Michael Davidson - In the Shadow of Mordor

We are driven again and again into choosing between extremes: freedom or war, heroism or depravity. And the 10-15% of Russians who turn out not to have adapted to life in the swamp of ubiquitous depravity are involuntarily forced to become heroes. Although all they really wanted at the start was one thing: the opportunity to live a normal life. Yet, stubbornly, it turns out that not a single generation in Russia has been afforded such a luxury.

I’ve written before that Russians love to rebuke the West for being so “delicate,” arguing with examples of the great heroism of the Russian people. Without disputing these examples, I want to remind our compatriots: this is not something to boast about. A normal society doesn’t have to give birth to heroes. Heroism is born in conditions of trauma, repression, betrayal, and cowardice. It’s tempered in persecution, crystallized in torture. It learns to love and to fight not by virtue of these conditions, but in resisting them. A feat of bravery is an indicator of an unhealthy society, the terrible conditions prevailing in it, the extremely high level of baseness. Heroism is the exceptional situation, and a true hero is not some superman fighter, but rather the hero starts out a traumatized, crippled individual. The personal example that he sets is one of pain and hardship, a sacrifice that is the fate of few.

Troubadours who get carried away with Romanticism forget that heroism is an extreme condition for the individual, and one does not survive without its scars.

There is a controversial saying that in some ways is very appropriate: “Heroes are needed in the moment of danger; the rest of the time, they are dangerous.” To paraphrase it, we can say: “Heroes are needed in times of misfortune; the rest of the time, they are unfortunate.” A feat is always a rupture, and often payment for someone else’s baseness and wrongdoing. This is what destroys a person’s ability to live a normal life.

And looking at the current state of Russian society, one can’t help but pose the question: what sort of example will all this leave behind for future generations? After all, 85% [Putin’s approval rating], that’s an example of cowardice, conformity, a bizarre mixture of indifference, delusion, and in some cases, conscious depravity. And the remaining 15% — this is again an example of the maimed, the poisoned, the traumatized survivors of loss and actions for which they clearly were not prepared. They just could not do anything else. Once again we find ourselves unable to set the standard norm, the example of the golden mean, the model of the life of a normal person in a normal society. Again we have not been allowed to develop a normal life because exceedingly brutal conditions have been set before us, requiring an inevitable choice between extremes.

The same problem faced by Russian dissidents now confronts Ukraine: how to survive the loss, the pain, the tragedy of war and build a normal society, how to switch from a regime of constant struggle to one that builds a future. After all, this is where our long-term victory is: Not simply to survive, or to endure sacrifice, but to learn to live with this experience. To love, to create, not to forget about our own lives. And most importantly — to be happy. Otherwise, the exorbitant price we had to pay will have been in vain.

The wood plank floor of the old house was rough against her cheek as she slowly, painfully regained consciousness. Her limbs were stiff with cold, and she remembered snow so heavy that even the old four-wheel drive truck struggled to climb the narrow road that wound upward to wherever she was now .

Her two captors were getting loud and probably drunk in an adjoining room. They spoke Russian, although with a distinct Kavkaz accent. Their choking laughter turned to howls, like ravaging wolves, and her heart rose to her throat. She recognized one word “девочка,” girl .

Her wrists and ankles were bound. It was strange that she hadn’t noticed at first, but the shock of coming to in such primitive surroundings and the raucous voices of the men who had snatched her from her apartment must have numbed her reactions — that and the cold. It must be near freezing in the room and several degrees colder where she lay on the floor .

The journey to this place had been a long one, both in terms of time and distance, and experience, too. She supposed it must have started that day so long ago in Moscow when they broke into Golovina’s apartment .

Frantic barking shattered the silence from somewhere in the semi-darkness ahead. Olga Vladimirovna Polyanskaya pasted herself against the wall with a half-desperate glance over her shoulder toward the brightly lit hallway and the raised voices behind her. Vovchik was arguing loudly with the people in the other room, and Pasha was jamming the video recorder in their faces as he peppered the American diplomat with questions.

She slipped farther down the dark corridor looking for any object she might use against the dog when a dirty little mongrel about the size of a cat sprang from the open door of the office. It regarded Olga with bulging eyes half hidden under shaggy hair with that mixture of stupidity and vulgarity common in lapdogs. Without warning it started bouncing and barking without moving toward her.

“Scat!” she hissed as she sidled into the room. It took only a moment to locate the switch, and bright light spilled over the narrow space of the office. The entire room was lined with metal racks with neat rows of shelves containing cardboard folders. The folders held decades-old, dog-eared documents with names, black and white photos and other excerpts from peoples’ lives typed tersely into the spaces of forms.

Olga selected a file at random and began to untie the ribbon, but the shriveled cardboard crumbled under her fingers to reveal a stack of photocopies of court decisions and yellowed newspaper clippings. “ 27 OCTOBER 1937, RED ARMY SOLDIERS VIKULOV AND GRIGORIEV WHILE SERVING IN THEIR UNIT CONDUCTED COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY AND SLANDEROUS AGITATION DIRECTED AGAINST THE POLICIES OF THE PARTY AND GOVERNMENT CONCERNING WORKERS’ LIVING CONDITIONS. THEY ATTEMPTED TO DISCREDIT THE STALINIST CONSTITUTION AND THE INVESTIGATIVE ORGANS OF THE RED ARMY. IN ADDITION, VIKULOV SPOKE OUT IN FAVOR OF ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO EARLIER WORKED AT KRASNOYARSK STATION…”

This wasn’t what she was after.

She grabbed another clipping but it, too, concerned times long past. “ THE SUPREME COURT OF THE USSR PRONOUNCED ITS JUST VERDICT AGAINST A GANG OF HEINOUS CRIMINALS, TRAITORS TO THE MOTHERLAND. THE SENTENCE OF THE SOVIET COURT SERVES AS A WARNING TO THOSE WHO SHARPEN THEIR SWORDS AGAINST OUR MIGHTY SOCIALIST MOTHERLAND. THERE IS AND WILL NEVER BE MERCY FOR THE ENEMIES OF THE SOVIET PEOPLE AND THE ENEMIES OF SOCIALISM. MAY THIS NOW AND FOREVER BE A REMINDER FOR THE CAPITALIST BARBARIANS. LIKE AN ENDURING WALL, WE RALLY AROUND COMRADE STALIN AND HIS FAITHFUL COMPANIONS.”

She was wasting precious time. Olga withdrew a camera from her bag and snapped quick shots of the shelves, one after another, hoping the lens would pick out something overlooked in her rushed search. At the rear of the office she spotted a desk with a new computer. Beside it was a printer that still smelled of recent use. Like a hunter who spots his prey after a long pursuit, she rushed to the desk and rifled through the papers, her heart beating a tattoo. She couldn’t believe her luck. “ REPORT TO THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE CURRENT QUARTER” was right there in her hands in black and white.

The barking from the hallway reached a crescendo, drowning out even the cries of the old woman. Olga turned from the report to the open office door suddenly wishing Pasha were there with his video recorder. Where was he? Forget the damned American .