You are so right, Tessa. As long as those with whom we disagree are good to us and we to them, we can communicate and share ideas and help each other to remain free. If we speak to each sincerely and truthfully we can grow in wisdom and understanding. Otherwise, as the Torah tells us, speaking insincerely and lying will kill our Souls.
The reverse is sorta happening to individualism in the West. Actually, scratch that. It's happening to the *entire* value system. Everything we hold dear and everything we were being taught about what's right and wrong is being replaced in a matter of years.
Thank you, Fabian, and yes! I was originally going to write a longer version of this article and talk about other "foundational" myths as well! I decided to keep it to the Soviet myth but I may write about other ones later, too. You are exactly right!
The ideal and living reality of справедливость - ´´fairness´´ realised for the first time in human history in the best years of the USSR was what sustained your ancestors, the memory of which now gives them just cause for nostalgia and sadness. Your softly patronising attitude towards them, though nicely written, is almost as disrespectful as the example you give of the youths mocking the war veteran.
I guess we all create theories to help us feel better about our choices.
Fairness? Where did you get that from? Did you live it? What is your experience? I am afraid, my dear, that your understandable desire to believe that an ideal has been realized is clouding your vision here. We can disagree, it is all good, but please let us disagree respectfully, without sounding irritated that somebody has a different opinion. :)
I´m Irish (b. 1959) and married to a Soviet woman (b. 1962) and I know so many young (40s+) and older 70, 80+ who survived the soviet collapse of the 90s and still pine today for that life that they knew. The western propaganda I grew up with was so effective that it took quite a while for me to wake up to the reality that their world was so much better, more wholesome and civilised than mine. While I was getting beaten at school (corpòreal punshment was still a thing even in the 90s) they could not imagine such a thing. The idea of our government funding private schools while public schools were struggling - was unbelievable. No public Kindergarten, no prophylactic medicine to speak of, Large cold private castle houses on bank credit instead of cosy affordable and homely apartments ´´for everyone´´. Poor people´s housing in Ireland (with the collusion of the church) was architecturally designed to clearly emphasise the desired class barrier. Those people must learn their place. In USSR the professor and the plumber shared the same apartment block, their children played together and went to the same school .
This is a small sample of the sort of thing I meant by ´´fairness´´...
My grandparents left Russia sometime shortly before 1917. I guess they were tired of working slavishly and achieving nothing (except making a living). Life here was not quite as hard as it was there, but nobody was giving things away here, though I suspect they would have been highly suspicious of anything free.
I imagine that Communism (rather the lies about what Communism was) sounded very welcoming compared to the hard life in Tsarist Russia. The peasants went from a bad life to a worst one, from one illusion to a different illusion.
Meanwhile, in the USA, we, the "free", lived smugly under a different illusion. Living under a government, instead of living with a government, will never produce the freedom and liberty we hope for. Government always wants to rule, rather then guide, and we accommodate, willingly, by being ignorant and apathetic. We depend on government, with a bit of religion/spiritualism thrown in, which has a goal, but which is not the goal of the people. I guess that we indeed reap what we sow.
Now that the government-corporate entities largely have what they want, power and wealth, there is little need for the human peasant.
We have a chance left to stop the destruction of the human race. Are we going to act, rather than just react? Do we have enough strength and energy and will to put on end to this apocalypse?
Thank you, Cynthia! Here in New York, I made friends with a lovely, very talented lady who used to date Brodsky a long time ago. It was fascinating to hear her stories!
Tessa, I continually marvel at your beautiful ability to capture the soul’s essence in words. What you say here resonates deeply with me. And you remind me that love is not a path of weakness or least resistance. It is, in fact, a challenging path with a heavy pack at times. Not heavy because it is inherently hard to be loving, but heavy because some people are in so much pain that they fight hard and it takes energy to be with them. Still, love makes the soul light in all senses of that word. Thank you for being you. 🙏 PS Apologies if I posted this in the wrong place. It’s hard for me to do on a phone.
Thank you for this. And I join you in feeling love and respect for the old veteran in the march. Even though he fought in Stalin's army, the world owes a debt of gratitude to him and others like him.
