THE UNTOUCHED KEY
For Stalin-who, like Hitler, was born after the death of several siblings-there was nothing but loneliness, the constant threat of beatings, the belief in his own ostensible worthlessness and guilt, and nowhere another human being to protect him from constant persecution and abuse, to tell or show him that he was not guilty. There was no one of influence in his life who could avert his fate, just as there was no mercy later for the millions of prisoners in the Gulag Archipelago. Without even being sentenced, they could be tormented, tortured, killed—or released— for no apparent cause. Everything was determined by the arbitrary whim of a tyrant who suspected enemy attacks from all sides because he had experienced perpetual threats at an early age and because there had been no witness to teach him that the whole world was not like his father: wicked, dangerous, unpredictable, frightening. When a child's boundless powerlessness never finds sheltering arms, it will be transformed into harshness and mercilessness; when, in addition, it is spurred by a mother's ambition, it can result in a great career that introduces all the elements of the child's repressed misery into world history. Then millions of human beings are marched to Russian prisons or to Nazi gas chambers without knowing why, because once a little boy didn't know why he was being punished. How long are we going to tolerate these senseless marches now that we finally are in a position to discover their underlying causes?
“Then millions of human beings are marched to Russian prisons or to Nazi gas chambers without knowing why, because once a little boy didn't know why he was being punished.”
-Alice Miller (The Untouched Key)
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