Through towering pine forests and untouched meadows, the road to Lake Baikal in southern Siberia winds past cemeteries where bright plastic flowers mark the graves of Russians killed in Ukraine. Far from the Potemkin paradise of Moscow, the war is ever visible.

穿过高耸的松林和人迹罕至的草地，通往西伯利亚南部贝加尔湖的道路蜿蜒经过墓地，鲜艳的塑料花标记着在乌克兰丧生的俄罗斯人的坟墓。这里远离波将金村庄般的天堂莫斯科，战争的痕迹历历在目。

On the eastern shore of the lake, where white-winged gulls plunge into the steel-blue water, Yulia Rolikova, 35, runs an inn that doubles as a children’s summer camp. She is some 3,500 miles from the front, yet the war reverberates in her family and in her head.

在湖的东岸，白色翅膀的海鸥跳入铁蓝色的湖水，35岁的尤利娅·罗里科娃经营着一家旅店，兼做儿童夏令营。她距离前线约5600公里，但战争在她的家庭和她的脑海中萦绕不去。

“My ex-husband wanted to go fight — he claimed it was his duty,” she said. “I said, ‘No, you have an 8-year-old daughter, and it’s a much more important duty to be a father to her.’”

“我的前夫想去打仗，他说这是他的职责，”她说。“我说，‘不，你有一个八岁的女儿，做她的父亲是更重要的责任。’”

“People are dying there in Ukraine for nothing,” she said.

“在乌克兰，人们毫无理由地死去，”她说。

He finally understood and stayed, she told me, with a look that said: Mine is just another ordinary Russian life. That is to say the life of a single mother in a country with one of the highest divorce rates in the world, a nation plunged into an intractable war, fighting a neighboring state that President Vladimir V. Putin deemed a fiction, where tens of millions of Russians, like herself, have ties of family, culture and history.

她告诉我，他终于明白了，并留下了，她的眼神似乎在说：我的生活只是另一种普通的俄罗斯生活。也就是说，一个单亲母亲的生活——在一个离婚率在世界上居前列的国家，在一个陷入苦战的国家，在一个与普京认为纯属虚构的邻国作战的国家，几千万俄罗斯人像她一样，同那里有着家庭、文化和历史的联系。

I spent a month in Russia, a country almost as large as the United States and Canada combined, searching for clues that might explain its nationalist lurch into an unprovoked war and its mood more than 17 months into a conflict conceived as a lightning strike, only to become a lingering nightmare. The war, which has transformed the world as radically as 9/11 did, has now taken 200,000 lives since Feb. 24, 2022, roughly split between the two sides, American diplomats in Moscow estimate.

我在俄罗斯待了一个月，这个国家的面积几乎和美国和加拿大加起来一样大，我在这里寻找一些线索，以解释它为何会在民族主义情绪的驱使下无端卷入一场战争，以及它在这场持续了超过17个月的战争中的情绪——曾经被认为会是一场闪电战式的冲突，结果却变成了挥之不去的噩梦。据驻莫斯科的美国外交官估计，这场像9·11一样彻底改变了世界的战争，自2022年2月24日以来，已经夺走了20万人的生命，双方的死亡人数大致相当。

As I traveled from Siberia to Belgorod on Russia’s western border with Ukraine, across the vertigo-inducing vastness that informs Russian assertiveness, I found a country uncertain of its direction or meaning, torn between the glorious myths that Mr. Putin has cultivated and everyday struggle.

我从西伯利亚前往俄罗斯与乌克兰西部边境的别尔哥罗德，穿越令人眩晕、塑造了俄罗斯人的自信的广袤大地，我发现这个国家不确定自己的方向或意义，在普京培育的辉煌神话和日常生活的挣扎之间摇摆不定。

Along the way, I encountered fear and fervid bellicosity, as well as stubborn patience to see out a long war. I found that Homo sovieticus, far from dying out, has lived on in modified form, along with habits of subservience. So with the aid of relentless propaganda on state television, the old Putin playbook — money, mythmaking and menace of murder — has just about held.

一路上，我遇到了恐惧与狂热的好战情绪，也遇到了坚持挺过一场持久战的顽强耐心。我发现苏维埃人非但没有灭绝，反而以一种改良过的形式，连同屈从的习惯，继续存在着。因此，在国家电视台不遗余力的宣传下，普京的老套路——金钱、编造神话和谋杀威胁——基本得以保留。

But I also heard ambivalent voices like Ms. Rolikova’s, along with a few raised in outright dissent, especially from young people in a country with a stark generational divide.

但我也听到了像罗里科娃这样矛盾的声音，还有一些人提出了完全不同的意见，尤其是这个代沟明显的国家中的年轻人。

It was this restiveness, this impatience with the seeming incoherence of the war and with the insouciance of the privileged in Moscow and St. Petersburg, that formed the backdrop to the short-lived revolt led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner group, in late June. It was not for nothing that he named his uprising the “march for justice.”

“That Prigozhin rebelled was symptomatic of many social problems, but the way he advanced toward Moscow unhindered also demonstrated nervousness about whether all army units would fight,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Putin clearly did not want to give an order to fire he was unsure would be implemented.”

“普里戈任的反叛是许多社会问题的症状，但他能不受阻碍地向莫斯科挺进也表明，对于所有军队是否都会参战，有一种紧张情绪，”卡内基俄罗斯欧亚中心高级研究员亚历山大·鲍诺夫说。“普京显然不想下令开火，因为他不确定是否会被执行。”

Making a martyr of Mr. Prigozhin was too risky in the short term for other reasons, too. Wagner’s role in avoiding recourse to an unpopular draft, by recruiting many thousands of criminals to bear the brunt of much heavy fighting in Ukraine, has been crucial. If Mr. Putin, 70, did not blink, he certainly flinched.

出于其他原因，让普里戈任在短期内成为殉道者风险太大。瓦格纳在避免不受欢迎的征兵方面发挥了至关重要的作用，它招募了成千上万的罪犯，让他们在乌克兰的激烈战斗中首当其冲。即便说70岁的普京没有眨眼，他肯定也是缩了一下的。

Yet, after 23 years leading Russia, Mr. Putin’s hold on power is still firm as fighting intensifies in southern and eastern Ukraine. He learned long ago, indeed from the outset of his rule in 2000, that, as the author Masha Gessen has put it, “wars were almost as good as crackdowns because they discredited anyone who wanted to complicate things.”

然而，在领导俄罗斯23年之后，随着乌克兰南部和东部的战斗愈演愈烈，普京仍然牢牢掌握着权力。他早在2000年执政之初就认识到，正如作家玛莎·格森所言，“战争几乎和镇压一样好，因为它们会让任何想把事情搞复杂的人失去说服力。”

He has always used war — in Chechnya, in Georgia and in Ukraine — to unite Russians in the simplistic myths of nationalism and to usher them to the simplistic conclusion that his increasingly repressive rule is so essential that it must be eternal.

无论是车臣、格鲁吉亚还是乌克兰，他总是用战争将俄罗斯人团结在简化的民族主义神话中，把他们带到简单化的结论面前，即他日益高压的统治如此不可或缺，必须永远存在。

Still, as far as possible, the war must be invisible, banished to places like Ulan-Ude, near Lake Baikal, not far from the Mongolian border. That is done, in part, by paying recruits about $2,500 a month, a huge sum in a region where a monthly salary of $500 is more typical.

尽管如此，战争必须尽可能地隐形，只有像乌兰乌德这样靠近贝加尔湖、距离蒙古边境不远的地方才会有。这在一定程度上是通过向新雇佣兵支付约2500美元的月薪来实现的，这对于典型月薪500美元的地区来说是一笔巨款。

“Money is the main reason people go to fight,” Ms. Rolikova said. “The contracts being offered volunteers are crazy by our standards.”

“金钱是人们参加战斗的主要原因，“罗里科娃说。“按照我们的收入标准，为志愿兵的报酬太疯狂了。”

But all of the money that Mr. Putin showers on remotest Russia only brings the war into sharper relief. It is etched in the fearful faces of young recruits lining up at the airport for flights to Moscow, and from there overland to Rostov-on-Don and into Ukraine. It is in the freshly turned soil of cemeteries where young men are laid to rest. It is in the air, a pall of dread.

