The Strelnikov Papers

"The battle within

Begins again -

And there I must begin."
February, 1919

"This is the time of glorious hate, when indecision has been cast away like yesterday's newspaper. I slyly silently mock those who still struggle. Their lives are open books to me as my eyes pierce their every encroaching fear and last remaining hopes. Praise be to the power of certainty! The lost and the confused and the stranded look to me longingly for direction. I appear as a spirit of divine authority: their greatest wish.

"I am Strelnikov, beacon of the revolution's light. I have been given the power of life and death as I bathe in the unaccountable rule of Man's deemed righteousness. I've turned my back on the selfish and indulgent endeavors of personal relations. Those are for inferior times. All around me I'm surrounded by the blazing white light of destiny's fight, filling me with purpose and awe. My guns are instruments of God and my will is directed by His purpose alone."

Strelnikov was at one with the vast expanse of the cold childless Russian sky above him, unleashed by the chaos of the October revolution, the same sky that spawned the endless white mirror of the sunlit snow reaching the horizon. The liberation of being death's master skyrocketed him to infamous fame among the countryside peasants. His soldiers worshiped his overpowering conviction, seduced by the same passions that torment every empty aching life. A soul like Strelnikov, who orders a village burned then sleeps like a child, is a man to die for.

Yet not someone for whom to live.

Like a baby struggling to find reason in refusing mother's milk, Strelnikov and his men twist their minds in dark pursuit of an impossible ideal. How to create life from death? Each valiantly decries his unworthiness of love - Strelnikov the most by far - and thus they fought and died so that others more "worthy" may live. This war - like every war - though called revolutionary and historic and world-changing was still like any other: it starts with self-deception.

The madman's train terrorized the Urals in search of pure love: love for the revolution, love for the state, love for Strelnikov - and to relentlessly stamp out love judged to be illicit as one would an emerging fire. Those in his domain feared a doom worse than death: to stand before Strelnikov's examining gaze which spotlights your soul before heaven itself. Better to die alone in the dark by his blind dog soldiers than to face his public crucifixion. In time, his name was not even dared to be whispered and life with him became an accepted common understanding as like the coming of the seasons. No matter how horrific, one must endure it.

But every evil has a shelf life. Once Strelnikov's masters had extracted what they wanted from him he was tossed aside like the peel of a squeezed orange. Alas, a loser like him must be hunted down to be denied and destroyed before any association is made (for his masters were even greater losers). He returned to his village to find nothing but black ashes blowing across the icy snow, another pointless sacrifice to the ambition of men. Strelnikov took in a breath but this time the cold inhaled him.

He had hoped his madness would deliver him to paradise as sobriety never had, that cheering crowds would thank him for his service; the selfless hero. His family had fled at the prospect of facing such a monster as one would an oncoming tornado. Strelnikov, hero of the devolution, was the most alone man in the world. Too late he realized his self-betrayal by the flowing plaudits from the self-appointed state, his knees dropping in despair into the hardened snow. No man may judge himself  - or another - unworthy of love; this the origin of war. He was a creature unwanted by every living being - including himself.

He who lives by the bullet dies by the anguished broken heart.