On the Fortieth Day since Svetlana Kurs's Passing, Her Previously Unpublished Essay «The USSR as Cradle and Grave» Has Been Published
Svetlana Kurs's essay «The USSR as Cradle and Grave» was written in the autumn of 2021 for a literary project by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the formation and the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In January 2022, Tina Wünschmann translated the essay into German. Following the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many texts about the legacy of the USSR required re-evaluation. The planned publication was postponed, and the essay never saw the light of day during the author's lifetime.
In this essay, she combines historical research with personal and family history, showing how 20th-century events influenced people in Belarus and continue to impact the present. The author brings her narrative up to the events of 2020–2021, transforming a farewell speech to the Soviet Union into a testimony about imperial legacy, fear, memory, and human dignity.
For the current publication, Tina Wünschmann wrote a personal foreword about the creation and translation history of the essay, as well as why images from this text stayed with her throughout the subsequent years. The translator's foreword is placed at the beginning of the text, which we are publishing on our website.
«Immediately upon its birth, the USSR demanded blood, for which it grew a special proboscis — the Cheka. The full name of this entity was the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation. It emerged on December 20, 1917 (incidentally, it's notable that the USSR was very fond of getting things done in December. Most key dates — formation, death, campaigns, laws, decrees — are dated to December) and until 1991, through a chain mutation, it transformed into the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB, consistently continuing the decree of the Council of People's Commissars «On Red Terror», which legalized the terror launched against the enemies of Soviet power.
Soviet law was designed to strip the subjects of the former Russian Empire of even the limited rights they possessed, effectively turning them into state slaves. Initially, the practice of depriving individuals of electoral and civil rights based on class was legalized — the so-called «lishentsy» (from the word «lishenie prav» meaning 'deprivation of rights') appeared. The new Labor Law established the provision for universal labor and military conscription.«
The full essay can be read at the link
Comments
Таму, для вызвалення ад масквы і яе лукашэнак, трэба выракацца любой маскоўшчыны, а ня толькі яе асобнага камуністычнага перыяду.