That Moderately Handsome Husband of Mine...

The Russian proverb goes as paganly as it can be: "A husband and a wife are one devil", bearing a direct reference, of course, to the most sacred book of the mankind: "...and shall cleave into his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:23). I think I have already mentioned that unique spiritual blend of paganism, mysticism, eastern beliefs and Christianity in its splendid and grandeur case of Orthodoxy which makes up an ordinary religious vision of a commoner and explains the appearance of the proverb, but today it's nothing of a religion or of a commoner.
Today it's about someone very special... 



Some years ago (let's leave diachronic precision to the historians) in a far away land, in the most improbable circumstances, deep in the sweat of the work exhaustion, in a state as remote as it can be from any romance potentiality, despite all the odds, in the middle of my relatively set and content life, I am meeting a moderately handsome man - "my heart's desire", "an apple of my eye", "a flesh of mine", "my bread of life" and "the fat of my land" and so much more... whatever that above-mentioned Holy book may produce on the case.

Many things have happened since, and a lot of water passed under the bridge. As two pawns on the tricky checked field of a relationship we have suffered both our losses and our victories and certainly walked a long way to the other side of the board in understanding each other. Almost a year of a long-distance relationship with its inescapable emotional roller-coaster (to be honest, mine mostly), smoothed by the exuberant means of communication complimentary of the XXI century made the first years together Heaven on Earth (hence so many biblical references here). Then we became fruitful and multiplied and brought a brand new little human being into this wicked world.

And then we got wed. In the church. Twice. In two religions and in front of one God. Let no man therfore put asunder, yt which God hath coupled together.

But what I want to say, really, what I need to say now, is that I am grateful to him, to my moderately handsome man. And as now he sits on the couch, remote and deep in a silly movie, with a silly smile understandably provoked by the same silly movie (you know, that boyish "I-am-so-cool-fighting-aliens-with-my-laser" type), which he is so fond of watching, and has no idea that I am writing about him...

So, my love, there it goes:

I am grateful to you that you came to the (literary) End of the World in the temperature far below freezing point and common understanding and made us happen.

I am grateful that through that first dark year of a long-distant part of our relationship every day you were leaving "a morning message" for me. Always.

I am grateful that you always translate all those Danish movies that we watch together, even when sometimes I am not much interested.

I am grateful to you that you can make any call for me, and take me any place.

I am grateful that every day you try to make my life better.

I am grateful that you accept my neuroticims, depressions, and complexities with the exceptional sense of humour which kills it all.

I am grateful that you accept my mother (boy, that says it all, doesn't it?)

I am grateful that you take me as I am (basically, as my mother).

I am grateful to you to put Katya to bed and wake up with her when I do not even ask.

I am grateful to you for all the excellent food that you can cook from scratch.

I am grateful that you motivate me for something which I would have not even dreamt of doing otherwise.

I am grateful that you always believe in me.

I am grateful that in the quarrels, as stubborn as you are, you always come and hug me first.

I am grateful for you always patiently listening to whatever verbal emotional (not always, but mostly) trash I have to produce on the remains of the day.

I am grateful to you for Katya, who would have never existed if it were not for you.

I am grateful that you are an excellent father: loving, understanding, fun, caring and strict.

I am grateful to you for finding my apple earphones yesterday (seriously).

I am grateful that you show me better.

I am grateful that by your actions, decisions and thoughts you teach me to be better.

I am grateful that you love me (and I try not to take it for granted).

I am grateful to you that you are what you are...


Long time ago a rather mystical scenario ran out in the streets of my native city, when quite an elderly lady that I helped to come all the way home asked me what I want in the life most. My inborn sobriety, skepticism and politeness replied in chorus that I was quite content with what I had. In a proverbial pause, effect strengthened by a deep look, she said that I would soon get my halves back together, hinting in an obvious way on the romantic aspect of being, which I scoffed out, but apparently remembered, setting somewhere on the depth of the consciousness.

Years passed. In a relationship like this one, as close to perfection as it can be, one can easily allow to remember and cherish that episode with a witch. So, my dear single girls, there's an answer: open thy eyes and look for the old ladies around. Quite possibly most of them are just ordinary old ladies, who will benefit greatly from your help, but the beauty of it - you never know...


To conclude I, hereby, call upon you, commoners: let's eat, drink and be merry, as my cup runneth over - today is my husband's birthday!

Happy birthday, my love! And thank you for being with me.



...and seriously, just so you know: there's absolutely nothing moderately about him!
(you know what I mean ;-)




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

On Beauty, Poetry and Autumn

A purely Icelandic summer evening in the late August can be very romance-inducing - wind putting feeble, scarce trees to the ground, howling above all limits of sanity, washing out any thought of opening the door, let alone going out. Rain (or, wait, was it snow) is beating the windows with the rage unknown in the rest of the world, slapping and stamping the last leaves on the sleek wet transparent surface, forcing them down to the bricked unyielding uncaring cold wall. No one is behind the windows, no one exists in the world, we are stuck inside.
 

And this is the perfect evening to go down with some "roistering, drunken and doomed poet" with some good whiskey (if I could ever drink any).  

Today it has been two years since I arrived at this proud little island.  

        ...O may my heart's truth 

                Still be sung

On this high hill in a year's turning. 

______

Poem in October

By Dylan Thomas

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood

        And the mussel pooled and the heron

                       Priested shore

                   The morning beckon

With water praying and call of seagull and rook

And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall

                    Myself to set foot

                        That second

       In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-

Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name

       Above the farms and the white horses

                         And I rose

                     In rainy autumn

And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road

                    Over the border

                       And the gates

         Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling

Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling

          Blackbirds and the sun of October

                      Summery

              On the hill's shoulder,

Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly

Come in the morning where I wandered and listened

                  To the rain wringing

                    Wind blow cold

          In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

          With its horns through mist and the castle

                    Brown as owls

                But all the gardens

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

              There could I marvel

                     My birthday

         Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country

And down the other air and the blue altered sky

          Streamed again a wonder of summer

                   With apples

              Pears and red currants

And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

                 Through the parables

                       Of sun light

         And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy

That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

         These were the woods the river and sea

                      Where a boy

                  In the listening

Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy

To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

                   And the mystery

                         Sang alive

          Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true

           Joy of the long dead child sang burning

                        In the sun.

                It was my thirtieth

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

              O may my heart's truth

                        Still be sung

            On this high hill in a year's turning. 

"Pretty woman walking down the street..."

We live in a world of stereotypes - we are born into it and by that same fact of birth we acquire a predetermined inventory of characteristics. Then having absorbed with the mothers milk the core attributes of femininity or masculinity on a long road of maturity we are becoming more of what the society expects of us: "Aren't you a boy to be whining like a girl?", "You have to be clean and pretty - you are a girl!"

And, gradually, chiseled by everyday judgments we are shaped into what we have to be: pretty, clean, shy, weak, or strong, decisive, rugged and ambitious - you know, sort of blue or pink, skirts or trousers.
As a Russian woman ("pink", "modest", "timid", hmm... "pretty"? , "blushing", "with long hair", "coy" and "shamefaced" (whatever that means) living abroad I want to discuss intercultural gender misunderstandings that I faced being brought up "in a pink-bow-Russian way".

source of photo
In one famous and most revered Russian (Soviet) movies ever, which got most of the all possible prizes abroad - "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" - the plot is banal and as conventional as it can be: three simple girls came to Moscow from the province in search of a better life in the middle of the 60s. The obvious embodiment to a better life was a fortunate marriage which could establish a position of a woman and secure the rest of her life.

Consequently, in a rather archetypal and fairy-tale manner, one gets married to a simple worker, the second in an ongoing search of something better ends up alone having lost her quite a decent husband to alcoholism, and the third, having been knocked up by some ambitious charming scunk, after 15 years turns into a self-sufficient director of a huge and successful plant, sort of a self-made woman - bitter, cold and decisive single mother in well-made Soviet pants, spending her scanty free time with a married lover - quite a widely-spread and accomplished image these days.

The movie touches upon many issues (if you come across a version with English subtitles - as a winner of a Golden Bear in Berlin 1980 and an Oscar in 1981, it should most certainly exist in  English - I implore you - watch!), the main being the fate of a woman in a society.  

None of these women is happy without a man, the successful one being utterly unhappiest of all three. Envied by many, she confides into her friends: "Just don't tell your sons that when you get everything in life, the only thing you feel like doing is to howl as a lonely wolf" (- Только ты пока ребятам не рассказывай, что как раз когда всего добъешься в жизни, больше всего волком завыть хочется"). 

