fic: the collapse of the ussr in three snapshots, pg
Title: The Collapse of the USSR in Three Snapshots
Rating: PG for thematic stuff I guess
Summary: Russia is falling apart and he wishes that they'd stop trying to fix him.
Notes: Someone on the anon meme gave me the prompt 'stop trying to fix me' and 'Russia'. So here it is. Also, probable history!fail.
March 1985
Reform is the word in Moscow today. Reform for the economy, which has been slowly declining. Reform for the people. For the first time in decades, there is talk of a policy of glasnost- free speech. Free emotion.
What Russia knows that they don't: the people are restless. He can feel it in his bones, creeping under his skin. The countries that he once held so close are pushing away and he knows that they can feel it too.
Once they let the people feel freely, they will have opened the floodgates. There will be no turning back.
August 1989
They are singing to the west.
Along the Baltic, hands linked in defiance, they are singing and it is a song of change and Russia does not like it at all. Why can't you all let things be, he wants to say, why can't you all see that everything is fine? In his heart, he knows that it's not true. He can hear them cry and he can hear them sing.
Still, he wishes for before, when he was a superpower instead of a crumbling state, when the Eastern Bloc was snug in his palm instead of slipping out of his fingertips. Stop trying to fix me, he wants to say. I am still alright.
January 1991
He is no longer breaking. Instead, he is broken. No amount of bribery or charisma or sheer force can hold him together. The USSR is no more.
Yet although he is dying he is like an infant. Unsteady and weak, yes, but at the same time a little newer, a little more ready. It will be a long road to return to where he was. (Except maybe, he doesn't want to go back to where he was. Maybe he wants something else- something better.)
In part he was right, though. They tried to fix him and they couldn't. So they broke him instead and let him build something new.
Rating: PG for thematic stuff I guess
Summary: Russia is falling apart and he wishes that they'd stop trying to fix him.
Notes: Someone on the anon meme gave me the prompt 'stop trying to fix me' and 'Russia'. So here it is. Also, probable history!fail.
March 1985
Reform is the word in Moscow today. Reform for the economy, which has been slowly declining. Reform for the people. For the first time in decades, there is talk of a policy of glasnost- free speech. Free emotion.
What Russia knows that they don't: the people are restless. He can feel it in his bones, creeping under his skin. The countries that he once held so close are pushing away and he knows that they can feel it too.
Once they let the people feel freely, they will have opened the floodgates. There will be no turning back.
August 1989
They are singing to the west.
Along the Baltic, hands linked in defiance, they are singing and it is a song of change and Russia does not like it at all. Why can't you all let things be, he wants to say, why can't you all see that everything is fine? In his heart, he knows that it's not true. He can hear them cry and he can hear them sing.
Still, he wishes for before, when he was a superpower instead of a crumbling state, when the Eastern Bloc was snug in his palm instead of slipping out of his fingertips. Stop trying to fix me, he wants to say. I am still alright.
January 1991
He is no longer breaking. Instead, he is broken. No amount of bribery or charisma or sheer force can hold him together. The USSR is no more.
Yet although he is dying he is like an infant. Unsteady and weak, yes, but at the same time a little newer, a little more ready. It will be a long road to return to where he was. (Except maybe, he doesn't want to go back to where he was. Maybe he wants something else- something better.)
In part he was right, though. They tried to fix him and they couldn't. So they broke him instead and let him build something new.