ABSTRACT
The Communist Party's monumental lack of practical achievement contrasted with the energy it directed towards its own survival, most recently in subverting the elections. The Party was a colossal, blind omnivore, carelessly crushing Daghestan. Exploring this labyrinthine system, with its contradicting symbolic signposts, spread a confusion of the soul. The weight of oppression exaggerated any signs of non-conformity into signs of freedom. For instance, in Bezhta, a roof ridge illogically sported ram's horns, a tin red star and a television aerial, while a cut-metal Moscow Kremlin similarly decorated a house in Charah and a bridge near Muni was crowned with a tin spaceship and star. Every village, like Karata, displayed painted portraits of male and female official local heroes behind grandiose portals: "We are proud of these names 1917-1987" - glossing over the war against the Red Army in 1920, the uprisings from 1926 to 1936 and the 1950s purges, when villagers were summoned at night to go to Makhachkala, never to be seen again.
