Zen blog post in Russian
https://dzen.ru/a/ah9HqchSU3_ufUWt

The country that was eaten by zeros: the story of a missed future. The Tale of the Eaten Future: A Grotesque tale of Economics and Power.

Here is an attempt to translate the dry figures of macroeconomic statistics into the language of classical Russian literature. This is a story about the "alternative cost" of government choice. The main point of the story is to make the abstract trillions of budget expenditures tangible and to show the most terrible but invisible price of militarization — a dead, unlooked-for future. This is a story about undeveloped cities, unborn people and the enormous potential of a huge country that was voluntarily thrown into the furnace.

"Cast-iron Snout and the Ghost of alternative Value"
In one department... however, it is better not to name which one, because there is nothing in the world more touchy than any government places, especially in our harsh, tightly buttoned-up time. Let's put it this way: an official served in a certain Main Directorate of Future Estimates. He was so inconspicuous that even clerical flies landed on him without the slightest reverence, mistaking him for an extension of the oak table. His name was Epiphan Karpovich Pustosmetov. This last name, coupled with a skinny, as if wrung dry figure, was frighteningly precisely consistent with his position. Epiphan Karpovich was in charge of copying numbers into thick books that smelled of sealing wax, so monstrous that the mere sight of them drove an ordinary person's mind beyond reason.

On that dank evening, when the evil Petersburg wind howled through the chimneys like a minor sexton at a wake, Pustosmetov sat alone under a green lamp. In front of him was the Main Bulletin for 2026. His eyes skimmed over the lines, where it was written in a sweeping general's handwriting: "Total — 50 trillion rubles." Each figure was fat, well-fed, with an imperious curl. And next to it was a terrible, bottomless column: "National Defense," which swallowed up two and a half times more at once than all social policy, all schools, hospitals and mothers with many children combined. Eighty-four percent of that money was shrouded in such a thick darkness of secrecy that the paper itself was deathly cold. Epiphan Karpovich dipped his pen, and suddenly his hand trembled. Fifty trillion! The human mind goes blind and numb before this white noise. But Pustosmetov, who withered over the estimates, knew their true, living value.

Suddenly, the air in the office thickened, there was a smell of gunpowder smoke, through which for some reason the aroma of fresh milk and fresh bread penetrated. Blue smoke billowed from the very center of the giant zero, inscribed in the military spending column. Out of this smoke, a nimble imp in an official uniform, an overseas spirit named Opportunity Cost, was woven, squinting slyly. He did not scare Pustosmetov with horns, but simply blew on the paper. And in front of the astonished clerk, right on the cloth, another, unprecedented Russia began to breathe.

Thirty magnificent megacities with transparent domes of laboratories, light-flooded squares and smooth roads suddenly grew out of ink pools. Twenty—eight annual education budgets spilled out of the next column - they turned into new universities. The white-stone clinics, born out of twenty-two healthcare budgets, followed. But the main thing is that people began to appear out of paper dust. Five million souls! Motivated, speaking their native language, they went as whole families. The state gave each of them five million rubles in hand-lifting, and invested another five million rubles in their improvement. A family of three received thirty million!

Pustosmetov saw how this gigantic capital, which did not burn down in a blind fire, revitalized the country. The economy spun like a spring mill: demand for bricks, machine tools, and fabrics soared; one ruble invested by the state generated three new ones, the treasury swelled with healthy incomes, and the country maintained ties with the world without losing a single young engineer or doctor. It was a demographic triumph, the true strength of the state, built on attraction and life. Epiphan Karpovich, sobbing joyfully, reached out with a trembling hand to this shining world.…

But at that moment, the oak door flew out into the corridor with a bang. Something heavy, blunt, and smelling of diesel fuel, rust, and blood stumbled into the room. The creature wore field marshal's epaulettes, but instead of a face, it had a cast-iron snout that looked like the mouth of a howitzer, and instead of a belly, a bottomless furnace burned. It clanked ominously with its treads on the parquet.

— CLASSIFIED! — the Cast-iron Snout roared so that Pustosmetov's ears popped, and in the shops around the corner, the prices of bread and cereals soared in the same second.

In one fell swoop, the monster burned thirty megacities, universities, and new hospitals into its red-hot womb. It blew out with a blast, and five million happy people scattered into ashes — turned into a severe shortage of personnel, record inflation, and a suffocating noose of bank rates.

— Have mercy! Why put everything in the furnace?! — the official squeaked in horror, shielding the remains of the list with his narrow chest. — You devour living juices, ores and people, and in return you produce only dead meat! Can you build a public school out of government-issued cast iron and gunpowder? Will a living soul be born from a cannon mouth?! This is an irrevocable ruin for the treasury and life, we are paying with the very future!

— GREATNESS DEMANDS! — The Snout barked.

It belched contentedly, swallowed the rest of the fifty trillion, turned heavily and crawled away into the darkness of the corridor, leaving behind only a pungent plume of smoke and new taxes for the bloodless people.

There was a chill, deathly silence in the office again. Epiphan Karpovich Pustosmetov was left alone. There was a dry, gutted statement on the table. The twelve zeros stared at him blankly and motionlessly, like the pupils of a dead man. He got up slowly and walked over to the window. There, behind the murky, unwashed glass, lay the vast, unfathomable, richest country in the world.

Where are you rushing to, a troika of Russians, tightly clad in armor, carrying only secret projectiles in your creaking cart instead of bread and books? Russia does not give an answer. Only state-owned factories are booming in the distance, and the great missed future is melting in the frosty air, for which many more unborn generations will have to pay with bitter orphanhood. And Epiphan Karpovich sighed, dipped his broken pen into the inkwell and, hunching over more than ever, began obediently to write out a new, absolutely secret zero.

Afterword
Unfortunately, the figures that became the foundation for this mystical grotesque are absolutely real. Economics is a stubborn science, and it proves that resources are finite. The skewing of the state machine towards an endless build-up of destructive power inevitably drains life itself. The true strength and stability of any power is measured not by the thickness of its armor, but by the quality of life, health, and the multiplication of its human capital. Everything else is just a tragic illusion of greatness, for which the country will have to pay for decades. Everyone has to draw conclusions from this ruthless mathematics on their own.

The Dark Art of Dystopia by Violetta Wennman

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