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Caudamus
@caudamus.bsky.social
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chainsaw kitty loves you
Photograph of a poster of an anime-style cat-eared character holding a red-splattered sign reading "CHAINSAW KITTY LOVES YOU"
April 6, 2025 at 8:38 PM
caudamus.bsky.social
Holy crap this book goes hard, right from the very start.
Screenshot of text from the book. An Eternal State “It had never even occurred to me that in the Soviet Union anything could ever change. Let alone that it could disappear. No one expected it. Neither children, nor adults. There was a complete impression that everything was forever.” So spoke Andrei Makarevich, the famous songwriter and musician, in a televised interview (1994). In his published memoirs, Makarevich later remembered that he, like millions of Soviet citizens, had always felt that he lived in an eternal state (vechnoe gosudarstvo) (2002, 14). It was not until around 1986 and 1987, when reforms of perestroika (reconstruction) were already afoot, that the possibility of the socialist system not lasting forever even entered his mind. Many others have described a similar experience of the profound feeling of the Soviet system’s permanence and immutability, and the complete unexpectedness of its collapse. And yet, Makarevich and many Soviet people also quickly discovered another peculiar fact: despite the seeming abruptness of the collapse, they found themselves prepared for it. A peculiar paradox became apparent in those years: although the system’s collapse had been unimaginable before it began, it appeared unsurprising when it happened.
February 7, 2025 at 6:15 AM