I want to tell you about my experience and how my way of thinking has changed. How at first I was delighted with the ideas promoted by the cult of Viktor Davydovich Stolbun, and how then I realised what was really behind them.
My story is about at what price a person learns to think, not so much critically as independently. It is not difficult to criticise, but the ability to find the best solutions requires not only a good education, but also a lot of courage.
This is a story about how much ignorance costs us. It is about how not to bring up children. It is about what happens in the soul and psyche of a small child.
I want to tell the truth, the truth about a cult that did not disappear with the collapse of the USSR, that larger “cult” which had made it all possible. I want to tell the truth, as true as any memory or life experience can be.
This book is not fiction. It contains only facts from the childhood I spent in a cult.
For many years I held an internal discussion about whether it was worth publishing this truth. I kept expecting one of the “adults” would do it – after all, I was a child when I was there. But no one came forward, and the cult continues to exist to this day in the very centre of Moscow. Even in Switzerland, where I now live, there are followers of Stolbun’s “teachings”.
Now it is headed by another person, Vladimir Vladimirovich Streltsov, the son of Stolbun’s wife, and its members actively promote themselves on Russian social networks and continue to attract new clients. Previously, they “treated” mainly alcoholism, drug addiction and schizophrenia, but now they also say they treat tuberculosis.
There is a lot of information on the Internet, but it is scattered and sometimes fundamentally incorrect. I decided to collect between the covers of one book what I know myself, using people’s real names.
WHO THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN FOR
For my husband, to tell him the story of my childhood, which differs significantly from his own. People say things like: Europeans are so pampered, they are completely unaware of the hardships of life. They say: there’s no point even trying to tell them, they still won’t understand. I disagree. It probably depends on the person. It’s possible to be pampered and never face the problems I did, and at the same time remain a person with not only curiosity but also a big heart – a heart with enough space for both my stories and the feelings associated with them… Might this attitude even be the expression of true love?
For my daughter, for her to know the conditions in which her mother grew up and developed as a person, and thereby better understand me.
She said recently,
“Mum, sometimes I catch myself thinking that I’m afraid of growing up and becoming different from you…”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you had such an interesting life, you say such interesting things… But many of my friends have mothers who are… well, there is absolutely nothing to talk to them about… And nothing dramatic has happened in my life either, and will probably never happen. I have everything, no problems… unlike your life, so rich and interesting! I’m afraid my life will be boring and I won’t be able to tell my children anything interesting about myself.”
“So I’m protecting you from the trials that fell to me. Now I know what the price is! It means a lost family and loneliness. It means wasting many years of effort serving other people’s interests. It means ruined health. It means a short life. You will definitely have other stories, and I hope they will be warm-hearted, funny and, not least, instructive for those who have less experience than you.”
This book is also for anyone who would like to hear the truth about how people lived once upon a time in a cult in the USSR, and what it meant to be a child in such a commune.
Finally, the book is for me myself, to relive the experience, to rethink it, and ultimately to let it go and to step back, having turned over this page of my life.
I tell the story from two points of view: that of a child growing up in a cult and that of an adult who has experience of both parenting and emigration. I remember what I faced and how I felt as a child, and I share my present thoughts about the past. I track the evolution of my attitudes and thoughts to show how easy it is when you are young to fall into a trap, and how difficult, and sometimes impossible, even over the years, to get out of it.
Everyone will see something of their own in this story. I am a philosopher by education; I like thinking, reasoning and looking at things from different angles. Write to me and let me know what you think about all this!
1. Before the cult
NOTHING IS SHOCKING IN CHILDHOOD
Everything that happens in childhood seems normal. Children have no choice: adults decide everything for you and you can only go with the flow, trying to adapt and survive. As the years pass and you grow up, your memory returns time and again to episodes from childhood, and questions start welling up inside…
What was the point of that? Why would they do that?
When you compare your own experience of being a parent with that of your own parents, you start to wonder:
Would I have acted like that with my own child? What about with someone else’s?
