A Message from the Soviet Union
I escaped that world once. Please don’t make me watch you build it.
I was born in the Soviet Union in 1987.
In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to be precise.
And I came from there to tell you that democracy is not only important: it is a matter of survival.
Did you ever think that democracy is boring? Ask someone who lived without it.
I will tell you what life is like in that unfortunate experience called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
And I’m not even talking about communism. I’m talking about authoritarianism.
Dictatorship.
A state where you never know when people with masks and no badges will kidnap you in your home or in the street for nothing .
You couldn’t have opinions.
You didn’t have neighbors. You had watchers.
You didn’t have a voice. You had a head to bow.
You didn’t know if your children would see you tomorrow.
You never know if your friends that you suddenly lost contact were vanished into a prison no one even knew existed.
You learned to stay small and invisible. To survive by betraying yourself, by keeping your head down, by praying the state forgot you.
Life in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was hell.
I was 4 years old when Ukraine got independence, but that logic, that fear, they remained for a long time.
There are probably many of them still here today. When fear spreads into every part of life like that, it can take generations to wash it out.
And I’ll tell you: there are things happening in America right now that feel like I’m living in a Soviet Union I was thankfully too young to see, but had the misfortune to live in my first years.
A president threatening to jail opponents while the crowd cheers.
TV networks turned into pure propaganda, calling it “news”
Armed militias patroling the streets, calling it “freedom.”
Laws bent to protect the powerful, not the people.
As you know, the U.S.S.R. was already a terrible of a place to live, so that many people ran away at the first chance.
That’s why when I hear Americans say “my vote doesn’t matter” or “all politicians are the same,” I feel something crack inside me..
Democracy isn’t a subscription you cancel. It’s not entertainment.
It’s the thin line between you and the abyss.
Trump knows this. Putin knows this. They want you tired. They want you bored.
My mother, my grandmother, watched relatives disappear. This country watched entire families hiding tears because so many times the informant was inside our homes.
I never thought I’d see this poison spread in America.
You have leaders promising “order” if you surrender your rights.
You have neighbors turning into enemies. You have people laughing at freedom, calling it a weakness.
They want you to forget that democracy isn’t about loving your leaders.
It’s about stopping them from becoming gods.
You think your Constitution will save you?
Please understand that no paper saves you if you stop defending it.
Trump is not a joke.
He is not an accident.
He is the symptom of a disease this country here knows too well.
The disease that eats democracies from the inside.
If you don’t fight, if you don’t stand up, if you don’t vote like your life depends on it, one day you’ll wake up in a country where holding your tongue is much safer than being true.
Where fear is the air you breathe.
I came from that world.
I will do everything I can to make sure you don’t build it again.
Democracy is not entertainment.
It’s what decides if you live as a human or as a shadow.
It is survival.
—Viktor
🇺🇦🇺🇸
This journal is still new, and I need your help to make it grow. If this message moved you, please share it and subscribe if you can. It’s the only way we’ll reach everyone still holding this line with courage, conscience, and truth.
I did a volunteer medical trip to western Siberia in the early days post breakup of the Soviet Union….. to a prison hospital. I was a 50 year old nurse who thought I understood what a democracy meant. My naïveté left me as I learned that many of the patient/prisoners were inmates at gulags. A number of them were political prisoners. Many, undoubtedly, spoke against the government and thus were imprisoned. Now I understand how the same could happen here in the U.S. Freedom of speech is in jeopardy. The rule of law is in jeopardy. Our freedoms are in jeopardy. Thank you Viktor for reminding us that we must be vigilant and fight back to preserve our democracy.
Thank you, Viktor, for reminding us in the US of the cold, hard truth. I hope your words reach people who need to hear them.