To Me The Deserter Seemed Personally Important Because As An Eastern European, I Have Met This Guy Irl.

to me the deserter seemed personally important because as an eastern european, i have met this guy irl. he is intensely familiar, down to the phrasing, sometimes (the whole "a liberal and a pederast" bit, oof) and DE acknowledges this literal old communist on an uninhabited island, acknowledges the reasons why he is the way that he is, and just straight up tells you "you cannot be this way. you have to find a way to become something else". that last bit is the difficult part, of course

playing disco elysium for the first time felt so familiar because it was made by communists. i kept getting the feeling of - i see you! i know you! every time i came across encyclopedia worldbuilding checks and recognized the tools of historical materialism brilliantly used. i wince when i see people describe DE as just being ironic about communism or whatever - no! this is the most communist game ive ever played!

sometimes i see people point to the deserter's character as evidence that DE isn't truly a communist work, but i don't think the deserter is meant to be a paragon of communism in the game. he's a revolutionary stuck in the past and that is his grave error. "The material base for an uprising has ended," "The historical condition for a revolutionary opportunity has passed. It will not come back anymore. However hard I try, whatever I do." but everything you've seen the game proves his statement wrong. DE's world still has the objective conditions for revolution because the working masses are sick of all the ruling order's shit, and there are plentiful opportunities to develop the subjective forces as we see in the communist quest that young people are willing to continue the communist struggle. but the deserter cant see that from his position and his trauma - ultimately this is what makes him fail as a communist because he has let go of the basic principles: that world is always changing; that change is made by people, through class struggle; that a communist must always be grounded and alert of their own material context.

the scene in the communist quest where you get through to steban and it tells you that "you're witnessing his ironic armor melt before you" - i think that was the devs taking their ironic mask off, too. i believe that because steban's reasons for his communism are the same as mine. we have to struggle even if it's hard and even if they kill us because this is what keeps us human. to struggle for freedom is the next best thing to actually being free. to fight for communism is to fight for the future. it is not about being imprisoned by failures of the past. in fact it IS about failure - because the movement is the working class's school in the struggle for power and we need to learn from each failure and move forward.

i just know that if my comrades and i were somehow in a room with the devs and we had to sing the internationale, we would all know the words. in different languages, but we'll sing the same melody and when we get to the part, the word "international" will be sung in unison. do you get me? i think disco elysium is to some young game-savvy communists of the world today as "what is to be done" was to lenin's generation. something something international communist solidarity...