“Say ‘Cheese!’”

A photo taken in a London restaurant of a group of well-known Russians, has ignited a storm that says a lot about Russian society today.

It’s Friday, and unless you spent the week inside the Space Station, you’ll know that the biggest story has been the brouhaha about ‘that’ photo. What photo, you ask? The photo with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Valeriya, the pop singer, who was in London for a concert.

Shaggy-haired Alexei Venediktov, head of the very independently-minded Ekho Moskvy, who was having lunch with Khodorkovsky (and has had his own run-ins with the Kremlin), posted on Instagram a photo with the message “Guess who all these guys are. Bumped into each other at Hakkasan.”

If you’re not a Valeriya fan, or you’re not up on your Russian politics, you might be unaware that Valeriya and her producer husband Iosif Prigozhin are known for their pro-Putin stance. Valeriya was a Putin confidante during the elections, and actively supported the annexation of Crimea. And for those who like to take sides, that puts her in the ‘enemy’ camp.

What happened next says a lot about the state of Russian society today. The Russian blogosphere has been white hot with shrill debate for the past two days (and it’s still going on …) about the rights and wrongs of posing for a photograph with people you’ve met by chance in a London restaurant.

One Bozhena Rynska expressed what has proven to be a representative opinion:

“Mikhail Borisovich, allow me, as the junior party here, to give you a moral lecture. Don’t go blurring the front line. When you have your photo taken in the company of scoundrels and reprobates, you’re showing everyone that they’re not for real, and you’re not for real, as in ‘on stage we might be the Montagues and Capulets, but in real life we’re just heading out for a beer together. And this blood isn’t blood at all, it’s cranberry juice, so don’t cry now, kiddies.’ And people who actually believe you, people who take all this at face value rather than as a read-through of some play, feel like they’ve been spat on when they see photos like this. Looking at this lovely little group portrait, I personally feel cheated.”

Many people used much less temperate language, and things got so hysterical that Prigozhin was forced to justify the encounter with Khodorkovsky to the ‘other side.’ “You’ve got two famous people – one of whom we’re acquainted with – sitting at the table next to ours. There’s such a thing as politeness, you know. Plus, sad as this might be, Khodorkovsky is a historical personality in every sense of that word.”

Valeriya didn’t get off lightly either. “One foot in one camp, one in the other, eh?”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky expressed  his own stance on the matter in a reply to Bozhena Rynska.

“I understand why this might make you uncomfortable – there’s us and there’s them, and they’re whacking us and we’re whacking them. Any little bridge between the two sides is a potential betrayal. They’re unhappy on the other side of the barricades as well, but for a slightly different reason – civil war’s convenient for them as an alternative to an irremovable regime. Not peaceful revolution, but a bloody, painful war … For their purposes it’s important that society is fragmented, that people look upon each other as enemies, and that the potential for distrust keeps building up. A bridge over a chasm is a means to compromise, bypassing the Kremlin. But they have a problem with that. We’re not only ‘political animals,’ we’re people, compatriots with thousands of connections and interests besides politics.”

It was just a spur-of-the-moment photo taken in a London restaurant, and nobody would have thought, or said anything, if two British politicians on opposite sides – Cameron and Corbyn, say – would have smiled together for the camera. But the fact that it’s generated the Russian storm it has, shows how the Kremlin’s search for enemies has taken its toll. Differences in political views are now being seen not as a subject for debate but as a reason to start quarrelling – to hate.

And when this regime falls, as it will, what are we going to do then? We have two choices: we can either take the path of Nelson Mandela, where “courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace,” or we can seek out our enemies, line them up against a wall, and shoot them.