但普京在俄罗斯最偏远地区的挥金如土只会让战争显得更为刺眼。年轻的新兵在机场排队等待飞往莫斯科的航班，然后从那里经陆路前往顿河畔罗斯托夫，再进入乌克兰，战争的印记铭刻在他们恐惧的脸上，埋藏在墓地新翻的土壤里，死去的年轻人在那里安息。空气中弥漫着一股恐怖的战争气息。

The life partner of Ms. Rolikova’s best friend was killed in Ukraine in February, leaving the friend with two young children. Her half brother has fled to Georgia. Her grandfather was from the Donetsk region of Ukraine, a family tie that compounds her anguish.

罗里科娃最好的朋友的人生伴侣2月死在乌克兰，抛下了她和两个年幼的孩子。她同父异母的兄弟逃到了格鲁吉亚。她的祖父来自乌克兰顿涅茨克地区，这种家族纽带让她更加痛苦。

Ms. Rolikova gazed out at the vast shimmering lake that contains more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. The wind was suddenly up; the gulls beat their wings hard against it to hold still. She said she tried to derive wisdom from nature, finding in it a refuge from the turmoil of war.

罗里科娃凝视着窗外波光粼粼的广阔湖泊，这里蕴藏着世界上20%以上的淡水。风突然刮起来了；海鸥用力拍打翅膀防止被大风吹跑。她说，她试图从大自然中汲取智慧，寻找躲避战争动荡的避难所。

For her daughter Valeriya’s sake, at least, Ms. Rolikova hopes the war will be over within two years. “We are told one truth, they are told another truth,” she said. “But why do we need to kill each other like in World War I?”

至少为了女儿瓦莱丽娅，罗里科娃希望战争能在两年内结束。“我们听到的是一种真相，他们听到的是另一种真相，“她说。“但为什么我们就得像第一次世界大战那样互相残杀呢？”

In Moscow, a world away from Ulan-Ude, Western sanctions appear to have had little effect beyond stores like Dior that have signs saying, “Closed for technical reasons,” and the comical renaming of departed Western businesses, like “Stars,” for Starbucks.

在远离乌兰乌德的莫斯科，迪奥的门店挂着“因技术原因关闭”的告示，已退出俄罗斯市场的星巴克被重命名为“Stars”，这么做有些可笑，然而除此之外，西方制裁似乎没有产生什么影响。

The subway is spotless; restaurants offering a popular Japanese-Russian fusion cuisine overflow; people make contactless payments for most things using their phones; there is a ridiculous concentration of luxury cars; the internet functions impeccably, as it does in all of Russia.

地铁里一尘不染；日俄融合美食十分受欢迎，到处都是这样的餐厅；大多数事情都是通过手机无接触支付处理；豪车云集，多得离谱；互联网运作流畅得无可挑剔，就像整个俄罗斯一样。

The war is nowhere to be seen, other than in the billboards from the Ministry of Defense and, until recently, Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group (now of uncertain future) that try to lure recruits with slogans like, “Heroes are not born, they become heroes.”

我们在任何地方都看不到这场战争，除了在国防部的广告牌上，以及不久前在普里戈任的（如今前途未卜的）瓦格纳集团广告牌上，该集团试图用诸如“英雄不是天生的，英雄是做出来的”之类的口号来吸引新兵。

These may be found next to a multitude of new high-rise developments with English names like “Trendy Towers” or “High Life.” For all of Mr. Putin’s efforts to vilify the West, it still lives in the Russian imagination as a chimera of cool.

I first visited Moscow four decades ago, when it was a city devoid of primary colors eking out existence in the penury of Communism. Gazing at Moscow today, it is possible to discern why Mr. Putin earned so much respect from his countrymen. He opened Russia, only to slam it shut to the West; he also modernized it, while leaving the thread to Russia’s past unbroken.

40年前我第一次来莫斯科，当时它是一座没有颜色的城市，在共产主义的贫困中勉强维持着。看看今天的莫斯科，我们就能明白为什么普京赢得了他的同胞如此多的尊重。他打开了俄罗斯的大门，却又猛然将西方关在门外。他还对其进行了现代化改造，同时完整地保留了与俄罗斯过去的联系。

Sitting at a cafe overlooking the Patriarch’s Ponds in one of the toniest areas of central Moscow, Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the State Duma and a direct descendant of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy, exuded confidence as a moneyed crowd ate large crab claws and other delicacies.

在莫斯科市中心最繁华的地区，俄罗斯国家杜马副主席、伟大小说家列夫·托尔斯泰的直系后裔彼得·托尔斯泰坐在一家俯瞰着主教池塘的咖啡馆里，他露出了自信的表情，咖啡馆里，一群有钱人正吃着大蟹钳和其他美味佳肴。

When I asked him how Russia proposed to pay for a prolonged war effort, he shot back: “We pay for it all from our sales of oil to Europe via India.”

我问他俄罗斯打算如何支付长期战争费用，他反驳道：“我们通过印度向欧洲销售石油来支付这一切。”

This was bravado, but it had some truth to it. Russia has rapidly adjusted to the loss of European markets with oil sales to Asia — and India has sold some of it on to Europe in refined form.

这是虚张声势，但也有一定道理。俄罗斯失去欧洲市场后做出了迅速调整，向亚洲出售石油，而印度也将部分石油精炼后出售给欧洲。

“Our values are different,” Mr. Tolstoy said. “For Russians, freedom and economic factors are secondary to the integrity of our state and the safeguarding of the Russian world.”

“我们的价值观不同，“托尔斯泰说。“对于俄罗斯人来说，比起我们国家的完整性和维护俄罗斯世界，自由和经济因素都是次要的。”

Mr. Putin’s rule is all about the reconstitution of this imagined Russian world, or “Russkiy mir,” a revanchist myth built around the idea of an eternal Russian cultural and imperial sphere of which Ukraine — its decision to become an independent state never forgiven — is an integral part.

普京的统治就是要重建这个想象中的俄罗斯世界，或者说“俄罗斯米尔”，这是一个围绕着永恒的俄罗斯文化和帝国领域理念而建立的复仇主义神话，乌克兰是其中不可或缺的一部分，然而乌克兰却决定成为一个独立国家，这永远不可原谅。

As for the future, Mr. Putin has very little to say, leaving people guessing.

至于未来，普京几乎没有说什么，人们只能猜测。

Rarely in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia is Mr. Putin’s image visible, other than on television, even if he has ventured out a little more of late. He governs from the shadows, unlike Stalin, whose portrait was everywhere. There is no cult of the leader of the kind Fascist systems favored. Yet mystery has its own magnetism. The reach of Mr. Putin’s power touches all.

It is evident in the bodyguards bursting into upscale Moscow restaurants to make room for some capo or oligarch of a system where great wealth comes only at the price of unwavering loyalty to the president.

这不难看出：保镖冲进莫斯科的高档餐厅，为这个体制中的某些头目或寡头腾出空间，在这个体制中，必须对总统付出坚定不移的忠诚，才能获得巨大财富。

Above all, it is in the fear that causes people to lower voices and hesitate before uttering that treacherous word of Mr. Putin’s double-think — “war.”

最重要的是，正是出于恐惧，人们压低声音、犹豫不决，不敢说出普京双重思想中的那个险恶之词——“战争“。

The Kremlinology of the Cold War has been replaced by the equally arduous pursuit of trying to penetrate the utter opacity of the Kremlin to read the mind of a new czar, Mr. Putin, now in the autumn of his rule.

冷战的苏俄学，变成了另一项同样艰巨的任务：透过克里姆林宫的重重迷雾，弄清普京这位新沙皇在想什么——如今，他已经在自己执政的暮年。

Repression has become fierce and the war Mr. Putin started in Ukraine has been waged with near total unconcern for the consequences of his decision, a human trait that John le Carré once described as “a primary qualification for psychopathy.”

