Following dreams

I’ve not been shy...ever...in what my aspirations are, but I’ve always been reserved in pursuing my dreams. That’s why it’s rather remarkable that I’m actually doing so.

As I said in the pitch I sent to Atlas Obscura my ultimate goal is to make Soviet history approachable and understandable to non-academics. When one is friends with any number of smart people who don’t know anything about Stalinist history then one has to do something to make that history approachable for people. I’m in no way implying that I’ll be able to make the history understandable. There’s no way, if you have any shred of humanity, that you can understand the state enforced killing of millions of people, but there’s no way we can stop the same thing from happening again if we don’t acknowledge that it happened in the first place.

My scholarship so far has me terrified about where we’re at, where we’re going, the possibilities for either of those things, but if more people aren’t aware of the dangers of letting government do nothing but sow discontent and fear then there’s no way to avert disaster.