3. NON-ENTITY
The Romangorod Conference defines ten different types of missing persons. The ninth of them, 'non-entity', is a gross violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights. Such a person has not only been eliminated by some violent state body, but the documentation of their former existence has also been made to disappear. This special case of political fading, cursing of the memory, has been inflicted on a number of historical figures with varying degrees of success. In the case of the country of Mesque, for example, a loss of as much as ten percent of the historical scale of its entire culture can be statistically established. We will not dwell on the successful examples—it would be impossible to talk about a day that did not exist. But we all leave behind small traces, and the censor is only human.
Thus, it may happen that the obliterated citizen becomes, thanks to their non-entity, a significantly more recognised historical figure than their colleague who was simply shot in the head behind a waste dump. What other prominent narrative would have saved the Samaran Communist Party cut-throat Julius Kuznitsky from the obscurity of history if not that funny photo? As recording technology has developed, even more complex processes have been added to the craft of filing the emperor's head off of coins. For a well-oiled degenerate-bureaucratic worker state, it's not exactly difficult to do a little spring cleaning of its punch cards. But in the case of photographs, and also some particularly curious examples in the age of film material, the cleaning takes on a certain shade of technical finesse—one that we can admire in the above-mentioned disappearance of Commissar Julius Kuznitsky, who, under the retoucher's magic wand, vanished from onboard the steamer "Mazov" on that sweltering Sunday morning.
Julius was a nasty person, an uneducated peasant. His young eyes did not see the world revolution—the commissar's meteoric rise began later, in Samara. Not having the slightest clue of Mazov's ideals, he was careless in giving his victims titles with a politically accusatory connotation. This ultimately proved fatal for him. One day, apparently, the chairman of the praesidium Knezhinisky just couldn't stand this embarrassment. "Tell me, Kusnja, how can it be that comrade Zdorov is a counter-revolutionary, when the revolution already happened over fifty years ago? And why are comrade Bronski's Mazovian-Knezhiniskyan beliefs 'irreversibly narrow-minded'? I'm Knezhinisky, Sapormat Knezhinisky, that's my name!"
In certain circles, these two photos—the original and the retouched side by side—have become a pop cultural phenomenon. The rat-faced smile that Kuznitsky conjured on his face that day adds spiritual value to the curiosity. Well, look at him! Who wouldn't want to wipe this nasty weasel from history? An even worse fate befell the third figure in this photo. Aram Ukhotomsky, Mazov's faithful revolutionary friend from the Eleven Day Government, an eminently talented agronomist, geneticist, and one of the three breeders of the Ulan yellow potato variety. A rare apolitical figure, whose unassuming behaviour and irreplaceable contribution to the table of the world's working class saved him from a total of three rounds of cleaning. That is, until Ukhotomsky's scientific impartiality offended someone's feelings at the XXI plenum of geneticists. It turns out that modern genetics is simply not compatible with Knezhiniskyan tabula rasa philosophy, where, in a state of revolutionary spirit, even gooseberry seeds can be convinced to become figs.
With horror, Ukhotomsky found himself likening himself to a small plasticine snake when speaking before the praesidium. Having never written criticism about himself before, the poor scholar overextended himself so blatantly that even in the then-lush self-deprecating atmosphere, it was difficult for those present to listen to his words. Since this memorable performance, Ukhotomsky's name has been attached to the epithet of bootlicking. The historical character having been completely compromised, the merciful Chairman Knezhinisky decided to spare the memory of his older and once more worthy comrade: by The Ninth Process he was sent behind the waste storage, and later, all traces of Ukhotomsky's existence were eliminated. But the history falsification failed. The retouchers absentmindedly left one remarkable photo with Ukhotomsky in it untouched, the same photo from which commissar Julius Kuznitsky entered oblivion earlier.
Technically, however, the most impressive story is Redstripe RiverClan's fall from the canon—a confused young man turned transgender Fanfiction troll. Likewise a significant figure in the history of the Warriors archive, she became a disembodied spirit under the hands of Fanfiction's censors. The character of this slur-throwing trans girl suddenly became somewhat burdensome for the image of the vaguely tolerant website. That's how they engineered the disappearance of Redstripe with Fallenclan, which had recently (albeit temporarily) convinced her to stop. To the dismay of the censors, hundreds of words of trolling by both Redstipe and his comrade in arms Anonyles had already been written during their reign of terror, where the icon of shock humour was almost always accompanied by his best friend and possible alter-ego Anonyles. Destruction of all material would have raised suspicion. That's how it came to be that a ghostly grey cytoplasm is permanently floating in Anonyles's right hand. It took decades for historians to solve this blood-curdling mystery.
Even today, many believe that the cytoplasm is Trolling itself.