RALEIGH Soviet Baby Boomers

Soviet Baby Boomers
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Soviet Baby
Boomers
An Oral History of Russia’s
Cold War Generation
Donald J. Raleigh
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raleigh, Donald J.
Soviet baby boomers : an oral history of Russia’s Cold War generation / Donald J. Raleigh.
p. cm.—(Oxford oral history series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-974434-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Baby boom generation—Soviet Union—History. 2. Families—Soviet Union—History.
3. Youth—Soviet Union—History. 4. Soviet Union—Social conditions—1945–1991.
5. Cold War—Social aspects—Soviet Union. 6. Social change—Soviet Union—History.
7. Moscow (Russia)—Biography. 8. Saratov (Russia)—Biography. 9. Oral history—Soviet Union.
10. Interviews—Russia (Federation) I. Title.
HN523.5.R357 2011
305.2440947'09045—dc22 2011007313
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
In loving memory of my son, Adam Sanders Raleigh, 1986–2008
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
INTRODUCTION 3
1 THE REAL NUCLEAR THREAT: Soviet Families in Transition 16
2 OVERTAKING AMERICA IN SCHOOL:

Educating the Builders of Communism 66
3 “UNCONSCIOUS AGENTS OF CHANGE”:

Soviet Childhood Creates the Cynical Generation 120
4 THE BABY BOOMERS COME OF AGE 168
5 LIVING SOVIET DURING THE BREZHNEV-ERA STAGNATION 220
6 “BUT THEN EVERYTHING FELL APART”:

Gorbachev Remakes the Soviet Dream 268
7 SURVIVING RUSSIA’S GREAT DEPRESSION 312
CONCLUSION: “It’s they who have always held Russia together” 355
Appendix: The Baby Boomers 369

Notes 377
Bibliography 387
Index 395
Acknowledgments
Until recently, my office on the fourth floor of Hamilton Hall at the University
of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, was the only one along the corridor not
occupied by someone affiliated with Carolina’s distinguished Southern Oral
History Program (SOHP). I must have walked past promotional posters and
announcements about SOHP activities thousands of times over the preceding
decade during which I researched and wrote a book on the Russian Civil War in
Saratov province, a project for which I spent each summer sifting through volu-
minous archival collections in the Volga city. By the time I had finished the dif-
ficult-to-research monograph, I was itching to tackle something altogether new
for me but also felt an intense attachment to Saratov. One day the inspiration
came: why don’t I write an oral history? Back then, I could count on one hand
the number of books in Russian history based on this methodology. But I had
never read a work of oral history. Besides, what would I write about? I answered
my own question while attending the graduation from Knox College—my alma
mater—of magna cum laude graduate Anna Obraztsova, whose parents and
Moscow family I have known since 1976. Over the years Anna’s mother, my dear
friend Lyuba, shared stories of attending Moscow’s prestigious magnet School
No. 20, which offered intensive instruction in English, and of her friends, now
scattered throughout the world. After picking up Lyuba in Chicago, we drove to
Galesburg, Illinois, for Anna’s 2001 graduation. At some point that weekend I
baffled Lyuba, “Lyub, why don’t I write my next book about your graduating
class?” When I realized that a comparable school had existed in Saratov, I knew
I had a topic, and one that appealed to me at that. There’s a story behind the
making of each book, and this is mine.
Although I shoulder sole responsibility for this study’s shortcomings, it, more
than most books, represents a team effort. I therefore am pleased to acknowl-
edge the many people and institutions that, in so many ways, have supported,
financed, or otherwise facilitated the researching and writing of this book since
its inception. Above all, I wish to express my profound gratitude to the sixty
individuals who took time to share their life stories with me. They also extended
to me respect, hospitality, and sometimes their homes, family photos, and even
friendship. I owe a special thanks to several 1967 graduates of School No. 20: to
Lyubov Obraztsova (Raitman), Tatyana Koukharskaia (Arzhanova), Yelena
x | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Kolosova, Yelena Proskuryakova (Zharovova), Yevgeniya Kreizerova (Ruditskaya),

Vyacheslav Starik, Andrei Rogatnev, and Leonard (Leonid) Terlitsky. In Saratov,
Nikolai Kirsanov helped me establish contact with many of his classmates, some
of whom also went beyond the call of duty to assist me, especially Arkady
Darchenko, Natalya P., and Aleksandr Virich. A class in his own in this regard,
Aleksandr Konstantinov has served as an invaluable resource from the start. The
project benefited as well by my interviewing two former teachers at each school:
the late Nina Ivanovna Timonina and Roman Arkadyevich Kaplan, who taught
at School No. 20, and Klara Eduardovna Starshova and Igor Andreyevich
Molchanov, who taught at School No. 42. Principal at the time I began the
project, Igor Andreyevich helped me locate members of the class of 1967 and
several teachers.
I am also indebted to Russian colleagues and friends in both Moscow and
Saratov. In Moscow, Oleg Kling and his wife Katya Orlova and children Dasha,
Masha, and Vanya have made me family, as has Lyuba Obraztsova, her mother
Liliya Aleksandrovna, and ex-husband Petya Obraztsov. I am also thankful for
the support and hospitality I have received from Larisa Zakharova, and Feliks
Burdzhalov and his wife Rita Orlova. In Saratov, Nina Devyataikina not only
helped me jumpstart the project but also cheerfully aided me in innumerable
ways. I likewise thank other colleagues in the History Department at Saratov
University, in particular Velikhan Mirzekhanov, Anatoly Avrus, Mikhail Kovalyov,
and Denis Belousov. Yelena Yarskaya-Smirnova and Pavel Romanov at Saratov
Technical University contributed to this project as well by sharing their experi-
ence practicing oral history. Josif Gorfinkel and his wife Lyudmila Aleksandrovna
served as my local arrangements, recreational, and emergency committees,
kindly helping me at every step of the way. Viktor Semyonov extended friend-
ship and his knowledge of old Saratov.
This book was made possible by the generous support of UNC’s University
Research Council, the Spray-Randleigh Fellowship program, a Chapman
Fellowship from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities during the spring
2004 semester, and funds available to me as holder of the Jay Richard Judson
Professorship. These monies funded research trips and transcription of the tapes
by two conscientious and efficient assistants to whom I owe a great debt, Katya
Karelina, who set the bar high, and then by Olga Kotik, who, in transcribing the
bulk of the interviews, maintained Katya’s standards. A John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship during the 2005–6 academic year allowed me to work through the
3,500+ pages of transcribed interviews and to draft the first three chapters of the
book.
My study has benefited immeasurably from the insights and rigorous reading
that my peerless colleague and friend, Louise McReynolds gave it. Emily Baran
also pored over the manuscript—twice—with razor sharp eyes. Kim Gaetz and
George Gerolimatos good naturedly read the manuscript at various stages,
reporting on it to my graduate reading colloquia on Soviet history. Gary
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xi
Guadagnolo reviewed the penultimate draft, catching some glitches and incon-
sistencies in usage. Marko Dumančicˊ commented intelligently on early chapters
of the book. I have also gained from discussing the study with Chad Bryant,
Jacqueline Hall, James Leloudis, Beth Millwood, William R. Ferris, Robert
Jenkins, Yasmin Saikia, Jehanne Gheith, Alexander Rabinowitch, Ronald G.
Suny, Diane Koenker, Rósa Magnúsdóttir, Sharon Kowalsky, and the outstanding
graduate students at UNC with whom I have had been privileged to work.
Moreover, I am happy to express appreciation for the intellectual compan-
ionship and supportive environment of the Department of History and the
Slavic Studies community at Carolina and Duke University. It is difficult for me
to imagine a better place to work. Or to make home: My colleagues’, graduate
students’, and departmental staff members’ expressions of support, friendship,
concern, and affection during the darkest chapter of my life when I lost my son
sustained me in more ways than they will ever know.
I eagerly acknowledge, too, the suggestions of the two anonymous readers for
Oxford University Press and the enthusiasm and strategic insights of my editor,
Nancy Toff. Thanks as well to her efficient assistant Sonia Tycko, to Lynn
Childress, who copy edited the manuscript, and to team leader Jaimee Biggins,
who saw the manuscript through production. Emily Baran prepared the index
as if the book were her own.
Finally, it would have been challenging—and much less fun—to finish this
volume without the loving friendship of Doug Ludy, Louise McReynolds, Stan
Chojnacki, Barbara Harris, Alex and Janet Rabinowitch, Beth Holmgren, Mark
Sidell, the late Fern Mignon, Jerry Bolas, David E. Williams, Chad Bryant, Joe
Glatthaar, Rob Dewoskin, Al Calarco, my Al Anon family, and the new friends I
made at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in New Mexico.
I dedicate this book to my son, Adam Sanders Raleigh, 1986–2008, who text
messaged me the night before he died that he wouldn’t trade me for any dad in
the world. I felt, and feel, the same way about him.
Donald J. Raleigh
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Soviet Baby Boomers
INTRODUCTION
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the leader of the USSR, Nikita Sergeyevich
Khrushchev, promised the Soviet people that the Soviet Union would surpass
the United States in per capita production by 1970 and attain communism by
1980. A vast improvement over socialism, which the state proclaimed had been
achieved already in the 1930s, communism represented that stage in historical
development when the inherently superior Soviet system would race past the
capitalist order. Khrushchev’s blueprint for communism included sky-high
incomes; free vacations, trips to resorts, medical service, and education; a six-
hour workday; free lunches in schools and workplaces; free day care and unprec-
edented maternity benefits; and the gradual reduction of fees for other service
industries.1 “But people didn’t think it was possible,” remembered Irina
Vizgalova, born in 1950 in the provincial city of Saratov. “Even children. How
could we? Because suddenly we didn’t have bread here in Saratov. There was no
milk. What kind of communism could there be when they passed out bread in
school?” Her classmate Olga Kolishchyuk drolly recalled when, in conjunction
with Khrushchev’s campaign, the authorities hung a banner with his slogan
“Catch up with and overtake America” across Lenin Street, Saratov’s major thor-
oughfare. Shortly afterward, the state automobile inspection put up a poster
suspiciously nearby, “when in doubt, don’t pass [overtake] anyone.”
Yet several other people their age taken in by Khrushchev’s promises—who,
as adults, ironically emigrated from Russia—dredged up different memories.
Irina and Olga’s classmate, Aleksandr Trubnikov, who today lives in Israel,
trusted Khrushchev: “I even remember arguing with my friend whether we’d
each have a personal helicopter in 1980, by which time we’d have built commu-
nism. I remember very well how normal this seemed back then.” Trubnikov
added, “I now see that our childhood minds were so tainted that we believed
that we’d have a bright future. It’s great that at least now I understand that they
duped a huge part of the population.” Similarly, Moscow’s Bakhyt Kenzheyev,
now a Canadian citizen, stressed how smugly satisfied Khrushchev’s promise of
overtaking America had made him when he was eleven years old and in awe of
Soviet triumphs in the space race with the United States. “But then the year 1970
began and I was already twenty years old. I looked at Khrushchev’s Party Program
and realized that nothing had been done,” observed Kenzheyev. “More than
4 | SOVIET BABY BOOMERS
anything else,” concluded Saratov’s Viktor D., “reality shaped my worldview.

And to a large degree, comparing reality with what was on the posters and with
information from the press.”
On the other side of the globe, on Chicago’s working-class South Side, the
frosty Cold War rivalry between Russia and the United States also shaped my
own worldview, but my concerns—although I grew up poor—were more
political than economic. Once designated the worst public school system in any
American city with a population over a half-million, the Chicago public schools
nonetheless deserved top marks at the time for subjecting the young and impres-
sionable to frequent “duck and cover” air raid drills launched by a piercing siren
blast, owing to the “Soviet threat,” which I, for one, took seriously. Our humor-
less physical education teacher at Mark Twain Elementary, Mrs. Dickman, sup-
plemented the drills with mandated and improvised fitness regimens and
nagging reminders that we should “eat bread, not candy,” so that we might be as
strong as the Russians. On top of this, raised Roman Catholic, I clocked in hun-
dreds of hours on my knees, praying for the conversion of the atheist Communists.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, I remember being glued to the
television set, fearing an imminent nuclear attack. In short, born in 1949, I grew
up in “Dr. Strangelove’s America.”* The perceived Soviet menace helped fashion
my generation the way the threat of terrorism defines today’s.
Characterized by a state of tension, competition, conflict, and even threat of
nuclear annihilation, the Cold War, the confrontation between the United States
and the Soviet Union from the end of World War II to roughly 1990, represented
a clash of two universalist ideologies, two ways of understanding the world. The
dispute produced a stratified, bipolar global power structure in which the two
superpowers towered over all the rest. Although there is general agreement that
the Cold War dominated world affairs for almost half a century and continues
to influence humankind, it has left a varied legacy for different generations
living in different countries. What it meant and means to Russians my age is the
subject of this book.
Through the life stories of the country’s Cold War generation, Soviet Baby
Boomers traces the transformative developments of the second half of the twen-
tieth century that brought down the Soviet empire. Born shortly after World War
II, the individuals I interviewed for this project graduated in 1967 from School
No. 20 in Moscow or from School No. 42 in the provincial city of Saratov, both
newly opened “magnet” secondary schools that offered intensive instruction in
English. Most members of this cohort still live in Moscow, Saratov, or elsewhere
in Russia; however, others have immigrated to the United States, Canada, Israel,
and Western Europe. A number of them are dead. Members of the generation
* For those too young, or too old, to recall, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 jet-black cinematographic
satire told the story of an accidental preemptive nuclear attack, and what might happen if
the wrong person pushed the wrong button.
INTRODUCTION | 5
that began school the year the USSR lifted the first artificial satellite, Sputnik,
into space in 1957, they grew up during the Cold War, but in a Soviet Union that
increasingly distanced itself from the most awful features of the long reign of
Josef Stalin (1924–53). Unlike earlier generations, whose success in transforming
the country into the other superpower was tempered by ever-present shortages,
deprivations, famine, terror, and the horrors of World War II, the Baby Boomers
benefited in untold ways from decades of peaceful, organic, evolutionary
development. They proved every bit as revolutionary, if not more so, than the
preceding decades that established the Soviet system and that predated—and
perhaps even determined—Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev’s coming to power
in 1985 and his commitment to reinvent the Soviet system. During this genera-
tion’s childhood and young adulthood, the country’s leadership dismantled the
Gulag, ruled without terror, promoted consumerism, and opened the country in
teaspoon-size doses to an outside world that feared Soviet-style Communism.
Reaching their prime during the Gorbachev era, these Baby Boomers today con-
stitute elements of Russia’s and other countries’ professional urban class.
In telling the story of this cross-section of the country’s Cold War generation
in its own words, I throw light on a critical generation of people who had
remained largely faceless and ignored up until now. Focusing on how a group of
individuals born in 1949/50 remembered their lives, I explore the margins among
the political, the personal, and the professional. I seek, among other things, to
answer five wide-ranging questions in order to grasp what it meant to “live
Soviet”2 during the Cold War. Who and what shaped the Cold War generation’s
worldviews while they were growing up? What do their life stories tell us about
what constituted the “Soviet dream,” and ultimately about the relationship bet-
ween the growing emphasis on private life after 1945, the undermining of Marxist
ideology, and the fate of the Soviet Union? How have they negotiated the chal-
lenging transition to a post–Soviet Russia following the collapse of communism
in 1991? How have their lived experiences both reproduced and transformed
Russian society during the Cold War and afterward? In other words, how do
their personal stories help us comprehend cultural transmission across
generations? Finally, how do the memories of those who grew up in Moscow
differ from those raised in a provincial city “closed” to foreigners and therefore
to many direct foreign influences?
Equally important, this book is one of the first on post-1945 Soviet history to
draw on the methodology of oral history. This approach appealed to me because,
in the Soviet Union, where the boundaries between public and private life
remained porous and the state sought to peer into every corner, it had been dan-
gerous to remember facts that gave the lie to, or questioned, government-gener-
ated fictions. Ideology was meant to replace memory.3 During and after the
dissolution of the USSR, Russian citizens began openly talking about their past,
trying to make sense of it, and I saw obvious benefits in listening in. As Russian
historian Darya Khubova put it, “It is sometimes said, and is almost true, that
‘for us the documents are subjective, and the only things which might be
objective are the memories.’”4
Indeed, the domestic climates in the two superpowers the year this Soviet
generation—and mine—was born differed dramatically. In the United States,
signs of postwar prosperity found expression in robust consumption. That year
the U.S. automobile industry churned out bigger cars and more people bought
them—some 6.2 million. The number of television sets in American homes had
shot up from roughly 5,000 at war’s end to 10 million in 1949. In January the first
television soap opera, These Are My Children, began broadcasting. Months later
Hopalong Cassidy became the first network western and The Lone Ranger pre-
miered. The first Emmy Awards for television were presented in 1949, signaling
the new medium’s promise. It was a year of other “firsts” too. The New York
Giants signed on their first African American players, the U.S. Army swore in its
first enlisted woman, and Harvard Law School admitted its first female appli-
cant. In the realms of technology and consumption, the first Polaroid camera
went on sale, the first transcontinental dial telephone calls linked California
with New York, and the Sara Lee Company in Chicago released the first frozen
Sara Lee Cheesecake.
The emerging Cold War, however, cast a dark cloud on U.S. postwar pros-
perity, for 1949 also saw publication of George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian classic
about the horror of Soviet-style totalitarianism controlled by Big Brother and
The Party. That April twelve nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a collective defense bulwark against Soviet attack. In May
the Federal Republic of Germany officially came into existence as the Soviet
Union lifted the Berlin blockade, one of the first international crises of the Cold
War. Afterward, the first allotment of Marshall Plan funds aimed at rebuilding
war-torn Europe and minimizing the appeal of communism poured into West
Germany. On September 21, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the com-
munist People’s Republic of China. Two days later, the U.S. government
announced that the Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear device. The
Cold War intensified at the start of 1950, when Ho Chi Minh launched an offen-
sive against the French in Indochina and President Harry S. Truman ordered
full-speed development of the hydrogen bomb. In June forces from communist
North Korea invaded the south, transforming the Korean conflict into a full-scale
war. After China entered the hostilities, Truman threatened to use the atomic
bomb to achieve peace, instituting a state of national emergency. Alarm over
communist activities in the United States mounted when a jury found former
State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of participating in a communist spy
ring. Overriding President Truman’s veto, Congress passed the Internal Security
Act requiring registration of American Communists.
Postwar prosperity was yet to come to the Soviet Union by the end of the
1940s, owing to the devastation of World War II, known in Russia as the Great
Patriotic War, which destroyed one-third of the USSR’s national wealth. The war
INTRODUCTION | 7
left 27 million dead, including 17 million civilians; cities, villages, transporta-

tion, and communication systems ruined; and countless people homeless,
injured, or otherwise victimized. (By comparison, U.S. war casualties amounted
to 407,000 deaths; moreover, with the exception of the Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor, the war did not rage on American territory.) A postwar famine in
1946–47 added to the Soviet tragedy, claiming an additional one to two million
lives. The Fourth Five-Year Plan, implemented in 1946, aimed at reaching prewar
levels of industrial production and at rebuilding the country’s infrastructure by
1950. Restricting the manufacturing and consumption of consumer goods
enabled the government to achieve the first goal, but not the more elusive sec-
ond one. Just as it had before the Great Patriotic War, the country’s Stalinist
economic model privileged heavy industry in addition to making new alloca-
tions for atomic energy, radar, rocketry, and jet propulsion, leaving no funds for
televisions or frozen cheesecake. Yet in 1948 Soviet propaganda declared that
efforts to “reconstruct” the war-ravaged country had been completed, after
which the birthrate began to climb.5 We can thus speak metaphorically of a
Soviet baby boom roughly akin to our own. By 1949 the Kremlin had demobi-
lized the swollen ranks of the Red Army, ended the worst of rationing, and low-
ered the price of bread. This was prosperity, Soviet style.
During the Great Patriotic War, Stalin had loosened the Party’s reins over
society to facilitate the Soviet Union’s wartime alliance with Great Britain and
the United States. But now, suspicious of his former allies and of his own people
who harbored expectations for a further relaxation of controls, Stalin clamped
down. As early as 1946, the Communist Party Central Committee began to dis-
cipline the country’s intelligentsia by attacking two major literary journals for
their “servility” toward everything foreign, as Soviet propaganda stressed the
superiority of all things Soviet or Russian. Plays by Western writers were purged
from theatrical repertoires and leading artists, composers, writers, and film
directors came under fire. This call for vigilance, an “anti-cosmopolitan”
campaign to root out what ideologues deemed as Western influence, soon raged
through the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences with damaging
consequences for linguistics, genetics, cybernetics, and other disciplines. These
ominous developments increasingly took on a distinct anti-Semitic tone.
Moreover, the year the Baby Boomers were born almost a million more inmates
populated the Gulag than in 1941. The government carried out punitive deporta-
tions in Soviet Moldavia and forced collectivization of agriculture in the Baltic
states, territories the Soviet Union had seized during the war. On December 31,
a massive parade marked Stalin’s seventieth birthday as his countenance was
projected into the sky over the Kremlin, a reminder of how exaggerated the cult
of Stalin had become.
With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that America’s dread of the Soviet
Union was also inflated. My own childhood fear of Russia, however, eventually
evolved into an insatiable curiosity about, and affinity toward, my Russian
counterparts that ultimately resulted in this book. Because Moscow enjoyed a

privileged economic and cultural position within the USSR (and within the his-
toriography of Russian history), I saw great benefits in making my project com-
parative by including a similar cohort of Baby Boomers from a large provincial
city. It made sense to choose Saratov, a city I had studied since the 1970s, since
Saratov—like much of the country but unlike Moscow—was physically off
limits, that is, “closed,” to foreigners until 1991. Lying on the western bank of the
Volga River, Russia’s Mississippi, some 535 miles southeast of Moscow, Saratov
by the start of the twentieth century had become the flour production capital of
the empire, a vibrant river port and rail center through which all of the political
and social conflicts of late Imperial Russia swirled. The plight of the rural masses
in particular, brought about by acute land shortage and overpopulation, had
exalted the peasant in the eyes of the local intelligentsia, many of whom pined
for pastoral utopias. As a result, Saratov province emerged as a center of Russian
revolutionary populism, acquiring a reputation as one of the most radical Volga
provinces well before the Revolution of 1917. Afterward, Saratov remained a
major food-producing region, but Soviet power enhanced the city’s significance
as an industrial and manufacturing hub, resulting in hearty population growth
into the 1970s. By the time members of the Cold War generation were born, the
city’s population had reached 473,000, and it swelled to 816,000 in 1975, when
they were in their mid-twenties.6 In 1951 the city began to mass-produce “Saratov”
refrigerators, prized throughout the Soviet bloc. The city’s factories and plants
manufactured YAK-40 airplanes, machine tools, gear-cutting machines, industrial
glass, ball bearings, synthetic fibers, trolley buses, chemicals, gas, electronics,
and space communications equipment. Because many of these enterprises had
ties with the Soviet military-industrial complex, the government closed the city
to visitors from “capitalist” and even other countries.
Within Russia and the USSR, Saratov was also recognized as a leading cultural
and educational center, renowned in the nineteenth century for its music con-
servatory, the third to open in Russia, and for the Radishchev Art Museum, the
first to welcome the public free of charge. Founded in 1909, Saratov University
had approximately 9,500 students when the Baby Boomers attended it. At the
time, the Saratov Polytechnic Institute enrolled about 15,000 students and the
Saratov Medical Institute another 5,500. In the early 1950s, Yury A. Gagarin, the
first person to orbit the earth, attended a Saratov technical school, later renamed
in his honor. In April 1961 Cosmonaut Gagarin brought his historical space
flight to a triumphant, if unglamorous, conclusion by parachuting into a field
outside Saratov, further firing the imaginations of members of the Cold War
generation, then entering their teenage years.7
Stalin’s death in 1953, which gave momentum to forces in Soviet society press-
ing for change, had a defining impact on the Baby Boomers. In the new climate,
magnet schools in mathematics, science, and foreign languages targeting aca-
demically gifted children opened across the USSR, symbolizing the country’s
INTRODUCTION | 9
School No. 42’s B class on graduation night, June 22, 1967, sporting hairdos and skirt
lengths that otherwise would not have been tolerated. Female students in particular
griped about principal Vera Fillipovna’s rigid interpretation of school dress codes.
Courtesy of Aleksandr Konstantinov
cautious embrace of the outside world amid the changing battlefields of the
Cold War and a domestic climate of heady optimism that set apart the post-
Stalin 1950s from the previous decade. One of these elite new schools, Saratov’s
School No. 42, started up in 1954. The graduating class of 1967 comprised fifty-six
pupils divided into two groups of roughly equal size, Groups A and B, two-
thirds of whom were female (thirty-eight of the fifty-six graduates). Six of the
graduates have since died and several others have suffered strokes or other debil-
itating illnesses, sometimes due to alcohol abuse. Six live abroad (one in
Germany, one in the Netherlands, three in the United States, and one in Israel),
and five in Moscow. It proved impossible for me to ascertain the whereabouts of
two others who left Saratov. Government and Communist Party officials and
members of the cultural and technical intelligentsia sent their children to School
No. 42; only a negligible percentage of the cohort came from working-class
families.
I had more difficulty determining the class of 1967’s ethnic or national com-
position, because, when enrolling children, administrators recorded the nation-
ality indicated on a child’s birth certificate, which was not always an accurate
marker of one’s ethnicity. (Soviet citizens were issued passports, which indicated
nationality, only when they turned sixteen. At that time they could select the
nationality of either parent.) According to school records, all of the students
were Russian by nationality, except for five Jews, one Ukrainian, and one
Moldavian. Yet my conversations with members of the class suggest that as
much as 18 percent of it has some Jewish lineage, which popular anti-Semitism
taught them to conceal. Two have Tatar surnames (the Tatars are a Muslim
minority who speak a Turkic language). One parent of several others belonged
to Saratov’s Volga German minority that inhabited the Volga region since the
eighteenth century (Stalin ordered their mass deportation to Kazakhstan and
Siberia in September 1941). The loose generalization that can be made from the
data is that the ethnic composition of the school roughly corresponded with
that of Saratov, except that Jews were overrepresented and the city’s Tatar
population underrepresented. This profile is less the result of conscious policies
than of the overall educational levels achieved by these two communities: Jews
constituted, by far, the most highly educated national group in the Russian
Federation, the largest of the fifteen republics constituting the Soviet Union.
Undoubtedly related to Khrushchev’s blueprint for building communism
made public in 1961, a government decree of May 27 called for the establishment
of 700 new magnet schools throughout the country over the next four years and
for improving language instruction in ordinary schools. In 1961, neighborhood
School No. 115 in Moscow was converted into special School No. 20 with
intensive instruction in English. Soon to become one of the preeminent schools
in the city, School No. 20, like its Saratov counterpart, enrolled children of the
cultural and technical intelligentsia, Communist Party officials, military officers,
and only a handful from working-class families. A large number—the graduates
themselves estimated that perhaps as many as half the class—were at least part
Jewish. As in Saratov, the class of 1967 comprised two groups, A and B, until the
ninth grade, when a third class, C (actually V in Russian) was formed, com-
prising students from A and B and newly admitted pupils. Whereas school offi-
cials in Saratov facilitated my project by allowing me to examine school records
and by putting me in touch with several members of the class of 1967, school
administrators in Moscow, stressing issues of confidentiality, refused to assist
me. As a result, I had to enlist the support of my friend and 1967 graduate of
School No. 20, Lyubov Obraztsova (née Raitman), who shared contact
information and class photos with me. In time, I identified eighty-three 1967
graduates and confirmed that six others had died, but given Moscow’s size and
the far-reaching dispersal of this cohort owing to emigration, I failed to locate
thirty-five members of Moscow’s Cold War generation from School No. 20.
The Russian intelligentsia has understood the benefits of using generation
as a conceptual frame to help measure social change within a historical con-
text at least since the publication of Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children in
1862. The novel features a rising generation’s intellectual challenge to the
status quo in the wake of Russia’s humiliating showing in the Crimean War
INTRODUCTION | 11
and on the eve of the emancipation of the empire’s serfs and introduction of
other initiatives known as the Great Reforms. Some of the children soon pop-
ulated the burgeoning revolutionary movement, giving way to successive gen-
erations also defined by a distinct bond created by destabilizing forces that
made each age cohort conscious of its historical purpose. For the Soviet period,
for instance, the events defining generations include the Revolution of 1917,
the dark Stalinist 1930s, and World War II. But no destabilizing forces made
the Soviet Union’s Cold War or Baby Boom generation conscious of its histor-
ical mission; it grew up and experienced late socialism in a strikingly tranquil
age, despite the Cold War. Importantly, the positive developments that shaped
the Russian Baby Boomers have remarkable similarities to those that molded
their Western counterparts, including me: the rise of a youth culture, the appeal
of Western popular culture, more leisure time, a carefree attitude, economic
growth, rising living standards and a consumerist culture, and the expansion
of education.
There is virtually unanimous agreement that this generation has played a
vital, even defining, role in transforming the climate of the contemporary world.
For this reason, it is time to tell the Soviet Baby Boomers’ story. By no means a
homogeneous group, the individuals I interviewed undoubtedly had different
expectations and life experiences than less educated, less well-connected, and
rural elements of Soviet society. But they are a highly significant, critical compo-
nent of the country’s urban professional class, inseparable from the entire Soviet
mass intelligentsia whose size grew exponentially in the decades following
Stalin’s death. Between 1965 and 1982, 12 million Soviet citizens graduated from
college—including virtually all of those whom I interviewed. In that regard, the
1967 graduates’ collective story tells the larger story of the upper strata of the
entire Cold War generation that lived through the USSR’s twilight years.
My understanding of the broader historical context in which the Baby
Boomers’ life stories are set is informed by the limited historical and sociological,
and substantial political science literature on postwar Soviet history as well as by
the personal observations I made during thirty-six trips I took to the country
beginning in 1971. I likewise utilized quantitative and qualitative research on the
period conducted by Western and Soviet social scientists, and the books, movies,
and other publications identified by those I interviewed as having played influ-
ential roles in their lives. However, I privileged the oral testimony. I located and
interviewed sixty Baby Boomers between 2001 and 2008. Working without assis-
tants, I interviewed my subjects at their homes and dachas, at work, in apart-
ments I rented, hotel rooms, parks, cafes, and even in a parked car. I taped them
in Moscow, Saratov, New York, Montreal, Portland (Oregon), Ames (Iowa), and,
over the phone, in Israel and on Cyprus. Approximately ten graduates from each
school declined to meet me. In all, I interviewed thirty-one members of the
Saratov cohort (more than 50 percent) and twenty-nine members of the Moscow
cohort (about 35 percent). Conducted in Russian, the interviews range in length
from one to three hours. Although I employed open-ended interview techniques

to uncover my informants’ remembered experiences, I formulated questions
aimed at illuminating the themes noted above. I turned the conversations into
dialogues by asking my informants what they believed I needed to know about
them in order to shed light on the issues that interested me most. I use their real
names in the pages that follow (except in eight cases when they asked to remain
anonymous) not only because this convention distinguishes oral history from
ethnography but also because—symbolically—most of the Baby Boomers are
not afraid to reveal their identities.
Because individuals’ values and beliefs evolve as a result of personal experi-
ence and changes within a larger sociohistorical context, people tell their stories
in different ways throughout their lives. My book, then, is not only about specific
historical events, but more so about what they mean to the Cold War generation
today. Above all, I sought to comprehend how the interviewees made sense of
the world, and the structure and patterns of Russian society as exhibited by rep-
resentative individuals. Constrained and enabled by the range of stories avail-
able in a given culture at a given time, which people make their own, “life stories
reveal the canonical rules of a society at a certain time, its mores, behavioral
expectations, and taboos.”8 That said, the highly intelligent and well-educated
people I interviewed structured their responses with a high degree of integrative
complexity.9 They felt comfortable in their own stories, which they already had
available within in draft form before I pried them open with questions and we
collaboratively coauthored the sources upon which this study is based. True, I
confirmed or suspected in my informants’ responses errors, conscious silences,
exaggerations, inventions, and the co-opting of others’ stories. Memory, however,
is an interpretation of life events rather than a chronicle of the past. “Wrong”
statements are nonetheless psychologically true,10 especially because people often
act on the basis of how they understand life events rather than on the events
themselves.11 Moreover, my project is not dependent on the accurate memory of
any one of my interviewees: I searched for similarities, differences, and contra-
dictions among many people’s narratives to discern patterns across a number of
lives and therefore to get more than one side of the story.12 I used the oral evi-
dence to uncover feelings, understandings, and judgments to reveal what events
meant to people.
In sum, I created a composite narrative out of the Baby Boomers’ individual
stories that no one person could tell. I embedded it in larger historical narratives
of Cold War; de-Stalinization of Soviet society after 1953; Khrushchev’s “over-
taking” America and opening up to the outside world; economic stagnation and
dissent during the Leonid Brezhnev years (1964–82); the transition to a market
economy during and following the collapse of the Soviet Union; emigration;
the transformation of class, ethnic, and gender relations across this broad swath
of time; and globalization. People are invisible to themselves in the enormous
social transformations taking place around them. As a result, I looked for the
INTRODUCTION | 13
connection between biography and history. My goal is to provide insight into

how these historical developments were experienced by those living through
them and to suggest, through their life stories, how Cold War Russian society
functioned at a quotidian level.
Selecting the Baby Boomers’ words to express my own viewpoint, I see my
work as a collection of voices in my own “choral arrangement,” to borrow a
phrase from historian Kenneth Kann.13 This arrangement underscores the revo-
lutionary impact of decades of peaceful, evolutionary, organic development in
transforming the Soviet Union out of existence, in changing it from a state that
mobilized society to accomplish ambitious goals into a modern, highly literate,
urban society that lost its coherence as the Stalinist economic model exhausted
its potential—and the Soviet dream. An economy of scarcity under Stalin had
made the new Soviet man, Homo Sovieticus, a peculiar kind of consumer; the rise
of modern consumerism after World War II made him over into a consumer
with expectations. While the Cold War generation grew up, systemic problems
and a measured opening up to the world promoted private over collective values
and this, in turn, exacerbated the troubles that increasingly made reform the
order of the day. Deficits in what might be called the Soviet myth economy
aggravated economic shortages: the Soviet Cold War generation grew up
believing it lived in the best country in the world, but this perception came
under assault when it reached adulthood and sought to find its own niche
within it. The USSR figuratively expired in 1980, the year by which Khrushchev
had promised the Baby Boomers that communism would arrive. Like food items
that expire, the Soviet Union had not exhausted its shelf life, but the risk of it
going bad shot up with each passing day.
My arrangement of voices also highlights the Baby Boomers’ agency in par-
ticipating in and constructing a new society and their own lives. Despite
American Cold War black-and-white thinking that depicted Soviet citizens as
either intransigent Communists or disgruntled dissidents, members of the Cold
War generation were neither. Shaped fundamentally by their families,14 they
lived remarkably “normal” lives in a society quickly losing its uniqueness. Their
lives aligned fully with the social rules and norms of Soviet society that ironi-
cally, as we will see in the following chapters, included forces that eventually
subverted the system. That said, most Baby Boomers—like the CIA and Western
academics—did not expect the disintegration of the USSR but, as anthropologist
Alexei Yurchak argued, they were ready for the collapse when it came, finding it
logical and inevitable.15 Although the Baby Boomers routinely violated and
reinterpreted the norms of expected behavior, many of them supported the
values and ideals of Soviet socialism until they publicly came under fire. But
others sensed the system was doomed and wanted out. What concrete experi-
ences compelled one in six of the Baby Boomers I interviewed to emigrate to the
United States, Canada, Western Europe, or Israel? (At least thirteen others did,
too, among those who declined to be interviewed, died, or whom I could not
locate. Many others contemplated leaving their homeland.) Most left Russia
after the fall of the USSR made this option less difficult; however, they had
entertained the possibility of doing so for years.
With the benefit of hindsight, the most important and transformative histor-
ical events—the end of the Cold War and demise of the Soviet Union—seem
inevitable. But there is often little agreement over what caused these events or
what they mean. The private memories—the personal recollections of the Cold
War generation—are framed by broader collective memories, by widely shared
accounts of events. As psychologist James Wertsch maintains, collective memory
is a form of mediated action between people and the cultural tools, in particular
narrative texts or stories, available to them; it belongs to a specific time, place,
and history; it reflects a social position and perspective; and it undergoes
change.16 These observations are crucial to the story presented in the following
chapters because, owing to the new information that became available to the
Baby Boomers when Gorbachev in the late 1980s unleashed his revolutionary
program to reform or to restructure the socialist system known as perestroika,
the differences between how living in Moscow or Saratov shaped people’s mem-
ories lost much of their significance. Gorbachev’s most successful reform—glas-
nost, or openness, which ironically doomed the others—leveled the playing
field: everyone in the country who wished now had access to the same flood of
revelatory and even dubious information. Perestroika and glasnost contributed
to a breakdown of the ideals of the socialist experiment, and to an uncritical
interest in Western models and outmoded Imperial Russian forms. The result is
considerable homogeneity in the Baby Boomers’ assessment of the Soviet
experiment, which reveals a social position and perspective—that of the
well-educated urban professional class. Despite the wrenching economic diffi-
culties many Baby Boomers endured in the 1990s during the bumpy transition
to a market economy, the vast majority of those I interviewed remembered
many, but not all, features of the Soviet system negatively and the post-Soviet
period positively, in spite of real concerns over specific policies and develop-
ments. This is important because their collective memory today forms the con-
tinuity that connects and distinguishes generations. It allows individuals to
locate their own lives in historical time, as these answers to my question, “How
can your life story help me understand the fate of the Soviet Union?” suggest.
“I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I’d basically say that we went almost
literally from Stalin[ism] to normal, developing capitalism. We still have far to
go. It was hard enough, but we lived through this with the understanding that
this was the deck of cards dealt us,” replied Arkady Darchenko. “Many of us,
including me, are happy that we lived to see this other life. Unfortunately, we
will not live to see the complete transformation of our society. But it’s great that
we’ve gone through what we have. It was hard, full of all sorts of difficulties, yet
it gave life meaning. I wouldn’t want to continue living as we had in the 1970s,”
he concluded. Yevgeny Podolsky responded that he saw significance in “moving
INTRODUCTION | 15
beyond the ideals they instilled in me during childhood to get to where I am

today. Some got there sooner and some got there later, but this speaks to the fact
that history does not deceive us. It has definite laws of development, and no
artificial theories or teachings can change people,” who, he emphasized, were
now living a normal life: “Back then I was a true believer. I accepted what they
told me as true, as how things really were, but got to the point where it all turned
out to be a lie. Of course, you’ll come across some who cling to their old views,
but the upshot is that people understood that our former life, our history since
1917, was a terrible experiment.”
Yet Leonid Volodarsky and Natalya Pronina cautioned against emphasizing
only one side of the story. “We lived peacefully under Soviet power. I have to say
that lots of negative things have been said about Soviet power, and they’re true,
but there was also lots that was good. There’s no denying that,” contended
Volodarsky. Observing that the Baby Boomers “had it really tough,” because
they “lived through a revolution,” he applauded stability, “which is very impor-
tant for the overwhelming majority of people.” Extolling the benefits of free
education and health care, privileges that are part of her generation’s collective
memory, too, Pronina detailed, “I, someone from a family of very modest
means, turned out to be someone after all. My parents, if they were engineers
today, couldn’t afford to send me to college. They couldn’t afford to let me join
any study or hobby group. They couldn’t afford to hire someone to give me
music lessons or foreign language lessons.” Pronounced clinically dead, she also
believed that she would not be alive today if it were not for the readily available
and free Soviet health care system. “Back then a doctor saved me and it was free.
She saved me because that doctor had taken the Hippocratic Oath, and she con-
sidered it her responsibility to save people. That’s no longer the case. Today she
wouldn’t even know who Hippocrates was,” insisted Pronina. Reminding us
that shattered ideals nonetheless often remain attractive, she ended elegiacally,
“That’s what the Soviet period was. It has its positive qualities. There was a lot
wrong with it, but there was a lot that was right. It’s like today—there are some
good things, and some bad.”
1 THE REAL NUCLEAR
T H R E AT
Soviet Families in Transition
“She remembered the Revolution and the postrevolutionary period. I there-

fore had not only a textbook understanding of history but also one from a live
eyewitness, and this is very important,” observed Saratov Baby Boomer
Aleksandr Babushkin in telling me about the grandmother who helped raise
him. Because attitudes toward authority are shaped mostly by the family, even
in, or perhaps especially in, authoritarian societies such as the Soviet Union,1
I began each interview by asking the Baby Boomers to tell me about their par-
ents and grandparents. What they had to say on the subject confirmed the
essential role families played in the USSR as repositories of information that
might confirm or challenge official histories. The family backgrounds of two
other Baby Boomers likewise highlight some of the ways in which the Russian
Revolution, turbulent, Stalinist 1930s, and Great Patriotic War placed society
under assault, generating memories that may have clashed with official ones
created by the state.
Modest and unpretentious, Anna Lyovina, a 1967 graduate of Moscow’s
School No. 20, captivated me with the first words she uttered. Anna recounted
that her maternal grandmother came from Moscow, “but not always, because
she was born in America.” Her father, a distinguished engineer, worked in
Philadelphia at the time of the U.S. centennial in 1876. After returning to
Moscow, this man, Anna’s great-grandfather, founded an engineering firm that
developed extensive international contacts. The Russian Revolution of 1917
turned this world upside down, however, disenfranchising the tsarist elite, now
depicted as Soviet power’s class enemies. Concealing their pasts, they had to
invent new identities. By law, Anna’s grandmother remained an American citizen
until she married a Russian professor of physiology, M. O. Samoilov, the first
person to introduce the electrocardiogram in Russia. Offered a position at Kazan
University, one of Russia’s oldest and best, Samoilov and his bride left Moscow
for this vibrant Volga city, where Anna’s mother was born in 1915, the youngest
of four children. So as not to be drafted into the Red Army during the Civil War
T H E R E A L N U C L E A R T H R E AT | 17
(1918–22), her twin brothers, born in 1902, escaped to Siberia and from there to
America, where they worked their way through Harvard.
Remarkably enough, in 1925 Anna’s grandmother traveled to the United
States as part of a delegation of educators sent by the Soviet Ministry of Education
to familiarize themselves with American schools. She took her ten-year-old
daughter, Anna’s mother, with her. During the year they lived in America, Anna’s
mother attended school, learned English, and fell in love with the United States,
while Anna’s grandmother, who had not seen her sons for seven years, experi-
enced a deep personal conflict. “Grandmother understood, of course, that they
would not be able to adapt themselves to Soviet life,” explained Anna. And her
grandmother really could not stay in the States, because her husband, older
daughter, and sister and their families were back in Russia.
Despite offers to work in Europe, Anna’s grandfather decided not to emigrate.
But tired of the weekly trek between his joint appointments in Moscow and
Kazan, he remained in Moscow in 1930, where he died of a heart attack that
same year. Afterward, his widow took a position teaching French and German at
the university, but Anna’s mother, as a professor’s daughter, could not enroll
there because of an affirmative action program for workers introduced by Josef
Stalin. Undaunted, she cleaned animal cages at the Moscow zoo so as to qualify
as a proletarian. “This corrected her application, and only then was she able to
enroll at the university,” Anna explained. Her mother’s problems did not end
with this stroke of luck. She graduated in 1937, the year of the Great Terror, and
thus found it difficult to land a job owing to her “bourgeois” family background.
Trained in Zurich, Anna Lyovina’s

great-grandfather Aleksandr
Venyaminovich Bari worked on the
Russian pavilion at the world’s fair held in
conjunction with the U.S. centennial in
Philadelphia. Anna’s “American”
connection became both a source of pride
and of anxiety for her family, which
shared this chapter of its history only with
trusted individuals until after the demise
of the USSR made it safe to speak openly
about the past. Courtesy of Anna Maslova
(Lyovina)
Rejected everywhere she turned, she accepted a position as a civilian worker in a

