To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter – Vladimir Bukovsky’s autobiography about his life in the Soviet Union. A little longer than I might otherwise have liked, but the nuggets of wisdom in his life’s story and the reality of what he went through made it worth it for me. His dealings with a government that values ideology above all else were particularly eye-opening.
Here he is on the essence of the struggle in the Soviet Union.
This concept of “Soviet man” was really the starting point for all the illegality in the country. Every ruler that came along filled it, as he did the concept of “socialism”, with anything he wanted to put into it. And if you tried to argue with it afterward at Party meetings, there were no criteria. The supreme judge in this question was the Central Committee. And any interpretation differing from theirs was in itself a crime.
He particularly has some good insights on citizenship.
There is a qualitative distinction between the behavior of an individual and that of the human crowd in an extreme situation. A people, nation, class, party, or simple crowd cannot go beyond a certain limit in a crisis: the instinct of self-preservation proves too strong. They can sacrifice a part in the hope of saving the rest, they can break up into smaller groups and seek salvation that way. But this is their downfall. To be alone is an enormous responsibility. With his back to the wall a man understands: “I am the people, I am the nation, I am the party, I am the class, and there is nothing else at all.” He cannot sacrifice a part of himself, cannot split himself up or divide into parts and still live. There is nowhere for him to retreat to, and the instinct of self-preservation drives him to extremes—he prefers physical death to spiritual death. And an astonishing thing happens. In fighting to preserve his integrity he is simultaneously fighting for his people, his class, or his party. It is such individuals who win the right for their communities to live—even, perhaps, if they are not thinking of it at the time. “Why should I do it?” asks each man in the crowd. “I can do nothing alone.” And they are all lost. “If I don’t do it, who will?” asks the man with his back to the wall. And everyone is saved. That is how a man begins building his castle.
Until people learn to demand what belongs to them as a right, no revolution will liberate them. And by the time they learn, a revolution won’t be necessary. No, I don’t believe in revolution, I don’t believe in forcible salvation.
A citizen possesses his rights from birth. A subject is endowed with them as a dispensation from on high. But to be a Ukrainian, a Russian, or a Jew was also a natural right: the state that citizens carry within them, and only that, decides what the external state will be.
Last tidbit that’s particularly noteworthy. The USSR had a constitution! Guaranteed rights and everything for their citizens. Set rules for trials, etc. I honestly had no idea and it shatters the mythology of “The Constitution” for me.
Here again is Bukovsky.
What do we regard as most fundamental—ideology or the law? That was the question posed by our trials, and on the answer to it depended not the fate of the accused but the entire life of our country in the future.