You could say that like the argumentative Indian, the Briton with the stiff upper lip, the Russian tendency to vranyo is but a gross stereotype. Not all the demonetisation woes of a billion people could wash the starch off the lips of the BJP-ruled government in India. One argument with the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry claims he went straight into therapy. And some would say, vranyo is former American president Donald Trump’s first name. Nevertheless, without any offence to the Russian people, given the great Ukrainian unravelling, let’s dwell a while on the famed Russian vranyo.

Lozh, stock and barrel

It seems there are two Russian words for lying. Lozh has reprehensibility built into it and vranyo, a fond and imaginative kin. In the essay, A Word Or Two About Vranyo, Dostoevsky writes, “… among our Russian intellectual classes the existence of a non-liar is an impossibility… in Russia, even completely honest people can lie.” In yet another essay, historian Ronald Hingley writes that not only is the Russian lie more attractive than the non-Russian lie, but unlike the lozh, vranyo needs an accommodative audience. He invokes Dostoevsky's The Idiot wherein General Ivolgin tells Prince Myshkin how Napoleon was actually acting on his advice when he ordered the French retreat. Hingley points out how the Prince keeps a straight face through this tall tale in order to preserve the General’s self-respect.

Not all the waters of Volga

Russia did not just deny its role in the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, it also created an entire counter narrative. The Russian ministry of foreign affairs promoted a book that claimed that the Illuminati was responsible. Yet Another story was that the US and Dutch agents had planted the bomb — that blew up the plane — only to discredit Russia. In 2020, a Ukrainian plane was shot down. Soon after, Iran accepted responsibility; it had been a mistake. etc. Even then, Russia continued to insist on Tehran's innocence, sometimes blaming the Western media for framing Iran, at other times calling the downing something orchestrated by the United States. Then again, even after evidence emerged that the Bashar-al-Assad government had used chemical weapons against its own people in north Syria, Russia insisted that the Syrian military planes were destroying chemical weapons. And it goes on and on. Hingley had classified the age of Lenin as the Age of Truth, the age of Stalin as the Great Era of Lozh, and the reign of Khrushchev as when Russian vranyo came into its own “as an influence on Soviet public behaviour”. In Putin’s hands, the white lie has come to be stained a deep and diabolical red, awash in the fate of its victims abroad and at home.