Personal Narrative - Russias Communist Society and its Government :: Russian History

Lenin promised peace to the Russian people, but it was an illusion that never came, for the country where my great-grandfather remained with the majority of my family soon sunk into civil war. Untouched by man, the snow lay still and smooth, cloaked in white purity. Guilt filled my every step as piles of snow crumbled helplessly under my heavy feet. At the door I paused to look upon the path my footsteps had made only to become discouraged at the beauty I had destroyed. Silently, she sat by the drafty window in her dimly lit apartment. Her long, silver hair fell in frantic, unruly curls about her face, yet she made no attempt to brush them aside. When she spoke, it was not as if she was directing her words toward me, or anyone else in the room. Instead she spoke to the window and the winter winds blowing feverishly outside. She asks if I ever noticed how one could feel and smell a snowstorm hours before the first flakes begin to fall. The harsh Russian winters of her youth had left her with a sixth sense in predicting oncoming blizzards. Slowly she lets out a shallow sigh as she remembers how her family could feel the oncoming revolution months before 1917. The Bolsheviks' climb to power was a slow and involved process, much like the time it takes for a few snowflakes to turn into a blizzard. She tells how the smell of revolution was powerful enough to encourage the majority of her family to escape Russia before it was too late. Her father, however, was a Cossack, a royal officer to the Tsar and a servant to Russia. Despite the Bolsheviks' increasing power and the threat of revolution, her father remained close to the Tsar, putting himself in constant danger. For the first time, tears fill her eyes, and she tells me the sad horror that the Revolution inflicted upon her family. Like an unstoppable force of nature, the Russian communist party not only tore apart the government of 1917, but also divided families and destroyed the lives of many Russians. The woman sitting in the chair revealing her life story to me is my grandmother. Although the memories are painful for her to recall, she states how important it is to know one's heritage. As a child, I was weaned on the stories of my Russian ancestors, and in school I had read textbooks discussing the Russian Revolution of 1917.