Thank you, Eric, for both things!!! Those veterans really sacrificed so much! I feel eternal gratitude to them, even though the war itself was yet another abomination, yet another standoff between the super powerful at the expense of everybody else.
My own grandparents were the voting age adults in 1917 when the Russian Revolution happened. My grandfather was a farmer so not called up for WW I; rather, he was kept home to raise food for our and our allies' troops and civilians (Dad tried to sign up as a drummer boy, at a ripe old 3, but was snagged by a neighbor at the mailboxes, 1/2 mile from home, and carted back to his Mom). They were unaware of the coup our CONGRESS committed in 1871, when they made the District of Columbia a private corporation, or the chicanery attached to the ratification of the 17th A in 1913, which completed the severing of our gov't from any semblance of control by "we the people" a betrayal most US citizens are still not, or just beginning to become, aware of having happened. For those of us who grew up in the age of radios, TVs, telephones, telegraph, and multiple daily newspapers, it's difficult to realize how those actions could have been slipped past our elders, without, or with every little, resistance from the citizens; for the kids of the internet and world wide web age, impossible! But my grandmother remembered travelling for weeks in a covered wagon, when her family moved, from the Dakota territory, to Iowa, as a child. When she and my grandfather married, they went for a ride in the very 1st automobile in that part of Iowa as their "honeymoon". The cities were using electricity and had phones, even some early radios, but not in what gets called "flyover country" now.They still used oil lamps, cars were a rarity, and when phones came along, they were wooden boxes on the wall, which required an operator to connect you, party lines, and a crank on the side to alert the operator someone wished to make a call (they still had it when I was a kid). Information moved very slow back then, to most of "we the people", except in the urban centers on the coasts, connected by telephone and telegraph. I don't know, of course, but I suspect in Tessa's grandparents' Russia cum USSR, it was at least as slow moving if not more so, given what I did learn of the history of that era there. To people today, it's difficult to conceive how they even survived at all. But if you're of Tessa's and my generation, you should realize children today can't even comprehend phones tied to a wall by wires, and radios with no picture at all, or black and white only TV, let alone no cars or internet. So it should be a bit easier for us to realize technology was far behind what our childhood knew when our grandparents were the young adults, and the lies were easier to spread, because the truth was harder to disseminate against the lies.
I can well believe the Russians who were the young adults and older teens in 1917 Russia felt betrayed even by Stalin (I still remember to this day, almost 70 yrs later, the films our journalists smuggled out, of him lying in state, and the abuses of his régime echoed in all the faces of those passing his bier), and those who followed him. (I also remember Kruschev slamming his shoe on a desk at the UN, swearing they would bury us!) I didn't understand it then, but I have never forgotten, and learned what it was I saw then, some yrs later. It was a time, here, when we still, foolishly, thought we were living the "American dream", in "freedom". Only in the past few decades have we begun to realize how our gov't has betrayed us as well, and, as Tessa said, it's very hard to break through the protective bubble of the illusional beliefs. Doing so creates a cognitive dissonance in the hearers, that most vehemently reject as lies. The few who don't reject it outright may struggle for a time with that dissonance only to revert to "safety" in the bubble, or slowly incorporate that unbelievable betrayal into their reality, then flounder for awhile, not sure where to find truth or reality, and finally sink into despondence, or, a few, manage to get back up and resist the results of that betrayal. That's where we are, in America, today...
"But (Yhwh) God...". We have largely forgotten He's still in control, has a plan unfolding, and a better time ahead for those who CHOOSE it. The "catch" is EACH MUST freely choose to be part of it, according to the pattern He gave us for doing so; no one will make you, and you are each free to choose the other alternative, although I really don't recommend it.
Thank - you, Tessa, so do you. I was hoping this would provide perspective for those not yet born, who hadn't learned the history, and didn't understand it wasn't just Russia, America was not so different in that time.
When you have time and desire, could you expand on:
1) “ They were unaware of the coup our CONGRESS committed in 1871, when they made the District of Columbia a private corporation”
2) “the chicanery attached to the ratification of the 17th A in 1913, which completed the severing of our gov't from any semblance of control by "we the people" a betrayal most aUS citizens are still not, or just beginning to become, aware of having happened,” please?
