Russia's Elites Are Suffering From Extreme Cognitive Dissonance
An interview with Andrei Tsiganov of the Katyusha project.
I had a nice call with Andrei Tsiganov, a journalist and popular conservative-patriot in Russia about 10 days ago. Tsiganov’s “Katyusha” news portal is a good source for alternative patriotic viewpoints from within Russia.
They did heroic work during the insane COVID lockdowns and forced vaccination rollout in Russia trying to resist these WEF-inspired measures. My good friend Mr. Slavsquat often uses their work in his own articles and also has nothing but good things to say about this organization.
I wish I could get these interviews out to a broader audience. But, because I cannot, I am limited in my future interview attempts. See, no one wants to spend time talking to a microblogger, not even in Russia. As such, I have a few more left that I will publish, but that will be the end of my outreach efforts for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.
It is a shame because these patriotic voices ought to be heard and I wouldn’t mind being the guy putting in the work who got them heard in the West.
Oh well.
Enjoy!
**
Hello, again! Thank you for speaking to me. You know, last time we spoke, we were both optimistic that the “house” was about to be cleaned.
But it seems now that this was never in the cards. Have you revised your expectations since then?
You’re asking me what changes have been made to the cadres at the top and that is an important question, yes. Well, there have been some changes, but not what we would like to see, that is for sure. These are all changes on the 3rd or 4th echelon down. Many have been fired on these lower levels. Also, some people at the top are finally starting to understand that they have no future in the West.
However, so far, the only example of a large business leader who has come out as a patriot is Evgeny Prigozhin. We also have the head of Crimea, who has a son serving in the war - he has been very good. A few politicians in the Far East as well. But so far nothing and no one on the federal level. We, of course, would like to see an elite that actually cares about Russia’s sovereignty emerge from this mess.
Some people say that there’s a secret multi-step plan.
Well, we can say that President Putin is making a lot of public moves now. He is signing many orders related to business, punishing Russian businesses trying to move capital out of the country, taking measures against Western businesses.
We have also seen resistance on the level of rhetoric to the new LGBTQ Satanism of the West. Unfortunately, positive measures are continually being undermined by chinovniks high up in the government who seem to be ideologically opposed to any change. But still, we see hopeful signs that our government is finally taking baby-steps in the direction of rekindling traditional values within Russia. We also see regions taking their own measures, blocking concerts and boycotting Liberal artists and so on that promote anti-Russian ideas. These regions are far more patriotic than Peskov, who refused to condemn these same anti-Russian artists when asked point blank about it.
Also, it is worth pointing out that people are not waiting on the government and are mobilizing on their own to help the soldiers at the front. This self-mobilization is rekindling the spirit of the Russian people. And President Putin, at least, appears to be aware of this effort and personally supportive of this.
[NOTE: There have been cases of the government punishing Russian troops for asking for aid or receiving aid and filming “thank you’s” because this apparently makes them look bad.]
When we spoke a year ago, we were very pessimistic about our chances of stopping the cultural subversion of Russia. And yet, here we are, and the situation is much more hopeful on this front at least.
What do you think will be done or ought to be done with these anti-Russian subverters? I mean in the cultural sphere and in the government.
Do you want me to answer as an Orthodox man? Well, the Orthodox answer is that before a man’s life is over, he still has a chance to repent. So, maybe these people will change their ways. But right now, the situation in the country is like when a sportsman who hasn’t done any sports for awhile finds out that all his muscles have atrophied. Our federal politicians are used to getting their marching orders from America and the UK. They don’t know how to think on their own, only follow orders from the West. They have no original or Russian ideas at all in their heads. But a few of them have proven that they still have some brains and some instinct of self-preservation left. They are beginning to take small steps to save their own skins now.
In contrast, the people have adapted to this new reality much faster. The people understand that we are not at war with Ukraine only, but with all of NATO. They understand that this is an existential conflict. But the same cannot be said of our political class. Our big cities, of course, are still living in a fantasy. There is no war there, as far as they are concerned.
We had a forum recently where we had guests from Belgorod, the city that has been getting shelled by Ukraine. At the forum, we invited professors from St. Petersburg to attend, and they were shocked to hear that these people were getting bombed. In their mind, it is all propaganda. And they are not young students, mind you. These are older people, many who were born in the USSR, but they simply don’t want to understand what is going on. They reject the truth - that is their default position.
Is this a cognitive dissonance problem? Are they ideologically against these facts somehow?
Well, let me bring up another example of what I mean to illustrate my point. So, the fact of the matter is that we have a lot of Turkish agents in our government who also work for London. They are extremely anti-Russian and they promote anti-Russian policies. For example, they import hundreds of thousands of non-Russians into Russia to demographically replace us.
Look at the problems that they have in the West. They are being flooded by migrants to destroy their European, Christian identity. Russia is no exception. We have an elite that was educated by the Western elite and they follow the same policies.
So there is cognitive dissonance everywhere you look in Russia, really.