You come to see more and more that there is no difference between your own child and others, especially when you grew up with other children yourself, without your family —although you knew you had one.
A PRISON FOR ACADEMICS
I was born in Dushanbe and spent my early years there, until my parents left to live and work in Leningrad. My memories of my birth town are childishly picturesque, symbols of home: my grandma, warm air, aroma of fruit, flies in the kitchen, traditional pechak sweets, the “Green” bazar, cool linoleum on the floor, vinyl records, the smell of books, our loggia with its huge mirror, babbling irrigation channels right in the street, the asphalt melting, our hip bath, whole alleyways of roses, weeping willows, vines hanging over your head, tea with mulberry, fragrant flatbreads with sesame, cherry orchards, sandstorms, and of course, the opera! Grandma often took me to the opera, which was considered the heart of the town (at least that’s how I remember it).
Tajik State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Sadriddin Aini. Founded in Dushanbe in 1936.
The Russian-speaking circle in Tajikistan at that time was mainly members of the intelligentsia, forcibly exiled from the major Russian cities. This included my relatives. My grandfather was the son of an enemy of the Soviet state, who was shot during Stalin’s reign of terror, and the whole family was now living under this stigma. My mother’s side of the family weren’t allowed to live in Leningrad, where they were actually from. For a while the family lived just outside the forbidden 100-kilometre radius which stretched around the desirable cities, but after that we were packed off to the most remote Central Asian republic to “colonise the virgin lands”. My grandparents, as academics and professors, were sent to found and build a local university in Dushanbe. For this they received a meagre salary and an adobe shack with no amenities, right in the university’s internal courtyard. My mother and uncle grew up there. Nobody complained (it just wasn’t done in the Soviet Union), and to this day my mum is convinced that the family chose to live in Dushanbe of their own free will. Back then everyone was obliged to be happy and grateful to the Communist Party, whatever happened.
AUNT OLYA CARMEN
When I was born, my grandmother already had her own apartment, “kindly” donated by the Soviet government. It was in a three-storey building and even had a cold tap and plumbing. Her and my grandfather were divorced: he had gone to live and work in Kyrgyzstan, where later he headed up the geological institute. Grandma continued to teach at the Dushanbe university and to look after the children (my mum and her brother) as before.
I lived the first years of my life in my grandmother’s apartment. We had a neighbour called Aunt Olya. I knew her very well: she lived right underneath us, in the same sort of apartment. Actually, all the inhabitants knew each other, as there were only six apartments in this building of ours on Ulitsa Lakhuti.
Aunt Olya was something special. She sang in the opera. When we went to see Carmen I would wait on the edge of my seat for her appearance. On the stage she would metamorphose from the average woman I usually saw her as into a real firebird: the flamboyant Carmen, with gorgeous hairstyles and dresses, vivid makeup and the stirring sound of castanets. She would dance, clacking her castanets and heels, passionately singing the Habanera, and toss a rose to Don Jose! The whole hall would be on their feet demanding an encore. Some of the audience were moved to stick their fingers in their mouths and whistle from overwhelming emotion.
At the end of the opera we would stream out into the foyer, chattering animatedly while we waited for Aunt Olya. She would come out to us already stripped of her makeup, in the normal clothes of a simple Soviet woman, with her hair in a ponytail. I was always amazed by the change in her. Where had the passion gone, where the roses and Don Jose? Why could she not stay the same beautiful Carmen outside the theatre? But in those times we were obliged to look like everyone else: modest, greyish, forbidden to stand out.
Aunt Olya fell into the cult too, and my memories of that bright and wonderful Carmen had to stay in the past forever.
Oh, how I wanted to be like Carmen! I dreamed of being flamboyant and vivacious, showered with roses, singing like a nightingale, beside me a Don Jose who would delight in me always. (My dream came true later, but it took me almost 40 years).
A HAPPY CHILDHOOD IN LENINGRAD.
