Truth Really Matters

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/thomas-hopkins-d-o It was March, 2008. Seryozha flew from Kiev to Moscow to vote in the presidential election – his grandfather often talked about what a privilege it was to finally have elections. The airport was crowded; the Metro station was loud, crowded, and stuffy. He waited fifty minutes in line to buy a train ticket. But then he bought fifty tickets and shouted, “I have just stood in this line for fifty minutes! I don’t want you to have to stand in line for fifty minutes, too.”

Seryozha proceeded to feed one ticket at a time through the turnstile, waving people forward to pass through. Shortly, a policeman approached him and said, “You have to come with me.” The policeman led him to the on-site precinct, where he stood before a mean-looking, sweating, bald official who starting shouting obscenities at Seryozha.

Seryozha tried to explain, but the policeman insisted, “The resale of tickets is illegal.”
“I wasn’t reselling them.”
“You could have gotten the cashier in trouble. She could get fired.”
“Why? She did nothing wrong! No one did anything wrong.”
“What do you think you are, God?”

Finally, Seryozha felt a calm and a clarity. He simply responded, “I understand.” But he realized that the policeman and the official’s minds worked in a way he would never be able to understand. He threw away the remaining forty-five rides.

What really made Seryozha angry that day, however, was the ballot. The only opposition candidate to Vladimir Putin was a no-name who obviously had not acquired the two million signatures necessary for candidacy. Many others had been prevented from qualifying, including Garry Kasparov, who couldn’t even find anyone who would rent him a hall – for any price – to gather an initial cadre of supporters.

In one day Seryozha experienced totalitarianism at both ends of the spectrum. The police officer felt it was his job to ensure all passengers remain equally miserable and to prevent anyone from organizing an improvement. At the polling place, every voter was made a co-conspirator, casting a ballot as if there were an actual choice.

The anecdote is drawn from Masha Gessen’s 2017 book, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen follows the lives of four people who were born at what many hoped to be the dawn of democracy in Russia. The author traces their paths against the regime that worked to crush them and extinguish hope. Hope – it’s one of the ‘Big 3’, faith, hope, and charity.

I’ve always seen hope as the most underrated – by far – of the trio of virtues that conclude 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. Verse 13 reads: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Charity = agape love, of course, and deserves the preeminence. Faith, also, gets much attention. Hope, not so much. But an assured hope, hope in a coming resurrection, hope in the born again believer’s certain salvation, hope in the love of God that never fails – indeed, hope carries us through the direst times of life, even for those who live under totalitarianism.

The author, Masha Gessen, is not a Christian; neither are the people he follows in his book. Particularly, they do not evince the hope for which a Christian has assured access. And that produces the overriding sadness of these stories. I know from other sources that there are many Russians who know the Lord, and live spiritually victorious lives in the midst of tyranny, even persecution. A similar book about some of them would be inspiring. But let’s glean what we can from Gessen’s work.

Gessen has an insightful take on the sciences in the Soviet Union. The arms race provoked investment in the hard sciences and technology. As an Air Force officer in R&D from 1974 – 1994, I was intimate with arms race issues. I helped lead the development of high power microwave technology during the ‘Star Wars’ program under President Reagan in the 1980s, diligently aware of similar efforts in the Soviet Union. In fact, our program benefited from results published by the Russians in the open literature.

Gessen observes that there was no similar motivation in Russia to invest in philosophy, history, economics, or the social sciences, which atrophied under the communists. A leading Russian economist in 2015 wrote that the top Soviet economists of the 1970s had no understanding of the work of economists preceding them, especially those in the free world. Overall, Gessen asserts, Soviet social scientists lacked skills, theoretical knowledge, and even the language to understand, evaluate, and recommend rational policy for their own country.

It is easy to understand why depression and, therefore, alcoholism were rampant in the Soviet Union. Gessen explains that Marxism had been deemed complete and successful in the Soviet Union. Marxism is a complete worldview that portrayed Soviet citizens as shaped entirely by their society. Since the Soviet project was officially successful – a real-life, functioning socialist society – then each individual must have goals and talents that meshed perfectly with the needs of the society that produced him. Anomalies could only be judged as mental illness or criminality. Simple. No need for psychology. Certainly, a Christian worldview would be anathema to the finished Marxist project. Christians were legally crazy.