Until (of course - this movie got an Oscar) she meets the real man - sort of a Soviet Mr. Big - who sets the priorities right - "And by that remember: from now on, everyday, everything is decided only by me. With one simple reasoning that I am a man". (- А заодно запомни, что всё и всегда я буду решать сам. На том простом основании, что я - мужчина").

And what happens with that forty-year-old woman, the head of an enormous industrial enterprise in Moscow, the strong woman in man's pants? She weeps with happiness - I am not joking!

In a society like Russian, despite all the hard work of Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, life, still in many respects, is organized around good old Domostroi (a 16th century book or a code of a patriarchal rules of family life), of course, changed and adopted by the compliments of the XXI century. But a woman - in a notion of a woman - is supposed to be pretty, skinny, well-dressed, high-heeled, red-lipsticked, long-and-polish-nailed, educated (preferably, but not to use it), smart (optionally), good cook, good mother, good friend, good (inventive) lover, strong, fit, and by all that - stand by the side of a man. Just a man. With no attribute.

All that, no doubt, made a Russian woman a proverbial model wife all over the world with no obvious realization and acknowledgment from her side. Because we are brought up this way, we find nothing special in being a woman.

When my moderately handsome boyfriend, back then, was visiting me in Russia, I found it so rude that even stopped speaking to him for 30 minutes or so, after he left the bus ahead of me without offering me a hand. Then, this uncultured (so I thought) schmuck went through every door in a city first, never waited for me to take my place in a taxi, never offered (of course I would have declined gracefully, but still) pay a bill in a coffee shop. Never. never, never. So that eventually my inner lady-in-pink felt so cheap and neglected that I even considered an immediate break up.

Now it seems like charming memories from the past. But still the difference exists. We are, in our personal imaginative way, princesses in an ebony tower waiting for our knight in a shining armor (preferably on a white horse, produced in Germany). Even if we never admit it.  

And we let them think we are a bit stupid, naive and weak because...
we are not.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

On the Victory Day: Iceland which helped us live

If I were to write something, anything about war what would it be? What do we, people, born and brought up as remote from war as possible know about it? Movies, photographs, stories, chronicles, memoirs can give a general picture, but hardly any real understanding, any realization of the proportions of every human's tragedy involved. 

War is not only about heroism and deaths on the battlefield, it's just as well about a life of a child born in the hot summer of 1941, it's about the whole life of a mother who lost her toddler in the bombed train, it's about every day of a wife who is waiting for her husband, of a mother who still hopes for her son to return, waiting through deaths of children and hunger. 

Year after year somehow I find more and more details about the World War II. Having moved to Iceland,  I discovered Hvalfjörður - a birthplace for at least ten Arctic convoys, seven from which ended in my native city of Arkhangelsk between 1941-1942, bringing food and supplies, giving hope and saving our lives. 

on the photo - the most famous and tragic Arctic convoy PQ-17 is being assembled in Hvalförður

It's a Victory Day in Russia today - on the 8th of May, 1941, the World War II officially ended, as Field-Marshal Keitel signed Wehrmacht capitulation papers in Berlin. Interestingly, due to the time difference, it was already the 9th of May in Moscow, since then we keep this date to remember.

World War II is a huge historical field in terms of topics, actions, direction, events, places, people, etc. Arctic convoys is one of them, undoubtedly, influential for the whole course of events. More importantly for me, as it has always been tightly connected with my native city, and now as I have found out, with my new homeland. 

A lot has been researched and written about Arctic convoys, but just to make a small picture:  in the period between August 1941 to May 1945 there were 78 convoys, sailing from the United Kingdom, Iceland and North America to the two most northern ports of the Soviet Union: Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. 

Let respected historians forgive me for the small possible inaccuracies, but as far as most of sources state in 1941-1942 fourteen convoys started from Iceland: ten from Hvalfjörður and four from Reykjavík. Seven out of ten coming out from Hvalfjörður ended in Arkhangelsk. The importance of them is difficult to underestimate: a complete new vein brought blood to the dying, exhausted heart of the country, reviving the huge organism for the victorious fight. The great value of the convoys was not only in terms of supplies or food, but in terms of hope - suddenly the victory seemed closer, possible, soon.

