The singer Shaman appeared after I was already locked up, so I had neither seen nor heard him, but I knew that there is now this main Putin-approved performer — Shaman. And he has a signature song: "I Am Russian." Everyone knows it, people record parodies of it, and so on. Naturally, I was curious to hear it, but where are you supposed to listen to anything in prison? And then they transferred me to Yamal. Here, every day at five in the morning, the command is "Rise," and right after that the Russian national anthem plays. Immediately after it comes the country's second most important song: they always play Shaman's "I Am Russian." So picture this: the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (a region in Russia's Arctic north). Polar night. In the punishment barracks of a maximum-security penal colony, A. Navalny, sentenced to 19 years in prison, whom Kremlin propaganda spent years smearing over his participation in Russian Marches (nationalist demonstrations), is doing morning exercises to the song "I Am Russian," which is being played for him as corrective educational work. Honestly, I'm still not sure I fully understand what post-irony and meta-irony are. But if this isn't it, then what on earth is? 😉