Krylja

A lonely Soviet-type ruin: a woman who sacrificed herself for society/the state/a better tomorrow for all - yes, it is a uniquely Soviet/Russian type that articulated the most altruistic of communist ideology with the fate of Russian history. Nadezhda Petruchina finds her alter ego in Kara's Tomorrow Was the War (1987), in Iskra's mother who sacrificed everything for the Revolution, and the Great Patriotic War, and transformed herself into an impersonation of the Idea - Petruchina loses her youth in the war, only to selflessly dissolve herself in building a better world for children, whom she cannot have precisely because of it. If her husband had survived, he would undoubtedly be Alexei Astakhov from Chukhray's Clear Skies (1961). And most importantly - if Petruchina had her own children, they would certainly be the children from Khutsiev's I'm 20 Years Old (1965) - those children who learn that one can work for Soviet society without sacrificing oneself (something that, in a selfish way, Petruchina’s stepdaughter, emphasizing the word “step,” tries to do!). /// For post-communist "thinking," the sacred idea of totalitarianism will of course never admit the existence of inhabitants of the USSR who willingly sacrificed their youth and lives in service to a society that was certainly not ideal, but who also never definitively abandoned the idea that that ideal could come (because they were indoctrinated by a totalitarian ideology, that is certain and scientifically explained). The civil war, the 1930s, industrialization, the Second World War, and the end of Stalinism - then came Petruchina, only to discover that no one needs her efforts anymore, that a different era has begun, which must forget about her in order to peacefully live off her work. What would she say about the fall of communism is another question that gives her solitude another dimension... (02.04.2016)