Hidden History, Cemetery of Empires: Freedom after 20 Years of Slavery

by Dr. Galima Galiullina for VT

“Blessed is he who visited this world in its fateful moments”…Fedor Tyutchev

First published 21 August 2021

Fate graciously allowed me to have the experience of living in two empires. Moreover, in the capitals of these empires. And each time it coincided with a certain critical moment in the development of events.

I ended up in Moscow in August 1989, the year of the withdrawal of the Soviet military contingent from Afghanistan. I came to study for a doctorate, enrolling in one of two places in the entire USSR available in my field.

The three-year term completed my twenty-year education, free of charge at all levels. I was the daughter of repressed parents, but this did not affect my desire for knowledge or the prospects for my career. My daughter and I were provided with a free apartment in Moscow, a scholarship stipend sufficient for a normal life in the capital, and complete freedom of creativity.

Comprehension of History

Two years later, on August 19 of 1991, I saw firsthand a column of tanks marching along the central streets of the capital. Thirty years have passed since those tragic three days, when thousands of people were ready to defend democracy on the barricades built around the White House in Moscow, the faces of these people, I remember, there was a light of faith that freedom had already come, but it was under threat.

Most memorable were the old Moscow women who brought pies and tea to the barricades. They treated both sides – the soldiers sitting on the tanks and the barricade defenders. “Eat, sons” – for them they were all sons. Now I understand that it was they, these kind-hearted Moscow old women, who relieved the terrible tension of those days and nights and were a symbol of the unity of the people even in the hours of turmoil.

Now, after all the tragic 90s we had gone through, we are sorry for those three young guys who died under the tanks, and we are sorry for the millions of lost lives, broken destinies and disappointed hopes of the population in Russia who suffered from the shock therapy.

It took thirty years to see clearly what happened to us then.

In 2009 my destiny moved me to another empire, which allowed me to understand how the collapse of empires begins. The war in Afghanistan for the USSR then became a kind of catalyst for the processes of internal disintegration.

I still remember a soldier walking along a street of Chelyabinsk, he was shell-shocked, so he walked with a strange gait somehow sideways, his gaze was fixed on some very bitter memories, and his suffering distorted his young face.

In the book by Jack Matlock, the last US Ambassador to the USSR “Autopsy on an Empire” (1995), I found many interesting details about how the elites in the Republics were preparing to change their fate. The attitude that the USSR would disintegrate as a prison of nations worked astoundingly well as if it was crafted by the CIA itself.

The first destructive efforts were made by the leaders of Lithuania, supported by pressure from Washington on Gorbachev, and the flywheel of the collapse only gained momentum.

Undoubtedly, the betrayal of the elites played a key role in the death of the USSR. Living in the relatively modest luxury of Soviet life but observing the standard of living of the Western elite on their trips, they easily succumbed to offers of friendship and cooperation, believed in smiles and hugs.

In general, Gorbachev was offered a difficult diabolical choice: to agree with the proposed image of a person with whom one can deal, as Margaret Thatcher reported to Reagan after her charming eight hours of one-on-one conversation, and to start a policy of new thinking as a tool for reforming the “evil empire”, or go in an independent way, preserving the USSR as an unique civilization.

Having chosen the first, he could no longer stop, he found himself in the suffocating friendly embrace of Reagan, Bush and Thatcher. In fact, the policy of new thinking turned out to be an instrument not of reform, but of destruction. And soon a chain of completely treacherous oral agreements brought the country to the brink of an abyss.

Then Yeltsin stepped in, cold-bloodedly entered into his conspiracy with the future masters of Russia and in one drunken night destroyed the USSR as a geopolitical reality. On the accomplished death of the USSR, Yeltsin immediately reported to Washington.

