Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth.   Sooner or later,  that debt is paid.

Shall we call killers heroes?  State security “heroes” gave birth to the Gulag, enforced starvation, ripped apart society and annihilated millions of people.  Shall we celebrate people but forget their pain?  Mikhail “AK-47” Kalashnikov was sent at age 11 to die in Siberia, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya’s mother was arrested for marrying a man who was shot for nothing, and artist Zinaida Serebriakova did not see her children for nearly forty years.  Shall we boast of Norilsk, the Arctic mining city filled with mass graves of the prisoners who built it?  Shall we bury history?  Hundreds of Russian stamps disinform about Vladimir Putin’s secret police, but lies and fear have consequences — Russian society is deeply damaged, and decision-making at the highest levels is remarkably foolish and self-destructive…