The Immense Danger of Ideology (Primary Source Analysis)

TURN ON SUBTITLES

This Soviet Propaganda film “Kubanskie Kazaki”, or the Cossacks of the Kuban, was produced and distributed about fifteen years after the Holodomor genocide and attempts to depict the process of collectivization in the 1920’s and 1930’s by focusing on a single collectivist farm, and telling an entertaining tale of love stories and friendships that go on there. Widely regarded as one of the era’s finest Soviet films, I first watched the movie in Professor Gillespie’s class on depictions of nature in Russian Literature and Cinema and found it entertaining and engaging. I am highlighting this specific scene because of the immense contrast it cuts with the pictures and other primary sources I have found in my research of collectivist farms during the Holodomor genocide.

From small children whose bones protrude from their face and chest, to laws depicting an image of round-the-clock surveillance and harsh punishments, such as torture and death, for any rule-breaking, the horrors I have learned about the Holodomor genocide will remain burned, indelible, in my mind for the rest of my life, much in the same way the horrors of the Holocaust or the Rwandan Genocide do. To see this cynical depiction of collectivist farms as a place where rosy-cheeked, muscular, and beautiful men and women sing as they harvest grain made me unbearably angry.

This, of course, was one of the Soviet Union, and other 20th-century communist movements, greatest strengths. The appearance of righteousness, of being on the right side of history, and of simultaneously unlocking the true meaning of life: to work and live your life for revolutionary struggle. As is the question with any man-made disaster, and specifically with genocide, one must ask: how did so many let this happen? In much the same way Hitler, or so many other horrific dictators, did, those who carried out these horrors, or those who looked the other way, were sold a highly-appealing vision of the future.

Not only did this vision of the future answer life great theodicy (why is there evil in the world? Capitalism, you idiot), but also promised that, during that great revolutionary struggle, you would be oh, so happy. In fact, you will look like the young men and women harvesting the grain. Your muscles will glisten with sweat in the sun, you will be working with nature instead of against it, you will be part of a community united in its struggle to feed your comrades and target injustice, you will be tired at the end of the day and you will sleep easy, confident in your attempts to make the world a better place.

Lines from this clip include “We’ll gather everything as it should be, not a single grain will be wasted, because we are tightly-knit, reliable folk.” And we work “before dawn, so that athletes and musclemen could grow on our bread, so that all girls could be lovely and dexterous, so that young cossacks could love them stronger…’

I chose to highlight this unconventional primary source because it gets to an important truth about how disasters with massive numbers of casualties can still happen in the post-atomic age, where traditional warfare between major powers will likely never happen again, and in our increasingly secular world where religious conflicts happen less and less. No, the greatest man-made disasters stem from ideology, a hunger for meaning, something that will replace the absence of God, of great national pride. Whether it takes the form of Communism or Fascism, we must remain on guard against the seduction of easy answers, of rosy images of a future that will never actually happen, of anything except practical reforms that ease human suffering around the world.

I know when I first watched the video, I felt a deep yearning for this simple lifestyle depicted in this video, the idea of communism, of a life dominated by hard work and righteous goals, of a fraternal collective where everything is as it should be. A utopia, in short. However, knowing what I now know about Holodomor, and the ways this video distorts the reality of a collectivist lifestyle, just like propaganda distorted so many aspects of Soviet life, I understand it is my duty to resist that urge.