Every year Arkhangelsk becomes a meeting place for those who survived, sadly, less and less of them with every year. Every year we, children, were in the streets to look at those old dignified foreigners, who seemed strangely alike our grandfathers, walking side by side with them; every year, we, students of the language department, were volunteering with translation; every year, marveling at their courage, theirs and our grandfathers´ feat, which gave us possibility to live. We grew up with the knowledge of the convoys, but somehow to my shame Iceland literally has never ranged the ship bell in our heads.

Last year a couple of my very good friends were visiting Iceland. On the road from Borgarnes, approaching the tunnel, my friend asked about convoys. The answer of my moderately handsome husband took me by surprise as he mentioned Hvalfjörður which we were passing by at that moment. How come this peaceful, most breathtakingly beautiful place on Earth was involved in the war. How come there is a direct link between this place and my home. How come the lives of my parents, my life and the lives of my children depended on this particular part of the world. How come I didn't know...

The war, the end of which Russia celebrates today, is exceptionally multifaceted and manifold. There's hardly a person in Russia who has never been touched by it. And it still echoes to us - through the other times, through the other places.

At this moment I want to thank Icelanders who helped us live.

beautiful and peaceful Hvalfjörður almost 70 years later

source of photo



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Christ has risen!

On the holy day of the Orthodox Easter, Sunday, 5 May, indeed as the situation required, I thought of God. Then I thought of the seventy years of the soviet times when the Mighty Position had been secured by Vladimir Lenin with a twenty-year interim intermission of the ever more almighty, loving and punishing - Stalin.
Thinking back into the history, Russians have always had an extremely grievous and hard relationship with God, which, combined with the inherent mysticism and fatalism as parts of the national character, engraved religious traits even on the all-negating stoned stance of the atheists.  

In the Orthodox religious tradition the icons - the depictions of God and the saints - were present in every house. According to the rule they were positioned in the so-called "red corner"  ("red" in the old Russian language meaning "beautiful", "honorary" - c.f. the Red Square). The icons were supposed to be in the Eastern corner of the house, as praying, sending our thoughts and talking to God we face the appearance of the sun and, thus, symbolically greet the Advent.

In the Soviet years religion becomes quite a dangerous puppet in the hands of the master - just think what a believer may do for the God. Some clever man, unfortunately the history keeps his name a secret, offered - no, no, not just to abolish God - that would be impossible for the country where religion was so tightly intertwined with the everyday life - but to replace Him. And who comes into the picture?

The decision was exceptionally smart and worked for many decades. Even the honorary red corner was kept to fit yet another deity.

The portraits of Lenin were adorning the walls of every institution, every establishment, every official room, on a frequent occasion enforced by the bronze or gypsum busts, the honest and strong look coming from the different sizes. The Bible, the Testaments and the Gospels were banned, instead we were given the Stories of Lenin - now I cannot tell what part of truth was there, but looking back I realize how much of a hagiography or menology (the lives of the saints) it reminded of and certainly served the purpose well. There was even a children's version of the Acts with pictures - just like Noah's Arch story.

Interestingly, the religious rituals were still kept going - we baptized children, painted eggs for Easter. But the pure religious meaning of them was a bit tarnished - baptism, for example, started to bear more of a pagan belief of the holy water protecting a child from the illnesses. Still, most of the children were baptized - secretly, at home, by an isolated priest. Consequently, we even had a mummified deity (whose remains are still by the way kept uncommitted to earth in the Red Square, the spirit haunting economy and politics - so far the only obvious, undeniable, unquestionable explanation of the ongoing Russian misfortunes), a religious doctrine - a successful mold of communism and spiritism, a set of rituals - books, learnings, common meetings, portraits -"icons", in other words, even when we didn't have it, we had it all.

Nowadays, the busts are on the dump, the pictures faded in the cellars. With the life so cruel and grim, fiercely grinding people by its millstones, people are seeking for the alleviation and looking for God once again...

In Russia on the holy day of Easter we greet each other with the traditional words: "Christ has risen!" and for many He has finally risen indeed.




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

One girl, one island

"The greatest is best seen from the distance" - once and quite rightly a famous Russian poet said. Last week my very good friend from quite distanced Russia was visiting Iceland for the first time in her life. Being quite an experienced traveler and having seen most of Europe and beyond, she shared her thoughts and impressions about Iceland before and after. 