Thank you for educating naturalised citizens-freedom lovers 🫶🏼
I'll do my best. In the aftermath of that fracas in 1861-1865, which was actually a war between 2 nations, not a civil war at all, Congress was run by some real control freaks, with 1 Thaddeus Stevens in the lead, and which did a number of "nation-stealing" moves, under the guise of "reconstruction". The name of the Constitution was changed (from the Constitution of the united States for America, the original, to the current title), the original properly ratified 13th A (1820), prohibiting members of the BAR (British Accreditation Registry; British nobility with the title esquire) from all elected or appointed offices, was simply erased and replaced with the present reading, and it and the 14th and 15th As were "ratified" by states under gunpoint, in effect, as the southern states, dragged back in, were run by northerners and threatened with all manner of mayhem if they did not ratify those 3, not the least of which was alienation in NOT being allowed back in, or having any voice. The 10th A was also altered, erasing the clause promising the right to secede to each state, a requirement to getting the Constitution and Bill of rights ratified. That was the atmosphere in Congress still in 1871, when, on Valentine's Day, they voted making the entire District of Columbia, previously known as Washington City, a private corporation, trademarked USA. The citizens not present, and most were not, were not informed 'til it was a done deal, and then on back pages of newspapers in obscure small columns, without fanfare or explanation.
2) The 17th A was sold as "moving the selection of Senators to popular votes", without mentioning that took out of the hands of states' legislatures control over them, making them also "free agent" employees of the DC corporation, and taking all control of our gov't out of the hands of the people and states as intended by the framers of our Constitution, right as our economy was being handed over to a private bank, owned and run, mostly, by foreign nationals. Because most of the US , even in 1913 was still without phones, electricity, cars, and other more current means of information acquisition, they never really got the memos about what those acts meant for them, or the nation, in the long run, and the globalists behind them for sure weren't advertising. I did not learn all this in school, but well after I had graduated, in the process of becoming educated.
Belated welcome to my homeland. I always enjoy helping others understand, when it's in my ability to do so; when it's not, I will say so.
Tessa, This is amazing. Brought a tear at the image of the old soldier -- so many analogs. As I said in a comment to an earlier post, you are increasingly going to important places in a way I do not see many other thinkers go. Your recitation of the "things you know" in here is profound. Thanks for enriching our days.
Eighty-four year old Herman Neuman resonates and loves Tessa with all his heart. Here is why: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=heroes+from+the+attic%3A+gripping&crid=3H71078J0W1NZ&sprefix=heroes+from+the+attic+gripping%2Caps%2C191&ref=nb_sb_noss
Isn't that happening as we speak?
You are so right, Tessa. As long as those with whom we disagree are good to us and we to them, we can communicate and share ideas and help each other to remain free. If we speak to each sincerely and truthfully we can grow in wisdom and understanding. Otherwise, as the Torah tells us, speaking insincerely and lying will kill our Souls.
I love you, sister. Thank you.
What a very insightful read, thank you!!
The reverse is sorta happening to individualism in the West. Actually, scratch that. It's happening to the *entire* value system. Everything we hold dear and everything we were being taught about what's right and wrong is being replaced in a matter of years.
Thank you, Fabian, and yes! I was originally going to write a longer version of this article and talk about other "foundational" myths as well! I decided to keep it to the Soviet myth but I may write about other ones later, too. You are exactly right!
I for my part prefer the short articles due to my short attention span. :)
I'm sure I've said it before, but I love your writing.
Thank you!!!!
Was this for a post-Soviet audience?
https://youtu.be/LNBjMRvOB5M
I remember the song from my childhood, never saw the video. It is the original video? It's pretty bad!!
That song was really big in Germany also. One of the most annoying childhood tunes I remember. But hell, they sure made an important point, huh?
That is the video as I remember it. In those days I watched MuchMusic, a channel familiar to Canadians.