labor camp until a well-connected neighbor found her a position in the capital
at a research institute devoted to the study of frozen soil conditions. In Soviet
Russia, who one knew mattered.
If it had not been for the Russian Revolution, it is doubtful that Anna’s
father, Fyodor Lyovin, the youngest of the five children resulting from the
union of a peasant tailor and an illiterate Cossack seamstress, would have
married into an academic family such as that of Anna’s mother. The Revolution
had not only benefited him but also his siblings: “All of the children received
an education, all of them became scientists, and all of them made their way
from Krasnodar to Moscow,” boasted Anna. A graduate of Moscow University,
her father specialized in ichthyology. But a dark cloud descended over him
after he published his research abroad and turned down an invitation to
teach at the ideologically pure Institute of Red Professors in the 1930s. Drafted
as a rank-and-file soldier into a cavalry unit run by crude, semiliterate peas-
ants, “he almost went nuts.” When World War II broke out, they dispatched
him to the front. After he suffered a broken leg in combat, his retreating unit
left him with vodka and a hunk of bread. He lost consciousness, was taken
prisoner, and ended up in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. Somehow managing
to escape, he fell into the hands of a secret police unit that ferreted out
“deserters” and either packed them off to the Gulag or shot them as a warning
of what happened to those who “betrayed” the Motherland. Lyovin could
have met this fate, but those who escaped before him told Soviet authorities
of the selfless role he had played in planning their getaway. Incarceration by
the Nazis deprived him of the benefits otherwise bestowed upon Soviet vet-
erans; however, it did not prevent him from completing his graduate studies
at Moscow University.
Meanwhile, Anna’s grandmother had resumed teaching at Moscow University
after the war. Her future son-in-law—Lyovin—was one of her students. He mar-
ried his instructor’s daughter and accepted a position at the university, but soon
fell victim to Stalin’s postwar anti-Semitic campaign even though he was not
Jewish. (His surname Lyovin, in this case pronounced LYOvin, is usually Jewish
[LEVin]). Yet no one cared, and he lost his post for “ideological” reasons. “He
even wrote to Malenkov, but to no avail,” injected Anna (Georgy Maximilyanovich
Malenkov was viewed by many as Stalin’s likely successor). Exiled to a remote
biological station outside Moscow, Lyovin had to reinvent himself as a soil
scientist.
The story of Irina Barysheva’s parents, both from Saratov province, also
reflects the impact of the Revolution on individual destinies. The last of thirteen
children in a poverty-stricken family, her father was born in 1909. The destabili-
zation brought about by World War I, revolution, and civil war guaranteed real
hardship for him—begging, hunger, factory work at an early age—but, insofar
as he was a proletarian, also opportunity. After signing up for the Communist
Youth League, the Komsomol, he soon joined the Communist Party [CPSU].
“And then things really took off. That is, his biography was exactly what was
needed during the Soviet period. Ever the more so because he was 100 percent
Russian. He quickly made a career in the Party,” related Irina. “He was accepted
everywhere without taking exams, at the university, and then at graduate school.”
Upon completing Saratov University with a degree in law, he obtained a second
degree in Moscow as a Party functionary. Irina heard plenty about his commit-
ment to various Soviet “campaigns”: first to wipe out illiteracy, then to improve
failing collective farms. During her toddler years, he participated in Khrushchev’s
crusade to plow up virgin land in remote parts of the country. “He was a
Bolshevik by nature, not a Communist,” Irina explained. He lived and breathed
the spirit of the Revolution, not of the Soviet bureaucracy.
In contrast, Irina’s mother’s roots lay in Imperial Russia’s gentry class. Unlike
the poorer, more ethnically homogeneous, lower elements, her mother’s family
represented a mélange of Polish, Jewish, Gypsy, and Belorussian blood. Irina’s
mother was born in 1913, the last of eight children. Her mother, Irina’s grand-
mother, died shortly thereafter. Her father, who had studied at an art academy
in Kraków, served as a high-ranking tsarist official until the Bolsheviks seized
power—and his property. Now a widower with a large family to feed, he was
forced to take up work as an artist and to marry his former cook. The family
lived in poverty. For this reason, Irina’s mother appreciated her years in a
Pioneer* brigade as the best of her childhood, “because they fed them there,
and thanks to this she survived.” Barysheva’s parents met at school, where they
became classmates, despite the fact that her father was four years older than her
mother. Irina’s father fell madly in love with her mother because she was fun
and upbeat, while he was somber and serious; “such a difficult childhood left its
trace,” Barysheva observed. An excellent student, her mother nonetheless
encountered difficulty pursuing an education because of her gentry roots. Irina’s
father’s had a “correct” proletarian background, however, making it possible for
him to help her enroll at the Saratov Economics Institute. She had to conceal
not only her gentry origins but also the fact that one of her uncles had fled to
America during the Revolution, and another to Germany. When the American
relatives sent food parcels to Saratov during World War II, Irina’s mother refused
to accept them and thereby acknowledge that she had relatives abroad.
“Otherwise they would have shot her, and they would have shot her child, too,”
believed Barysheva. Years later, Irina’s brother corresponded with them—they
live outside Chicago—until the American relatives offended their Soviet rela-
tions, whose overtures they misunderstood as an attempt to finagle an invita-
tion to America.
* At age ten, children joined the Pioneers, a children’s organizations formed to replace the
prerevolutionary scouting movement.
The stories of Anna Lyovina’s and Irina Barysheva’s families suggest some of
the myriad ways in which the Revolution transformed people’s lives. They also
illustrate how family lore, transmitted orally, offered missing pages not only to
sanitized accounts individuals told publicly to negotiate the rules and practices
of Soviet society but also to official histories. The latter often reduced complex
historical forces to Manichean struggles between the dark forces of capitalism
and the heroic and inevitable triumph of communism. A case in point, the
History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) or Short Course, published in
1938, became the self-serving catechism of Stalinism with which the Baby
Boomers’ parents grew up: Between 1938 and 1953, the Short Course was pub-
lished 301 times in 67 languages with a press run of almost 43 million. After
Stalin’s death in 1953, the account fell under fire. The replacement textbook
acknowledged the Short Course’s shortcomings, but the 1969 edition dropped
criticism of its negative influence. That is the textbook the Baby Boomers used
in college.2
As an antidote of sorts, family histories archived facts, truths, partial truths,
rumors, and even legends that families kept secret to hide suspect class back-
grounds in view of an ever-changing Party line. Everyone’s family story offered
alternative or more complicated histories. This is significant because, upon
coming to power in October 1917, the Bolsheviks sought to revolutionize the
family as part of their far-reaching plan to fashion a new Soviet man and
woman. In some respects they succeeded. Yet ironically, the new Soviet family
helped to transform, and ultimately bring down, the system that sought to
rethink it.
R E V O L U T I O N I Z I N G T H E S O V I E T FA M I LY
Between the Revolution of 1917 and the end of World War II in 1945, ideologi-
cally fueled policies and the shifting economic and political priorities of the
state placed traditional family patterns under siege. Based on a vision of free
sexual union, women’s emancipation through wage labor, liberating women
from the responsibility of housework, and an eventual withering away of the
family, the Bolshevik Family Code of 1918 ended centuries of patriarchy, making
women equal before the law. It made marriage a civil ceremony and divorce
easily obtainable. It abolished the legal concept of illegitimacy, outlawed adop-
tion (assuming the state would have the resources to raise homeless children),
and, in 1920, legalized abortion. The most radical family code of its time proved
to be a bad fit for a country impoverished and brutalized by the sustained crisis
of World War I, revolution, and civil war, and a population that remained largely
rural, peasant, and newly literate.
For these complex socioeconomic and political reasons, the state reversed its
position by 1936. It now tightened up divorce laws, banned abortion, and
attacked libertarian views of the family promoted during the Revolution. But
one critical element of the original vision of how to rethink the family remained
intact: the Stalinist state never claimed that women’s place was in the home,
because it needed their labor to industrialize the country. Although this ideolog-
ical retreat from the revolutionary family code of 1918 and renewed commit-
ment to strengthening time-honored family values took place when most
European states promoted pronatal policies, there was something distinctly
“Soviet” about the changes of the mid-1930s. They reflected the economic reality
of millions of peasants and women joining the industrial workforce as part of a
single-minded program of industrialization at breakneck speed and of ruthless
collectivization of agriculture. This resulted in a double burden for women, who
were expected to work outside the home and to do most of the chores within it.
The changes likewise gave rise to a new Soviet elite comprised of cadres from
humble social backgrounds sent to school and technical colleges by the state
(Irina’s father, for example), and to a program of targeted and arbitrary terror,
the “purges,” the bleakest chapter in Soviet history. Before the state largely shut
down the Gulag following Stalin’s death in 1953, an estimated 18 to 20 million
Soviet citizens passed through it and another 6 million people were forcibly
exiled to remote regions of the country.3 We still do not know exactly how many
perished as a result of state repression.
Obscuring the boundary between military and civilian involvement, World
War II also battered the Soviet family. Destroying as much as one-third of the
USSR’s national wealth, the war caused an enormous imbalance in the country’s
male–female ratio. Census data reveal that in 1959 there were 20.7 million more
women than men in the USSR, and 8.5 million more women than men under
age forty-two. As late as 1975, the country’s population of 253.3 million included
18.3 million more women than men, although by then the number of men and
women under age forty-eight was roughly equal.4
The Great Patriotic War became a central moment in the evolution—and
legitimization—of the Soviet system. Victory, the propaganda organs screamed,
validated all sacrifices made before and during the conflict. But what about
afterward? The torment and misery of war had given rise to hopes that life
would get better in peacetime. Yet, in defeating the Nazis, the Soviet Union
transformed its geopolitical situation by towering over Eastern Europe, thereby
contributing to emergent strains in the wartime alliance with England and the
United States. Withholding the true extent of the country’s ruin from the
population, the Soviet government vowed to rebuild the Soviet economy to
even higher levels than before the war and gave top priority to “reconstruc-
tion.” Offering only oblique reference to a famine that took one to two million
lives in 1946–47, Soviet propaganda justified the renewed appeal for delayed
gratification by emphasizing the fear of a new war. The call to sacrifice began to
lose its grip in 1947 and 1948, however, as public consciousness turned increas-
ingly to peacetime thereby constituting a change in the previous outlook.5 By
then the authorities had demobilized the Red Army, restored some prewar
levels of industrial output, abolished rationing, and lifted the most stringent
features of martial law.
This return to “normality” in 1948 gave rise to a Soviet-style baby boom
beginning in 1949 and 1950. Those born at this time represented the first Soviet
generation to come of age during a period of evolutionary transformation that
lacked the wrenching adjustments and raw ideological fervor of earlier Soviet
power. It was the Baby Boomers for whom Soviet power had to put up or shut
up. It was crucially important that defeat of the Nazis not only determined how
the Soviet people and leaders viewed the world and lived in it but also guaran-
teed that the rest of the world, particularly the West, would fear the Soviet Union
as the other superpower. This was ever more the case as the USSR, before the end
of the decade, consolidated control over Eastern Europe and manufactured an
atomic bomb, while Chinese Communists fought their way to power in the
world’s most populous nation. Whether the Soviet Union deserved to be con-
sidered the other superpower is beside the point: The outside world feared it as
such; Soviet leaders acted accordingly; and those growing up in the USSR after
the war believed they lived somewhere special.
“ M O T H E R WA S L U C K Y T H AT S H E F O U N D
H E R S E L F A H U S BA N D ”
All but a few of the parents of the Baby Boomers whom I interviewed came from
the upper strata of Soviet society. The family of one of them, Vladimir Mikoyan,
belonged to the top Soviet elite. His paternal grandfather, Anastas Mikoyan, served
in Stalin’s Politburo for more than forty years. His maternal grandfather, Aleksei
Kuznetsov, held the post of Party secretary of Leningrad during the war. Several
others from Moscow and Saratov also came from the Soviet nomenklatura, an elite
subset of Party members from which top-level government positions were drawn.
Other parents fell into the next rung on the social ladder, comprising upper-tier
Party and government officials, state economic managers, high-ranking military
officers, distinguished scientists, and cultural figures. The majority of the parents
belonged to the next category, the ranks of the mass intelligentsia—professionals
(doctors, research scientists, professors, engineers, architects, artists, teachers,
librarians, etc.), government or Party officials, or mid-level functionaries. A few
could be classified as career military officers. Only a handful belonged to the
working class. In most instances, at least one parent had ties to the Moscow or
Saratov regions; however, Stalinist society was remarkably mobile. Most of the
parents without local roots had moved to Moscow or Saratov on the eve of war to
study, or else found themselves there during the conflict, when the government
evacuated tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Owing to the massive casualties of
World War II, some Baby Boomers never knew, or barely knew, their fathers.
World War II made the parents the “war generation,” shaping their attitudes
toward the Soviet system—by further legitimizing it—and its place in the world.
The war created new identities, often becoming the starting point of stories peo-
ple told about themselves and their families. It generated expectations of how
they ought to live after victory had been secured. Tempered by self-sacrifice, the
war generation had already experienced deprivation and sometimes repression
firsthand before the Nazi invasion. But even this could not prepare them for the
hardships and misfortunes of the Great Patriotic War. In considering the cohort’s
parents, we need to keep in mind that we are dealing with the lucky ones—the
survivors.
Although some parents proved reluctant to recount war stories to their chil-
dren, the majority spoke openly about their experiences. Moscow’s Leonid
Terlitsky recalled that his father was sent to an officers’ school and that months
before graduation the whole class was dispatched to the trenches. “Out of close to
three hundred people, five survived. So, my childhood was very much spent
listening to his war stories. He shared his experiences with me in great detail to the
point where I sometimes would think that all this happened to me rather than to
him.” The physical reminders of the struggle shored up an evolving collective
memory that the government co-opted and mythologized to serve contempora-
neous purposes (for example, “if it weren’t for the war, we would be living better
now”). The government’s efforts met with success. Even today, after public
discussion of the Soviet past discredited many core beliefs about the Communist
system, the war remains a sacred topic for many: the Soviet people won the war at
tremendous personal and collective sacrifice, regardless of the system.
The Baby Boomers tapped archived memories—ones they have shared
before—in telling me about how the war impacted their parents. For a lucky few,
the war provided the occasion for couples to fall in love. Lyudmila Gorokhova’s
Moscow-born father met her Kharbin-born mother at a dance in Saratov during
the conflict that both survived unscathed. Evacuated from Moscow to Samara
after the Nazi invasion, Sergei Zemskov’s mother met her future husband there.
His father disappeared in battle without a trace. Boris Shtein’s father grew up
“abroad”—in then-independent Estonia. The Soviet occupation on the eve of
World War II brought him to Moscow, where he met his future bride when both
were students. Yelena Kolosova’s parents became acquainted in Moscow during
the war, which interrupted her mother’s education. She described to Yelena how,
as Nazi forces advanced on the city, the government torched documents, and
how black ash filled the air and bombs rained down on homes on the Arbat
neighborhood, where many of her classmates lived. She joined a brigade that
repaired frozen water mains and later met her future husband, evacuated from
Sverdlovsk, at the Institute of Light Chemical Technology. Both of her parents
had blemishes on their records: “One was the daughter of someone five minutes
short of becoming an enemy of the people; the other the son of someone
missing without a trace.” But this gave them more in common. “They really were
suited for each other and were madly in love with each other,” maintained
Kolosova.
For others, the war meant painful separation, sometimes with tragic conse-
quences. Vyacheslav Starik’s father came to Moscow from Ukraine before the
war to study. Anticipating hostilities, his mother in 1941 wrote him not to return
home. Starik recalled, “He didn’t go, and the Fascists destroyed the entire family
there in 1942.” Tatyana Luchnikova’s mother left Leningrad for Moscow to find
work with her uncle. Her family members who stayed behind perished during
the blockade of Leningrad. A spark flew between Tatyana Arzhanova’s future
parents when they met on a tram during evacuation at the start of the war. They
fell in love, but her father-to-be was shipped off to serve in Mongolia and, after
demobilization, completed his studies in Irkutsk. Her mother waited seven
years for him to return to Moscow before they married in 1948. Vladimir
Glebkin’s father, a mathematician, served in the Moscow home guard during the
war until Soviet forces discovered a strange contraption, which his father cor-
rectly identified as an autopilot device for planes. This not only got him out of
the guard (which had a sky-high casualty rate), but provided him with a
professional interest he would pursue the rest of his life. When Tatyana
Artyomova’s father was drafted, her mother and brother were evacuated to the
Urals, where her mother toiled in a factory. Having survived the war, her parents
decided to start a “second” family. Tatyana was the result. The outbreak of war
found Irina Vizgalova’s mother constructing an aerodrome near Kiev. After rush-
ing back to Saratov she was evacuated to Bashkiria, where she sat out the rest of
the war with her mother. Drafted into the Red Army, Vizgalova’s father “returned
safely from war, although he spent the entire war laying mines. God spared him.
He wasn’t even wounded,” said a grateful Irina.
But for most, the hardships of war overshadowed all of its other aspects.
Aleksandr Babushkin recounted that his father miraculously survived even
though he was shell-shocked three times, and “three times my grandmother
went to bury him.” Natalya Yanichkina’s teenage mother was evacuated to
Central Asia after the Nazis invaded. She found work there with a geological
expedition before malaria devastated her. Aleksandr Konstantinov’s mother’s
first husband perished in the war; her second husband, his father, fell into
enemy hands, an experience that almost cost him a stint in the Gulag. Fifteen
years old when the hostilities broke out, Irina Garzanova’s father enrolled in an
artillery school evacuated from Leningrad. Sent to the war zone ahead of
schedule, he arrived at the Belorussian front in late 1943, where he fell under
machine gun fire. Medics amputated his left leg above the knee but saved his
wounded right leg, which he afterward was able to use in a limited way. Declared
an invalid, “he could have stayed home and bemoaned his fate,” observed
Garzanova. Instead, he graduated from Saratov University, accepted a position
at the Polytechnic Institute, and “retired at age sixty-five in 1992, even though he
could have, as a war invalid, retired at age fifty-five.”
The enormous shortage of men after the war allowed them to have their pick
of women. Valentin Ulyakhin’s father was seventeen years older than his mother.
Natalya Yolshina was also the offspring of such a union. Her father, a physics
teacher, left for war as a widower. He met his second wife at the store where she
sold school supplies. Natalya P., whose parents, both from Saratov, married in
1948, was also a “late child.” Twelve years older than her mother, her father, a
“Communist by conviction,” was thirty-nine years old when she was born and
“ready to start a family.” Natalya Yanichkina “practically didn’t know” her father,
who was fourteen years older than her mother. “Imagine the postwar genera-
tion. They had shot all the men.”
Bakhyt Kenzheyev shared his mother’s chilling account of what became of
the young men who had gone to school with her. “Of the twenty boys in her
class, only three returned from the war, and one of them was a complete invalid,”
explained Bakhyt. “Mother was lucky that she found herself a husband.” But
this meant that she defied tradition to marry a Kazakh Red Army soldier raised
in an orphanage. His father’s (mis)alliance did not go unnoticed by the military
authorities. Ordered to return to his first wife, he refused, only to find himself
discharged from the army and “left on the streets with his pregnant Lena.”
Given Soviet postwar realities—missing fathers—all children were seen as
legitimate. Tatyana Arzhanova knew her father mostly “through letters to Mama
and me.” Tatyana grew up with her mother and grandmother, who “didn’t want
Yevgeniya Ruditskaya with her

parents, between whom there
was a “huge difference” in age:
“When I was born my father
was forty-nine years old and my
mother was twenty-eight. This
was my father’s second
marriage,” she explained.
Courtesy of Yevgeniya Kreizerova
(Ruditskaya)
me to know him” and who told her terrible stories about his alcoholism. She
later had an “unofficial” stepfather who lived with them for several years. Georgy
Godzhello was raised by his mother and her parents and goes by his mother’s
surname because his parents never married. Godzhello said next to nothing
about his father, who had a “second” family, but he enthused that his mother
“is simply unique.”
Some of the parents had married and started families before 1941; the older
siblings resulting from this tended to have a deep influence on the Baby Boomers.
Leonid Terlitsky’s older brother, a jazz musician, not only convinced him to
become an architect but also saw to it that he developed an appreciation for
jazz, a leading source of American “soft” power. Recalled Terlitsky: “He was one
of the first people in Moscow playing jazz bass. He took me to every jazz festival
through my childhood.” His influence did not end here: Terlitsky immigrated to
the United States in the 1970s and credited this to his brother’s influence. Viktor
Alekseyev expressed gratitude to his brother, fifteen years older, for “enthusiasti-
cally supporting” his wish to enroll in the special English-language school. More
important, Viktor’s older brother helped him decide upon a profession. “It was
he who told me that a new department was being opened at the university. He
encouraged me, and I’m very grateful to him for that.”
Whatever their family backgrounds, the war strongly affected the Baby
Boomers’ parents, becoming the defining feature of that generation. Given the
hardships they endured, it is not surprising that they would place top priority
on lavishing their own children with whatever benefits the postwar Soviet system
could offer.
“ T H I S P R O B A B LY C O U L D H A P P E N . . . O N LY I N T H E
S OV I E T U N I O N ”
After 1917, “formers,” the privileged elements of tsarist society disenfranchised
by Soviet power, drew on their cultural capital—the knowledge they possessed,
their behavior, moral qualities, aesthetic sense, good manners, and the like—
to adapt creatively to the new conditions of Soviet life. Many of them thus
recovered their social position and facilitated the upward mobility of their off-
spring by educating them.6 Aleksandr Konstantinov’s parents, whose paths
crossed at Moscow University, fit the bill. Konstantinov was born in Moscow,
but his parents had to relocate to Saratov when he was a preschooler because
his father had been taken prisoner by the Nazis. As Konstantinov explained,
“My father underwent some sort of verification as a result of which he managed
to avoid being sent to the labor camps. However, he wasn’t allowed to remain
in Moscow. He told me he was given a choice: move to Baku, Saratov, or some
other town—and he chose Saratov.” In time his father became a professor at
the Saratov Medical Institute and his mother a scientist at the Anti-Cholera
Institute in Saratov.
Those disenfranchised by Soviet power also survived by marrying people

from less suspect social origins. Owing to class politics that discriminated
against “formers,” affirmative action programs that privileged workers, and tre-
mendous opportunities for upward mobility, some Baby Boomers were born
into families of “mixed” social standing. Irina Barysheva is one of them. Another
is Aleksandr Virich, whose mother was the daughter of Aleksandr Kovalevsky, a
distinguished Saratov statistician, and whose father was the son of Ukrainian
peasants who immigrated to the Far East during a routine famine. Virich’s par-
ents fell in love during their student years in Saratov. Later his father became
Saratov’s chief architect. The war also offered some an opportunity to refashion
their biographies. For example, Aleksandr Kutin’s grandfather, a bookkeeper for
the Riazan-Urals railroad hub in Saratov, had experienced discrimination before
the fighting. Awarded the Order of Lenin during the ordeal, his new identity as
war hero replaced his suspect past as a tsarist official.
Rags to riches tales demonstrate the prospects for upward mobility in Stalin’s
USSR. Tatyana Artyomova’s parents grew up in an orphanage in Ukraine.
“Therefore, they achieved everything on their own.” Both of her parents graduated
from college, becoming, in her words, “typical members of the Moscow intelli-
gentsia.” Vladimir Glebkin’s father from a peasant family became a distinguished
mathematician. Lyubov Kovalyova’s father was born in a poor village near Kursk
in 1905. He later attended special courses for workers and rose quickly, serving as
the main engineer of a large textile plant at the time of her birth. Vladimir
Nemchenko’s father was born into a Ukrainian peasant family. A war invalid, he
met his future wife, a medical student, in Saratov, where he trained at the Higher
Party School, which prepared Soviet functionaries. Olga Gorelik’s mother came
from a family of four that had been abandoned by their father. She became a
Born in 1919, Aleksandr Konstantinov’s mother,

Natalya Sergeyevna, graduated from Moscow
University. Her first husband disappeared
without a trace during the war, after which she
married his friend and classmate Aleksandr
Stepanovich Konstantinov. Courtesy of
Aleksandr Konstantinov
professor of medicine and her sister a doctor. “This probably could happen to
someone only in the Soviet Union because we’re Jews and before the Revolution,
for the most part, they were unable to get an education,” Gorelik opined.
Some family genealogies reflect important trends and opportunities for those
who served the Soviet state. For example, Andrei Rogatnev’s maternal grandfather,
who came from a poor peasant family, became a Civil War commissar at an early
age. Andrei’s grandmother was born to a Siberian gentry family with nine daughters.
His grandfather met her when he asked to be quartered in a home with as “many
girls as possible” in the family. She fled with him as the Red Army pursued their
enemies, the Whites, teaching soldiers basic literacy. Rogatnev’s paternal grandfather
worked as a freight train brakeman and his grandmother as a laundress. Their off-
spring, Andrei’s father, joined the secret police. Rogatnev explained that, as a young
Komsomol activist during the dangerous 1930s, his father found himself between a
hammer and a sickle and had no choice but to accept an invitation to join the secu-
rity forces. “He was probably lucky, too, that he immediately got involved in foreign
intelligence work and didn’t take part in the repressions and doesn’t have any blood
on his hands,” reasoned Rogatnev. Andrei credited glasnost with helping him learn
more about his father, who, he claimed, “became the NKVD’s resident in Mussolini’s
Rome, and from there warned about the impending attack on the Soviet Union.”
Olga Gorelik’s father worked as a journalist and war correspondent. His job took
him to Stalingrad, to Budapest, and then to Kishinev in Soviet Moldavia (now
Moldova). He met his bride to be, “an exceptionally pretty woman,” in Saratov
while on leave during the war, where she, a young doctor, worked in a hospital. They
married before the end of the week, but had to commute until he returned to Saratov
in 1949, after which he was appointed assistant editor of the local Communist Party
newspaper, Kommunist. Larisa Petrova’s father also served as a high-ranking official
in the city Party committee and her mother as a school principal. They met in
Saratov doing Komsomol work after the war. Irina Chemodurova’s father made a
career as a Party historian. A native of Dnepropetrovsk, he escaped to the Volga
when the Germans seized the city, completing his education at Saratov University,
after which he “was sent to take courses at the Central Committee.” He became a
specialist in the history of the CPSU, teaching this mostly unpopular subject at
Saratov University and then in Ufa.
Only a handful of the Saratov Baby Boomers belonged to the working class.
Natalya Pronina claimed to be one of them. So did Irina Kulikova, whose mother
moved from the countryside to Saratov during the war. Too young to fight dur-
ing the conflict, her father completed technical school and labored as a skilled
metalworker at a local factory. Aleksandr Ivanov was born into a working-class
family that lived next door to Kulikova.
A number of Moscow and Saratov interviewees were born to military fam-
ilies, underscoring the prominence of military service in the USSR at that time.
A career officer, Olga Martynkina’s father faced regular transfers. As a result, her
maternal grandmother raised her in Saratov. Olga Kolishchyuk’s father was a
colonel in the Red Army stationed in the Far East. Born in the Belorussian town
of Vitebsk, her mother had fled with her family from the Belorussian front to
Saratov during the war and met her husband when she went to Siberia as part of
a youth brigade. Olga was born there. Afterward she spent two and a half years
in China with her parents, where her father was posted. When her parents relo-
cated to Saratov in 1955 they initially lived with her grandparents. After his family
perished during the war, Sergei Zemskov’s father studied in a military school in
Leningrad and later in a military academy. Born in 1911 into Moscow working-class
families, both of Viktor Alekseyev’s parents grew up in harsh material circum-
stances. His father made a career in the military, returning to Moscow when
Viktor was a young child. A military engineer, Sofiya Vinogradova’s father
achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel and could have climbed even higher had
his family been willing to leave Moscow. Tatyana Luchnikova’s father served in
the Soviet rocket forces. She spent part of her toddler years in Khabarovsk before
the family settled in Kazan. Tatyana moved to Moscow in the ninth grade.
Georgy Godzhello’s father was a career military man, as was his maternal
grandfather who helped raise him. Aleksandr Trubnikov’s father had an army
career before settling down as an engineer at a Saratov factory.
More likely than their Moscow counterparts, some parents of the Saratov
cohort had been sent to the Soviet periphery, where their skills were needed as a
payback to the state for their free higher education. As a result, a number of
Saratovites were born on the fringes of the USSR. Irina Tsurkan’s half-German
mother met her future husband from Moldavia on the Pacific island of Sakhalin,
which fell into Soviet hands as a result of the war. After completing his studies
in Kishinev, Irina’s father worked in Sakhalin as an engineer. Her mother had
arrived there from Saratov as a young physician. Irina was born on the island.
Aleksandr Virich’s parents served a stint in Vladivostok upon completing their
degrees. Born there, Aleksandr returned to Saratov with his parents in 1951. Larisa
Petrova was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and lived there until she was seven
years old. After the war the Soviet government fortified its hold on the Baltic
states reincorporated into the Soviet Union during the conflict, by exiling large
numbers of the countries’ inhabitants to Siberia, settling Russians in the area,
and posting military units in the region. Yevgeny Podolsky’s parents worked in
Kaunas, Lithuania, between 1946 and 1952, when they relocated to Saratov where
his grandparents lived. Yevgeny said that he came from a military family but
failed to mention that his father worked for the secret police in Lithuania.
Members of the Saratov cohort who spent their toddler years in Siberia waxed
nostalgic about the natural wonders of the place. Galina Poldyaeva lived with her
parents on the Kamchatka peninsula between the ages of three and six. Fading
photographs evoked memories of the train ride between Moscow and Vladivostok,
the boat trip from there to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and killer whales at play.
Then there was Kamchatka itself. “I remember,” said Poldyaeva, “how snow
covered everything because the settlement was made up of single-story wooden
homes. When there was a blizzard or heavy snowstorm there was snow up to the
chimneys, and in the morning soldiers would dig us out.” Natalya Pronina grew
Yelena Zharovova’s father, Vadim

Nikolayevich, an engineer from
Izhevsk, married Anna Vasilyevna, a
history teacher from Moscow, in 1947.
Yelena’s father was drafted into the
Red Army in 1953, after she was born.
Courtesy of Yelena Proskuryakova
(Zharovova)
up in Siberia outside the Gulag capital, Magadan. Her mother, from Saratov, and
her father, from Michurinsk, met there in the transportation industry. Pronina
insisted that “no one in Saratov had such a childhood, and that’s because the tiny
little settlement where I lived was surrounded by Mother Nature.” As she put it,
“You could play wherever you liked, run about freely, associate with others freely.
It was like a wild life preserve.” Her parents did not move back to Saratov until
1960, when she became the “seventh” Natasha, the diminutive form of Natalya, at
school. The contrast between the physical beauty of the deep hinterland and the
grim built environment of Soviet power jarred her: “My impression was that
Saratov was a hot, dusty, dirty city.” Arkady Darchenko’s parents accepted assign-
ments in Siberia after his father graduated from the Saratov Polytechnic Institute
in 1949. His father served as chief clerk at a mine along the upper Yenisei River
where Arkady was born in the town of Abakan. “These were the very places where
Lenin was once in exile,” he recalled. Unlike Pronina, Darchenko spoke openly
about the Gulag: “The chief clerks and foremen had been sent there as a mandatory
way of paying back the state. But the workforce, for the most part, was made up of
prisoners mostly from Western Ukraine. Each day,” he added, “they drove the
inmates dressed in black pea jackets to work and back. They escorted them with
German Shepherds. I can still see it. It was sometime in ’53 or ’54, when I was four
years old, and it got carved into my childhood memory.” Darchenko remembered
the impression Saratov made on him in 1956: “There was no embankment, and no
bridge. There were natural beaches right on the riverbank. There were huge barges
with watermelons, which they unloaded by tossing them. Some of them fell into
the river. We kids retrieved them and ate them.”
During their schooldays, only two of the Baby Boomers, both from Saratov,
experienced the death of a parent. Aleksandr Virich lost his mother when he was
fourteen, but had little to say about how her loss affected him. His father remar-
ried a “well-paid doctor,” so the outward manifestations of Virich’s family life did
not change radically. This was not true of Galina Poldyaeva, whose father died
when she was thirteen. Recalled Galina: “I didn’t have any worries until my father
was no longer with us, and my mother hid her feelings from me. Of course, all of
our relatives helped us.” They received other support as well: “Our school had a
very active local committee that provided assistance. They helped all the time.”
Because it remained hard to obtain a divorce in the Soviet Union owing to a
1944 decree and to a severe housing shortage, the Baby Boomers were spared the
complications arising from being from a broken home (but not the problem of
parental conflict due to the inability to get a divorce or to secure separate
housing). The Soviet system eased up on the draconian 1944 legislation after
Stalin’s death, but did not implement real changes until 1963. More important,
the government introduced a form of no-fault divorce in 1968, after which
divorce rates shot up. Taking advantage of the new laws, the parents of some
Baby Boomers divorced about the time their children entered college. In con-
trast, divorce would become part of the Cold War generation’s personal stories
and something that distinguished them from their parents’ generation.
Arkady Darchenko had vivid memories

of his toddler years in Siberia: “The
most amazing thing was the tall grass
that you could get lost in. And the
enormous mushrooms my size!”
Courtesy of Arkady Darchenko
“ I A LWAY S R E M E M B E R E D H O W H U R T F U L ‘ L I T T L E J E W ’
SOUNDED”
Nationality remained a problematic category of self-identity throughout Soviet
history, complicated by state affirmative action programs for minorities, tar-
geted discrimination (as in the case of the Volga Germans and other national-
ities exiled during the war), popular prejudices, religious bigotry, and corruption.
The country represented a true melting pot of peoples, but this only made
ethnic intolerance more apparent when it occurred. As children, the Baby
Boomers paid little attention to their classmates’ family backgrounds or nation-
ality. Part of this had to do with the success of Soviet propaganda (depicting the
Soviet Union as one big happy family), part with the socioeconomic status and
attitudes of their parents, part with the innocence of childhood, and part with
how people remember. Aleksandr Konstantinov claimed, “I made it to the uni-
versity before I realized that there was such a thing as anti-Semitism.” Yet he
admitted that “on the street kids called sparrows [a bird often seen as a nuisance]
‘Yids,’ but I didn’t know what the word ‘Yid’ meant.” His not being Jewish made
it possible for him to conclude that “nationality problems didn’t concern peo-
ple at all.”
Some of the cohort’s grandparents and parents of Jewish descent, however,
experienced official discrimination or everyday anti-Semitism, which has a long
and violent history in Russia. This is particularly the case because of the last
wave of state anti-Semitism in Stalin’s final years, when many Jews lost their jobs
as a result of the campaign to root out “cosmopolitanism.” In currency since the
late 1940s, the term marked someone accused of rejecting Soviet values in favor
of “reactionary” bourgeois ones. The so-called Doctors’ Plot,* made public
shortly before Stalin died, gave rise to fears that a new purge was about to be
launched targeting Jews. Boris Shtein remembered that his maternal grandfather
lost his teaching post for including “too many citations from American sources
in his doctoral dissertation. He was fired at the very start of the 1950s for cosmo-
politanism.” Although Leonid Volodarsky’s father had joined the CPSU at the
front, “he was afraid of everything.” His son explained: “I understand why. There
was the front, war, and after the war things were rough, too. The campaign
against cosmopolitanism was underway when he graduated from the institute.
And, of course, no one gave work to a Jew. He got by taking on some difficult
* Marking the culmination of postwar state-sponsored anti-Semitism, the Doctors’ Plot

refers to a government announcement in January 1953 that nine Kremlin doctors, six of
whom had typically Jewish surnames, had killed several prominent Party leaders and
planned to murder others. Alarmingly, the government condemned Soviet Jews as Zionists
and agents of Western imperialism. After Stalin’s death, however, the new Soviet leaders
acknowledged that the plot had been a fabrication.
odd jobs.” Sofiya Vinogradova remarked that her mother “was born at the wrong
time.” After graduating from Moscow University in 1949, she could not find
work until 1953. The situation improved after Stalin’s death, but too slowly for
some. Lyubov Raitman’s mother, for instance, had trouble landing a job, despite
her credentials. “It’s what they call the Fifth Point,” clarified Raitman, referring
to a quota system for Jews identified according to the fifth item on their Soviet
passports indicating nationality. Eventually, Raitman’s uncle found her mother
a job as an editor.
There is some inconsistency or ambivalence in the interviews regarding the
sensitive subject of whether members of the Cold War generation themselves
experienced anti-Semitism during their childhood. When presented with pass-
ports at age sixteen, Soviet youth could opt for the nationality of either parent.
Because of popular anti-Semitism and official discrimination against Jews, those
with one Jewish parent often chose the nationality of the non-Jewish parent.
Several Saratovites never mentioned that they are part Jewish. Their silence prob-
ably represents a way of coping with Saratov’s more overt anti-Semitism. Yevgeny
Meyer claimed not to have encountered any anti-Semitism growing up, yet he
took his mother’s (Slavic) surname, Podolsky, prior to completing school and
competing for college admission. Aleksandr Trubnikov, the only one of the cohort
to have immigrated to Israel, acknowledged that the problem of anti-Semitism is
“sufficiently complicated.” Trubnikov’s mother is a Jew, but he was considered a
Russian because his father was Russian and he had a Russian surname. His moth-
er’s family suffered at the hands of the Nazi invaders, but afterward he did not
believe she endured any discrimination—at least as a Jew. “Besides, she was a
woman. She did not have to hold any high positions. She did not have to join the
Party. It was men who experienced discrimination,” he stressed.
It is hard to untangle the knotted strands of ambiguity concerning one
Saratovite who asked not to be identified. Her family knew anti-Semitism first-
hand: her maternal grandfather, who had taught at Saratov University, “was
asked to leave in 1952.” That same year her mother “was asked to leave the
Economics Institute.” (She later defended her candidate’s degree, a rough
equivalent to our Ph.D. at the USSR Academy of Sciences.) Two of the interview-
ees’ classmates told me that, when they met her on the street several years ago,
she poured her heart out about the anti-Semitism she had suffered growing up.
Yet her former classmates saw things differently: in almost identical language
they volunteered that she was “strange” and had a “difficult personality.” Several
of her colleagues intimated the same to me. I therefore had certain expectations
when I interviewed her, which she met: she seemed suspicious, even embittered.
She never married. Although she is a successful professional, she cast herself as
a victim. My encounter with her reminded me that there always are multiple
truths. In this case, her personal qualities might have constrained her professional
and private life as much as discrimination had, yet the latter might also have
determined her attitudes and outlook on things.
According to Moscow’s Mikhail Markovich, “half of our class were Jews or

else had one Jewish parent.” Many of their parents came from territories
belonging to the former Jewish-populated Pale of Settlement in Ukraine. Born
in Kirovograd, Igor Litvin’s Jewish itinerant parents eventually settled in Moscow.
His father arrived at age fourteen, finished some economics courses, and found
a position with a Soviet trade organization in Riga, Latvia, on the eve of the Nazi
invasion. His mother’s family perished in the war, leaving her an orphan at age
sixteen. Lyubov Raitman’s father, from Vinnitsa, Ukraine, studied architecture in
Odessa before coming to Moscow for graduate work. He met his future bride,
daughter of a Moscow lawyer, in the capital and married her in 1943. Leonid
Volodarsky cast his Jewish parents’ marriage as something of a “misalliance”
because his mother came from a Moscow family belonging to the intelligentsia,
and his father from a poor family in Ukraine. His father’s experience demon-
strates two contradictory policies after the war: an affirmative action program
for veterans and anti-Semitism. Volodarsky’s father was admitted to the Foreign
Language Institute without the need to pass entrance exams because he had
been a front-line soldier during the war. In due course, he found a position
teaching English there. Yet Volodarsky believed his father would have had even
more professional success had not “nationality hindered him.”
Unlike their Saratov counterparts, the Muscovites of Jewish heritage felt their
“otherness” already in childhood. Although Mikhail Markovich maintained
that “there were utterly no problems ever connected with” his being half Jewish,
that is not how his classmates remembered things. Lyubov Raitman’s first
encounter with her “otherness” came when she was about five years old and her
village nanny took her for a walk. An attractive child with dark hair and inquis-
itive eyes, Lyubov caught the attention of another nanny, also from the village.
When the other nanny asked Raitman “what’s your nationality?” she replied
that she is Russian. “What kind of Russian are you? You’re a little Jew!” Raitman
did not know that her parents were Jewish, “but I understood that this is bad
and I always remembered how hurtful ‘little Jew’ sounded to me.” Yevgeniya
Ruditskaya explained that being Jewish did not pose any difficulties for her at
school, “but outside of school I felt anti-Semitism.” So did Leonid Terlitsky: “Of
course there was street anti-Semitism but I was a tough kid growing up in
Moscow, and I didn’t take shit from anyone so I was in a few fist fights in my
childhood when you try to prove your point of view through brute force.” His
experience ran in the family: “So was my brother who broke someone’s nose for
that very reason, and so was my father who was called a kike on a tram right
after the war. He was wearing a civilian overcoat over his military uniform.
Someone called him a dirty kike and accused him of spending the war in
Uzbekistan. So he threw that son of a bitch off the tram.”
Saratov’s German minority also endured state-sponsored discrimination—
both during World War I by the tsarist government and again, during World War
II. Since the eighteenth century, Saratov and neighboring Samara province had
been home to the Volga Germans. Stalin ordered the mass deportation of these,
and other Soviet Germans, some 750,000 people, to Kazakhstan and Siberia in
September 1941. Yet some escaped this fate because they were married to a
Russian or other Slav. Vladimir Kirsanov’s Volga German mother stayed in
Saratov “only because my father was Russian. They didn’t touch such women.”
Be that as it may, “it was very rare” that a German was able to remain in Saratov.
“Basically 99.99 percent were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. My grandpar-
ents went there and practically all of my relatives,” he volunteered. Irina Tsurkan’s
maternal German grandmother escaped deportation because she was married to
a Ukrainian. Gennady Ivanov’s Volga German mother avoided deportation, but
he insisted it was owing to the arbitrariness of Soviet officialdom. “They sum-
moned her and the committee members said, ‘Why do this to a young girl of
twenty? Why ruin her life? What kind of threat does she pose to us?’ And they
let her stay.” Ivanov probably did not tell the full story; later in life his mother
moved to Aktobe, now in Kazakhstan, where she died. She undoubtedly had
relatives there who had been deported in 1941.
“ C H I L D R E N W I T H G R A N D PA R E N T S
HAD A BETTER CHILDHOOD”
Owing to the serious imbalance in male/female ratios after the war, 85 percent
of Soviet women between the ages of twenty and fifty-five (the official retire-
ment age for women) worked, and by the 1960s more Soviet women than men
had high school diplomas and college degrees. As a result, the USSR set world
records for the number and percentage of working women with secondary and
higher technical educations, distinguishing themselves on the world stage in
terms of the diversity of the positions they filled. But the outpouring of women
into the labor force complicated child rearing, regardless of Western observers’
admiration for Soviet achievements in providing maternity leave and affordable
day care. The Cold War generation’s mothers received fifty-six days off after
giving birth and the right to stay home for a year without pay before returning
to their jobs. A survey conducted by Soviet sociologists in 1962, however, revealed
the material difficulties families faced in raising children: a shortage of chil-
dren’s facilities, lack of time on the part of parents (especially mothers), unsat-
isfactory living conditions, and low pay. Survey respondents recommended
expanding the network of day care and other children’s facilities; lightening
woman’s load at the workplace; and involving husbands more in caring for chil-
dren and in sharing responsibility for housework.7 In 1960 only 13 percent of
preschool-age children in the USSR attended state nurseries, and Saratov failed
altogether in meeting its targeted plan for their expansion.8
Around 1950 the Soviet family remained a multigenerational one, owing to tra-
dition, housing shortages, and economic necessity. Grandmothers—babushki—in
particular, often kept families afloat by taking on the tasks of childrearing, shopping,
cooking, and running the household. Sofiya Vinogradova, for instance, called her
grandmother “the head of the household.” True, some Baby Boomers had an alto-
gether different experience. One of them, Yevgeniya Ruditskaya, recounted,
“Unfortunately, I didn’t know my grandparents. My maternal grandmother was
shot during the war and my grandfather perished at the front. And on Papa’s side
no one survived either.” Viktor Alekseyev’s grandfathers had died before Viktor was
born. He had memories only of his paternal grandmother who lived with the
family until she passed away when he was four years old. Lyubov Kovalyova’s
paternal grandparents died when she was a toddler, and her mother’s parents lived
in a village in Ukraine. “They came to live with us for a year or so only at the very
end, when they were helpless,” divulged Kovalyova. All of Igor Litvin’s grandpar-
ents died before 1950. “Children who grew up with grandmothers and grandfathers
had an altogether different childhood,” he believed.
Those with grandparents agreed. During their preschool years, a good number
of Baby Boomers lived with their grandparents because of their parents’ work
schedules or unsatisfactory living arrangements. Galina Poldyaeva’s maternal
grandparents, who lived in Voronezh, took care of her when she was a toddler
while her parents were stationed in far-off Kamchatka. In fact, she called her
grandmother “Mama”—to the chagrin of her real mother. After Poldyaeva’s par-
ents returned to Saratov, she vacationed each summer in Voronezh, and her par-
ents even discussed sending her to live with her grandparents again because they
had a large apartment in the center of town. Aleksandr Babushkin lived with his
maternal grandmother since his parents did not receive a separate apartment
until 1957, and then only a one-room flat. Because Olga Martynkina’s father
served in the military and moved frequently, her maternal grandmother brought
her up in Saratov so that she did not have to change schools. Martynkina never
mentioned her mother, and this makes her grandmother loom even larger.
Vladimir Glebkin lived with his paternal grandmother outside Moscow until
the end of first grade. His father worked so much that Vladimir by and large inter-
acted with him only in the summer when the family vacationed. Because Sergei
Zemskov’s father served in Murmansk, where his mother became a school
principal, Zemskov mostly lived with his grandparents at their dacha outside
Moscow. Yelena Kolosova resided with her paternal grandparents in the provin-
cial town of Kursk until she was four years old, because her maternal grand-
mother in Moscow suffered from tuberculosis. Yelena warmly recalled that Kursk
“was its own special sort of world that enriched me with its customs, outlook,
and hospitality.” A grimy, inconvenient train that “literally, as they say, stopped
at each goat” linked her world in Kursk with Moscow. After Yelena moved to
Moscow her “beloved” maternal grandmother who lived with her family spoiled
her. Although she received a miserly pension, she “spent it on me,” emphasized
Yelena. “Mother thought she was a bad influence on me. I would have to agree.”
As Sofiya Vinogradova quipped, “Children with grandparents had a better
childhood than those without.” “A grandmother and grandfather, that’s true
Olga Martynkina and her parents in 1953. Owing to her father’s military career, her
parents settled in Moscow, not their native Saratov, after he was demobilized, by which
time she was a student at the Saratov Conservatory and did not consider moving.
Courtesy of Olga Zaiko (Martynkina)
love, of course,” gushed Galina Poldyaeva. Irina Garzanova attended day care
for only four months after coming down with one infection after another. “They
took me from there and I was raised by my grandparents” who resided with her
family. In addition, her maternal grandmother’s sister Baba Lyulya, who never
married, moved to Ulyanovsk oblast where Garzanova worked as a physician, to
look after her infant son. Vladimir Nemchenko was reared mostly by his
maternal grandmother and harbored some resentment toward his father, who
“had no time” for him, especially when he offers unsolicited advice now.
Likewise, Irina Vizgalova’s maternal grandmother brought her up. “My grand-
mother was exceptional,” Vizgalova told me. “I was lucky.” Born in Siberia, her
grandmother began to lose her hearing during the Civil War. Completely deaf
by age thirty, she taught in a school for the deaf but came to Saratov to tend to
her grandchildren. She read lips well and they learned sign language. Gennady
Ivanov’s maternal grandmother, a gynecologist, retired to look after him so that
his mother, also a doctor, could devote attention to her research.
Some Baby Boomers recalled with fondness summer visits to grandparents
who did not live in Moscow or Saratov. The most evocative example comes from
Vyacheslav Starik, who spent three months each summer in his grandmother’s
village located in the backwaters of Orel province. His great-grandmother, who
was still alive when he was young, had given birth to thirteen children, nine of
whom survived, including his grandmother, who was “barely literate” and who
“could write but only with difficulty.” (He did not get to know his grandfather,
killed by a garbage truck, a misfortune Starik blamed on the long shifts people
worked under Stalin and the safety violations that accompanied such policies.)
It was not easy to reach the village. Starik described taking the train from Moscow
to Orel, and from there another train to a station at Verkhovie, site of a factory
that produced evaporated milk. “If I see in a store evaporated milk made in
Verkhovie, I buy it,” stated Starik. His parents would inform their village rela-
tives by telegram that they were arriving, and they would meet their Moscow
relations at the station with a cart and pair of horses, which trudged another
seventeen kilometers to the village. Starik’s family brought sausage, candy, and
other presents to the kolkhoz, which remained “hungry enough” so that farm
women stole grain from the threshing floor to feed their poultry flocks. The
village store sold next to nothing, just sugar and gingerbread with an inedible
filling that was, according to Starik, “a hundred years old.” Visiting the country-
side most summers, Starik saw before his very eyes “how living standards in the
village improved.” Electricity replaced kerosene lamps. The chairman of the kol-
khoz got a telephone. Battery-operated radio receivers appeared. Then televi-
sions. True, there was still no road leading to the district center, “but on the
other hand it was ecologically clean.” Boasted Starik, “Unlike many city chil-
dren, I knew the difference between a horse and a cow.”
No one among the cohort had more famous grandfathers than Vladimir
Mikoyan, grandson of Anastas Mikoyan, a longtime member of Stalin’s
Politburo, and of Aleksei Kuznetsov, hero of the defense of Leningrad during
the 900-day blockade of World War II. His grandfather on the Mikoyan side
expected that the families of his four surviving sons (one had perished during
the war) spend part of the weekend at his dacha, because a family “had to
behave like a family.” Vladimir felt lucky in that he later worked for ten years in
the United States as a Soviet diplomat. But this had a downside to it. “I didn’t
communicate with my grandfather, who back then still had a sharp mind. And
there was a lot that I could have asked him and learned from him,” regretted
Vladimir. That said, he volunteered that his grandfather “told me himself” that
he kept a loaded pistol handy, prepared to take his own life if the security
police ever came to arrest him. He feared shaming himself if tortured and
wanted to soften the blow to the family. Fear of arrest was a legitimate concern
for Mikoyan, because of the fate of Vladimir’s other grandfather, Aleksei
Kuznetsov, whom Stalin had shot in 1950.
The heavy male casualties during the world wars and lower male life
expectancy made grandfathers an endangered species. Viktor D. lost both of his
grandfathers already during World War I. One of Leonid Volodarsky’s grandfa-
thers died in 1941; the other, who worked in a store in Omsk, was killed by ban-
dits during a robbery. Some interviewees knew their grandfathers only vicariously.
In recounting the revolutionary pedigree of her maternal grandparents, Tatyana