...most of all I was impressed by the nature - unique, virgin, untouched and severe. I have seen Gullfoss, Geysir, all the touristic routes, I was hiking in the mountains, but the most beautifully striking place for me became Reykjanesviti. I never thought there are places so completely remote and secluded in this world, where one simply unites with the nature.

...in Russia we deprive ourselves of many things, including a simple smile. Icelanders struck me as very friendly nation, in a narrow street a complete strangers will greet you.

...people take pride that they are Icelanders. The country itself has a rather limited history compared to Russia or other big European nations; it had less than a million of population in all its history, and, nonetheless, Icelanders take pride in the smallest detail, which could easily have been left unnoticed. People take pride in the place they were born.

...the thing which struck me most was that this is a society which is fundamentally different not only from Russians, but more or less from the Europeans in general. This is a small society, everyone knows each other, the telephone book is organized by the first names, and they treat each other as one big family, where everyone is a relative - and they actually are. Even the language, as we know, reflecting the realities of life, devised a word, which defines male relatives frændi and female relatives frænka, not to go into detail of cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and so on - it is just one family.

...I have to mention the language and the concept of Linguistic Purism in Iceland. Many countries have the policy of preserving their language, but in Iceland they have special list of the Icelandic names, which you can name a child, anything else has to be approved by a special linguistic committee. Once again, they value their heritage and identity.

...and everyone speaks English. France, for example, has the policy of protecting the language as well, they also create French equivalents for the new words. At that people learn and speak English very reluctantly. Icelanders are not afraid to go beyond - to enter globalization and keep their national identity.

...I was also surprised by rather high social standards of living in Iceland. Maybe because we have a stereotype of  well-off Norway and hardly expect anything of a small nation in the North Atlantic.

...feminism is obviously not a bad issue, especially in Iceland. In Russia a man considers it beyond his self-esteem to help the woman with cooking and with a baby. Probably it is not even the fault of men, as women themselves consider proper to work, make career, and take care of the family, children, cooking and a husband. A man has to work and make money, a woman stays at home. It was very surprising to see otherwise.

...the same as the baby in the family: in Russia when a child is born a mother falls out of life for 2-3 years completely: no parties, no friends, no travel. Here life just goes on and the quality of life doesn't change much.

...the concept of Icelandic family with many marriages, all kinds of spouses, kids from all sides is another point of astonishment - it is so far out of the Russian culture. We are more traditional - of course infidelity happens and rather often these days, but men very rarely leave families. The ones which do keep hardly any contact with their children.

...Reykjavik struck me as having rather plain architecture - simple and unsophisticated. Reykjavik can not be compared with French, Italian or most of European cities, where "every stone breathes history", or even with St. Petersburg, where every house is an architectural masterpiece. Here houses are simple, plain, primitive and functional. But it goes together with the nature: severe, minimalistic, plain.

...my perception of the museums is defined by the Russian museums - you have to spend days in the Tretyakov Gallery, weeks in the Hermitage. Once again we are so proud we have so much to show, that we drown foreigners in our culture. Here, the National Museum of Iceland is fascinating in combination of simplicity, functionality, importance and interest it arises and the questions it answers. The paradox is - there's no La Gioconda in Þjóðminjsafn, but still it is the one of most interesting museums I have ever visited.     

...Russians know very little about Iceland. Of course it depends on the education but in general many people hardly make any difference between Iceland, Ireland or Greenland. Of course, they realise these are completely different countries, but in conceptual understanding "it is all somewhere there". The stereotypes include: volcano in 2010, snow and Bjork - her last name is not possible to pronounce even by people with the linguistic education. The older generation know Reykjavik as the meeting place of Gorbachev and Reagan.

...Icelanders are very active. There's a lot to do: hiking, swimming, horse-riding, music, skiing, even dancing tango. One of the paradoxes for me was that skating rinks are indoor, swimming pools are outdoor. This is shocking to me, but when I mentioned this to Icelanders, they were completely surprised, explaining that it would be too cold to skate outside.

...Icelanders take life easy and it is shown in everything. Hiking in the mountains may be quite a dangerous thing but people just go. Children are not over-treated with medicine, massages and over-care and running naked in frost and wind in the outdoor swimming-pools. Museums are not overloaded with information, but simply showing the life itself. And I can go on with many examples.

