--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote: For a glimpse, check out Venedikt Yerofeev, _M-oscow Stations_ http://www.ukauthors.com/article2090.html- a harrowing description of the "ordinary" life in x-USSR.
---
The best description of life in the Khrushchev-era USSR I've seen in English is Edward Limonov's autobiographical novel A Young Scoundrel: http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol3no2/dolan.html
It's Anna's fault he started sewing pants. Somehow he went on a date with the Jewish woman in bell-bottomed jeans of some khaki material. Bell-bottomed jeans were high fashion in Kharkov in the winter of 1964-65.
"What wonderful pants, Ed!" said Anna approvingly. "Who sewed them for you?"
"I sewed them myself," Ed lied, thereby solving all his financial problems for the next ten years.
"I didn't know you knew how to sew," Anna was truly amazed. Before this she had not taken him seriously. This was still before the kid went to see her in Alushta, in the Women's Sanatorium, where Anna went to get some rest from Kharkov and its problems. This was before they started sleeping together, before Ed moved in with Anna and went to live with the Jewish family as a new member. This was before our era. At that time, Ed and Anna were just friends. At that time, he would go to Anna Moiseyevna's place and sit in the corner and for the most part, keep silent, looking at the guests in amazement, with the innocent eyes of a working class guy and criminal. He kept silent because there was nothing for him to say--- he didn't know the names of the painters, writers, or poets of Russia, or the world; he didn't have an opinion about the poems of Pasternak which were in fashion at the time...Ugh, he didn't even know who Van Gogh was, and it would take him several months for him to stop confusing him with Gaugin, and another month to be certain who the severed ear belonged to.
However, despite his confusion and embarrassment at this unavoidable muteness, the bookseller stubbornly kept coming to Anna Moiseyevna's each evening, inevitably bringing with him a bottle of port, knowing that the port would make it easier for him. Every evening, that Autumn, there were arguments, poetry reading, and port at 19 Tevelev Square. In Anna's company--- Vicki Kuligina and Vicki's former husband, Tolik Kuligin---port was preferred to "'biomitsin." The evolving bookseller willingly gave up fortified white wine for port.
Now, through the thick stratum of time, the conduct of the working-class guy Savenko seems to have been admirably directed by his powerful intuitive faculty. If he did not understand the reason that he needed Anna, needed these sometimes incomprehensible and sometimes simply comical and affected people, his mighty instinct whispered to him: "Sit here. This is what you need. This place. These are the ones, the people you searched for, fruitlessly, in the factories, in the vegetable plots, on the roads of the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Asia. Sit down, keep quiet, and learn." And that's what he did. Ignoring the unwanted sympathy and, at other times, mockery. The elk-like Misha Basov was more ironical than the others. And many times the bookseller noticed Misha's mocking glance directed at him.
.....Pants. After ten days or so, Anna suddenly asked him "Listen, Ed, sew a pair of pants for my friend? He's as thin as a rake, and on him normal soviet-style goods look like a sack. And his girlfriend, my friend Zhenya, wants Bunny to look handsome. Will you sew them?"
"With pleasure, Anna. He needs to buy one metre twenty centimetres of cloth"--- the liar answered, remembering how Maskim the guy who sewed his khaki jeans measured him. Of course this lie involved him in all sorts of unnecessary trouble--- but, thought the liar, he would get out of it somehow. He'd measure Anna's friend, take the material and the measurements to Maksim, and Maksim would make the pants. Then Ed would give them to Anna's friend, and everybody'd be happy.
etc.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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