This weekend, Russians go through the motions of parliamentary democracy, casting votes in an election whose outcome — a United Russia majority — has never been in doubt. The ritual of voting persists not as an instrument of popular will, but as a structural feature of governance, a performance of legitimacy in a system that has separated political certainty from all other kinds. In a country where economic pressures, geopolitical isolation, and the long shadow of war leave ordinary life genuinely unstable, the one thing the state can guarantee is who holds power — which is, perhaps, the most