Arzhanova told me that her grandmother, born into a Siberian peasant family
with thirteen offspring, was taken in by her godmother to work as a nanny. In
1918 she joined the Communist Party and sometime during the Civil War mar-
ried a Polish socialist. When she was eighteen years old, she gave birth to
Tatyana’s mother and soon thereafter was sent to Moscow to study. Although he
was forty-three when the war broke out, her grandfather was drafted. The family
believed he died in September 1941. Ambiguous language in his war letters led
family members to suspect that his own men might have killed him because he
refused to surrender. Widowed without knowing it, her grandmother waited
years for him to return.
Those blessed with grandfathers underscored the influence they had on them
as they grew up. Galina Poldyaeva spent a lot of time with her grandfather who,
in her words, “taught me how to walk correctly.” He paced back and forth like
Stalin in an army jacket and boots, a style that Galina imitated while sporting a
Panama hat. He also instilled in her his passion for hunting and the chase.
Grandfathers served as role models especially for male Baby Boomers, whose
fathers were busy earning degrees and advancing careers. Georgy Godzhello’s
grandfather played a crucial role in his life, because Godzhello did not see his
father. Andrei Rogatnev also held his grandfather, a dedicated Communist, in
the highest regard. “I now understand,” he told me, “that if all Communists had
been like my grandfather and others that I knew, then, perhaps communism
wouldn’t have been discredited.”
“SHE HAD AN ENORMOUS INFLUENCE ON ME”

The Baby Boomers’ parents availed themselves of state-run day care facilities
only as a last resort. One of the few to attend a state nursery, Saratov’s Aleksandr
Trubnikov generalized from his own personal experience: “Back then women
didn’t stay home with their kids. People believed that the most important thing
was work, and that children needed to grow up as part of the collective. I went
to a nursery school. I had grandmothers, but since we lived far away from them
they didn’t look after us.” Trubnikov added, “Back then they had round-the-clock
nurseries where parents could leave their kids during the week, but I didn’t
spend the nights there, because my parents didn’t work shifts.” Lyudmila
Gorokhova attended a facility where her mother worked as a day care provider.
But owing to its distance from their home, Gorokhova remembered that “they
didn’t drag me back and forth because we had what was called an extended day
facility. I spent the night there. I virtually lived there.” Moscow’s Tatyana
Artyomova also attended day care and took part in an extended day program at
school, because her grandparents were dead. Later her mother hired a babysitter
and then quit work to become a stay-at-home mom when Artyomova was in
second or third grade.
Some families hired nannies in cases in which grandmothers still worked,

lived elsewhere, were sick, or no longer alive. Usually young peasant women,
the nannies influenced the Cold War generation by exposing their charges to a
distinctive frame of reference: that of the countryside. The nannies had different
values, they spoke village Russian, and they tended to observe religious practices
and holidays. Given the bleak situation on the postwar collective farms, peasant
youth looked for ways to escape to the cities; working as a nanny seemed like a
one-way ticket out.
Aleksandr Konstantinov’s nanny, a village girl from Ryazan province, was
roughly eighteen years old when she came to work for his parents. Konstantinov’s
mother’s family had belonged to the Ryazan gentry, and it is instructive that the
“formers” continued to turn to local peasants to provide this service. Konstantinov’s
nanny was the daughter of Auntie Fenya, who had been hired by her former
Ryazan masters after the Revolution. Konstantinov acknowledged his nanny’s
Aleksandr Konstantinov visited his childhood nanny in Ryazan oblast around 2007. She
spent many years in Moscow, then in Saratov, before she returned to the Ryazan
countryside. Courtesy of Aleksandr Konstantinov
influence on him: “The things she told me greatly differed from what my parents
had to say. Moreover, she was critical of my parents.” He recounted: “I saw some
things in them from her point of view, for instance, the oppression of one person
by another. I saw this in how my parents treated her. It was not nice, and I always
defended her.” According to Konstantinov, she “wasn’t really religious,” but she
went to church and “had Easter cakes blessed. It was more of a superstition.”
Konstantinov observed that “it wasn’t accepted” in Saratov to have a nanny, who
was usually called a housekeeper. “It was more common in Moscow.”
His classmate Olga Kamayurova was raised by her paternal grandmother
and nanny, whom Olga remembered as “an absolutely humble and charming
woman, as unselfish as they come.” She not only brought up Kamayurova and
her brother but also Olga’s own daughter and began to raise her daughter’s son.
Olga Gorelik was less than a year old when her nanny, Galya, began looking
after her. “Back then many arrived from the village when they were young and
got hired,” explained Gorelik. “We were like girlfriends.” Galya, who was “not
very literate,” took care of Olga until she turned five, when her parents decided
to send her to kindergarten for a year before starting school.
As Konstantinov observed, it was more common for professional families in
Moscow to hire nannies. Yelena Kolosova’s mother was unable to take even a
few months maternity leave: “I always had nannies, and then I had a grand-
mother who no longer worked,” detailed Yelena. Even when Kolosova lived
with her grandparents in Kursk, Nanny Dusya helped raise her. Kolosova’s
grandparents took in Dusya when she returned to Kursk after her husband had
been killed during the war. She lived the rest of her life with them. “For me,
Dusya was like having yet another grandmother,” added Kolosova. Dusya cele-
brated religious holidays and taught Yelena how to bake the traditional Easter
cake, kulich, and to make the accompanying sweetened cottage cheese, paskha.
Tatyana Arzhanova’s nanny, Vassa Efimovna, or Vasyena, who also came from
the village, liked to take Tatyana to the movies, “and when there were some scary
moments she’d cover my eyes with her skirt,” remembered Arzhanova. Anna
Lyovina idealized her nanny, an illiterate peasant from Tambov province with a
“natural sense of beauty and harmony” and “a real Christian worldview” who
never judged others. “I now understand,” reminisced Lyovina, “that she had an
enormous influence on me.” She took Lyovina to church (her parents allowed
this providing her nanny made no attempt to have her baptized). Lyovina mar-
veled over how her nanny went to bookstores to admire the illustrations in art
books she could not read. When Lyovina gave birth to her first son, her nanny
brought her an art book, Reproductions from the Metropolitan Museum.
“ B A C K T H E N W E W E R E A L L AT H E I S T S ”
Anna Lyovina’s nanny may have exposed her to a “real Christian worldview,” but
the Baby Boomers grew up in an emphatically secular public environment. The
Communist Party launched an antireligious campaign at the end of the 1920s

that destroyed or closed most churches and monasteries, making it difficult, and
dangerous, for the Cold War generation’s parents to remain openly religious.
World War II brought changes in state policy, when the government struck a deal
with the Orthodox Church. In exchange for the church’s support of the war effort,
the government allowed many churches to reopen. After the war, the Kremlin
maintained its softer stance toward religion, realizing the foreign policy benefits
that came with it as the Cold War escalated. But the status quo changed once
again in 1958, when Khrushchev started to shut down churches, monasteries, and
theological seminaries, and intensified antireligious propaganda.9
While many citizens saw the antireligious campaign as a form of repression,
these controversial actions did not necessarily contradict the spirit of the time.
In their autobiographical account, Moscow intellectuals the same age as the
Baby Boomers, Pyotr Vail and Aleksandr Genis, argue that “the intelligentsia
had no room for God.” This remnant of the past seemed incompatible with sci-
ence, progress, and communism. It was not that belief in God was harmful or
dangerous, but “embarrassing.” Indeed, a manual issued by the government at
the time, The Atheist’s Companion, stated categorically that “religion serves as a
break to social progress.” By 1960 the question “Is there a God?” seemed comical
in comparison with “Is there life on Mars?”10 Irina Vizgalova spoke for many:
“Back then we were all atheists. They raised us that way. I grew up like that.”
Influenced by her atheist parents and by the media hype over the Soviet Union’s
launching of Sputnik, Irina Garzanova teased her very religious maternal great-
grandmother: “How can there be a god up there?” Undaunted, the old woman
took Irina to church. Vyacheslav Starik grew up “a complete atheist.” Visiting his
grandmother’s village each summer did not change things because, as he put it,
“There wasn’t a church there. It had been destroyed.” Religious holidays were
loosely observed, he noted, “but there was no religion.”
Outwardly complying with the state’s official position, some families
remained tolerant of religion. It played no role in Yelena Kolosova’s young life,
but an icon of St. Nicholas hung above her nanny’s bed. Andrei Rogatnev
explained that it was not that he grew up with a hostile attitude toward religion,
but “without an opinion of any kind.” Having attended a church school in his
youth, Lyubov Kovalyova’s father became an atheist as a member of the
Komsomol and later of the Party. Be that as it may, she recalled, “We had a tol-
erant attitude toward religion, there was no harsh denunciation of it.” Yelena
Zharovova remembered that “at home we didn’t poke fun at religion. I knew
that there’s a God. I sometimes went to church, although I didn’t know any rit-
uals or prayers.” Viktor D.’s father in Saratov did not know if there was a God,
but he taught Viktor that there is a higher power summoning people to adopt a
moral point of view. “In effect,” reflected Viktor, “it’s the essence of all the best
that humankind has lived through, the suggestions for living worked out over
the centuries found in any religion.”
Despite ruthless state policies toward religion, the Baby Boomers’ grandpar-
ents, especially grandmothers born before the Revolution, kept religion alive.
Many of them did not hide their religiosity—a “privilege” that came with age in
the Soviet Union. Galina Poldyaeva’s grandmother was a believer, but her
mother, a committed atheist, refused to have Galina baptized. Vladimir
Kirsanov’s family had no believers, except for his Volga German mother who
had attended the local Protestant church before the Soviet regime blew it up.
Aleksandr Kutin told me, “My maternal grandmother was very religious. And all
of my maternal grandfather’s relatives were also religious. Many people their age
were.” Aleksandr Ivanov insisted there was nothing religious about his family,
but then confided that “an icon hung in the apartment,” that his parents had
him baptized, that his “grandmother sometimes went to church,” and that he
had “a Godfather.” Tatyana Kuznetsova’s maternal grandmother did not go to
church, but believed in God. Recalled Tatyana: “Everyone baked Easter bread
and colored eggs.” Natalya P.’s maternal grandmother taught her a prayer when
she was little. However, her father, a Communist “really chewed out Grandma.
It wasn’t that he was afraid that someone would find out, but he really strongly
believed in what he did.” A self-described “atheist by nature,” Natalya Pronina
acknowledged that religion nonetheless played a role in her life: “The other kids
in my class didn’t know that my maternal grandmother was an Old Believer.
Insofar as this was forbidden back then, she carefully kept this hidden.”*
Moscow’s Vladimir Glebkin remembered that religion played no role during his
childhood, yet admitted that his grandmother was religious: “However, she
wasn’t a fanatic. My father and mother, they, too, didn’t forget, well, customs,
especially on Easter.”
Some grandmothers took things further and arranged to have their grand-
children baptized, even though this involved some risk because priests had to
report baptisms to state authorities. Not uncommon was the experience of
Arkady Darchenko, who confided, “My parents aren’t religious, but my grand-
mother was. My great-grandmother, who looked after me when we first arrived
in Saratov, was very religious. When I was five she took me to church and had
me baptized.” Similarly, Olga Kamayurova told me, “You know, as Communists,
my parents were atheists. My grandmother had me baptized in church secretly,
probably when I was about three years old. But afterward, until I reached adult-
hood, I wasn’t at all interested in religion.” Neither was Irina Tsurkan, who also
knew she had been baptized: “They did so on the sly, entrusting this to some
granny who lived in our building. She took me there, baptized me, and brought
me back. And everyone acted as if no one knew a thing about what had hap-
pened.” Mikhail Markovich mentioned that the women in his mother’s family
* The Russian Orthodox Church underwent a schism in the mid-seventeenth century, after
which those rejecting reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon continued to practice old
rituals. The Old Believers comprised numerous subdivisions, which were persecuted
by both the tsarist and Soviet states.
harbored a deep respect for religion and that his grandmother became a church
elder in her fifties. “And believers had me baptized.”
One Muscovite, Valentin Ulyakhin, became an Orthodox priest after the col-
lapse of the USSR, thereby fulfilling his father’s own dream. Born in Krasnodar
in the Kuban region in 1907, his father had attended a church primary school
and would have become a priest if the Russian Revolution had not made this
impractical. He kept his spiritual thoughts to himself during the Stalinist 1930s,
but not during the war. Repeating a popular saying, Father Valentin quipped,
“There are no atheists in the trenches.” Although he did not become a conscious
believer until the death of his father in the mid-1970s, Valentin had been intro-
duced to the church: “I remember how Grandma and I prayed in the Church of
the Redemption, how she lit candles, how we took Communion, because I was
still very young back then and could take Communion without confession.”
Ulyakhin admitted that his classmates “were non-believers. Perhaps they
believed, but if they did they kept it secret.”
Most of the Jewish Baby Boomers also observed that religion played no or
little role in their childhood, and this is not surprising given the high levels of
education among this group. Moscow’s Leonid Terlitsky maintained that his
“father was well educated in Jewish law and tradition but the family was secular.”
Moreover, many parents belonged to the Party. Yet even in such cases, religion,
or religion as custom, had not completely disappeared from everyday practices.
As Yevgeny Podolsky reminded me, “Religion back then was forbidden, and the
authorities carefully monitored this, especially among families of Party mem-
bers.” That said, he confided that “sometimes grandmothers might say something
about it.” Olga Gorelik’s Jewish family belonged to Saratov’s Party elite and kept
an atheist veneer, but her maternal grandmother was a believer. “I remember
perfectly well that Grandmother went to the synagogue. She knew Yiddish. I also
understood some. However, no one ever taught me, and in general my parents
had no desire to do so. On the contrary, they believed that everything they had
had been given to them by Soviet power. And, in fact, that’s the way it was.”
Viktor Alekseyev linked religion with cultural tradition, noting that his grand-
mother knew Yiddish, and “somehow kept up these traditions.” Yet they didn’t
impact his father, a Party member: “In general religion left no trace on his world-
view. I never noticed any.”
The generational split within families between the Baby Boomers’ grandpar-
ents and parents regarding religion bequeathed a mixed legacy. The Soviet state
may have taught the Cold War generation that religion was an embarrassing rem-
nant of the past; however, the need to learn how to “act Soviet” in dealing with it
transformed religion into a political issue. Said Terlitsky: “So many chose to sort
of follow the rules and keep quiet just to stay alive.” Be that as it may, most fam-
ilies observed cultural practices with religious overtones, especially at Christmas
and Easter or during Hanukkah. Doing so further separated public from private
life while providing elements of continuity with Russia’s pre-Communist past.
There is also the question of one’s innate spirituality. Saratov’s Larisa Petrova
captured this point best: “We were all atheists. Religion didn’t interest us. We
didn’t go to church, but at heart there was something.” She elaborated, “We
always believed in some sort of higher power. You’d be anxious about an exam
and say ‘God help me.’ You know, we always said the word ‘God,’ ‘God help me.’
We didn’t even think about it.” There is also such a thing as a spirit of the time.
Cited earlier, Vail and Genis emphasized that the highly secular Soviet age of sci-
ence that had seemingly made religion obsolete in the early 1960s, in time cre-
ated a spiritual vacuum that needed to be filled in some people.11
“ T H I S S E E M E D A LT O G E T H E R N O R M A L T O U S ”
Upon coming to power, the Bolshevik government confiscated all private housing
and established a monopoly over it, thereby obscuring from the start the lines
between public and private life. In contrast to Western Europe and the United
States, the housing strategies of individuals and families were not based on
independent choices, but on state policies determined by ideological preferences.
Making control over living space a political rather than an economic issue became
such an effective strategy that it amounted to a form of symbolic yet discreet vio-
lence.12 This is especially the case because Stalin’s government gave low priority
to housing, despite the enormous population influx into the cities as a result of
rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture, and later from the dev-
astation of war. Horrendous overcrowding became the norm for virtually all but
the most privileged. Most Soviet citizens lived in communal apartments (kom-
munalki), an unofficial symbol of Soviet power at the everyday level. Each room
or cluster of rooms in apartments and homes intended to house single families
now accommodated several different families, often multigenerational ones,
who shared not only bathroom and kitchen facilities but also the full range of
human emotions and dysfunction that come with overcrowding.13
After World War II, class considerations, the whims of local authorities, Party
membership, an individual’s value to the state, and corruption, as before, gov-
erned housing policies. The vast majority of the population continued to live in
communal apartments, managed by a person responsible for making sure
inhabitants shared bathroom and kitchen facilities and cleaning responsibil-
ities. The housing manager could also monitor the inhabitants’ comings and
goings. If communal housing policies represented optimal conditions for
molding the new Soviet man and woman of the Stalin era, then a mass exodus
into individual apartments provided ideal conditions for molding the post-
Stalin Homo Sovieticus. Making the expansion of housing a top priority,
Khrushchev mass produced prefabricated modular apartment complexes known
colloquially and not unaffectionately as khrushcheby, “Khrushchev’s slums,”
whose appearance transformed the Soviet urban landscape. Urban housing
stock doubled between 1950 and 1965. One hundred eight million people moved
into new apartments between 1956 and 1965.14 The exodus out of the kommunalki
proceeded rapidly. It began with the political and Party elite, spread to highly
educated professionals and skilled workers, and finally to lower and unskilled
elements. The trend intensified under Leonid Brezhnev when, between 1965 and
1978, 10.5 million people a year moved into their own quarters.
Despite the rapid expansion of housing, the state failed to meet its citizens’
rising expectations, in part owing to the astounding rate of urbanization in the
postwar Soviet Union. In 1959 the urban population made up 52 percent of the
total. This grew to 62 percent by 1970, to 70 percent by 1980, and to 74 percent by
1990.15 In 1970, 23.7 percent of married couples lived with at least one parent. In
1979, by which time most of the Cold War cohort had married and had become
parents, this figure remained substantial at 19.7 percent. (In comparison, the
corresponding figure for the United States was approximately 1.5 percent.16) The
inadequacy of the urban housing stock proved to be another source of dissatis-
faction. As late as 1959, only 34 percent of urban residents enjoyed running water,
and only 2.2 percent had hot water. Indoor plumbing was available to 31.4 per-
cent of city dwellers, central heating to 22.4 percent, and bathing facilities to 8.9
percent.17 It is therefore not surprising that Soviet citizens continued to see inad-
equate housing as a primary concern.18
At the time, four types of housing existed in the Soviet Union: individual
(often wooden) homes (usually found in rural areas and in provincial cities);
government apartments distributed through the workplace; government flats at
the disposal of municipal authorities; and cooperative flats that individuals pur-
chased. The construction of cooperative apartment buildings reflected not only
the government’s commitment to improving living standards but also economic
realities: people had money to spend, yet little to spend it on, and the housing
shortage remained acute. By 1977 more than two million Soviet families dwelled
in cooperative apartments, and an estimated one million families were “in line”
to purchase one.19
The most graphic memories of living conditions shared by the Cold War
cohort have to do with life in communal apartments. “Can you imagine what a
communal apartment was like?” asked Saratov’s Irina Tsurkan, who lived with
her parents in a one-room communal apartment. She described a long hallway
with six rooms off of it, each inhabited by a separate family. “Whenever there
was a holiday, there was company in each room. There was singing, all sorts of
noise, a real uproar.” When Olga Kolishchyuk’s family returned to Saratov in
1955, they moved in with her grandparents who occupied a single room “six
meters long,” she claimed. Irina Kulikova’s family “lived in a communal flat
without indoor facilities.”
In Moscow, Viktor Alekseyev, his parents, older brother, and grandmother
occupied a communal flat until his father received a two-room apartment
through work when Viktor was ten years old. Anna Lyovina’s family rented a
room in a “hut” before occupying a shabby apartment in a barracks outside
Moscow. “Excuse me, but the toilet, God knows where, was on the street,” she
recalled. Under Khrushchev the family moved back to the city into a communal
apartment. Igor Litvin’s family dwelled in an apartment located in an old

wooden building on the outskirts of Moscow known locally as the “Jewish
house,” because “no one but Jews rented rooms and apartments” in it. Recalled
Litvin: “In 1956 or 1957 when Eisenhower was supposed to visit Moscow, it was
decided to raze all of those small houses.” After they demolished the building,
his father obtained a two-room communal flat in central Moscow, where they
remained until his parents bought into a co-op when Litvin was in college.
Bakhyt Kenzheyev remembered “eighteen people lived in my grandmother’s
three-room apartment.” Then he, his parents, and sister moved into a separate
communal flat. “It was in the basement. It was a room of sixteen square meters
for the four of us.” He added that, from today’s perspective, “the poverty we
lived in back in the 1950s is simply unimaginable. But we were nevertheless
happy because we didn’t know any better.” Tatyana Arzhanova lived with her
mother, grandmother, stepfather (temporarily), and nanny in a two-room third-
floor communal apartment adjoining a cinema whose sounds penetrated the
apartment’s walls. “I don’t know anyone in the West who could imagine such a
family life.” She described the unventilated kitchen without hot water situated
in the corridor. Because the bathroom in the apartment had an occupant, Auntie
Katya, Arzhanova and her family had to bathe in the public facility across the
street. “But this seemed altogether normal to us,” explained Tatyana. Her mother
always met her downstairs when she returned home “because it really was awful
to go upstairs.” The entranceway served as a haven for local drunks who relieved
themselves there because there were no toilets nearby. “It was disgusting,”
objected Arzhanova. So much so that she scrubbed down the stairs before her
friends came to visit on her birthday and other occasions. Her mother also
waited for her at their entranceway for safety reasons: Arzhanova’s mother often
found documents or purses abandoned by thieves. Once her mother came
across an otherwise empty bag with a real treasure in it, a recording of
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. Since her family had recently acquired its
first Victrola, they “listen[ed] to it with great pleasure.” Leonid Terlitsky’s family
lived in communal apartments until he was fourteen years old. Terlitsky’s reality
seemed altogether normal, too: “The family was large. We lived in a single room.
There was always food on the table. There was always clothing on our backs.
I went on summer vacations with my parents.”
Moving into a new government flat or co-op amounted to a new way of life.
Yevgeniya Ruditskaya resided with her parents in a one-room flat in an apartment
with ten other families. They managed to exchange this room for a larger one in
another building and eventually to buy a cooperative apartment. “I remember
how Mama walked into the apartment and said ‘I can’t believe it. Is this really
mine?’” reminisced Ruditskaya. Arkady Darchenko recalled that most people in
Saratov lived in communal flats: “But then, before our very eyes, they began to
move us out of communal flats into our own. People could see that a lot of new
living space became available and people began to live on their own. More
things began to show up in the stores.” Olga Kamayurova’s family lived in a

communal flat in which they shared a kitchen with two other families until
1963, when they purchased a co-op. “The apartment was considered luxurious.
It had three rooms and was located in a brick building with all amenities. My
mother’s salary allowed her to hire a housekeeper.”
Saratov’s “housing market” offered another variant: individual wooden
homes, usually without indoor facilities, similar to ones in villages, found
especially in the Glebuchev Ravine neighborhood, which was packed with them.
They too sometimes housed more than one family. Galina Poldyaeva lived in
such a home until her father, a worker, was given an apartment in 1961. Olga
Martynkina resided with her grandmother: “She had her own house with a
garden. Then they tore them down and built apartments. Grandma had a coop-
erative apartment—a one-room apartment with a large kitchen, a good
apartment.” Aleksandr Ivanov’s family also lived in a small house at first. Then
“they built the khrushcheby, which in principle was state housing,” he explained.
“Some were given these apartments, but not us. My parents had to buy a co-op
apartment with their own money.”
Those who did not experience communal living were the children of the Party
or government elite, of prominent professionals or cultural figures, or of some
high- to mid-level professionals or Party workers. Vladimir Mikoyan, grandson of
a member of Stalin’s Politburo, grew up in a well-appointed private home. But
this had its downside. “To be honest,” he recalled, “I never liked living in a private
house because I couldn’t invite friends over, owing to the contrast.” When the
family moved into an apartment when Mikoyan attended School No. 20, he
could finally ask classmates to his place. Son of a KGB official, Andrei Rogatnev
lived in an apartment located in a building the Ministry of the Interior con-
structed for its employees. Olga Gorelik’s father was deputy editor of Saratov’s
Party newspaper and later assistant to the head of the local Party organization.
“We lived in a building next to the State Bank. Basically, it was a state within a
state,” remembered Gorelik. Several of her classmates, also the children of Party
officials, grew up in the same or neighboring downtown building. On a more
modest scale, Georgy Godzhello lived with his mother and grandparents in a
“very small” two-room apartment. His grandparents occupied one room of eight
square meters, and he and his mother the larger one of eighteen square meters.
“But we always had a shelf of books,” he recalled. Tatyana Artyomova’s family of
four also inhabited a small two-room flat. “I really loved this apartment and
thought it was really a good one because it had high ceilings and large windows.
The small room was very tiny and had only a bed and a desk. Nothing else would
fit. That was my brother’s room. The rest of us lived in the bigger room.”
All but a handful of families improved their living arrangements during the
1950s and 1960s. Conditions for Irina Barysheva’s family, who inhabited two small
rooms on Saratov’s main thoroughfare, did not get better because, even though her
father distributed apartments, they could not buy one since they “lived on only
one salary.” Similarly, Natalya Yanichkina replied that “we didn’t live in a com-
munal apartment, but didn’t move into a new flat.” Irina Kulikova’s father worked
at a factory that built its own apartment houses for its employees. “People live even
worse than us. We’ll wait our turn,” he told her. But her father died before receiving
an apartment, so the family lost out. “Things improved, but only through our own
efforts. We didn’t get a thing from the government,” regretted Kulikova.
No matter how intrusive the state, one’s personal space, substandard as it
might be, could serve as an arena of what historian Moshe Lewin calls hidden
resistance.20 It was here that people often spoke their minds (although the street
was better), told jokes (frequently at the system’s expense), listened to foreign
radio broadcasts (or chose not to), read and discussed literature (official and
otherwise), entertained guests (usually trusted friends), celebrated holidays
(including religious ones), nourished each other, bickered, and made love. It
was here that one could personalize otherwise look-alike furniture and belong-
ings. It was here that children learned to read between the lines, when to “speak
Soviet,” and when to bite their tongues. Moving into individual flats strength-
ened the nuclear family. And what went on in families reproduced Soviet
everyday realities, but also, in time, transformed them.
“ T H E L E S S Y O U K N O W, T H E B E T T E R Y O U ’ L L S L E E P ”
Because remembering could be dangerous in Stalin’s Russia, the parents of the
Cold War generation practiced caution in talking about certain aspects of their
lives. Despite the heady optimism of the Soviet 1950s, the legacy of mass repres-
sion and the subculture of violence it created cast a shadow over the Baby Boomers’
childhood. During Stalin’s terror, fear of others had even spread to family mem-
bers, as some people sought to distance themselves from their arrested relatives by
fleeing to other locales, by falsifying family histories, or by relying on personal
connections to stay afloat in the sea of uncertainty. Yet repression could also
strengthen family ties and identities because the whole family of someone
designated an “enemy of the people” became vulnerable to persecution.
After Stalin’s death, the post-Stalin leadership shut down most labor camps and
“rehabilitated” many of those who had passed through or died in them by acknowl-
edging the victims’ innocence and restoring the property and rights to those still
alive. Memorial, a nongovernmental organization set up during perestroika, esti-
mates that the authorities rehabilitated 612,000 people between 1953 and 1957. But
in declaring camp inmates innocent, the Party leadership did not name the guilty
or publicize rehabilitation procedures, since the new policy represented more of a
political than a legal move. The state failed to institutionalize the process of rein-
tegrating Gulag survivors into the system. It did little to mitigate survivors’ anxiety,
depression, trauma, and fear of rearrest as they dealt with arbitrary officials and
ambivalence at all levels—even from family members—in their attempts to have
their property restored, to find jobs, and to obtain housing. Historians of the Gulag
point to how the pathology of the camp system and its subculture affected everyone
in Soviet society. This made it possible for the state to offer rehabilitation at the
price of silence in this Khrushchevian “deal” with society.21
Saratovites and Muscovites shared similar stories about their families’ first-
hand experience with repression, the great equalizer in Soviet society. Olga
Kamayurova’s maternal grandfather in Saratov was repressed in 1937, when her
mother was thirteen. He died locked up. Irina Kulikova’s maternal great-grand-
mother, a peasant, was arrested (and later rehabilitated), “simply because she let
her tongue wag.” Olga Martynkina’s family also “suffered from the personality
cult,” a euphemism for Stalinism. Her uncle’s father-in-law perished in prison,
making her aunt an “enemy of the people.” Martynkina’s husband’s uncle also
spent time in Stalin’s labor camps. The family lived in Tomsk at the moment of
his arrest after which “they left Siberia immediately for Saratov, so as to escape.”
Aleksandr Kutin’s uncle had been sent to camp because he had had been taken
prisoner of war. Calling the Stalinist policy of incarcerating liberated Soviet
POWs “vile,” Kutin underscored that rehabilitation proved to be bittersweet.
“Life simply didn’t work out for him,” he maintained. “They didn’t give him
suitable work.”
Moscow’s Boris Shtein related that his grandfather’s brother “was destroyed
and the rest of his family exiled to Baku.” The return of the repressed to Moscow
when the Gulag shut down left an indelible memory on Shtein: “My grandfather
helped them a lot. These were close acquaintances and relatives and he tried
hard to help them materially. People lived with us before returning to their
homes.” He likewise recounted that his mother told him how she and his grand-
mother “sat at the window each night until a certain hour when they came after
people. And only then they went to bed. According to my mother’s stories, at
least half the people in the building were arrested,” he said.
Yelena Kolosova’s paternal grandfather ended up in Stalin’s Gulag. His crime:
he had survived a Nazi concentration camp and lived to tell about it. Her
maternal grandfather also became a victim. He “was supposed to have been
repressed,” shared Yelena, “but he committed suicide so that his family would
not fall into the category of the family of an enemy of the people.” Mikhail
Markovich’s great-grandfather perished in the Gulag and his wife and older chil-
dren passed through the camps. The children later acquired a higher education,
but “none became a Party member,” observed Markovich. Yet this deep-rooted
detachment from the regime was not true of numerous other families, illus-
trating that the social pressures to comply, complicated by the dynamics of gen-
erational change, could produce Communist believers, too. For instance,
Vladimir Sidelnikov’s maternal grandparents, both peasants, were repressed
after someone denounced them. His grandmother spent fifteen years in the
Gulag near Magadan. Raised in an orphanage, Sidelnikov’s mother nonetheless
became a hard-edged Communist who did not blame the system for her own
mother’s misfortune, dismissing it as a “terrible mistake.”
Although arbitrary, the terror targeted Old Bolsheviks, consuming those who
made the Revolution, as Moscow’s Sergei Zemskov’s account confirms. Zemskov
comes from a family of revolutionaries, many of whom were repressed in 1937.
Some of them survived the ordeal, especially the women, one of whom was his
grandfather’s sister, who languished for almost twenty years in the camps. His
own grandmother “sat” for five years. Zemskov vividly recalled how, when he
was about seven years old, he encountered at the family dacha former Gulag
inmates who had been rehabilitated. Zemskov especially remembered that,
“despite all, they preserved the romantic notions they had toward the Revolution.
Not a single one of them became embittered or talked about how much he or
she had suffered.” Some voiced hostility toward Stalin or Beria, head of the
security police, but their ideological and moral commitment to the system never
wavered. “They made a huge impression on me,” maintained Zemskov.
Repression struck closest to home for Saratov Baby Boomers Viktor D. and
Natalya Yanichkina. Viktor’s father “sat” it out in Siberia before being allowed to
return to Saratov in the mid-1950s. Natalya’s mother and grandmother were
charged with “cosmopolitanism” in 1952 and repressed. According to Yanichkina,
her mother and grandmother (she barely knew her father) “had lots of furniture
and things that had been brought from [East] Germany after the war. When my
mother began wearing clothing not seen elsewhere, someone denounced them.
This turned out to be a kind of show trial, and that’s why they imprisoned both
mother and daughter.” Yanichkina’s mother threw a hunger strike during her
interrogation until they brought her child, ill with pneumonia, to see her.
Afterward, the police packed her mother off to far-off Vorkuta. Yanichkina’s care
fell into the hands of her “very old” great-grandmother and step-grandfather,
who raised her until her mother was amnestied and then rehabilitated after
Stalin’s death. Although cut short, the prison sentence took its toll. Her grand-
mother suffered a heart attack in the camps; she and her husband divorced after
her release. And her mother decided against starting a second family. “She’s not
a nun, but she was afraid.”
Some families managed to avoid the terror, yet in recounting how they did so,
the Cold War generation emphasized that things could have been otherwise and
that, in this way, their families could just as easily have been swept up into the
whirlwind. Aleksandr Virich’s grandfather was a distinguished prerevolutionary
statistician. “He was lucky, for he died in time, in 1934. He would have been
repressed in 1937,” averred Virich. Vladimir Kirsanov’s father’s peasant family left
for the city before collectivization. “I don’t know what would have happened to
them had they stayed,” he wondered.
Moscow’s Andrei Rogatnev shared how his grandfather, an Old Bolshevik
and Civil War commissar, left the Red Army to take up a diplomatic post. This
saved him. “Our entire family understands this simply as a coincidence, as good
fortune.” Tatyana Arzhanova’s grandfather turned in his Party card to protest the
arrest of innocent friends. He died in the war, which “probably helped from
falling himself into the meat grinder.” A kick in the temple by his favorite horse
killed Bakhyt Kenzheyev’s Kazakh grandfather in 1923. After his grandmother
died a year later, Bakhyt’s father and his siblings were placed in an orphanage.
If Kenzheyev’s grandfather had lived five years longer, “he would have been shot,
in which case the children would have ended up in a children’s home in Siberia
as enemies of the people,” claimed Kenzheyev. Anna Lyovina’s grandfather, it
will be recalled, died in 1930. “I know this sounds blasphemous, but the fact that
he died in 1930 saved him,” she reasoned. Moreover, her aunts were expelled
from the university for attending church. Others voiced relief that no one in
their families had been purged, that no one, as Galina Poldyaeva put it, “fell
into the meat grinder.”
Repression remained a taboo topic in some families. Olga Martynkina
remarked that her grandmother “kept everything secret.” Irina Tsurkan’s grand-
mother told her “the less you know, the better you’ll sleep, and never told us a
thing.” Natalya P. maintained that her parents “didn’t discuss such things.” But
she—and others—still found out what was going on, and that is the point. “I
can recall that we had a neighbor who venerated Khrushchev, because he freed
him [from the Gulag]. He was very intelligent and soft spoken.” Similarly, Irina
Garzanova remembered meeting the son of her mother’s friends arrested in the
1930s for drawing a picture of Hitler. He languished away in the camps until
1956. No one “spoke about this as long as he was in camp,” related Irina. “But
when he returned, of course, the matter was discussed. He’d drop in to visit with
us often.” As a young adult Natalya Yanichkina would want to know more about
her mother’s ordeal in Vorkuta, but “when I was young we didn’t discuss it,” she
stated. “I knew that Mother had been repressed, but back then we didn’t use the
term, which appeared much later. I knew that my mother had been imprisoned,
and I was ashamed of this. I didn’t want to know a thing.” Andrei Rogatnev lived
in a large building housing agents of the secret police. During the repression of
the 1930s waves of arrests rolled through the building. “We children grew up
together and we continue to get together, but no one ever said that someone else
was the son of an enemy of the people, the son of someone who had been
repressed. They protected our childhood.”
It is hard not to agree with Anatoly Shapiro that “there were repressed indi-
viduals in practically every family.” “And when that was the case,” agreed
Viktor D., “the whole family suffered, not just the repressed.” Moreover, as
Shapiro maintained, “Fear was instilled in my parents, and it exists even today.
I also was afraid. It was passed on genetically.” Vladimir Glebkin corroborated
that his parents “to the very end did not believe that the harsh Stalinist system
had come to naught; this fear remained with them always.” As a result, parents
inspired in their offspring awareness of the need to be cautious—a survival skill
that arguably came at the system’s expense, for it ineluctably raised the question
of why this was the case. Anatoly Shapiro’s parents feared talking about politics
because, as he put it, “the children might say the wrong thing to someone on the
street and there would be repercussions.” When his grandparents wished to
keep something from the children, they spoke in Yiddish. Vladimir Sidelnikov’s
parents did not tell him that his maternal grandmother had endured a fifteen-year
Gulag sentence. “You couldn’t back then, because I might have let the secret
out,” elaborated Sidelnikov. Andrei Rogatnev remembered telling jokes about
Khrushchev. Andrei’s father, a KGB agent, warned him, “Andriusha, please don’t
tell anyone this at school.”
Neither of Pyotor Krasilnikov’s parents in Saratov, both Communists, men-
tioned politics in his presence. He explained: “They lived through 1937, and
things remained strict enough for some time after Stalin’s death. Therefore, there
were practically no such conversations.” Similarly, because Vladimir Kirsanov’s
mother’s Volga German family had been deported during the war, “fear of
repression lingered. Generally, they spoke little about politics at home,” he
recalled. Olga Kolishchyuk admitted that “during my childhood they told me
that I had to bite my tongue, because the cult of personality was a dangerous
thing. You might blurt out something as a joke and then there’d be a knock on
the door at night and they’d take your parents and you’d remain an orphan. And
they told me over and over again not to say anything out of stupidity.”
“IF I DIE, CONSIDER ME A COMMUNIST”

