I rather liked this article, though it is soooooo obviously written by a Westerner. Every single thing about the USSR was awful, you see (free vacations to the Black Sea! Free daycare! The horror!) so, accordingly, anybody nostalgic about the Union must have had his or her views "tinted" by "upheavals," a priori, or they are just pining for their youth or have been brainwashed by Communist propaganda. We're supposed to believe people in the USSR just HATED the cradle-to-grave social security net. Yeah, right.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ------------------
Baltimore Sun January 7, 2001 Fond memories of Soviet era linger Upheavals since 1991 may tint perception of life in USSR By Douglas Birch Sun Foreign Staff
MOSCOW -- Theirs was the best life the old Soviet Union had to offer.
The newspaper Soviet Weekly published a story about them in September 1979 called "Meet the Family, Moscow Style." Vasily Vasilyonok, 36, was building an electric car to escort marathoners in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. His wife, Irina, 31, was designing traditional costumes for her nation's Olympic athletes. Their 6-year-old twins -- Yulia and Vasily Jr. -- were studying music at their day-care center, and dreaming of becoming artists and sports stars.
Soviet Weekly described their life in a brand-new apartment in southern Moscow. "So you see, the Vasilyonoks have a lot going for them -- a typical Moscow family with confidence in the future and a lively interest in their careers and family," the English-language newspaper gushed.
The Soviet Union and its citizens seemed to have a glorious future.
Gathered around a kitchen table a few days ago, Irina, Vasily Jr. and Yulia saw the Soviet Weekly article for the first time. Listening to it translated into Russian, Irina closed her eyes and nodded dreamily at the description of the subsidized day care, cheap public transportation and good public schools. "In those days, it was easier to live," sighed the blonde, blue-eyed woman, now 52. "It was a warm and cloudless life."
Ten years after the fall of communism, opinion polls show that most Russians -- especially those middle-aged or older -- are nostalgic about Soviet times. That might baffle many Westerners, who think only of the Soviet Union's brutal repression of its citizens. But the story of the Vasilyonok family might help explain why so many here look back fondly on the days of totalitarian rule.
Yulia, now 28 and a pediatrician at one of Moscow's most prestigious hospitals, pored over the article's photos of the family. "I would like to go back to that life, if only for a short period," said the intense young physician, who is married and has a 2 1/2 -year-old son. Then she considered it, and added: "If I could, I would have stayed in that life."
Vasily Jr., who is a few minutes younger than his sister, listened to his mother and sister praise the Soviet days. His first response was sarcastic. "Oh yes, if we had not been interfered with by the Americans, we would have long ago built communism in the whole of the world," he said.
Shaking his head, he picked up the yellowed newspaper clipping. Communism was regimented, he said, and imposed a gray, dreary uniformity on everyone and everything. "After the Soviet Union fell," he said, "life became much more joyful and energetic."
"On the contrary," Yulia said, correcting her little brother. "Previously, it was much better."
In a poll taken in November, more than half of Russians surveyed agreed with this statement: "Things would be better today if there had been no perestroika" -- the last efforts to reform the communist system that preceded its collapse.
Why the stubborn fondness for the Soviet state? Sociologists and political scientists say the economic failures of the new, more democratic Russia are chiefly to blame.
Life seemed better in Soviet times, Vasily Jr. suggested, because people did not realize how poor they were. "Why it was so good and people were so happy?" he said. "Because there was an iron curtain and we didn't know what consumer goods there were on the other side of the curtain."
In Soviet times, there was officially no unemployment, but work was compulsory. Housing was cheap, but apartments were small, shoddy and hard to find. Western newspapers, magazines and books were banned or restricted. Soviet families didn't know that their counterparts in the West lived much better -- that many owned homes and shopped at well-stocked supermarkets and sprawling malls.
Soviet citizens were fed a steady diet of propaganda, and Soviet Weekly's article on the Vasilyonoks was part of that fare. It cast everything in an implausibly rosy glow. ("Winter snow is a joy to the Vasilyonoks -- especially when there's a cozy flat to return to!")
Yet, even considering the advantage of two decades of hindsight, Irina insists that it was all true. By many measures, the family had a comfortable life. The Vasilyonoks lived south of the center of Moscow, surrounded by gardens and a stroll from a state-supported day care center. They paid the equivalent of $76 a month for rent and utilities for their two-bedroom apartment. They took state-subsidized vacations at Black Sea resorts and occasionally went skiing in the Caucasus mountains. "Even the little ones like skiing and walking and the mountain air does wonders for them all," the newspaper declared. They were saving for the ultimate luxury for an ordinary Soviet family: a boxy Zhiguli car.