The ideal and living reality of справедливость - ´´fairness´´ realised for the first time in human history in the best years of the USSR was what sustained your ancestors, the memory of which now gives them just cause for nostalgia and sadness. Your softly patronising attitude towards them, though nicely written, is almost as disrespectful as the example you give of the youths mocking the war veteran.
I guess we all create theories to help us feel better about our choices.
Fairness? Where did you get that from? Did you live it? What is your experience? I am afraid, my dear, that your understandable desire to believe that an ideal has been realized is clouding your vision here. We can disagree, it is all good, but please let us disagree respectfully, without sounding irritated that somebody has a different opinion. :)
I´m Irish (b. 1959) and married to a Soviet woman (b. 1962) and I know so many young (40s+) and older 70, 80+ who survived the soviet collapse of the 90s and still pine today for that life that they knew. The western propaganda I grew up with was so effective that it took quite a while for me to wake up to the reality that their world was so much better, more wholesome and civilised than mine. While I was getting beaten at school (corpòreal punshment was still a thing even in the 90s) they could not imagine such a thing. The idea of our government funding private schools while public schools were struggling - was unbelievable. No public Kindergarten, no prophylactic medicine to speak of, Large cold private castle houses on bank credit instead of cosy affordable and homely apartments ´´for everyone´´. Poor people´s housing in Ireland (with the collusion of the church) was architecturally designed to clearly emphasise the desired class barrier. Those people must learn their place. In USSR the professor and the plumber shared the same apartment block, their children played together and went to the same school .
This is a small sample of the sort of thing I meant by ´´fairness´´...
Humble, compassionate, and deeply humane. Thank you, Tessa.
Thank you so much, Theresa!!
My grandparents left Russia sometime shortly before 1917. I guess they were tired of working slavishly and achieving nothing (except making a living). Life here was not quite as hard as it was there, but nobody was giving things away here, though I suspect they would have been highly suspicious of anything free.
I imagine that Communism (rather the lies about what Communism was) sounded very welcoming compared to the hard life in Tsarist Russia. The peasants went from a bad life to a worst one, from one illusion to a different illusion.
Meanwhile, in the USA, we, the "free", lived smugly under a different illusion. Living under a government, instead of living with a government, will never produce the freedom and liberty we hope for. Government always wants to rule, rather then guide, and we accommodate, willingly, by being ignorant and apathetic. We depend on government, with a bit of religion/spiritualism thrown in, which has a goal, but which is not the goal of the people. I guess that we indeed reap what we sow.
Now that the government-corporate entities largely have what they want, power and wealth, there is little need for the human peasant.
We have a chance left to stop the destruction of the human race. Are we going to act, rather than just react? Do we have enough strength and energy and will to put on end to this apocalypse?
"Smugly" is le mot juste in the context.
Beautiful
Tessa - Your essay and Franco’s poem arrived next to each other in my mail…
He wrote: "we are fragile, we are broken, and we are poor
because we desire,
not the other way around” https://francoamati.substack.com/p/saints-of-imperfection
I sent a note to him, too...
Beautiful. Thank you, Peter!
A Brodsky poem (he wrote one every Christmas Eve) for you Tessa.
DECEMBER 24,1971
For V.S.
When it’s Christmas we’re all of us magi.
At the grocers’ all slipping and pushing.
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.
Nylon bags, carrier bags, paper cones,
caps and neckties all twisted up sideways.
Reek of vodka and resin and cod,
orange mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway
toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard.
And the bearers of moderate gifts
leap on buses and jam all the doorways,
disappear into courtyards that gape,
though they know that there’s nothing inside there:
not a beast, not a crib, nor yet her,
round whose head gleams a nimbus of gold.
Emptiness. But the mere thought of that
brings forth lights as if out of nowhere.
Herod reigns but the stronger he is,
the more sure, the more certain the wonder.
In the constancy of this relation
is the basic mechanics of Christmas.
That’s what they celebrate everywhere,
for its coming push tables together.
No demand for a star for a while,
but a sort of good will touched with grace
can be seen in all men from afar,
and the shepherds have kindled their fires.
Snow is falling: not smoking but sounding
chimney pots on the roof, every face like a stain.
Herod drinks. Every wife hides her child.
He who comes is a mystery: features
are not known beforehand, men’s hearts may
not be quick to distinguish the stranger.
But when drafts through the doorway disperse
the thick mist of the hours of darkness
and a shape in a shawl stands revealed,
both a newborn and Spirit that’s Holy
in your self you discover; you stare
skyward, and it’s right there:
a star.
Joseph Brodsky, "December 24, 1971" from Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999. Copyright © 2000 by the Estate of Joseph Brodsky. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Source: Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999 (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000)
Thank you, Cynthia! Here in New York, I made friends with a lovely, very talented lady who used to date Brodsky a long time ago. It was fascinating to hear her stories!
Wow.
Tessa, I continually marvel at your beautiful ability to capture the soul’s essence in words. What you say here resonates deeply with me. And you remind me that love is not a path of weakness or least resistance. It is, in fact, a challenging path with a heavy pack at times. Not heavy because it is inherently hard to be loving, but heavy because some people are in so much pain that they fight hard and it takes energy to be with them. Still, love makes the soul light in all senses of that word. Thank you for being you. 🙏 PS Apologies if I posted this in the wrong place. It’s hard for me to do on a phone.
Thank you, CuriousElder!!! Your words are such an honor. Thank you!
Thank you for this. And I join you in feeling love and respect for the old veteran in the march. Even though he fought in Stalin's army, the world owes a debt of gratitude to him and others like him.
Thank you, Eric, for both things!!! Those veterans really sacrificed so much! I feel eternal gratitude to them, even though the war itself was yet another abomination, yet another standoff between the super powerful at the expense of everybody else.
My own grandparents were the voting age adults in 1917 when the Russian Revolution happened. My grandfather was a farmer so not called up for WW I; rather, he was kept home to raise food for our and our allies' troops and civilians (Dad tried to sign up as a drummer boy, at a ripe old 3, but was snagged by a neighbor at the mailboxes, 1/2 mile from home, and carted back to his Mom). They were unaware of the coup our CONGRESS committed in 1871, when they made the District of Columbia a private corporation, or the chicanery attached to the ratification of the 17th A in 1913, which completed the severing of our gov't from any semblance of control by "we the people" a betrayal most US citizens are still not, or just beginning to become, aware of having happened. For those of us who grew up in the age of radios, TVs, telephones, telegraph, and multiple daily newspapers, it's difficult to realize how those actions could have been slipped past our elders, without, or with every little, resistance from the citizens; for the kids of the internet and world wide web age, impossible! But my grandmother remembered travelling for weeks in a covered wagon, when her family moved, from the Dakota territory, to Iowa, as a child. When she and my grandfather married, they went for a ride in the very 1st automobile in that part of Iowa as their "honeymoon". The cities were using electricity and had phones, even some early radios, but not in what gets called "flyover country" now.They still used oil lamps, cars were a rarity, and when phones came along, they were wooden boxes on the wall, which required an operator to connect you, party lines, and a crank on the side to alert the operator someone wished to make a call (they still had it when I was a kid). Information moved very slow back then, to most of "we the people", except in the urban centers on the coasts, connected by telephone and telegraph. I don't know, of course, but I suspect in Tessa's grandparents' Russia cum USSR, it was at least as slow moving if not more so, given what I did learn of the history of that era there. To people today, it's difficult to conceive how they even survived at all. But if you're of Tessa's and my generation, you should realize children today can't even comprehend phones tied to a wall by wires, and radios with no picture at all, or black and white only TV, let alone no cars or internet. So it should be a bit easier for us to realize technology was far behind what our childhood knew when our grandparents were the young adults, and the lies were easier to spread, because the truth was harder to disseminate against the lies.