The first postwar attempt to study the Soviet family, the Harvard Project, based
on interviews of émigrés conducted in 1950–51, reveals what constituted the
Soviet dream for the Baby Boomers’ parents, most of whom were born in the
decade following the Revolution of 1917. On the eve of World War II, this gener-
ation voiced the greatest enthusiasm for the Soviet experiment. The Harvard
Project concluded that prewar Homo Sovieticus believed in success and approved
of specific features of the Soviet welfare state such as government ownership of
the means of production, free education and medical care, and social mobility.
Yet the new Soviet man and woman also expressed widespread hostility toward
the collective farm system, resented the terror, and felt an enormous gap between
themselves and their top leaders. Further, they either totally believed what the
state told them or totally rejected it.22
World War II hardened these attitudes toward state propaganda but also
transformed this generation’s expectations. Delayed gratification—an inherent
feature of the Soviet system from the start—began to lose its appeal just as the
state called for further self-sacrifice to ward off the new threat of conflict as the
unfolding Cold War exacerbated the paranoid social and cultural climate that
characterized postwar Stalinism. After Stalin’s death in 1953, however, the impet-
uous Khrushchev (1953–64) ended rule by terror, improved the bleak living con-
ditions, sought to reduce tensions with the non-Communist world, eased the
misery in the countryside, slammed Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress in
1956, fashioned a new social contract based on his populist leadership style, and
promoted the Thaw in Soviet cultural life—a period rich in promise character-
ized by an episodic relaxation in censorship restrictions and openness that had
a tonic effect on the intelligentsia. Rejecting terror, the Party sought compliance
by different means, including a dispersal of authority and calls for exemplary
personal conduct. Its success in all of these areas underscored dazzling accom-
plishments in the Soviet space program and scientific-technical revolution. In
the short run, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and the Party’s acknowledge
of former “falsifications” may have increased the public’s confidence in the
system and its trust in the media. It was at this time that an independent public
opinion emerged in the Soviet Union.23
This is important because a far larger percentage of the Baby Boomers’ par-
ents belonged to the Communist Party than the population at large: at least one
of the parents of 80 percent of the interviewees joined the CPSU. They thus consti-
tuted the system; the values and attitudes they instilled in their children helped
to determine the fate of the USSR. In 1956 (when the population was approxi-
mately 200 million) the CPSU had 7,174,000 members and candidate members.
Only 11.2 percent of them had attained a university-level education, and only
25.8 percent had completed a secondary education. As a cohort, therefore, the
parents of the Cold War generation belonged to the most educated strata of the
Communist Party. Enrolling their children in the elite magnet schools can be
seen as a perk of Party membership, but it also had much to do with the parents’
own educational levels.
Roughly 75 percent of Party members at the time were male. During the 1950s
and afterward, the Party stepped up efforts to attract women into the organization
but, as Vyacheslav Starik stated, “For the most part, it’s traditional in Russia that
the woman is more family oriented. The man is the go-getter.” Besides, many of
the interviewees’ fathers became Communist Party members during the war, when
the high death rate of Communists at the front and efforts to expand the size of
the Party transformed it: There were 3.4 million Party members and candidates for
membership in 1940 and 5.76 million at war’s end. Igor Litvin, for instance,
explained that his father joined the Party in 1941, “when there was such a high
level of patriotism.” Many became Party members at the front. Leonid Terlitsky
recalled that his father used to joke about this: “During the war a commander
comes to his troops and says, ‘Who wants to join the Party,’ and one of the soldiers
answers, ‘If I die consider me a Communist. If I survive, please don’t.”
Terlitsky’s anecdote touches upon a vital element of Soviet public life: Party
membership remained a key to success and was even necessary in some profes-
sions. A high percentage of the interviewees explained that their parents became
Party members because they had to do so. Lyubov Raitman described her father
as a conscientious Party member who attended meetings and paid dues, but as
someone who “never was a committed Communist.” An accomplished architect,
“he had to be a Party member in order to head up a studio,” she added. Yevgeny
Podolsky defended why his mother joined the Party circa 1965: “She had already
become the chief doctor at a sanitary inspection station in Saratov. And it was
expected back then that someone in a position of authority belong to the Party.”
Aleksandr Virich maintained that his stepmother enrolled in the Party’s ranks
because “in Russia at the time it was impossible to defend your dissertation if
you hadn’t joined the Party.” An engineer recruited to extract war reparations in
occupied Germany, Valentin Ulyakhin’s father “had to” join the Party in 1946.
“Back then when someone ended up abroad,” explained Valentin, “they
demanded that he be a Party member.” Drafted into the army in 1953, Yelena
Zharovova’s father joined the Party when he got stationed in Leningrad. “The
Party organization requested that he be transferred back to Moscow to his
family,” she explained, adding that her father “quit the Party as soon as that
became possible when he was already an old man.” Yelena Kolosova’s father felt
compelled to accept an invitation to become a Communist after being elected a
member of the Academy of Sciences. She recalled that her family treated politics
“with a peculiar sense of humor and sometimes a biting one.” Irina Garzanova
had a similar explanation for her father’s becoming a Communist: “We could
say that they made him join the Party after heading up his department for a year.
However, as soon as he could quit, he did.”
But there were committed Communists among them, too, especially within
the Saratov cohort. Olga Gorelik cast her father as a true believer, who did not see
Party membership as a ticket to success: “We lived very modestly. We didn’t have
any luxuries—no car, no magnificent apartment. Nothing.” Aleksandr Trubnikov’s
father lectured him that “under capitalism I never would have achieved what I
did.” Born in 1914 to a cook and an alcoholic who got crushed to death by a train,
he obtained a higher education and became an army engineer. “Socialism and
Soviet power,” he reminded his son, “elevated us.” Natalya Yolshina described
her parents as rank-and-file Communists who inculcated in her universal values
such as honesty and responsibility. “Ours was a ‘correct’ family, and I was a
‘correct’ child,” affirmed Yolshina. Both of Vladimir Sidelnikov’s parents belonged
to the Party, but he stressed that his mother in particular, an instructor at a
Moscow neighborhood Party committee, “was an ardent Communist.” So were
some parents who did not become CPSU members, such as Natalya Pronina’s;
she regretted, “I can honestly say that this was not by choice.”
Some parents refused to join the CPSU because of the compromises they felt
they would have to make as Party members. Georgy Godzhello recalled that,
when his mother declined an invitation to become a Communist, she expressed
her support for communism, but explained that she might have a problem
“subordinating herself to Party discipline.” Some parents paid a price for staying
outside the Party’s ranks. Irina Vizgalova’s father was invited to join the Party so
that he could become a full professor, “But he felt he could get by without being
a professor, and therefore he didn’t join,” she related. Vladimir Glebkin believed
that not joining the Party posed “a serious problem” for his father: “Everyone
said that, had he joined the Party, he would have become an academician a long
time ago.” Be that as it may, Glebkin stressed that his father achieved much
without taking this step.
“ E V E R Y O N E U N D E R S T O O D T H I S A S A G R E AT L O S S ”
Family history, personal experience, and an array of other considerations deter-
mined the Baby Boomers’ parents’ attitudes toward the Soviet system, regardless
of whether they belonged to the Party or not. These positions changed as more—
critical—information became available after Stalin’s death. When Soviet radio
announced on March 6, 1953, that Josef Stalin had died, many found it impos-
sible to fathom him gone, because all of the accomplishments of Soviet power,
including victory in World War II, had been credited to him. Many shed tears of
grief and tears for the uncertainty awaiting them. Marking a turning point in
public consciousness, Stalin’s passing even made an impression on the young
Cold War generation. “Believe it or not,” Leonid Terlitsky told me, “but one of
my first memories is of the day when Stalin died. It’s very vague because I was
only three years old. But I do remember sort of the inner feeling of that day. It
was unlike any other day.” Saratov’s Aleksandr Babushkin had vivid memories
of 1953, “even though I was four years old. I remember there was a black loud-
speaker. Our neighbors listened attentively to it and cried.” Irina Garzanova
recounted “that there were lots of people, some kind of demonstration on Lenin
Street. There were portraits of Stalin.” Yevgeny Podolsky recalled, “I was in my
bedroom, in bed, when my mother came in. She was crying, tears were pouring
down. I naturally also began to cry and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ And my mother
said, ‘Stalin died.’” Podolsky continued, “People cried, because everyone under-
stood this as a great loss,” including Irina Kulikova’s maternal grandmother who
had been repressed. Repeating the oft-told tale that Stalin simply was not in the
know about the repressions, Irina’s mother told her that “Grandmother cried
when he died and even I did, despite the fact that she and I had suffered.”
Some of the interviewees remembered their parents’ disparaging remarks
about Stalin after he died, a reaction that became more pronounced as a result of
Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. The
attack emboldened writers, movie makers, and even some historians, an other-
wise ideologically safe group, to press the limits of the permissible. It likewise
encouraged families, particularly those that knew repression firsthand, to talk
about the injustice done them, for doing so now represented the Party line. “The
entire country breathed a sigh of relief,” according to Viktor D., whose father had
been repressed after the war. “After the Twentieth Congress the police in Saratov
stopped checking to see if my father was at home. In 1957 my father was fully
rehabilitated. It was now possible for me to enroll in the English-language school
and later in medical school. Before [the Twentieth Party Congress] that would
have been unlikely or would not have happened at all.” Olga Martynkina did not
forget her grandmother saying, “‘Well, thank God, finally.’” Tatyana Artyomova
recalled, “Both Papa and Mama admired Khrushchev for finding the courage to
The Baby Boomers remembered the ubiquitous portraits of Stalin in public places—even
after he died. At the end of 1953, Natalya Pronina and her kindergarten class celebrated
the New Year in Magadan with the assistance of Uncle Frost (the Soviet Santa Claus).
Courtesy of Natalya Altukhova (Pronina)
do so, since he was one of them.” Her classmate Tatyana Arzhanova believed her
mother and grandmother’s discussions about Khrushchev’s dethroning of Stalin
affected her at a subconscious level. When being put down for a nap, she imag-
ined seeing the faces of Lenin and Stalin in the elaborate patterns of the Oriental
rug hanging above her bed. There was no doubt in her mind: Lenin was good,
while Stalin was bad. “This is connected with the repressions and with what hap-
pened to my grandfather’s, grandmother’s, and mother’s friends,” she clarified.
Aleksandr Konstantinov shared that he “remembered the Twentieth Party
Congress well. It was clear that Stalin was a monster, and it was wonderful what
Khrushchev did.” Olga Kolishchyuk reminded me “that there were Party meet-
ings everywhere. Everyone was in shock, because before Stalin had been consid-
ered a god.” Leonid Terlitsky echoed this point: “all of a sudden we heard that
Stalin was not what we thought, not what we were told he was, but something
very different.” Still, he remembered that his parents “were careful to tell me not
to talk to anyone about it. It was sort of a taboo [topic]—any criticism of the
government, don’t talk about it outside the house. That was the rule.”
Yet Natalya Pronina claimed the congress made no visible impression on her
parents: “None at all. I can say that for certain.” Arkady Darchenko’s experience
may help us grasp why. His parents did not share with him their reactions to
Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, he explained, because “they were afraid to
comment, especially since they had worked in the Gulag [as did Pronina’s]. They
didn’t discuss politics at home. My father never joined the Party and my parents
were afraid. They still are, by the way. As they say, ‘Who knows what might hap-
pen?’” And there were others such as Olga Gorelik’s father who, while not
approving of the repressions, saw Stalin “as a remarkable and talented leader.”
There were also households in which parents did not see eye to eye on the
Stalin question. Irina Barysheva remembered that her Party-member father from
working-class origins “believed in his communisms and socialisms so much.”
From Russia’s gentry class, her mother “was raised differently and was more criti-
cal of the authorities.” Barysheva overheard conversations at home as her mother
and her friends exchanged whispered secrets. Her mother had a particularly close
friend whose husband, the editor of the local paper, had been shot without a trial
or investigation. But his wife did not know his fate. For years, corrupt officials
extracted bribes from her, offering in exchange bland assurances that her hus-
band was alive and that she would soon be able to correspond with him. Then
the Twentieth Party Congress took place and she found out the bitter truth. “She
wrote such a letter to the Supreme Soviet that Mama was afraid that they’d arrest
her and shoot her.” Concluded Irina: “That’s probably when I first heard about
the personality cult.” Soon thereafter the government rehabilitated the executed
Communist, offering his widow a small monetary compensation. “It was the
money that offended her most,” noted Barysheva. As a sign that things had
changed, no one reacted to the hostile letter she had penned to the government.
She later went insane, spending her last days in a mental asylum, while her
aggrieved children joined relatives in America when emigration became possible
in the 1970s.
“ W E B E G A N T O G E T M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N ”
Khrushchev began opening up the Soviet Union to the outside world as part of the
thawing of public life, not only because the more internationally minded and pro-
reform elements of society supported this policy but also because of Khrushchev’s
own fascination with the West. Confident in the Soviet system’s ability to pass the
tests associated with invidious comparison with the West, particularly America, he
believed that by definition everything Soviet was better, and if it just so happened
that this was not obviously so at the moment, then it was destined to become the
case in the not-too-distant future. This act of faith resulted in a much welcomed
expansion of foreign contacts that trickled down throughout Soviet society. It
involved allowing Western tourists to resume travel to the USSR in 1955, displaying
Pablo Picasso’s cubist art in Moscow in 1956, translating certain Western writers,
and promoting cultural exchanges. Two particularly consequential examples of the
latter are the Moscow Youth Festival in 1957 and the opening of the first U.S. exhibit
in Moscow in 1959. Made possible by a bilateral agreement recently signed by the
two superpowers, the latter put on show cars, kitchens, and everyday products asso-
ciated with the American way of life.
For two weeks beginning on July 28, 1957, an estimated 30,000 foreign youth
in their twenties and thirties attended the Moscow Youth Festival, exposing
Soviet youth—including the Cold War generation’s parents—to Western music,
ideas, fashion, and behaviors. Calling themselves “shtatniki” (Stateniks) or “bit-
niki” (Beatniks), Soviet youth sang “Love Potion Number 9” and adopted the
expression “See ya later, alligator.”24 For a short spell, Picasso’s doves of peace
replaced the otherwise ubiquitous hammer and sickle.25 Jazz musician Aleksei
Kozlov called the festival “‘the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system,’”
while film critic Maya Turovskaya stressed that Russians could “touch and smell
the outside world for the first time in three decades.”26 The result, as Vladimir
Sidelnikov crudely put it, was that “after the festival our Russian wenches began
to give birth to Negroes.”
Natalya Yanichkina described how the Moscow Youth Festival reverberated in
Saratov: “We didn’t have a television, but back then people would visit their
neighbors to watch [the festival on] TV. I recall there was some special event here,
too, and the city was spruced up.” Yanichkina summoned up memories of sew-
ing new dresses for the occasion and of how her mother looked like Lolita Torres,
an Argentinean movie star popular among Soviet cinemagoers in the 1950s and
1960s, a fact that reminds us that the “West” was not the only source of outside
influence on Soviet life. Yanichkina understood the festival as “an event of
national significance” for her country. “There was dancing, fireworks; it was
almost like a carnival. There’s a park of culture and leisure in Saratov. Mama went
there with her girlfriend, but didn’t take me along because I had come down with
the mumps.” It was more than a fleeting moment in Soviet cultural life. As she
put it, “We began to get more information, not the kind you speak about in the
kitchen in private, but public, open, information.”
Saratov’s Natalya Pronina attended the Moscow festival with her parents.
“You have to see documentary films from the time,” she insisted. “People danced
in the streets. People of all nationalities. You’d be walking along, and there’d be
one nationality and you’re of another. Then we’d join hands and dance. It was
spontaneous. People wanted to do it, their hearts were in it. The interaction was
completely free.” Equally vivid is the impression made on Pronina of befriend-
ing a Chinese girl in the hotel where her family stayed. “Although we didn’t
understand each other’s languages, we got along really well. We drew, cut out
some dolls, and I had a very positive impression of the Chinese. Both my par-
ents and hers were pleased that we got along.”
Bringing Soviet citizens into contact with U.S. technology and consumer
goods, the American exhibit also had a profound impact on the popular imagi-
nation. The Stalinist system had avoided making comparisons with capitalism
so as to justify economic autarky and isolation. Promoting the slogan “catch up
with and surpass America,” Khrushchev believed that the Soviet system would
overtake the United States in all measures. In this sense, those who visited the
U.S. exhibit in Moscow in 1959 “were viewing their own future.”27 The American
exhibition opened in the summer of 1959 in Sokolniki Park. In the American
exhibit’s dome, a huge screen flashed alluring slides of American highways,
supermarkets, cities, and college campuses. The exhibit comprised eight themes
ranging from work and agriculture to medicine and basic scientific research.
Sipping free Pepsi Cola, Soviet visitors saw an IBM computer in use, a Disney
produced “Trip across the U.S.,” and examples of American consumer goods.
One of the structures featured a model home, new cars, boats, camping gear,
and a Jungle Gym set. The exhibit conveyed a real sense of technological
superiority, thereby undermining Soviet propaganda, and undoubtedly the
authorities’ confidence in the Soviet system’s ability to withstand the competi-
tion. The Soviet media counterattack depicted the exhibit as a “tacky display of
excess and bourgeois trivia.” It controlled admission, banned the Americans’
distribution of free cosmetics, and promoted rival cultural events. Yet, according
to official statistics, 2.7 million Soviet citizens visited the exhibit. The real figure
might be as much as 20 percent higher.28
In justifying the expenditure, the United States Information Agency (USIA),
the propaganda wing of the State Department, saw the exhibition as “the largest
and probably the most productive single psychological effort ever launched by the
U.S. in a communist country.”29 At this exhibit, Vice President Richard M. Nixon
and Khrushchev angrily debated the virtues of their respective countries—and
ideologies. This episode is often called the “kitchen debate” because it took place
against the backdrop of an American dream kitchen in a model ranch house.
Consumption had become as much of a front of the Cold War as had outer
space.30 The setting allowed Soviet critics to trivialize the preponderance of
consumer goods, making the commentary gender specific by claiming that the
exhibit was intended more for women’s eyes. But some visitors knew better.
As a nine-year-old, Moscow’s Leonid Terlitsky had no chance of getting into
the exhibit, but his mother did. “She brought back a lot of catalogs and a lot of
brochures of American cars, and American kitchens, and American homes, and
other stuff.” The exhibit made a “huge impression” on Aleksandr Konstantinov’s
mother: “She had a lot to say about it. The organization of scholarly research
amazed her. She told us about the system of grants, about American kitchens,
American cars, and the general style—light-hearted, cheerful, and open.” Some
others, especially in Saratov, experienced the exhibit vicariously, as Aleksandr
Trubnikov’s account reveals. “I, of course, didn’t see it; but acquaintances of my
parents did and they told us about the altogether amazing displays that were
there. This struck me as being strange. However, they explained to me that the
capitalists had squeezed the last drop of blood from the poor workers, and that
soon they’d stop putting up with this.”
Afterward, a bilateral agreement between the superpowers resulted in regular
USIA exhibits opening in the few Soviet cities not closed to foreigners. The par-
ents of Viktor D. from Saratov visited the American exhibit in neighboring
Volgograd in the mid-1960s, after which Viktor traveled the 400 kilometers on a
motorcycle to see it for himself. “I liked it. The cars, the technology, the motor-
cycles, and all the informational handouts. It was back then that I saw my first
real American,” reminisced Viktor. “I received a great deal of pleasure, seeing
everything and remembering what I saw. We saved the interesting catalogs and
the other things they gave us.” Viktor emphasized that he would not have made
the trip if America hadn’t fascinated him. “Hardly. You wouldn’t find me
traveling to the zoo in Rostov. Or to the one in Saratov for that matter.”
“ T H E WO R L D B E GA N TO O P E N U P J U S T A L I T T L E ”
Khrushchev’s measured opening up of Soviet society and easing of restrictions
on cultural life also made it possible for some parents to travel abroad. Saratov’s
Natalya Yanichkina remembered that the father of her classmate Galya Kiselyova,
a member of the local Party elite, traveled to Africa. “It might have been for out-
ward appearances, but nevertheless the door was open for some,” remarked
Yanichkina. The disparity between Moscow and Saratov in this regard, however,
was enormous: none of the parents of the Saratovites I interviewed went abroad
at that time. As “the world began to open up just a little,” Tatyana Arzhanova’s
unofficial stepfather went to Rome for the Olympic Games in 1960. Leonid
Terlitsky’s parents, a musician and administrator in the Red Army Symphony
Orchestra, began traveling abroad while Leonid was in school—to Yugoslavia,
Hungary, then to England, and even the United States. Terlitsky recalled the
impression made on him of the books, records, catalogs, and brochures for cars,
kitchens, and houses that his mother brought back to Moscow. “Plus I had rela-
tives in the United States, and there was contact with them.” Indeed, two of
Terlitsky’s father’s sisters had left for New York before the Revolution. His mother
arranged for a clandestine meeting with them during a visit to the United States.
Then there was the time friends of the family’s American relatives visited Moscow
in 1961. “We were still in our old room, and all of a sudden these two nice
Americans in clean clothes walk into our grimy neighborhood where we lived.
It was quite an experience.” When Yevgeniya Ruditskaya was in eighth grade, her
mother journeyed to Italy. “She returned absolutely sick. She was in shock,”
after observing the standard of living there. “For several days she couldn’t even
talk about it,” reported Ruditskaya. Vladimir Glebkin’s mathematician father
began attending conferences and symposiums abroad in 1956 or 1957. Anatoly
Shapiro’s parents worked in Austria after the war. In 1965 his father, a lawyer
specializing in international trade, frequently began traveling abroad and

recounted his impressions and adventures. Work assignments also took Lyubov
Kovalyova’s father to Eastern Europe and to the United States in the 1950s. “I
remember that when he traveled to America he brought back a film shot on a
video recorder,” she recalled. Seeing video shots of San Francisco, New York,
and Washington fascinated her.
Both of Lyubov Raitman’s parents went abroad while Lyubov attended School
No. 20. Her mother went first, in 1960 or 1961. A French-speaking editor for a
scholarly journal in the natural sciences, she was included in a group of scien-
tists who left for France on a program of “academic tourism,” that is, tourism
with a didactic, professional purpose. “They liked her, despite the fact that she
was a Jew and did not belong to the Party,” shared Raitman. “They included her
in the group because she could serve as a translator. This was probably the most
important event in her life.” As Lyubov explained, “It was simply impossible to
Leonid Terlitsky (bottom left) in 1954 with his parents, older brother, and a neighbor
girl in the communal flat they lived in during his early years, where they hosted
American relatives who visited in 1961. Terlitsky’s brother had a profound influence
on his taste in music and on his decision to emigrate. Courtesy of Leonid Terlitsky
hope during those years that there was a chance this dream would come true. It
was a miracle.” Of course, Soviet tourists had to be on their best behavior, for “in
each group of this sort there was supposed to be, and always was, an agent of the
KGB.” But to the group’s pleasant surprise the one chaperoning them “didn’t
really hide his role and behaved with dignity. And he got along with my mother
very well.” The exhilarating sensory overload transformed her, and affected
those with whom she shared her observations back home in Moscow. Evaluating
her mother’s experience, Raitman said, “They were people just like us, but they
were free. She sensed a different life. And then there was Paris. It all made a
strong, strong impression on her.”
And on Lyubov, too. Allowed to exchange little money, Soviet tourists none-
theless found ways to scrimp and save in order to bring back gifts to their loved
ones. “I remember that she brought me an absolutely fabulous little skirt.
Neither my girlfriends or I ever had anything like it again,” gushed Raitman,
who added that earlier her uncle had brought her a pair of gloves from Paris,
“such beautiful crimson gloves,” which replaced the tatty mittens she normally
wore. “I’ll remember them my entire life. Gloves, like grown ups had!” Raitman’s
father, a distinguished architect, visited Ghana yearly between 1962 and 1964.
“He brought back a Philips transistor tape recorder, which created an incredible
furor among my friends. When we had a party at school I’d take the tape recorder
and we’d record each other singing and then listen. It was a wonderful toy.”
Because those who traveled abroad had to be cautious in sharing their
impressions outside the family and circle of trusted friends, they often “told us
what they were ordered to say, and not how things really were,” maintained
Vladimir Sidelnikov. Consequently, the deep impact the “material encounters”
with the outside world made should not be underestimated. For instance,
Marina Bakutina’s Party-member mother, who taught English at the Institute of
Foreign Languages, went abroad as a translator at international conferences
and exhibits. “She was in New York in 1958 or 1959 and brought back a View
Master. It was truly a window on the West. I don’t know how to say ‘Wow!’ in
Russian. There was nothing else like it. No journals, no films, no television
broadcasts, especially during those years, were comparable to the 3-D View
Master,” enthused Marina, who “can still see New York, the Rockefeller Center,
as if it were yesterday. She also brought back the album from My Fair Lady, my
favorite musical.” Marina, who lives in Portland, Oregon, today, linked the
subversive impact of seeing the world vicariously through the View Master as
part of the prehistory of her decision to emigrate. Concluded Tatyana Arzhanova:
“As kids, the greatest impression made by these trips turned out to be the things
people brought back.”
A handful of Baby Boomers themselves spent time abroad during their early
years, but mostly were too young to appreciate the experience. Anatoly Shapiro
was born in Austria. Saratov’s Olga Kolishchyuk had only vague recollections of
the time she spent in China when her father served in the Soviet Red Army.
Living abroad left an indelible mark on seven-year-old Andrei Rogatnev, how-

ever, who was in Hungary during the Soviet invasion of 1956, because his father
served in the KGB. Andrei exonerated Soviet actions by ignoring them, focusing
instead on the transgressions of the Hungarian “freedom fighters.” He recalled
the “Russian troikas,” when Hungarian freedom fighters tied three people bound
together at the leg to the back of a Soviet “Pobeda” automobile, dragged them
through the streets of Budapest alive, doused them with gasoline, and torched
them. “I saw all of this with my own eyes,” he underscored. “This strengthened
my belief even more that our cause was right.”
“ T H E FA M I LY WA S Y O U R S O C I A L N E T,
YO U R SA F E T Y N E T WO R K ”
Acknowledging the existence of independent public opinion, Stalin’s successors
remained determined to shape it: The postwar Soviet Union had one of the larg-
est and most complex public communication systems in the world, aimed at
inculcating values that the state deemed desirable. And even when it failed to do
so, it mostly succeeded in shutting out ideas that might weaken the Party’s grip
on society.31 As Leonid Terlitsky put it, “There were, of course, millions upon
millions who believed it, who honestly believed it. This is the nature of any pro-
paganda, especially Soviet propaganda. If someone tells you over and over again
that your hair is green, you finally start to believe it. Or to have doubts about it
at the very least.”
As a closed society, the USSR made it difficult for outside observers—and per-
haps even for its own leaders—to understand how attitudes toward authority
and other core values, molded primarily by the family, shored up, or offered an
alternative voice to those promoted by the state. Ultimately, an individual’s lived
experience finds expression in the values one espouses and in the identities one
takes on, and all of this begins in the family. While true that political authorities
make decisions that shape orientations and the choices available to people, the
family imparts its own values that determine how individuals respond to cir-
cumstances. Within any historical situation, people pick their fates and live their
lives both as passive objects and as active agents.
Families have histories—memories—often passed on orally, but also with
the help of photographs, official and private documents, possessions, and other
symbolic reminders of the past. Soviet state policies made memory dangerous,
yet they could not prevent family memories and personal encounters with Soviet
power from challenging sanitized official histories. The Baby Boomers’ grand-
parents, after all, were born before the Revolution, and many of them, especially
the women, observed religious practices on the sly. Moreover, most families
knew state repression and violence firsthand. They also experienced the state’s
efforts to refashion the Soviet family, followed by a return to traditional prona-
tal family values. Then came total war, and expectations of what peacetime
might bring, followed by Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s Thaw. Rule without
terror, the loosening up of censorship, attempts to improve living standards,
growing foreign contacts, and a foreign policy of peaceful coexistence must be
seen as the Party’s recognition of what the Soviet people wanted. In responding
to—and shaping—“public opinion,” however, the state became far less success-
ful at keeping out unorthodox ideas. As a result, the Soviet family, an amalgam
of traditional as well as egalitarian features, underwent sweeping changes while
the Cold War generation grew up and attended school. Authority in the family
shifted from patriarchal to more open forms as three-generation families, which
had persisted in the cities, gave way to the nuclear family—and eventually to a
falling birthrate. As a result of state policies of modernization, the Soviet family
more closely came to resemble those in other industrialized nations. According
to the 1959 census, the average family in urban Russia had 3.5 members. The
postwar birthrate fell in the 1960s owing to expanding educational and job
opportunities for women, social mobility, and improved living standards. In
addition, the number of people who took advantage of no-fault divorce, intro-
duced in 1968, made clear that many people had stayed locked in unhappy mar-
riages because they had to do so.
The shift to the nuclear family, facilitated by the beginning of a mass exodus
from communal to private flats, created opportunities for deepening attitudes
associated with the Thaw and for forming an independent public opinion.
Ironically, this is ever more the case owing to other peculiar features of Soviet
reality. Social life remained centered in the family. As Leonid Terlitsky reminded
me, while he was growing up he went to an occasional movie, but there were few
restaurants or clubs to go to: “There were no activities outside the family, and
the family was your social net, your safety network,” he stated. He also claimed
that “no one in my family believed the government. No one would have a rela-
tionship with the government unless he had to.” At the other end of the spec-
trum, some parents remained ardent Communists. But Vladimir Prudkin’s
parents represent what appears to have been the most typical archetype among
the Baby Boomers. Prudkin observed that his parents, like those of his class-
mates, were liberal thinkers but not hostile toward the system that defined and
rewarded their success. “In this regard they were conformist enough in their
external behavior and at work, but their thinking placed them on the side of
what we might call the free movement.”
2 O V E R TA K I N G
AMERICA IN SCHOOL
Educating the Builders of Communism
On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile lifted off from
the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a 184-pound polished silver
sphere called Sputnik (“Traveling Companion”). The size of a beach ball, the
world’s first artificial satellite contained two beeping radio transmitters that
allowed observers to track its orbit. A decade earlier, the RAND Corporation
had foreseen that the launching of the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth
“would inflame the imagination of mankind, and would probably produce
repercussions in the world comparable to the explosion of the atom bomb.”
RAND was right. A dazzling public relations victory, Sputnik’s appearance dem-
onstrated, according to the New Republic, that the USSR had “‘gained a
commanding lead in certain vital sectors of the race for world scientific and
technological supremacy.’” Future Sputniks, informed Newsweek, “‘would be
able to sight and even photograph just about every point on earth.’”1 Worse yet,
cautioned the Chicago Daily News, “‘the day is not far distant when they could
deliver a death-dealing warhead onto a predetermined target almost anywhere
on the earth’s surface.’”2 As one historian wrote, Sputnik was “the shock of the
century.”3
Other Soviet successes and “firsts” in space followed hard on the heels of
Sputnik, fanning fears that “the Russians” were beating the Americans at what
we believed we did best. Technology, after all, had become a deciding factor in
the Cold War superpower competition since 1949 when the Soviet Union had
ended the U.S. nuclear monopoly. Less than a month after the alarm caused by
Sputnik, the USSR put into space the much heavier Sputnik II, which carried on
board scientific instruments and a dog named Laika.4 In 1959 three Soviet space
missions, Luna 1 to 3, had sent back to Earth images of the far side of the moon.
On April 12, 1961, Soviet science propelled the first man into space, Yury Gagarin.
The Soviet space program also launched the first space flight with more than one
cosmonaut aboard. It accomplished the first space walk. And it boasted the first
woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, too.
OV E R TA K I N G A M E R I C A I N S C H O O L | 67
The launching of Sputnik inspired fear in the West, but confidence in

Soviet citizens, for the triumph complemented the Thaw in cultural life,
denunciation of Stalin’s crimes, robust economic growth, and rising living
standards that characterized the country in the decade following Stalin’s
death in 1953. Not surprisingly, given the Cold War competition between
the superpowers for the hearts and minds of the Third World, Soviet propa-
ganda capitalized on the world’s shocked reaction to Sputnik’s launching,
depicting the achievement as but one of many spectacular technological
advances underway in the USSR. Moreover, in 1957 Khrushchev dreamed up
the slogan “Catch up with and overtake America,” which became the under-
pinning for his new Party Program approved by the Twenty-second Party
Congress in 1961. The program assured citizens that the USSR would surpass
the United States in per capita production by 1970 and build a Communist
society by 1980.
The Party authorized Khrushchev’s blueprint for building communism hard
on the heels of Gagarin’s historical space flight, which left a lifelong impression
on the Baby Boomers. “We were most proud of his achievement,” affirmed
Saratov’s Natalya Yanichkina. Moscow’s Leonid Terlitsky remembered the
excitement—classes were cancelled—when Gagarin’s mission succeeded:
“Everyone poured into the street in an absolutely unprecedented expression of
joy. It was absolutely spontaneous. It was like the Yankees won the pennant.”
That same year, the government issued the “Moral Code for the Builders of
Communism,” which the Cold War generation committed to memory.
Beginning with “devotion to the cause of Communism, love of the socialist
Motherland and of the socialist countries,” the code articulated collectivist
values and patriotic commitment that youth were expected to manifest. “There
was nothing wrong with this,” claimed Natalya Yanichkina. “It’s almost the
same as the Ten Commandments.” Natalya Yolshina concurred that “the basic
postulates of Christianity did not fundamentally differ” from the code.
How successful were Soviet schools at bringing up “the worthy builders of
Communism,” as a popular 1965 housekeeping manual called this generation?5
K H R U S H C H E V ’ S E D U C AT I O N R E F O R M S
There were no alternatives to highly centralized government-run schools in the
USSR, which gave top priority to educating the builders of communism. State
ministries controlled the curriculum, viewing teachers as instruments of state
power. The year the Baby Boomers were born, the USSR introduced compulsory
seven-year schooling, later extended to ten years, and then, in 1958, to eleven.
Emblematic of Khrushchev’s never-ending turnarounds, the government in 1964
returned to a compulsory ten-year education usually comprising four years of
primary and six years of secondary education, to take effect in 1966. The class of
1967 was the first to complete the new ten-year curriculum.
The Baby Boomers’ school year ran from September 1 to June 1 (until late June
for the upper classes), Monday through Saturday, from 8:30 until 2:00 or 2:30 P.M.,
with twenty-four to thirty-two class periods of forty-five minutes a week. Pupils
enjoyed a five-day fall break to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution,
a twelve-day winter break (December 30–January 10) to celebrate the New Year,
and an eight-day spring break (March 24–31). They were graded on a five-point
scale, with “5” representing the equivalent of an American “A.” The state banned
corporal punishment in schools. When the interviewees attended school, the
number of contact hours devoted to the sciences increased while the number of
hours devoted to Russian language and literature, geography, and mechanical
drawing decreased (as did foreign language instruction, except at the magnet
schools). The time devoted to military training, physical education, shop and
home economics, and practical excursions peaked in 1959, but then declined.
Moreover, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin forced a rewriting of history texts
and, in 1962, to counteract pressures from below for even greater cultural liberaliza-
tion, the introduction of a new subject, social studies, which focused on study of
Marxist-Leninist texts, Party documents, and the pronouncements of Soviet leaders.6
Two years later, Soviet schools further strengthened political indoctrination, pro-
moting an atheistic, materialist view of the world. As Tatyana Luchnikova put it,
Tatyana Arzhanova’s mother

accompanied her across Moscow’s
Pushkin Square to her first day of
school, on September 1, 1957, weeks
before the launching of Sputnik.
Soviet school children wore
uniforms to school and customarily
brought flowers to their teachers at
the start of the school year. Courtesy
of Tatyana Koukharskaya (Arzhanova)
“You had to be stupid not to understand. At school they told us there was no God.”
Luchnikova remembered reading in school textbooks that “you could traverse the
entire globe and not find evidence of God.” She elaborated, “We’d open the text-
book and read what was written there because we had to answer questions to receive
a grade. We’d repeat what was in the textbook. It never occurred to us to analyze
anything. Like zombies, we simply followed along what was written.”
Khrushchev’s reforms affected teachers and how they taught. In 1957 the
government set up a national teachers’ union and reconsidered pedagogical prac-
tices, paying more attention to how children learn. Ironically, whereas the United
States introduced sweeping reforms to make schools more competitive in science
and math following the launching of Sputnik, the Soviet Union instituted reforms
in the second half of the 1960s in response to American educational models,
deemphasizing rote learning and creating a more relaxed atmosphere in
elementary school, measures that came too late to affect the Baby Boomers. In
other words, elements on both sides of the Iron Curtain feared that the other side
had the edge when it came to educating its young people. Despite the alarmist
mood in the United States, some educators who visited the USSR noticed plenty
to criticize, especially teacher-dominated classrooms with little discussion, lots
of factual learning, and virtually no individual research.7 Journalist Susan Jacoby,
for one, saw few examples of “high quality” teaching, underscoring, instead, the
more “formally drawn” line between students and teachers that reminded her of
the Catholic schools she had attended.8 The debate over which superpower had
better schools intensified in 1970, when a Russian-born American educator Urie
Bronfenbrenner extolled the virtues of the Soviet school system for placing as
much emphasis on vospitanie, or correct behavior, as it did on developing chil-
dren intellectually. As much a critique of what he believed were disturbing trends
in America, Bronfenbrenner’s work argued that the centralized Soviet system did
a superior job of socializing its young people, producing the type of society it
desired thanks to “generous emotional support coupled with a firm insistence on
propriety and collective conformity. In short, the individual was still very much
at the service of the collective.”9
But this was often in theory only. Doggedly determined to raise industrial
production levels, convinced that Soviet schools were “divorced from life,” and
troubled by youth’s desire to attend college rather than to join the ranks of the
proletariat, Khrushchev pushed through a reform in 1958 calling for pupils to
spend part of their school week acquiring practical work experience in industrial
and other enterprises. He also proposed that all children work after eight years
of schooling and before completing high school. These measures proved imprac-
tical to implement, immensely unpopular, and easy to circumvent, despite
government efforts to propagandize this “polytechnic” approach. For instance,
the Pioneer manual glorified the life of a worker named P. A. Samsonov, empha-
sizing the positive features of combining work and learning: “The more I read,
the more I love the profession of being a worker and take pride in it,”10 the hero
contended. Not surprisingly, the post-Khrushchev leadership dropped these
calls for mandatory polytechnic training, which virtually none of the inter-
viewees recalled. Moscow’s Anna Lyovina did only because they interrupted her
future husband’s studies. Assigned to a chemical enterprise, he injured his arm
there, “thanks to an alcoholic,” she claimed.
“ S C H O O L N O . 4 2 TA L K S W I T H G O D H I M S E L F ”
Saratov’s School No. 42 opened on September 1, 1954, at No. 18 Radishchev
Street. When the class of ’67 was in fifth grade—also in the historic year 1961—
the school settled into a new, well-equipped building on the Twentieth
Anniversary of the Komsomol Street. The school’s class of 1967 comprised two
groups, A, formed in 1958 when the pupils were in second grade, and B, formed
the following year, each with twenty-eight students. Later in the Soviet period,
the more capable students could be found in A and the less accomplished ones
in B, but this was not the case back then, at least in the special schools. True,
Aleksandr Babushkin (a member of the A class or ASHnik/ashniki [pl.]) boasted
“that the level of the A class was intellectually higher” than that of the B class;
however, it was actually the status and privileges of their parents that distin-
guished the two groups back then.
Most ashniki agreed with Vladimir Nemchenko that “there was, to all intents
and purposes, no difference” between the groups, the parents of whom,
according to Natalya Yolshina, “belonged to the intelligentsia: doctors, teachers,
engineers.” But “a small percentage of parents of the A class worked in the oblast
committee of the Party,” she added. In a status-conscious society such as the
Soviet Union that distinction was paramount. Interviewees from both classes
readily rattled off the names of the children of the local Communist Party
nomenklatura who attended school with them. Despite the widespread sense
that the parents of the ashniki belonged to the Communist Party elite, Olga
Gorelik—herself the daughter of the deputy editor of the local Party
newspaper—pointed out that “there were children of Party officials, but not
many. There were four of them.” Some of these individuals found excuses not to
meet with me, thereby giving credence to the gossip their classmates told about
the difficulties the children of the former Party officials endured after the col-
lapse of the Soviet system. An exception, Tatyana Kuznetsova, never mentioned
her father’s privileged position: “For us,” she stated, “there didn’t exist such a
thing as important parents and unimportant ones.”
The majority of members of the B class (BESHnik/beshniki), however, called
attention to the distinction between the two groups. As Irina Tsurkan quipped,
“It’s probably the children of the Party officials who claim there was no
difference.” Her classmate Aleksandr Virich echoed her sentiments: “Their
parents’ status was higher. We were not as privileged, but represented the
second tier of the intelligentsia.” Olga Kamayurova agreed that “some sort of
difference was noticeable. Those in the A group seemed more elite. It seems
to me, both now and back then, that they were a bit stuck up.” It is not that
children in the B class did not have influential parents. But, as Irina Tsurkan
pointed out, “There were fewer of them, and they were probably a rank
below.” Concluded Aleksandr Konstantinov: “The A group was made up not
so much of people with connections as of people of privilege, among who
were several children of Party officials. They formed a nucleus around which
an elite group was fashioned. The group also included the children of trade
officials. We, too, came from the privileged stratum, but we were not of their
ilk.” Irina Barysheva reminded me that the “cultural intelligentsia did not
envy” those who belonged to the commercial establishment, for, as her class-
mate Larisa Petrova put it, “they lacked culture.” Revealingly, no one recalled
any significant conflicts between the A and B classes, although, “for the most
part, we associated with those from our own class,” remembered Aleksandr
Kutin. Aleksandr Virich agreed, “Although we had some contacts, there were
no particular friendships.”
Despite the minor advantages children of the A class might have enjoyed in
regard to their parents’ privileges, members of the B class emphasized they
had—and have—the edge when it comes to personal qualities. Actually, both
classes see the B class as unique in that many of its members remain friends
today and still get together regularly. Maintained Larisa Petrova: “We simply had
a wonderful class,” while the A class was “more stand-offish.” Arkady Darchenko
elaborated, “We were closer and the friendship that’s lasted among us for forty
years is worth mentioning.” Irina Kulikova believed the reason for the cohesive-
ness of class B boils down to the human factor: “We were much simpler in our
relations, in our behavior, and in everything else. It didn’t matter what kind of
family a child came from, from a worker’s or a professor’s.” Galina Poldyaeva
claimed that it was only in the upper classes that she and her classmates became
aware of what each other’s parents did. “We never felt it mattered what family
you came from. It never entered our heads.”
Members of the class of 1967 had attended at least a dozen different primary
schools before transferring to School No. 42. They concur that it “was much
nicer, and cleaner” than, as Aleksandr Trubnikov put it, “my neighborhood
school.” “It was the top school, which was opened for the children of high-
ranking officials,” exclaimed Irina Barysheva. “Back then it wasn’t acceptable to
use this term, but it existed nonetheless.” Natalya Yolshina stressed that “it
wasn’t just anybody who went there.” Lyudmila Gorokhova’s experience was
typical. She had been the “star of the class” at her elementary school, but when
she enrolled in School No. 42 “it turned out that I wasn’t a star but ordinary.”
“For Saratov, the English school is somewhat legendary,” remarked Aleksandr
Virich. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of our class went to college.” Those who
attended the school knew “that they would become relatively well-known
leaders of science and technology in Saratov and perhaps in Russia.” “Of course
it was an elite school,” boasted Irina Chemodurova. “This was reflected even in
our conversations back then. We’d say, ‘School No. 13 talks with School No. 19,
School No. 19 with School No. 42, and School No. 42 with God himself.’”
The school’s composition made it special in another regard, too. Natalya
Yanichkina explained, “Our school didn’t have any of the serious disciplinary
problems encountered in ordinary schools. There was no hooliganism, which in
an ordinary school would be an everyday occurrence.” Aleksandr Trubnikov
concurred. “Selectivity is selectivity. Let’s just say that we didn’t have anyone
who became a criminal.” Irina Garzanova opined that “the main thing was the
atmosphere of the school. It’s wonderful when there’s a friendly, creative
atmosphere in any collective, and at school all the more so.” Similarly, Olga
Kolishchyuk recalled, “The school offered a fine education and demanded good
behavior and decency. It was head and shoulders above the others.” There was
tremendous peer pressure to succeed, and the students who did not perform
well “went to other schools and were practically straight-A students there.”
Although the Saratovites sounded off about the elite nature of the school,
virtually all of them commented that, as children, they paid no attention to
issues of social distinction. But “often it was the parents who competed. And
those from the working class who got in did so only because they needed to
have a certain percentage of workers and peasants,” explained Aleksandr Virich.
Aleksandr Konstantinov (back row, third from left) recalled that, on the first day of
school in Saratov on September 1, pupils were taught how to sit correctly at their desks.
They were instructed to place their hands flat on the desk with the right hand on top
of the left so that they could readily raise it to answer questions. Courtesy of Aleksandr
Konstantinov
“It was the same everywhere back then, beginning with the Supreme Soviet and
ending with a school or kindergarten.” Natalya P. volunteered that two of her
classmates in the B class from working-class families were admitted “to improve
the school’s profile. They couldn’t take children of only the intelligentsia.” The
fathers of the two pupils in class B may not have been “ordinary” workers. One
of them, a chauffeur, “drove around someone from the nomenklatura,” recalled
Irina Barysheva, while the other was a skilled fitter who “traveled all over the
world” to show customers how to use Soviet engineering tools. Neither of their
children confirmed Barysheva’s observation that their fathers were special in any
way. In fact, one of them, Aleksandr Ivanov, remarked that “we were all from
average families,” thereby demonstrating the power of Soviet propaganda—and
the role that a family’s cultural capital can play in constraining and enabling
decisions that young people make. Ivanov found that School No. 42 simply was
not a good fit. He enjoyed physical education, shop, and physics lab, not English,
and especially not Russian, for which he received Ds. He left School No. 42 after
the eighth grade to study at Saratov’s Aviation School.
Things turned out similarly in the A class, which at one point enrolled a
pupil from a large working-class family, Yura Gusev. According to Natalya
Yanichkina, one or both of Gusev’s Russian-born parents had been taken to
Germany during World War II. All too aware of the fate of Soviet POWs who
returned home, they fled to Australia, where their children were born, but
returned to the USSR in the 1960s when the post-Stalin leadership welcomed
back expatriates. With poor knowledge of Russian, the oldest child, Yura, and
then the rest of his many siblings, enrolled in School No. 42. Gusev’s father
labored in a local factory, while his mother stayed home to take care of their
large brood of children. Yanichkina remembered that “the school helped this
family out a great deal. We held school concerts, for instance, and collected
money for the ‘curriculum fund,’ which went to the family for clothing and
other things.” But Yura did not graduate from the school: “When he showed
some musical talent, he left to study at a military school specializing in music
and graduated from there,” recalled Yanichkina.
It bears repeating that the Saratovites claimed that, as children, they took no
notice of nationality, with the exception of one interviewee of Jewish descent. As
Vladimir Kirsanov observed, “These questions don’t interest children. I can’t
remember any conflicts in school on these grounds.” “Regarding nationality,”
confirmed Arkady Darchenko, “it’s worth noting that we simply didn’t think
about such things back then. Even now I can’t say with any assurance who
belongs to what nationality.” Irina Vizgalova remarked that “as an adult I under-
stand that there were other nationalities apart from Russians, but back then we
were all the same. Nationality didn’t concern us at all.” Olga Kolishchyuk also
maintained that “we didn’t pay any attention to this whatsoever. Only now, I’m
able to say that there were Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Tatars, and
an Armenian.”
“ C H I L D R E N O F S O R T O F T H E C R E A M O F S OV I E T
SOCIETY”
In 1961, neighborhood School No. 115 in Moscow was converted into special
School No. 20 with intensive instruction in English. “We, in fact, were the first
graduating class when kids went through the full program of a special school,”
explained Leonid Terlitsky. When the switch took place, the parents of roughly
half of the fifth-grade class of School No. 115 opted to keep their children in the
new magnet school. Igor Litvin was one of them. “They had to accept us,” he
made clear. But during the next two years the administration rid the school of
weak students and of pupils from families not likely to intervene should their
children flounder. Mikhail Markovich recalled that school administrators car-
ried out this weeding out process “very tactfully.” According to Vyacheslav Starik,
“they gathered together the parents of the previous students and warned them
that the load would be substantially greater than in a regular school, and there-
fore some of the parents transferred their children.” As a result, Sergei Zemskov
observed that his classmates’ parents came from the “intelligentsia” and “rather
high-ranking Soviet officials,” but there was “practically no one from the working
class in this school.” Mikhail Markovich believed that the school’s principal wel-
comed the children of top Party officials, thereby creating a certain social—or
perhaps psychological—inequality. Elaborated Markovich: “It was a question of
clothing, of tape recorders. There were no tape recorders back then. Yet several
had them.”
The new magnet school drew pupils from an ever-expanding pool of poten-
tial students from nearby and surrounding neighborhoods. The technical and
scientific intelligentsia populated the neighborhood, which became more elite
as apartment complexes of various ministries and even the Politburo were built
on nearby Aleksei Tolstoy Street. Owing to the school’s location and its almost
instant reputation for excellence, it is not surprising that “a lot of kids in the
school were children of sort of the cream of Soviet society, high-level Party offi-
cials,” as Leonid Terlitsky observed. “We had one of [Politburo member] Anastas
Mikoyan’s grandchildren in our class. We had the daughter of the TASS* general
director in our class. We had children of several high-level diplomats in our
class. We had children of several high-level KGB officers in our class. We had
children of famous scientists and artists in our class.”
Like their Saratov counterparts, many Muscovites responded that they did
not interest themselves in what their classmates’ parents did. Calling herself
“average” with a “Soviet understanding” of things, Lyubov Kovalyova looked
upon everyone at the time as equals—as she had been taught. “Only much,
* The Soviet Union’s official news agency.

