Serfdom of the mind. Thread.
Russia in the time of St Peter the Great sowed the grains for the Russian revolution. The ‘success’ in wealth terms of that period was never surpassed. St Petersburg being an enduring legacy. However was a success built on the model of serfdom.
Landowners that were responsible for tracts of land as big as Wales, with populations in the 100,000s, but those populations were serfs. Not quite slaves, as they were provided with more than food. But they were considered chattel of the estate, effectively owned by their masters
It was not exclusive to Russia. European families operated on a similar model. The Dukes of Burgundy being one great example. The financial ‘model’ of wealth extraction was so tightly managed that the peasants were almost starving.
Except one year the noble Duke noticed the peasantry were starting to look rather well fed. He sent some spies into the villages to find out what was happening. They reported back that the peasants were eating snails.
The duke said, get some, I want to try, and a new ‘delicacy’ was born!
Such attitudes to people was never going to end well.
Marie Antoinette ended her life on a gastronomic faux pas – ‘let them eat cake’.
Russia’s ‘ancien regieme’ took a while further to topple.
It took the economic devastation of the first world war, and the cunning plan of General Ludendorff to transport the diseased revolutionary mind of Lenin by train, to destabilise a country, before Russia reformed.
But it reformed in a bad way. Revolution bought not an idyl of communism, but a new form of serfdom. Serfdom of the mind.
Serfdom of the mind, managed by brutal oppression.
Serfdom of the mind, while people collaborated in the direct murder and causation of deaths of millions of citizens on the lies of a great fraud, and thoroughly nasty piece of work, Stalin. A populist who created himself as an image of the greatest leader of all time.
Some of the artwork is magnificent. Have a look at the mosaics in Moscow’s underground!
Serfdom of the mind – where people do not realise that their leader is a criminal.
Serfdom of the mind – where the media is controlled by the government, and information is trivialised, propaganda is devised to divide, and lies are told in three-word strap lines.
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