Анна Сандермоен - The Cult in my Grandmother's House

Soviet Union Geological Research Institute named after A. P. Karpinsky

My parents often took me to work with them. I remember the institute’s museum well. At the entrance stood a huge salt crystal you could lick, and there was a dinosaur skeleton of monstrous proportions in the centre of the permanent exhibition.

I remember that the institute seemed huge, with many corridors, halls and stairways linking the various parts of the bulding. While mum and dad led me along the long corridors I would count the office doors, and between them the smaller doors of the specimen cupboards. On seeing me, my parents’ colleagues would invariably throw up their hands with cries of “Is this really little Ania!? Lord how big she’s getting! Really takes after her mum! Or is it her dad?” That really pleased me. So much so that if someone suddenly forgot to say it, I wondered what was wrong with them.

THE TIME I WORKED AS A GEOLOGIST

The institute had an inner yard which housed the lorries used for geological fieldwork (as well as some homeless cats).

My parents took me on my first field expedition when I was just seven. This was to the Southern Urals, the mountainous region two timezones east of St. Petersburg, considered the border of the Europe and Asian landmasses. We stayed in tents, cooked on a campfire, walked miles into the hills, and I genuinely helped my parents discover ammonites and the fossil trails of single-celled organisms. Since I was smaller I could more easily see them under my feet. I was also tasked with bagging up the samples and labelling them. In the field was the first time I had to cope with masses of insects, jumping in my face as I walked. They only came up to the adults’ waists, but they got me right in the face. I remember my dad very patiently explaining that there was no need to be afraid of the bugs, they were harmless. Obviously I had a multitude of new impressions after my first real field trip. I was very proud that I had done some real geological work.

I remember myself as a happy child. I felt good and safe beside my mum and dad. I was proud of them.

I finished my first year of school in Leningrad, and then it was the summer holidays. My parents sent me to stay with my grandmother in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. This was still Soviet times, and Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union.

2. Brainwashing

THE FIRST COMMUNE ON LAKHUTI

On arrival in Dushanbe I was taken aback. It was the town where I was born, and the house where I spent my early years, where every millimetre was my territory, strewn with my beloved toys, but – it was different. In this tiny two-room apartment with its combined bathroom and toilet there were about 20 people of various ages, all complete strangers to me. They all slept side by side on the floor, tightly pressed against each other, sharing blankets and pillows. They ate on the floor too, on a spread-out oilcloth. The apartment had ceased to be a cosy and safe place to play.

All these people were always in a good mood and with unbelievably exaggerated emotions.

In addition, they all had lice, which I soon got too.

My grandmother hardly seemed to notice me; or rather, she gave me only as much attention as she gave any of the others.

At first people were constantly rebuking me, things like

“Don’t cross your legs! It means you think you’re better than everyone else. Don’t fold your hands on your chest – do you think you’re Napoleon? Looks like you’ve got delusions of grandeur.”

A seven-year old child could hardly be expected to understand these remarks (who Napoleon was, what grandeur is, let alone delusions thereof), but I stopped folding my hands and crossing my legs.

Apparently crossing the limbs was considered a psychological defence mechanism, protection from external influence.

Members of a cult, however, are supposed to be constantly open, that is, vulnerable – so they can be controlled.

I had to learn how to plait my long hair myself, because going about with loose hair like Carmen was just not done. If I didn’t plait my hair, the adults would ask if I wanted to look like a slut. One time I asked what a slut was, and they told me it was a prostitute. I didn’t dare to ask what a prostitute was. By their intonation I had already understood it was something very bad and applied only to beautiful women and girls. After that I came to the conclusion that being beautiful was very bad. It wasn’t safe. Although, I wondered, if the beautiful Carmen was bad, then why did we still listen to that opera? Ah, but she dies at the end… does that mean she deserved it?

“TAPPING” AND “LAYERING”

One day one of the grown-up women, Natalya Yevgenyevna, called me into her room and said she was going to give me a treatment. Everything was so absurd that I didn’t even question what I needed to be treated for. Indeed, would any child question authority, when they are totally abandoned and there is no one trustworthy to ask? She sat me in front of her, looked in my eyes and began in a confidential tone:

“Ania, I know you are angry and that you have resistance. Where would you say your anger is, on a scale of 1 to 10? And your resistance?”

Later I and all the other members of the cult were asked this question all the time. I always answered that my anger and resistance were somewhere between 7 and 10 on the 10-point scale. If the adults were so convinced that I was angry and full of resistance, why should I disappoint them?

