Journalist Vitaly Portnikov in the column for the Crimea. The realities reflect on the strength of the Crimean myths in modern Russia and explains how the president's heir will change the situation. After Vladimir Putin's interview to Austrian television, many observers could not help but note that the explanation by the Russian president of the reasons and circumstances of the annexation of Crimea remained virtually unchanged - as if not a real story , but a certain religious canon, carefully learned and cleared of any genuine facts that could cast doubt on the narrator's truthfulness.

From this it could be concluded that the situation with the Crimea really will not be possible to decide that it has become an important part of the Russian state myth that without the annexation of the Crimea, Russia is not Russia. And even if power changes in this country, Putin's heirs will stick to the Crimea and repeat to journalists the same story that Putin is now telling.

[...] I would not say that Russia without the Crimea is not Russia. But the fact that Putin without the Crimea is not Putin is obvious to me. The entire board of the Russian president is clearly divided into time to the Crimea and after. And if it was possible to confidently say about the degradation of the regime and the reduction of the base of its popular support to the Crimea, it was not by chance that the government switched from the rate to the middle class to Uralvagonzavod - then after the Crimea there is a consolidation of society on a completely different, imperial platform. Another platform of support for Putin [...].

But Putin's heir will have a completely different situation. Moreover, he will simply need to distance himself from the previous ruler. The legitimacy of the Russian government is not based on her electivity, but on the fact that the current ruler is always better than the previous one. Khrushchev is better than Stalin, Brezhnev is better than Khrushchev, Gorbachev is better than Brezhnev, Yeltsin is better than Gorbachev, Putin is better than Yeltsin. When Medvedev was president, even in this comic situation, many of the nomenclatureists were already trying to imagine that Medvedev was better than Putin - how, a liberal and a "resolute person", besieged Georgia.

The next Russian president will also be better than Putin. And he does not have to hold on to Putin's canons. The imperial canon of Stalin implied the voluntary adherence of the Union republics to the USSR. The secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which explained how the Baltic countries were actually joined, Stalin simply hid in a secret folder. And then Khrushchev hid. And then Brezhnev. But Gorbachev got it out as soon as there was a need for a real improvement in relations with the West and changes in the Soviet Union.

Putin also has something to hide in the folder. To renounce the annexation of the Crimea is very, very simple. We need to tell the truth about how it really happened - and even Russian citizens will have no doubt that it was precisely occupation and annexation, and not at all "people's will" and "fear of nationalists". With documents and transcripts all this is not difficult to prove. All these documents, all these transcripts in the Kremlin archives are waiting for their hour. The hour of collapse of the "Putin canon".