Moscow’s School No. 20 opened in a former neighborhood school weeks before the
Twenty-second Party Congress endorsed Khrushchev’s new Party Program. It promised
the builders of communism that their generation would achieve communism by 1980.
Courtesy of Yevgeniya Kreizerova (Ruditskaya)
much later, I can tell you in all honesty, I understood that we were children of
very different parents. And our possibilities were probably very different, even
though we were grouped together in the same class.” Yet others sensed back
then when someone came from a famous family. For instance, Anatoly Shapiro
had a crush on Nadya Goryunova, daughter of the general director of TASS who,
according to Shapiro, was one of “the five most important ideological leaders in
the country.” Another pupil from an elite family was Sasha Rukavishnikov, the
son of well-known sculptors and grandson of one of Moscow’s main architects.*
Aleksei Yefros’s grandfather “discovered” painter Marc Chagall and founded the
journal Foreign Literature.** The B class included Vladimir Prudkin, son of an
acclaimed actor at the Moscow Art Theater, and Yelena Kolosova, whose father
became a member of the Academy of Sciences.
* Rukavishnikov left School No. 20 to attend a special art school, after which he became a
well-known sculptor.
** Yefros died several years before I began this project.
The A and B classes in Moscow saw each other as competitors, but not to
the same degree as their Saratov counterparts. Tatyana Arzhanova believed
the A class “was more academically minded, more diligent, more hard-work-
ing, and more aspiring.” It also seemed to her that students in the A class
showed keener interest in studying science, while the B class was more
inclined toward the humanities. This “split” reflects a popular, but by then
waning, public discussion between “physics and poets” regarding who
offered the most to society, fueled not only by the well-acclaimed technolog-
ical advances of the period but also by the popular film Nine Days of One
Year.* With the establishment of a third, C, class in the ninth grade, however,
the rivalry between the groups eased. One of those transferred to the new
class from within, Sergei Zemskov, recalled that “it was a real tragedy” for
those involved at the “emotional” level. Mikhail Markovich, among others,
hinted that pupils who misbehaved were placed in the C class, the “rowdy
class.” According to Vyacheslav Starik, the C class comprised pupils “from
various social strata, with various degrees of preparation, with diverse
cultural habits.” He gave as an example Vladimir Mikoyan, grandson of a
Politburo member, and Mark Milgotin, who, after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, purportedly emerged as a leading figure in the Russian mafia. Even
Mikoyan admitted that “they gathered all of the hooligans and under-achiev-
ers there.” Not only: the C class included the daughter of the ambassador of
Afghanistan, and Boika Dionisyeva, the daughter of Bulgarian diplomats.
Tatyana Luchnikova joined the C class when her family moved from Kazan
when she was in the ninth grade. Her father, a military engineer, served in
the rocket forces.
As in Saratov, many Muscovites claimed to have paid little attention back
then to ethnicity; however, they could not ignore the fact that a large percentage
of the class was Jewish. Sergei Zemskov estimated that “about half his class” was.
Lyubov Raitman explained that many Jews such as herself lived in the center of
Moscow, where the school was located. Moreover, “traditionally, in Jewish fam-
ilies parents wanted their children to receive a good education and made this a
priority.” Leonid Terlitsky was of the same mind: “Jews have this knack for giving
their kids the best education available, putting themselves into debt in order to
do so, and evidently a lot of the parents of my classmates in School No. 20 were
of that set of mind because the class was full of Jewish kids.” Terlitsky under-
scored that “we weren’t any different from other kids. We were all secular Jews.
It was an ethnic rather than a religious category. Many of the teachers were
Jewish, too.”
* Directed by Mikhail Romm in 1962, the film depicts the conflict between old and new. It
features a scientist who thinks independently, as well as sinister omens reminding viewers
they lived in a dangerous, nuclear age. Indeed, in an ironic twist the scientist succumbs to
radiation.
When School No. 20’s B Class posed for graduation pictures in 1967, the West remained
an imaginary place. Today ten members of the B Class live abroad. Courtesy of Lyubov
Obraztsova (Raitman)
“ I ’ M V E R Y G R AT E F U L T O M Y PA R E N T S ”
The Saratovites believed their parents sent them to School No. 42 because, as
members of the intelligentsia, they appreciated the value of knowing a foreign
language, particularly English, which, in this Cold War environment, was
becoming the most widely taught foreign language in the USSR. “My mother
looked to the future,” explained Tatyana Kuznetsova. “She realized that a child
would need to know another language.” Likewise, Larisa Petrova noted that “the
most important attraction was that the school taught English, and, secondly,
had a reputation in Saratov for its discipline and outlook on teaching, and, to
be blunt, it had a higher cultural level than in other schools.” “Apparently my
parents already understood back then that a child needs to know a foreign lan-
guage,” remarked Olga Gorelik from an elite Party family. One of her classmates
was Natalya Yanichkina, whose mother had been imprisoned in the Gulag.
Commented Yanichkina: “I think Mama wanted to make the point that I was as
good as they were.” Something else motivated Yanichkina’s mother: “School
No. 42 was very prestigious back then, and Mama, as if to make up for the lack
of maternal love I experienced when she was away, wanted to give me everything
she couldn’t give me earlier.” Some ended up at School No. 42 when it raided
top teachers from other schools. For example, when Aleksandr Trubnikov fin-
ished first grade, his teacher received an offer to join the staff at School No. 42.
“They allowed her to pick two students from her class to take with her, and she
chose a girl and me.” At first his parents were not keen on the idea, because the
school was far away from where they lived. “There also was the problem of work
shifts. But my mother insisted that I be given a chance. That’s how I ended up
there.”
The Saratovites remembered having to “compete” for a slot by passing an
exam and interview with school officials before being admitted. When Aleksandr
Konstantinov’s parents heard that a second class was being formed at School
No. 42, they sought to enroll him there. He explained, “insofar as I was an ‘A’
student I had a good chance of getting admitted. I went for some sort of inter-
view and everything went well, except for the fact that I mispronounced the
letter ‘Sh.’ They told me that they might let me in if I was able to correct this. I
went to a speech therapist and repeated ‘sh-shilly-shally and sh-shiney shoes.’
They admitted me that fall.” Irina Barysheva related that “Papa once again went
off somewhere on some campaign and we didn’t make it back [to Saratov] in
time for the exams.” Although her mother lobbied to get her admitted, Irina
acknowledged that her father’s position as manager of the factory that spon-
sored School No. 42 “probably played a role” in her getting in.
A handful of pupils enrolled after the initial selection as slots opened when
students moved, opted for other schools, or were encouraged to leave. Turned
down the year before when she had trouble pronouncing her r’s, Irina
Chemodurova joined the A class in third grade. “I studied with a language
teacher for a year,” she recalled, before replacing someone who had left the
class. Moving to Saratov in 1960, Natalya Pronina joined the A class in fifth
grade. Private tutors likewise prepared her for admission. She remembered, “I
passed the exams, very tough ones. I had to demonstrate that I had mastered
the material.” Similarly, Yevgeny Podolsky did not enroll in School No. 42
until the fifth grade. “I had to work hard at the language, because I had to
make up four years, and the principal admitted me under the condition that if
I didn’t catch up with my classmates during the year, I’d have to leave the
school.” “It turned out,” he sheepishly explained, “that they built the school
next to my father’s factory, and he became the school’s sponsor.” The eighth
Natasha in the group, Natalya Yolshina joined the A class in seventh grade.
Before then she had attended a special music school where a classmate who
had enrolled in School No. 42 infected Yolshina with the desire to go there.
“She elatedly told me about School 42, about how everyone wears the same
uniform, about the boys in jackets with high collars, about how they carry
satchels, and about how they speak English during recess.” Yolshina’s parents
hired a teacher from the school to tutor her so that she could learn as much
English as those already enrolled.
“A N E W S C H O O L F O R T H E C H I L D R E N
O F G I F T E D PA R E N T S ”
Vladimir Prudkin, “Kuzya,” clarified what motivated his parents to get him
admitted to Moscow’s School No. 20. “Stalin left the scene and shortly there-
after the so-called Thaw began. It’s as if the realization of the need for contacts
with the outside world arose, and most likely my parents understood that even
a minimal knowledge of a foreign language was necessary.” By this time magnet
schools offering English, French, and Spanish had opened, but his parents “felt
that English would soon become the international language.” He observed that
the selection of pupils was carried out privately, but probably “according to a
quite widespread phenomenon called blat, or connections.” This all but assured
that it became “an elite school.” Indeed, according to Bakhyt Kenzheyev, “the
majority of children came from the nomenklatura.” He saw himself as an “odd
duck,” since his parents were not of that caste. Yet his father, a Kazakh, took
advantage of his own form of blat: he enlisted the support of the Kazakh union
republic’s representative in Moscow to get Bakhyt admitted. Other Muscovites
confirmed that parents pulled strings to win a coveted slot for their children in
the school; however, they also remember an admissions interview. Vyacheslav
Starik enrolled in School No. 20 in 1961, “the year Gagarin made his flight.” His
parents hired an elderly woman to teach him English once it became clear they
were wasting their rubles on violin lessons. He performed well during the inter-
view. Tatyana Artyomova likewise took private English lessons to prepare for her
admissions interview, which she sailed through, “because I had straight A’s at
the school I had attended and because I acquitted myself well on the exams,”
she explained. Lyubov Kovalyova also mentioned “some sort of interview at
School No. 20 that I passed.” Lyubov Raitman stressed how unusual this was:
“We had an admissions interview, a small exam for eleven year olds which, as a
matter of principle, was altogether atypical for schools. This was something new.
That is, you could get turned down.” Only later did she realize that her mother’s
workplace petitioned in order to help Raitman get admitted.
Some parents who knew English encouraged their offspring to study the lan-
guage. This is true of Vladimir Glebkin, whose father “very keenly felt the impor-
tance of studying a foreign language. He learned English on his own, and not
badly, but he also told me that it was essential to master English.” Owing to a
speech impediment, Glebkin was admitted on probation, during which he saw
a speech therapist to improve his pronunciation of the “L” sound. Similarly,
Lyubov Kovalyova’s father began studying English on his own as an adult and
persuaded her to try out for School No. 20. Tatyana Arzhanova recalled that an
old woman working in the nearby bath house informed her mother and grand-
mother that her granddaughter went to School No. 115, which was being
transformed into an English-language school. A teacher of English, her mother

taught Tatyana enough of the language to pass her interview.
A somewhat different path led Yelena Kolosova, now of Houston, Texas, to
School No. 20. On the advice of her grandmother’s friend, a well-known translator,
Yelena began studying English at age five with “an absolutely wonderful English-
woman.” Since “Russian did not come easy to her at all,” they spoke only in
English. Kolosova thus had a strong command of the language before enrolling at
School No. 20. Her parents decided to send her there after reading a satirical article
in the paper about “a [new] school for the children of gifted parents.” Yelena was
admitted, after which she “didn’t have to do anything for a long time.”
As in Saratov, the parents of those in Moscow who joined the class after its
initial formation hired tutors to prepare their offspring for admission—often
teachers from the school whose moonlighting increased the odds that those
they tutored would get in—but also enlisted the help of valuable personal
connections whenever possible. Viktor Alekseyev joined the class in the sixth
grade. In order to compete, he “crammed day and night,” studying with his
older brother, a student at the Institute of Foreign Languages, and with a
private tutor. During the “admissions interview,” Alekseyev fumbled, but the
teachers took a liking to him. Admitted conditionally, he had to pull himself
up to the same level of his classmates during the first quarter. “I truly had to
work day and night on the language.” Sergei Zemskov emphasized that his
mother—herself a teacher of English—had attended School No. 115 and had
many fond memories of, and personal ties to, the neighborhood. “Besides, it
turned out that the head of curriculum at School No. 20 had been in my
mother’s class in school. Despite the fact that the school by this time had
already become something of an elite one and that there were some diffi-
culties in sending me there, they nonetheless transferred me to the school.”
Leonid Terlitsky enrolled at School No. 20 in the middle of seventh grade,
when his parents took him out of the neighborhood school, because he “was
turning into a young gangster.” He and another person “spent about six
months in private lessons” with a teacher from the school. Joining the B class
in the eighth grade, Yelena Zharovova studied English with a private tutor to
ready herself for entrance exams in English and mathematics. The transition
proved difficult. Reminisced Zharovova: “I had to get used to new kids, to new
teachers, to new relationships. The atmosphere was different; teachers treated
us differently. If in my school they used the familiar form of ‘you’ when
speaking to you, here they used the formal form of ‘you.’”
“ S H E WA S A R E A L C O M M U N I S T ”
A Soviet school’s success had a great deal to do with the personal qualities of its
principal and vice principals (one for curriculum and another for the physical
facilities). The Saratovites appreciated the special climate that reigned at No.
42, even if they complained about it at the time. Most of them, especially the
women, spoke about the “very strict,” and even “iron” discipline at No. 42, per-
sonified by the school’s “authoritarian” principal, Vera Filippovna Echberger. A
product of the Stalinist system, Echberger has a personal story that remains
hard to pin down. Tatyana Kuznetsova commented that “she was, as far as I
know, German. And that probably showed.” Then why had she not been
deported at the start of World War II like other Saratov Germans? The only
answer I have comes from Irina Barysheva, whose father knew Echberger from
their Komsomol days, when they campaigned together to wipe out illiteracy. At
the start of the war Echberger’s husband, a true believer, left for the front on a
so-called “Communist train,” filled with Party loyalists willing to sacrifice
themselves for the war cause in order to whip up patriotism. Because of him,
intimated Barysheva, Vera Filippovna, a German, was allowed to remain in
Saratov. Her personal circumstances deepened her loyalty to the system. Teacher
Klara Eduardovna confided in me that Vera Filippovna held on to her portrait
of Stalin.
Irina Barysheva complained that it was hard to escape Echberger’s watchful
gaze, for Vera Filippovna would “stand at the door and check the length of our
skirts. She always had a ruler in her hand. And we weren’t allowed to wear
bangs.” Natalya P. remembered that “when our principal, Vera Filippovna, vis-
ited our class we had to show our hands and, if she noticed that anyone was
doing their nails, she’d punish them. We weren’t allowed to wear adult hair-dos.
We didn’t dare think about wearing makeup!” If the girls tried to get away with
wearing makeup, Echberger sent them home to wash up—or hauled them into
the bathroom to do it herself. Natalya Yanichkina recounted that “the school
nurtured an asceticism in us, not allowing us to ‘let our hair down.’ They’d
loosen up a bit if there were a dance. That was different.” There was no
“conspicuous consumption” back then, as Natalya P. put it, and “we were all
dressed modestly.” For instance, the girl’s uniform comprised a brown dress
with a white collar covered by a black apron. “But on special occasions the
apron was replaced with a white one,” remembered Yanichkina. Girls also had
to wear socks, even in the heat. Yanichkina described how, as Soviet consumer
industries expanded, the girls wanted to wear hose and pantyhose: “The first
one-size hose appeared, for example. And the income level of the pupils’ par-
ents allowed them to buy or ‘obtain’ nylon stockings. But Vera Filippovna for-
bade this and we had to wear what everyone else wore, so that no one stood
out.” Concluded Yanichkina: “On the whole, she was probably right in this
regard. But as children, we thought this was unfair.”
As teenagers, the young women tested Echberger’s regulations, especially her
insistence that the girls wear braids and not cut their hair. When one of them
saw in the newspaper Pioneer Pravda illustrations of recommended hairstyles for
girls, which included deviations from Echberger’s sense of decorum, they
launched a revolt. Citing the newspaper article to justify their making a fashion
statement, the girls, one by one, cut their hair—to Echberger’s dismay. “It was a
real revolution,” boasted Irina Barysheva.
Photographs of Vera Filippovna say it all. A strong, formidable-looking woman
with a military bearing, a stern, even harsh, expression, and an aura of self-confidence,
Echberger had no trouble taking other people’s inventories and setting the “correct”
tone at school. Aleksandr Ivanov called her “a woman with a man’s personality.” She
enhanced her authority by knowing all that she could about her charges. “She was an
amazing woman, who knew each pupil by name, and the names of their parents,”
Aleksandr Babushkin remembered. “She knew what made each student tick.” As the
remarks about Vera Filippovna’s cultural war against the girls’ growing consciousness
of fashion suggest, Echberger recognized what trouble to expect from her pupils. In
the seventh and eighth grades some of the boys sneaked into the bathroom during
recess to drag on cigarettes. Aleksandr Ivanov related what happened when word of
this reached Echberger. “Things went so far that during recess she, a woman, went into
the men’s room. She was standing there [when we came in].”
Irina Garzanova grossly exaggerated that Vera Filippovna “was already approach-
ing seventy back then” to drive home the point that Echberger stood on the other
side of a great divide separating the generations. From a child’s perspective, it must
have been hard to imagine that Vera Filippovna had once had a childhood. That said,
Although it might not seem

obvious to viewers of this
photo, several female Baby
Boomers remarked that Vera
Filippovna (right) softened her
look for graduation night in
1967 when she presented
diplomas to Olga Kolishchyuk
and others. Echberger’s “iron
discipline” extended even to
teachers. Irina Vizgalova
remembered that teacher Klara
Eduardovna “once had been
sent home to change because
she came to school in a colorful
blouse rather than in a white
one.” Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
it coincided with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In fact, Echberger’s penchant for
iron discipline may have had something to do with her Bolshevism. She “was a prin-
cipled woman,” insisted Larisa Petrova. “She was a real Communist in the positive
sense of the term. She was honest, and she loved order and discipline. She mixed up
each class by placing children of well-off parents next to children from ordinary fam-
ilies.” Although committed to broadening the social profile of the school’s student
body, “she didn’t pick children from families of alcoholics or from other antisocial
elements.” Patent privilege violated her Soviet egalitarianism. Irina Garzanova
received a reprimand from Echberger for being driven to school at the start of the
school year. “That was not allowed,” explained Garzanova. “Like good Soviet chil-
dren, we were expected to use public transportation.” Viktor D. voiced respect for
Echberger’s success in creating a built environment conducive to learning, but criti-
cized her for “being afraid of childhood pranks and for exaggerating their impor-
tance.” He clarified that “she’d panic a bit and not always investigate things fully.” He
believed he “suffered from her” as a result. Tatyana Kuznetsova saw a softer side to
her. “We feared her, but she actually was a very pleasant, kind-hearted woman. When
we’d see her on the street after we graduated she’d greet us warmly. She could be
really charming, but in school she was strict.”
“ H E WA S A B O R N A D M I N I S T R AT O R ”
The photos suggest he looked like Khrushchev or like kolobok, the small personi-
fied round loaf of bread coveted by animals of prey in Russian fairytales: short,
bald, thick-set, and seemingly obtuse—except for the piercing eyes. Georgy
Godzhello, himself an educator, gave Anton Petrovich Potekhin top marks for
creating “extraordinary” conditions. “As someone who turned out almost with the
same kind of job, I perhaps understand him better than others. He was able to
create optimal conditions and pick a teaching staff.” Moreover, he had a gift for
admitting talented children. Sofiya Vinogradova called him “a very good manager,
who got along very well with children and teachers. Back then I didn’t understand
this,” she added, “but now I can appreciate it.” Once the children of the Party elite
began attending the school, he managed to expand it by building a second edifice
and a swimming pool. He had the students put in a wonderful garden and attend
to it. He kept bees. He planted apple trees. “And we didn’t suffer because of this,”
concluded Starik. Mikhail Markovich explained why: “He arranged to sell the pro-
duce and used the money to buy tape recorders, movie cameras, and the like.”
Most of the Muscovites fondly summoned up memories of Anton Petrovich’s
peculiarities, his light touch on many disciplinary issues, and his constructive way
of dealing with problems and of meting out punishments. “We had a wonderful
principal, Anton Petrovich, with very charming eccentricities,” recalled Andrei
Rogatnev. One of them was pretending to be deaf whenever his charges asked him
for something. Another concerned Latin America. Vyacheslav Starik warmheart-
edly brought up that Anton Petrovich opened each school year on September 1—a
Some Baby Boomers expressed positive feelings about principal Anton Petrovich (center,
surrounded by teachers and members of the C class). Vyacheslav Starik called him “a
born administrator,” forged in the fire of the Russian Civil War when one-person
management became the order of the day. Courtesy of Vyacheslav Starik
real ritual in Soviet schools—with a speech. No matter what burning issues of the
day needed mentioning, he ended each oration by sharing his views on the
situation in Latin America. “Why did he have such a thing for Latin America?” No
one knew, but they could count on Anton Petrovich ending his annual homily in
this manner. Boris Shtein found Anton Petrovich interesting “in that he sometimes
could recite whole paragraphs or give entire lectures in verse. He was blessed with
natural gifts. He became one of the first in the country to be given the rank of
‘people’s teacher.’” He also had a thing about protecting the parquet floors, making
students change their shoes at school. Andrei Rogatnev reminisced how Anton
Petrovich taught the students to polish the school’s parquet floors until they shone
like his bald head. Once, when he slipped off his jacket and draped it over a chair,
one of the students dropped a large-toothed comb into the breast pocket so that it
protruded. Mikhail Markovich told me Anton Petrovich began the social studies
lesson by taking out the comb and asking to whom it belonged.
Sergei Zemskov was enthusiastic about Anton Petrovich, who also taught social
studies. “He was simply the most marvelous person. He had wonderful classes. It’s
hard to say what the content was, but they were good-natured human interactions.”
Anton Petrovich’s approach to diffusing a mutually hostile relationship between
sixteen-year-old Zemskov and his Russian literature teacher, Galina Aleksandrovna,
won over Sergei for good. Zemskov had no idea how Anton Petrovich knew about
the strained relationship, but one day he invited Zemskov into his office, where he
told Sergei that Galina Aleksandrovna’s infant had taken ill. He asked Zemskov to
take her medicine for the infant. “You can well imagine the look on her face when I
rang her bell.” But Anton Petrovich’s strategy solved the problem.
Mikhail Markovich recalled that Anton Petrovich, born in 1899, had worked as
principal of a military school and also had served in some sort of “penal” forces
before taking charge of School No. 20. “Yet he was utterly blessed from birth with
a sense of the magnificent and of good,” and with an appreciation for hard work.
Markovich added that Anton Petrovich “was strict with the boys, but was alto-
gether lenient with the girls,” especially the pretty ones. His ability to get things
done and his disciplinary practices made an abiding impression on Markovich,
who recounted how Potekhin enlisted a nearby sound recording establishment to
sponsor the school. As a result, “we had our first radio station.” “I remember
Anton Petrovich when the first Beatles group formed [at school],” continued
Markovich. “We set up something like a discotheque. I looked up; he was standing,
leaning against a shovel, taking it all in altogether benignly. He understood.”
Then there were the punishments. When in the tenth grade Markovich and
another student were sent out of the classroom for a misdeed, Anton Petrovich
had them paint the school fence, “like Tom Sawyer.” When Lesha Yefros broke a
teacher’s chair, Anton Petrovich exiled him to the cabinetmaker’s workshop for
two days to repair broken furniture. Vyacheslav Starik recalled a craze the boys
went through. “We disassembled practically all of the school furniture. It was a
period when we were fascinated with jousting like knights.” This came to an end
when a teacher sat down and the chair collapsed under her. “And when they
noticed how much furniture we had taken apart, there was a huge scandal. They
dragged us off to the wood shop—we had a home mechanics class—and we
reassembled all of the furniture there that we had taken apart,” said Starik.
“All of the teachers had enormous respect for him,” maintained Markovich. He
let a teacher, Roman Lvovich, smoke in class, “which was altogether incompre-
hensible in Soviet times.” He also turned something of a blind eye to the students’
smoking. When the boys gathered in the attic to light up, he’d chase them away.
“But he’d bang against things when he came, as if he were announcing that Anton
Petrovich was coming. We’d scurry out of there in time, and he never caught
anyone. But he’d punish people for hooliganism” and for coming late to school.
Vyacheslav Starik likewise remembered that Anton Petrovich categorically forbid
marking the end of eighth grade with alcohol, throwing a real scene when he
came across several males from the class carrying open bottles on the street.
None of the females complained about Anton Petrovich the way their Saratov
counterparts did about Vera Filippovna when it came to fashion, but they dis-
liked the school uniforms. Lyubov Raitman hated it and the Pioneer kerchiefs,
“which were supposed to be ironed, accurately tied, and which we ‘forgot’ when-
ever we could.” That was “especially true of the girls in the upper classes. It simply
didn’t look good. It looked much prettier without the kerchief. So we used any
opportunity.” In winter when it was cold in school, they would don a cardigan to
cover the kerchief. “But, by and large, to the very end of our studies there was the
so-called Pioneer outfit.” The Moscow variant included a navy blue skirt, a white
shirt, the mandatory kerchief, “but, still, not that awful brown dress with the
black apron” (worn in Saratov). In sum, owing to Moscow’s more liberal and
open environment, the school authorities and many of the teachers allowed their
charges an element of personal autonomy when it came to the dress code.
Some of the Muscovites had mixed feelings about Anton Petrovich—and
about his teaching. Vladimir Glebkin conceded that Potekhin’s administrative
capabilities benefited the school materially, but did not understand how
Potekhin ended up in the field of education. He seemed “far removed from
learning,” claimed Glebkin. “It seems to me that if he had been a foreman at a
construction site, he would have been in his own element.” Lyubov Raitman
cast him as “a terrible Communist, an insufferable historian who taught history
and social studies.” Vladimir Mikoyan criticized his teaching of social studies:
“It could have been interesting, but it wasn’t the way he taught it. Anyhow, per-
haps Anton Petrovich had to stay within certain limits.” Some were institutional,
but others may have been self-imposed. “But you have to give him his due,”
opined Anatoly Shapiro. “He set up this school, and he was a very good admin-
istrator, yet he likewise was a man of his time, and that was Stalin’s time.”
“ N O T A L L S C H O O L S I N S A R AT O V G I V E S U C H A
F O U N D AT I O N ”
Olga Kolishchyuk stressed that No. 42 “was a fabulous school.” Pyotor Krasil-
nikov elaborated “They put into place the nuts and bolts there, and did so at a
very high level. Later, we simply developed them more narrowly in college.”
“Not all schools in Saratov gave such a foundation,” opined Tatyana Kuznetsova.
Official records confirm the success of its pupils: fifty-four of the class of 1967’s
fifty-six graduates enrolled in college, a figure that vastly surpassed the national
average attained by elite specialized schools (approximately two-thirds).11
Foreign language instruction amounted to 30 to 40 percent of the teaching
time in the ninth and tenth grades, compared with 6 to 8 percent in regular
schools.12 As Aleksandr Trubnikov put it, “They not only taught English there
very well, but they taught those who wanted to learn. The teaching methods
were good, the teachers were good, and they demanded a great deal from us.”
However, “all of the other subjects were, in my view, the same as in any neigh-
borhood school.” Natalya P., herself an educator, appreciated the standard
school curriculum: “The school provided us with a good, broad education, not
a narrow one. We even studied art. They taught us how to sew.” Of course, the
school sought to inculcate values. They “were very similar to how I was brought
up at home,” said Natalya Yolshina. “You had to be smart, and you had to be
educated. You had to work hard and honestly, correctly. You had to apply
yourself.” Olga Kolishchyuk underscored “respect for others, intelligence, love

for literature, no matter what we became, and friendship.”
Most of its graduates agree that the school deserves top marks for teaching
English as best it could—given the circumstances. Recalled Natalya Pronina:
“We had English every day and English literature three times a week. We studied
history, modern history, in English. We even studied some physics in English,
and geography.” Natalya Yanichkina noted the drawbacks of introducing special
subjects taught in English. “They did this with history and they began to do the
same with physics by translating an ordinary textbook into English. But this was
all done as an experiment, since for the most part our understanding of the lan-
guage at that time was not deep enough to allow us to study physics. The result
was neither English nor physics.”
Attending school in a closed city in a closed society certainly made itself felt.
As Yevgeny Podolsky added, “We had practice only among ourselves and with
our teachers, because back then there were no foreigners in Saratov.” According
to Natalya Pronina, “they taught us English well, but those who taught us English
hadn’t been abroad, and naturally they had an accent.” Besides, “one had to use
literary English as in our textbook published in 1949. It was as old as we were.”
Natalya P. remembered reading Lorna Doone, which she called “an absolutely
awful book. But apparently they simply had enough copies to go around. There
was a real problem with textbooks.” And with audio equipment: unlike School
No. 20, the Saratov school lacked a modern language lab. “But there were several
record players, a handful of records, and one or two tape recorders,” Aleksandr
Konstantinov informed me. “And all of this was the initiative of the teachers.”
All school systems inculcate values and what societies believe constitutes
good citizenship. Olga Kamayurova astutely observed that because their “entire
life was politicized it would be hard to say that this somehow stood out at
school.” Arkady Darchenko made the point that “it seemed to us that that’s
simply how things were. That’s why it didn’t seem political. Even the Pioneer
movement. We took it to be like your Scout movement. We were just hanging
out.” Aleksandr Konstantinov believed that, “in comparison with other schools,
it was far less politicized. It all depended upon the teacher.” Yet Yevgeny Podolsky
called attention to the fact that “in history and the social sciences things were
heavily politicized and the textbooks were written in such a manner that when
you look at them today they seem funny.” Besides, “each day we had a political
information session and the children had to be aware of current events,” recalled
Tatyana Kuznetsova. They had to subscribe to newspapers and discuss articles
from them. As a result, Podolsky and others “for the most part believed, because
we didn’t know anything else. There was no other information until the later
grades when we began to listen to foreign radio broadcasts.”
Regardless, the graduates concurred that the school prepared them well for
college. “After graduation, or already in the ninth or tenth grade we could
converse rather freely in English,” marveled Aleksandr Kutin. Pyotor Krasilnikov
agreed that the school did a fine job of teaching conversational English. Natalya
P. may have hated Lorna Doone, but she enjoyed reading Jane Eyre, and, in tenth
grade, Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray. When Olga Martynkina later
enrolled in the Saratov Conservatory, she got by in language classes owing to
what she had learned at School No. 42. “I didn’t have to study, I didn’t attend
classes.” Back then the only undergraduate program in English was offered by
the Saratov Pedagogical Institute, where a full third of the class of ’67 enrolled
upon graduation. Those who went to the Pedagogical Institute excelled. “We
already knew everything,” boasted Olga Kolishchyuk. “We only had to clean up
a few things and do some polishing.” Others maintained that this proved to be
the case even with the weaker students.
Galina Poldyaeva’s sharing perhaps sums things up best: “Of course, we had
to learn by heart a lot of what they taught us. We, of course, understand today
that there were lots of shortcomings and that things could have been done dif-
ferently. But we were only children back then, and we didn’t think about such
things.”
“THE SCHOOL HAD VERY TOUGH REQUIREMENTS”

The atmosphere at Soviet schools often sharply deviated from the climate at
home. As someone who had not attended day care, Anna Lyovina formed a neg-
ative view of school from her older sister who “always came home in tears and
who saw school as a torture chamber.” She detailed: “Therefore when I went to
an ordinary school, I, too, cried each day. It devastated me that we had to sit
with our hands folded, that we weren’t supposed to move, that we had to write
only in a certain way, holding our pen not in a way that was comfortable, but as
one should.” To ease her anxiety, her parents transferred her to another school,
but things were not much better for her there. Her “liberation” came when she
“ended up at School No. 20.” Lyubov Kovalyova volunteered that “it was always
friendly there and I enjoyed myself.” Andrei Rogatnev made the same point:
“You left the warmth of home for the warmth of school.” Given the quality of
the pupils, “there were always interesting conversations, interesting associa-
tions,” noted Kovalyova. Mikhail Markovich elaborated, “Each of us had some
distinguishing feature. And if someone took a stab at something, he tried to do
it well.”
Tatyana Arzhanova remembered that she and her classmates spent as much
time with each other as possible, linking up on public transportation, since
there was no system of school buses in the USSR. “We couldn’t simply go to
school; we had to go together,” no matter how complicated this became. What
did they do when they arrived? “We were supposed to do calisthenics before the
first period,” recalled Yelena Zharovova. “The school was equipped with a loud-
speaker system used to broadcast the exercises. But we exercised only on special
days when someone from the administration remembered. Otherwise we simply
chatted during the music, showed up late for the calisthenics, or got ready for
our first class.”
School No. 20 matched the success of its Saratov counterpart, with virtually
everyone eventually enrolling in college. Tatyana Artyomova believed that her B
class had five gold medalists (students with perfect records) and ten or eleven
silver medalists (students with near-perfect records), a number constituting half
the class. “We studied an awful lot. They gave us a lot of work,” recalled
Artyomova. “I never worked at any point in my life as hard as I did in school.
There wasn’t a single free moment. The school had very tough requirements.”
Another medalist, Yelena Zharovova, concurred: “I studied an awful lot, and
sometimes didn’t go to bed until two or three in the morning. And I wasn’t the
only one like that.” Zharovova elaborated that the school system inculcated in
her “responsibility for what you say or do. And perhaps shame if you didn’t
work to the max.” Marina Bakutina was of the same mind; the school instilled
in her “a very serious attitude toward learning and toward obtaining knowledge.”
Vladimir Bystrov emphasized the quality of language instruction. “It turned out
that for twenty-one years I didn’t have the opportunity to practice my English.
But when I first visited America in 1988, after a week I began to speak English.”
Vladimir Prudkin knew “the map of London better than the map of Moscow.
Many, many years later,” he remembered, “when I first arrived in London, I got
my bearings, as if I already knew things by heart.” Vladimir Glebkin also praised
the language instruction and the well-equipped language lab. “We each had our
own tape recorder. We could record how we pronounced things and compare it
with a master recording and hear our shortcomings. However, what was inter-
esting was not listening to individual tapes, but acting out short skits during
class.” He gave the example of staging scenes from Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. By
the seventh grade, he recalled, “We already had excellent knowledge of the lan-
guage.” Comparing the school program with that of ordinary schools, Lyubov
Raitman commented that “we had more English-language lessons each week,
and then, in the upper classes, several subjects taught in English, English and
American literature, a subject called regional geography, and a little bit of his-
tory.” The other subjects paralleled what one would find in ordinary schools.
Otherwise critical of Soviet education, the American reporter Susan Jacoby
acknowledged the positive role of native speakers and language labs in the spe-
cialized schools in Moscow.13 Indeed, Yelena Kolosova applauded the “endless
assignments in the language lab, and also contact with native speakers.” Kolosova
welcomed the lessons “where we compared native speakers of the language
from South Africa with those from India.” Anna Lyovina shared Kolosova’s
enthusiasm. “It was wonderful! Besides, there were lots of visitors. Any delega-
tion that came to Moscow would drop in to socialize with us. That is, we heard
real language, which was very rare for the time.” Lyovina later encountered pro-
fessors at the Institute of Foreign Languages “who never saw foreigners and
didn’t know how to correctly pronounce some things.” She believed the “system
School assemblies were held to observe political, cultural, and social events and to
welcome foreign visitors. Students at School No. 20 enjoyed a much looser
dress code than their Saratov counterparts. Courtesy of Yevgeniya Kreizerova
(Ruditskaya)
of teaching English [at School No. 20] was very open and free for those times. I
can’t imagine how our principal was able to achieve such freedom. Our teachers
experimented.” She recalled the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “All of
the scheduled activities were cancelled. They told us today we’re going to have a
press conference. Pretend you’re journalists from different newspapers.
Formulate some questions.”
Anatoly Shapiro pointed out that, from today’s perspective, much about the
school program seems politicized, but that was not the case back then. “It
couldn’t have been otherwise.” Marina Bakutina professed “not to remember
anything that was politicized. On the contrary, the teachers of English were
sometimes dissidents.” Nor did Vyacheslav Starik remember any politicization:
“Yes, we were Pioneers, and they enrolled us in the Komsomol. The external
attributes existed. But I can’t say that they forced us.” Yelena Kolosova under-
stood politicization as a personal matter, casting principal Anton Petrovich and
history teacher Nadezhda Petrovna, with her stiff appearance, as the bearers of
politicization. Kolosova shared, “It depended upon the instructors’ cultural level
and upon their method. I think that we were happy enough that politics was
watered down there. There was humor. They knew who they were dealing with.
There were funny things such as civil defense and the like. They were, of course,
a product of the time,” she explained. Yet even Anton Petrovich could have a
light touch. Georgy Godzhello related that many of the boys “forgot” or left at
home the Komsomol badges that Anton Petrovich liked students to wear.
Eventually they conspired to drop them down the toilet, which they did without
serious consequences. He also recalled a class discussion of Mikhail Sholokhov’s
novel about collectivization of agriculture, Virgin Soil Upturned, when one of his
classmates queried: “What sort of Communist is it who says that, for the sake of
the Revolution, he’s ready to mow down women and children with his machine
gun?” Nothing came of this question. “No one brainwashed us,” underscored
Leonid Volodarsky.
“A L L O F T H E T E A C H E R S W E R E E X C E L L E N T ”
At Saratov’s School No. 42 a single homeroom teacher taught the children until
the fifth grade, when they began to switch teachers for some subjects. Students in
the B group loved their homeroom teacher Aleksandra Sergeyevna Fadeyeva.
“She was like a mother. We adored her,” said Olga Martynkina. Many shared
Irina Tsurkan’s view that the teachers “had very colorful personalities” and played
an enormous role in shaping their charges’ worldviews. “As I now understand,”
opined Irina Chemodurova, “the contingent of teachers was very strong. They
taught us how to think, not only to learn things by heart.” Exclaimed Aleksandr
Konstantinov: “Actually, all of the teachers were excellent! Except for a few indi-
viduals, they were all interesting.” Arkady Darchenko echoed these sentiments:
“Basically, the teaching staff was very strong. There were simply wonderful
teachers of English.” Not all of their classmates would agree, but most Saratovites
remained grateful to those who prepared them so well for college.
Natalya P., today a teacher of English, acknowledged that “from today’s per-
spective, some of them used strict methods that were tied to the [Stalinist]
regime. The older ones were brought up and worked both before and during the
war. They weren’t at all able to shed this, but the young ones were marvelous.”
She also complained that there was considerable turnover among English
teachers in the B class, unlike in the parallel A group. Her classmate Aleksandr
Kutin shared her objection: “We changed our English teachers like gloves.” Some
interviewees hypothesized that the A group had more stability in this regard
because the school administration did not wish to invite criticisms from local
Party leaders whose children attended the school. There was an exception: Klara
Eduardovna Starshova, whom members of the B class cited most frequently as a
favorite teacher. The daughter of a devout Communist who taught at Saratov
University, Klara Eduardovna was a child of the Twentieth Party Congress and of
Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin. This—and her youth—gave her more in
common with the class of 1967 than with her parents’ generation. Klara
Eduardovna began teaching at School No. 42 as a newly minted graduate of the
Saratov Pedagogical Institute where, she told me, she had had “little practice
with the language.” As a result, she and three girlfriends spoke English among
themselves. Her efforts were not in vain, for she made a favorable impression on
future gold medalist Aleksandr Konstantinov. Like him, Irina Tsurkan remarked
that Starshova “was like an older sister.” Irina Vizgalova praised her too. “She’s
a charming person and the most amazing thing is that, although so many years
have passed, she remembers who is where, what they do for a living, how many
children they have, and their problems.”
Tatyana Ivanovna Zorina, who taught Russian language and literature, also
made a deep and abiding, if not always favorable, impression on her pupils. An
older woman, Zorina had survived the blockade of Leningrad and therefore
commanded, and demanded, respect. She taught the class of ’67 from the fifth
grade, becoming class B’s homeroom teacher in the ninth and tenth (final year)
grades. Viktor D. found her “very peculiar” and suspected that she was becoming
senile. “She was a very strange woman,” concurred Irina Barysheva, “who was
not afraid to express what, for that time, were seditious ideas,” tolerating uncon-
ventional readings of Soviet classics from her pupils. Barysheva recalled that,
whenever she took an independent position, Tatyana Ivanovna still gave her an
A for the day and never “forced” her to adopt an official point of view. “Another
would have slammed me with Ds. All of the other kids valued this and really
liked Zorina,” volunteered Barysheva. Olga Kamayurova knew her classmates
liked Zorina, but Olga had reservations: “Perhaps she treated us correctly, but
she was crude and without ceremony. I never found that to be pleasant. I’m very
thankful to her that I write without making errors,” confided Aleksandr Kutin,
who admitted she was “original, strict, and had a sharp tongue.” Zorina was
Olga Kolishchyuk’s favorite teacher. “She was strict, but fair. And she could really
interest us in the subject. She had absolutely brilliant Russian, fabulous Russian,
classical Russian, without any slang.” Irina Garzanova recalled how Zorina
would tell them, “Don’t be offended. I’m responsible to your parents. I’m pre-
paring you for college. All of you will get in.”
The Saratovites who became scientists or went to medical school after gradu-
ation often had positive things to say about their science and math teachers at
School No. 42. Vladimir Nemchenko and others praised Roza Vasiliyevna
Galaguz, who taught chemistry so well that although Irina Chemodurova saw
herself as “a typical student of the humanities,” she enrolled in the Chemistry
Department at the university because of Galaguz’s influence. Even more sang
the praises of their bearded physics teacher, war veteran Mikhail Dmitryevich
Benevolensky. Yevgeny Podolsky remembered, “His classes were a real pleasure.
He had a great sense of humor.” Viktor D. called him a “man with an excep-
tional heart and with outstanding knowledge” who demonstrated “a love for
teaching and for children.” According to rumors, he even raised several orphans.
Irina Vizgalova recounted that, “like many girls in our class, I didn’t understand
a thing about physics, even though we had an absolutely charming teacher. We
really liked him. He was too kind, and didn’t give Ds.” He also inspired Aleksandr
Trubnikov: “He was loud-mouthed, very lively, and taught physics well. It prob-
ably was because of him that I studied physics in college.”
Because history was the most patently politicized discipline, a personal

