Interior Gulag

A few days ago I defended my thesis (that is, diploma). Basically, it means the end of the 5-years journey that fragmented my life and taught me an important lesson. The lesson is, if you want to jump into something for five years you had better be very conscious about what you are doing.

There was no joy. But there was a sense of freedom. Whole life is in front of me, and there are no deadlines, credit tests, and papers. I am responsible for my actions and for who I am.

Last week, just a couple of days before the thesis defense,  I watched a Russian movie Karaul (1989). It is a movie that is worth being watched by anyone. I perceived it metaphorically as a story about what I have recently been calling "interior Gulag." Most Russians who were born in the USSR have it. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian social system which forced replication of specific patterns and states of consciousness in its citizens. One of the specific states it has been reinforcing in order to ensure that its citizens act as parts of a mechanism was the state of being a prisoner who is forced to do things he or she doesn't want or need—useless things, pointless stuff, hard meaningless work. Many people in today's Russia continue to live as if it was the Stalin's time and they were in Gulag.

I want to write about it in more detail. But now I am too tired.

Please be well.