So for months now I’ve been watching this show when I go the gym here in Moscow. It runs on Muz-TV, the Russian MTV-analog, and it’s called “Battle for Respect: Start Today!”

Let me tell you why I loved this show. I loved this show because it is a show wherein Russian youths duke it out for the title of best rapper, best graffiti artist, or best break-dancer. This being Russia, land of the ballet, the break dancers are surprisingly good. The graffiti is, like much contemporary Russian art, derivative. And the rap is, well, in Russian.

All season, these Russian youths competed for the show’s top honor while promoting “a healthy lifestyle.” This is the show’s tagline and is repeated every other sentence or so. So, for example, while the young-uns break-dance, the voice-over commentary goes something like this: “Look at Alesya’s sick moves. You can only do moves like that if you lead a healthy lifestyle. Clearly, she must lead a healthy life-style.” Or: “Wow, everyone is going crazy on the stage now. Guess I should find myself something to do. Maybe I’ll go lead a healthy lifestyle.” And so on. (Hip-hopping may not evoke images of fresh-squeezed orange juice, in Russia at least the break-dancers are very much into clean living.)

Anyway. The point is, here I am, thinking no one but me watches this show and here are all these kids rapping and tagging and popping all season long and behaving like Russian hip-hop aliens, and then, on Friday, Vladimir Fucking Putin shows up for the season finale.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, people. To the sounds of M.C. Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This,” no less.

And not only that, he shows up in his casual “hip-hop” attire: gray slacks, a tight cream-colored turtleneck, and a brown mock-turtleneck sweater zipped up over his little dictator belly. And everyone is, obviously, shocked. So they clap. And scream. And chant “Respect, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

Okay, so that’s the funny part. He hands out the lame-o prizes, talks about how break-dancing is actually propaganda for – yes – a healthy lifestyle.

And then he breaks out the nationalism.

“‘Respect,’” Putin said, “is a word of French origin. ‘Graffiti’ is Greek. It means ‘to write.’ And ‘rap’ and ‘break-dance’ are obviously of English origin.

“Not everyone likes that.

“But we live in a unique time, one that is characterized by mutually penetrating cultures and customs.” It’s called, he added, “globalization.”

And not everyone likes that, especially not a man under whose watch nationalism and xenophobia have risen to new – and officially sanctioned, nay, sponsored – heights.

Moreover, once Putin showed up and delivered his lecture on etymological purity, it became clear who the winning rapper would be: Roman Chumakov, known by his stage name “Roma Zhigan.” Zhigan’s hit of the season was a song called “Russia,” which features Zhigan rapping over strains of Russian folk song. He promises not to sell out Russia (who’s buying, by the way?), extols the virtues of pan-Slavic unity, and describes Russia as “an Orthodox land.”

Which made the whole project – and my gym television-watching – come into vaguely frightening focus. Russian television is either directly or indirectly controlled by the Kremlin, specifically by one man named Vladislav Surkov. Surkov, Putin’s ideologist and spin-meister, may be a loyal Kremlin apparatchik but he’s also known for his ties to artists and Moscow’s bohemian circles. He’s also in with the youngs: Nashi, the terrifying pro-Kremlin youth group often compared to the Hitler Youth, was his creation.

So when Putin’s approval ratings sank a bit in recent weeks, Surkov puts his old boss on TV with the thuggish youngs and the hip-hoppers, cultures with which he is surely familiar, on a show that he likely had something to do with and which promotes a healthy lifestyle why? Why, to counteract the continuing demographic crisis so Russians who speak Russian and love Russia and rap in Russian about Russian manifest destiny don’t die off and leave sacred Rus’ to the Central Asian hordes, of course!

Remind you at all of this project?