MY FIRST YEAR OF SCHOOL
In 1981 I was 7 years old. I lived with my mum and dad in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). My parents were geologists and worked at the Soviet Union Geological Research Institute. This was a splendid building with high columns and wide staircases, like the Hermitage palace. A temple of science!
Soviet Union Geological Research Institute named after A. P. Karpinsky
My parents often took me to work with them. I remember the institute’s museum well. At the entrance stood a huge salt crystal you could lick, and there was a dinosaur skeleton of monstrous proportions in the centre of the permanent exhibition.
I remember that the institute seemed huge, with many corridors, halls and stairways linking the various parts of the bulding. While mum and dad led me along the long corridors I would count the office doors, and between them the smaller doors of the specimen cupboards. On seeing me, my parents’ colleagues would invariably throw up their hands with cries of “Is this really little Ania!? Lord how big she’s getting! Really takes after her mum! Or is it her dad?” That really pleased me. So much so that if someone suddenly forgot to say it, I wondered what was wrong with them.
THE TIME I WORKED AS A GEOLOGIST
The institute had an inner yard which housed the lorries used for geological fieldwork (as well as some homeless cats).
My parents took me on my first field expedition when I was just seven. This was to the Southern Urals, the mountainous region two timezones east of St. Petersburg, considered the border of the Europe and Asian landmasses. We stayed in tents, cooked on a campfire, walked miles into the hills, and I genuinely helped my parents discover ammonites and the fossil trails of single-celled organisms. Since I was smaller I could more easily see them under my feet. I was also tasked with bagging up the samples and labelling them. In the field was the first time I had to cope with masses of insects, jumping in my face as I walked. They only came up to the adults’ waists, but they got me right in the face. I remember my dad very patiently explaining that there was no need to be afraid of the bugs, they were harmless. Obviously I had a multitude of new impressions after my first real field trip. I was very proud that I had done some real geological work.
I remember myself as a happy child. I felt good and safe beside my mum and dad. I was proud of them.
I finished my first year of school in Leningrad, and then it was the summer holidays. My parents sent me to stay with my grandmother in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. This was still Soviet times, and Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union.
2. Brainwashing
THE FIRST COMMUNE ON LAKHUTI
On arrival in Dushanbe I was taken aback. It was the town where I was born, and the house where I spent my early years, where every millimetre was my territory, strewn with my beloved toys, but – it was different. In this tiny two-room apartment with its combined bathroom and toilet there were about 20 people of various ages, all complete strangers to me. They all slept side by side on the floor, tightly pressed against each other, sharing blankets and pillows. They ate on the floor too, on a spread-out oilcloth. The apartment had ceased to be a cosy and safe place to play.
All these people were always in a good mood and with unbelievably exaggerated emotions.
In addition, they all had lice, which I soon got too.
My grandmother hardly seemed to notice me; or rather, she gave me only as much attention as she gave any of the others.
At first people were constantly rebuking me, things like
“Don’t cross your legs! It means you think you’re better than everyone else. Don’t fold your hands on your chest – do you think you’re Napoleon? Looks like you’ve got delusions of grandeur.”
A seven-year old child could hardly be expected to understand these remarks (who Napoleon was, what grandeur is, let alone delusions thereof), but I stopped folding my hands and crossing my legs.
Apparently crossing the limbs was considered a psychological defence mechanism, protection from external influence.
Members of a cult, however, are supposed to be constantly open, that is, vulnerable – so they can be controlled.
I had to learn how to plait my long hair myself, because going about with loose hair like Carmen was just not done. If I didn’t plait my hair, the adults would ask if I wanted to look like a slut. One time I asked what a slut was, and they told me it was a prostitute. I didn’t dare to ask what a prostitute was. By their intonation I had already understood it was something very bad and applied only to beautiful women and girls. After that I came to the conclusion that being beautiful was very bad. It wasn’t safe. Although, I wondered, if the beautiful Carmen was bad, then why did we still listen to that opera? Ah, but she dies at the end… does that mean she deserved it?
“TAPPING” AND “LAYERING”