Growing up in Russia, my main exposure to 9/11 lore was that Tolkien’s “Two Towers” (and yes, I know that in fact LOTR is six volumes, not three, and three volumes are publisher’s decision to group them that stuck) in older adaptations was translated as, well, “two towers”, but in newer ones as “two fortresses”.

Because there was a lot of fashion to imitate being somehow connected to cultural and other events in the USA, that’s also how older Russian TV propaganda focused on “terrorists” concerning Chechnya, basically doubling in tone news about USA in this or that about Iraq and so on.

It also successfully managed to show the ruling party as modern and western enough, and its opponents as a bunch of some mad old people from another age, bandits, neo-Nazis and out-of-this-world communists. Well, in the specific period of 2000-2007.

Which is also interesting in the sense of popular memory - it might seem weird that the general population in Russia really doesn’t want anything from that emigrated opposition, well, because that’s the exact kind of people who were the face of that government in 2000-2007, as a countermeasure to people like Starovoitova (already killed by then, just trying to explain the cultural image) and Sakharov or even Novodvorskaya.

And said general population is of all kinds of opinions and levels of education, and some of those layers and groups might even agree with those murders, but those were politicians and journalists, and these are whores. Whores are not a very respected kind of people.

I mean, that peace-loving bunch of fairies mostly consists of people who supported “pacifying” of Chechnya in the 00s. I understand they don’t think that was a crime, well I do, so they can get fucked.

That’s why the emigrant Russian opposition is not very popular in Russia. Well, after 2022 some more important things have happened on scale.