We are at war, and yet we import and naturalize these migrants who hate us. Sobyanin and others help them get passports quicker than anyone else. People who are specialists, Russian people marooned all over the FSU, these people are constantly being hampered in the process of returning to Russia. They are treated very badly actually and actively discouraged from returning. They justify this as needing more workers. But the majority of these people do not work. They simply engage in criminal activity.
Our situation is not as bad as in America, where, to my knowledge, 1/3 of the population are migrants who hate the gringos, but Russia would be better served by building contacts with people who are similar to us. With these gringos, you see? [He means conservative Whites] And yet we do not. More dissonance.
Our government, our professors and our media are simply not dealing with the reality of the situation in Russia and the world. Instead, they want to let in the entire Turkic world and to make deals with them.
But are the people pushing this migration themselves Turks?
First, ask yourself why we are suddenly such good friends with the Turks. Here I mean Turkey. The answer is simple: money. Our oligarchs and their oligarchs are in business. So, Turkey, which supports Ukraine, sends them weapons, does not recognize Donbass and so on, they get to become the gas hub of Europe. We could have made Greece the gas hub of Europe and changed European politics forever. We do this knowing that the Turks spit in our faces. That their intelligence services actively work in Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tatarstan and train them for the coming conflict with Russia. Russia’s enemies also try to turn the Russian peoples against one another like they did Yugoslavia, where they turned various Serbs against one another to divide and conquer Yugoslavia. That is what they have done with Ukraine.
But take the grain deal as another example. What a waste. What a total lie. None of that food is getting to Africa to save the starving black masses. This was a deal made for Turkey. And, as usual, Russia ends up holding the short end of the stick. Tricked again. You have to understand, all the eastern countries are like this. [He means the Third World] They only understand force.
Take Kazakhstan, by the way, which is a fake country created by the Bolsheviks. It didn’t exist before the Communists - it was a Leninist project like Ukraine. Now they have an anti-identity. An anti-Russian identity. And they actively prepare for a break with Russia now.
Actually, my view is that Russia gets stronger the more our enemies attack us. We should be grateful that our enemies are hitting us so hard. So long as we are in good standing with God, we will win. So long as we remain Orthodox, God will deliver us.
It seems that there are enough traitors in the government making things difficult even without the Turks.
Now we come to the topic of the traitors in the government. Yes, there are many. Also, there are very many idiots. It is difficult to tell which is which, but there is still a difference.
War has a logic of its own. Here, I will not reveal any military secrets, but let me say this. First of all, Russian volunteers have changed things for the soldiers. They have stepped up to fill in the gaps. Things are changing on the front now. Our military machine is starting to reform itself. It is getting more serious. I am not a prosecutor and I do not have the documents proving who betrayed the army (within the military) and how. I can only speak in broad strokes about this topic.
I would rather speak about the civilian government. Because the same problems exist there. The main problem is the wrong kind of thinking that we see everywhere in Russia. Take this digitalization effort, that we are copying according to the Klaus Schwab template. Why are we doing this? No one asks! The answer appears to be: for lack of a better idea.
Governments have an inertia of their own and for 30 years we were moving towards integration with the Globalist West and now the momentum in many spheres continues to push us in this direction even though we are at war with the West. This relates to the military, which is part of society as well and affected by the same inertia. This also undermines the military, because soldiers need to feel like they are fighting for something real, and, Russia’s elites do not fill anyone with much hope.
What do you think of Strelkov’s Angry Patriot’s Club? Do you think they have the right idea? How can Russians deal with the traitors in their own government?
Well, I am not a part of this club. Right now we are at war and it is dangerous to rock the boat. But let me say this: they are being accused of trying to stage a “Patriot’s Maidan” against the government. This is completely false. Russia’s patriots are doing all they can to either fight or help at the front. What patriots in Russia are doing is holding out hope that the government finally takes the necessary measures to win this war, which they have refused to do so far.
I can tell you this though. Right now, the government is actually reaching out to veterans from the front and pulling them up to certain positions. This is an encouraging sign.
Has Russia started to look for new friends in the West? I thought that they would get more serious about this now.
Well, here there is nothing good to be said. Our chinovniks are in an ideological straight-jacket. They are used to dealing with the people that they are used to dealing with. They do not want to reach out to conservatives in the West. They simply refuse to do so. If Russia actually stood up for traditional values and became the defenders of this world idea and shared it with the world and worked on it, we would have many friends and allies in the West. But our elites are compromised and stupid. So there is no progress on this front, unfortunately.
What do you think about how [You-Know-Who-Ish] this war against Russia is? You don’t have to reply if you don’t want to. I don’t want to get you in trouble and I can just ask something else.
Well, in Russia, we have free speech so I will speak my mind on this. I agree that there is a [You-Know-Who-Ish] conspiracy against Russia. What the origin of this is, I do not know, but it probably stems from them killing Christ. The [YKWs] are a talented people, but they use their talents for evil. Take Israel, where their police provokes and attacks the Muslims in Jerusalem. This recent action was a deliberate false flag to trigger a new war perhaps. The [YKWish] religious extremists want to rebuild the Third Temple. Here, Russia has to support these Muslims against the aggression of Israel and their religious and political ambitions.
