PBC0074: hatred of oppression

PBC 74 conveys anger against political oppression on the part of independent or non-political writers. The beautiful forests of Siberia are imagined as being covered in the blood and the graves of the prisoners who suffered violent oppression: the “mass of secrets dark and horrid that the Siberian taiga could tell us,” and: “the Siberian highway – like signposts – is covered in crosses” (W379). Like the Decembrist who through tsarist coercion “swapped an ambitious dream [of rule of law] for felling timber in the hinterlands of Siberia,” Russians now talk about citizenship and civility when the world wants “not sacrifice but constancy and labor” (W337).