Then Natalya Yevgenyevna asked me to close my eyes and put both my hands face down on the table. Over the course of several minutes she tapped out a set rhythm on the table with a special wooden knocker in the shape of a mushroom, and I had a minute to copy the rhythm with my palms, keeping my eyes closed. For one tap I had to answer with the right hand, for two the left. The right hand corresponded to the left half of the brain, and the left to the right. It was considered good if you made mistakes with both hands, the more the better. Skewed results, where you made many more mistakes with one hand than the other, were evidence of brain dysfunction. If you made hardly any mistakes at all then it meant you were practically stupified from anger, aggression and resistance, and you needed active treatment right away. At this the educational psychologists would confer among themselves, concede to the authoritative opinion of the Chief, and then what ususally followed was a huge dose of therapy: speeches, mechanotherapy , and layering (explained below).

To sum up, it was with the help of this tapping that they measured a person’s level of aggression.

Besides this test there were others. They were all intended to measure the current condition and potential of the brain. There were auditory tests (where you had to remember and repeat combinations of words at speed), visual (remember combinations of cards, and then reproduce them, also under time pressure), and tactile (they would bend each of your fingers, and you had to remember and repeat the order, with eyes closed). These tests were all known as evidence , that’s what people would call it, “making evidence”.

Chloroethane

After that first test, the tapping one, Natalya Yevgenyevna asked me to take my pants off and lie down on my side. She started to pour liquid chloroethane over my buttocks, first on one side then the other, and on special points on my toes. It was sore and I felt an unpleasant burning sensation on my skin. After the procedure you weren’t allowed to raise your head so the best thing was to make yourself fall asleep or at least lie with eyes closed.

Later the skin would itch like crazy where the chloroethane had touched it, and would come out in small crusty burns. But with the years I got used to it. After that first time I got this treatment almost every day for six years. I never noticed any change. Everyone there got this same treatment all the time, adults as well as children. It was known as layering; “to layer a person”.

I should say that at least there was never any sexual subtext to any of this treatment. No one ever touched my genitals.

Much later I read that chloroethane is a strong drug and that even small doses can have a strong intoxicating effect. People can even become addicted to it. But we never knew that and never noticed any special effect from it. At least I never did.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS

Soon I found out there was a Chief orchestrating all this confusion: Viktor Davydovich Stolbun. He was an elderly man (at least he seemed so to me, although in reality he wasn’t more than 50), short, with a big meaty nose, dishevelled grey hair and small eyes, and everyone respected and feared him. To be on the safe side I also started to respect and fear him.

We referred to our commune as the collective . It was made up of people who wanted to build true communism, to save a world perishing from widespread schizophrenia.

As the Chief saw it, humanity’s main problem was that most people in the world were suffering from schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug addiction and other serious psychological aberrations. “Children are suffering and perishing!” he would cry pathetically, gesticulating dramatically. From his point of view, absolutely all physical ailments, including cancer, infectious diseases and broken bones, stemmed from psychological deviance, that is from impure mindsets and ways of thinking. For a person to recover, they had to correct their psyche and restructure their personality.

The main reason for a deviant psyche was the corroded system of family relations. Psychological correction was therefore only possible with the involvement of the whole family. Thus, people came to the collective (or rather, were forced to come) with their whole family. Any relatives who refused to join the collective for whatever reason were considered traitors and potential enemies. Anyone who left the collective for any reason was also automatically put in this category.

My whole family, with the exception of my grandfather, was completely in thrall to this ideology.

This meant there were whole family clans in the collective. In turn the whole collective was split into two groups: adults and children. I was in the children’s category, obviously. We lived separately from the adults, and differently. Sometimes we wouldn’t see the adults for months.

The Chief took on patients for “treatment”. Applicants included certified alcoholics and schizophrenics, as well as those without any formal diagnosis but who were having difficulties in certain areas, for example in child-rearing. There were also assistants to the Chief: these included his wife, amateur enthusiasts, and people who had already been successfully “cured”. They called themselves educational psychologists.

The main form of treatment was speeches. This was a form of brainwashing: you stood in the middle of a crowd of people who would all try to prove you totally worthless. Eventually the moment would come when you’d no longer have a single doubt on the subject. Then they would patronisingly indulge you with handouts in the form of promises: “Fine, if you beg us, we might help you get better”. Then you understood what happiness means. You might not be getting better (as if you were even sick in the first place) but for all that you’d always be part of the cult.