The song is called 'Heresy' and it's about the collapse of communism as witnessed by Peart and his telling is both chillingly accurate and heartbreaking to hear. This song affected me deeply as I listened to it a few times and began to take in the big picture that Peart had painted with his words. I'll reprint the lyrics in full and then examine them piece by piece.
All around that dull grey world
From Moscow to Berlin
People storm the barricades
Walls go tumbling in.
During the writing and recording of the album, the band had CNN on as they watched the fall of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Berlin wall. It must have been hard for Peart, a well read man and keen observer of the human condition, not to be affected on a deeper level than most.
The counter-revolution
People smiling through their tears
Who can give them back their lives
And all those wasted years?
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Who doesn't remember the video images of people, finally freed from the chains of the absolute domination of communism, celebrating their freedom? They danced and cheered in the streets alternately crying and laughing. Their celebrations would turn to sadness later as they came to realize that the glorious revolution nearly a hundred years ago had stolen all their lives. No one could give them that time back. As if frozen in amber, the entire nation had stood still against the march of modern times and the advance of technology.
All around that dull grey world
Of ideology
People storm the marketplace
And buy up fantasy
The counter-revolution
At the counter of a store
People buy the things they want
And borrow for a little more
Immediately following the collapse, people went on a frenzy of consumerism as imported goods finally began to flow into a nation where scarcity had been the norm for so long.
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
The people at the top of the Soviet Government absconded with much of the nation's wealth as they began to see the impending collapse of Communism, leaving millions destitute and penniless to fend for themselves.
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Spoken from the view of the free world, we had to ask ourselves if it was possible to lay down our old hatred and fear of Communism and welcome these newly freed people openly into a world they scarcely knew.
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes I guess we do
Spoken from the view of the recently freed, they had to come to grips with a new life where they were ultimately responsible for themselves and their future.
All around this great big world
All the crap we had to take
Bombs and basement fallout shelters
All our lives at stake
These lines struck me hard as a child of the cold war. We lived on the brink of total annihilation for decades as we practiced our nuclear response drills, waiting for the inevitable warning siren that would signal the end of humanity as we knew it.
The bloody revolution
All the warheads in its wake
All the fear and suffering
All a big mistake
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
It was these lines that slammed the final point home for me. The great and glorious communist revolution had been proven to be a lie, a big mistake, that no one would ever be able to rectify. Who will pay for all the lives lost and the untold suffering, degradation and humiliation after the fall? All those wasted years that would never, could never, be reclaimed or made right. The millions left in the wake had to question the entire revolution at that point and come to grips with the fact that the grand experiment had failed so spectacularly and there was no one left to blame or hold accountable. We in the west had to come to grips with the realization that even though we had been right about Communism all along, it gave hollow solace in the face of the suffering people with faces filled with both joy and anguish. Those people paid the ultimate price for a mistake and while we might outwardly rejoice in their freedom, inwardly we had to control our own tears at how many people had been left with nothing.
This was the feeling I was left with in the end, one of both joy at the lifting of the darkness but horror at what the new light had exposed. Human suffering on a scale I had never personally witnessed before.
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