problem involving one otherwise exemplary teacher turned into a scandal of
sorts. Before the ninth grade Albina Ivanovna Baklanova taught history. “She
was famous in the city,” recalled Irina Barysheva. “They wrote about her in the
papers; they came to film us for television; we were a vanguard class” that par-
ticipated in and won various citywide academic “socialist competitions.” Viktor
D. appreciated her because “she worried about each pupil and put her entire
heart into her teaching.” For this reason, Irina Barysheva and her classmates
complained when they learned that Baklanova would no longer be teaching
them. Everywhere they turned, the students were blandly told that she had
opted to resign. But Baklanova refused to meet with them when they went to her
home. Altogether by chance, Barysheva claimed to have found out what hap-
pened from her father because the factory he directed sponsored the school. It
turned out that one of his skilled workers who helped out in the school’s work-
shop became romantically involved with Baklanova. “During the Soviet era this
was unacceptable, ever the more so because he was willing to leave his family for
her. This was incompatible with the calling of a Soviet teacher. To make a long
story short, they suggested that she quit ‘of her own accord,’” explained Barysheva.
This indignity occurred before the Soviet government relaxed divorce laws, when
concepts of what constituted suitable behavior on the part of teachers—and
good Communists—made such liaisons problematic. “When a new teacher of
history showed up in the ninth grade,” lamented Aleksandr Konstantinov, “she
proved to be Communist to the core. She wasn’t mean, but it was awful, and the
contrast was so obvious.” “Honestly speaking,” volunteered Irina Chemodurova,
“she almost killed my desire to study it.”
Some Saratovites griped about how some teachers made them feel, but most
of the disgruntled ones complained about grades they believed they did not
deserve. Natalya Yanichkina, for example, groused about her Russian literature
teacher, Valentina Nikolaevna: “She was from the old Stalinist cadres. She would
all but disrupt an entire class simply because it seemed to her that a girl’s hairdo
was not right or because her hair was braided, say, on one side.” Fortunately,
continued Yanichkina, “Lidiya Vasiliyevna Yermolova replaced her. She was
more democratic. She’d express views that were not part of the school program,
or tell us her opinion of an author, or of some situation. She was my favorite
teacher.” Irina Garzanova praised her teachers except Aleksandra Ignatyevna
Dolgova: “the only one I don’t recall with gratitude, because we didn’t get along.
My only two B’s were in mathematics.” Yevgeny Podolsky’s bête noire was
biology teacher Galina Lyudvigovna, whose B prevented him from graduating
with a silver medal. Irina Barysheva got good grades from chemistry teacher
Roza Vasiliyevna Galaguz until the ninth grade, when Irina fell in love with a
university student who would become her future husband. “I simply wasn’t into
chemistry,” she owned up. But that did not prevent her from demonizing
Galaguz, who gave Barysheva a D for the fourth quarter, which would have
resulted in expulsion from the school. She and her mother appeared before the
school council, at which all of her teachers spoke on her behalf except for
Galaguz. “And, as a result, under pressure from my homeroom teacher, the
principal, and, here, once again, I think it was important who my father was,”
she was allowed to retake the exam in August, when she received a B for the
course, “and thereby remained in school.” Aleksandr Virich clashed with his
geography teacher and Russian language teacher, Zorina. The first disagreement
“ended in mutual love between me and the geography teacher.” But Virich’s
charm did not work on Zorina. She gave him Cs in language and literature, “but
didn’t prevent me from getting Bs on my graduation exams,” he remembered.
“ W E S I M P LY D I D N ’ T H AV E A N Y W E A K T E A C H E R S ”
Mikhail Markovich had nothing but admiration for the teachers at School No.
20 and for how they related to their students. “For the most part the teachers
were brilliant.” According to Andrei Rogatnev, with rare exception “the teachers
were tremendous, simply tremendous.” Anatoly Shapiro claimed they not only
“were excellent” teachers but also “honest and decent” people, especially those
who taught English. “They were really capable and devoted,” observed Viktor
Alekseyev. Vladimir Bystrov praised his first teacher of English, Irina Yakovlevna
Yurina, who “left a long time ago for America during the first wave of immigra-
tion.” Leonid Terlitsky recounted how “she taught us the English terminology of
jurisprudence. She set up a trial.” Mikhail Markovich remembered that the mock
“English court” involved swearing on a Bible, and this during a state campaign
to close churches. She also organized an English-language choir. Lyubov Raitman
applauded Yurina too as an “absolutely extraordinary teacher, who, before com-
ing to the school, worked as a translator for the Soviet tourist agency, Intourist.
She shared many personal reminiscences and experiences, and she had very
good English. She had a great voice and knew many American songs.” Anatoly
Shapiro likewise expressed gratitude for Yurina, who, as head of the curriculum,
recruited “a group of very talented young, gifted teachers of English,” including
his first English teacher, Maya Naumova Turovskaya, who also left for America.
Georgy Godzhello called Turovskaya “the most outstanding, most brilliant
teacher,” adding, “we simply didn’t have any weak teachers.”
Something else about the school’s English teachers stands out. Soviet teachers
were among the strongest believers in socialist values.14 But things were more
complex than that at School No. 20 during the 1960s. As Igor Litvin understood,
“They were not only teachers but some kind of dissidents, who, if they hadn’t
been fired from their former jobs, were at least told that it was time for them to
leave.” Litvin elaborated, “Since the new possibility emerged of working in the
special schools—there was no fixed curriculum—the neighborhood department
of education took them on. And there they could be creative.” Although they dif-
fered from one another in every possible regard they had one thing in common:
“They did not belong to the mainstream of Russian education.” Litvin later studied
English at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, where we “waited for interesting
classes like the ones at school. It was only during my fourth year there,” he recalled,
that he “understood that there simply weren’t such teachers there.” Vladimir
Prudkin drew similar conclusions about the teachers at School No. 20: “When I
got older I began to understand that it was our good fortune that there were not
only such good pupils, but also teachers, because they also selected the teachers in
an elitist way.” Pointing out that most of the teachers came from the same age
cohort as the Soviet “sixties” generation (the shestidesyatniki), which in Russia
refers to those who attended college during the Thaw* and came of age at the start
of the 1960s, he maintained, “It’s clear that the teachers sympathized with this
group.” Moreover, “the more liberal” among them “eagerly took in liberal ideas,
and all kinds of contact with Europe and the West.” In this regard, stressed Prudkin,
“It was altogether obvious that the teaching staff was in full agreement with the
ideas of Khrushchev’s Thaw.” He added, “Perhaps 90 percent of them were people
who somehow almost felt that they were free.” There is no reason to doubt
Prudkin’s observations, for Soviet authorities took notice of the tolerant climate in
the special schools, repeatedly expressing dissatisfaction with Moscow’s Special
Math School No. 2, which they shut down, seeing it as a breeding ground of
potentially dangerous activities on the part of both pupils and teachers.15 Vladimir
Shlapentokh confirmed that the post-Khrushchev leadership adopted a negative
stance toward the special schools for this very reason.16
One teacher who fired the Baby Boomers’ imaginations is Roman Kaplan,
“Romashka,” who improved the Muscovites’ language skills in the ninth and
tenth grades. Leonid Terlitsky, who remains close to Kaplan today, appreciated
that “he was friends with everyone and still is, with [Nobel Prize poet Joseph]
Brodsky, with Baryshnikov, with every meaningful cultural figure of the time.”
As teenagers, they commended his unorthodox approach to teaching, his
theatrical readings, and his manner. “I’ll never forget the time he came into the
classroom and read Kipling’s poem ‘If.’ My, how he read it! He’s very dramatic,
and absolutely cast a spell over us,” gushed Lyubov Raitman. Kaplan made a
lasting impact on Mikhail Markovich for traveling each week to Leningrad to see
his wife, something the students found terribly romantic. He also smoked
Marlboros. “Back then that was a rare thing, and he smoked in class,” marveled
Markovich. Like many other girls in the class, Tatyana Luchnikova “was in love
with Roman Kaplan.”** In addition to Kaplan, Vyacheslav Starik extolled the
* As mentioned on p. 53, Khrushchev’s inconsistent liberalization of cultural policy is loosely

known as the Thaw; however, the term also refers more specifically to the period before and
immediately after the Twentieth Party Congress of 1956, where he denounced Stalin.
** In 1996 Luchnikova published a collection of her poems, Cross of Love, which she
presented to her former teacher at his restaurant. According to Luchnikova, Kaplan told
her, “Tanya, come to the Russian Samovar and sell as many of your books as you would
like.” The book is Krest liubvi (New York: Context Publishing House, 1996).
virtues of Gennady Petrovich Nikiforov, who taught English, not only at School
No. 20 but also on TV. “Later I even saw a film in which he played Churchill. He
grew plump for the part.” Then there was a Jesus-look-alike from Moscow
University who had translated Stalin’s writings. Out of personal interest he vis-
ited the school several times a week to offer a few classes.
Most of those in the B class spoke passionately about their Russian language
and literature teacher, Nina Ivanovna Timonina, “an altogether marvelous
teacher,” in Vladimir Bystrov’s estimation. Andrei Rogatnev believed that, thanks
to her, “I can say without boasting that I write grammatically.” Marina Bakutina
spoke for many others in describing Nina Ivanovna’s daily rapid-fire dictation
requiring mastery of “the most insidious spelling rules.” Marina despaired over
the D’s she received on the exercises. “I begged my parents to take me out of the
school. I remember how much I practiced at home, and gradually I began to get
Cs, then Bs, and finally As.” Yelena Kolosova agreed that Nina Ivanovna was “her
favorite teacher of all time,” because of Nina Ivanovna’s “extraordinary respect
for her pupils.” Sofiya Vinogradova expressed envy that the B group was so lucky.
“When she sometimes taught us we felt very fortunate. Such artistry. I can’t
describe it. You’d have to hear it and see it.” Mikhail Markovich praised the A
class’s Russian literature teacher, Olga Aleksandrovna Lanskaya. “It’s to her credit
that I followed this path and do what I now do.” “She was of course confined by
the school curriculum, but sometime in the 1960s this began to loosen up, and
we quickly raced through that which was required.” She, and Nina Ivanovna,
had their classes read and write summaries of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day
in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—the shocking novella published in 1962, which
reminded readers of the dark chapters in the Soviet past and the shortcomings
of the Soviet present—and other controversial works. Markovich credited these
efforts with “opening them up.”
Now co-owner with ballet superstar

Mikhail Baryshnikov of the Russian
Samovar restaurant in Manhattan,
English instructor Roman Kaplan keeps
in touch with some of his former
students. This photograph was taken at
an informal reunion of the B Class at
Andrei Rogatnev’s Moscow apartment in
2005. Courtesy of Donald J. Raleigh
Some teachers made lasting impressions on their young charges for the
strangest of reasons. Yelena Kolosova mentioned Yury Borisovich Seminovker:
“I think they jailed him for black marketeering. There were such rumors.”
Vladimir Glebkin enjoyed his enigmatic physics teacher, not because of the
subject, but because of how he taught. He “opened his heart” to those fasci-
nated by physics and “tried not to get into things too deeply” with those who
did not understand the subject. Anna Lyovina remains grateful to her home-
room teacher, Galina Aleksandrovna, who helped Lyovina detach from a
clinging classmate from a troubled home whom “no one wanted to be friends
with.” Marina Bakutina reminisced about how her classmates poked fun at a
teacher of English literature her classmates for some reason called Marzipan.
He pronounced the word “realism” as “brealism,” totally unaware of the
additional “b” when he said the word, but able to discern it when he had his
charges repeat the word as he pronounced it. Boys in the C class could not
resist the opportunity to tweak the name of a tenth-grade English teacher,
Semyon Anisimovich Sheiman, whom they called Semen Onanisimovich
[Masturbation] Shame-on-You.
Those that got into trouble for causing disciplinary problems had critical
things to say about some of their teachers, while others reacted negatively to
teachers who appeared as spokespersons for the regime’s official value
system. Leonid Volodarsky observed that “there were teachers who loved
their subjects and who loved children, and there were teachers who perhaps
loved their subjects, but who did not like children.” Sergei Zemskov pointed
out that the teachers at School No. 20 “felt that the school had to be better
than average, and that their professionalism also had to be greater.” He
believed they “denied themselves creativity” and that a “rigid pragmatism”
held sway. “That is, you had to be well prepared, and you had to move on to
prestigious colleges. All of this was factored down to the last ‘t.’” Some of the
interviewees reviled history teacher Valery Mikhailovich, who condescend-
ingly told his students that “at your age Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya [a
Komsomol partisan heroine during World War II tortured by the Nazis] was
hanging from a rope.”
Lyubov Raitman found objectionable her math and homeroom teacher in
the middle school years, Rada Fyodorovna Kostenko. “She was terribly Soviet
and had a very Soviet disposition.” Raitman detailed the time the KGB in 1962
arrested a colonel in the Soviet military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky, staging a
show trial broadcast on television. Convicted of spying for the Americans and
British, Penkovsky was executed. Kostenko launched into a tirade against him
during a math class, which prompted her pupils to misbehave. This set her into
a rage. According to Raitman, Rada Fyodorovna bellowed, “Well, it’s people like
you who grow up to become Penkovskys.” “We were terribly proud of this,”
boasted Raitman. “That’s the awful fool she was.” Admitting that most of
her classmates shared Raitman’s assessment, Yelena Kolosova confessed she
“absolutely loved Rada Fyodorovna Kostenko. I don’t have a problem with such
people. At heart they’re more reliable and predictable, because they’re not hid-
ing behind pleasant veneers.” Recognizing Rada Fyodorovna’s “Soviet qualities,”
Boris Shtein also came to her defense. “She was a very lively person, not
unfeeling, with real heart.”
“ G R E E T I N G S T O S A R AT O V F R O M B R I S T O L ”
Some of the Saratov English teachers had spent time abroad in countries where
English was spoken as a second language, such as India or Burma, and one of
them, according to Olga Martynkina, had been a translator for the UN. But
those attending Moscow’s School No. 20 were taught by teachers with stronger
English and had far greater opportunity to encounter native speakers of English
than their Saratov counterparts living in a “closed” city. By opening the country
up in the 1950s, Khrushchev made it possible for a trickle of foreigners to visit
Saratov while the Cold War generation attended School No. 42, but by the late
1960s, Saratov, home to numerous defense-related industries, became totally off
limits to foreigners from the capitalist world. Like many of her classmates, Irina
Chemodurova remembered that before then Saratov had a sister-city relation-
ship with Bristol, England, and that the head of the school’s curriculum
department, Nina Alekseyevna Bobrovnikova, traveled to England. A document
in the school album for the 1966/67 academic year indicates that, after the first
official visitors from Bristol came to Saratov in 1956, several delegations from
Saratov toured England. During the time the Cold War generation attended
School No. 42, Saratov sent an exhibition of children’s art to Bristol and also a
photo exhibit of scenes from performances in Saratov theaters of plays written
by English playwrights.*
Most of the Saratovites have some vague recollection of the visitors from Bristol
and of some of their teachers traveling to England. Arkady Darchenko stated that
“we were in the fourth grade at the time, and I remember that it was mainly
teachers, probably of the Russian language.” Aleksandr Babushkin recalled tiny
blue flowers planted along the riverfront: “They told us that they brought these
flowers from Bristol and planted them.” According to Aleksandr Kutin, the head
of the school’s curriculum and one or two other teachers had traveled to Bristol as
tourists. Natalya Yanichkina corroborated this: “Delegations of teachers visited
Saratov, but there were no children. I remember that our teacher had a pen on
which was written ‘Greetings to Saratov from Bristol.’” Yanichkina also mentioned
a delegation that visited Saratov shortly before they graduated—perhaps the last.
“Some sort of Englishman, I believe, visited and socialized with us. I think he gave
some lectures at the university. I can even recall what he looked like.”
* Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Jerome
Kitty’s play about George Bernard Shaw, Dear Liar; and Oscar Wilde’s tale, “The Star-Child.”
A young teacher at School No. 42 at the time, Klara Eduardovna Starshova

met with a delegation of three English women who visited Saratov in 1958.
When the authorities chose her father, a devout Communist, to host them at
home for tea, her family anguished over what to serve the visitors, given the
limited possibilities. Klara Eduardovna told me her most vivid and unexpected
memory of the encounter involved the response to her remark about the virtues
of the English-language Communist newspaper issued in England, The Daily
Worker, one of the few available in the USSR. Her guest Barbara astonished her
by lambasting the paper for its lack of objectivity.
Shortly thereafter, Saratov closed, not to reopen to the West until the
Gorbachev era. In the meantime, the authorities replaced Bristol with Bratislava,
then in Czechoslovakia. Summed up Arkady Darchenko: “We corresponded
mostly with people from ‘brotherly’ countries, with Czechs, Slovaks, Poles. But
to travel abroad, no, there was nothing like that.”
“ B A C K T H E N T H E Y O N LY C A M E T O U S ”
In contrast to their Saratov counterparts, the Muscovites had regular contact
with foreign visitors, who not only provided opportunities for them to speak
English but also a chance “for the foreigners to be shown something,” as
Vladimir Glebkin so aptly put it. Because of his technical skills, Glebkin wel-
comed foreign delegations to the school’s radio center: “I remember that,
already from the seventh grade, I told these foreign delegations about every-
thing.” Lyubov Kovalyova remembered that “many delegations visited the
school, and we always performed for them. We had a choir. We sang, with
enthusiasm, ‘Do Russians Want War?’ and ‘Jingle Bells.’ I think all of them
liked it.” Andrei Rogatnev recalled British guests, “But there was no exchange
yet. Back then they only came to us.” Vyacheslav Starik summoned up mem-
ories of visitors from Canada, and once a delegation from either Australia or
New Zealand. When the Brits visited, “we told each other dirty jokes.”
(Afterward, some of the males “practiced” their newly acquired vocabulary at
Mayakovsky Metro station, where Intourist often took tourists because of the
station’s exceptionally stunning mosaics.) For Leonid Terlitsky, “one of the
memorable guests was writer James Aldridge, who visited the school with his
Egyptian wife.” Boris Shtein boasted that “somewhere I still have the book For
Whom the Bell Tolls with Mary Hemingway’s autograph.” These encounters
made Bakhyt Kenzheyev hunger for even more contact with foreigners. When
he was sixteen years old, he paid a call on the House of Friendship, which
hosted foreign delegations, expressing a desire to practice his English. The staff
invited him to meet with English-speaking visitors. “I was very surprised and
probably went there for about half a year and met with tourists,” noted
Kenzheyev. “I think they probably thought that I was a young KGB agent, but
I was simply a kid who wanted to speak English.”
The Muscovites also got to mingle with visiting foreign school children their
age. In the eighth grade, children showed up from England. Marina Bakutina
cringed telling me about her reply to a visiting English teen who asked about
Moscow. “I began to recite by heart a passage from our English textbook about
what a great metro Moscow had, about when it was built, about how much
marble was used in constructing the subway. It was an altogether inappropriate
reply. I remember very well the look of amazement on the girl’s face.” Americans
whose parents worked in European embassies also visited the school. “We
socialized with them quite freely,” recalled Igor Litvin, “although I now think
that there probably was someone in our group who [might have informed on
us], but I don’t know who.” When Lyubov Raitman was in the tenth grade, a
large group of American school children paid a visit. “We spent several days with
them. We went places with them, to museums, to Red Square, and elsewhere. It
was terribly interesting. They attended classes with us, sat next to us, boys and
girls. We spoke with them, and later corresponded with them.” Raitman and
others exchanged letters with their American or British pen pals. Yevgeniya
Ruditskaya became pen pals with a girl from England, “but then I had to end
this because my mother had a top security clearance and they wouldn’t let me,”
she regretted. The KGB often monitored these innocent childhood contacts.
“ N O O T H E R S C H O O L I N S A R AT O V H A S T H I S ”
Both schools offered unique summer opportunities for the Baby Boomers that
they remember fondly, for the programs—in some regards extensions of the
school year—contrasted sharply with the boilerplate, state-subsidized summer
Pioneer camps that most Soviet youth attended. Some of the Baby Boomers
attended Pioneer camps, too, but the camps were not popular among the
intelligentsia, who sought other ways to care for and enrich their children.
Viktor D. claimed that there were more than 350 Pioneer camps in the Saratov
region back then, “but it seemed scandalous to send their children there, and
not because conditions were bad.” As a result, Aleksandr Trubnikov reported
that “the majority from our class did not go to camp.” Each year Olga
Kamayurova’s parents took her to the Black Sea. “Back then this was simple
and easy. I never went to camp, neither to Pioneer Camp, nor to any sport
camp. I simply wasn’t drawn to that sort of thing,” she explained. Aleksandr
Babushkin expressed gratitude to his grandmother. “She showed me much of
the then Soviet Union. There’s practically not a place that we didn’t visit.”
Although he vacationed at the Black Sea several times with his parents,
Aleksandr Trubnikov observed that “few could afford [going to the sea]. It was
expensive, even for some who went to our school.” Instead of camp and trips
to the sea, each summer during the 1950s Yevgeny Podolsky’s grandmother
took his sister and him to the village of Chadaevka in the Saratov region. “I’d
remind you that this was not today’s village. There was mud up to our knees,
no roads, nothing. We lived in our landlady’s cottage with dirt floors, but
things were very clean. That was our vacation.” A rare exception, Lyudmila
Gorokhova loved Pioneer camp, perhaps because she lived at state day care
facilities when she was a preschooler. “For the ten years I was in school I
attended Pioneer camp twelve times. That is, some years I went for two sessions
I liked it so much,” she recalled.
The local Party elite sent their children to the USSR’s most prestigious Pioneer
camps, which were located on the sea. Tatyana Kuznetsova fondly recalled the
time she and classmate Irina Kositsyna spent at Kabardinka, on the Black Sea,
where kids from Cuba vacationed with them. Downplaying her family’s privileged
position, Kuznetsova claimed she did not go to local camps “because of the ter-
rible Volga mosquitoes.” Irina Chemodurova also spent time at an elite camp,
Adler, where, at the age of seven, she saw Khrushchev. After graduation, Olga
Gorelik with Larisa Petrova attended Artek, the most prestigious Pioneer camp
in the Soviet Union. “We lived in the same building,” noted Gorelik. “Her father
also worked in the oblast (provincial) Party committee.”
Despite the intelligentsia’s reservations about Pioneer camps, most looked
favorably upon sending their children to an alternative—to Camp Labor and
Rest, an option that became available thanks to the initiative of School No. 42’s
teachers. The Saratovites raved about spending a month living in tents following
the eighth and ninth grades. “Children today can only envy us,” crowed Galina
Poldyaeva. For her, camp began each year with vivid memories of the journey to
an island in the Volga, Chardym, in a huge iron motorboat, powered by an auto-
mobile engine. “All of the kids attending the camp, and all of the tents, in pieces,
were on the wooden deck. And Mikhail Nikolayevich [their physics teacher]
would say, ‘Sit still. If someone rocks the boat, we’ll drown.’” “No other school
in Saratov had this,” boasted Aleksandr Trubnikov. “And it’s not because we
were the English-language school, but because we lucked out with our gym
teacher, Igor Andreyevich,” who organized the camp. Trubnikov described his
memories of the Volga camp as “wonderful ones. It was really a great summer
camp,” he told me. “I think this is what I enjoyed most about my school days.
This was real happiness, when you’re young, when you don’t yet work, and
when you’re on the Volga.” Remembered Trubnikov: “I drank right out of the
river. You’d swim, take a sip, and swim further. It was so clean! These memories
are probably the happiest from my school years.” This is where many of them
cemented lifelong friendships. Arkady Darchenko clarified why: “In our class a
large enough group went practically each year. We did just about everything our-
selves. We purchased supplies and took turns cooking on open campfires. And
group work is the sort of thing that bonds people. Likewise, there were conflicts
and romances.”
Like others, Irina Tsurkan found the experience transformative. Raised by
strict parents who barely let her out of their sight, Irina remembered what the
camp signified for her: “It meant tents. It meant taking turns keeping the
The Saratov Baby Boomers enumerated the many reasons why they enjoyed living in
tents at Camp Labor and Rest on an island in the Volga. Aleksandr Konstantinov
recalled what might have been one of the main ones: “It meant freedom for us,
especially from our parents!” Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
campfires burning. It meant doing some fun work on nearby kolkhozes. I

remember that they sent us city kids to weed carrots. We good naturedly weeded
and weeded. Not a single carrot was left. We pulled them all up!” Up until that
point, Tsurkan suffered from all sorts of inferiority complexes, owing, in her
view, to her exacting upbringing at home. She recalled, “It was at camp that I
revealed my more interesting side. I returned home a different person, and peo-
ple treated me differently. I came to feel that I was no worse than anyone else,
and perhaps better at some things.” Pyotor Krasilnikov saw the socialization
experience as a rite of passage. “At first we listened to the songs of the older kids.
Then we ourselves became upperclassmen and others listened to us and we
taught them.”
Not everyone attended Camp Labor and Rest, because some parents did not
allow their children to do so, and because some Baby Boomers did not want to
go. Natalya P.’s parents insisted she vacation with them on the Black Sea. “This
totally distressed me,” lamented Natalya. “I didn’t need their trip down south to
the sea; I wanted to go to camp with my classmates! But my parents were strict
and didn’t let me go.” Irina Vizgalova did not participate because she spent each
summer visiting her grandparents in Volgograd oblast. Others did not attend
camp, “because not everyone liked living in a tent and roughing it,” explained
Aleksandr Trubnikov. “To be honest,” confirmed Larisa Petrova, “I always loved

comfort, and never really cared for tents.”
“ O N LY E N G L I S H I S S P O K E N H E R E ”
During the summer the young Muscovites spent time at the dacha, visited relatives,
attended camp, or traveled with their families. Mikhail Markovich visited his grand-
parents in Yasnaya Polyana, where he enjoyed “a village childhood during the
summer.” This meant that he was left to his own devices and “was absolutely free,”
he recalled. “We played all of the childhood games, including stealing apples from
the neighbors’ trees.” “Although travel was confined to the country,” Yelena Kolosova
appreciated her parents because they “miraculously managed to find untouched
nature reserves” to visit. Viktor Alekseyev remembered going to the Black Sea every
other year. “It was mainly with my mother or with my aunt, my mother’s sister.” By
the time he had completed school his father had salted away enough money to buy
a small dacha outside Moscow, where they spent subsequent summers.
Some Muscovites attended Pioneer camps, but they and their parents harbored
the same reservations about the experience that their Saratov counterparts articu-
lated. Viktor Alekseyev volunteered, “I went to Pioneer camp several times, and
wasn’t, to put it mildly, in ecstasy.” He had a list of grievances that others shared: “the
discipline, the overcrowdedness, and the level of the teachers in comparison to ours.”
Yevgeniya Ruditskaya “couldn’t stand the Pioneer camp.” She explained that “it made
an awful impression on me, because there were altogether different kids there who
really differed from the children I went to school with.” Ruditskaya experienced anti-
Semitism in the Pioneer camps “and that’s why I hated them.” “It was never inter-
esting there,” quipped Tatyana Artyomova, “because the other kids were strangers.”
But “everyone was one of us,” Artyomova waxed lyrically, recalling the glo-
rious month she spent at a special English-language camp organized by School
No. 20 during the summer of 1964, after she finished seventh grade. The camp
was the brainchild of the younger teachers and some of the parents. Leonid
Terlitsky gave credit to Irina Yakovlevna Yurina: “She was the moving force
behind organizing an English summer camp, a month in tents outside of
Moscow on the territory of one of the military bases where we would use a can-
teen to eat, and we spent the month speaking only English.” Lyubov Raitman
thanked “the influential parents of several of our classmates,” who struck a deal
with a military unit stationed near Moscow. The unit provided large soldiers’
tents that accommodated up to six people. According to Marina Bakutina, each
of the parents was given an assignment in preparing for the camp. “My parents
were asked to make a poster, which my father did: ‘Russian is forbidden. Only
English is spoken here.’” Anna Lyovina emphasized how lucky she and her class-
mates were that “all of the teachers did it out of sheer enthusiasm. After all, no
one made them.” She elaborated: “Do you understand what kind of enthusiasm
and energy is needed to organize all of this, to arrange things, to figure out
Yevgeniya Ruditskaya (third from right) fondly remembered vacationing with both her
parents at the Black Sea. This was unusual given Soviet workplace vacation policies,
which often meant that married couples had to take their vacations at different times.
Courtesy of Yevgeniya Kreizerova (Ruditskaya)
where we’d live and what to feed us? And to achieve all of this in our bureau-
cratic system? Can you imagine how many documents they needed? They pulled
it off. I thank my lucky stars that it all turned out, and that I ended up at that
school.” Vladimir Prudkin called it “a gift of fate, especially in the USSR.”
The experience made “a very powerful impression” on Tatyana Artyomova and
others. They began each morning singing songs in English and learning new vocab-
ulary. “It was lots of fun, it was really interesting, and it helped us grow closer,”
insisted Lyubov Raitman. Tatyana Arzhanova maintained that the camp experience
resulted in bringing the A and B classes closer together as well. Lyubov Kovalyova
believed that, apart from having a good time, they took part in some “socially useful”
work, too, in nearby fields. Yet it was summer, and the emphasis was on enjoying
themselves. Leonid Terlitsky fondly reminisced, “We would play soccer using English
terminology and have various activities. Even our coach, who didn’t speak a word of
English. He learned. He had to learn corner kick, penalty kick, that sort of stuff.” The
girls basked in the sun, hiked, and hung out at a nearby stream. Although they were
not supposed to wander off on their own, “like all kids, we were interested in going
exactly where they forbade us to go,” said Lyubov Kovalyova. She also recalled, “There
was one more absolutely marvelous thing. We took turns at night duty. We guarded
the campsite, and in the morning one of the teachers would come to check on us.”
Passionate about soccer, the males at School No. 20 continued their team competition at
camp. Five members of the B Class’s team were interviewed for this book (Viktor
Alekseyev [far left], Leonid Terlitsky, Sergei Zemskov, Vladimir Glebkin, [second, third,
and fourth from left], and Vladimir Prudkin [third from right]). Courtesy of Lyubov
Obraztsova (Raitman)
The school administration looked upon the opportunity as something to be

earned: because of misconduct, Leonid Volodarsky and several others were not
allowed to take part in the adventure. Several others earned the opportunity, but
did not like it. Yelena Kolosova found it “a bit hard” to spend 24/7 with others,
even her friends. She remembered, “There was no room for my inherent insu-
larity. Although I’m someone who is very loquacious, I’m really a reserved
person.” Moreover, her first severe allergy attack darkened her memories of the
camp. “I don’t even recall what provoked it, but the memory’s a vivid one. So is
the memory of what my complexion looked like. I was covered with awful scabs
and they sent me back to Moscow first chance they got.”
Lyubov Raitman acknowledged that, when she and her friends were by them-
selves they spoke Russian, but “nevertheless, we tried [to speak English]” and
the teachers did their best to uphold the English-only rule, “punishing” those
who got caught violating it. For example, one night Andrei Rogatnev and Shurik
Lapson, who now lives in Skokie, Illinois, whispered to each other in Russian in
their tent about the next day’s soccer plans. Recalled Rogatnev: “Suddenly the
tent flap was flung open. It was pitch dark. A flash light shone in our eyes.
‘Lapson, Rogatnev! Tomorrow while all the others go to the river for a swim, you
can dig a ditch.’ That’s how they taught us English.” Vladimir Sidelnikov con-
fided that he and a few others, “got drunk behind the teachers’ backs.” But it was
not only such things that bonded them and made the camp special. Lyubov
Raitman believed that interaction with the teachers that summer contributed to
the shaping of their outlooks: “They broadened our horizons, that is, our access
to information.” Sharing their knowledge and sometimes firsthand experience
in England and America, the teachers presented these cultures in a positive light.
“It was not exaltation, it was not servility toward America, but it was recognition
of the positive in literature, in art, in history, in geography, in all aspects of life.
We learned a great deal during that month.”
“ I T WA S A L L A B O U T L E N I N , L E N I N , L E N I N ”
The state exposed children and young adults to a pyramid of age-based youth
organizations designed to provide fun, inculcate values, develop talents, and
carry out political indoctrination. Soviet school children between the ages of six
and nine belonged to the Young Octobrists, named after the October (Bolshevik)
Revolution of 1917. At age ten, children joined the Pioneers formed to replace
the prerevolutionary scouting movement. Celebrating its fortieth anniversary in
1962 when the interviewees were in sixth grade, the Pioneer organization spon-
sored a national campaign involving youth in all sorts of activities in which the
Baby Boomers took part.
Pioneers were instructed to study hard, to be honest, and to learn how to get
along with others. They took an oath upon joining the organization, “to dearly
love my Soviet Motherland, to live, study, and struggle as the great Lenin bade
us and the Communist Party teaches us.” They wore a uniform, a red kerchief,
and a badge with the motto “Always Prepared,” the response to the Pioneer call,
“Be prepared to fight for the cause of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!”
They had a salute, rules, and responsibilities. The Pioneer manual told them
how to behave, how to dress and groom themselves, how to be polite, and how
to look after themselves,17 in short, how to be “an example for all.”18 Making no
mention of Stalin, the manual had plenty to say about Khrushchev’s initiatives.
“Grow corn!” it directed.* “Unlike any other crop, corn is important for the
national economy.”19 The handbook emphasized that the Seven-Year Plan
adopted in 1959 set the goal of accelerating the creation of the material and
technical basis of communism.20
As Saratov’s Olga Gorelik maintained, “We were Octobrists, then Pioneers
and we wanted to be. Even though it was a special school, there was no irony in
any of this.” For Moscow’s Bakhyt Kenzheyev joining the Pioneers was “one of
my most ‘wonderful’ childhood memories.” Except for one thing. The school
had invited a writer to the ceremony, requesting that he tie the red kerchief on
* Khrushchev sought to introduce and expand the cultivation of corn to increase livestock
herds and consequently meat and dairy production and consumption.
Young Pioneer brigade from School No. 42’s B Class on Pioneer Day, May 19, in the
fifth or sixth grade, with their popular home room teacher, Albina Ivanovna Baklanova.
Principal Vera Filippovna dismissed Baklanova, ostensibly for becoming romantically
involved with another teacher. However, Vera Filippovna might have seen Baklanova as
a rival who threatened her position. Courtesy of Aleksandr Konstantinov
one of the pupils. Kenzheyev reported, “I was short and puny and my status
when I was ten years old was zero so I was standing there at the end of the line
and I was eager for this old Soviet asshole to tie the kerchief on my neck, but he
overlooked me. So it was a major disappointment.”
All of the interviewees later joined the Komsomol organization, the
Communist Youth League that catered to young people between the ages of
fourteen and twenty-eight, but some did so only out of necessity. “When they
accepted us into the Komsomol,” explained Igor Litvin, “everyone really wanted
to join. God forbid that you didn’t get picked. There would have been a certain
stigma. That is, you had to be a member.” Membership in the Komsomol, a
training ground for Party membership, was far from universal in the USSR, but
those with aspirations to enroll at a university needed to join. “I really didn’t
want to join the Komsomol,” volunteered Saratov’s Pyotor Krasilnikov. “I didn’t
understand why I had to join. But the times were such that, if you would have
said that you didn’t want to join, they’d not have given you your diploma upon
graduating, so I had no other choice.”
Vladimir Ilich Lenin stood at the center of the Soviet belief system and thus
of the Pioneer and Komsomol organizations. According to Moscow’s Igor Litvin,
“there was a mythologization of Lenin.” Vladimir Bystrov acknowledged that he

“revered Lenin. That was the line they filled our heads with.” Georgy Godzhello
observed that “we truly believed what we were taught. We had no doubts.”
Vladimir Sidelnikov confided, “I adored Lenin, ever the more so because my
mother told me so much about him and even named me Vladimir in honor of
him.” Saratov’s Olga Gorelik remembered that everything associated with Lenin
“was sacred for us.” Olga Kolishchyuk agreed, “We looked upon him as a
member of the family, as a protector, as a teacher, and as a person to imitate.”
Olga Kamayurova recalled, “We sang a song that now seems like gibberish:
‘Lenin is always alive, Lenin is always with you.’” As Tatyana Kuznetsova shared,
“He was everything. Open any of our textbooks and his portrait’s on the first
page, be it Our Native Language, or the ABCs.”
The Cold War generation back then held Lenin in high regard, but often not
Stalin, owing to Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin drive during their childhood and
return to “Leninist principles.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev admired Lenin but had “no
illusions” about Stalin “because of 1956, and then there was another Party con-
gress in 1961, a year full of all sorts of scandals. Then there was One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich. Besides that, I had a maternal uncle who had spent ten
years in Siberia, and two paternal uncles who had been shot.” As Aleksandr
Konstantinov put it, “Many probably were under the impression that Lenin,
unlike Stalin, was a good man, who wanted the best. Of course, people
Portraits of Lenin could be found in all public buildings, including Soviet schools. A
portrait of Lenin observes Arkady Darchenko on June 22, 1967, addressing his classmates
and their parents on graduation night. Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
nevertheless looked upon him with some cynicism because he was forced on
us.” Back then Leonid Volodarsky believed “that if Lenin were only alive, then
everything would be fine. I think that no matter who you ask,” he stated, “they’d
say that Lenin did everything correctly, and that Stalin perverted everything.”
Viktor Alekseyev certainly felt this way. “We didn’t know the entire truth back
then.” He emphasized that his views on Lenin “began to evolve much later”
than those of some of his classmates. He gave the example of his classmate and
friend Igor Altshuller, “who far earlier was exposed to all of the damaging
influence of samizdat [self-published forbidden works] and foreign radio
broadcasts.”
The abrupt changes in the Party line toward Stalin confused many, since before
1953 Soviet propaganda had attributed victory in the Great Patriotic War to him.
“His influence was absolutely enormous in that regard,” remembered Galina
Poldyaeva. As a child, Irina Vizgalova also linked Stalin to victory in war. “Well,
Stalin, Stalin, Stalin. Back then it was believed that it was all Stalin’s doings that
we won the war. But all of our misfortunes came from him.” Tatyana Kuznetsova
sensed a certain public anxiety over Stalin when Soviet newspapers wrote about
repressions. “How could all of this have come about? How had things really
been? After all, people left for war with his name on their lips, ‘For the Motherland!
For Stalin.’” As Aleksandr Trubnikov reasoned, “Stalin is a complicated matter.
When I was really young, Nikita Sergeyevich [Khrushchev] denounced the Stalin
cult. And when we finally began to understand things, this cult began to return
once again. I remember that, already in 1963–64, no one had anything negative
to say about Stalin anymore.” Consequently, added Trubnikov, “Our poor his-
tory teachers simply didn’t know what to tell us! It was as if Stalin had made
mistakes and had some shortcomings, but, on the other hand, he won the war.
That was the most important thing, the war. There’s a saying, ‘war justifies
everything.’”
As they grew up, some of the interviewees had a change of heart about Lenin.
In the lower grades, Yevgeniya Ruditskaya associated Vladimir Ilich with the
ideals of the Russian Revolution and proletariat. “But then in the upper grades I
began to understand what’s what.” But for most the realization came later. It did
for Aleksandr Trubnikov who remembered, “The propaganda system was so
comprehensive, so all-encompassing that it was hard to think something other
than that Lenin was a genius who showed us the bright path. I didn’t think oth-
erwise until I attended the university.” When Bakhyt Kenzheyev enrolled at the
university, a friend poured scorn on communism. “I was shocked. After all, how
could that be? Communism was such a good idea. I think that until I was twenty
I thought that Lenin was good.” Admitted Anatoly Shapiro: “I understood that
Lenin was a bandit and a scoundrel only after graduating from college, when I
was older.” When he attended school, Yevgeny Podolsky “accepted what they
said about him. Back then, no one said anything bad about him, and it never
even crossed anyone’s mind. Lenin remained some kind of ideal.” As Olga
Martynkina summed up, “From childhood we read books about Lenin. It was
all about Lenin, Lenin, Lenin. Lenin gave us everything. Yet later, when you
begin to mature and grow wiser, when you begin to read other kinds of books,
you understand.”
“ C AT C H U P W I T H A N D O V E R TA K E A M E R I C A”
Although Soviet statistical compendia commonly compared Soviet achieve-
ments with what had (not) been achieved under the tsars, the real unit of
measurement was the United States,21 especially after Khrushchev in 1957
launched his campaign to catch up with and overtake America. Saratov’s
Aleksandr Kutin found the slogan appropriate “because there had to be some
kind of competitive incentive. And we could never have said ‘let’s catch up with
and overtake Kenya.’ That would have sounded stupid,” he retorted. Kutin saw
an unexpected benefit in the campaign: “In order to catch up with and overtake
America, you had to at least know how America lived. They allowed us to know,
but, of course, in small doses.”
The slogan came to encapsulate Khrushchev’s new Party Program that, from a
Soviet child’s perspective, promised the moon, not just traveling to it. Life was won-
derful, because it soon was going to get even better. Their Pioneer manual made
clear the Communist Party’s goal: to build a Communist society. “It will be the best,
the most just and the happiest society on earth.”22 In this society everyone would work
and create to the full extent of their talents and abilities; everyone would receive
whatever they required to satisfy their needs; everyone would be able to live an
interesting life, free to draw on the material and cultural abundance.
Growing Soviet consumerism, price reductions on basic necessities, and tri-
umphs in the space race in and after 1957 gave just enough credence to the pro-
paganda to make some Soviet citizens optimistic, and to make Western observers
anxious. Tatyana Luchnikova remembered that “I was very happy because I was
born in the very best country in the world.” This brought to mind something
she had memorized at school: “I know of no other country where man breathes
so freely.” Luchnikova wrote poems in this vein as a schoolgirl that appeared in
newspapers targeting youth. Saratov’s Natalya Pronina remembered Khrushchev
saying, “‘Today’s generation of Soviet people will live under communism.’ I’ll
never forget this remark. It was drilled into me since childhood. We once
believed in this, because we saw with our very own eyes that we were living
better and better.” “You have to give credit to propaganda,” mused Saratov’s
Aleksandr Trubnikov. “I, and many of my friends, too, believed in socialism,
further still, in communism, which was even more special.” Trubnikov elabo-
rated, “When you know nothing other than this life it seems that that’s how
things ought to be, especially when they tell you so 24/7. We live better than
anyone in the world and soon we’ll start living fabulously. Perhaps there were
those who felt otherwise.”
There were. Khrushchev promised what he ultimately could not deliver, and
this did not escape the attention of some Saratovites as they entered their teen-
age years. A bemused Olga Gorelik replied that she “never tried to overtake
anyone.” Skeptical of Khrushchev’s boasting, she “took it all in for what it was.”
According to Trubnikov, his classmate Arkady Korchmar “drew caricatures,
batches of them, of Khrushchev’s adventures in Africa and elsewhere. They were
like comics, like what you see in cartoons. He understood things far better than
I did at the time. He knew.” “I was confident that we would truly achieve com-
munism by 1980,” remarked Arkady Darchenko. “People indeed believed that
we were on the right path, and that soon we’d achieve it. But when we were a bit
older, we realized that we weren’t heading in that direction. We understood
already during the Khrushchev years.”
Yet some Baby Boomers realized this earlier than others because, in 1962,
bread, the staple of the Soviet diet, briefly disappeared from shops in Saratov. “I
won’t even speak about meat and other things,” said Yevgeny Podolsky, who
remembered that “people began to blame Khrushchev for the economic diffi-
culties—after all, he himself had invited criticism.” We already heard from Irina
Vizgalova, but her claim that even children did not think it was possible to build
communism bears repeating: “How could we? We didn’t have bread here. There
was no milk. What kind of communism could there be when they passed out
bread in school and there were long lines for bread?” Many interviewees dredged
up memories of queuing up at night for bread before the shops opened in the
morning. Aleksandr Trubnikov had a sardonic take on the matter: “We harbored
no doubts that we lived in the greatest country in the world, that we had fine
futures ahead of us, and that life was steadily improving. Then, all of a sudden,
things got so good that we were without bread in 1962.” Even though this epi-
sode did not yet shake Trubnikov’s faith in the system, he admitted that not all
of his classmates shared his optimism. Moreover, the economic situation trig-
gered full-scale riots in the city of Novocherkassk in southern Russia. Even
though the regime brutally suppressed the disorder and news about it, rumors
about the shootings, which left twenty-four dead and dozens wounded, circu-
lated widely throughout the USSR.23
Some Saratovites had further reasons for doubting Khrushhev’s promises or
for questioning his policies or ability to rule. Irina Vizgalova laid into his unpop-
ular currency reform in 1961, which many feared would devaluate their savings
as had been the case under Stalin: “Everyone was extremely disappointed. This
was hard to swallow, that money became worthless.” Olga Kolishchyuk remem-
bered that “we were in shock when he took off his shoe and pounded it [at the
UN]. Some of his pronouncements also humored us, but we hoped that you
Americans didn’t have good translators. Not all of what he said was translat-
able.” Olga Martynkina had a list of complaints: pounding his shoe at the UN,
giving the Crimea to Ukraine [this became an issue only after Ukraine became
independent in 1991], and forcing corn on the country. “He was called the corn
man,” she snipped, for the Soviet economy began producing candy, beer, sau-
sage, and other items from corn, which also became the subject of jokes and the
symbol of his failed agricultural policies in general. A joke from the time has it
that Khrushchev received a Nobel Prize for agriculture for managing to sow
grain in Siberia and to harvest it in Canada, a reference to the Soviet need to
begin purchasing grain abroad at the end of the Khrushchev era.
Although the Moscow Baby Boomers lived better, they were even more skep-
tical of Khrushchev’s plans to build communism. As Yelena Zharovova remarked,
“That future seemed to me at the time so unattainable that I didn’t get all caught
up in it.” Most agreed with Leonid Terlitsky that “Khrushchev was maligned
mostly because he had destroyed the economy. Since the war there hadn’t been a
time when people couldn’t buy bread.” Living near one of Moscow’s train
stations, he had vivid memories of people from the suburbs and small towns
outside of Moscow showing up to buy bread. “They would buy it by the sack full,
taking it back to the whole village or for the whole family.” This distressed
Muscovites. “There was no sausage, no meat, nothing or very little that people
could buy with money, and that caused a real uproar. I think that was the primary
reason behind the dislike of Khrushchev,” he argued. Terlitsky also found the
carrying out of the corn campaign especially ludicrous, “but if you try to explain
anything about this country from a logical point of view you’re bound to fail.”
Yelena Kolosova cast Khrushchev as “a comic, yet somewhat romantic” figure,
but one tainted by Stalinism. “Who was there to catch up with?” she queried.
“We were very proud of our space program without a doubt and, later, of all that
a totalitarian state could achieve by blood.” Andrei Rogatnev chastised not only
Khrushchev’s closing, using bulldozers, of an avant-garde art exhibit in Moscow
in 1962 but also his corn campaign, the belligerent shoe-thumping stunt at the
UN, and the drive to overtake America. Evoking the Pioneer call, he snickered,
“We were prepared, only we didn’t know for what.” He then shared a joke he
heard “not out loud in Red Square, but in the kitchen at home”: Khrushchev
and Kennedy agreed to compete against one another in a race. The next day’s
issue of Pravda informed readers of an international competition involving
Khrushchev and Kennedy to see who could run the fastest. Nikita Sergeyevich,
Pravda reported, came in second, and Kennedy next to last. Rogatnev also
recalled a remark that his classmate Vladimir Bystrov made in tenth grade
English class. Formulating statements in English using subjunctive “if” clauses,
Bystrov volunteered, “If my grandmother would have had two packages of mar-
garine, she wouldn’t have been grandmother, but a food store.”
Although critical of his economic policies, many Moscow parents evaluated
Khrushchev’s political reforms positively. Lyubov Kovalyova’s father, a
Communist, believed he was a progressive leader, and, unlike earlier Kremlin
figures, accessible to the public and “more democratic.” Viktor Alekseyev’s father
looked upon Nikita Sergeyevich favorably, because “the Thaw was felt everywhere.
It happened slowly, but people began to feel freer.” Anna Lyovina remembered
that, for her parents, his ouster was a “huge shock, because they deeply respected
Khrushchev, despite the fact that they understood that he was uneducated and
part of the Stalinist system.” Still, as Lyovina reckoned, “If you place everything
on the scales, my parents believed the good outweighed the bad, and I think
they’re right.” Leonid Volodarsky’s parents, “people of quite liberal views,”
thought that everything Khrushchev said about Stalin “was correct and
necessary.” Khrushchev’s denunciation of abstract art and hostile encounter
with leading members of the cultural intelligentsia in 1962, however, disap-
pointed many who otherwise backed his de-Stalinization. “It seems to me that,
on the whole, my parents evaluated him positively owing to the Twentieth
Congress,” weighed in Boris Shtein. “But I remember the conversations at home
after his meeting with the intelligentsia [in 1962]. Much changed.” Historian
Vladislav Zubok concurs, arguing that the chance for a common cause between
the impetuous Kremlin leader and the intelligentsia might have overcome
Stalin’s legacy and reformed the Soviet project.24 It is not for nothing that the
monument on his grave depicts a Janus-like figure, half black and half white.
In Saratov, Yevgeny Podolsky’s Communist Party member parents felt
relieved at Khrushchev’s ouster, because “he was basically part of the same
cohort as Stalin,” yet had dealt a terrible blow to their belief system, so much
so that they never trusted him. Later, under Leonid Brezhnev, when the regime
softened its position on Stalin, emphasizing that his policies had won World
War II, his parents told him: “See, it turns out that Khrushchev wasn’t alto-
gether right after all.” Pyotor Krasilnikov explained that, to understand his par-
ents’ positive reaction to Khrushchev’s ouster, it is necessary to consider what
preceded it: bread shortages. His grandmother, moreover, resented him for
levying a tax on trees. “She had no livestock and had to pay for her apple trees.
So her husband chopped them down.” Aleksandr Konstantinov’s parents
understood Khrushchev’s removal “as some sort of reversion toward a tougher
policy. We understood that Khrushchev was no saint. He was crude. But he
accomplished much.”
Many Baby Boomers had a hard time separating out their childhood mem-
ories from their adult attitudes toward Khrushchev, since hindsight gave them
the ability to judge him in more textured ways that may have obscured what
they had thought about him in the past. Irina Tsurkan realized when she became
a doctor that “he ruined alternative medicine, all sorts of folk remedies, which
he called ‘voodoo.’ He returned from America and said that everything was avail-
able in tablet form, that everything had already been invented. Many formulas
were lost. We certainly can’t thank him for this.” Others, however, came to
appreciate aspects of Khrushchev’s nonstop reforms or, more commonly, the
climate of optimism and renewal he nurtured in the post-Stalin years. Moscow’s
Vladimir Bystrov had a strong opinion about Khrushchev’s efforts to break up
the power of the centralized Moscow ministries. “He was absolutely right. Things
have turned out that way now, but back then they didn’t let him do it.” Despite
the threat of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Saratov’s Olga
Kolishchyuk remembered Khrushchev’s promotion of peaceful coexistence and
that he was depicted as “the messenger of peace.” “We thought about America
and hoped that everything would be good there, too, that people would be sane
there, too, that there would not be war, and that our leaders would somehow
reach agreement and there wouldn’t be any tensions.”
Others expressed appreciation for the Thaw. As Moscow’s Viktor Alekseyev
put it, “Some freedoms began to appear. Despite the fact that all of this was very
gradual, nevertheless the Thaw at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the
1960s was felt everywhere.” Praising Khrushchev’s accomplishments in pro-
moting the Soviet space industry and military, Pyotor Krasilnikov believed the
bread shortages had been “artificially created in order to arouse the masses
against him.” His classmate Gennady Ivanov also saw them as a provocation.
Crediting Khrushchev with promoting a climate conducive to creativity, Sergei
Zemskov found that this had come to an end by the time he entered the work-
force, when they began to pay far more attention to copying the West. “You’d
come with an idea, let’s say, and the first question that arose was ‘And over there
in the West? Do they have this? If they don’t have it, then why do we need it?’
Under Khrushchev this question never arose.” But it did: Tsurkan, as well as
those who harped on Khrushchev’s corn campaign, underscore this blind copy-
ing of the West that Zemskov claimed to have experienced only later.
The slogan to catch up with and overtake America, which may have doomed
the Soviet Union to failure, bombarded the Baby Boomers and penetrated their
consciousness, sometimes in mysterious ways. Moscow’s Vladimir Sidelnikov,
for instance, put an unusual spin on the slogan: “I believed that we’d catch up
with and overtake America. Khrushchev said that today’s generation of Soviet
people will live under communism. He wasn’t that far off the mark. We now live
as if under communism, if you put ‘communism’ in quotation marks.”
T H E F L I P S I D E O F N O S TA L G I A
Some of the interviewees’ memories of their schooldays open windows onto
less nostalgic aspects of their childhood. For example, Aleksandr Konstantinov
confided that one characteristic feature of his and other Saratov schools at the
time was what he called their criminalization: “What I mean by this is that some
of the boys were connected to city gangs, sort of like West Side Story. Your pres-
tige at school—in the restrooms where the pupils smoked—was dependent on
who your ‘protectors’ were.” The detail he provided belies the otherwise sani-
tized image of the school. “I was protected since the ‘king’ of the riverbank
neighborhood nicknamed the ‘Italian’ lived in our building and was friendly to
me. This gang world was a fact of life for us boys.” Konstantinov emphasized
that “at school Matveev, who was two or three years older than me, was ‘king.’
Everyone feared him. They began to respect me in school after he told one of the
older boys in the bathroom not to touch Konstantinov because ‘the Italian’s
behind him.’” Gennady Ivanov recalled a mostly Tatar gang from the Glebuchev
Ravine neighborhood, and another dubbed the Industrialists, but insisted “there
were no hooligan groups in our school.” Although these and other gangs occa-
sionally caused trouble at School No. 42, it had an advantage: “We came from
different neighborhoods of the city and, if they came to pester us, we could
enlist the help of those from our neighborhoods, in which case no one could
equal us,” boasted Ivanov.
Some Saratovites’ passionate recounting of one episode made as much of an
impression on me as others’ silence on the subject, or claims not to remember
the incident at all. A handful of females brought up the event concerning the B
class, which remains a conversation topic today among them. The case in point
took place during the final weeks in school as stress mounted in regard to tak-
ing exit exams, especially the mandatory composition on a topic in Russian
literature that students needed to pass in order to graduate. The fractured mem-
ories reflect complex issues involving childhood jealousies and rivalries, and
also reveal a large measure of collusion between pupils and teachers. So much
depended upon the results of this hour-long essay—one’s standing within the
class, what college one could get into, the school’s and teachers’ reputations—
that pupils, their parents, and teachers worked the system to obtain favorable
results by learning in advance the writing prompts from which graduating tenth
graders had to choose. In other words, what would be seen as outright cheating
in the United States was acceptable in the Soviet Union. Irina Barysheva came
clean: “It’s a secret to no one that we found out the topics in advance and pre-
pared drafts the night before.” This is the case “even now” in Russia’s schools.
But something went terribly wrong back in 1967. This time the authorities had
managed to keep the real prompts secret, except from one girl, the “class
favorite,” who knew the new themes but did not tell a soul. “After that we ostra-
cized her,” justified Barysheva. Natalya P. saw her classmate’s behavior as an act
of betrayal. “It was her father who gave her away. He said, ‘M—wrote all night.
She needed to receive a medal.’ No one spoke with her at graduation. She was
all alone.”
Having to write on a topic for which students had not prepared the night
before distressed Barysheva. It was “something unreal,” she claimed. Like others,
she had picked one of the five themes the night before, written a crib, and mem-
orized it. Her father checked her work before sending her to school, where, to
her dismay, she realized her efforts had been in vain. When she learned the new
prompts for which she had not prepared, Barysheva drafted an essay on Soviet
writer Mikhail Sholokhov, avoiding one on the nineteenth-century poet Nikolai
Nekrasov, whom she “didn’t understand.” But this upset her homeroom teacher
Zorina, who told her “Ira, I’ll even sneak you a crib sheet, but don’t write on that
topic. Write on Nekrasov.” She then took her into the hallway. “Have you lost
your mind? That theme is unfair. How can you critique the craftsmanship of
Sholokhov?” Zorina even tried to talk Barysheva’s mother into convincing her to
select the question on Nekrasov. Yet Ira stuck to her guns. Zorina gave her an A
on the essay, but the outside commission assigned the essay a B, because her
interpretations deviated from the Party line. Zorina, her “favorite teacher,”
appealed and Barysheva eventually got an A. Barysheva believed her father who
managed the factory that sponsored School No. 42 had interfered on her behalf
once again: “Sponsors, after all, are sponsors—and that means pipes, indoor
plumbing, bricks, and other materials [the school needed].”
None of the Muscovites brought up gang activities at school or cheating on
the final exam. But “children are children,” as Vladimir Bystrov put it. “Between
classes we ran and goofed off. We did all those things. Not in school, but near
the school after classes.” “Of course, conflicts arose, and fights, and everything
else,” clarified Sergei Zemskov, but “afterward it was hard to imagine what had
caused them.” Mikhail Markovich remembered: girls and also relations with
those in authority. Some resented the Pioneer leader, Nikolai Alekseyevich,
Lyubov Vilenskaya and Natalya Khamidulina, members of the Saratov B Class, pore
over a class assignment. Now a physician, Vilenskaya lives in the New York area, as
does Khamidulina’s daughter, who married an American. Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
“a not very smart and hyperactive creature.”25 Leonid Terlitsky wryly remarked
that Nikolai “wasted his irrepressible energy on attempts to organize the stu-
dents at the school into future builders of communism.” The male students
resented Nikolai Alekseyevich, among other things, because he squealed on
smokers. Pupils in the older class of ’66 took their hostility out on him in a vin-
dictive hazing incident that caused him to wet his pants.
Vladimir Mikoyan told how the C class challenged Anton Petrovich’s
authority. During a break between classes, Sergei Zemskov boasted to a group of
classmates that he had stayed up all night reading nonconformist poet Yevgeny
Yevtushenko’s cycle of poems, “The Bratsk Hydroelectric Station,” smitten by its
honesty and boldness. “I remember how we crowded around him listening.
Then Anton Petrovich appeared.” When he ordered them to their seats for their
social science lesson, Zemskov defiantly replied that he would not take his until
he had finished reading the poem. According to Mikoyan, “we all left. We simply
walked out. And out on the street we agreed not to return to school. We wanted
to punish the principal.” No one in the C class went to school for three days as
telephones rang off the hook. “We graciously went back,” bragged Mikoyan.
One can only imagine the negotiations that went on behind the scenes to
smooth things over so that everyone saved face.
Encounters at school with foreign visitors offered lessons for a society open-
ing up to the outside world—and for the guests. One group of visitors used the
school assembly called in their honor to disparage the Soviet system. To the
dismay of teacher Olga Konstantinovna, none of her charges rose to the defense
of the maligned motherland. Recalled Vyacheslav Starik: “When all of this was
over and we were alone with her, she began to rip into us, ‘Why didn’t we, con-
scious and active Komsomolites, put an end to the flood of slander and spiteful
criticism?’ And we had to honestly confess that we didn’t understand what the
slanderers had actually said. This was a big relief for her, for it turned out that
we weren’t secretively anti-Soviet after all, but ordinary C students.” Tatyana
Luchnikova brought up an episode that caused the school administration pro-
found embarrassment. It took place during the visit of a group from England,
when a British guest “left her boots in the cloakroom. She took off tall black
boots, and someone stole them. So,” concluded Tatyana, “even in magnet
English School No. 20 there was theft.” Luchnikova did not know whether the
boots were found and returned to their owner, but she expressed surprise that
no one else had told me about the incident.
“IT WILL BE THE BEST . . . SOCIETY ON EARTH”

Saratov’s School No. 42 and Moscow’s School No. 20 attracted children of the
nomenklatura, of Party and state officials, of career military officers, and of the
technical and cultural intelligentsia. Their student bodies were diversified by a
few token children of working-class families, but this Soviet style affirmative
action program met with limited success. In both cities these were schools for
the “children of gifted parents.” Except in a few instances, parents used their
influence, connections, and pull—blat in Russian—to get their offspring enrolled
in these schools and, since at least one parent of roughly 80 percent of the Baby
Boomers belonged to the Communist Party, they tended to be well connected.
When necessary, they hired private tutors to prepare their children to enroll in
the school or to get through academic subjects that gave them difficulty. As the
most educated group in the Soviet Union, Jews were overrepresented in both
institutions, especially in Moscow, where a high concentration of Jews
inhabited the surrounding neighborhood.
Devoted Communists set the tone at both schools, whose built environment
represented the best the Soviet Union had to offer. Principals Vera Filippovna
and Anton Petrovich selected seasoned teachers but, given the special need for
instructors of English, they often had to take on newly minted teachers or, as
was especially true of Moscow, those with nonconformist views. In both cities
some of the younger teachers imbibed the spirit of the Thaw, thereby making
enduring impressions on their young charges who mostly raved about those
who instructed them at the special schools. These teachers were also flexible in
dealing with their young pupils, and often generous in organizing enrichment
experiences such as special summer camps outside the parameters of the Pioneer
movement. Such activities, and the relationships that grew from them, miti-
gated the otherwise strict regulation typical of Soviet schools.
Two mutually reinforcing indices highlight the elite nature of both schools:
their near-perfect college placement record, which places them within the top
tier of elite schools in the Soviet Union, and universal Komsomol membership.
Joining the Komsomol simply was something one did to facilitate getting
admitted into an institution of higher education, even if one had doubts about
the official youth movement. Both markers also strengthen the case for studying
this cohort of individuals, since they represent a highly articulate and influential
element in society, whose views contributed to the sustainability—and
erosion—of the system.
Given that, how successful were Soviet schools in bringing up the builders of
communism? Designed to educate, as well as to inculcate values and to indoc-
trinate their pupils with belief in the advantages of communism, School No. 42
and No. 20 deserve top marks for preparing their charges to compete academi-
cally, and for teaching them English, given the restrictions and limitations of the
Cold War. They instilled in their charges basic human values that would be
appreciated in most societies. And they did so in a climate of heady optimism
fueled by Soviet technological achievements, by elevated consumer expectations
bolstered by palpable improvements in living standards, by an opening up to
the outside world, and by Khrushchev’s campaign to overtake America and his
new Party Program. The latter revealed that delayed gratification—the promise of
a radiant future—no longer was a viable option. That is why Khrushchev risked
naming the year when the Soviet system would achieve true communism, and
why Soviet propaganda told the Baby Boomers that theirs “will be the best, the
most just, and the happiest society on earth.” Despite the optimism of the era,
these promises had a hollow ring to them. As the Russian writers the same age
as the Baby Boomers Vail’ and Genis put it, “Anyone could look out the window
and see for themselves that so far everything was still the same: the broken
bridge, queues for potatoes, drunks in the bars. Even the orthodox Communist
understood that this landscape would not change radically in twenty years.”26
As schoolchildren, some of the interviewees may not have doubted this, but
they now had a unit of measurement they would use to gauge how well the
Soviet system functioned. For some, misgivings appeared early, after the disap-
pearance of bread and other essential items, especially in Saratov, which made a
mockery of the ubiquitous propaganda extolling the virtues of communism
whose achievement, Soviet citizens were told, was right around the corner.
Economic difficulties, combined with Khrushchev’s endless campaignism,
growing personality cult, foreign-policy failures, and attacks on Party organs,
turned public opinion against the First Secretary—but not the Soviet system—
by the time his comrades ousted him in 1964. Many in Soviet society continued
to appreciate Khrushchev’s dismantling of the Stalin cult; however, others found
his attack on Stalin disconcerting.27 De-Stalinization affected the Baby Boomers
directly in that history texts were revised before their very eyes. To counter any
potentially negative fallout from this, the Communist Party increased the contact
hours devoted to political indoctrination while they attended school. Slavic
studies scholar Catriona Kelly concluded that, during these lessons, pupils heard
about self sacrifice for the common good, but learned even more about how to
bend the rules and that they could think whatever they wanted as long as they
maintained outward decorum.28 In retrospect, it seems clear that the government
stepped up such measures because the message it wished to convey to the
builders of communism had competition, some of which was nurtured by what
they did in their free time.
3 “UNCONSCIOUS
AGENTS OF CHANGE”
Soviet Childhood Creates the Cynical
Generation
“For the most part, our family was an average Russian family of moderate
means,” explained Saratov’s Aleksandr Virich. “We always had decent food; we
went to the theater, to the movies, to the circus, and to whatever else that was of
interest. We didn’t differ from other average people of our time. We had a quiet,
peaceful, happy childhood.” Similarly, Moscow’s Igor Litvin believed his
childhood “was quite happy, and I see it today through rose-colored glasses.”
His classmate Lyubov Kovalyova called her childhood “a very good one, as I
understand today. But I didn’t doubt that even back then.” True, according to
state propaganda, a Soviet youngster had to have a happy childhood. Propaganda
aside, the Baby Boomers’ childhood did differ in qualitative ways from that of
their parents, who were brought up during the cataclysmic Stalin years. By the
1960s, the emergence of the good life resulting from postwar recovery and peace-
ful, organic change placed a new accent on leisure activities and consumption in
the Soviet Union. The Cold War generation’s parents benefited from this
development. So did their offspring, all of whom emphasized that they had a
“normal,” “happy,” “exceptionally happy,” even “wonderful” childhood.
Most of the Baby Boomers’ families were well off by Soviet standards and
some of them very much so. Vladimir Glebkin reminisced, “Back then the state
supported science and my father was a talented and successful scholar. Therefore
we didn’t have any problems with our standard of living. For that reason my
childhood was very happy, materially speaking.” Yet others from both cities
recalled that they had happy, but not necessarily materially abundant, child-
hoods. As Olga Gorelik recognized, “Our family had a full life, but that did not
refer to furniture or material things. My father made sure there were always a lot
of books at home; however, for the most part, everything else was difficult to get
hold of.” Yevgeny Podolsky reflected that “with the passing of time, we probably
remember the good things and forget the bad. Hence, when you look at your
“UNCONSCIOUS AGENTS OF CHANGE” | 121
childhood from the perspective of a fifty-year-old, you recall the good, although,
in evaluating that life today, you see that it was very difficult. I see how my par-
ents worked, how we lived. It was hard, because wages were low, and they
worked a lot and worried about supporting our large family.” Anatoly Shapiro
shared that he had “some very sweet childhood memories, but we felt the lack
of material things and money.”
Despite the Baby Boomers’ stable and comfortable childhood, many of them
as adults realized that this formative period in their lives also bred cynicism that
would develop more fully in the 1970s. This paradox involved not only material
issues but also beliefs and attitudes nurtured by the Cold War generation’s
identification with a larger global youth culture.
“WE LIVED FOR RECESS AND FOR LIFE AFTER

SCHOOL”
Childhood is the ultimate age of discovery. “Like all of the other kids,” stated
Moscow’s Georgy Godzhello, “I had an enormous range of interests.” “It’s easier
to tell you what I wasn’t interested in,” quipped Tatyana Artyomova. Saratov’s
Tatyana Kuznetsova pointed out that “sometimes these interests turned into
professions.” They did for Arkady Darchenko, whose childhood love of physics
reflected the spirit of the time. “Right after I started to go to school, physics
became my thing. Back then there was a cult of physics. I knew exactly what I
wanted to become, and where I’d go to college already as a child,” he recalled.
Yevgeny Podolsky observed how the ethos of the era defined how many
youngsters spent their free time. “During my childhood years we were interested
in space, space, and space. That’s how it was.” He took pride in the fact that Yury
Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth, had studied in Saratov and had com-
pleted his 1961 space flight by parachuting into a nearby field. Leonid Terlitsky
remembered, “We had chess tournaments until we turned blue.” And not sur-
prisingly, since chess was also in the news: in 1960 Soviet citizen Mikhail Tal
became the youngest international chess champion at age twenty. Other Soviet
victors followed, including Boris Spassky, Viktor Korchnoi, and, later, Anatoly
Karpov. “Many of us collected things,” recounted Viktor Alekseyev and others.
Larisa Petrova collected stamps, a hobby that became a “special passion” for
Natalya Pronina. “At an early age,” Mikhail Markovich began to play Preference,
“a rather complicated card game.” Akin to Bridge, the game became popular
among the Cold War generation in both cities.
Most of the males mentioned being fascinated by electronics, model building,
and photography. Interested in radios and electronics, Saratov’s Aleksandr Kutin
bragged that he “can fix a television even now.” He also “became enamored with
building model boats.” Pyotor Krasilnikov became a radio buff, “probably
owing to the influence of our physics teacher. It was back then that the first
pocket transistor radios appeared, and my parents were pleased that I was at
home and not running around somewhere on the streets,” he remembered. Moscow’s
Vladimir Glebkin also developed a real passion for electronics and radios, which
eventually fed into his professional interest in physics. His father bought him
do-it-yourself kits. Even though Glebkin’s first efforts to construct a receiver fell short,
he successfully built a transistor radio and a tape recorder so that he could record the
Beatles. Aleksandr Virich was partial to photography. “It was interesting and presti-
gious because, when you engaged in photography, you’d curry favor with the girls.”
Virich remembered the unofficial school newspaper the Saratov boys put out on
March 8, International Women’s Day, entitled Our Girls Are Better than All the Others.
“It was huge, with tons of photographs.” Because only a few families had automo-
biles at this time, the interviewees had nothing to say about cars except for Sergei
Zemskov, whose Opal-owning grandfather taught Sergei how to rev up the engine.
Many female Baby Boomers loved theater, ballet, dancing, reading, hanging out
with friends, and other pastimes, some of which, as in the case of the males, were
gender specific. Larisa Petrova reasoned that her interests “were probably the same
as most children. I loved to play with other kids.” Olga Gorelik liked to read, draw,
go to the movies, and spend time with her girlfriends. Natalya Yanichkina enthused,
“Like all the girls, I wanted to become an actress and joined the school club.” Irina
Tsurkan remembered, “I wrote to all of our famous actresses. Some replied, others
didn’t. I became close friends with Natalya P. and we bought Hamlet and other
plays and played theater at home.” Olga Kamayurova enjoyed music and “played
with kids my age on our street. Then there was the beach and trips to the country.”
Natalya Pronina’s mother “insisted” that she learn how to embroider. “I finished
my first piece of embroidery under threat of punishment. But I completed my sec-
ond piece on my own free will, and because I wanted to,” she claimed.
The Baby Boomers loved sports, in part owing to far-reaching media coverage
of the USSR’s victory in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, the second
games in which the Soviet Union took part. Saratov’s Pyotor Krasilnikov attended
a sports club and remembered, “I especially liked volleyball, and then I boxed
for a while with Gena Ivanov.” Viktor D. recalled “constant participation in
neighborhood, city, and oblast-wide competitions. I took first place in my neigh-
borhood for skiing.” When he broke his leg in the eighth grade and had to
spend two months lying in a hospital bed in traction, his classmates and teachers
tutored him “so that I didn’t fall behind.” Moscow male Baby Boomers “were
fanatics about soccer. We played soccer after school practically every day. It was
our main love,” claimed Vyacheslav Starik. According to Saratov’s Natalya
Yanichkina, “the whole class loved basketball and organized tournaments.”
Olga Kolishchyuk and some of her classmates took up gymnastics. Then, she
related, “We took up folk dancing. All of us loved to dance and, to uphold the
school’s honor, we performed in various competitions. We performed on a tele-
vision show ‘Dance with Us,’ and our group won.” Olga Kamayurova enjoyed
different diversions in winter and summer: “In winter there was the skating rink,
which we went to each day. It was like a narcotic. I couldn’t get by without a fix.
In summer it was the beach and swimming.” After the large outdoor pool
opened in Luzhniki in Moscow, Yelena Kolosova frequented it. Marina Bakutina
described her father as “a big adherent of a healthy life style regarding physical
activity.” As a result, after school Maria skied, skated, and swam competitively.
“I remember that I was the only girl at school called a sportsman.” This had a
downside: “I spent a lot of time in the swimming pool at the expense of social-
izing with my fellow classmates,” she regretted.
Tatyana Arzhanova voiced a common sentiment: “We lived for recess, and for
life after school.” Except in one regard: having grown up during hard times, the
war generation lavished private lessons of all sorts on their children, even when
they lacked interest or talent. Marina Bakutina spoke for many when she shared
that “my parents gave me access to everything that you could possibly famil-
iarize a child with.” Olga Gorelik’s parents made her take music lessons even
though she “lacked any special interest” in it. Natalya Yanichkina had a similar
experience “even though I had a tin ear. But, once again, you had to give a girl
back then a good humanities education,” she justified. Irina Vizgalova told me
her parents sent her to a music school, “but it didn’t work out.” Olga Kamayurova
took piano lessons, “but these ten years didn’t elicit anything in me other than
aversion,” she admitted. “After I left home I never once sat down at the piano
By age ten Olga Martynkina already demonstrated real talent and interest in the piano,
and eventually she left School No. 42 to enroll in a special music school. A graduate of
the Saratov Conservatory, she is a pianist at the Saratov Theater of Ballet and Opera.
Courtesy of Olga Zaiko (Martynkina)
bench.” Natalya Pronina felt the same: “Papa believed that a child needed to
know how to play an instrument. I wasn’t very enamored with the idea. It
requires a lot of diligence that’s difficult to maintain.” Apart from music lessons,
Olga Martynkina’s parents also sent her to ballet school. “Then they proposed
that I go to a choreography school, because I showed some talent in this area.”
The males complained, too, about music lessons, which had become a new
rage in part owing to the extraordinary popularity of American pianist Van
Cliburn, who won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow
in 1958, becoming the first foreign star on Soviet TV.1 Gennady Ivanov groused,
“I wasn’t all that interested in music, but I took piano lessons when I was a kid.
I can’t say that it ever became a goal of mine or a lifetime hobby.” Vladimir
Nemchenko admitted that “I never fell in love with music, probably because I
attended music school for four years. My parents made me.” Because Kolya
Khabarov attended music school, he could not walk home from school with his
friends. Irina Kulikova reported, “I saw him coming, clutching a folder of music.
I said to myself, ‘Poor Kolka is going to music school.’ But then we look and see
that he’s coming from the school, waving the folder. I said, ‘Kol, what’s wrong?
What happened?’ ‘They kicked me out,’ he said, with a grin on his face.”
Natalya P. and others spotlighted the down side of their parents’ good inten-
tions. “For instance,” she said, “I studied music since I was six years old. I studied
ballet, music at the music school, and something else. And then I got sick. It had
something to do with my heart. I was nine or ten.” The doctor who examined
her identified the problem: “‘So, we have ballet, music, the English school.
Figure skating has become popular, too. Maybe you’ll enroll the girl there, too?’
She added, ‘She’s simply tired.’ So they dropped me from ballet [instead of
music], which grieved me greatly, because I couldn’t stand music.” Moscow’s
Tatyana Arzhanova explained how her mother “transferred all of her unfulfilled
desires, her striving to study music, to me.” Despite the fact that Tatyana did
poorly on the test to assess her musicality, her mother convinced the school to
take her into the preparatory class. “Strange as it sounds,” Arzhanova remem-
bered, “in time I developed, or it manifested itself, perfect pitch.” But, “it was a
burden for me that I didn’t think I needed.” Besides, “all of my friends remember
the music school because, owing to scheduling conflicts, they didn’t let me
attend birthday parties,” she complained. Forced to take piano lessons, Yevgeniya
Ruditskaya recalled “for the most part the piano drowned in my tears. For two
years they tormented me, and then I quit.”
The schools instilled and nurtured many of the Baby Boomers’ interests by
sponsoring clubs devoted to academic subjects—history, math, physics, English
literature, and so on—as well as to sports and music and other enrichment activ-
ities such as photography and electronics. Many of them also joined clubs or
took part in activities organized at Pioneer palaces. Lyudmila Gorokhova
recounted that “somewhere around five or six o’clock I, without fail, went to
some kind of club.” She completed ballroom dancing classes and classes in
gymnastics and acting. After school, Natalya Pronina took part in the literature
club and in one for math. “Back in our time everyone could join as many as
they’d like,” she stated. Viktor D., for instance, joined volleyball, basketball,
ping-pong, and handball clubs. As Pioneer leaders, Olga Kolishchyuk and others
volunteered to work for the same teacher who had taught them in elementary
school. “We’d come to her class, help her correct homework, and organize var-
ious things. And each year we put on performances such as Cinderella,” related
Olga. The Saratovites also had positive memories of the woodwind ensemble
for boys and string orchestra for girls, directed by Stepan Ivanovich Lendyuk, a
former military musician who, according to Viktor D., “loved to teach.” Viktor
enjoyed the band: “It gave me a great deal, because my family is not musical at
all.” The band took part in parades and other public functions. Aleksandr Ivanov
mentioned that, apart from the band, there also was a folk instrument ensemble,
in which he played the alto sax. Ivanov took part in the May Day celebrations
and other events.
The Muscovites took advantage of their access to the country’s best theaters.
Mikhail Markovich remembered, “We went to the Taganka Theater. After the the-
ater opened when we were in eighth grade [in 1964] we didn’t miss a single
premiere.” Igor Litvin confirmed the craze over theater. “For example, there was the
Theater of Satire, and my parents knew one of the actors. I saw practically all of the
performances.” Sofiya Vinogradova recalled that she “went to the Bolshoi Theater,
and to all the others. To get tickets, we queued up at night and took numbers.” In
the upper grades she “went to see particular actors.” It was not just the classics that
drew her, but the plays “that they put on with difficulty.” Marina Bakutina waxed
nostalgic: “There was a period in my life when the Moscow Art Theater dominated.
I remember I even collected programs.” An impression was made on Anatoly
Shapiro and others when Vladimir Prudkin’s father, actor Mark Aleksandrovich,
visited their school along with other well-known stage performers.
Apart from clubs and cultural activities, the Baby Boomers spent consider-
able leisure time, and in some regards came of age, in the courtyard (dvor) of the
apartment building where they lived. Enthused Saratov’s Irina Vizgalova: “We
had a wonderful courtyard, and courtyard friends. Back then we all played
together, not like today. The courtyard was closed in, and children of various
ages came there to play together.” Olga Gorelik remembered she “hung out
there from morning until night,” not only because her parents worked long
hours but also because “the desire to hang out was enormous.” Until she was
five years old, Natalya Yolshina lived in an old home with a yard and “courtyard
friends, boys and girls.” When they moved into an apartment near the Volga,
“there was also a courtyard, and kids from our courtyard and from the neigh-
boring one played together,” she reported. The names of the games they enjoyed
are unfamiliar to us, but not how they were played. For instance, Aleksandr
Virich volunteered “like all young lads, we ran around, hung out, played Shtander
[Spud] and Cossacks and Robbers. And we fought.” When they were younger,
they played war, not Russians against Germans, but “ours vs. yours,” according
to Aleksandr Ivanov, “with sabers and water pistols.”
Moscow’s Igor Litvin explained that the building in which his family lived
on Malaya Nikitskaya was “a special one, about which you could write a sepa-
rate book,” because a number of those from the nomenklatura lived there,
including the son of writer Maxim Gorky. “When we got older and began to
flirt, we came to the courtyard to do so.” Litvin also commented how, each May,
parents and their offspring cleaned the yard and planted flowerbeds. They set
up a ping-pong table. In the winter they flooded the yard to make a skating
rink. Children of all age groups hung out there. Today Litvin appreciated the
practical side of things: “I understand that such an arrangement helped out
parents who worked. They didn’t have to look out after the children because
there was a certain amount of self-organization. No one ever strayed from the
courtyard. It was its own secluded world.”
Many interviewees idealized the yard, but as Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov
pointed out, “Where else could we play?” “The street had its own rules,” he
elaborated. “The building was packed with people. Several families inhabited
each apartment, and all of them had lots of children, therefore the courtyard
was packed with kids. The children grouped together by age. We played with
each other, and fought with each other, all according to rules of the street.” The
mixed neighborhood in which he lived included young criminals who,
according to Trubnikov, “smoked what today’s called marijuana. But back then
we called it anash, or hash. Marijuana grows everywhere. It’s very widespread.
They used to sell it for kopecks, and this meant that anyone could try it.”
Trubnikov was about eight years old when he first smoked pot. In Moscow
Anatoly Shapiro remembered, “We smoked cigarettes [in the courtyard]. I
began to smoke at age fourteen. We’d all gather there and smoke. We socialized.
We didn’t hit the bottle, well, we practically didn’t drink.” But Vladimir
Sidelnikov, a recovering alcoholic, remembers it differently: “It all began, of
course, in the courtyard.”
“ T H E M A I N T H I N G I S R E L AT I O N S H I P S ”
Friendship lacks a definition that works for all times, places, and peoples,
because the phenomenon is a cultural and historical one that changes over time:
the type of society determines the nature of friendships.2 What was “Soviet”
about the Cold War generation’s friendships, as Russian émigré sociologist
Vladimir Shlapentokh notes, was that friends served as critical sources of
information, as substitutes for the mass media. They also played an economic
role. They borrowed money from each other and devised ways to beat the system,
to find a job, to place their children at work, survival strategies often intertwined
with the second economy. They helped to determine how leisure time was spent.
In this regard a friendship could threaten a family’s hold over someone

by exposing that person to outside influences. Given the Stalinist legacy,
friendship’s most important virtue was trust: people regarded as friends only
those whom they knew for a long time.3
Saratov’s Aleksandr Konstantinov, who has lived in Moscow since his stu-
dent days, expressed a common sentiment in saying that the friends he made
at School No. 42 “are perhaps even closer than those I made at the univer-
sity.” His classmate Aleksandr Virich reminded me that, owing to the gender
imbalance at school, he “considered all the boys who went to school with
him” to be his friends. According to Pyotor Krasilnikov, “as we were growing
up there were three or four groups. Our group began to smoke together, and
then began to hit the bottle together.” Vladimir Nemchenko, Aleksandr
Trubnikov, and Valentin Bobrov became “an inseparable threesome” because
they lived nearby and attended the same school. Later Trubnikov befriended
Yevgeny Podolsky, who had nothing but positive things to say about
Trubnikov, “who really looked out for me and who had a huge influence on
me.” Bonding at camp on the Volga, they studied together, often stayed at
each other’s homes, and prepared for college entrance exams together. They
remain close today, despite Trubnikov’s emigration to Israel. Olga Kamayurova
befriended Nelya Yegorova, who now lives in Germany. Olga reported that
she and Nelya “skipped school. We hid our briefcases in her attic among the
potatoes and then rode to the outskirts of Saratov, where we hung out. Later
I lied and said that I had been sick. I simply couldn’t endure attending school
for six days in a row each week.”
Moscow’s Tatyana Arzhanova hung out with a group of three or four other
friends, with whom she remains close even today, despite the strains of separa-
tion caused by emigration. She recalled that they corresponded with each other
when they attended different childhood summer camps. Igor Litvin credited his
friends with shaping his worldview “because my entire childhood passed namely
among my friends from school,” who remain “special.” Illustrating his point, he
mentioned classmate Yakov Gluz, who immigrated to America in 1977. They
have corresponded ever since, even though Litvin’s father feared the conse-
quences of Igor’s writing to a Russian émigré in America. “But that was my
condition for remaining in Russia,” explained Litvin. “I said, ‘I must correspond
with him, because I can’t believe I live in a prison.’” Viktor Alekseyev developed
a lasting friendship with Igor Altshuller, who later emigrated to Holland. Far
more critical of the Soviet system than Alekseyev, Altshuller’s decision to emi-
grate after becoming disappointed in Gorbachev’s reforms influenced Alekseyev’s
own decision to leave Russia. Altshuller later came to America after being diag-
nosed with cancer and when he died was living with Alekseyev.
But not everyone felt so fortunate when it came to making lifelong friends at
school. Years after they graduated, Moscow’s Tatyana Arzhanova encountered an
Vyacheslav Starik, Yury

