Abstract
I am not sure whether I regard this article by Ikkos and McQueen (2018) as brave or foolhardy! The authors tackle some complex and contradictory ideas that certainly pre-occupy me at this point in time. However, I found myself very concerned at the use of the term ‘social unconscious’ as though it is a concept that explains without a proper explanation of what it means.
As I understand the intention of the authors, they regard the dramatic ending of the Soviet Union under Gorbachov as a form of state suicide—the suicide of communism as known in the past together with the fragmentation of the former USSR. The testimonies that Svetlana Alexievich (2016) has published in Second-Hand Time partly embrace this new order but also contain many voices longing for the old order of the USSR as they experienced it. Many of the voices in her books long for a time when there was security of education and a place to live and a welfare state to look after them. They remember a time when they were looked after and, provided they kept their heads down, had enough to eat. They agree that there was a lack of freedom, but after all the wars and death, they had a more certain life than now. The authors quote Alexievich who says that ‘for the fathers, freedom is the absence of fear’, while for the children, ‘freedom is when you are not afraid of your own desires . . . it is when you can live without having to think about freedom’. The authors also look usefully at the capitalist betrayal of the promises that a post-communist society offered.
The authors then link this to Brexit with those in the United Kingdom longing for a fantasy United Kingdom of the past. They look to a former glory that they, however, have never experienced and would never have existed for many of those who long for it. The UK colonial past was class-ridden so that the poor of both town and country were very badly treated as well as the poor, enslaved and colonized overseas. In this way, the authors’ inclusion of Brexit is a different project as the Russians long for a time that they have experienced. The authors’ fear seems to be that the United Kingdom breaking away from Europe is also a form of state suicide. It is the suicide of a United Kingdom that prided itself on welcoming refugees and a United Kingdom that built a railway tunnel to symbolically connect us to Europe, to the mainland, as never before in our history. However proud some were of this reputation of tolerance and inclusion, the voices of racism and exclusion are as powerful a part of UK history and, at this time, seem to have the strongest presence.
Perhaps, the link between Russia and the United Kingdom, for this article, is the voice of the young. Analyses of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom confirmed that the majority of the young people who voted in the referendum voted to remain in Europe, not to leave. Their future as UK Europeans has been squashed by an older generation fantasizing about a non-existent past. However, the focus of the article is about a young boy of 14 who kills himself and the authors link this to the life of young people and what they call ‘the social unconscious’ of a society that they regard as having been ended by suicide under Gorbachov. To explore what this might mean is complex in the extreme and the link to Brexit very different. For example, the statistics on young men committing suicide in the United Kingdom suggest that they are dropping in number rather than rising even if there is despair at leaving the European Union (EU). Perhaps, for some there is disgust at what is happening in the United Kingdom but not suicidal despair nor a wish to transcend living by embracing death.
In reviewing this article for the journal, I suggested that the authors read Catherine Merridale’s (2001) book, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia, so, to write this response, I return to it. Catherine Merridale, like Svetlana Alexievich, does use testimony but is also researching the questions that haunt her and, I would suggest, also haunt us. She is haunted by the spectre of Death in Russia. ‘More than 50 million lives were lost between 1914 and 1953, to violence, famine, and epidemic disease’ (Merridale, 2001: 11).
The knowledge of these deaths was officially hidden at certain times, especially under Stalin, but they hardly dwelt in the unconscious. They were known but not faced and Catherine Merridale was part of a wave of people in the 1990s to literally uncover what had been covered up. The hidden deaths, the well of desire to find those who had died, the glorification of the dead so that a bearable story could be told, the whispered acknowledgement of those who had been involved in the deaths, these are all stories told in Catherine Merridale’s book. To begin to embrace a concept such as the ‘social unconscious’ in Russia, then understanding the ubiquity of death and the denial of trauma would be essential. Catherine Merridale records how, in my summary words, every family has traumatic stories to tell, they are so common that they cannot be regarded as traumatic. My experience in training group analysts in St. Petersburg was that, a generation later, our trainees were hungry to understand trauma and the transmission of trauma. Just because these terrible events touched virtually everyone, it does not mean that they were not traumatized if trauma includes flashbacks, nightmares, depression and emptiness as a void. However, the whole issue of testimony and bearing witness is part of this story.
Yet another aspect would be the importance of the impact of the Orthodox Church—another hidden but known power during Soviet times. After all death and resurrection are closely linked and perhaps there was hope for a kind of resurrection through the economics of capitalism!
Alexievich records the testimony of a mother whose much loved son of 14 killed himself. If a loving family and friendships make the suicide inexplicable in conventional diagnostic terms, then how can it be understood? There are also testimonies from his friends and both friends and family describe the teenager’s fascination with death. There is also evidence in Alexievich’s books that suicide among adolescents was increasing but why? How does this link to the social unconscious? This young man seems fascinated by death and stood on his window ledge thinking about ‘what?’
There is a French expression, ‘L’appel du vide’, which speaks to the wish for transcendence and is applied to people who leap to their death. A wish to fly or to find the unknown perhaps? I think we can only begin to grapple with the spectre of death in the lives of these families, as well as the tremendous upheavals still being experienced in Russia, to have any concept about why he was so drawn to death as a solution to his short life. There are many reasons for young men to kill themselves and adolescence is often troubling and challenging and a society in turmoil may well enhance confusion and despair.
As psychotherapists, we would also have to examine the family relationships of this young man and they are briefly alluded to towards the end of the article, because, if the personal is political, my link to the social unconscious, then the family configuration is part of this. Was loving him also a replacement for lost brothers, fathers—the mother was very open that their daughter, born after their son’s suicide was regarded as his child? What had the family inculcated that influenced this much loved young man? Perhaps, reading more of the testimonies helps with this even if one family is not analysed?
I am reminded of Becker’s (1973) book, The Denial of Death, in which he describes how much of our lives are governed by denying the overwhelming knowledge that we will all eventually cease to exist and have to deny this to give a purpose to living. Perhaps, exploring the link between death and the social unconscious is the underlying discussion of the article. Death is both known and unknown and extremely hard to comprehend. With violent death being so ubiquitous in Russia, what is known, what is allowed to be known, what is repressed or forgotten, may well lead to a social anxiety state that influences some young people to see death as safer than life. As we know, adolescents need a sense of purpose and an opportunity to feel that they can contribute to society. Perhaps, Russia and Brexit and the current international economics of power make that hard to envisage. It is all conjecture.
The dilemmas I have emphasized are alluded to towards the end of the article but I am still left with the deftness of an explanation called ‘the social unconscious’. However, death, grief and desire do seem linked in the article and in Russia so I would like to end this response with ‘Requiem’ by Anna Akhmatova:
Nothing is left but dusty flowers. the tinkling thurible, and tracks that lead to nowhere. Night of Stone whose bright enormous star stares me straight in the eyes, promising death, ah, soon!