Dream reports from 8 years ago popped out of my journal. One of them seems closely related to the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, and reminds me that to navigate the future, we must understand the past. This is a summary of one of several travel reports I recorded from my dream adventures on one night in 2014, a few weeks after Putin's "little green men" started the invasion of Crimea.
March 17, 2014
Kaganovich's Baby
I agree to make a trip to the north, a secret mission. I am supposed to check on a baby that is going to be delivered. The father is Kaganovich. I recognize the name. He is one of Stalin’s strongmen. A woman colleague drives. In the dream, I pull cards from a tarot-like deck to get a reading on where this is going.
The first card I draw is bronze-colored. There is a line drawing of an armored horseman. He does not look like a medieval Western knight; the style is from farther East. In scrolling script, perhaps Cyrillic, the card has a name that means Sovereign. I see it is numbered XV. So, this corresponds to the Devil card in familiar decks. Here, it seems, the Sovereign – or the pursuit of sovereignty over a land – is the Devil. The devils of history are out again. And perhaps the horsemen of the Apocalypse.
We arrive at an apartment building full of sweet young girls. I learn that Kaganovich's baby has already been born. This is not good news.
I made the following notes on the dream after writing it down:
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| Kaganovich makes a speech in 1938 |
Lazar Kaganovich, born in Ukraine, was one of Stalin’s closest henchmen. "Iron Lazar" was Stalin’s chief enforcer against Party rivals and the effective dictator of Ukraine in the 1930s. In 2010, before the supreme court in Kyiv, 250 books of documentary evidence were produced by the prosecution to support the charge that he was guilty of genocide through the deliberate starvation of more than 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-3. The horror he and Stalin inflicted on Ukraine is known as Holodomor, "Killing by Starvation".
Kaganovich was one of the few Jews to survive at the top through Stalin’s reign. Amazingly, he almost outlasted the entire Soviet era, dying in 1991 aged 97.
What is Kaganovich's baby? Kaganovich had a daughter, born in 1917.I don't think the dream is about her. Maybe his baby is his legacy as reflected in Russian actions at the time of the dream, but more especially in 2022, when killing civilians by starvation again seems to be the policy of a Russian dictator, and Putin's violent rhetoric echoes Stalin's. My dream title makes me think of "Rosemary's Baby", a horror story on film. Dreams can key us into the history we need to know, and reruns of old horror stories we want to avoid.
Photos at top: Holodomor monument, Kyiv
2 comments:
what a haunting picture in the mist that goes with the dream report. may this end soon and not expand.
I have been re reading this dream Report over and over. IF it was my dream. there is much ugliness in this vision death suffering the horrors of the Picture to day of the baby carriages in the square in Lviv one for each child killed so far in the war. but i find hope the suffering will come to an end. the country will survive the monster in a lot of ways created this Ukraine today so its his baby. The people will not give up they will fight to the bitter end. I think they will prevail and like so many other things in Russia the Literary roots are in Ukraine the cultural the science, they will transplanted from Ukraine. the War and Ukraine wining will cause a Rebirth in Russia.
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