高压政策愈发凶狠，普京在乌克兰发起的战争，几乎全然不考虑自己的决策会造成什么后果，这种特质正是约翰·勒卡雷曾说的“精神变态的一项首要条件”。

Putinism is a postmodern compilation of contradictions. It combines mawkish Soviet nostalgia with Mafia capitalism, devotion to the Orthodox Church with the spread of broken families, ferocious attacks on a “unipolar” American world with revived Russian imperialist aggression — all held together by the ruthless suppression of dissident voices and recourse to violence when necessary.

普京主义是矛盾事物的后现代汇集。它是伤春悲秋的苏联怀旧与黑手党式资本主义的结合，是对东征教会的虔诚和无所不在的破碎家庭的结合，是对“单极”的美国世界的猛烈攻击和俄罗斯帝国起死回生后的出击的结合——这一切都是通过对不同意见的无情镇压实现的，必要时会采取暴力手段。

An increasingly disarming phenomenon in Russia is that it looks familiar to an American or a European, yet it is not. It is “operating on a different software,” as Pierre Lévy, the French ambassador, put it to me. The definition of state secrets keeps shifting.

在俄罗斯有一个让人越来越解除戒备的现象，它看上去很像美国或欧洲，但其实并非如此。它是“运行在一种不一样的软件上的，”法国大使皮埃尔·列维对我说。对国家秘密的定义在不断改变。

I was advised to accept no document, unless it was a menu, and even then, to use a QR code to order food whenever possible.

我得到的建议是，不要接受除了菜单以外的任何文件，即使是点菜也尽可能扫二维码。

Putin’s True Believers

Five time zones away from Moscow, a dilapidated Soviet-era coal-burning power station belches smoke over the corrugated-iron roofs of modest wooden homes in Ulan-Ude. A bust of Lenin’s head, the world’s largest at 42 tons, still towers over the central square of this city of more than 400,000 people.

在距离莫斯科五个时区的乌兰乌德，一座废弃的苏联时代燃煤发电厂喷出浓烟，笼罩在有波纹铁屋顶的木屋上。重达42顿的世界最大列宁头像，至今在这座人口超40万的城市的中央广场上耸立着。

Now, this quiet capital of Russia’s Buryatia Republic, a center of aircraft and helicopter production that was closed to foreigners during the Cold War, finds itself enmeshed in another war against the West, whose roots lie in the breakup of Lenin’s Soviet Union.

这座静悄悄的城市，如今是俄罗斯布里亚特共和国的首府，冷战时期，这里是固定翼飞机和直升机的生产中心，外国人不得进入，现在它再次卷入一场与西方的战争，而列宁的苏维埃联盟的解体，正是这场战争的根源所在。

Aleksandr Vasilyev, 59, an economist, was about to return to the distant front for a second tour, having signed one of those $2,500 contracts with the Ministry of Defense.

59岁的经济学家亚历山大·瓦西里耶夫即将第二次前往遥远的前线，他和国防部签了那种价值2500美元的合同。

Last December, a Ukrainian shell killed his closest friend, Viktor Prilukov, near Soledar, in eastern Ukraine. Days later, Mr. Vasilyev was blown into the air by a grenade. “I am not a very good bird,” he said. He returned to Siberia with a shattered shoulder, now largely healed.

去年十二月，他的挚友维克多·普利卢科夫在索莱达尔附近被乌军火炮击中丧生。几天后，瓦西里耶夫被一枚榴弹炸上了天。“我不太擅长飞翔，”他说。他带着受了重伤的肩膀回到西伯利亚，如今基本已经痊愈。

“Of course, the money is nice, but it’s not the main reason for going again,” said Mr. Vasilyev, a vigorous man who makes regular use of the weights on the floor of his Soviet-era apartment.

“钱当然是好东西，但那不是我重返的主要原因，”瓦西里耶夫说，他身形健硕，经常在他那间苏联时代的公寓里举铁。

“I fight out of duty to the motherland,” he said. “Our grandfathers went all the way to Berlin in 1945 to ensure we not have an enemy country next door. We won’t allow America to install that.”

“参战是对祖国应尽的义务，”他说。“我们的祖父1945年一直杀到柏林，就为了确保我们不用跟一个敌国作邻居。我们不会让美国给我们安插这么一个邻居。”

As Mr. Vasilyev spoke, a clock with the faces of Mr. Putin and his servile sometime stand-in, Dmitri A. Medvedev, stared down at him from the wall of his kitchen.

他的厨房墙上有一个钟在说这番话的同时，，钟面上的普京和他的跟班——有时当他的替身——迪米特里·A·梅德韦杰夫直溜溜盯着他看。

“My mother gave me the clock 10 years ago because she thought I criticized them too much!” he said. “You know, our usual Russian grumbling, taxes and corruption. We criticize — the czars, Stalin and his gulag, Yeltsin — and we accept.”

“这个钟是我妈妈十年前给我的，因为她觉得我整天骂他们！”他说。“你知道的，我们俄罗斯人常有的抱怨，税收和腐败。我们骂沙皇、斯大林和他的古拉格集中营、叶利钦——然后我们接受现实。”

Others’ embrace of the war is still more ardent. Nikolai Vorodnikov, 44, invited me to his garage where he repairs and readies vehicles to be sent to the front. About 100 SUVs and trucks have already made their way from his Siberian garage to Ukraine.

有的人则以更热忱的方式支持战争。44岁的尼古拉·沃罗德尼科夫邀请我去他的车库，他在那里修理车辆，准备送到前线去。他位于西伯利亚的车库已将大约100辆SUV和卡车运往乌克兰。

He himself fought in Mariupol, a Ukrainian city pulverized by Russian forces. In April 2022, as he stormed the main administration building there, Mr. Vorodnikov took two bullets to his chest. He recuperated for many months back in Ulan-Ude after receiving emergency care.

他本人曾在乌克兰的马里乌波尔作战，一座被俄军夷为平地的城市。2022年4月，沃罗德尼科夫在冲进那里的主要行政大楼时胸部中了两颗子弹。在接受紧急护理后，他回到乌兰乌德修养了好几个月。

Like Mr. Putin, he believes that the 10th-century Kievan Rus — comprising territory that partially overlapped with today’s Ukraine — was the birthplace of modern Russia and that the region has always constituted the inalienable borderlands of greater Russia. Russia and Ukraine are “one body,” he says.

和普京一样，他认为10世纪的基辅罗斯——其领土与今天的乌克兰部分重叠——是现代俄罗斯的诞生地，并且该地区一直是大俄罗斯不可分割的边疆。他说，俄罗斯和乌克兰是“一个整体”。

“The body has a tumor — it is in Ukraine, and we have to cure it,” he told me. “The tumor comes from Americans who go places they have no need to go. Our task is clear and will be accomplished, justice restored, fascism defeated.”

“身上长了个肿瘤——长在乌克兰，我们必须治，”他告诉我。“带来肿瘤的是美国人，他们去了他们没必要去的地方。我们的任务明确且即将达成，正义将得到伸张，法西斯主义将被击败。”

I asked him about Mr. Putin. “He was sent to Russia by God,” he said.

我问他怎么看普京。“他是上帝派到俄罗斯的，”他说。

In a time of terror, the great mass is enthusiastic, compliant, calculating or cowed. A few brave people, by contrast, move to an inner compass.

在恐怖时期，广大民众要么热情高涨，要么顺从，要么精于算计，要么畏首畏尾。相比之下，一些勇敢的人会转向内心的指南针。

The problems of Yevgeny Vlasov, 39, started late last year when he began posting critical commentary on Vkontakte, or VK, a Russian version of Facebook.

39岁的叶夫根尼·弗拉索夫的麻烦始于去年底，当时他开始在Vkontakte（简称VK）上发表批评评论，VK相当于俄罗斯的Facebook。

A tall, lean man with a disarming frankness and fearlessness, Mr. Vlasov, an electrical engineer in Ulan-Ude, posted a graphic from an opposition website illustrating the war’s toll.

弗拉索夫是乌兰乌德的一名电气工程师，个头高瘦，有一种坦率和无畏，他发了一张来自反对派网站的图片，说明了战争造成的伤亡。

It showed that for every Muscovite who dies in the war, 87.5 people die in Dagestan, Russia’s southernmost republic; 275 people in Buryatia, where he lives; and 350 people in Tuva, home to an Asian minority and the poorest region of Russia.

