Evil Amidst Beauty

I visited the Gulag Museum this afternoon in Moscow, a day after the horrific and incomprehensible tragedy in Connecticut . . . the brutal slaughter of innocents, including twenty children. No matter what scale, when evil manifests itself in our world, it is impossible to reconcile. 

Clearly something goes terribly wrong within the perpetrator's being. Whether it is a physiological malfunction or a defect in character doesn't really matter to the stunned and saddened families of the victims. For those not directly affected, we shudder and then, on some fundamental level (perhaps due to the instinct to defend and survive), we quickly turn the page. It is not that we lack sympathy or compassion. It is just that there is nothing we can do to change what has happened. 

That's a brutal fact. We want to support the survivors and the loved ones of those lost, but the work of doing so is necessarily left to those who know these people. The rest of us . . . the larger society . . . goes on with living. Albeit with a sense of melancholy and a more tangible foreboding. But, the impact on any of us not directly involved fades quickly in the wash of all that comes next. 

Though imagine if homicidal brutality began to become more prevalent. It would be not unlike those eras when the plague decimated whole societies, taking people from almost every family. As awful and indiscriminate as disease can be, at least it's not mindful of its actions and effects. When Stalin was able to extend his own paranoia to Russian society, ordinary people became both perpetrators and victims on a massive scale. 

Millions died. Starvation, torture, and literally being worked to death became commonplace. One man drove the madness. He was able to extend the heinousness exhibited in the Connecticut massacre to a societal level. Finally, after decades, Stalin is being held to account more regularly and openly.

If you can look at this photo closely enough, you will find that Stalin's portrait is made up of human skulls. What a horrible man. And, his ability to lead Russians to join in such slaughter is what is harder to understand . . . and more frightening. 

The act of one person taking the lives of innocents is unforgivable and incomprehensible. That Stalin took the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen evokes a similar bewilderment. And, both this week's and the events from the long decades when Stalin ruled, raise the specter of a society that no longer condemns, but rather, tacitly condones slaughter. That's a very disturbing legacy that we must guard against, at all levels where it appears.