what were they thinking?

I remember learning about church history in my protestant church school. The time line went something like this:

God created the earth
God picked Abraham to father the jews and be the chosen people who wrote down what he said
God send Jesus to die and save everybody from the mess humanity had gotten into
The disciples became the apostles, started the church and wrote the new testament
Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses

Sometime after I learned history that didn’t come from born-again-authored textbooks, I realized that things had happened in the church between the first century and the 15th.

The protestant revisionist history had the catholic church sort of erased. As if, before the “real” church, the protestant one, there had been this big empty dark spot.

As I learned more I realized, that’s not true. There were all kinds of things happening, acts of faith and struggles. There were hundreds of years that the faith was preserved by the faithful. I was kind of surprised to realize that.

Now, from 1917 to 1991, communism was in charge of Russia. It was a totalitarian government, and here in the Democracy-loving west, we saw them as gray and robotic. They produced propaganda, and their biggest newspaper was called TRUTH, and they made it the truth by stamping out any other voices.

But I found this amazing book in a used book store: Writers in Russia: 1917-1978
This book explains what the writers were thinking. It talks about how they were excited and embraced the Revolution. That at first, they were inspired and producted good writing regarding their hopes and dreams for the new order.

And then, well, things got funky. All the intelligentsia revolutionaries had envisioned a utopia, a place where everyone would have everything they needed and be free to create.

As it turned out, people sort of had what they needed but they were less and less free to create.

But creative people will create. Their creativity compels them. And what things were happening behind that iron curtain?

THe official story was lockstep uniformity. But unofficially, the Russian people were as hungry for beautiful culture as ever.

This book tells of a really healthy underground publishing community. They would sent out the stories, the poetry, type up multiple copies and mail them out like chain letters. In this way, one officially unpublished poet was once able to pack out a soccer stadium to hear him read his poems.

PACKED OUT A STADIUM FOR POETRY.

I remember how we would hear of the strength of the first century Christian. HOw they were so vitallly involved with their faith. They went to their death in the jaws of lions.

The lack of something makes it so much more precious. THe lack of freedom makes the desire for it unbearable.

Here, we have so much freedom. And what do we do with it? We hardly know what to do with it. We are dilletantes with our freedom of speech. Toying with it…Childishly experimenting.

And yet, would we have it any other way? Freedom means contempt. I can toss off the most foolish nonsense with my power of speech, because it is free. Free is not important, doesn’t require any thought.

The Soviet writers were not automatons. They had truth that tortured them to be told. THey had the highest of formalism to deal with. Leave iambic pentameter aside, try working within the bounds of a capricious and murderous dictator. Stalin was no joke.

And yet, they did it. They worked and crafted and wrote. What an amazing history. It’s blowing my mind to get a glimpse of all these creative minds struggling with their surrounding and how to express themselves.