Yuri Levada graduated from Moscow State U. with a degree in philosophy, but was self-taught in sociology, a subject not quite banned, but referred to as a curse word by Lenin early in the century. Lecturing in the journalism department, he analyzed a short story in which collective-farm workers complain about their bosses and working conditions before a Party meeting starts. During the meeting they take turns praising their collective farm’s achievements and boasting of their contributions to the Soviet cause. When they go home, they return to cursing their stupid jobs and their pitiful pay.

Levada described this as the ‘public-private behavioral divide,’ which was obvious to everyone as hypocrisy, but also as an established cultural fact of life. Levada published a series of lectures in two small books, Lectures on Sociology. Barely making it past the censors, they were condemned by Party officials for ignoring the ‘truths’ of ‘historical materialism’ and for “allowing for ambiguous interpretations,” namely, for provoking readers to think for themselves. Levada was stripped of his degree, fired from the Institute, and all of his staff lost their jobs.

Gessen describes the vast gulf in privileges enjoyed by the Party elite, compared to ordinary Russians. Alexander Galich was a dissident songwriter who wrote “Beyond the Seven Fences.” The singer fantasizes about what’s behind the fences surrounding leaders’ estates, imagining fresh grass, clean air, chocolates, shish kebabs, and private movies from the West. Returning to the city he must listen to a Party lecture from the train’s speakers about Soviet egalitarianism. He can’t take it, thinking of the leaders . . . “Back there, beyond the seven fences, / Behind the seven locks, / they don’t have to listen to this lecture, / they can just eat their shish kebab.”

Perestroika (“restructuring”), Gorbachev’s fatal experiment, was impossible. The people who commanded the establishment and enjoyed the privileges, were supposed to devise change that would dismantle the rigid power structure, potentially dislodging those in power. Sabotage to Perestroika was inevitable, but the efforts made fostered nationalist stirrings in the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, and even in parts of Russia not so close to Moscow.

Yuri Levada was rehired by a government agency with the goal to shape public opinion. They needed a sociologist, something Communists never before imagined. Levada designed a research program based on his hypothesis that every totalitarian regime forms the type of man on whom it depends for its stability. This New Man, though, does not turn out to be what the Party expects; rather, it is a person equipped to survive within the totalitarian state. The regime then copes by managing a nation of glum survivors.

Levada called the New Man, “Homo Sovieticus,” shaped over decades by rewarding obedience, conformity, and state paternalism. Self-isolation became a key characteristic both for the New Man and for the state itself, sealing itself off via the Iron Curtain. The individual self-isolates because he cannot trust others. “Keeping one’s social circle small was a sound survival strategy during the era of mass terror, when excessive trust could prove deadly.”

The Soviet state became the ultimate, but unloving parent, feeding, clothing, housing, and educating its people, giving jobs to make life meaningful, and rewarding and punishing as expedient.

This explains in part why Christians under persecution in such countries are so attracted to the Gospel, to a transcendent worldview with assured hope, to fellowship with other believers, even if conversations and singing in secret gatherings must be whispered.

Levada administered a survey to 2,700 people throughout the Soviet Union. He discovered that doublethink permeated the culture. Gessen quotes Orwell’s 1984 to define doublethink: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, . . . to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.”

Levada and his team identified several “games” played by the state and its subjects, for example the game they called “Work” – “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Also, “Care” – “They (the state) pretend to take care of the citizenry, which pretend to be grateful.”

The consequences of “the system” were the destruction of both the individual and the health of the society, measured in falling standards of education, morality, and widespread degradation. He predicted the Soviet man and the system would go extinct. He got it right.

Gessen summarizes the gradual crumbling of Soviet hegemony over the last few decades of the 20th century. Eastern European countries allowed protests and organized elections, producing results that eventually liberated them. In Romania the Communist Party was intransigent; rebels in the army seized and executed the dictator and his wife. As the Soviet satellites defected, the Soviets began pulling out military, secret police, and political overseers. A KGB agent in Dresden (East Germany) would describe the drawdown as frightful and humiliating. His name was Vladimir Putin. Somehow, Gorbachev and his Kremlin compatriots imagined that the disintegration would stop at the Russian border.

One trouble spot was a growing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over an Armenian enclave called Nagorny Karabakh, trapped within the borders of Azerbaijan. Moscow sided with Azerbaijan; ironic, since in 2022 Russia went to war against Ukraine, ostensibly over the Russian speaking provinces in eastern Ukraine. Armenia then seceded from the Soviet Union in 1990. Many others followed, including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine.