Critical Processes of Empires – My conclusions:

1. A country runs the risk of entering into an irrepressible process of disintegration if the peoples inhabiting it have lost their unity and the nation has split;
2. On the example of the Roman Empire and the USSR, one can see that the loss of the attractiveness of the project of future generates indifference of the population to the fate of the country;
3. Undermining the legitimacy of the ruling elites due to moral paralysis in their circles works like a time bomb. In the USSR, this was accomplished by several noisy campaigns to expose the Uzbek elite (the Uzbek case), an organized campaign for the entire Soviet people to repent for so long enduring the tyrant Stalin and his comrade-in-arms Beria, whose image of a sexual maniac especially struck the popular consciousness. In the Roman Empire, the complete disintegration of the elites is well documented and illustrated in the film Caligula;

4. An empire has no future if its youth has lost respect for the history of their country, if stories about heroes of the past do not touch their hearts;
5. The most important tools for uniting people into a single nation – culture and the media serve the interests of those whose benevolence allows them to enjoy a feast during the plague.

Russia and Afghanistan: Experience of Lost Freedom

Many Russians in those years welcomed the changes that came to sweep away the rotten foundations. It seemed to us that the world of free countries had already accepted us into its circle as equals. But very quickly these illusions collapsed. We were quickly given to understand that we cannot have anything of our own – neither the Constitution, nor ideology, nor national interests.

The Constitution was written for us by more experienced democratic experts. In all the offices significant for the life of the nation, foreign consultants sat and dictated, dictated, dictated, or simply brought what was already ready for a long time. In ten years, we had almost completely lost the country. Browder, an international fraudster, boasted that he could buy Russia for $ 10 billion.

Observing the events in Afghanistan these days, I see the same tragedy of lost freedom. Under the American scheme freedom was different – there is freedom from moral obligations, from the observance of moral laws and rules of coexistence. But for the colonized Afghans freedom is a desire to live according to their traditions, in accordance with the precepts of your ancestors, according to the canons of your faith.

In Afghanistan, these two freedoms clashed. For 20 years the people of Afghanistan have been deprived of the freedom to live in accordance with the precepts of their ancestors, according to the canons of their faith. There is a wise Spanish proverb: Bayonets are good for everything, but you can’t sit on them.

Military force is good only for military purposes (defeat the enemy, a coup), but to actually govern the country you need something much more than just strength – you need intelligence, ideas that unite society, social harmony, a common will. After 20 years Americans realized that they couldn’t find any idea to unite poli-tribal Afghan society.

They flew away, leaving behind sobbing women, helplessly drooping men, those they had tamed. Free from moral obligations benefactors who tried to free these people, these savages from their wild morals, flew into their free world.

Photos that appeared to the eyes of stunned humanity, where a military transport plane with the defiant name Globe master is captured, carrying away American soldiers.

Photos and videos which showed people who climbed in despair onto the landing gear covers and then fell down and died will become a symbol of how the empire treats those who believed that by serving it, they found protection. The global master does not care what will happen to them. He leaves another ruined country and washes his hands.

Afghanistan is left with endless opium plantations, 75% of the population serving the heroin business of those who have been the master here for 20 years, 250 thousand graves of Afghan residents killed by bombs, missiles, drones, mines, children who never went to school or who knew peace. 300,000 thousand children in Afghanistan suffer from drug addiction.

More than 70% of the population cannot read and write. These are the fruits of the public discourse formed during the Bush administration and continued by the Barack Obama administration – the discourse of dehumanizing and demonizing the enemy as an ‘other’.

It is this discourse that explains the unparalleled experience of sadistic cruelty, excitement from murder and genocide, manifested in all US wars in Muslim countries. To be convinced of this, it is enough to see photographs of torture taken by the American military in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Lessons from Roman Empire

Geopolitical changes in Eurasia led to the emergence and rapid growth of centers of power, in particular, Russia, China and Iran, capable of competing with the global master. This forced America to carry out a series of reforms in the army, with corresponding changes in taxes, politics, and information policy.