图片显示，战争中每死亡一个莫斯科人，意味着达吉斯坦共和国死亡87.5人；他居住的布里亚特共和国死亡275人；以及图瓦死亡350人，图瓦是一个亚洲少数民族的家园，也是俄罗斯最贫困的地区。

In contrast to all the recruitment billboards, whose images are almost exclusively of white ethnic Russians, a disproportionate number of those dying at the front come from Russia’s ethnic minorities, a pattern confirmed by Mediazona, among other independent news outlets. That was Mr. Vlasov’s point.

所有征兵广告牌上的图像几乎都是俄罗斯白人，与之相反的是，在前线阵亡的人中有很大一部分来自俄罗斯少数民族，Mediazona等独立新闻媒体证实了这一情况。这就是弗拉索夫要表达的。

His friends told him to stop posting. He paid no attention. As a nobody, he thought nobody would be interested in his antiwar videos.

他的朋友告诉他停止发帖。他不理会。他认为自己是一个无名小卒，没有人会对他的反战视频感兴趣。

Mr. Vlasov’s friends, most of whom admire Mr. Putin, asked him when he had last watched TV. He replied: “I stopped watching 10 years ago. It’s all garbage. And that’s why I have a different view.”

弗拉索夫的朋友们大多钦佩普京，他们问他上次看电视是什么时候。他回答说：“我十年前就不再看了。都是垃圾。这就是为什么我有不同的观点。”

What view is that?

什么样的观点？

“I have been angry,” he said. “I just did not understand why we had to attack Ukraine last year. There was no normal reason.”

“我一直很愤怒，”他说。“我就是不明白为什么我们去年必须攻击乌克兰。没有什么正常的理由。”

The president, Mr. Vlasov argued, had lost his bearings. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 went so smoothly that Mr. Putin thought eliminating Ukraine would be easy.

弗拉索夫认为，总统已经迷失了方向。2014年吞并克里米亚的过程非常顺利，普京认为消灭乌克兰也很容易。

“The only problem,” Mr. Vlasov said, “was that Ukraine was preparing all this time, while Putin’s cronies were stealing billions all this time, which is why our soldiers were scrounging for socks.”

“唯一的问题是，”弗拉索夫说，“乌克兰一直在做准备，而普京的亲信却一直在偷窃数十亿美元，这就是为什么我们的士兵在四处寻找袜子。”

Mr. Vlasov thought for a moment. “Putin is a thief,” he said. “The war in Ukraine has shown Russians how much money has disappeared to build his palaces.”

思索片刻后，弗拉索夫说：“普京是个小偷。乌克兰战争向俄罗斯人展示了为建造他的宫殿而损失了多少资金。”

Last December, a police officer called and ordered Mr. Vlasov to report to the local police station. Mr. Vlasov demanded the reason. None was given. He went anyway and was asked if the social media page containing the criticism of the war was his. He said it was.

去年12月，一名警察打电话命令弗拉索夫到当地派出所报到。弗拉索夫询问原因。对方没有给出任何理由。不管怎样，他还是去了。他被问那些含有批判战争的社交媒体页面是否是他的。他说是的。

The police compiled a report saying that he had admitted guilt — he had not — and that he would be fined 60,000 rubles, or about $630, and be imprisoned if he did it a second time.

警方整理了一份报告，称他已经认罪——但他没有——并且如果他再犯，他将被罚款6万卢布（约合630美元），还会被监禁。

Mr. Vlasov hired a lawyer, Nadezhda Nizovkina, who has been active in the political opposition in Ulan-Ude. “I fight for freedom of speech, but I also fight against all that is going on,” she told me. “Under the Constitution, my client should be free to post what he wants.”

弗拉索夫聘请了一位名叫纳德日达·尼佐夫金娜的律师，她是乌兰乌德政治反对派的活跃人士。“我为言论自由而战，但我也与正在发生的一切作斗争，”她告诉我。“根据宪法，我的当事人应该可以自由地发布他想要发布的内容。”

Over the past six months, Mr. Vlasov has appeared in court three times. His fine was eventually halved, then dropped in April, but he has not received any official communication that the case is closed.

在过去的六个月里，弗拉索夫已三次出庭。他的罚款最终减半，然后在4月被取消，但他尚未收到任何表明已结案的官方信息。

With his children aged 10, 9, 4 and 2, Mr. Vlasov wants to leave Russia. He sees no future for the family in Ulan-Ude. His dream is to become an electrician in California; he thinks his wife could find a job in a nail salon.

弗拉索夫想要离开俄罗斯，他的孩子分别是10岁、9岁、4岁和2岁。他看不到一家人在乌兰乌德的未来。他的梦想是去加利福尼亚州当电工；他认为妻子可以在美甲沙龙找到一份工作。

“Putin has been in power so long that children do not ask who the next president will be, they ask who the next Putin will be,” he said. “That is not a good thing.”

“普京在位太久了，孩子们都不会问下一个总统会是谁，他们问下一个普京是谁，”他说。“这可不是什么好事。”

Mr. Vlasov recalled going in 2021 to a demonstration in support of Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who was sentenced this week to a further 19 years in prison under brutal conditions. “There were lots of people protesting,” he said. “Support for Putin was down.”

弗拉索夫回忆起2021年参加声援阿里克谢·A·纳瓦尔尼的示威活动，也就是那位被关押的反对派领袖，这周他又被判了19年徒刑，监狱的条件十分恶劣。“有很多人在抗议，”他说。“普京的支持率在下降。”

Two years on, some of his friends who protested are now supporters of Mr. Putin, a change he attributes to “this magic solution brought about by the war!”

两年下来，他的一些曾经参加抗议的朋友已经成了普京的支持者，他把这种态度的转变归咎于“战争带来的神奇解决方案”。

We agreed to meet the next day at the Southern Cemetery, a 40-minute drive from Ulan-Ude, in a pine forest. There is no more room in the cemeteries in the city center.

我们约定第二天在南方公墓见面，那里距离乌兰乌德40分钟车程，坐落在一片松树林中。市中心的墓地已经没有更多空间了。

We strolled through the vast burial ground, past scrawny stray dogs and picnic tables and large bouquets of multicolored plastic flowers glinting in the sunlight around newly dug graves of soldiers.

我们漫步穿过广阔的墓地，经过骨瘦如柴的流浪狗和野餐桌，还有阳光下闪闪发光的大束彩色塑料花，周围是新挖的士兵坟墓。

An entire section of the cemetery is given over to Ulan-Ude’s dead in the war.

墓地的一整块都留给乌兰乌德的战死者。

An old couple was preparing a grave, shoveling the earth and beating it back down. A level lay on the ground next to the headstone they were about to place.

一对老夫妇正在准备一个坟墓，他们铲土，夯土。在他们准备安放的墓碑旁边，地上放着一个水平仪。。

I asked who they were burying.

我问他们埋葬的是谁。

“Our grandson.”

“我们的孙子。”

How old was he?

他多大了?

“Nineteen.”

“19”。

What happened?

出了什么事？

“Ukraine happened.”

“乌克兰的事。”

The headstone read: Andrei Malykh, born May 4, 2003, died Oct. 31, 2022.

墓碑上写着：安德烈·马利克，生于2003年5月4日，卒于2022年10月31日。

As I read it, their daughter approached, threatening to call the ubiquitous Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., if the conversation continued.

当我读着这段铭文时，他们的女儿走过来，威胁说，如果谈话继续下去，她要就打电话给无处不在的联邦安全局。

Refighting an Old War

The celebration of the centennial of the Buryatia Republic was held on May 30 at the ornate Ulan-Ude opera house beneath a frescoed ceiling of Soviet planes with red stars and a Soviet flag emblazoned with Lenin’s image.

5月30日，布里亚特共和国成立100周年庆典在华丽的乌兰乌德歌剧院举行，天花板上悬挂着苏联飞机的壁画，机身上有红星和印着列宁肖像的苏联国旗。

The governor, Aleksei S. Tsydenov, of Mr. Putin’s United Russia party, spoke for a half-hour, extolling the 39,000 Buryats who died in World War II. He then honored eight local soldiers of the current war already elevated to the status of “Hero of Russia.”

