The transformation of Soviet ideology happened through the gradual disappearance of that “ideology” in Soviet life. (c) Alexander Zemlianichenko AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.This is the third in a series of essays by Kirill Kobrin on the death of the post-Soviet project. Read part one here. Stay with us for further installments.
A casual observer should be amazed at the gulf between publicly expressed emotions and the reality of life in Russia over the past 25 years.
Almost immediately after the fall of the USSR, Russian society was gripped by an obsession with all things Soviet, but this obsession combined with support for the most anti-Soviet economic and social policies you could think of. With the catchphrases of everyone’s favourite late Soviet comedies on his or her lips, the post-Soviet individual busied himself with building a life that excluded both the heroes of those films and the possibility of making those films again. It was, in effect, like watching a Bolshevik-era militant atheist destroying a church brick-by-brick while singing psalms at the top of his voice.
