But once, to my great surprise, my husband told me he liked the fact that I wasn’t some spoilt little European thing, but a steely Russian with a good (albeit a little strange) sense of humour.

I was 39 years old when he proposed to me, and I thought it would be dishonest on my part to unite my life with a person without telling him about my past, about my childhood. I wouldn’t be able to keep silent about this all my life, and if I told him it in snatches, then he might have formed an incomplete or even wrong impression of me. That might have been fine if he was Russian – Russians aren’t fazed by most far-out stories. But he is Norwegian, and he was raised in a decent family, in the sort of abundance I never dreamed of, and, most importantly, surrounded by love and care. A decent environment gave him moral guidance; wealth fostered his severe self-discipline; and love and care made his heart responsive. Therefore, he became not only a reliable partner and a rich man, but also a good father, husband and lover.

I had to go a long way before I found myself.

After all, when adults raise children incorrectly, the children cease to love not the adults, but themselves.

I wrote my story especially for my intended husband. And I was preparing myself for him to change his mind about marrying me after reading it. But that did not happen.

Could it be that if a person is able to coherently describe a situation, it means they have coped with it?

A CULT WITHIN A CULT

I used to get annoyed when friends and acquaintances questioned me about my childhood. Every time I started to answer, someone would immediately interrupt me, and from their very first question it was clear they didn’t believe me. Or the question was so painful that I got angry and snapped at them. And sometimes I myself began to doubt whether I was telling the truth: maybe I had embellished it, maybe my memory was distorted over time under the influence of emotion. More than once I tried to check by asking someone else who was in the cult with me as a child. Unfortunately, not only did everyone I ask confirm my memories, but they also added their own.

However, when talking with people who came to the cult as adults, I noticed their impressions differed from the memories of those who had spent their childhood there. Moreover, they can be divided into several types.

Some experienced guilt and did not hide it. It was obvious the memories were very unpleasant for them. In my opinion this is the normal reaction of a normal person.

Others avoided direct answers, answered inappropriately, or turned everything into an angry, sarcastic joke. They didn’t want to remember. My stepfather was one such. In principle, this is also a normal reaction, although it indicates indifference and a lack of empathy.

Still others, instead of actually answering, insulted me. This was the majority.

A fourth group rolled their eyes meaningfully, as if to say I must be narrow-minded and limited not to understand the deeper meaning of everything that happened there. Like I didn’t get it while I was there, and I never got it after that. They didn’t manage to cure me. It was of people like this that the backbone of the cult consisted. Everything rested on them. And it rests on them to this day.

Only now, having left Russia forever, am I beginning to realise that all those sectarian attitudes have spread everywhere, and continue to spread, like mould…

We left the cult, we condemned it in words, but it remained in us and with us; we continued to live according to its principles. We judged things in the same way, we treated ourselves in the same way, we thought in the same categories, we acted with the same attitudes and built our lives in accordance with them. Our fear of the unknown, of what we cannot control – mental disorders, physical illness and death – is primordial and nurtured by a system inherited from the concentration camp conditions of the Soviet Union.

And every time I tried to dissociate myself from this, to simply physically move further away, I was “kicked out” from the team, as if making it clear:

“We don’t need another you. If you are not completely with us, then you are against us. So you are the enemy.”

A 40-YEAR JOURNEY

The first time I made notes about my childhood in the cult was when I was 23, just so as to not forget the details. I already knew then that it would be something of a thought experiment on myself. And I also knew that what I wrote down as memories was true, but what I wrote down as evaluation was not true. But back then I didn’t know other words. I didn’t know how to name my emotions, or how to cope with them. I couldn’t label them. I was only 23, and there was no one around to help me sort out my feelings. I was driven by a desire to recall at least something good about my family, about my parents who had sent me to the cult. I tried my best to find an excuse for them.

Now I’m 45. I no longer live in the USSR, I no longer even live in Russia. My daughter is already 15. My family is now also completely different; it is Scandinavian and Swiss. My husband is Norwegian and we live in Switzerland. My husband has his own business, his own private university and business school, and I have my own business in publishing books. We are committed to educating people.

I moved to the West not only physically, but also mentally. And now I only ever look East out the corner of my (narrowed) eyes.

Sometimes an insignificant event can suddenly turn your view and interpretation of your whole life upside down. The way you used to define your life – how you set priorities and inferred causal relationships – suddenly changes radically. Quite unexpectedly you see in each of your past decisions and actions some kind of mistake, which only now acquires systemic status. Previously, when it was your implicit belief, it was impossible to even see it, let alone understand it.

And now you watch as everything you guarded and clutched like a precious jewel through storms and hurricanes suddenly collapses like an avalanche, smashing to useless dust all those intellectual constructions you naively considered the foundation, the cornerstone of your personality – in a word, that on which your self-esteem and dignity were based. You always thought it was what gave you the strength and right to walk the earth with your head held high and your shoulders squared. And then – that’s it. You no longer have a foundation. It’s all dust. Zilch.

Do many people go through this? How many times in a lifetime? And how long does it take for a reasonable person to learn what is dust and what isn’t?

It so happened that for me the turning point was emigration: a change of country, environment and culture. Emigration let me look back at the past and see it in a new way, as if from outside. And, of course, meeting my future husband was the catalyst that set off this whole sequence of changes in my intellectual perspectives and perceptions.

For many years I didn’t know how to talk about the cult. On one hand, it seemed to contain something great, brilliant and necessary for all humanity. On the other hand, there was a constant whisper inside me that no, something wasn’t right… Until I had a daughter, I attributed this vague misgiving to ignorance; it was more convenient to think I was simply not intelligent enough to understand the full depth and true meaning of what went on. But then my daughter was born, and when she reached the age at which I entered the cult, I suddenly, and to my own surprise, completely revised my attitude to what had gone on there and to the people connected with it.

It must be said that my husband understood from the second sentence of my story that I had been in a cult. I needed almost 40 years.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK