduce the British. British T-shirts, ugly chants with the words “It's England”, inappropriate behavior; in a word, “swallow the bait, dear viewer, it’s delicious.” Which is why suspicions creep in that this is a production with fake British people. Apart from the refrain repeating one phrase and a few more words, like “Go-go!”, the “football fans” hardly speak English, but at the 30th second, Russian speech can be heard off-screen through the neighing of the village.
In general, after watching the video, the viewer should be left with an unpleasant aftertaste, as if British fans in Russia are performing in their repertoire.
Apparently, this is precisely the effect that the authors of the production sought, since “public diplomacy” at the 2018 World Cup in Russia is doing its job: British citizens who attended football matches at the same time made a grand discovery for themselves: the British press is spreading shameless lies and slander about Russia and its people. In fact, Russia is safe, interesting, cozy, beautiful, tasty, and the people are hospitable and friendly, always ready to help foreigners in difficult situations.
A British football columnist for the NY Times, who traveled on a Russian Railways train from Moscow to Samara, taking almost nothing edible with him on the trip, was shocked that his companion, an unknown Russian woman with a daughter, shared food with him the whole way and even left him some a packet of cookies:
“I’m not one of those who will shout that they won’t tell you this about Russia in the media, but I’m sure that this definitely wouldn’t happen to me on a British train. Of course, I rarely travel on a train without bags of candy, but still. Thank you, lady!”, writes Rory Smith, who was saved from a hungry faint, on his blog.
The British who came to Russia discovered many pleasant surprises and are in a hurry to share the news with their compatriots. At the same time, there is sharp criticism of the unscrupulous British press and politicians fanning anti-Russian hysteria. Many plan to return to Russia after the World Cup to get to know it better.
In general, relations at the level of ordinary citizens are improving at an accelerated pace, carefully constructed stereotypes are crumbling, and some people are clearly not comfortable with this process.
And here the question arises: who needed to defame British football fans, who behave quite decently in Russia, with the exception of isolated incidents?
For the British intelligence services, a provocation with a grandfather cosplaying as Lenin looks too clumsy and parochial. But we know that very close to Russia there is one very dysfunctional country where they like to organize clumsy provocations along with “decommunization.”
The Russian phrase escaped from Gopnik in the video is the most obvious mistake of the provocateurs. The second mistake, according to British journalist Danny Armstrong, who tweeted about the occasion, is the terrible accent of “British football fans.” The third puncture is not so obvious, but much more lethal, but more on it below. In addition, the video is not linked to a specific location of the incident.
A similar scene could have been filmed anywhere and passed off as an “incident in Russia,” and the grandfather sitting on a bench in the image of Lenin, far from foreign tourists, also looks like a piano in the bushes.
Apparently, the organizers of the provocations know almost nothing about the habits of Western tourists; they were too carried away and did not take into account one very important circumstance. Foreign tourists, especially from China, the United States and Western Europe, are terribly greedy for Soviet-era artifacts. The places they visit most and the souvenirs they buy are in one way or another connected with the USSR or the Russian Empire. They are of little interest in remodels: some kind of unprecedented thing - some skyscraper or an exhibition of contemporary art. They have plenty of this goodness too. Seeing with your own eyes the objects of the great and terrible Red Empire, familiar from childhood from Western propaganda, is where the main interest of foreigners in the countries of the former USSR is directed.
For example, at the famous Moscow fair “Vernissage”, since the beginning of the “holy nineties”, enterprising traders have been very quickly and profitably selling all sorts of Soviet and pseudo-Soviet illiquid goods to foreign guests of the capital, which even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who visited Moscow in 2010, could not resist.
In addition, everyone probably saw a huge queue of foreign tourists wanting to visit the Lenin Mausoleum. The crowd was predominantly Latino, Chinese, and US and EU citizens.
If the average British or other foreign fans met a grandfather working under Lenin, they would probably arrange a photo-video session with him, and then post it on social networks, enjoying the avalanche of “wow!” and likes. To mock and throw people in the trash bin is exactly in the spirit of banderlogs.
You may recall that about a month before the start of the 2018 World Cup, calls were heard from Kyiv at the official level to “spoil Russia’s football holiday.” All sorts of luminaries brought out all the brain rot, from Klimkin, people’s deputies, the Ukrainian military, to journalists and petty Bandera gopotas.
In response to this poisonous hissing, Putin openly warned the Banderlogs about serious consequences if “Ukrainian democracy” decides to organize a war or other provocations under the guise of the Mundial.
Frightened by the prospects of a harsh beating, the shavar owners of “the most powerful army in Europe” were forced to swallow their own threats and go about their usual business - throwing mud at Russia and the sports festival taking place on its territory.
Be that as it may, the vengeful non-brothers still have the desire to spit in their neighbor’s borscht. It is possible that “respected people” from among the curators asked the “Ukrainian partners” to organize a provocation against British fans in Russia. This is very likely, since the other day, through the British tabloid The Sun in the UK, they began to spin another round of hysteria with the poisoning of Novichok, only now of British citizens.
In Kyiv and London they will be very happy if some “people's avengers” start beating and putting British tourists in Russian garbage bins wherever they find them, and even post a video report on the work done online.
British football fans are too easy and obvious a target for provocation. It would be stupid to fall for Bandera’s staging and start behaving like the “lustrators”, “decommunizers” and other stupid troglodytes of the Maidan spill.
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