I can well believe the Russians who were the young adults and older teens in 1917 Russia felt betrayed even by Stalin (I still remember to this day, almost 70 yrs later, the films our journalists smuggled out, of him lying in state, and the abuses of his régime echoed in all the faces of those passing his bier), and those who followed him. (I also remember Kruschev slamming his shoe on a desk at the UN, swearing they would bury us!) I didn't understand it then, but I have never forgotten, and learned what it was I saw then, some yrs later. It was a time, here, when we still, foolishly, thought we were living the "American dream", in "freedom". Only in the past few decades have we begun to realize how our gov't has betrayed us as well, and, as Tessa said, it's very hard to break through the protective bubble of the illusional beliefs. Doing so creates a cognitive dissonance in the hearers, that most vehemently reject as lies. The few who don't reject it outright may struggle for a time with that dissonance only to revert to "safety" in the bubble, or slowly incorporate that unbelievable betrayal into their reality, then flounder for awhile, not sure where to find truth or reality, and finally sink into despondence, or, a few, manage to get back up and resist the results of that betrayal. That's where we are, in America, today...
"But (Yhwh) God...". We have largely forgotten He's still in control, has a plan unfolding, and a better time ahead for those who CHOOSE it. The "catch" is EACH MUST freely choose to be part of it, according to the pattern He gave us for doing so; no one will make you, and you are each free to choose the other alternative, although I really don't recommend it.
You have the most fascinating stories, Sandra! Thank you for that.
Thank - you, Tessa, so do you. I was hoping this would provide perspective for those not yet born, who hadn't learned the history, and didn't understand it wasn't just Russia, America was not so different in that time.
Thank you for your awesome thoughts.
When you have time and desire, could you expand on:
1) “ They were unaware of the coup our CONGRESS committed in 1871, when they made the District of Columbia a private corporation”
2) “the chicanery attached to the ratification of the 17th A in 1913, which completed the severing of our gov't from any semblance of control by "we the people" a betrayal most aUS citizens are still not, or just beginning to become, aware of having happened,” please?
Thank you for educating naturalised citizens-freedom lovers 🫶🏼
I'll do my best. In the aftermath of that fracas in 1861-1865, which was actually a war between 2 nations, not a civil war at all, Congress was run by some real control freaks, with 1 Thaddeus Stevens in the lead, and which did a number of "nation-stealing" moves, under the guise of "reconstruction". The name of the Constitution was changed (from the Constitution of the united States for America, the original, to the current title), the original properly ratified 13th A (1820), prohibiting members of the BAR (British Accreditation Registry; British nobility with the title esquire) from all elected or appointed offices, was simply erased and replaced with the present reading, and it and the 14th and 15th As were "ratified" by states under gunpoint, in effect, as the southern states, dragged back in, were run by northerners and threatened with all manner of mayhem if they did not ratify those 3, not the least of which was alienation in NOT being allowed back in, or having any voice. The 10th A was also altered, erasing the clause promising the right to secede to each state, a requirement to getting the Constitution and Bill of rights ratified. That was the atmosphere in Congress still in 1871, when, on Valentine's Day, they voted making the entire District of Columbia, previously known as Washington City, a private corporation, trademarked USA. The citizens not present, and most were not, were not informed 'til it was a done deal, and then on back pages of newspapers in obscure small columns, without fanfare or explanation.
2) The 17th A was sold as "moving the selection of Senators to popular votes", without mentioning that took out of the hands of states' legislatures control over them, making them also "free agent" employees of the DC corporation, and taking all control of our gov't out of the hands of the people and states as intended by the framers of our Constitution, right as our economy was being handed over to a private bank, owned and run, mostly, by foreign nationals. Because most of the US , even in 1913 was still without phones, electricity, cars, and other more current means of information acquisition, they never really got the memos about what those acts meant for them, or the nation, in the long run, and the globalists behind them for sure weren't advertising. I did not learn all this in school, but well after I had graduated, in the process of becoming educated.
Belated welcome to my homeland. I always enjoy helping others understand, when it's in my ability to do so; when it's not, I will say so.
Thank you!
You've welcome.
Tessa, This is amazing. Brought a tear at the image of the old soldier -- so many analogs. As I said in a comment to an earlier post, you are increasingly going to important places in a way I do not see many other thinkers go. Your recitation of the "things you know" in here is profound. Thanks for enriching our days.
Thank you, Dr. K!! Big hugs to you