“This story lowered the temperature and helped divert attention from the gloom,” such as the horrors of war and rising food prices, said Volkov, director of the Levada Center.
A cemetery in Ulan-Ude, Russia, where an entire section is dedicated to the victims of Russia's war on Ukraine.credit: Nana Haitman/The New York Times
The story of how a local pet tragedy dominated the national conversation is a case study in how information spreads in modern Russia.
Volunteer Kudryashova said Twix's owner, Edgar Gayfulin, contacted her on social media on January 12 and asked for help in finding the cat, which was traveling on the state-run train with one of Gayfulin's relatives.
A train worker thought Twix was a stray, and threw the cat from a passenger carriage as the train stopped in Kirov, northwestern Russia, according to Gaifullin and Russian Railways.
Kudryashova began posting about the missing cat in local animal chat groups.
The search effort mobilized hundreds of volunteers from across the Kirov region, attracted coverage from local media and eventually attracted the attention of state television.
Cats tend to rule the Internet everywhere, but cat-themed content is especially popular in Russia.
Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, citizens cannot express their true opinions.credit: Kremlin/AP
Nearly half of Russian households own a cat, one of the highest rates in the world. The cats' exploits have been covered prominently in the national media, and a new Russian television series titled catastrophe The film is not about war, as some might assume, but about a lively, talking ginger cat.
The discovery of Twix's body after a week-long search added an emotional element that catapulted the furry victim into a cause célèbre, with an online petition calling for the offending companion to be punished quickly gathering 380,000 signatures. The propaganda machine responded.
People walk past a billboard honoring a Russian soldier and reading “Our Country, Our Victory!” In St. Petersburg last month.credit: France Press agency
Representatives of the ruling party formed a congressional committee to reform the rules for transporting animals. The District Attorney's Office announced it is looking into a possible case of animal cruelty. A conservative activist has proposed erecting a statue of Twix in Kirov.
Dozens of pro-government commentators issued heated statements about Twix's role in Russia's zeitgeist.
“What is known about the death of Twix the cat: key developments,” read the headline of an article published by the state-owned newspaper Izvestia.
Journalists pressed the head of the state-run Russian Railways company about the incident, using a tough style rarely seen in questioning a senior official.
People on a bridge over railway tracks in Kaliningrad, Russia. Twix is thrown off the train by an attendant.credit: AP
“I have two dogs and a cat at home,” railway executive Oleg Belozerov, who runs the country's largest employer and oversees nearly 160,000 kilometers of track, told government reporters.
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“Can someone compensate me for their loss? I’m not sure,” he added.
He described the cat's death as “force majeure,” the legal term for an unexpected catastrophe usually reserved for natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
Russian Railways suspended the steward, opened an internal investigation and changed its animal handling guidelines just days after Twix's death. (The host, whose name was not published, did not comment on what happened.)
The company apologized in a statement to Jayvulin, the owner of Twix, but blamed the person who accompanied the animal for leaving it out of sight.
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State media helped turn Jayvulin into a minor media figure. He has hired a lawyer to handle the compensation claim against the train company, created an official Telegram account for Twix, and is regularly interviewed by state media. Volkov, director of the polling center, said that most of the participants in his survey blamed the person who was accompanying Twix for his death.
Volkoff said the Twix scandal took most of the national conversation away from discontent over egg shortages, heating failures in cold winters and other negative quality-of-life issues.
State-sanctioned public anger is often directed at what the government considers inappropriate or immoral behavior, which in turn underpins Putin's larger efforts to present himself as a global champion of what he calls “traditional values.”
But the government's rapid, and seemingly disproportionate, response to viral phenomena has also allowed it to create a sense of accountability at a time when genuine political expression has increasingly become a crime.
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The country's chief federal investigator personally announced a criminal case against Sergei Kosenko, the influencer who threw his child into a snowbank. Kosenko, who has 7 million followers on Instagram, had titled the video “Leo’s first trip” before deleting it.
When conservative commentators expressed outrage against a hotly-themed celebrity party in Moscow in December, authorities responded by jailing one attendee, blacklisting others, fining the host and temporarily closing the venue.
The search for acceptable targets for moral outrage has added a darker tone to Twix's story. A Russian woman has received numerous threats after she was mistakenly identified on social media as the train attendant who kicked out the cat, according to the woman's daughter.
Denouncing the death of a cat in Russia is of course safer than expressing a political opinion or protesting the war.
“The country has lost the ability to express itself freely, to be human,” Boris Nadezhdin, an anti-war candidate who plans to run against Putin, said on a talk show this week while sitting on a large photo of Twix. the background. “Expressing your support for cats you have never seen before in your life is a show of humanity.”
This article originally appeared on New York times.
