In Moscow, Halloween is celebrated by exactly 4% of Russians and is usually a holiday for going to clubs while dressed in a ridiculous fashion, which is basically a holiday for people who would spend their Saturday nights going to clubs while dressed in a ridiculous fashion anyway.

This Halloween, however, had a different, more lofty air. One hundred people gathered at Moscow’s Triumphalnaya Square in support of the 31st Article of the Russian Constitution (get it? On the 31st?), which guarantees freedom of assembly. Fittingly, the cops showed up, detained half the people there, and beat up even the members of a pro-Kremlin youth group.

Oh, and they also detained a US Embassy officer named Robert Bond, who, looking shocked in his de rigueur North Face jacket, presented his ID upside-down. Photographic evidence of the event instantly made it online , which made it the best Halloween on record for Russian LiveJournal users who, naturally, sit at home while dressed in a ridiculous fashion. Bond! Arrested! By us Russians! From Russia with handcuffs, bitches!
But what was he doing there? “Don’t you know?” snarked one commenter, “He was handing out money” to the opposition, long suspected of being American stooges. Why is he holding his card upside down? “Coppers can’t read,” remarked another user, “especially not upside down.”

And who, by the way, was the Best James Bond in the History of James Bonds? Sean Connery? Pierce Brosnan? That new Slavic-looking one? It was, clearly, time for a photo-off.

In the meantime, quoth a US Embassy spokesperson, Robert Bond was no spy. He was “a political officer at the Embassy” and, furthermore, “was an observer, not a participant, at the demonstration. The Embassy routinely sends Embassy officers to observe demonstrations, meetings and other political events.” Moreover, added the spokesperson, “he was not arrested by the police.”

No matter. The technicalities were not at all the point. As most Russians and even more LiveJouranlists will tell you, government figures lie, and there he was, photographed for posterity, an American “political officer” looking dubious as he egged on the counterrevolutionary wreckers, feigning surprise when our boys clapped him on the back and said, “What’s up, tovarish?”

And, let’s not forget that his name was Bond, the most evocative Cold War hero of all time and space. And yet, wondered one of the LiveJounralists, what would’ve happened if his last name were not Bond but Hardballs?

Photos via Norvezhsky Lesnoi