Only now, having left Russia forever, am I beginning to realise that all those sectarian attitudes have spread everywhere, and continue to spread, like mould…
We left the cult, we condemned it in words, but it remained in us and with us; we continued to live according to its principles. We judged things in the same way, we treated ourselves in the same way, we thought in the same categories, we acted with the same attitudes and built our lives in accordance with them. Our fear of the unknown, of what we cannot control – mental disorders, physical illness and death – is primordial and nurtured by a system inherited from the concentration camp conditions of the Soviet Union.
And every time I tried to dissociate myself from this, to simply physically move further away, I was “kicked out” from the team, as if making it clear:
“We don’t need another you. If you are not completely with us, then you are against us. So you are the enemy.”
A 40-YEAR JOURNEY
The first time I made notes about my childhood in the cult was when I was 23, just so as to not forget the details. I already knew then that it would be something of a thought experiment on myself. And I also knew that what I wrote down as memories was true, but what I wrote down as evaluation was not true. But back then I didn’t know other words. I didn’t know how to name my emotions, or how to cope with them. I couldn’t label them. I was only 23, and there was no one around to help me sort out my feelings. I was driven by a desire to recall at least something good about my family, about my parents who had sent me to the cult. I tried my best to find an excuse for them.
Now I’m 45. I no longer live in the USSR, I no longer even live in Russia. My daughter is already 15. My family is now also completely different; it is Scandinavian and Swiss. My husband is Norwegian and we live in Switzerland. My husband has his own business, his own private university and business school, and I have my own business in publishing books. We are committed to educating people.
I moved to the West not only physically, but also mentally. And now I only ever look East out the corner of my (narrowed) eyes.
Sometimes an insignificant event can suddenly turn your view and interpretation of your whole life upside down. The way you used to define your life – how you set priorities and inferred causal relationships – suddenly changes radically. Quite unexpectedly you see in each of your past decisions and actions some kind of mistake, which only now acquires systemic status. Previously, when it was your implicit belief, it was impossible to even see it, let alone understand it.
And now you watch as everything you guarded and clutched like a precious jewel through storms and hurricanes suddenly collapses like an avalanche, smashing to useless dust all those intellectual constructions you naively considered the foundation, the cornerstone of your personality – in a word, that on which your self-esteem and dignity were based. You always thought it was what gave you the strength and right to walk the earth with your head held high and your shoulders squared. And then – that’s it. You no longer have a foundation. It’s all dust. Zilch.
Do many people go through this? How many times in a lifetime? And how long does it take for a reasonable person to learn what is dust and what isn’t?
It so happened that for me the turning point was emigration: a change of country, environment and culture. Emigration let me look back at the past and see it in a new way, as if from outside. And, of course, meeting my future husband was the catalyst that set off this whole sequence of changes in my intellectual perspectives and perceptions.
For many years I didn’t know how to talk about the cult. On one hand, it seemed to contain something great, brilliant and necessary for all humanity. On the other hand, there was a constant whisper inside me that no, something wasn’t right… Until I had a daughter, I attributed this vague misgiving to ignorance; it was more convenient to think I was simply not intelligent enough to understand the full depth and true meaning of what went on. But then my daughter was born, and when she reached the age at which I entered the cult, I suddenly, and to my own surprise, completely revised my attitude to what had gone on there and to the people connected with it.
It must be said that my husband understood from the second sentence of my story that I had been in a cult. I needed almost 40 years.
WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK
I want to tell you about my experience and how my way of thinking has changed. How at first I was delighted with the ideas promoted by the cult of Viktor Davydovich Stolbun, and how then I realised what was really behind them.
My story is about at what price a person learns to think, not so much critically as independently. It is not difficult to criticise, but the ability to find the best solutions requires not only a good education, but also a lot of courage.
This is a story about how much ignorance costs us. It is about how not to bring up children. It is about what happens in the soul and psyche of a small child.
I want to tell the truth, the truth about a cult that did not disappear with the collapse of the USSR, that larger “cult” which had made it all possible. I want to tell the truth, as true as any memory or life experience can be.
This book is not fiction. It contains only facts from the childhood I spent in a cult.
For many years I held an internal discussion about whether it was worth publishing this truth. I kept expecting one of the “adults” would do it – after all, I was a child when I was there. But no one came forward, and the cult continues to exist to this day in the very centre of Moscow. Even in Switzerland, where I now live, there are followers of Stolbun’s “teachings”.
Now it is headed by another person, Vladimir Vladimirovich Streltsov, the son of Stolbun’s wife, and its members actively promote themselves on Russian social networks and continue to attract new clients. Previously, they “treated” mainly alcoholism, drug addiction and schizophrenia, but now they also say they treat tuberculosis.
There is a lot of information on the Internet, but it is scattered and sometimes fundamentally incorrect. I decided to collect between the covers of one book what I know myself, using people’s real names.
WHO THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN FOR
For my husband, to tell him the story of my childhood, which differs significantly from his own. People say things like: Europeans are so pampered, they are completely unaware of the hardships of life. They say: there’s no point even trying to tell them, they still won’t understand. I disagree. It probably depends on the person. It’s possible to be pampered and never face the problems I did, and at the same time remain a person with not only curiosity but also a big heart – a heart with enough space for both my stories and the feelings associated with them… Might this attitude even be the expression of true love?
For my daughter, for her to know the conditions in which her mother grew up and developed as a person, and thereby better understand me.
She said recently,
“Mum, sometimes I catch myself thinking that I’m afraid of growing up and becoming different from you…”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you had such an interesting life, you say such interesting things… But many of my friends have mothers who are… well, there is absolutely nothing to talk to them about… And nothing dramatic has happened in my life either, and will probably never happen. I have everything, no problems… unlike your life, so rich and interesting! I’m afraid my life will be boring and I won’t be able to tell my children anything interesting about myself.”
“So I’m protecting you from the trials that fell to me. Now I know what the price is! It means a lost family and loneliness. It means wasting many years of effort serving other people’s interests. It means ruined health. It means a short life. You will definitely have other stories, and I hope they will be warm-hearted, funny and, not least, instructive for those who have