Most people have a full measure of life, and most people just watch it slowly drip away. But if you can summon it all up at one time in one place, you can accomplish something glorious.
Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez, 2024
Let us think for a moment of what the USSR is all about. Let's take, for example, the lapot. Here it stands ordinary, stagnant, boring. Crack it, and what happens? Everything spins up, people are at work, eager to prove their usefulness. There's a wonderful ballet of courage and unyielding tenacity. And now we pay tribute to the creators of this project - the constructors, engineers, and the ideologists of this seemingly absurdly unimaginative utopia.
Think of a vast plain, be it solid steppe, frozen ground or lifeless desert. Everywhere you look, there is nothing but endless sky and hostile nature. And here, in just a few years, an iron road will be laid, on which a bustling city, an industrial giant, and perhaps even a spaceport of the future will be raised. And doubly surprisingly, this will not be mythical dreams of New Vasyuki, but the very real reality of the Soviet Union.
How could a miracle happen in a world of ruthless pragmatism and consistent atheism, which denies the very idea of the supernatural? Where could one find the enormous material resources necessary for the monumental construction of a new reality in a country exhausted by endless wars? Where can we find arguments strong enough to fundamentally change the mentality of a country with thousands of years of history and centuries of tradition? How to instill in the uneducated, prone to apathetic fatalism citizens of a multi-ethnic patriarchal empire the ideas of social equality, justice, labor enthusiasm and faith in a brighter future? After all, this is completely unimaginable, completely surrealistic, contrary to all rational logic.
How amazing must a nation be to not only believe in an abstract, speculative conception of an ideal future of general welfare, but to dare to build it in reality? How driven to the edge must this nation be for the mere vague hope that paradise can be built on earth, rather than in an ephemeral afterlife, to suffice to cause millions to make a mass existential sacrifice?
Indeed, no 'normal' person can imagine all this happening in reality. This is a country of people who shock the 'West' with their primitive savage morals, who have an enduring reputation as drunks, who are, in the words of the screened General Patton, 'Russian goats,' dancing national dances on the ceremonial table. And so they become the first to send a satellite into space, their compatriot becomes the first astronaut in history, they beat the West in sports, whether in power hockey or chess. Completely unthinkable, a fantastical looking glass, it categorically cannot be!
But too many of these fabulous miracles have not only happened, but they have also left behind a vast segment of visual photographic evidence, whether in a documentary or in an artistic and creative reinterpretation. They can no longer be erased from the pages of history, from the collective memory of several generations of people, whether within the country or beyond its borders. The truly enormous achievements of the past continue to remind us of themselves not only in the scale of giant industries, fundamental achievements of science, awe-inspiring constructions and majestic sculptural monuments. After all, these wonders have become such a trademark of the country that they have become the property not only of national but also of Western popular culture. In hundreds of feature films, the Soviet way of life has either been tried to be directly adapted or used as a source for creating fantastical alternate realities. Virtual game universes, including the iconic universes Command & Conquer, Fallout, Warhammer 40k and many others are saturated to the core with Soviet themes, be they symbolism, characteristic content or even Russian names of characters.
How is it that an ordinary, boring bast shoe has been reborn as a Union that has become the star of the front pages of the Western press, that has defeated all kinds of direct and indirect aggression aimed at its elimination, that has been the cause of constant fierce fear, panic hysteria and nervous disorders among its many detractors? Why does it defy unrelenting pressure, whether from high-tech weapons, fast food and jeans ideology, appeals to cultural degradation and mental shallowness? Perhaps the destiny of this nation is indeed to show the rest of us "how we cannot live", but not in the sense suggested by Nekrasov, but in terms of the realization of the impossible, the pursuit of the unattainable, the overcoming of rational notions. In this sense, the USSR is itself a masterpiece of collective creativity, an overambitious gesamtkunswerk, not without its flaws, but nevertheless a defining factor in world history and art.
