Readers old enough to remember the Soviet Union also remember how skilled it was at saying nothing – about anything – no matter what. If something happened, regardless of whether it was visible to the outside world, it simply wasn’t acknowledged. A natural disaster? Never happened. The disappearance of an important figure? He’s fine. A bomber crash into a village? No bomber, nothing happened.
If outsiders posed a question about any event, the basic answer, if there was one, was denial, deflection, or obfuscation. The Soviets never admitted to anything going wrong, to any internal failures, or to any event or condition that might break the illusion they so ardently projected or that might provide an outsider a peek into what’s really going on.