The Vasilyonoks couldn't travel abroad. Nor were they permitted to read certain books or espouse certain political beliefs. But why should they embrace heretical views? Vasily Sr. was a Communist Party member, a privileged position enjoyed by only 5 percent of Soviet citizens. Millions had been "repressed" -- executed or exiled to gulags -- during Stalin's brutal reign. But the Vasilyonoks hadn't known any of them.
Both parents had university degrees and professional jobs. Together, they earned 508 rubles a month -- double what most Soviets made at the time. At official exchange rates, that is the equivalent of about $18,500 a year in 2001 dollars -- still an upper-middle-class income by Russian standards. They were also an unusually attractive young family -- so much so that their pictures and story, first published in the weekly paper, were used in a series of textbooks designed to teach Russian to foreigners.
As the Soviet economy faltered in the 1980s and shortages of food and clothing became common even in Moscow, the Vasilyonoks adapted and survived. Like many of their neighbors, they raised vegetables at a dacha, or country house, and bought food through a network of connections at home and at work.
But the stress of those times took a toll. The Vasilyonoks divorced in 1988. The Soviet Union would dissolve three years later.
In August 1991, Vasily Jr. was a student at Moscow State University, working part time at an office building in downtown Moscow, when he heard a rumbling sound outside. He went to the window and saw a column of tanks rolling down the broad avenue. He knew instantly what it meant: Communist Party hard-liners were trying to crush President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's efforts at reforming the Soviet state. He switched on a television: all the stations were broadcasting a taped performance of a classic Russian ballet. "After that, nobody liked Swan Lake anymore," he said.
The Soviet Union's end signaled the start of a long economic slump. Prices rose 10 times faster than wages. Industrial output fell almost 50 percent. Millions of people were laid off. Pensioners saw their life savings wiped out. Official corruption flourished.
As state financial support for students dwindled, Vasily Jr. was forced to shift from full-time to part-time studies. He was married and had a child while still in school, which exempted him from the draft and military duty in Chechnya.
Vasily barely managed to hang onto his job at a bank in 1998, when many banks collapsed. Still, he never lost faith that Russia could make the transition to a modern democratic society. "I believed that everything would be all right," he said. "I still believe it."
While still a teen-ager, Yulia decided to become a pediatrician. But while in medical school, she saw the state salaries of physicians plummet. Public hospitals deteriorated. Worse, she said, health care workers became cynical. Soviet doctors and nurses had cared about their patients, she said. That no longer seemed true.
"If somebody was told to go and stay on extra hours at the hospital, people would gladly do that, without extra pay," she said. Now, money seems to drive medical care.
After his divorce, Vasily Sr. continued to work at an auto factory in Moscow -- eventually becoming chief engineer. But the Russian auto industry was hard hit by the Soviet Union's dissolution. He collapsed and died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 54 while visiting his mother's grave.
Irina has prospered. She remarried in 1988; she and her second husband -- who works for an international trading firm -- have a 13-year-old son. They live in a lavishly renovated apartment with a view of the Moscow River, in a building -- originally built to house Soviet generals -- where some apartments rent for $3,000 a month. She quit her state job in the early 1990s and earns a substantial income freelancing as an interior designer for wealthy "New Russians," building palatial houses outside Moscow.
What is the biggest change in her life? She says she has far more creative freedom than she did 22 years ago. In Soviet times, every apartment was laid out according to one of several floor plans, and tenants were forbidden to make structural changes. "Now, it depends on your imagination," she said. "You can make beautiful designs if you have imagination."
Yet she values her prosperity and creative freedom less, it seems, than the security that the old system provided. When she talked about the changes in Russia, bitterness crept into her voice. "Everything was destroyed," she said at one point. "Step by step. Everything was ruined."
Were things better under communism?
She considered the question. "No, you can't say that things were better," she said. Neither were they that much worse. "You can't compare then and now."
In 1979, she acknowledged, she was younger and ambitious. Her children were just starting school. Her life was still a series of possibilities. In lamenting the passing of the Soviet state, she said, she might also be mourning her lost youth.