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Irony

In the summer of 2007 I undertook a journey back into my homeland, Russia, a country which since my emigration to America in 1995 I had yet to return. Making the trip was more than a chance to visit my kin; it was a conduit into my own the heritage and tradition: the genesis of my culture. The month-long endeavor promised to rekindle my Russian nationalism and pride, yet, its effect was destroying the image of my idyllic country into what it really had become: a country that needed much renewal. The reality that my parents had experienced from the communist epoch had still maintained an iron-hold on the land. This wasn’t the Russia that had been taught to me in classes and books; it was the opposite of what I expected.

The country had totally reversed its intrinsic attitude: gone was the unifying spirit and replacing it was defeatism. Nine-story high rise gray apartment buildings dominated the cities, a dying symbol of the soviets and a testament to Russia’s own state. My hope in the morality of the people also disappeared with the myriad of unregulated laws and corruption. The headache inducing bureaucracy, a polluted landscape, Russia had almost been reverted to a primeval form were either the hardy or criminal survive.

A revelation came to me about a week into the trip that inspired mixed feelings. I enjoyed a temporary stay in St. Petersburg, the ultimate fusion of European and Russian civilization. Its beauty was in stark contrast to the rest of Russia. This city was a beacon of how the soul and spirit of Russia was: energetic, powerful, vast and spiritual. The model it set, socially and economically, could be applied to the rest of Russia.

Instinctively I knew the progress was a slow process but, nevertheless, the soul of that city, combined with my relative’s company, aroused a desire to rectify the country. Knowing that one man could only accomplish little, I thought of a more concrete plan to save the motherland that bore my parents and their parents and generations before me. To help rebuild the many repressed churches, to bring economic revival, to created the country that once was a great superpower, I would achieve this end.