The news in Moscow is that everyone has a new television and some people have a new car, but no one has any money or plans for winter vacation travel—or any plans for the future, really. When the ruble collapsed in mid-December, a man went to an Audi dealership to find that only one new car was still available; while he was test-driving the car, someone else bought it in cash sight unseen. Several people told me this story as though it was about a friend of theirs, and it may in fact be true. It is certainly true that large electronics stores have sold out of expensive television sets, which are apparently the durable good of choice in this round of dumping tumbling currency, and instructions on how to return Aeroflot tickets without incurring penalties have gone viral. Over the last dozen years of good oil-funded living, middle-class Russians have developed the habit of travelling to warmer climes for the two weeks of idleness the law grants them at the start of the year, but even with tickets booked and paid for, many discovered that they could not afford hotels or food. One friend told me that she was considering cancelling her trip just to see what would happen in Moscow with so many Russians staying there involuntarily: “Maybe people will storm the Kremlin.”

On Tuesday, December 16th, the ruble bounced up and down all day, finally settling at eleven per cent down against the dollar. The country went into shock, the day was immediately and unimaginatively dubbed Black Tuesday, and those who had rubles stormed currency exchanges and electronics stores. Apple’s online store stopped taking orders from Russia and reopened a few days later with vastly higher prices. But the most surprising thing about Black Tuesday was that it was a surprise to Russians at all. The economy had been shrinking for at least a year, and the slowdown had looked catastrophic for months, at least to the economists who were warning of looming stagflation. The American and European sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine and the Russian counter-sanctions, especially the ban on many imported foods, made things worse. Layoffs had been common since spring. In July, food prices spiked by about ten per cent. The currency had been slipping for months, and the fall of oil prices in autumn dealt the economy a final blow. Against this backdrop, a drop in the exchange rate, even as much as eleven per cent in a single day, seems predictable. So why didn’t Russians see this coming?

Denial is certainly one reason: no one wants to think about getting a lot poorer. But a bigger and more interesting reason has to do with the breakdown of public conversation in Russia under Vladimir Putin. When I was visiting in September, a distant relative told me that she had quit her job after having a fight with her superior and then discovered, to her surprise, a lack of openings that were comparable to her old position. Why would she be surprised? I wondered. Hers was one of those high-paid jobs that are generated when an economy is booming. Then again, how would she know that the economy was no longer booming? She would not have heard about it on state television, which is the only sort most people can or want to watch, and she may not have heard about it from her circle of friends, depending on whether any of them experienced the economic slowdown first-hand. After nearly fifteen years of systematic destruction of public space, engineered by Putin, the normal ways by which regular people absorb information about the state of their country are gone. Only a person who had lost his livelihood or half his savings would have been able to report that the economy was failing.

Following Black Tuesday, the Russian government has done what it can to stop the ruble’s slide. The central bank has hiked interest rates and bought up currency. The government has also strong-armed large exporters into dumping their foreign-cash reserves. By Wednesday, December 24th, the exchange rate had stabilized and the ruble had regained two weeks’ worth of ground. Even as economists warned that the ruble would fall again—a lot—after the holidays, people continued to use the currency to negotiate salaries and apartment rentals. On Friday, the brief recovery may have ended, as the ruble dropped another five per cent.

State television has continued to broadcast monotonously upbeat, if factually inaccurate, news. From watching a few morning programs, I learned that the U.S. economy was in trouble, all the more so because falling oil prices threatened America’s newfound status as an oil power; that anyone who wants quality fruit for New Year’s should buy Russian; and that Russia’s neighbors Kazakhstan and Belarus were coming out in support of Russia in the Ukrainian conflict. In reality, of course, the opposite is true. With new large-screen televisions in their homes to lift their spirits, it’s almost certain that Russians will once again be shocked the next time the ruble tumbles.