The first year [after the collapse] we got a woodburning stove. We burnt everything that would burn in it but wood — we couldn’t afford to buy it. And so went the Lenin books. I’m not sure if it was symbolic to my parents…
Narine Malkhasyan, in a conversation with Open Source, December 15, 2006
After last week’s show about the 15th anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union, we noticed that some on the thread thought the show had too much of an academic take and “ignored the perceptions of the common Russians”. I got in touch with my friend, Narine Malkhasyan, a Ph. D. candidate in Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University, and her mother, Minna Gurgenyan, the former Chief of Consular and Legal sections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Yerevan, Armenia. They shared some of their memories of life post-Soviet collapse and tried to answer some of the questions that arose during the show. What was it like for the common Russian after the collapse? Is it true what our guest Steven Cohen claimed, that most former Soviets regret the end of the regime?
When Iosiph [Joseph] Stalin died, I was a pupil of a school. Thanks to propaganda, we considered him the Great Leader. For this reason we wept bitterly and could not imagine how our country would live further, without him. Then children and youth did not know anything about “cult of personality,” [nor] about repressions, because in general, life was well-to-do. However, adults knew about them, although they thought mistakenly that those negative occurences were the result of the erroneous actions of the other leaders, and that Stalin was not informed of it. Atmosphere was strict, and they had to keep quiet and did not express their views. After Stalin’s death, people have breathed freely and felt themselves liberat[ed].
Minna Gurgenyan, in an email to Open Source, December 18, 2006
My dad once made soup from Spam. It was revoltingly delicious! And you had to know the right people to get Spam, too. It wasn’t something you could always just get.
Narine Malkhasyan, in a conversation with Open Source, December 15, 2006
You really got to know your neighbours well [after the collapse], because one who had means to watch TV (car battery, etc.) would invite others over for the soaps (mindnumbing that was much needed). Or if you were making food and missing an ingredient, you went to your neighbours for it…That’s one thing that I do miss, the human connections, the friendships that were made in those times. I don’t have that anymore. I don’t think kids growing up nowadays back home do either…It comes with the comforts in life. You have electricity, so you watch TV instead of reading. You play videogames instead of playing outside, you talk online instead of in person.
Narine Malkhasyan, in a conversation with Open Source, December 15, 2006
Electricity began to function only in 1995-1996, when hydroelectric stations received fuel. Everybody could guess about the time of light switching [on] thanks to the loud joyful cheers of children who were at home or in a yard. At that time every child applauded and shouted loudly: “Hoorah, the Lights have come,” or “Light!” in unison.
Minna Gurgenyan, in an email to Open Source, December 18, 2006
[After the collapse] was the best time of my life. It was much harder on my parents. I was a kid, I was content going to bed wearing a hat and mittens, I was content reading by candlelight. Good things were really great. It was like a game to us. It’s hard[er] to reflect on the Soviet times — they were comfortable and thus less memorable, what followed left a much bigger impression.
Narine Malkhasyan, in a conversation with Open Source, December 15, 2006
I do not feel that it would be worse for us for the Soviet Union to have remained intact. I am the representative of the oldest generation. Earlier I could not even imagine that the USSR ever could not exist or collapse.
Minna Gurgenyan, in an email to Open Source, December 18, 2006
I feel more loyal to the US because of the possibilities it has given me. Armenia has done jack for me or my family. I think it’s a very bitter kind of love for Armenia though. I grew up there, it’s in my blood. It’s less the people and more the land itself that I miss.
Narine Malkhasyan, in a conversation with Open Source, December 15, 2006
Well, don’t want to sound nationalistic, but Gurgenyan and Malkhasyan don’t sound like Russian to me, they are Armenian, of course. Not that I have something against Armenians, god forbid, just to make the point clear.
And please, don’t conflate the regime with the Union, these are two different things, just like Bush administration is different from USA.
Plus, this is a misquote, Cohen in fact said:
“A large majority of Russians…regret the end of the Soviet Union, not because they pine for “Communism†but because they lost a familiar state and secure way of life.”
And that makes perfect sense, as I, who lived in USSR for 30 years and almost 10 years in post-soviet Russia, readily attest.
And in general, Stephen Cohen is usually right, he definitely knows the facts and he somehow gets the feelings of Russian (soviet, post-soviet) people, which is rare, in fact, very rare.
Keep up the good work, Stephen!
Now about my personal experience. I lived in a small town near Moscow and we weren’t hit that hard there as to buy a wood stove. There were food shortages, long lines, soap was difficult to buy, etc. but we had electricity, hot water, central heating, and the same were true for my relatives in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) and Gorkiy (now Nizhny Novgorod).
Armenia, on the other hand, was hit really hard, they had that awful eathquake in Spitak, then a war with Azerbaijan, and they have no energy resources of their own, so things were really tough there. My daughter were taking dance classes, and her teacher was an Armenian refugee, a young woman, she was one of the leading dancers in Yerevan Ballet Theatre, but had to spend most of her time in our town since it was nearly impossible for her to raise her daugher in Yerevan, her job their just didn’t pay enough. And her husband has to stay there for some reason. And these situations were typical.
We never heard word “refugee” in Soviet Union, other than in world news. And then we had to face millions of them, not an easy thing to do.
We burnt everything that would burn in it but wood — we couldn’t afford to buy it. And so went the Lenin books. I’m not sure if it was symbolic to my parents
Well, at least they finally got some use out of them.
– A fine resource for following Russia is David Johnson’s Russia List of the Center for Defense Information. Many translations and erudite comments on the list — online at http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/default.cfm and by free email subscription. Some western press, some translations from Russian.
– Another way to explore Russia online is using Google Translate. Take a big Russian web portal such as Yandex.ru , then run the URL through Google Translate, selecting Russian to English translation. The resulting URL is large, but can be abbreviated using Tinyurl.com as http://tinyurl.com/ynexux
What makes this especially fun is that if you click on a link in a translation, that text will be translated too.
The statistical machine translation systems now being developed are still imperfect and need to be used with caution. But good enough now to get a good idea of many articles. Sort of a foggy view into another world….
Most useful if you have some Russian to get over the parts the machine translation has trouble with, but fun even without Russian.
Lenin books? That’s strange… And it says something about family history… My parents were both party members, but we didn’t have any Lenin’s books in the house, lots of other books, but no Lenin.