How Lenin and Stalin Killed God
How Lenin and Stalin Killed God
An Uzbek fairy tale
This is the first installment of the Russian Propaganda series, in which I plan to publish illustrated translations of literary and historical documents from Russia.
The fairy tale you’re about to read was first published in the 1936 in the collection of Anti-Religious Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the USSR under the title The Death of God. The story is attributed to one Vabkend Karim Achilev, a villager from the Old Bukhara region of Uzbekistan; but of course, there is no way of telling if Vabkend ever existed. In some ways, it doesn’t matter if he did.
The events described here do mirror what happened in the consensus reality. The Judeo-Christian God lost Eurasia to the Bolsheviks and had to bear their rule for the bigger part of the century.
Perhaps a new fairy tale needs to be written to describe the power struggle that ensued in the spiritual dimension after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
As I wrote in The Tsar Monk and the Psychedelic GULAG, there is a new syncretic religion—one part Soviet ideology, one part Christian Orthodoxy, and one part Russian Monarchism—emerging in Russia today. But the relationship between these three parts is not without tension.
For example, there was a bit of a dustup between Stalin and God last year, when the new Cathedral of Russian Armed Forces was unveiled to the public. The Red Tsar that once pushed God off a cloud appeared in one of the church’s mosaics. This caused a scandal, and, after some pushing and pulling, Stalin’s image was removed from the temple.
The same happened to the image of Putin and his coworkers, shown in a different mosaic, devoted to the 2014 annexation of Crimea. According to his spokesperson, when Putin learned that his face was put on the temple wall, he smiled and said: “One day, our grateful descendants will give us credit for what we’ve achieved, but it is too early for that today.”
The fairy tale was translated by Lera Bezrodnaya and illustrated by Jason Novak. The cover is by Giorgos Terzakis. Creative direction, editing, and lettering are mine.
Wow. Just wow. The article on the Cathedral of the Armed Forces and the images are just...well...wow. Seeing and reading that article really hits the spot on understanding what is probably going on in the minds of Putin and his supporters in creating the new national story, myth and/or religion. To a person in the USA who is center-left politically and a solid atheist of the agnostic variety, it is a bit frightening. The closest thing the USA has to a "national church" is commonly known as the "National Cathedral" in Washington, D.C. see here: https://cathedral.org/ The government has not funded it or has any control over it. Here is part of the Wikipedia blub on it: "From its earliest days, the cathedral has been promoted as more than simply an Episcopal cathedral. Planners hoped it would play a role similar to Westminster Abbey. They wanted it to be a national shrine and a venue for great services. For much of the cathedral's history, this was captured in the phrase "a house of prayer for all people." In more recent times the phrases "national house of prayer" and "spiritual home for the nation" have been used. The cathedral has achieved this status simply by offering itself and being accepted by religious and political leaders as playing this role." The USA certainly has probably more than its fair share of Christians who would like to have some sort of Christian theocracy that would involve imperialism of a sort with elements of militarianism and I also find them to be a bit frightening he says with a smile. The cathedral was built between 1907 and completed by about 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral
I’m really looking forward to this series! It’d be interesting to see what fairy tales surfaced after ‘91 in the post-Soviet world as well.