...to me Iceland is a country where Scandinavian minimalism and functionality genuinely combine with breathtaking severe beauty of the nature, easy-going and warm attitudes of Icelanders and all these make it truly unique land, a small polished piece of lava - a beautiful gem of the North Atlantic.

My dear friend went back to Russia leaving me alone with the thoughts of gratitude for this unique opportunity of being able to live in both countries, share both cultures, enjoy both worlds the difference of which is so sharply defined by the distance.



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

And then he asked "Why?"

And then he asked "Why? Why do people long for the old times? Wasn't it just for the better that these turbulent 90s brought freedoms of all sorts, democracy, goods to the shops, money to the wallet, free thinking, free press, new economy, private enterprises, private property, travel, the hoards of brokers, shoppers, marketologists, merchandisers, business advisers, analysts and agents with endless possibilities and what not...?" 
A shining fluorescent neon word "globalization" sparked above yet another "window to Europe" instantaneously finishing the decades of GULAGs, Stalin, oppression and stagnation. So, why haven't we just been jumping in the highest exaltation possible on this new glistening trampoline of freedoms since?

Then I started to feel that I owe an explanation.

source of the photo
My (moderately handsome) husband, having read the previous post and being a product of a completely different system, asked me this seemingly simple and logical question. The Western World for the decades of the Cold War and beyond was showing a dull, hungry and uneventful world of the Soviet State, where all of us were wearing ear-flapped grey hats with a red star on the forehead, marching in lines in the grey empty streets, eating cold potatoes with its grey skin - a sort of James Bond- or Schwarzenegger- movies with ludicrous and stupid military Russians and non-existing realia.

On the other side we were shown "the decaying capitalism", where poor decent people were dying in the streets under the cold and impersonal lights of advertisements.

Most interestingly, it worked. We were sympathizing chained Afro-Americans, exploited by the fat ugly millionaires in "that rotting America", so that even we - children - pioneers - were collecting our lunch money to send to them. And no one was stupid, no one was to blame: the propaganda worked well yet again.

History is a fickle mistress, who willingly changes its stories by the wish of the client: time, age, geography, events, attitudes, relationships, anything. I realize that, but having lived there I have the right to tell my story.

I was born in 1979 in the depth of the soviet stagnation (this story of a Russian girl could easily be mine, as well as of millions of other soviet children). These were the last years of Brezhnev and the General Secretaries started to fall like leaves on a windy day, being too old to rule for more than a couple of years, until Gorbachev started in 1985 and finished the Great Soviet Epoch as the first and the last President of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Understand me right - I do not thoughtlessly applaud to the good old days, but I certainly miss them. The life itself was simple, uncomplicated, non-criminal, non-chaotic, with no hatred, no fuss and stress, no unpredictability. In short, it was a strictly organized society built by a majority of simple uncomplicated honest people who worked all their lives.

Yes, we were deprived of the freedom of expression - everything had to be approved by special committees. Instead, we had free education, which was one of the best in the world, free kindergartens, free swimming pools, free after-school activities.
We were (relatively) deprived of the freedom of speech - we couldn't praise the life abroad or criticize Soviet routines. Still my father had self-made copies - the so-called samizdat - of the famous soviet exiles: Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn, Dovlatov.
We were short of the products in the shops. But the quality of what we had was impeccable - no chemistry in the food, no toxins in the plastic. Apples and oranges were always there with tangerines and bananas always for the New Year´s Eve, sometimes even with Pepsi.
We couldn't travel abroad. But the local flights were so cheap, my mother was taking planes from our city to Moscow going shoe shopping; we were regularly flying to the Black Sea resorts; people were coming to see us from Vladivostok. The countryside with villages and farming industry was flourishing.

I could go on with this list, but there's something which most of the Russians share today - a longing for the stability and safety - the most basic needs of a human.

Of course, it wasn't the best state in the world, as it was ringing in every song we were singing, but it was certainly the state where its people shared kindness, compassion, honesty, hard work and eternal humane values, most of which are conveniently forgotten now.

So we didn't have a freedom of speech... but we were happy and, therefore, free.







links with photos about the soviet times which you may find interesting to see:
http://offline.by/o-nashem-detstve-v-sovetskom-soyuze/
http://offline.by/interesnoe-puteshestvie-v-istoriyu-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/razval-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/deti-sssr/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHW0zL9dSMM


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson