By Rachel Mann PhD

I stood on the cobblestones of Red Square looking at the small, square tomb that housed what remained of Lenin. Behind it loomed the walls of the Kremlin, seat of power in which one dictator after another carried on the Russian legacy of oppression and darkness that long preceded the events of the 20th century. I entered the doorway of the mausoleum with a few Russian and international tourists to circumambulate around his plastered and chemically preserved body—a strange horror show.

It was 1983. I was 22 years old and a senior in college. I was finally here—facing the iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution and the authoritarian founder of the Soviet Union.

My intense engagement with Russia had started six years before, when I had to write a book report assignment in my high school social studies class. In a seemingly destined moment, I chose Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It chronicles the life of a man named Shukhov in a concentration camp in 1951 and is a thinly veiled authobiography of the author’s own exile in Siberia by Stalin. Fascinated, I went from that book to reading Solzehnitsyn’s 3-part series, The Gulag Archipelago and then August 1914. War, imprisonment, dictatorship, and oppression were the fodder of my readings.

I continued my fascination with Mother Russia and my passion for averting nuclear annihilation for 15 years until I completed an MA in Soviet Studies and a PhD in Slavic languages and literature in 1991. It was the summer of the Russian coup. Boris Yeltsin danced on top of a tank, the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union's abysmal economic condition had been revealed, and it seemed we were finally safer than we had ever been.

Now, 20 years later, I watch with horror as Putin, another psychopathic Russian dictator, lies to his people and drops bombs on Ukrainian hospitals and residential neighborhoods, grandmothers and grandfathers, babies, children, and mothers. Once again, a Russian dictator with a lust for power and territory has invaded, with his finger on the red button that could start a third World War.

I have been glued to the news and my heart once again weeps for both Russians and Ukrainians who are victims of the scourge of authoritarianism. I know it well from personal experience.

It was not until the age of 32 right after the Cold War ended, when my body locked up in pain and my mind was caught in intractable anxiety and depression, that I understood the reason for my unconscious projection onto Russia’s dictators and their victims. 

My mother was emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, and sexually abusive. Yes, as a woman suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, she was controlling, dictatorial and oppressive. I was not allowed to have thoughts, desires, feelings, or tastes different than hers. If I dared to stand up to her, which I did starting in my late teens despite the terror she instilled into me, she would brutalize me verbally and then punish me with the silent treatment—my own Siberia. Then, perhaps a few days or a week later, she would relent and with a high and mighty tone, “forgive” me for what were most often imagined wrongs.

As a result, my identity was so formed by and fused with hers from constant manipulation, disinformation and denial of her own faults that when I entered adulthood and while studying the Soviet Union with gripping intensity, I had no self-identity. She had completely invaded my psyche and soul.

As a Russian friend, Elena said to me during that 1991 trip to Moscow, “Ya nikto”—“I am no one.” A research scientist in infectious diseases who had been prevented by the Soviet Union from having any religious and spiritual life, she lamented to me about a true identity lost and potential never realized.

I could have said the same.

After 1991, I remained in Academia as an administrator and faculty member. I spent the next 15 years delving into interdisciplinary research and teaching on trauma, violence, healing, and peace. It had become clear that my empathy for the suffering of Russians was all about trauma. I was also lucky to connect with gifted therapists and healers who helped me claim my personal sovereignty and to get out of the inner and outer war zone with my mother.

In 2007,  I made the radical decision to leave my tenured position to become a shamanic energy healer and spiritual teacher. I was no longer no one. I anchored myself into a fully realized, luminous life of intellect, healing, love, and spirit. I had learned how what is in the outer world mirrors what is deep within us. I understood the ravages of violence in all its guises, from subtle to overt, and the pathways of transformation out of it.

All of this prepared me to once more face the global shadow of authoritarianism—not just in Ukraine and Russia—but in my own nation with the rise of Trump and Trumpism and in my own community of Charlottesville, Virginia where neo-Nazis and White Supremacists marched on the Downtown Mall, our own humble Red Square.

I feel like everything has come full circle. Just as I fought for my sovereignty from my mother, I am heartened by how hard Ukrainians are fighting for theirs and how Russians who stand against this brutality are protesting even in the face of Putin’s punishments. I don’t think they could have done so without the knowledge humanity now has about the deep, lingering harm of violence, genocide, war, and oppression societally and personally. And now many are reaching out for healing. Many are standing up, as I did, for the inherent right to sovereignty and, thus, for freedom from oppression and violence in all its forms.

Now, even while my heart grieves for Ukraine and Russia once again, I trust that someday I will stand once again in Red Square on the spot where Lenin’s tomb used to be and breathe the fresh air of peace and freedom.

Rachel Mann PhD is a sacred activist, social scientist, healer, and spiritual teacher. She offers courses on Sacred Activism for Peacemaking drawing on the best western knowledge about violence, trauma, healing and peace and the wisdom of Native American spirituality, Buddhism, and shamanism. She is currently a member of the faculty of Atlantic University (atlanticuniv.edu).  Find out more at rachelmannphd.com.