I was born in the former USSR, in Soviet Ukraine, in 1951.
By then, the revolution was long over. The 1936 Stalin Constitution — adopted fifteen years before my birth — had already declared that socialism had been achieved: class enemies defeated, exploitation abolished, the dictatorship of the proletariat fulfilled. The Soviet state had announced its triumph.
Then, in 1961, when I was ten years old, Khrushchev's 22nd Party Congress went further. It adopted the "Moral Code of the Builder of Communism" — twelve principles defining the noviy sovetskiy chelovek, the New Soviet Man, we were all being molded to become. It promised that "the current generation of Soviet people will live under communism" — full communism, to be achieved by 1980.
I was supposed to be one of these new humans — a stroitel kommunizma, a builder of communism. I was raised inside that declared victory, educated according to that promised future.
This is what collectivism does: it makes promises so grand that questioning them feels like betrayal. "Fairness." "Equality." "A better world." Who could oppose such beautiful words? But beautiful words are not beautiful outcomes. The promise is the hook. What follows is the trap.
Let me tell you what victory looked like. Let me tell you what the promise delivered.