该国首脑阿列克谢·齐杰诺夫是普京领导的统一俄罗斯党成员，他发表了半个小时的讲话，赞扬在“二战”中牺牲的3.9万名布里亚特人。然后，他表彰了八名在当前战争中被授予“俄罗斯英雄”称号的当地士兵。

The whole theater rose to applaud the pinning of medals on the lapels of three of these heroes, as well as on the lapels of several veterans of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

他将勋章别在其中三位英雄的衣襟上，又别在几位1941–1945年伟大卫国战争老兵的衣襟上，全场起立鼓掌。

It was a perfect image of the far-fetched fusion of the two wars that Mr. Putin has sought to engineer.

这是普京策划的将两场战争牵强融合的完美写照。

“Today, the role of conquerors of Nazism is played again by a new generation,” Mr. Tsydenov declared. “Our army will win. During all the stages of history there were those who wished evil on us. But we overcame all obstacles.”

“今天，新一代再次扮演了纳粹主义征服者的角色，”齐杰诺夫宣称。“我们的军队会赢的。在历史的各个阶段，总有人希望我们遭殃。但我们克服了所有障碍。”

A theatrical performance, of stylized Soviet influence, followed, including an all-male dance troupe that gyrated to a hymn to coal production, slashing their arms downward as they sang: “YES! YES! COAL PRODUCTION IS ON OUR SHOULDERS AND ALL RUSSIA IS BEHIND US!”

随后是一场具有苏联风格的戏剧表演，其中包括一个全男性舞蹈团，他们随着一首歌颂煤炭生产的赞美诗旋转舞动，向下挥动手臂，唱着：“是的！是的！煤炭生产是我们的责任，整个俄罗斯支持我们！”

Outside, the mood was less exultant.

在外面，气氛没有那么欢欣鼓舞。

Salaries averaging a few hundred dollars a month mean a hardscrabble existence for many.

对许多人来说，平均每月几百美元的工资意味着艰苦的生活。

Irina Kontsova’s two daughters, 7 and 9, learned on TV of the death of their father, Maksim Kontsov, 33, last year in Ukraine. She had found herself unable to tell them. Her older daughter, Margarita, was back from school early and saw a TV announcement that her father had received a Gold Star Hero of Russia award.

伊琳娜·康措娃的两个女儿七岁和九岁，她们是从电视上得知了33岁的父亲马克西姆·康措夫去年在乌克兰去世的消息。她感觉自己无法对她们说出口。她的大女儿玛格丽塔早早从学校回来，看到电视上宣布她的父亲获得了俄罗斯金星英雄奖。

We drove to the high school where the couple first met. A plaque is newly affixed to the facade. It commemorates the heroism of Mr. Kontsov, killed in a distant land in service to an aging leader’s obsession.

我们开车去了那对夫妇第一次见面的高中。学校正面新贴了一块牌匾，是为了纪念康佐夫的英勇行为，他在遥远的土地上为一位年迈领导人的执念而牺牲。

Ms. Kontsova, a forestry expert, stood beside the plaque. “You cannot break the Russian people,” she said. “Especially Russian women.”

康索娃是林业专家，她站在牌匾旁边。“你无法击垮俄罗斯人民，”她说。“尤其是俄罗斯女性。”

Watching her, all I could think of was the waste, the fatherless children, the poisonous bequest of tangled history, and all of those medals handed out to glorify the bloody sacrifice of war.

看着她，我满脑子想的都是这一切带来的浪费，没有父亲的孩子，纠缠不清的历史留下的有毒遗产，以及所有那些为纪念战争的血腥牺牲而颁发的奖章。

‘A Tower of Silence’

To reach the Moscow office of Dmitri A. Muratov, the Nobel Prize-winning editor of the shuttered independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, you walk past the office of Anna Politkovskaya, murdered by the Putin regime in 2006 for her reporting on Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Her typewriter sits on her desk, along with her glasses and notes and a book with a title that sums up the impunity of the Putin era: “History of an Inconclusive Investigation.”

她的书桌上放着打字机，还有她的眼镜、笔记和一本书，书的标题总结了普京时代的有罪不罚现象：《调查无定论的历史》(History of an Inconclusive Investigation)。

You walk on past the photographs of six other Novaya journalists killed since 2000. In different ways, they had adhered to a maxim of the great wartime photographer, Robert Capa, that Mr. Muratov cited in his Nobel acceptance speech: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”

你要走过自2000年以来被杀害的另外六名《新报》记者的照片。他们以不同的方式遵循了伟大的战时摄影师罗伯特·卡帕的格言，穆拉托夫在诺贝尔奖获奖感言中引用了这句话：“如果你的照片不够好，说明你离得不够近。”

Mr. Muratov, 61, sits in an office featuring a photograph of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the leader now reviled by many Russians, who rejected Communism in favor of free speech, free enterprise and open borders.

61岁的穆拉托夫坐在一间挂着米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫照片的办公室里，这位领导人现在受到许多俄罗斯人的唾弃，他拒绝共产主义，支持言论自由、企业自由和开放边界。

His restructuring and openness — perestroika and glasnost — of the late 1980s led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and, peacefully and fleetingly, brought a divided Europe together in liberty. In the photograph, Mr. Gorbachev, who died last year, holds an egg.

“He was very careful with live things,” Mr. Muratov tells me. “He was a farmer. He valued life. Now, in our state, death is more important than life.”

“他对待活物非常小心，”穆拉托夫告诉我。“他是一个农民。他珍视生命。现在，在我们国家，死亡比生命更重要。”

The past 17 months have resembled a funeral march. The government closed down Novaya, along with most independent media, soon after the war began. A branch of the paper, Novaya Gazeta Europe, now publishes in Riga, Latvia. Mr. Muratov stayed on in Russia, a country “where truth is now a crime,” as he put it.

过去17个月就像送葬队伍的行进。政府开战没多久就关闭了《新报》以及其它一些最独立的媒体。报社的一个分支《欧洲新报》目前在拉脱维亚的里加出版。穆拉托夫还是待在俄罗斯，他称这是个“视真相为犯罪”的国家。

The truth speakers — Mr. Navalny, the outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, the war critic Ilya Yashin, the theater director Yevgeniya Berkovich, the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and countless other writers and poets — are all in prison.

宣讲真相的人——纳瓦尔尼、大声批评克里姆林宫的弗拉基米尔·卡拉-穆尔扎、批评战争的伊利亚·雅辛、戏剧导演叶夫根尼亚·贝尔科维奇和无数作家与诗人——都已经身陷囫囵。

“We are the suffocated society,” Mr. Muratov says. “Russia has become a tower of silence.”

“我们是个窒息的社会，”穆拉托夫说。“俄罗斯已经成为一座无声的巨塔。”

Nobody, he argues, knows what the country really thinks. All that is known is that the older generation believes in Mr. Putin with a religious passion.

他说，没人知道国家是怎么想的。唯一知道的是老一辈像信教一样相信普京。

As for the young, up to one million of the best and the brightest have left since the war began. These young Russians, Mr. Muratov tells me, did not want to kill or be killed. They did not think that glory was attained through bloodshed. If anything, they believe glory lies in art and intellect. To replace them will take a generation or more, he believes.

至于年轻人，自开战以来已经有多达一百万最优秀、最明智的年轻人离开俄罗斯。穆拉托夫说，这些人不想杀人和被杀。他们不认为荣誉可以通过流血来获得。他们倒是相信，荣耀在艺术和知识中。他认为，要取代这群人，需要经历一个或几个世代的时间。

There are angry young people in Russia, too.

在俄罗斯还有一些愤怒的年轻人。

In the Belgorod region, close to Russia’s western border with Ukraine, where Ukrainian cross-border attacks have forced thousands of Russians to flee their homes, I met Ilya Kostyukov, 19.

在临近俄乌边境的别尔哥罗德地区，乌克兰的越境攻击迫使数万俄罗斯人逃离家园，我在这里遇见了19岁的伊利亚·科斯秋科夫。

He was thrown out of college last year for his opposition to the war but learned enough about the law to work as what he called a “lawyer,” mainly helping Russians desperate to avoid or leave the war’s front.

他在去年因为反战而被大学开除，不过他已经学到了足够多的知识，足以从事他称为“律师”的工作，主要是帮助迫切想要避免上前线或离开前线的俄罗斯人。

“We put an F.S.B. guy at the top of the government, we allowed bandits to operate and rule, we thought whatever went wrong could be rectified in an election,” Mr. Kostyukov said, “but it was too late when people started to realize — and here we are!”

“我们在政府最高层放了个FSB的人，我们让土匪来运作和统治，我们觉得，无论出了什么问题，都可以通过一场选举来修正，”科斯秋科夫说，“但是等人们开始明白过来已经晚了——于是现在就这样了！”

Beneath the surface of Russian life, a stark generational conflict lurks. It is unclear when it will erupt, but it seems possible that one day it will.

在俄罗斯生活表象之下，潜藏着一场剧烈的代际冲突。冲突何时爆发尚不得而知，但看起来总有一天会爆发。

In Moscow, I asked Mr. Muratov what drove Mr. Putin to his reckless invasion of Ukraine.

在莫斯科，我问穆拉托夫是什么促使普京对乌克兰发起无所顾忌的侵略。

“He developed utter contempt for the West,” Mr. Muratov said. “All these leaders and politicians would come to Moscow and go to Politkovskaya’s grave in the morning, and talk about human rights with representatives of civil society, and then they would go see Mr. Putin and sign deals for oil and gas.”

“他对西方产生了极度的厌恶，”穆拉托夫说。“这些领导人和政客会到莫斯科来，”上午去波利特科夫斯卡娅坟前祭拜，与公民社会代表大谈人权，然后他们会去见普京，签下石油天然气合约。

“After they left office,” he said, “Mr. Putin would buy them — former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former French Prime Minister François Fillon — they were all happy to take Putin’s money. So he concluded all this Western talk of values was garbage.”

“他们卸任后，”他说，“普京会收买他们——前德国总理格哈德·施罗德、前法国总理弗朗索瓦·菲永——他们都欣然接受普京的钱。于是他就得出结论，西方嘴上说的价值观都是垃圾。”

Mr. Putin, in Mr. Muratov’s view, also reached another conclusion: Western powers had exploited a period of post-Soviet Russian weakness to undermine the glory of the Red Army that had fought its way to Hitler’s Berlin in 1945. In effect, the West had insulted the 27 million Soviets lost to the war, among them Mr. Putin’s older brother. His father was badly injured.

在穆拉托夫看来，普京还得出了另一个结论：西方各国抓住后苏联时代俄罗斯的弱点，抹杀红军在1945年一路杀到希特勒的柏林这样的功绩。西方因此侮辱了2700万在战争中丧生的苏联人，这其中就有普京的哥哥。他的父亲当时身受重伤。

The West did so by expanding NATO east toward Russia’s borders, a broken pledge in Mr. Putin’s view.

西方是通过将北约东扩至俄罗斯边境来实现这一目标的，在普京看来，这本身就是背信弃义。

“So Putin decided to win the already finished World War II,” Mr. Muratov said. “He resolved to protect the result of that war. That is why we are told we are fighting Nazis and Fascists.”

“于是普京决定，要获得已经结束的第二次世界大战的胜利，”穆拉托夫说。“他要保护那场战争的胜果。这就是为什么要告诉我们，我们是在和纳粹和法西斯作战。”

The miraculous bloodless end of Soviet totalitarian Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were not bloodless after all.

苏联专制共产主义统治的结束，1989年柏林墙的倒塌，都奇迹般地没有流血，但现在看来，其实并非如此。

For Mr. Putin, the war has expanded in character, becoming the culmination of a civilizational war against the West. It may unfold in Ukraine, but Moscow’s enemies lie beyond.

在普京看来，战争的性质已经扩大，成为对西方的文明之战。它也许是在乌克兰进行，但莫斯科的敌人远不止于此。

The United States, Europe and NATO are now consistently identified as sources of “outright Satanism,” in the recent words of Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

用俄罗斯外国情报机构负责人谢尔盖·纳雷什金近日的话说，美国、欧洲和北约现在被一致认定为“彻头彻尾的恶魔崇拜”之源。

Being ideological, the war is doubly intractable. “There are currently no grounds for an agreement,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told me. “We will continue the operation for the foreseeable future.”

既然成了意识形态战争，就会愈发难以控制。“目前完全没有和谈的基础，”克里姆林宫发言人迪米特里·S·佩斯科夫对我说。“我们会在可见的未来继续这场行动。”

Anti-Western invective has attained phantasmagorical proportions. It is part of an emergent state ideology that is setting a course for possibly decades of confrontation.

反西方的恶言恶语已经达到光怪陆离的程度。这是一种正在成形的国家意识形态的一部分，为接下来几十年的潜在冲突埋下伏笔。

Thirty years after Russia — in the midst of the ardent liberal hopes of the 1990s — adopted a Constitution whose Article 13 said, “No ideology shall be proclaimed as State ideology,” Mr. Putin’s Russia is hurtling toward a new official ideology of conservative values.

上世纪90年代，对自由主义充满热忱期待的俄罗斯通过了一部宪法，其第13条写道，“任何意识形态不得被确立为国家的或必须服从的意识形态。”三十年后，普京的俄罗斯正加速走向一种秉守保守主义价值观的新官方意识形态。

The possibility of an amendment rescinding Article 13 has been raised by the justice minister, Konstantin Chuychenko, among others.

包括司法部长康斯坦丁·丘琴科在内的一些人提出了修宪废除第13条的可能性。

This anti-Western ideology is based around the Orthodox Church, the fatherland, the family and the “priority of the spiritual over the material,” as laid out in Mr. Putin’s decree on spiritual and moral values issued in November.

这种反西方意识形态是围绕东正教会、祖国、家庭和“精神高于物质”的观念建立起来的，后者在普京于11月发布的关于精神和道德价值的政令中得到体现。

The enemy, it proclaims, is the United States and “other unfriendly foreign states,” intent on the cultivation of “selfishness, permissiveness, immorality, the denial of the ideals of patriotism” and “destruction of the traditional family through the promotion of nontraditional sexual relations.”

政令宣称美国以及“其它不友好的外国政府”是敌人，意图培育“自私、悲观、背德和对爱国主义理想的否定”，并且要“通过推广非传统的性关系来摧毁传统家庭”。

If the West was portrayed during the Cold War as the nightmarish home of ruthless capitalism, it is now, as Russia sees it, the home of sex changes, the rampages of drag queens, barbaric gender debates and an L.G.B.T.Q. takeover.

如果说在冷战中西方被描绘为冷酷资本主义的恐怖大本营，那么在现在的俄罗斯看来，它是性改变、变装皇后泛滥、野蛮的性辩论和LGBTQ称霸的源头。

“For how long should Russia tolerate open warfare from the West using Ukrainian meat?” Sergei Karaganov, a well-connected Russian foreign policy expert, asked in an interview.

“面对西方公然利用乌克兰的人肉发起的战争，俄罗斯还要忍耐多久？”背景深厚的俄罗斯外交专家谢尔盖·卡拉加诺夫在接受采访时说。

“There is a high risk of nuclear war, and it is increasing,” he said. “The war is a prolonged Cuban missile crisis, but this time with Western leaders who reject normal values of motherhood, parenthood, gender, love of country, faith, God.”

“核战的风险很高，并且越来越高，”他说。“这场战争就是加长版的古巴导弹危机，但这一次面对的是否定母性、父母之道、性别、爱国、信仰、神明等正常价值观的西方领导人。”

This scarcely veiled Russian nuclear threat is part of a relentless onslaught against the West. From late March to May, Russia signaled that a new phase of outright confrontation had begun.

俄罗斯这种几乎不加掩饰的核威胁是这场对西方的厉声讨伐行动的一部分。从3月底到5月，俄罗斯一直在表示，一个正面冲突的新阶段已经到来。

In the first arrest of a foreign correspondent since the Cold War, Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal was detained on charges of espionage that are vehemently denied by the United States government and his newspaper. Four months on, he languishes in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.

《华尔街日报》记者埃文·格尔什科维奇被以间谍罪名逮捕，这是冷战以来第一次逮捕外国记者，美国政府和他所在的报社都强烈否认这一指控。四个月后，他仍在莫斯科的列福尔托沃监狱忍受煎熬。

The Anglo-American School of Moscow, an institution at the core of Russian-American cooperation for almost 75 years, shut down for good on May 12 after a court ruling and charges by a local newspaper that it was propagating L.G.B.T.Q. values.

过去近75年来一直处于俄美合作核心的莫斯科英美学校在5月12日的法庭裁决下彻底关闭，一家地方报纸指责该校传播LGBTQ价值观。

Mr. Putin will no doubt use this ideological onslaught and the war in Ukraine relentlessly in the run-up to Russia’s next presidential election, in March 2024. His re-election, nearly inevitable, would be for a renewable six-year term.

在接下来2024年3月的俄罗斯总统大选中，普京无疑会毫无顾忌地利用这种意识形态的讨伐和在乌克兰的战争。他的再度当选几乎是板上钉钉，他将得到一个之后可以继续连任的六年任期。

“Our presidential election is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy,” said Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. “Mr. Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote.”

“我们的总统选举其实不算民主，只是昂贵的官僚政治，”克里姆林宫发言人佩斯科夫说。“普京先生明年将以超过90%的得票率再次当选。”

The only time that Mr. Putin’s popularity plunged was last September when a partial mobilization was ordered. “We saw the biggest overnight drop in support for Mr. Putin in 30 years of polling,” Denis Volkov, the director of Levada Center, the only major independent pollster in Russia, told me in Moscow. “Suddenly the war was here!”

普京的支持率唯一一次出现下跌是在去年9月，也就是下达局部动员令的时候。“我们看到普京的民调出现30年来最大幅度的隔夜下滑，”俄罗斯唯一大型独立民调机构勒瓦达中心的主任丹尼斯·沃尔科夫在莫斯科对我说。“战争突然出现在了眼前。”

Mr. Putin’s approval rating fell to around 50 percent from 80 percent, according to Levada, which focuses on door-to-door polling. Support for Mr. Putin has since returned to around 80 percent, in so far as polling can be trusted in the current environment.

据专注于登门调查的勒瓦达的数据，普京的支持率从80%跌倒了50%左右。此后普京的支持率恢复到了80%左右，至于民调在当前环境下能有多可靠就见仁见智了。

By insisting, against all evidence, that Ukraine is a nation run by Fascists and Nazis, and by suggesting that the West wants Ukraine to be another home of gender-transitioning moral decay, Mr. Putin has successfully turned a war of aggression into a defensive war, essential to save Russia from those intent on ripping apart its physical and moral fabric.

尽管与大量证据相左，普京仍坚称乌克兰是一个法西斯和纳粹控制的国家，并且西方想把乌克兰变成又一个性别转换道德堕落的大本营，因此他成功地将一场侵略战争变成了卫国战争，本质上是在拯救俄罗斯，让它的实体和道德构造免遭被肢解的命运。

“What we see is not the measured language of an establishment in power for decades,” said Mr. Baunov, the fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “It has the ardor of revolutionaries, and it emanates from a major world power with a nuclear arsenal.”

“我们看到的不是一个在位数十年的当权势力会使用的那种四平八稳的语言，”卡内基俄罗斯欧亚中心的鲍诺夫说。“这是一个掌握核武的大国，在散发出一种革命者的炽热。”

A mirror effect is at work in this late Putin era. The accusations he levels at the West and Ukraine — aggression, fascism, nuclear threats — become his own actions. Russian-pulverized Mariupol in Ukraine in 2023 looks like nothing so much as Nazi-pulverized Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in 1943.

在普京时代末期有一种镜像效应。他对西方和乌克兰的指责——侵略、法西斯主义、核威胁——成了他自己的行动。乌克兰的马里乌波尔在2023年被俄罗斯夷为平地的样子更像1943年被纳粹摧毁的斯大林格勒（今伏尔加格勒）。

The vindictive fever churning inside the Russian leader came to a head on the eve of the war in Ukraine. The loss of Crimea, in particular, as the Soviet Union broke up was a festering wound because of the widespread Russian sentiment that it is a core part of the country’s history.

这位俄罗斯领导人心中的复仇之火在乌克兰战争前夕达到了顶峰。因苏联解体而失去克里米亚成为一个久久不愈的伤口，因为俄罗斯人普遍认为那是国家历史的一个核心组成部分。

“Putin was obsessed with justice, as he saw it,” said Aleksei A. Venediktov, whose popular Echo of Moscow radio station was shut down soon after the war began. “He told me in 2014, ‘You might not like the annexation of Crimea, but it’s just.’”

“普京执着于他所认为的公道，”阿里克谢·A·韦涅季克托夫说，他的电台“莫斯科回声”曾经很受欢迎，但在战争开始后很快遭到取缔。“他在2014年对我说，‘你可能对克里米亚的并入有不满，但那是正当的。’”

Mr. Venediktov says he knows Mr. Putin well. He believes everyone, himself included, got the Russian leader wrong.

韦涅季克托夫说他跟普京很熟。他认为所有人，包括他自己，都对这位俄罗斯领导人有误解。

“We did not see the Putin who was on a historical mission of revenge,” he told me. “We thought he was a corrupt guy from a poor family who wanted yachts and palaces and girls and money. We did not see the K.G.B. officer who thought the loss of the Soviet Union was unjust. We thought he was a cynic. In fact, he was a romantic.”

“我们看不到那个肩负着复仇历史使命的普京，”他告诉我。“我们以为他是一个腐败的家伙，出身贫困家庭，想要游艇、宫殿、女人和金钱。我们不觉得他是个认为苏联的解体不公平的克格勃官员。我们认为他是个冷血自私的人。事实上，他是个浪漫主义者。”

Nationalism is not fascism, but it is an essential component of it. Its perennial essence is a promise to change the present in the name of an illusory past in order to forge a future vague in all respects except its glory.

民族主义不是法西斯主义，但它是法西斯主义的重要组成部分。承诺以虚幻过去的名义改变现在，打造一个除了荣耀之外，在各方面都很模糊的未来，这就是它的永恒本质。

“History for Putin is an instrument to shape current events. He is absolutely uninterested in historical truth,” said Oleg Orlov, a leading human rights activist for more than three decades at the head of Memorial, which was shut down in 2021.

对普京来说，历史是塑造当前事件的工具。他对历史真相完全不感兴趣，”奥列格·奥尔洛夫说。他是一位重要的人权活动人士，担任“纪念”团体的负责人30多年，该组织于2021年被取缔。

Mr. Orlov, 70, is now on trial for “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of Russian Federation armed forces.” He faces up to three years in prison.

现年70岁的奥尔洛夫目前正在受审，罪名是“采取公开行动，诋毁对俄罗斯联邦武装部队的使用”。他最多可面临三年的监禁。

For years, Mr. Putin’s regime has deployed all means to re-energize and redirect history. “My History” theme parks spread, to remind Russians of their heroism, from resistance to the Mongols in the 13th century until the Nazi invasion. Children are indoctrinated through lessons and extracurricular activities built around military themes.

多年来，普京政权动用了一切手段来重振和重塑历史。“我的历史”主题公园遍布各地，俄罗斯人记住他们的英雄事迹，从13世纪抵抗蒙古人到纳粹入侵。围绕军事主题开展的课程和课外活动也向孩子们灌输了这种思想。

The march of millions of Russians carrying images of their dead forbears in parades across the country became a feature of the May 9 Victory Day celebration, marking the Russian triumph in the Great Patriotic War. This year, however, in a subdued ceremony, these so-called Immortal Regiment events were dropped.

5月9日的胜利日庆祝活动中，数以百万计的俄罗斯人举着先烈的画像在全国各地游行，这是俄罗斯卫国战争胜利庆祝的一大特色。然而，今年，在一场低调的仪式上，这些所谓的“不朽军团”活动被取消了。

“Perhaps there was a fear in the Kremlin that someone would march with a photograph of a son killed in Ukraine,” Géza Andreas von Geyr, the departing German ambassador to Russia, told me.

即将离任的德国驻俄罗斯大使格萨·安德烈亚斯·冯·盖尔告诉我：“也许克里姆林宫担心有人会拿着在乌克兰阵亡儿子的照片游行。”

At the beginning of the war last year, Mr. Orlov stood alone on Red Square with a banner saying, “1945: A country victorious over fascism. 2022: A country where fascism is victorious.”

去年战争开始时，奥尔洛夫独自站在红场上，举着一条横幅，上面写着“1945：一个战胜法西斯主义的国家。2022：一个法西斯主义获胜的国家。”

He told me that there were now two options. The first was that Mr. Putin would be replaced somehow, and that a period of reform would start, as under Khrushchev after Stalin.

他告诉我，现在有两个选择。第一种是普京以某种方式被取代，然后开始一段改革时期，就像斯大林之后的赫鲁晓夫时期一样。

“The second option, which is more realistic, is that the regime stays in place and Russia will be slowly dying,” Mr. Orlov said. “It will fall behind other countries, and to make this regime stable, the level of repression will rise.”

“第二种选择更为现实，那就是普京政权继续存在，俄罗斯慢慢消亡，”奥尔洛夫说。“它将落后于其他国家，为了使这个政权稳定，镇压会加剧。”

Mr. Putin almost certainly has enough of his country, and enough cash, behind him to pursue the war for at least another 18 months to two years, three Western ambassadors to Russia told me in Moscow.

三位西方驻俄罗斯大使在莫斯科告诉我，普京几乎肯定拥有足够的国家支持和资金支持，让他至少再打18个月到两年的战争。

I asked Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, if Russia sought more Ukrainian territory beyond the four provinces annexed.

我问克里姆林宫发言人佩斯科夫，在被吞并的四个省之外，俄罗斯是否希望获得更多的乌克兰领土。

“No,” he said. “We just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours.”

“不，”他说。“我们只想控制我们现在写进宪法的所有土地。”

Russia Turns in its Gyre

The fishery museum on Lake Baikal, a wooden building that has partly subsided into the water, is officially closed. But Ms. Rolikova, the innkeeper, thought it was important to see it, and so she opened the padlocked door to reveal a palimpsest of Russia over the past century.

贝加尔湖上的渔业博物馆是一座部分沉入水中的木制建筑，已正式关闭。但客栈老板罗里科娃认为有必要看看它，于是她打开了锁着的门，眼前过去一个世纪以来俄罗斯的缩影。

Scattered here and there were barrels in which salted fish once lay, sleds, nets, benches and faded photographs of fishermen headed out in wooden boats onto the immense lake. I was reminded of the observation of Roland Barthes, the French philosopher, that in every old photograph lurks catastrophe.

到处散落着放咸鱼的木桶、雪橇、渔网、长凳，以及渔民们乘着木船驶向浩瀚湖面的褪色照片。我想起了法国哲学家罗兰·巴特的一句话：每一张老照片都潜藏着灾难。

Soviet posters from the time of the Great Patriotic War adorned the walls: “Big Fish to the Front Line!” “The Duty of Every Fisherman is to Exceed the Plan!”

墙上挂着卫国战争时期的苏联海报：“大鱼上前线！”“赶超计划是所有渔夫的责任！”

A vision of vats of salted fish being hauled across thousands of miles of Russian steppe to nourish the Red Army battling its way to Hitler’s Berlin seemed to capture the immensity of the Soviet resolve and sacrifice that Mr. Putin insists he must honor through yet more war.

一桶桶咸鱼被拖过数千公里的俄罗斯大草原，给红军带去滋养，让他们一路打到希特勒统治的柏林，这样的景象似乎概括了苏联人的巨大决心和牺牲，普京坚称，他必须通过更多的战争来纪念这种决心和牺牲。

“Nobody came and asked us: Do we want this war or do we not?” Ms. Rolikova said.

“没有人来问我们：我们是否想要这场战争？”罗里科娃说。

On the road back to Ulan-Ude from Lake Baikal, the toll of Mr. Putin’s war to reverse history was inescapable.

在从贝加尔湖返回乌兰乌德的路上，普京为扭转历史而发动的战争的代价是随处可见的。

In one cemetery lay Andrei Mezhov, a Marine, born in 2000 and killed on March 6, 2022, in Ukraine. He was from the nearby town of Talovka, had studied at the Baikal State University and served in the army in Vladivostok.

墓园里埋葬着安德烈·梅佐夫，这名2000年出生的海军步兵于2022年3月6日死在了乌克兰。他来自附近的塔洛夫卡镇，曾在国立贝加尔大学读书，并在符拉迪沃斯托克的军队服役。

A Marine flag flapped in the wind above a bouquet of flowers. On it was the Marines’ motto, “Wherever we are, there lies victory.”

一面海军步兵旗在花束上方飘扬。旗帜上写着海步口号：“所到之处，皆是胜利。”

On each visit I made to a cemetery to see the graves of the war dead, F.S.B. agents would park their car 50 meters away, a gentle reminder.

每次我去墓园探视战争死难者的坟墓，FSB特工都会把车停在50米开外的地方，作为一种委婉的提醒。

On my last day in Moscow, I went to the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge beneath the Kremlin. A small shrine marks the spot where Boris Y. Nemtsov, a towering opposition figure, was gunned down on Feb. 27, 2015 — a flagrant political murder.

在莫斯科的最后一天，我去了毗邻克里姆林宫的莫斯科河大桥。一处小型纪念碑标出了反对派杰出领袖鲍里斯·Y·涅姆佐夫在2015年2月27日被枪杀的地点，那是一场明目张胆的政治谋杀。

Somebody is always present at the shrine, watching over it, making sure there is a fresh bouquet of flowers. On this day, the task fell to Arkady Konikov, who told me: “Nemtsov was an honest politician, a very unusual thing. He was a brave man, a great man.”

这里总有人在守护，确保纪念花束的新鲜的。这一天，这个任务落到了阿尔卡季·科尼科夫身上，他告诉我：“涅姆佐夫是个诚实的政客，这是很不寻常的。他是个勇敢的人，一个伟大的人。”

The year before Mr. Nemtsov died, almost a decade ago, as the Russian-instigated fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine began, he wrote on his Facebook page: “Putin has declared war on Ukraine. This is a fratricidal war. Russia and Ukraine will pay a high price for the bloody insanity of this mentally unstable secret-police agent. Young men will die on both sides. There will be inconsolable mothers and sisters.”

涅姆佐夫去世前一年，也就是大约十年前俄罗斯在乌克兰顿巴斯地区挑起的战斗开始时，他在自己的Facebook页面上写道：“普京已对乌克兰宣战。这是一场自相残杀的战争。俄罗斯与乌克兰将会因为这个精神不稳定的秘密警察特工的血腥疯狂而付出惨痛代价。两国的年轻男性会死在战场。母亲和姐妹将伤心欲绝。”

More recently, just before Mr. Gorbachev’s death on Aug. 30, 2022, Mr. Muratov, the Novaya editor, visited his friend as he lay in a Moscow hospital. The condition of the Soviet leader who decided to set Russians free, and whose funeral Mr. Putin would not attend, was grave. He could not understand much.

前段时间，戈尔巴乔夫于2022年8月30日去世之前，《新报》主编穆拉托夫去探望了这位正躺在莫斯科医院里的朋友。曾做出给俄罗斯人自由这个决定的苏联领导人身体状况急剧恶化，已经基本失去意识。去世后，普京没有参加他的葬礼。

There was a big TV in his room. On it, playing over and over, were images of bombings and explosions in Ukraine. As Mr. Muratov left the room, he heard Mr. Gorbachev say: “Who could be happy because of this?”

病房里有一台大电视。电视中一遍遍播放着乌克兰战火纷飞的影像。就在穆拉托夫离开时，他听到戈尔巴乔夫说：“谁会因此而高兴呢？”