On December 25, 1991, at 19:32, the Soviet flag slowly descended over the Kremlin, replaced by the Slavic tricolor.

“The entire Red Square lay pitch-black, like an unfathomable ocean — only the howling freezing wind and that colossal red star atop the Spasskaya Tower watched over this night with cold indifference.”

Gazing back into endless silence amid the cold, there was once a time when the fire of ideals ignited this eternally bitter land. The deep-winter wind sends one into a daze — as if the October Revolution, the Five-Year Plans, the Battle of Stalingrad, the voyages into space, were all but fleeting bubbles.

Liberating all humanity versus the war in Afghanistan; fighting for the emancipation of the proletariat versus the “Party of the Entire People”; democratic progress versus the Prague Spring; the man who set sail from Riga — Sablin — branded a counter-revolutionary; the radiance of Red October fading away; a great ideal vulgarly reworked time and again by hollow slogans, the spark of yestear extinguished by the long night, becoming a shrine plaque for someone else’s promotion, profit, and privilege.

Faith shattered, reality barren — was the agony compressed over so long to be released, or to endure, Yet on the day it truly fell, the heart had already gone numb past all response. You couldn’t call it pain or joy, nor regret or relief. An era ended, leaving only the silence that forever stands in the freezing wind.

Who stands behind the flag now on that Red Square where birch leaves once fell, The prosperity Yeltsin promised — thirty years have passed. Who knows when history will turn a new page.

It was not Qin that destroyed the six states — the six states destroyed themselves. It was not the world that destroyed Qin — Qin destroyed itself. If those who come after mourn them but do not learn from them, they too will be mourned by those who come after them. — Du Mu, “Epitaph for the Palace of Ah”

May Aurora — forever the goddess of the dawn — guide us toward the light!

💬 Comments

  • Qingwan (2021-12-25 20:17): Once, my foreign language was Russian