Moscow we believed in

At the end of the 70s CCCP was the most centralized empire in the history of the world with Moscow at its center. Cult of Personality crept back into the Soviet politics. This was a backdrop of dissident moment. Soviet BT and dissident movements were branches of the same tree and a strong commitment to the Libertarian ideals was shared. The Jewish revival was concentrated in Moscow. Only in the early 80s the BT bug spread to Leningrad and elsewhere in Russia. Dissidents and Jewish activist alike believed that redemption was possible. Of course there were different personalities and approaches amongst Moscow BTs but the people who set the tone were charismatic brave intellectuals. This is the religious language and bias that I remember and this is what Tony Montana refers when he writes:

in those days, the BTs were revolutionaries who practiced defiance through dabbling in Yiddishkeit.

And then something puzzling happened. A butcher from Leningrad, who himself was a latecomer was crowned a Tzadik by Chabad of NY. The entire new generation of the peasants came to the scene, their approach to religion was negating redemptive freedom, intellectual banter of the founding Moscow years and instead the new breed of BT paradoxically and instinctively recreated totalitarian, centralized, feudal structures. Tony Montana writes:

There is absolutely no comparing pre-perestroika Refusenik iconoclasts to today�s �BTs-by-default� who have comfortably fallen into a pre-set sub-cultural framework. Most of today�s Russian BTs (I�m not talking about the Chabad House mekurovim all over the country, but rather the sirtuk-wearing card-carrying Lubavitchers) are messianist, which suits their post-Soviet disorder on two counts. One, it reinforces their need to be distrustful of authority by sneering at the premise of a centralized system. Two, it meets an even more deep-seated, unspoken need to aggrandize their leaders into a generalissimo.

In the early days in Moscow we believed in the Hollywood ending. The world was collapsing but spirit and ideas would set us free. The new breed of BT although openly professing messianism harbors a secret longing for hierarchy. They instinctively support and worship authority and concentrated wealth of the totalitarian order. I have never understood this fully till now. But as I look at the post perestroika Chabad shops in Brighton and its multiple iterations in the former CCCP the logic of it all becomes clear.