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The end of the Soviet Union
前苏联的末途
Walking dead
行尸走肉
The cruelty of the last years of the Soviet Union
前苏联—充满折磨的晚年
The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation.By Oliver Bullough.
《俄罗斯最后一人：拯救行将灭亡之国》
STAGNATION, writes Oliver Bullough in his haunting account of the late Soviet Union, is not sexy. Biographies of Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev abound, but nobody has written seriously about Leonid Brezhnev, on whose watch the Soviet Union sank into drunken decay. The author of a definitive book about the tortured history of the north Caucasus, Mr Bullough has a good sense of how the traumas of Russia's past affect its present. His new book is a mixture of travelogue and biography, as he traces the life of Father Dmitry Dudko, an Orthodox priest who exemplified both resistance to Soviet rule and defeat at its hands.
奥利弗布洛写过一本描述前苏联晚年的著作，阅读之后令人过目难忘，不过其中“停滞部分”却让人不愿直视。关于斯大林和戈尔巴乔夫的传记汗牛充栋，勃列日涅夫却鲜有人问津，即便他眼睁睁地看着前苏联陷入混沌恍惚的泥潭。关于叙述北高加索伤痕累累历史的著作，布洛的《让我们名声大噪》无疑是最好的一本，也就是说，对于俄罗斯过去的创伤如何影响当今时代—布洛的嗅觉像狗一样灵敏。布洛的这本新书集游记和传记于一体，主线以东正教传教士德米特里杜德科神父的一生为轴。德米特里杜德科神父代表了一类人，首先反对苏联制度，之后却臣服于它。
The Orthodox hierarchy in the post-war Soviet Union was tainted by collaboration with the KGB. For those repelled by the sterility and corruption of the official ideology, religion was part of the axis of resistance. So the authorities kept the lid on, and religious practice beyond the liturgy was risky.
由于同克格勃合作，二战后的前苏联东正教教义算是蒙上了一层不堪的色彩。所有厌恶政府思想体系下不作为和腐败的角色中，宗教处在抗争的洪流中心。所以，政府当局一直在雪藏宗教，而宗教习俗也不再局限于礼拜仪式，开始走向危险的边缘。
Father Dmitry, whose post-war theological studies had been interrupted by eight years in the gulag, was a striking exception. He preached passionately and lucidly. He fostered discussion and roused his flock against the degradation, despair, abortions, alcoholism and promiscuity of Soviet life. He resolutely opposed anti-Semitism. Jews were “sacred friends”, he said. In the early 1970s his sermons became a sensation, published in the West and in samizdat in the Soviet Union. The Communist authorities objected. He defied them. They exiled him to a distant village. His flock followed him there. The authorities moved him again. And on it went.
德米特里杜德科神父战后研究宗教学，期间由于羁押在古拉格而中断八年。他可以说是人尽皆知的异数。德米特里杜德科神父传教富有激情、条理清晰，并且鼓励集思广益，号召教徒反对国家的倒退，抗击前苏联令人绝望生活中的病症，比如堕胎、酗酒和滥交。毋庸置疑，他是坚决反对反犹太主义的。用他的话说，犹太人是“神圣的朋友”。上世纪70年代，他所著的长篇训诫引起不小的轰动，西方国家和前苏联地下都有出版，当然共产党当局是明令禁止的。德米特里杜德科神父同他们抗争，政府将他流放到了边远农村。教徒们继而一路追随。政府又转移他的流放地，教徒继续跟随。最后就是“政府藏，教徒追”。
He began to see the Soviet system as the source of his country's ills. In 1977 he told the New York Times of the “diabolic storm” that had broken on his country. “Our nation has become corrupted, the family has fallen apart, the nation has got drunk, traitors have betrayed each other.” That was true. But by the late 1970s detente was ending. Fame in the West was no protection. Even a lone independent-minded priest was an existential—and intolerable—threat for the brittle Soviet leadership. The fledgling dissident movement was systematically crushed—by imprisonment, exile, coercive psychiatry or ferocious pressure on family members.
德米特里杜德科神父开始认识到前苏联大的系统正是国家症结所在。1977年，他向“纽约时报”讲道，说“罪恶的风暴”搅得这个国家天翻地覆。“我们的国家腐败透顶，家庭支离破碎，我们的国家此时就像一个醉汉，卖国贼之间互相叛变。”他没说错。不过，70年代后期国际紧张关系不再处在缓和状态，西方国家不再顾及名声。在脆弱不堪的前苏联领导层面看来，甚至一个单独具有独立思想的神父也成了实实在在并且不能再坐视不管的威胁。异见运动还没孵化就遭到有计划的打击——监禁、流放、强加精神病罪名亦或异见者家人承受着不堪重负的压力。
In January 1980 Father Dmitry was arrested. His friends prayed; the West protested. But he emerged six months later, a changed man: a zealous, repentant patriot who, in a sensational television broadcast, admitted to working with foreign powers against the Soviet state. Worse, he denounced his friends and helpers.
1980年1月，德米特里杜德科神父遭逮捕。他的朋友开始祈祷，西方国家表示抗议。不过在六个月之后，德米特里杜德科神父不再是之前德米特里杜德科神父：“洗心革面”之后的他成了一位热忱的爱国志士。他在电视广播中的表态令人震惊：承认与外国势力里勾外连，以反对前苏联政府。更不堪的是，他还揭发了自己的朋友和战友。
It was a huge propaganda coup for the regime. He showed no signs of torture, drugs or exhaustion. One of his followers wrote an open letter accusing the KGB of the “murder of my spiritual father”.
对于政权而言，大篇幅的宣传获得了意想不到的成功。在他身上，人们看不出一丝拷打或者下了迷魂药的迹象，而他也不显一丝疲态。德米特里杜德科神父的一位追随者发表了一封公开信，谴责克格勃“谋杀了自己的灵魂长者”。
Mr Bullough explains the mystifying conversion. The KGB played on his fears of renewed imprisonment and separation from his family. A skilful interrogator, Vladimir Sorokin found and enlarged the “chink” in his victim's soul: patriotism. Surely no true, law-abiding Russian could side with the enemies of his country?
布洛在书中解释了这一令人匪夷所思的转变。克格勃利用了德米特里杜德科神父恐惧二进宫的心理以及害怕同家人再度分开的心情。弗拉基米尔索罗金深谙审讯之道，他在手中这位受害者的灵魂之中察觉到了一个致命的软肋，并且将其放大：爱国主义。但是，真就没有一个真正并且守法的俄国人会站在国家敌人这一边了吗？
Later Father Dmitry was filled with remorse. But it was too late. Dogged by loneliness and guilt, and unable to resurrect his crusade for trust, hope and faith, he descended into the fetid swamps of Russian nationalism, wallowing in the paranoid anti-Semitism he had once eschewed. The brave, happy and confident man of the 1960s and 1970s became a miserable racist, a campaigner for hatred and nihilism.
之后，虽然德米特里杜德科神父心理满是悔恨，但是为时已晚。孤独和罪恶感陪着他走完余生，其间他一直苦于不能重塑自己当年“为信任、希望和信念而战斗的形象”。他深陷散发着“俄罗斯式爱国主义”恶臭的泥潭之中，沉浸在多疑好猜忌的反犹太主义之中，即使这是他曾经一度反对的。60年代勇敢、自信、快乐的德米特里杜德科神父死了，70年代的德米特里杜德科神父变成一个卑鄙无耻的种族主义分子，一个满脑子仇恨、虚无缥缈的沿街叫骂的人。
Mr Bullough largely succeeds in using this sad tale as a metaphor for the fate of the Soviet Union. He weaves the woes of past decades into his journeys to wretched villages, along with the lies and greed in the metropolis. Father Dmitry may be all but forgotten in modern Russia, but his old self would have plenty to say about it.
布洛以这则悲情故事来充当前苏联命运的影子，新书也因此获得了巨大的成功。在过去的几十年里，他游历了一些贫穷困苦村庄，他把其中所体验的悲伤编入书中，当然还有大都市的谎言和欲望。德米特里杜德科神父或许已经消逝在现代俄罗斯人民的生活里，但是60年代的神父依然对现代俄罗斯影响深刻。
