The Kitsch of Corruption

Alexei Navalny’s most current video, “A Palace for Putin,” paints a damning picture of how Russia’s head of state has siphoned off substantial amounts of public money to create an extravagantly selected house for himself.

Following similar exposés of Medvedev’s secret dacha on the Volga and Putin’s near Vyborg, this latest video clip discovers everything from the complex network of covering companies that has developed and rebuilt the presidential royal residence on the Black Sea, to the sprawling floor plans and also gilded furnishings of what seems the biggest exclusive home in all of Russia.

The billions of rubles as well as countless hectares that have actually gone into Putin’s Italianate estate, which includes 2 vineyards, an underground hockey rink, an amphitheater, and also an oyster farm, have added fuel to the fire for those that sustain the presently jailed Navalny and also relocated tens of thousands to require to Russia’s streets this past Saturday in demonstration.

Much of the indignation that “A Palace for Putin” arouses originates from the sheer extra of the corruption Navalny reveals.

The nail in the casket of his exposé is the wonderfully bad preference of every little thing we see in the video as well as especially of Putin’s residence.

In spite of their luxury, the two earlier presidential dachas revealed by Navalny can at least claim to be reconstructions of historic structures.

At the center of Medvedev’s Volga estate stands Milovka, a late eighteenth-century country mansion, while Putin’s Vyborg dacha updates (as well as considerably expands) Villa Sellgren, a very early twentieth-century home created by Finnish designer Uno Ullberg.

However, the presidential palace near Gelendzhik is a new structure, whose link to the past is tenuous as finest.

Created by Lanfranco Cirillo and also equipped with furniture from Italian collections so special that they neither have neither need public websites, Putin’s 17,691 square-meter home is littered with colonnades, double-headed eagles, as well as crystal chandeliers, all of which resemble rip-offs of earlier times and also locations more than real social inheritance.

When compared to Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace, Louis XIV’s Versailles, or King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein Castle, Putin’s palace looks less like a structure that connects the Russian president to his nation’s past than a recommendation that the building tradition Putin prefers is equally as developed as the “traditional worths” at the heart of his national politics.

Navalny’s cautious restoration of the interior of Putin’s royal residence reveals the full level of the Russian president’s love of pricey kitsch. In addition to an oddly called aqua-discotheque, the very beginning houses a barroom, theater, spa zone, four separate hot tubs, as well as a two-story pool.

The first flooring takes us to Putin’s personal gym, recreation room, online casino, home theater, and also hookah bar (skillfully equipped for post dance, must the requirement occur), and the leading floor includes a series of luxurious bed room collections.

According to “A Palace for Putin,” the Russian head of state has actually abused his power not merely by stealing his country’s wealth, but by wasting it on furnishings as well as fixtures so tasteless as well as overpriced that they make Liberace resemble a moderator of good taste.

The unlimited gold, parquet, marble, and also crystal reimagine Russia’s imperial past at the exact same time that they betray Putin’s penchant for bling in everything from his dining room table to his bathroom brush.

Audiences of the video clip have had an area day with the last, since Navalny located customizeds affirmations for the Italian washroom devices in among the estate’s wineries– a $1260 toilet paper holder and also $850 toilet brush.

One of the video’s viewers commented that if the icon of the tsar’s power made use of to be a scepter, currently it’s a commode brush, while one more jibed, “per tsar, his very own icon.”

When considered as circumstances of kitsch, not just Putin’s royal residence, yet likewise the royal aspirations and political persona shared at Gelendzhik appear to be bit more than a gilded bathroom brush.

Putin has cleverly used his macho swagger to preserve a hold on the Kremlin for over two decades, shifting interest away from the actual compound of his plans and also onto his swaggering style.

The kitsch that “A Palace for Putin” so deftly discovers might not prove, as Navalny contends, that the Russian head of state is “mentally ill.”

It does show the gulf separating the nation’s leader from those Russians who took to the roads last Saturday, as well as the heft that style can and does have in current Russian national politics.

Navalny’s own style of attacking irony as he exposes native to the island corruption in “A Palace for Putin” supplies a fitting antidote to both the Russian head of state’s macho and his kitsch.

It comes as no surprise that “A Palace for Putin” has actually garnered over 86 million hits on YouTube as of today and also influenced protesters in Moscow’s Pushkin Square to swing their own toilet brushes against the very actual corruption behind Putin’s kitsch.

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