What you just alleged may have been considered a conspiracy theory not so long ago, but it it is not so outlandish now that new facts have come to light. For example, the alleged plan to create a new Khazaria on the territory of Ukraine.
Well, we had that adviser on the security council who got fired for his anti-Chabad comments! And Putin personally apologized to Israel for Lavrov’s comments about Hitler’s [YKWish] roots! I do not know why this is happening. But it is no secret that it was them who created the Federal Reserve and then created the revolutions in Germany and Russia. We know then that they then pushed for these wars in Europe. Who brought Trotsky to Russia? Who financed all this? Schiff, Morgan, Warburg and Rothschild. Who pushed Germany over the edge with their anti-German measures? And then who helped Germany to rearm and then attack the Soviet Union? It was all [YKWish] capital working behind the scenes the whole time. And the terrorists who ran the Chekha and who murdered millions of Russians were [YKWs]. But it wasn’t just them. There were many Russians who went along with it as well, sadly. The worst types.
So long as the world worships money, the [YKWs] will continue to rule. Because they worship money too. Only when we return to other principles - our Christian values for example.
What concrete measures need to be taken that haven’t been been done yet to change the situation with the war?
To win the war, we need to actually start fighting a war. Right now, we don’t have a war, we have an SMO, whatever that is. Actually, we don’t even know who our real enemy is. It is not Ukraine, which is a lost province and the war actually a civil war. The real enemy is the Satanic Western elite. And if you are at war with the Satanic Western elite, you stop feeding them at least. And yet no bridges have been touched. And we continue to feed them! Only Nordstream II was blown up. But all the other pipelines continue to pump gas into the West. Could you imagine Stalin feeding Hitler’s army while war was going on? But we send rare metals, timber, gold, aluminum, oil, gas and so on to our enemies. This is a fact that they do not even try to explain!
All this comes back to the problem being that we do not know who our enemy is.
Why do we limit ourselves to Ukraine? The enemy’s home front is Poland. They provide all the support that the Ukrainians need. But we do not touch Poland. No one even believes that we will use our nukes to defend ourselves and all the while, Zelensky is allowed to waltz around openly in public 100% certain that he will be untouched. And as for Poland, we need to force the issue. Force the Americans to back down and show the whole world that America won’t support its allies to the nuclear hilt. Our enemy thinks we are weak and indecisive. We do not go on the offensive. We do not take decisive measures. That is why they think they can get away with anything. And I am not even talking about military measures necessarily. There are other ways to put the pressure on NATO. But these measures are not taken. Simply left on the table At the very least, we should be able to turn off the gas. Ukraine is still using our gas! They buy it back from Europe!
We need to start being serious. This cannot continue.
So, who do you think should be fired?
Well, let’s just say this: if Putin needs the full list, he has my number and he can call me at any time and I will tell him who needs to go. Putin seems to be getting closer to General Teplinsky, which should send a signal to Shoigu and Gerasimov. That is all I will say on the military issue.
As for the rest, let me say this, perhaps we should just get rid of the people that the West likes. Like Elvira Nabiullina, who is praised by the WEF and let billions of Russian roubles get stolen under her watch. She is loved by the West. They praise her work all the time! This should be cause for concern. How has she not been fired? I simply do not know.
And why are we still pursuing a policy of joining the digital globalist gulag being built by the West? Do they not understand that the minute we hook up to this electronic surveillance network, the enemy will have all our information at their fingertips? And I do not even know what to say about Russia’s complicity with the COVID agenda. These people, well, we should start with getting rid of these people.
If Russia wants to survive that is, that is what we have to do. And I have hope that we will, God willing.
Great interview; thanks for sharing. I hope Ron Unz or whoever else you've reached out to gets back to you to help you spread these interviews. It is disappointing how few people in positions of influence want to use that influence for good and the truth, and how these people have influence in the first place because the public wants to be fed comforting lies. Interviews like this are important and provide a perspective that isn't otherwise heard.
Andrei Tsiganov touched on all the right points; from the WEF to Nabiullina to the financiers behind the Bolshevik revolution to the fact that the Russian elites are compromised and don't want to win. One response of his bothered me, though: "Actually, my view is that Russia gets stronger the more our enemies attack us. We should be grateful that our enemies are hitting us so hard. So long as we are in good standing with God, we will win. So long as we remain Orthodox, God will deliver us."
I understand this is the default religious perspective, but if it doesn't work out then will Tsiganov default to an excuse of either "God is punishing us for not sticking enough to the religion" or "this is all part of God's plan"? I mean, it's good to have faith and not get lost in a sea of despair, but no, Andrei, Russia does not get stronger the more your enemies attack you. Russia gets stronger from victories and from purging its enemies from its internal ranks. Wins beget wins and increased confidence; losses beget more losses and decreased confidence. This is a very basic point...
Awesome interview, Rolo! How popular is Katyusha? Mr. Tsiganov sounded an awful lot like many of your columns. Its funny how Western people everywhere seem to have the same problem but no one is allowed to point it out.
It's a shame that Ron Unz won't regularly carry your open work but frequently publishes blatant CCP shills like Larry Romanoff and ranting boomers like Derbyshire and Sailer who always talk around root causes.