And yes, I am a redhead.
If you think about it, it says it all.
I lived most of my life in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Why does it matter?
Because I witnessed History being made. In essence, we all do, whether we realize it or not.
Because it was another universe, a world that does not exist anymore. Or does it? Sometimes I see the glimpses of it today... like the little Chinese gymnasts training for the Olympics... or Walmart sumer dress patterns (you wouldn't believe how Soviet some are - I would swear my aunt wore some of those back in the 50ies for her Komsomol meetings)
Because I myself do not want to forget what was actually being - and not being - said in public after the Chernobyl catastrophe... or during the three days of the Putch in 1991... or how my Geography teacher explained why the map of my country on the classroom wall had to be updated what seemed like every few months... Little things like that.
Do you know what a communal apartment is? That one can actually survive without a telephone... - there is always a pay phone round the corner if you need an ambulance. That you can live without seeing butter for a year, which does not bar you form being picky about which caviar you like, black or red.
I remember old Brezhnev and young Yeltsin. Fifty years down the road it will be the same as my grandmother's remembering Nicholas II, Lenin and Stalin.
Oh well... ramblings it all is... But have you ever asked your grandparents about how things were fifty, or even seventy years ago? Try, it can be quire fascinating.
