Can Revolution Bring Paradise?
I live in a city that was always an important strategic place. It’s obvious from the geography as well as the presence of archaeological finds of a large Celtic settlement, Roman frontier fort, or the quite visible, and to this day used, enormous fortification system of several forts, fortification lines, and even a castle that were build between 13th and 16th century CE as a response to Mongol and Turkish invasions.
Quite naturally, when we were under Red Army occupation, the old fort hosted a powerful Soviet garrison. I don’t remember what kind of unit it was, but when we were kids we had always waited with bated breath for rotation of forces. It was simply almost a mystical spectacle to watch the tanks and IFVs marked with a red star roam the empty streets of our town in the middle of the night under the red flag with yellow hammer and sickle while the whole world literally trembled at their power.
Suffice to say, that sight was mesmerizing only while I was a preschooler. If you grew up where I live, by the time you entered puberty, you already knew (or at least strongly suspected) that, despite all the propaganda of our collaborationist Marxist-Leninist government, those tanks were here not to protect us from so-called “bourgeois forces” that allegedly tried to subvert “the righteous soviet communist revolution” in the late sixties, but they were here only to prevent us from escaping from Moscow’s grip and its perverse idea of peace and world.
After all, when secret state police interrogates your parents because their friends emigrated to West, when they tap the landline where you live with your family, and when both, your parents and you, are sent to reeducation centers (parents to a school of Marxist-Leninist ideology, you to a special Pioneer camp), lest the parents loose their jobs and you will be barred from higher education, you have no illusions about the official narrative.
And let me assure you, even though I reference my particular individual case only, at that time and in that place, basically everyone was on the watch-list and the repercussions were always similar or worse.
Thus, no one had to tell me what to do when the Iron Curtain started to crumble. We all knew who was the common enemy, so to put myself on the forefront of the “barricades” of Velvet Revolution was only natural. Even while the adults, still afraid that the events from two decades ago will repeat and tanks will stop our efforts again, vacillated. Well, every teenager is a revolutionary — it simply goes with the age — and, thankfully, this time the head honcho in Moscow was Gorbachev.
But soon enough, I’ve lost my illusions about revolutions too.
For several weeks that felt and still feel like years even in hindsight, we lived in a state of full-fledged anarchy. Old government facing literally the whole nation in the streets was afraid to act and the new, free one, was not yet established. No one was in charge. Still, and contrary to popular beliefs about anarchy, it was a brief moment when everyone respected everyone, even the ones who were only recently persecuting their fellow men.
Despite daily strikes, sometimes general, we also didn’t freeze or hunger and all services were functioning as usually. Where it was possible — schools, theaters, and similar — the institution was running in a slightly different mode but generally fulfilling its designed purpose: dialogue. So, for example, theaters hosted political debates, and we still had classes, but we were also discussing the present events with our teachers, which, to be honest, was quite revealing.
During this interregnum, the organizational structure looked like this: each institutional unit had a board presided by an elected chairman. Each chairman was then responsible for collecting demands and suggestions of a unit they were elected from, and also present those demands and suggestions on an organizationally higher level (and then communicate all organizational decisions made on higher levels back).
At each higher level, then, another chairman was elected (from and by the present chairmen), and that went up all the way to the people who took it upon themselves to lead it all and negotiate the transfer of power with incumbent government. And although that system was suggestively incited from the top, the enthusiastic adoption, which resulted from the general atmosphere of freedom and belonging, was as spontaneous as it gets.
So, in the case of the school I attended at that time, there was a class board in every class and an overarching school board of all class chairmen as well as the chairman of the board of teachers. School board then had its chairman as a representative in the local board.
Also, in schools these boards used existing infrastructure of Socialist Youth Union (older brother of Pioneer) and they were also given actual executive rights. Their role in factories and other workplaces fell upon worker’s unions that already had a similar structure too.
But once it was clear that soviet tanks and soldiers, while still present, won’t leave the barracks and the course became pretty much set, human greed rose its ugly head again.
The first slap in the face came when the board of teachers unilaterally decided that they have the right to veto the school board. The argument being that it’s teachers who de jure and de facto run the school. Another disillusion came soon after.
At a heated public meeting of local chairmen, the representative of worker’s union of the factory that employed almost three quarters of our city, a guy who, as was customary among officials of worker’s union, spent more time drinking at union meetings than actually at work (plus being an unionist provided extra pay), demanded direct access of unions to the top leaders, in effect, bypassing the local board.
Eventually, they’ve got it. Other groups, mostly aligned with former profiteers and power brokers (who were to became the “new” economic elites) gained confidence, threw away their scruples once again, turned coats, and followed suit. That’s when political parties started to be born (or revived) in earnest and we were on our merry way to a parliamentary democracy and tripartite capitalism.
Only years later it also came into the light that many top level “revolutionary leaders” were in it, at least partly, because of generational grievances and wealth which the communist stole from their families decades ago.
Seeing many of them getting their hands on quite lucrative properties in restitution proceedings, which made it into the law with active help of said leaders to begin with, was certainly a crucial eye opener. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting your stolen heirloom back in some way, but you should have heard the soaring speeches those people gave from the platforms and balconies — quite a dissonance.
Well, what did I expect? All what every revolution ever accomplished was one and one thing only — reshuffling of hierarchy. If it didn’t click after reading books on history, it became obviously clear after a few other “minor revolutions” I lived through, such as our collective decision that we had enough of Wild East lifestyle and want to belong to civilized world, or, more recently, when our government was forced to abdicate under public pressure because of pretty serious suspicions of being in cahoots with organized crime syndicates. Those “uprisings” though, while they started on streets, were already fought in “democratic” voting booths.
So, give me a break with activism and revolutions. They may address a symptom here and there, but they never solve the actual cause. It does not matter whom you help to usurp power, whom you vote in or endorse. All who aspire to hold some office within a system aim at positions that the system itself creates and grants. Therefore, all revolutions eventually end up as, more or less, what they were initially fighting against.
Don’t get me wrong. If I was under Moscow’s boot to this day, I would not be writing these words. I would not have seen what I’ve seen, and I would miss out on a lot of experiences I deem crucial in my life.
So, the choice, although far from being ideal, is clear for me — between Soviet (or analogous) and Western life, I would again, and without hesitation, choose the latter. And I also still vote, if someone asks. But only occasionally, if I feel some sort of urgency. However, I’m also aware that me voting is only a stalling tactic, if successful. So I vote accordingly. With pragmatic purpose, not based on some naive sense of rebellion.
To use an analogy, if dictatorship would amount to stoning, capitalistic “democracy” would be a slow death by starvation. Physically as well as mentally. Not much difference, but the latter is more pleasant and offers more time. Time needed to explain that paradise on Earth is not a matter of politics and laws, because, as I said previously, only self-realized individuals can form a sustainable enlightened society that treats fairly everyone and then some. All other attempts are ultimately doomed to fail.
Therefore, know thyself — that’s the only revolution that can change anything. If it even is a revolution.
After all, calling it evolution feels like a better fit.