The only sphere in the life of the empire that did not lend itself to change was ideology, and in its context – the attitude towards all “these barbarians.”

This is an absolute repetition of the same strategic mistakes, or perhaps the organic flaw of the entire system that killed the Roman Empire.

Early warning systems, in the form of think tanks and smart journalism, have lost touch with reality or have no impact on the ruling team. The ruling team does not need their advice. Therefore, the thinking part of the empire is mainly engaged in endless mental masturbation.

Amazingly, modern America, in relation to the rest of the world, copied the most vicious features of the Roman Empire: “The barbarian society was at a lower stage of development – a world where power nullified law and where those whose muscles were stronger triumphed.

Thus, the barbarians played the role of a fatal “other” in Romans ideas about themselves: an undeveloped society, whose failures were emphasized, and the superiority of the empire’s power was legitimized.

Indeed, the Roman state viewed itself as something not just better than what was outside of it, but possessing an absolute and undoubted advantage, since the social order that reigned in it was predetermined from above.

This ideology not only allowed the upper classes of Roman society to value themselves highly, but also played a role in the functioning of the empire. In the IV century. the constant danger from the barbarians prompted the population to pay taxes, despite their increase as a result of the crisis of the III century .. “(Peter Heather. The fall of the Roman Empire. p. 54)

The Power by Fear – Phobocracy and Moral Paralysis

What has become the American dream after 9/11? Now it is not a house in a quiet suburb and a million dollars in the bank, a beautiful wife and smart children. The collective trauma of losing the security of life in the empire has intensified today and turned into paranoia.

In his article, Terror, Sexual Arousal, and Torture: The Question of Obedience or Ecstasy among Perpetrators, JS Piven sums up the American predicament: “Living in quiet despair during social upheavals and catastrophes easily turns into an ideology of sadism or psychotic fantasy. Therefore, events such as 9/11 can transform hidden violence into xenophobia and aggression, the demand for the complete destruction of the enemy”.

Now the search for the enemy is already underway within the nation itself, and some see enemies in white heterosexual men, others – in those who do not recognize 50 new genders, believing that the Almighty created only a man and a woman and this should be so until the end of time, others hate Russians, Asians hate African Americans and this is how the nation is split into warring groups. 23,000 victims of shootings of each other in 8 months of 2021 – isn’t this the ghost of a civil war? Or is it just a burst of hidden xenophobia and aggression?

Therefore, we see the American nation react ambiguously to President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Instead of joy and a sense of relief that this decision ends 20 years of terror and violence by the empire against the Afghan people, those who like to fight with other people’s sons scream shame.

These 20 years of driving Afghanistan into the Stone Age for the sake of enriching their corporations are a certain shame. The Americans did not notice and did not feel what the ideologues of war did to them: JS Piven went on to state:

“It is the long history of the representation of torture that helps to inscribe the ideology of oppression (slave and master) into our heads and bodies, causes (especially in times of domination by fear) oblivion and moral paralysis – ‘Abu -Grabe effect ”

The increased phobocracy during the pandemic with sophisticated pornography of fear and atomization only exacerbates the paralysis of morality and the oblivion of the moral law in the American nation.

The days of the evacuation of the American contingent became a real demonstration of their attitude towards those in whose country they were for 20 years without an invitaton and without the expression of the will of the population. Everyone knows the touching love of Americans for dogs. The service dogs were each taken out in aircraft in their own chair, and for the Afghans eager for that flight, it was enough to cling to the chassis.

Surprisingly, we still hear loud voices of those who call for the immediate return of the army to Afghanistan and punish those who dared to attack the master of the world. Bill Kristol is clamoring for more sacrifices and clinging to the hope that we can deploy forces in Afghanistan “and eventually make things right.”

David French argues that the United States has a moral and biblical obligation to protect the Afghan people from the Taliban. Justifying his calls for a new attack on Afghanistan on the Christian doctrine of just war, French cynically forgets his support for preemptive wars and his support for the targeted mass burning of innocent civilians.

