4 ideas
In Popov's novel, new ambassador Varadin Dimitrov takes over the chaotic Bulgarian embassy in London and is pressed by Sofia to secure Queen Elizabeth's attendance at a reception. The episode shows an institution delivering the appearance of a mandated outcome once the real outcome is out of reach.
When superiors demand a result for their own prestige and the subordinate cannot refuse or achieve it, the subordinate satisfies the demand with a convincing imitation. Success comes to be measured by how the result looks to headquarters rather than by what actually happened. As a result, a hierarchy that punishes honest failure ends up rewarding fraud.
A small post-transition state's outpost in a great capital spends its energy staging recognition, such as a royal visit, a photo, or proximity to power. It does this to prove its own relevance to the audience back home more than to influence the host country. Seen this way, many diplomatic rituals are mainly domestic theatre exported abroad.
After communism collapsed, state bodies kept their official forms, but staff treated them as platforms for personal side-deals, favours and survival schemes. That left the formal mission as a front. Émigrés, fixers and mafia-linked businessmen attach themselves to the embassy because the state's authority and access can be rented out informally.