Gessen traces the oppressive influence of the Soviet state on one’s private life. After the 1917 revolution, marriage and the family were despised by the Party, but twenty years later family was redeemed as the “nucleus of Soviet society.” At first, homosexuality was tolerated, but in 1934 was criminalized. Divorce was encouraged at first, but then nearly prohibited. Abortion was legal in the 1920s, then outlawed, but then legalized again in the 1950s. All these are worldview issues; jerking a culture back and forth on major issues of morality generates confusion and despair. This contributed to the final demise of the Soviet state in 1991 – leaders had no credibility.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became Chairman in the 1980s, he looked at the secret archives for the first time, experiencing shock, disgust, and disbelief at the atrocities the Party had committed. For example, Stalin personally signed execution orders for 44,000 people, people whom he did not know and whose cases he had not studied – if the cases even existed. Stalin enjoyed the power and the process.

Lidiya Chukovskaya lost her 31-year-old husband, a physicist, in 1938. She wrote, “The truth was too primitive and too bloody. The regime had attacked its citizens for no imaginable reason and was beating them, torturing them, and executing them . . . there is no reason . . . killers killed just because it is their job to kill.” This is what happens when Satan and his devils completely take over a country, and visit unlimited horrors on the image-bearers who live there.

In 1989 a Rehabilitation Commission was established and reviewed in that year about 280,000 court cases, clearing 367,690 names. This was about two percent of the job. Casualties of the mass terror under Stalin were about 20 million. This doesn’t count the intentional starvations and the gulag deaths after Stalin. (Others have estimated the total number of innocent deaths under Soviet communism at 60 million.)

Surveys in 1994 revealed that Russians were unenthused about their new freedoms. They certainly did not want to return to the past’s food shortages, poverty, and cultural depression. What they wanted was certainty, an understanding of who they were and what the purpose of their country was. They were shocked by learning that the “rotten, decadent West” was actually shiny, happy, ordinary, and constrained by a just system of law and order.

An open-ended question on a survey of 3,000 respondents asked what are the innate positive qualities of Russians. The leading qualities were “open,” “simple,” and “patient.” In short, the ideal Russian was a person without qualities. The violent, communist regimes of the past had vaporized the Russian personality.

The new president, Boris Yeltsin, created a commission to discover a new Russian national idea. A newspaper announced a prize of $2,000 for the best essay. The commission failed. The essay contest fizzled, with no prize awarded.

It would be interesting to do a similar experiment today in America. Once again, it’s a worldview issue. A writer with a Christian worldview could easily generate a vision of hope and determination, with virtuous goals for individuals and for the culture. Those with atheistic or pantheistic worldviews, especially those who are invested in Marxist politics, would likely have a much darker vision.

For many the Soviet era ended on July 17, 1998, When Yeltsin spoke at the reburial of the remains of Russia’s last czar and his family. It was the 80th anniversary of the execution of Nichalos II, his wife, and their five children. Yeltsin spoke of seeking redemption for “sins of our fathers.” Blame belongs, he said, not just to the murderers, but to all who lied afterwords, to all who worked to divide the nation into “us” and “them.” Yeltsin concluded with, “I bow my head before the victims of merciless killing.”

Lyosha was 13 at the time. At school the class discussed the President’s speech, agreeing that the Soviet era was finally done. Yeltsin’s speech had two key themes: the need for national unity and the need for national repentance. Only the unity theme gained traction. Russia was not on a path toward repentance. Neither is America. America has reversed much insanity over the last few months, but a spiritual revival necessitates repentance and a turn to follow in the footsteps of Jesus – recognizing Him as Lord. None of that is evident today.

In 1999 Yeltsin made a critical decision: He decided upon Vladimir Putin, a virtual unknown, a colonel Yeltsin had chosen to run the secret police, to be his successor. Many thought that Putin would be a temporary placeholder, but over just a few months his popularity shot up from 31 to 80 percent. He dealt decisively with a terrorist bombing, but talked like an ordinary man. People identified with him and they wanted a strong leader. Over the next few years he centralized the levers of power. Governors were now appointed, not elected. Seats in the parliament would be apportioned by party, not elected individually. Authoritarianism made a quick comeback. The emphasis was on cohesion to counter external threats. Protests were broken up by baton-wielding police. Activists were arrested before they could organize a protest.