It is clear that the critically destructive discourse in the US follows up the stairs leading down, created after the death of the USSR, needs to be understood in the context of the changes that have taken place in the global arena.

The world has changed beyond recognition, and American politicians are still trying to convince their fellow citizens and the world’s population of the biblical obligation to save and protect other peoples from tyranny and genocide.

In Belgrade, you can see a monument with the names of a thousand children killed during the bombing of Yugoslavia, but Serbia was punished demonstratively. The Secretary of State was then Madeleine Albright, whom the Serbs saved from the Nazis as a little Jewish girl, hiding her in their family. In gratitude, she fulfilled her biblical duty.

Extreme cynicism manifests itself not only in relation to other peoples, but also to those unfortunate compatriots who could not stand the realities of life and went into a narcotic fog. Look at your daughter, America, perhaps your future is ripening in her womb as the late-term pregnant young woman on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia so clearly illustrates.

Desperate Hope to Stem the Tide of Collapse

Necessary changes at the socio-political level:

1. Refuse to exploit the ideas of finding an enemy in the outside world. Experience has shown that attempts to destroy civilizations that have a thousand-year history turn into destructive consequences for the destroyers themselves.
   You cannot, declaring the peoples of these civilizations savages, and treating them as barbarians, expect to remove the bayonets from your chairs in the conquered lands.You cannot try to keep whole nations in pens like cattle, as Ayn Rand and Zbigniew Brzezinski recommended, and be calm about your future.
   The global world in the correct understanding has today unique opportunities for the development of any nation without enslaving other peoples;
2. Conduct a series of anthropological and sociological studies on the general theme “The American Nation: 20 Years After 9/11”. I am sure the results, if carried out honestly, without serving the interests of any political party or corporation, will be overwhelming;
3. Conduct a global based study to investigate in different countries of the world the topic: “America through the eyes of humanity: 20 years after 9/11. I am sure that the results will remove rose-colored glasses from many figures charmed by their own greatness.
4. Conduct hearings in Congress on the results of these studies in order to coordinate and reshape the country’s domestic and foreign policies in accordance with the principles of peaceful coexistence on this small and fragile planet Earth;
5. Strengthen the role of the state by returning to it all five essential functions: protecting the sovereignty of the nation, developing the national health care system, the system of universal education, protecting the environment, and developing culture. Distorted ideas of minimizing the state brought down all five areas to a critical state. This is especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic;
6. Creation of state media structures serving only the interests of the American nation, and not the “deep state” intent on globalization at all costs;
7. Change of public discourse in two of its key aspects: rejection of the propaganda of the American nation as an exclusive nation (in modern conditions this exclusivity is perceived by the world community as an excuse for permissiveness) and the prohibition of dehumanization, demonization of other peoples, in particular, Russians and those professing Islam. Ignoring the need to change the discourse will very soon lead the country to loneliness.

Future for Afghanistan

Liberation from slavery is such a powerful breakthrough for the energy of the people! Humanitarian aid from rich Arab countries, assistance by specialists from Russia, Chinese investments to integrate the country into One Belt – One Road projects, construction projects to implement a favorable geo-economic location of Afghanistan at the crossroads of the most important trade routes – logistics hubs, roads of all kinds – all this is possible when you have freedom!

I hope the Taliban have come to build a peaceful life through an appropriate moderation of their outlook. They broke the chains of slavery of the Afghan people and now may Allah send the people a peaceful sky over their heads and peace to families torn apart by endless wars. Let children see the sky for the first time without bombs and drones, let weddings play without the risk of being torn apart by rockets, let opium disappear forever from their lives! Amen!

In the meantime, a little Afghan angel, a tear-stained baby, who miraculously got on a plane that takes away the American military, sleeps, covered with a military jacket, we wish him good luck!

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