Chapter I
Communism, Utopia
'Growing up in Eastern Europe you learn very
young that politics is not an abstract concept, but a powerful force
influencing people’s everyday lives.' (Slavenka Drakulić)
Chapter 1, ‘Communism, utopia: The personal is political’, starts with a story of the author's great-grandfather who left Slovenia for the Soviet Union to avoid prosecution and to build a better future for him and his family. Events take place mostly in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and, towards the end of the chapter, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The chapter deals with a totalitarian state and society’s oppression–terror and seeks alternative understandings behind such oppression as well as for the ingredients that may prevent it in the future. The ‘out’ section starts analysing the ways in which politics is not an abstract concept but ‘a real and very powerful force influencing people’s everyday lives’ (Drakulić 1991, p. xv) – a theme that runs throughout the book. Chapter 1 also starts an inquiry into another central theme – the ways our individual and collective images and views about the future impact on our actions that, in turn, help manifest particular preferred futures. Other topics discussed in this chapter are those of raising children (including the role of socialisation/education in conflict, and socialisation/education for peacebuilding), worldviews and ‘othering’ – all crucially important to understand the events described in this chapter as well as the practices of waging terror, or alternatively, of building positive peace.
Chapter 1, ‘Communism, utopia: The personal is political’, starts with a story of the author's great-grandfather who left Slovenia for the Soviet Union to avoid prosecution and to build a better future for him and his family. Events take place mostly in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and, towards the end of the chapter, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The chapter deals with a totalitarian state and society’s oppression–terror and seeks alternative understandings behind such oppression as well as for the ingredients that may prevent it in the future. The ‘out’ section starts analysing the ways in which politics is not an abstract concept but ‘a real and very powerful force influencing people’s everyday lives’ (Drakulić 1991, p. xv) – a theme that runs throughout the book. Chapter 1 also starts an inquiry into another central theme – the ways our individual and collective images and views about the future impact on our actions that, in turn, help manifest particular preferred futures. Other topics discussed in this chapter are those of raising children (including the role of socialisation/education in conflict, and socialisation/education for peacebuilding), worldviews and ‘othering’ – all crucially important to understand the events described in this chapter as well as the practices of waging terror, or alternatively, of building positive peace.