One idea that I find interesting in Bykov’s novel is how, in a reign of extreme wokeness, people are waiting and wanting a war because that is the only thing that can end the ideological stranglehold.
Bykov is writing about the Stalinist USSR in 1941. And he’s right in that the Great War put an end to any sincere belief in the Soviet dogma. The regime didn’t end in 1945 but its capacity to control minds and not only bodies did. Of course, it then took several decades to make it go away completely.
As I keep saying, the current insanity we are experiencing in North America will end when not a single person will be able to hear the words “structural racism” or “decolonizing the curriculum” with anything but a cynical chuckle. I hate cynicism but at this point it’s our only hope for a way out of all this.

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