Back In The U.S.S.R.!

"There was a time when we thought anything was possible. It was like walking in the clouds and the chains of the world had dropped off. So intoxicating was this dream of dreams! I thought my heart would burst open.

But it was the devil's mask that fooled us. We didn't want to look behind it.
We didn't want to know. We just wanted to believe."
Kronstadt sailor, whom Lenin later referred to

as one of his "useful idiots"

*****

The last vestiges of hope slipped from Russian fingers in 1917. In the west were the ever approaching Germans moving seemingly at will. In the cities, starvation. Not a single horse left alive in St. Petersburg. Food rationing meant hours in line, oftentimes for only half a loaf of bread. Protests over the years had started and fizzled out. For the monarchy life meant to ignore them at their own peril - and that they did.

The Tsar was an oblivious beast. To survive he'd need the purest of hearts and this he did not possess. Instead he was an ordinary man placed in an extraordinary position. The monarchy was his god and savior, preserving it meant preserving his heritage and entirety of Russian history. The ruling elite had always ruled, why change now? Why change ever? A man of vision could only harbor treason.

Another protest, another police action. Quell them, maintain order, carry on. There was nothing else to consider. The Tsar wrote letters of passionate love to his wife. He thought of his family and his family life. He was living his life - the rest of the families of Russia must do the same  - with or without food. In this way he slumbered into a revolution.

For centuries the state had feasted off its citizens. Landlocked and surrounded by rival empires, the Russians freely gave control to the central state in the name of survival. Once this pattern had been established, the state kept alive the fear of "outside threats" in insatiable desire for more and more power. Dark as Mordor became its soul, withdrawing into a lullaby world that saw only itself as an aristocracy lorded over vast swaths of illiterate and backwards peasants who literally clawed each other in unruly disdain.

Buried deep inside the Russian soul burned the flame of freedom. She felt herself inferior to the West and her capitalistic ways who seemed to already be on the road to self-determination. But how to find freedom without catering to self-interest? She would find another way - a better way. She'd dazzle the world with her enlightenment and superiority. Russian freedom would be true freedom. Life would be love.

As it happens, not all protests are the same. The "why-change-now, stay-the-course" credo was a fatal error for the Tsar and his entire family. In the name of saving his life he guaranteed his death. These were times that called for men of vision and none had a stronger vision than Lenin (and it's always the strongest vision that wins, right or wrong). Hungry workers went on strike. Soldiers mutinied at shooting the protesters who were just as hungry as their family members. "Are we to shoot our wives and children too?"

The mutiny and strikes spread in popular fervor. A revolution had begun in the blink of an eye. Among its most ardent supporters were the long abused Kronstadt sailors. Withering under the officers' cruel control (a sailor could spend ten days in the brig for failing to salute), the sailors overthrew their officers and formed a committee to help engender a world more just. The feeling was all across the land. Freedom and hope at last, dawn of a new era.

In the absence of government sprouted long suppressed ideals vying for a new and better way. Poetry as politics. The excitement of the possibilities had minds running wild and anticipation was high. So pervasive and communal was the feeling the revolution had been virtually bloodless and certainly universal. Now was the time for Russia to show the world her true colors. Paradise waiting around the corner.

Like a child beginning to crawl with this infant democracy. Anyone could join the daily meetings in the town square to help decide the future. The Russian people were taking ownership of their lives. But too much of it was done in a religious fervor, a cacophony of voices seeking to impose their values on the other. The national debate lacked a single unified vision. Remnants of the old government grasped for fading feudal power as liberals cried out for a ringing democracy to right the Russian ship.

Then came Lenin.

Storming back from exile to a hero's welcome, Lenin overstepped himself at first. The idea of a true revolution, of a grass roots organic movement with legitimate motives was absolute anathema to him and had to be avoided at all costs. Lenin wanted tyranny in the name of freedom only. To this principle he was wholly dedicated and willing to follow to the very end. So even though his first attempt to seize control backfired and had him on the run, no other voice could fill the void either. Time was on his side.

As the provisional government crumbled under its own weight, Lenin rose from the ashes. An astute politician, he knew he needed the true believers of a fair and just society on his side. The sailors of Kronstadt were made to order. A life filled with just purpose can topple a thousand uncommitted lives with merely a whisper. Lenin realized this and though his Bolshevik party was only a small sliver he knew an army of "useful idiots" would save the day. And in this way power was finally seized.

The sailors became drunk with the idea of their moral infallibility. After "saving the revolution" and protecting the gains in freedom achieved, the sailors saw themselves as agents of purity cleansing the filth from society. People displaying wealth on the street were used for target practice. These self proclaimed guardians of the revolution would plant the seeds for a mentality that would later spawn the KGB as high protectors of Russian purity. No order could be wrong, no act considered vile if done in the name of protecting the revolution.

Lenin had to use the gambit of these directed dogs that instituted a democracy. When the count came in the Bolsheviks were voted to only a minority slice of power. Lenin had no use for democracy anyway, calling it a "step backwards". Democracy itself was declared an enemy of the revolution. The sailor guards emptied the delegates from the building and the essence of democracy has remained dead ever since. Lenin's next step, naturally, was to get rid of the sailors whose driving force was still the ideals of justice and fairness.

As Lenin's true murderous face emerged the sailors lodged a pitiful protest too late. Over the next three years Lenin's red army would take complete control in ruthless conviction and intolerance. The Russian people sank back into their previous role of subservience to an all powerful state who ran their lives from top to bottom. But Lenin, who literally made the revolution his life both personal and professional, was also a victim of deceit.

Lenin had drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid, wishing himself to believe he had created a true dictatorship of the proletariat. He had both power and purity, achieving his lifelong dream. But another soul saw more clearly than he. He saw the revolution and its mechanisms for what they were: tools of power whose only purpose was power itself. To believe anything else was a grand self-deception. Lenin spotted this traitorous non-believer and wrote a letter of denunciation but died on the day he was to deliver it.

In the decades that followed, the traitor Stalin - who'd made a useful idiot of Lenin - rode the lie of the revolution on the backs of his countrymen as darkness fell over the land with horrified screams in the night.