The utopia

The Delusion

During Yuri’s teenage days, he was unable to comprehend the need for Ukrainian independence. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t make out anything about nationalism and his father’s inclination towards the ideology as well as the admiration towards Petliura.
“Why lay your lives on line for a leader who would ditch you in the middle of the war?” He often used to question himself but never found an answer. He then questioned his mother about it.

“You are too young to understand the value of freedom. We don’t value the things that we get easily, which we don’t have to earn. You will never comprehend the essence of independence until you are subjugated.”

“Your father was a nationalist, and more than that an empath. He fought for the pro-Ukrainian movement not for his own sake but for the collective good. He correctly predicted the outcome of the Russian Revolution, the establishment of an autocratic regime under the veil of a promised utopian future.” His mother clarified.

“Aren’t we happy, mother? There is no soviet state intervention in our village. We walk freely, express freely, produce on our farm and earn our livelihood by working hard.”

“Isn’t this freedom? Isn’t this the utopia socialism talks about?” He reiterated.

Yuri had always been an ardent supporter of Bolshevism, unaware of the fact that Communism considers peasants as no class but a strata of the society which lacks ‘any form of class consciousness’, a strata that needs leadership of the working class or proletariates to attain consciousness. Yuri believed that Socialism was the only way for the eradication of all social evils, unaware of the fact that it encourages mediocrity over meritocracy which ultimately ruins the social structure. To him, Russian Revolution has liberated them from all forms of imperialist oppression of the Tsars, whereas Bolshevism resort towards attaining centralisation of power which makes them more autocratic than the Russian Monarchs.

Reality is something that human mind can perceive and what it can’t,  becomes a myth for it. Yuri’s perception about Bolshevism was based upon this. His mind blinded him of the authoritative tendencies of the ideology because there was no assertion of Soviet power in his village. Yuri’s family earned their livelihood by the ten acres of land they owned and their livestocks which included two cows. Hence, the farm produced abundant surplus for their own consumption.

However, for Yuri’s mother, the reality was quite different. She often used to venture into the days of ‘War Communism’, in which grains were confiscated at gun point without consent in Ukrainian countryside to feed the Soviet workforce in early-1920s. Violent actions were taken in the name of ‘extreme measures’ by the Bolsheviks to procure grains from peasants through terror (widely known as the Red Terror) which led to a massive decrement in farming enthusiasm. A Soviet Union, already lacking workforce due to First World War and the consequent Ukrainian Revolution, complemented by the forceful grain requisition, led to large scale famine in 1920.

News of mass starvation spread around the countryside like wildfire, which was a direct consequence of Soviet policies. Due to lack of restrictions on reporting of the famine by the contemporary media, horrible incidents came into light. Peasants dying of hunger, some of them either resorting to cannibalism or killing their own pets and livestock for sustenance. Soups made by boiling grass became some of the Ukrainian peasants’ primary diet.. The 1920 famine became significant because of the famous truce in the form of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (commonly known as NEP) was introduced in Soviet Union. However, the economy was in ruins, no matter how much the Bolsheviks tried reforming it. The NEP was not an action taken out of the recognition of flaws in Soviet policies but to retain their power throughout Russia and its republics

Yuri’s mother was aware of all these events but she never uttered anything to him. She chose to remain silent, not because she was afraid to tell him the truth but because the truth would burst Yuri’s bubble of utopia and would dishearten him deeply. Yuri was well institutionalised in the Soviet society and it’s left propagandist ecosystem. He not only learned to justify the Bolsheviks but also blamed the “bourgeoisie termites” for all the existing crisis throughout Ukraine. The denial of Yuri, his utopian bubble was about to burst soon, pretty soon.