One of Gorbachev’s inner circle was Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. In 2005 a journalist asked him if he was sorry that he and Gorbachev had not disbanded the secret police. Alex answered that they used to pretend that they were in charge, but it was the KGB. “I was a member of the Politburo. I was watched over by fifteen KGB agents. Two cooks and the housekeeper had the rank of officers.”

He was also asked why so many Russians idealize the past. He answered, “It’s the ‘leader principle.’ It’s a disease. It’s a Russian tradition. We had our czars, our princes, our secretaries-general, our collective farm chairmen, and so on. We live in fear of the boss. Think about it: we are not afraid of earthquakes, floods, fires, wars, or terrorist attacks. We are afraid of freedom. We don’t know what to do with it. . . . That’s where the fascist groups come from, too – the shock troops of tomorrow.”

In 1995 Moscow State University invited historian Allan Carlson, from Hillsdale College (a very conservative private school in the U.S.) to speak on his thesis that Western civilization was in decay. Carlson argued that the family was the bedrock of civilization and the sole key to man’s survival . . . and the family was under continual attack in the West. Russia was in the midst of a demographic crisis – still is – as the nation’s population was in decline for the previous half century. Male life expectancy, the lowest in Europe, was in the mid-sixties.

Lots of explanations have been offered for the Russian life expectancy issue . . . diet, smoking, alcohol, pollution, suicide, economic shock, etc., but these did not suffice. Carlson’s explanation was that the “natural family” was in decline. Broken and dysfunctional families pushed too many over the edge, damaging both physical and mental health. In short, Russians were dying for lack of hope, and lacked the institutions, especially the bulwark of a strong family life, to survive.

Any Christian could intuit this, of course. God designed the family so His image-bearers could flourish from birth through old age. He designed the church in this present age so families can help each other and bring others to know the Lord and into local fellowship. The third primary institution God gave us is government, with clear biblical principles to establish good and godly government. In Russia, all three institutions were dysfunctional. Result? Pervasive hopelessness.

Along with the Moscow State faculty, Carlson organized a World Congress of Families, held in Prague in 1997, with about 700 people. Attendees were largely from religious organizations, with several themes emerging, mobilizing against abortion, gay rights, and gender propaganda. In the U.S. the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the World Congress a hate group. Well, it’s nice to be clear about what side you’re on!

Skipping ahead to 2006 we see Putin, in a state-of-the-federation address, identifying depopulation as the nation’s most pressing problem. “Yes, I am indeed going to talk about love, about women and children. About the family . . . You know that our country’s population shrinks, on average, by seven hundred thousand people a year.”

Depopulation is now recognized as a worldwide problem. Most developed nations have a birth rate that has fallen off the cliff. For replacement, the average woman needs to produce 2.1 children. The U.S. rate is about 1.6. Many other nations in the West are significantly lower. Affluent adults in prosperous economies are marrying less, later, and having fewer children, or none at all.

What leaders like Putin (and leftists in the West) want, of course, are the peaceful fruits of a people living according to biblical principles, but without anyone actually believing that God is there. They want God’s blessings, but they hate God. The rulers, the state – it’s all about them and about control. Tyranny, though, requires fear and instability which tends to disintegrate families. Churches are invariably persecuted under tyranny. Government is about acquiring power, not about producing a prosperous environment for the people. The Democrat Party in the U.S. is perfectly in sync with Communist dogma.

Author Hannah Arendt observed that both the Nazi and Soviet regimes conducted periodic purges or crackdowns, “instruments of permanent instability.” “The totalitarian ruler must, at any price, prevent normalization from reaching the point where a new way of life could develop . . . both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”

Not long before the book was published, in 2017, a Levada survey determined who the Russian people thought was the “most outstanding person of all time in the entire world.” Joseph Stalin came out on top, followed by Putin and Pushkin.

That’s . . . tragic. What Russia needs, of course, is the Gospel. That’s where true, assured hope resides, for eternity and for the travails of this life. There is a remnant church in Russia, but it is small and, as far as I have heard, not growing significantly. But there are faithful Russian born again believers who work to share the Gospel with people around them, in the villages and in the cities.

May God bless them to be faithful and bold. Us, too.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com