Seliverstov (deceased before
I launched this oral history
project), and Mark Milgotin
became buddies as members
of School No. 20’s C Class. In
the 1990s the Russian
newspaper Kommersant
alleged that Milgotin was one
of the country’s top ten mafia
gangsters; today he is a
successful businessman.
Courtesy of Vyacheslav Starik
embittered classmate. Recalled Tatyana: “She got all upset remembering those
who had offended her, although I never noticed it.” Her classmate Vyacheslav
Starik believed this had something to do with gender: “I can say with assurance
that the boys’ company was far more democratic, with far fewer class differences.”
Remarks made by some female Saratovites support Starik’s point. Tatyana
Kuznetsova observed that “there were a few of our classmates who kept a bit to
themselves.” Natalya Pronina, who enrolled in School No. 42 in the fifth grade,
told me that “several of my classmates still consider me an outsider.”
The Saratov B class in particular prides itself in remaining close even today,
but not everyone felt or always felt so attached to the group. Olga Kamayurova
and Irina Tsurkan began attending reunions and parties only recently. Until
then they felt no need to do so. Admitted Kamayurova, “They sang songs they
all knew, they reminisced, they recalled old teachers. Even now I don’t have any
nostalgia for my school years. I can’t say, as they do, that our ‘school years were
wonderful.’” She related that, at a recent reunion, “one of our former classmates
leaned over to me and said: ‘I remember it all as a nightmare.’ And I agreed with
him.” Irina Tsurkan felt similarly: “I was surprised when we finished school that
our classmates wanted to get together. They did so regularly; however, I wasn’t
interested in how they lived or how things turned out for them. I was so satisfied
with my own life. Then I found fulfillment professionally.”
“ W E R E A D A N AW F U L L O T ”
The Soviet Union prided itself in being the “most reading” nation, especially this
generation. Irina Chemodurova called reading “her single and main passion.” “I
learned how to read when I was five and still love to read,” claimed Aleksandr
Trubnikov. The male Saratovites cited as favorite authors Mark Twain, Alexander
Dumas père, Jack London, Guy de Maupassant, Bret Hart, and Soviet writer Aleksei
Tolstoy. These Western authors were available in the Soviet Union not only because
they told a good story but also because they described racial prejudice or some
other negative features of life abroad or, as in the case of Jack London, advocated
socialism and workers’ rights. Back then certain magazines became the rage.
Vladimir Nemchenko remembered the anticipation he felt when either his father
or grandfather subscribed to one of the Soviet Union’s oldest weekly illustrated
magazines, Ogonyok (Little Flame), because it introduced Soviet readers to foreign
authors. Yevgeny Podolsky underscored the excitement of getting hold of popular
literary journals such as New World and Foreign Literature, which his family sub-
scribed to with difficulty. “There was a waiting list,” he recalled, “and they gave out
subscriptions with a catch, that is, if you wanted to receive a decent magazine you
had to subscribe to four Party newspapers or magazines such as Party Life, which
no one bought and no one read.” Foreign Literature first published Walter Scott
and other “children’s things. But there were practically no contemporary [foreign]
works published.” Owing to the difficulty they had obtaining good books, “we
traded books a lot and borrowed all the time from each other,” shared Tatyana
Kuznetsova. They also visited the library.
Reading conferred status. Moscow’s Igor Litvin recalled that “during the winter,
we’d congregate at the radiator in the stairway and tell each other about what we
read. There was a science fiction series with Belyaev* and other writers, such as the
Brit, H. G. Wells. We read few American authors at the time. Ray Bradbury and
others came later. You’d be ashamed not to know something. If you didn’t, you’d
keep silent, run home and open a reference book so that the next day you’d be able
to show that you knew.” Mikhail Markovich concurred that “we read everything,
read a lot, and shared our impressions.” Tatyana Arzhanova pointed out that “back
then it was very popular to buy the collected works of authors. Everyone had sub-
scriptions. I especially remember the summer I spent in the country at an acquain-
tance’s of my grandmother and mother. She had a huge library with collected
works. I read all of Balzac that summer, and all of Jack London.” Yelena Kolosova
* Widely read throughout the entire Soviet period, Aleksandr Belyaev was an immensely
popular science-fiction writer known for his technological innovations and novels about
biology.
remembered, “when I came home from school, I’d sit on the floor in front of the
bookshelf in my parents’ room, from which would fall out either Irving Shaw’s
Young Lions* or something else, and I’d simply lose myself in it. That’s how all of
Hemingway got read.” Vladimir Bystrov liked Jack London, science fiction, “and
Hemingway, O’Henry, and Sidney Porter.” Dostoyevsky had a profound effect on
Georgy Godzhello. He also liked Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, Jack London,
and Hemingway. Two volumes of the latter’s writings were translated into Russian
in 1959, in part because of his support for the Cuban Revolution.4
At school the Baby Boomers were raised on the same Stalinist literary canon
as their parents; however, it began to broaden as the Soviet Union opened up.
They did not take the advice of their Pioneer handbook, which urged them to
read books on Lenin, Soviet power, Khrushchev’s Seven-Year Plan, and Pioneer
heroes.5 As Irina Vizgalova remarked, “I read a great, great deal, and of course not
about the subjects they recommended at school, but others.” The Muscovites had
an easier time getting hold of rare, foreign, and even illegal items. Explained
Leonid Terlitsky: “You couldn’t go to the library and pick up a book printed in a
foreign language unless the book had been approved. I started reading English
early on because one of the kids in school whose father was also a musician
began to travel even before my parents’ orchestra because he played in the Bolshoi
Orchestra.” He put together a fairly decent library of books in English. “It wasn’t
much, but there were a couple of shelves of books of various kinds, from James
Bond to whatever, and they were loaned out,” remembered Terlitsky.
Vladimir Prudkin remembered—correctly—that there was a short period in
the 1960s when the authorities began to issue “books that before then could not
have been published in Russia. They began to publish Bulgakov. Kafka suddenly
appeared and books by Kierkegaard. Then this ended.” A Soviet writer who fell
out of favor with the Stalinist regime before he died in 1940, Mikhail Bulgakov,
became something of a cult figure among elements of the intelligentsia when
his internationally acclaimed novel, Master and Margarita, was first published in
the USSR in sanitized form at this time. Woven around the premise of the Devil’s
visit to the atheist Soviet Union, the novel deals with Pontius Pilate’s sealing of
Christ’s fate. The Moscow Baby Boomers found Master and Margarita a mile-
stone in their young lives, but no one in Saratov mentioned it, ostensibly because
it was harder to come by in the provinces and not something local teachers felt
comfortable teaching. Recounted Viktor Alekseyev: “It was really popular at
school, as reading outside of class. We discussed it among ourselves and quoted
from Master and Margarita, pages of which we knew by heart. I remembered
entire passages.” Tatyana Arzhanova read Bulgakov in the tenth grade. Master
and Margarita “was a real event, a real shock.” She explained why: “We never
* Born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in New York to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Irving Shaw
became an accomplished playwright, screenwriter, and author of international bestsellers,
most notably The Young Lions (1948), one of the most popular World War II novels.
knew anything about the Bible. We read the myths and legends of ancient Greece
and Rome. Maybe in families more intellectual than mine they read the Bible as
a source of culture and art, but that came later for me. The first revelation in that
regard was Master and Margarita.”
The publication in 1962 of Solzhenitsyn’s literary bombshell, One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, also created a euphoria among Soviet readers, because the
story destroyed the illusion anyone might have harbored that some prisoners
had languished in Stalin’s labor camps for a valid reason, “We read it,” remem-
bered Muscovite Viktor Alekseyev, “and what’s more, our teacher Nina Ivanovna
included it in the school program. We even wrote a composition about it in the
upper classes.” Lyubov Kovalyova “liked it a lot.” But not all three classes read it
in school, and not everyone liked it. Sergei Zemskov related, “Back then I didn’t
read it. My mother read it, and everyone else read it.” When Zemskov later read
the novella, he reacted negatively to it: “Time and again, I caught some tam-
pering of facts, some lies. Then you don’t believe the rest of it.”
The Saratovites read Solzhenitsyn’s novella, but not as part of the school cur-
riculum. Natalya Pronina read it back at the settlement in Siberia, where her
family lived before moving to Saratov, and disliked it: “It’s not worth talking
about, but he has a lot wrong in the novella. He editorializes a great deal, and
subjectively, in each of his works.” Yet reading the work transformed others.
Irina Chemodurova boasted that “I still have the first edition of One Day. I had
to read it.” Aleksandr Babushkin remembered that “it made a shocking impres-
sion. It opened our eyes,” but “when it was at its peak in Moscow, it was greatly
limited here.” Yevgeny Podolsky and others devoured it in college. “I read it dur-
ing a lecture my freshman year. I was shaken, of course.”
“ I S O M E H OW U N D E R S TO O D T H I S A L L BY M Y S E L F ”
The circulation and reading of “self-published” forbidden works (samizdat), usu-
ally typed with multiple carbon copies, or of these works published abroad and
smuggled into the Soviet Union (tamizdat), became widespread among the Soviet
intelligentsia about the time the Baby Boomers enrolled in college. Yet some
were already exposed to samizdat during the upper grades at school. The
phenomenon was far less pervasive in Saratov than in Moscow. Only one
Saratovite, Yevgeny Podolsky, averred that “lots of samizdat circulated” and that
he read it “already in the upper grades at school.” Moscow’s Vladimir Glebkin
recalled that Bakhyt Kenzheyev and Vladimir Prudkin were the main sources of
information about samizdat. Prudkin confirmed this. Whether or not the Baby
Boomers read samizdat at that time had much to do with their parents. Lyubov
Raitman’s parents got their hands on rare volumes of poetry by Russian masters
Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsetayeva, and Anna Akhmatova, all
unavailable for sale. She read them with great interest in her mid-teens, eager to
share her impressions with her closest girlfriend: “I wondered whether I should
or not. I nonetheless told her. I wanted to give her the books, but didn’t know if
I should or not. I eventually gave them to her.” She likewise recalled when her
parents’ friends brought over Solzhenitsyn’s works. “There were evenings when
people sat at our round table with thin sheets of cigarette paper on which typists
reprinted Solzhenitsyn’s novels. They circulated them. And some people read
faster than others, who held up the flow of these pages. I remember that we read
Cancer Ward. I really wanted to tell my closest girlfriends about this, but I knew
not to. I somehow understood this all by myself.” She added, “I knew, and can’t
recall just how or explain whether they said to me not to tell my friends at school
things I heard at home when my parents’ friends discussed politics. I didn’t do
that, and it was as if it were normal.”
Raitman’s intuitive sense of caution was something instilled in the Baby
Boomers at home already during their early years. Saratov’s Aleksandr Konstantinov
explained that “there were things about which it was better not to speak. This was
clear to us already in school.” Leonid Terlitsky recalled that “it was sort of a
taboo—any criticism of the government, don’t talk about it outside the house.
That was the rule, although there were pretty vivid discussions about it around the
family table.” According to Vladimir Mikoyan, “the spirit of caution was inherent
practically in everyone. It was the general atmosphere. People knew where and
how best to express their opinions. It was impossible to completely stifle the
expression of one’s own opinion.” Yelena Zharovova described how “at home it
was customary for us neither to believe in the printed word nor, for that matter,
what we heard over the radio.” How did she learn how to read between the lines?
“It was in the air. I can’t even tell you, people simply doubted everything they
read. And once you got the general picture, whenever they sharply criticized
something, you’d look closely at it to see how things really are,” she said. “If there
was outside information, you could judge things for yourself, but if there wasn’t,
then we’d more likely think that things were the opposite of what was written.”
This built-in caution made an act of school-age defiance even more remark-
able. Some of the Muscovites emulated the samizdat phenomenon by secretly
cobbling together an issue of their own class samizdat magazine, comprised of
their poems and drawings about life at school. Vladimir Glebkin remembered
“that there was a great deal of commotion. Somehow it reached school officials
and they searched almost everyone, but didn’t find the magazine. It existed—I
held it in my hands—but it somehow vanished in thin air.” Leonid Terlitsky
designed the magazine cover. Emphasizing that it was “funny stuff” with
“nothing really political about it,” he nonetheless ascribed importance to the
endeavor: “The fact that we engaged in this outside of official channels was in
itself an act of dissidence of sorts, because those were the days when a good
typewriter would be put under lock and key, let alone a Xerox machine, and it
was that technology that really finished off the Soviet Union. It started with the
tape recorder, then it went through the VCR phase, and it ended up with the
Xerox machine and with the Internet.”
“ E A C H F I L M WA S A N E V E N T ”
Apart from family, school, the general ideological climate, and books, Saratov’s
Gennady Ivanov saw film as a key factor that shaped his worldview. Although the
number of television sets grew significantly at the time, programming remained
limited. Cinema remained far more influential than television,6 which became
the primary venue for high culture. New films got noticed. For instance, Viktor D.
recalled Amphibian Man in 1962, which “was released all at once in practically all
of the movie theaters in town. Back then there were about fifty of them. And all
of them were packed.” The film sold 65.5 million tickets in 1962, becoming the
most popular Soviet movie of the year.7 “For the most part movie going meant a
great deal in our lives. Television appeared only later, when I was in fifth grade,”
remembered Saratov’s Olga Gorelik. “All of our films, Soviet films, were in fact
good, even the comedies and musicals. We liked all of our films and would go to
see each three or four times.” Gorelik thought the entire class went to see the
Czechoslovak film, Lemonade Joe (1964), and that all of her classmates liked Quiet
Flows the Don, which she called “a classic.” Aleksandr Ivanov loved patriotic
movies about war and Soviet agents because “our soldiers were always victo-
rious.” Arkady Darchenko credited his interest in physics with seeing Nine Days
of One Year, about physicists and scientists. Released in 1962, the film was the
number one choice of respondents to a survey carried out in the early 1960s of
favorite films.8 The girls in his class, he added, “loved War and Peace. But the
Soviet film Hamlet made the same impression on everyone. Here’s a film that
probably everyone in the class loved, even though we were only in eighth or
ninth grade.” Like all “normal kids,” Aleksandr Virich and his classmates fre-
quented the cinema. And, like all normal kids, they sometimes cut school to do
so, because when they attended a matinee, they paid only ten kopecks, instead of
the usual thirty to fifty kopecks, depending upon the location of the seats.
Western films proved far more popular than Soviet movies.9 Although the
government controlled which films reached Soviet audiences, mostly selecting
foreign movies that presented the capitalist world negatively, this approach
backfired, for viewers saw what they wanted to see. Even experimental films
coming out of Eastern Europe, especially from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
Hungary, could present the authorities with a dilemma. Take the example of the
1964 Czechoslovak film Lemonade Joe by Oldrich Lipsky. Part of a Czech New
Wave series, the film was a parody of an American western that featured a Kola-
loka [Coca-Cola]-drinking hero. The film’s lighthearted anticapitalist message
did not sit well with Moscow censors, who decided that Soviet viewers missed
the parody. The censors shut it down after two weeks. Saratov’s Tatyana
Kuznetsova remembered that “the entire class wanted to see it really badly so we
cut our classes.”
Soviet viewers eagerly fell into line to see American films, even when some were
shown without subtitles. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), starring Marilyn Monroe
as the stereotypical gold-digging dumb blonde, proved to be a huge hit in the Soviet
Union. Lyudmila Gorokhova gushed, “The film simply stunned me, and it remains
my favorite film ever since.” Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ranked high on Viktor D.’s list
of favorite films, too. Gorokhova also detailed her interest in McKenna’s Gold (1969),
starring Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, and Julie Newmar. The film features how the
lure of gold corrupts all sorts of people and is alive with violence, chase scenes,
conniving criminals, and Apache Indians bent on keeping the gold out of the hands
of their enemies. Gorokhova loved the movie “because of its unusual ending,”
which involves Apache spirits bringing down the walls of the canyon on top of the
gold to prevent the fortune from falling into the hands of greedy outsiders.
Gorokhova’s assessment of these films suggests how misguided the government’s
efforts proved to be: “They bought a lot of American films. But they bought those
that were cheery, witty, and gave you something to think about.”
The Muscovites also became animated when I asked about favorite films. Teacher
Roman Kaplan made an abiding impression on Marina Bakutina when he regaled
the class with descriptions of the foreign films he had enjoyed at closed showings.
She especially remembered his passion for the 1966 French film Man and Woman
directed by Claude Lelouch. “It was like forbidden fruit, which later was released for
mass consumption.” Igor Litvin rattled off the names of the movie theaters he
attended regularly: Flame, Art, and Barricade. “We went there all the time, and we
saw all of the new films that were released.” Litvin added that “in our childhood we
saw all of the Chapaev movies [about a Soviet Civil War hero] and Striped Trip,” the
most popular film of 1961, which Litvin “went to see a hundred times. And Paris
Secret [1964] with Jean Mare. I was amazed that when American children visited they
didn’t know Jean Mare.” Later, Litvin went to the House of Architects, House of
Films, House of Literary Men, and House of Culture opened by the All Union
Theatrical Society, which became “hotbeds of culture” because they showed other-
wise prohibited films not available for mass consumption. There were “showings of
the first films of Tarkovsky*, showings of the first American films,” especially west-
erns. Vladimir Bystrov singled out The Magnificent Seven (1960), starring Yul Brynner,
Steve McQueen, and Charles Bronson, which took the country by storm. “It was a
shock, simply a shock back then, because it was so different. The genre of the west-
ern was, of course, quite interesting for us boys. I saw it seven times.”
The Muscovites appreciated Soviet classics from the 1950s and 1960s as well.
Anatoly Shapiro recalled that “back then there were many wonderful movies
such as The Cranes Are Flying (1957),” a Thaw-era production documenting the
cruelty and psychological damage wrought by World War II. Yelena Kolosova
* Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky won international acclaim for his early films Ivan’s Childhood
and Andrei Rublev, and was highly regarded among the Soviet intelligentsia. Although he
produced less than a dozen films, each turned out to be a major cultural event.
told me, “We were a bit too young when they released Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are
Flying, but old enough for Ballad of a Soldier [1959, another international Soviet
hit, this one about love during war]. I recall that entire episode with [Marlen]
Khutsiev’s movie I’m Twenty Years Old [1964].” Kolosova had in mind the correc-
tions and cuts censors forced the director to make to the original film, shot in
1961. The significance of state interference was not lost on her: “That is, it was
part of the growth of our public awareness as a member of society, because each
time, as always in Russia, it’s some sort of political event.” She mentioned the
films of the most cerebral of Soviet directors at the time, Tarkovsky, whose Andrei
Rublev brought him international acclaim. “The volume of film releases in the
Soviet Union cannot be compared with that of Hollywood but, on the other
hand, each film was an event. And like very many things in Russia such as pub-
lications in New World, it was always something that you simply had to see.
Everyone had to, not only so that you could take part in conversations but also
because they really were worth seeing.”
“ I T WA S D I F F I C U LT T O G E T H O L D O F T H I N G S ”
During the Baby Boomers’ childhood the appearance of stylish clothing—and
the desire to acquire it—represented but one element of the emergence of Soviet
mass culture at the time. The Soviet government fueled interest in fashion but
sought to control tastes. It produced more shoes and new synthetic fabrics. It
allowed French and Italian film festivals that familiarized viewers with foreign
styles.10 It introduced the permanent wave. Soviet newspapers and magazines
began to write about fashion, hairstyles, cosmetics, perfume, and other topics of
interest to women, encouraging them to pay more attention to physical attrac-
tiveness. For example, the issue of Ogonyok published on International Women’s
Day in 1960 spotlighted perfumes, now made accessible thanks to the expanding
Soviet chemical industry that no longer needed precious oils.11 Disputes over
fashion at the time reflected an emerging public opinion mediated by literature
and journalism.12 As the Soviet Union opened, ideas of fashion circulated, often
clashing with older notions and creating demands for hard-to-come-by items of
clothing. Clothes for Young People, a booklet published by the government in 1959,
decried the “imitation of the worst traditions in foreign fashion” and “making a
show of originality.” The stilyagi, who wore tights suits and short skirts, became a
target of official ridicule from the late 1940s into the 1960s, because the government
saw their fascination with American jazz and “glaring costumes” as behavior
unbecoming the ideal Soviet youth. “Young people, in short, should be dressed
as miniature adults.”13 An advice book opined that “the intelligent, cultured
person doesn’t wish to look like a stilyag” and instead wears cleans shoes, is tact-
ful, and doesn’t talk with his hands or “spit over his shoulder while talking.”14
Saratov’s Arkady Darchenko remembered that “back then, toward the end of
our school years, tight pants were the rage, and jackets with padded shoulders,
but we weren’t allowed to [wear them]. Our school principal was a mini-Stalin
who dictated what we could wear.” But she had less control over what her
charges wore once they left school. Aleksandr Virich recalled that in ninth grade
Aleksandr Konstantinov was the first to wear a dark jacket with shoulder pads.
“As soon as he turned the corner, he changed into a handsome dark suit with a
white shirt and tie.” Darchenko concurred that “of course, people wanted to be
fashionable, but it was difficult to get hold of such things. It was impossible to
buy them, and we needed to ‘get hold of’ them. The meaning of the verb ‘get
hold of’ is probably uniquely Russian,” he explained, because it means acquiring
something with great difficulty. “Various fads passed through. Jeans, for example,
but they came later. Probably at the university; we also had to ‘get hold of’
jeans.” As Pyotor Krasilnikov explained, his family’s limited financial resources
made it hard for him to “get hold of” things. “I was satisfied with whatever my
parents were able to buy me from time to time. I knew that I’d not be able to buy
name-brand jeans.”
The Saratovites fought an uphill battle in trying to dress stylishly, owing to
the school uniform and to Vera Filippovna’s culture war. Irina Chemodurova
grumbled that the girls could not paint their fingernails or wear makeup or
nylon stockings until graduation night. “And until ninth grade we weren’t
The Baby Boomers’ families went to great efforts to assure that they would be dressed
stylishly on graduation night, June 22, 1967. Because the event was popularly viewed as
the end of childhood, the graduates could now bend the rules and sport adult clothing
and hairdos as this photo of Saratov’s B class suggests. Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
allowed to wear wristwatches.” “And no perfume,” added Irina Kulikova.

Natalya Pronina griped that the girls had to wear their hair “combed back,
with two small braids, or into a ponytail with large bows.” Instead, the girls
liked to “wear their hair teased back. It looked terrible.” Galina Poldyaeva
concurred that “those who had long hair had beehives. It was awful.” Irina
Kulikova reiterated that she and others had run-ins with Vera Filippovna
when they tried to wear such hairdos to school. Poldyaeva related that, when
those receiving graduation medals for their academic performance went to be
photographed, Vera Filippovna rescheduled the session, making the girls
return in braids.
The sewing skills girls learned at school expanded their clothing choices.
“Practically any girl in our class could make herself a dress,” claimed Olga
Gorelik. “We even had something of a competition.” They took each other’s
measurements, bought inexpensive material, and sewed outfits that they mod-
eled at home fashion shows, “just like on television.” They did this, noted
Gorelik, because the Soviet consumer industry gave stylish clothing a low pri-
ority. “Therefore the girls, especially in the upper grades, sewed for themselves
to have something to wear at parties.” Olga Kolishchyuk remarked that “all of us
loved clothes and tried to dress according to the fashions available to us. If it was
the fashion to let our hems out, we let them out. If the fashion was to wear
something else, we wore something else.” Kolishchyuk acknowledged her moth-
er’s influence. “By Saratov standards, she was always a very fashionable woman
and always dressed with good taste.” Olga Gorelik also credited television with
broadening her fashion consciousness. “Slowly a certain taste was formed. And,
later, when we were at the university, all the girls wanted to dress in a contem-
porary way.” It was then that mini-skirts appeared.
The Muscovites had more options available to them: the local dress code
was more lax, some of their parents traveled abroad or knew people who did,
and Moscow attracted foreign visitors who dressed differently. Leonid
Volodarsky believed he “was the first to have a pair of jeans in school, and that
was in 1967. One of my father’s friends brought them from abroad.” Igor Litvin
became aware of foreign-made products when he went ice skating and saw
that someone had “imported skates from Canada or somewhere. I understood
already in the ninth grade that there was a distinction. Jeans appeared. The
first Beatles tapes appeared. Someone had the first tape recorder.” Yet even
these comparatively privileged youth had limited choices. Moreover, not
everyone cared about clothes: Mikhail Markovich claimed “we didn’t pay any
attention whatsoever to clothing, and that carried over to college.” When they
attended camp or lived at the dacha, “we’d wear sweat suits and Keds.”
Graduation appears to have been a rite of passage: “I remember that they
bought me my first real English-style suit for graduation night. My father gave
me a watch when I enrolled in college.”
“ T H E S E W E R E FA R L E S S S E R I O U S S I N S ”
The Soviet Union deserved high marks not only for how much its citizens
read but also for how much they drank. Drinking was so embedded in
everyday life that popular attitudes on teenage drinking and related vices
remained lenient. “Of course, we drank and smoked,” confessed Saratov’s
Aleksandr Trubnikov. “These were far less serious sins than listening to
Western music. They were simply incomparable. Drinking was always consid-
ered normal in Russia.” At home, Aleksandr Virich’s parents allowed him to
have a glass of wine and, by the time he was in tenth grade, vodka. Vladimir
Nemchenko owned up that, when he got together with his friends, Vovka
(Vladimir) Kirsanov, Sasha (Aleksandr) Trubnikov, and Valka (Valentin)
Koloskov, they often downed a few bottles of wine. Nemchenko opined that
“alcohol is a pernicious thing because it imperceptibly takes over.” (It did in
Koloskov’s case. After losing his license to practice medicine, he worked at a
construction site. “They found him beaten to a pulp, with a broken skull,”
lamented Nemchenko.) Moscow’s Leonid Terlitsky recounted that “we would
skip classes, go out, and drink a beer. In later years we would drink into
oblivion, anything with an alcoholic content.” By the time he was in eighth
grade, Vladimir Sidelnikov and Mark Milgotin drank heavily. Acknowledged
Sidelnikov: “We drank like Russians. That’s what I did in my free time. I also
studied, but in all honesty I’m amazed that my brain endured it.” Although
drinking remained primarily a male pastime, Saratov’s Tatyana Kuznetsova
recalled that “there were two or three girls in the class who gave themselves
permission in the tenth grade to try it.”
Just about the entire group tried smoking. Some became addicted, but most
never let smoking become a habit or else managed to quit after becoming aware
of health risks as adults. Still puffing away today, despite having suffered a stroke,
Aleksandr Virich came clean that he “began to smoke in the tenth grade on New
Year’s. Before then,” he “just smoked a little.” Growing up in a family of smokers,
Moscow’s Yelena Kolosova first lit up when she was fourteen, but did not like
how it made her feel. She tried it on and off when she was in her early twenties,
but “it never grew into a habit.”
The Saratovites detailed the coed parties some of their classmates threw at
home, which may have been more common there, because the city lacked the
amenities of Moscow. According to Irina Kulikova, “we got together for the first
time in ninth grade at Lenka Kovalkova’s, whose parents left. My grandmother
called: ‘I’ll come to chaperone.’ She was the only one with us. It was wonderful.
There was no getting drunk, no smoking, nothing. There was soda pop, food,
and dancing. From nine at night until morning.” Although no one admitted to
excessive drinking, Irina Garzanova remembered that “from the eighth grade
the boys already hit the bottle. They began with wine, then switched to something
harder.” Natalya Pronina got together with her classmates from the A class at
Vera Miachinskaya’s place on holidays. Natalya admitted that the girls drank
alcohol, too: “It was a large group. Six girls and six boys. Just as it was supposed
to be at that age. We played records. There was a Victrola and a piano. Sometimes
we played popular songs, simple things with banal lyrics. We ate, drank alcohol,
and danced and danced and danced. And there were some teenage romances,
too.” In describing how they celebrated birthdays and New Year’s, Larisa Petrova
perhaps summed things up best: “There were no excesses. I recall this today and
am amazed. Some of the boys liked to get a little tipsy, but there were no drunks
lying under the table, no fights, no crude sex.”
Drinking and smoking may have been more culturally acceptable than
listening and dancing to Western music, but the Baby Boomers felt the appeal
of international youth culture. Tatyana Arzhanova explained how young people
learned about dances that were the rage in the West. Tatyana Soboleva joined
their class in the sixth grade after she and her parents returned from Paris. “She
brought a dance with her, either the Twist or the Shake and she showed us how
to do it.” Mikhail Markovich mentioned that “there were dances when we were
in the upper grades,” and that some of his classmates formed musical ensem-
bles. The Beatles served as a special inspiration. Galina Poldyaeva told me that,
in Saratov, “we got interested first in the Twist, and then the Charleston. Sasha
Konstantinov taught us how to dance the Charleston, and he and I danced
together.” “The boogie-woogie and Twist were banned,” Aleksandr Virich
reminded me. “How did we get out of this situation?” At Aleksandr Konstantinov’s
suggestion, they studied ballroom dancing at the local Pioneer Palace. “All of
us danced the waltz, tango, ‘a gentlemen’s selection.’ We learned several espe-
cially well in order to open school dances.” Virich recounted how pleased the
teachers were at first: “Konstantinov, Darchenko, and I danced with all of the
girls and teachers.” Playing the same waltz music over and over soon bored the
teachers, who left the pupils to their own devices. “We plugged in a tape recorder
brought from home, turned off the waltz, and put on the boogie-woogie. Forty
minutes passed. After that, when word spread, the teachers returned upstairs.”
But they had someone standing guard, who sounded the alarm. “We turned the
waltz back on, the boogie-woogie off, and returned to dancing the waltz. That’s
how we got out of the situation,” remembered Virich.
“ I S T I L L H AV E T H E B E AT L E S ’ G R E AT E S T H I T S ”
On graduation night, the B class at Saratov’s School 42 sang, in English, “Sixteen
Tons,” the battle cry of the (exploited) American miner, made popular by
Tennessee Ernie Ford. But if it had been up to them, they would have performed
a Beatles song. One thing that all of them—in both cities—agreed on is their
love of the Beatles, whose music, in part, became accessible with the state’s mass
production of tape recorders. As Saratov’s Aleksandr Virich recalled, “Our family
bought a tape recorder and I wanted to tape everything,” especially the Beatles.
“It’s impossible not to love the Beatles. Not only because they were banned here
in Russia. I think the whole world loved them.” Larisa Petrova remembered that
the “Beatles reached us in 1966. We could understand them, ever the more so
because we attended an English school.” Beatlemania overwhelmed Yevgeny
Podolsky: “I worship them even today, my entire generation does. They banned
them, but forbidden fruit is always sweet. Then the dissemination of tapes
began. It turned out that there, in the West, they don’t live so badly after all and
they sing well. This was a very significant moment.”
Shortages stimulated unusual forms of resourcefulness in the Soviet Union. To
meet the profound demand for Beatles music made popular by foreign radio
broadcasts, black marketers and other enterprising sorts made their own primitive
78-rpm recordings on used chest X-ray films. Although the Soviet government
declared the X-ray phenomenon illegal and the Komsomol formed music patrols
to curtail their production, millions of “records” continued to be made and dis-
tributed this way. According to Viktor D., “you’d listen to them three times, and
naturally the emulsion would rub off and erase the recording. Nonetheless, the
Beatles made a huge impression on everyone.” “It was 1965, I think, when they
brought me the Beatles on the sly,” recalled Natalya Pronina. “I first heard them
on recordings made from used chest X-rays that showed people’s ribs.” Years later,
when they were no longer banned she heard them on television. “I was some-
times amazed at how clear they sounded. Even the words were comprehensible.”
The problem of “getting hold” of tapes and crude recordings of the Beatles
made listening to them difficult. “They didn’t jam them, but for all intents
and purposes what we listened to was the tenth copy on a tape recorder,”
noted Aleksandr Trubnikov. Official attitudes toward the Beatles, as well as
the predispositions of many parents, likewise complicated listening to
Western groups. Trubnikov volunteered that “all of this was for all intents
and purposes banned. If they had caught us with a copy of a tape, say, of the
Beatles at a school party, we would have gotten in deep trouble.” Vladimir
Kirsanov remembered how much the Beatles upset the father of one of his
classmates: “‘How can this be? It’s disgraceful! What in the hell is this?’” His
own father “was amazed that you could listen to classical music and then, all
of a sudden, have some Western tapes with some scoundrels’ songs, recorded
somewhere in underground studios on X-rays.” Yet Natalya Yolshina clari-
fied that listening to illicit recordings “didn’t have any hostile or political
undertone. Rather, it was simply a bit of youthful rebellion.” She empha-
sized that “there were no political discussions on the subject, nothing at all
like that.” The fact that “forbidden” music had to be obtained on the sly just
made it another hard-to-get commodity. “This was the Cold War, and I
thought this was normal.”
Some tried to emulate the Beatles. According to Galina Poldyaeva, Pyotor
Krasilnikov “played the guitar very well and had a great voice.” As a result, “we
knew the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all of the hits from those times.”
But the Beatles reigned supreme. Concluded Arkady Darchenko: “I don’t know
anyone from our generation who doesn’t love the Beatles. Even now, I still have
the Beatles greatest hits.”
The Beatles and other Western music and trends were easier to come by in
Moscow. As Leonid Terlitsky explained, “My first exposure to the Beatles—
and the Beatles were gods for us—happened because one of my classmates
brought in, I think it was ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ or even before that, ‘Meet the
Beatles.’ Not only that, his parents went to the West and brought back the
records and a couple of John Lennon buttons and Paul McCartney pins.”
Terlitsky added that “we’d all get together and play the record on a good
Phillips player in someone’s house while we were playing a Russian version
of Bridge.”
Mikhail Markovich believed that School No. 20 had the first Beatles group in
Moscow, thanks to Tanya Marchenko, whose father worked in the Soviet embassy
in London. “She returned to school with the first 45-minute cassette of the
Beatles, which they played during breaks between classes. A Beatles group
appeared at school, comprising kids who had been playing for some time.
Volodya [Vladimir] Glebkin played the bass guitar.” Lyubov Raitman stressed
that studying English made the Beatles especially appealing. “We listened to
songs and deciphered and learned the words.” Andrei Rogatnev became a Beatles
fan in 1962, when he and Glebkin formed a beat-group. Rogatnev emphasized
the importance of foreign radio broadcasts. “We caught the BBC wave through
As young teens in
Moscow, Andrei Rogatnev
and Vladimir Glebkin
performed Beatles music
at school. This would have
been impossible in
Saratov, a fact
demonstrating yet another
difference between “open”
Moscow and “closed”
Saratov. Courtesy of
Vyacheslav Starik
the interference. We caught it and tried to copy it onto a tape recorder through
the crackling and din of the jamming. We jotted down the words as we under-
stood them. After all, it was very hard to understand.” Rogatnev’s examples drive
home the point: “Was it ‘yesterday’ or ‘yes today’? Take ‘Michelle,’ for instance.
Michelle was perhaps ‘me shall.’ After all, if we say ‘I will,’ then perhaps we could
say ‘me shall’? Why not? These were the discussions we had.” Rogatnev remem-
bered performing the Beatles in the ninth grade to a group of visiting school-age
kids from Britain, something that never would have been allowed in Saratov.
His parents placed no restrictions on him. “And it wasn’t only my parents who
were so good. I think it was the same with all the kids.” Indeed, at school,
Rogatnev and Vladimir Glebkin spent a lot of time broadcasting in the school’s
well-equipped radio center. “And at the same time we made copies of the Beatles
and Rolling Stones,” boasted Rogatnev. Today, Glebkin believes that his love for
the Beatles was a natural reaction to the government’s attempt to impose its own
tastes on young people. As a result, “the Beatles and all of Western culture pen-
etrated very deeply among young people.”
“WE GREW UP LISTENING TO THESE SONGS”

The Khrushchev era saw a resurgence not only of what has been called Soviet
“mass song,” with its optimistic gloss, but also of the elusive genre of pop.
According to Irina Chemodurova, “the majority of us were keen on variety show
music when tape recorders first appeared in 1961 or 1962. They were enormous,
with huge knobs. Naturally, some of the kids had them, those who had more
access.” But soon the so-called poet bards took the country by storm. In the 1960s
Aleksandr Galich, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, and others began croon-
ing their songs to their own solo accompaniment on the seven-stringed guitar.
Circulating on privately recorded tapes, guitar poetry represented the most wide-
spread form of unofficial popular and perhaps even antigovernment culture at
the time. Viktor D. recalled that “sometime around the sixth grade the entire class
fell for Okudzhava at the suggestion of Seryozha Arkhangelsky. I think he was the
first to bring tapes of Okudzhava to school.” Okudzhava visited Saratov when the
Baby Boomers were in the tenth grade, giving two concerts but not the scheduled
third one. “Something happened,” remembered Larisa Petrova. “He smoked on
stage and threw his cigarette butts. I later heard that it was seen as a scornful atti-
tude toward those in the audience. And a cigarette hit someone in the front row.
That was enough for the authorities.” Arkady Darchenko and others learned the
songs at summer camp, on the Volga. “Several guys in the group played the guitar
really well. They sang Okudzhava. Vysotsky was just making his debut. When we
first heard his songs we didn’t know whose they were, but we liked them enor-
mously and all of us sang them. Each night,” he continued, “when it began to
grow dark, we gathered around the campfires on the riverbank and sang until
two in the morning. We grew up listening to these songs, to these poet bards.”
Moscow’s Mikhail Markovich confirmed that “everyone sang all of those songs at
campfires in the 1960s, Vysotsky, Galich. And it was fun.” Viktor Alekseyev never
became a fanatic about them, but he admitted, “I liked them. It seemed to me
that they expressed nontypical feelings that were in opposition to official poetry
and literature. The bards were very, very appealing people.”
Vysotsky, especially, became something of a Soviet cult figure. His tough-
guy songs represented an attractive alternative to official sanitized culture,
because his lyrics dealt with life in the raw, with topics such as prison life,
crime, the unheroic aspects of war, sex, drinking, cramped living quarters,
and food lines. Vysotsky was also an acclaimed actor at Moscow’s trendy
Taganka Theater and appeared in Charles Bronson-like roles in movies.
Sustained gossip about his counterculture life style added immensely to the
officially decried Vysotsky cult. Vysotsky touched something vital in Viktor
D.: “At that time he was one of the few who understood the human soul, who
could express in a satirical, poetic form repressed feelings, the aspirations of
the majority.” Natalya Pronina agreed that Vysotsky’s songs struck a respon-
sive chord and explained why they sometimes offended the authorities: “The
song ‘And All Is Quiet in the Cemetery’ has lyrics such as everything was as
quiet as could be and as proper as could be. And although there’s nothing at
all in the song that makes an analogy to the country at large, that’s exactly
how we understood it. That it’s like a cemetery, see? We young people under-
stood this as a political song.”
“ W E R E AC H E D T H E AG E , A N D RO M A N C E S B E GA N ”
Under Stalin, sexuality was so brutally repressed in the USSR that Russia’s
leading sexologist, Igor S. Kon, called government policy “sexophobia in action.”
The Khrushchev Thaw permitted some research on sexuality and the term “sex”
even entered public discourse; however, the Soviet press preferred the more
euphemistic “intimate relations.”15 Although the system remained prudish and
hypocritical when the Baby Boomers came of age, Kon concluded that, by the
1960s, it was “clear that both the value orientations and the sexual conduct of
Soviet youth were moving in the same direction as those of their counterparts in
the West,” and “the overall trends in sexual behavior within Soviet society were,
in the main, the same as the West.”16 Changes in social structure and culture
resulted in earlier sexual maturation and onset of sexual activity. Premarital sex
became more socially acceptable, as did homosexuality (although none of the
interviewees admitted being gay or talked about the subject). As in the West,
these changes created a gap between the Baby Boomers and their parents in
terms of sexual values and behavior.17
Few of the Baby Boomers had anything to say about the troubled terrain of
individuality, privacy, and sexual practices. This is not surprising. Soviet schools—
like American schools at the time—offered no sex education. A few learned about
sex at home or from movies and hearsay, but most learned about sex from each
other. The moralizing official advice on sex for this generation, which a Finnish
sociologist calls “learned ignorance,” emphasized the dangers of masturbation
and the risks of venereal disease.18 The few gynecological handbooks available for
girls extolled the benefits of getting married as a virgin. Although family planning
using contraceptives appeared in the 1960s, they remained hard to obtain. The
Soviet medical profession rejected the birth control pill, instead praising the vir-
tues of condoms (known colloquially as “galoshes”), IUDs, and diaphragms.
Because of the difficulty getting hold of reliable birth control, abortion, legalized
in 1955, remained the most widespread form of birth control for the Cold War
generation until the 1990s. In 1985, the abortion rate per 1,000 women of repro-
ductive age was six to ten times the analogous rates in Western Europe.19
The Baby Boomers spoke readily about teenage flirtations and romances. “I
don’t think our school differed from any of the others,” stated Aleksandr
Trubnikov. “We reached the age, and romances began. Even Soviet power
couldn’t do anything about this. Basic instinct was at work.” Gennady Ivanov
piped in “that practically everyone had their first love at school,” but empha-
sized how rare it was “that someone remained with someone from school all
their life.” But were the Baby Boomers sexually active at this age? Like others,
Aleksandr Konstantinov remembered that “as far as I know, up until the tenth
grade, relations between boys and girls in our group were quite innocent, with
perhaps one exception. But if we are to go by what people said back then, a
select group of ‘golden youth’ in the A group beginning in the seventh or eighth
grade began to throw parties with alcohol and perhaps even sex.” None from
that group admitted this. Aleksandr Trubnikov believed that sexual activity
“depended on the neighborhood you lived in. My neighborhood bordered on
Glebuchev Ravine, where there were always loose morals. Many of my neighbor-
hood friends were older and more experienced than me. They taught us every-
thing and introduced us to the right people. But at school, as far as I remember,
there was no particular activity observed.”
Therefore, the majority described relations between the sexes at school as
pure and innocent. Irina Tsurkan felt “that’s to the credit of this particular school
and its particular atmosphere.” More to the point, “there weren’t any incidents
whatsoever of vulgarity.” But this had its downside, too. “That is, we probably
were naïve compared to other children,” she suggested. According to Moscow’s
Tatyana Artyomova, there were “many school romances. But I want to say that
these were very mature spiritual relationships.” In other words, “since the peo-
ple were on a very high level, their relations were of the highest level.” Yelena
Kolosova found love at any age humbling, and “all of my being in love unre-
quited.” Because love as a theme was plastered on the pages of Russian litera-
ture, she found it “simply impossible not to be in love.” She also “wouldn’t have
known what would have happened if her feelings had been reciprocated.” After
all, she found that older men—her father’s graduate students and even one of
her teachers—were attracted to her. “They always had enough sense not to go
too far, because they were dealing with a girl of fifteen or sixteen.” Moreover, the
boys her age, Mikhail Markovich claimed, “related to the girls in a respectful
way. We didn’t touch them. We went out with them and went to the theater with
them.” Markovich, however, conceded that “because of girls” the boys some-
times “settled things with their fists until they drew blood.”
Quite a few recalled the crushes they had while in school. Saratov’s Galina
Poldyaeva divulged that girls in the B class “were in love with Petya (Pyotor)
Krasilnikov, a handsome and gifted boy.” Krasilnikov remembered the time as
“an awkward age. We were becoming adults. We were interested in going out with
girls and in nature outings. We sang songs, built campfires. I taught myself how
to play the guitar, and I’d take my guitar with me on all of our nature outings or
get-togethers on birthdays or on holidays.” Because the B class comprised twenty
girls and eight boys, Aleksandr Virich opined that “we had so many girls that it
didn’t make sense to argue over them. We’d get acquainted, argue, go out, then
go out again, then argue again, then find new girlfriends.” Natalya Pronina told
me that “all of us girls in the A class were in love with Sasha [Aleksandr] Trubnikov.
He was very smart and well read, but mainly it was his inner charm. He played
the guitar and sang Vysotsky.” Many of the Moscow males considered Tatyana
The Baby Boomers needed a

ready supply of 2-kopeck coins
to use public phones. This
photo of Leonid Terlitsky and a
friend, taken near School No. 20
in 1966, hints at the diverse uses
of telephone booths at the time.
Courtesy of Leonid Terlitsky
Arzhanova the beauty of the B class. Georgy Godzhello, the tallest boy in class,
was her first boyfriend. “If Godzhello liked a girl, she must be worth something,”
Arzhanova believed. More to the point, “the feeling that others like you, that you
have a friend, a girlfriend, a group of friends, people you like to be with and who
are well-disposed toward you” impacted her life. “If I hadn’t had that stage in my
life, I would probably have turned out to be a different person.”
Viktor Alekseyev described the transformation he remembered taking place
at school. First the boys avoided the girls, then friendships emerged, and next
some attachments that the boys talked a lot about. “Or there was some petty
jealousy or rivalry among the boys over a very popular girl. The same was true
for the girls.” Regarding sex, Alekseyev emphasized how hard it is to generalize
about an entire generation. That said, he knew “some who began very young,
while at school, and others who did so rather late, at the end of their college
days. I was somewhere in the middle,” he admitted. “But I have the impression,
perhaps an erroneous one, that we became sexually active later and that it was a
much bigger deal than it is for young people in Russia today.” Indeed, his class-
mate Leonid Terlitsky did not believe that people at school were sexually active:
“Not really. There were some kinds of sexual experience but nothing major, only
a small minority I would say had had sexual experiences at the time. No, we got
into some serious drinking at that tender age of sixteen, and that’s about it.”
“ E V E R YO N E L I S T E N E D TO W E S T E R N R A D I O
B ROA D C A S T S ”
The Baby Boomers listened to foreign radio broadcasts, especially by the time
they reached the upper grades. Many of them did so because their parents tuned
in, or because they wanted to enjoy Western music or practice their English.
Those who denied listening to Voice of America and other stations came from
families closely connected to the political system. Quite a few observed that they
paid more attention to political events, and consequently took note of the
broadcasts more seriously, after they had enrolled in college, and especially after
the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Despite jamming and Soviet
counterpropaganda condemning foreign broadcasts, people found ways to
listen if they wanted to. Ironically, the government jammed Western broadcasts,
but at the same time produced a receiver in Latvia—the Spidola (later known as
the VEF)—that could pick them up. Vladimir Prudkin observed that for a time
under Khrushchev the Soviet government stopped jamming the broadcasts alto-
gether, but stepped up the jamming once again in 1968. Concluded Prudkin: “It
made an impression, when here in the USSR there were many things you
couldn’t talk about that they talked about over there.”
The BBC began beaming signals to the Soviet Union in 1946, Voice of America
(VOA) in 1947, and CIA-funded and Munich-based Radio Liberty (RL) in 1953.
Germany’s Deutsche Welle (German Wave) rounded out the list of most impor-
tant foreign broadcasts, but eventually thirty nations got involved in the activity.20
After the Soviet Union started jamming foreign broadcasts in the winter of 1948,
VOA engineers concocted ways to circumvent the interference, and Soviet lis-
teners found ways to adapt their receivers. Targeting the Soviet intelligentsia, the
early hard-hitting broadcasts focused on issues with which Soviet listeners could
identify: the impossibility of traveling abroad, the Gulag, the horrors of collec-
tivization, the depressed living standards, privileges of Communist Party mem-
bers, government hostility toward religion, restrictions on the intelligentsia, and
grievances of ethnic minorities. Characterizing VOA as a “servant of Wall Street,”
Soviet counterpropaganda depicted the Russian-speaking broadcasters as
“clearly the dregs of the earth, outcasts from all humanity, which they them-
selves realize.”
The VOA toned down the broadcasts following Stalin’s death in 1953, offering
more news and entertainment such as “Music USA,” launched in 1955, while
Munich-based and CIA-funded Radio Liberty continued its uncompromising
propaganda. In 1958, the United States Information Agency (USIA) made English-
language broadcasts available around the clock. After the two superpowers signed
a cultural agreement that year governing a vast array of reciprocal exchanges of
radio and television programs, films, artists, students, faculty, scientists, agricul-
tural specialists, athletes, youth, and even civic groups, the United States replaced
its aggressive psychological warfare with a more evolutionary one that promoted
the soft power of the symbols of American mass culture such as blue jeans,
chewing gum, jazz, rock music, stylish clothing, and cultural stars.21 By the mid-
1960s, however, the VOA, BBC, Radio Liberty, Deutsche Welle, and other stations
began broadcasting political trials back in the Soviet Union. Civil rights activist
Liudmila Alekseeva believed that the number who listened to VOA and Radio
Liberty eventually reached 34 million daily and 82 million weekly listeners,22
concluding that “it would be difficult to exaggerate the impact on Soviet society
of foreign radio broadcasts beamed to the USSR,” and that their influence was
“felt by all of Soviet society, from its highest to its lowest strata.”23
Saratov’s Arkady Darchenko remembered he began listening “as soon as I
was able to figure out electronics myself. We had a VEF. I fixed the wave band
so that they couldn’t jam us. I listened all the time. Yes, this was around tenth
grade and afterward.” Vladimir Nemchenko boasted that “already from age
seven I knew what Voice of America and German Wave were. I had a receiver in
the shed. I sat up at night and listened.” Aleksandr Virich claimed that “all of
Russia listened.” Fine-tuning his remark, he added, “Everyone who was even
somewhat of a member of the intelligentsia did. The lower classes didn’t listen,
but the majority of workers, of skilled workers, they all listened.” He, too,
explained how easy it was to outsmart the state’s jamming process. “Our jam-
mers worked at all frequencies our radios received. But no one realized that you
could insert a special band in an empty slot in an ordinary VEF, which was
adjusted so that it picked up the VHF wavebands. Everything came through
perfectly!” Viktor D. recalled, “We believed some things, but not others.” Viktor,
who listened with his father, considered it a “violation” of his rights that the
Soviet government considered listening an anti-Soviet act.
Listening ran in families. In Moscow, Anna Lyovina recalled that her mother
“listened all the time.” Igor Litvin’s father had a Spidola. “He, of course, lis-
tened, but didn’t make any commentary on what he heard,” observed Igor,
who listened, too, but to the Rolling Stones and Beatles. A jazz fan, Leonid
Terlitsky preferred the “Jazz Hour” on Voice of America. Leonid Volodarsky
remembered, “I liked the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. I followed them
closely. I’d listen to BBC World Service’s Top Twenty. If I could, I’d listen to
Radio Luxembourg, but it was hard to catch it.” Volodarsky’s parents “strictly
told” him “not to tell anyone about this, but we nonetheless discussed this
among ourselves at school.” Lyubov Kovalyova listened, because, she main-
tained, “It was really interesting to compare the understanding of an event here
with the view of the event from there.” Lyubov Raitman recalled she tuned in
“from age ten or so. I remember the crackling sound, and the voices that broke
off. It was very interesting!” Fluent in French, her mother could not pick up
French-language broadcasts in Moscow but could when they vacationed on the
Crimea. Coincidentally, her family encountered the Volodarskys while vaca-
tioning there, where they got to be friends. Lyubov recalled that Volodarsky’s
father, who taught English, listened to BBC and Voice of America on the beach
and translated what he heard for them. Bakhyt Kenzheyev’s father never spoke
about politics but listened each night after the kids went to bed: “The first thing
we bought when we saved up a little money was a radio,” recounted Bakhyt.
“He listened to BBC and to Voice of America.” Tatyana Artyomova had no
trouble picking up stations, characterizing the pastime as “absolutely normal.”
Underscoring the intellectual atmosphere at school, she noted that “if you
found out something new, you’d discuss it with the others.”
Saratov’s Arkady Darchenko agreed, “We no longer were afraid. We were from
a different generation. We often discussed what we heard at school, since we
listened to the same things.” Aleksandr Babushkin confided that “we talked
about the broadcasts and considered this normal. I don’t believe that in our
circle it was seen as something extraordinary.”
Aleksandr Konstantinov began listening “when the radio receivers appeared,”
that is, when he became a student at Moscow University. Some Muscovites also
date their serious listening to their college days. “That information became
important, probably from the time our troops invaded Czechoslovakia,”
responded Mikhail Markovich. “We began to understand that we lacked
information.” Leonid Terlitsky concurred: “At that time we would all listen to
Voice of America, to Voice of Israel, to various enemy voices. We were avid lis-
teners.” Tatyana Luchnikova claimed her mother “really loved to listen to VOA.
She couldn’t live without it.” Luchnikova joined in only after finishing school.
“It was really interesting because they said a lot about dissidents.”
In contrast, the Baby Boomers’ parents with the most to risk—almost always
Party members—claimed to have tuned in less, if at all, to foreign broadcasts.
Anatoly Shapiro remembered, “My father tried to listen late at night. He feared
all his life because he traveled abroad and worked for the Ministry of Foreign
Trade. I understand all of this now, but thought it was strange back then.”
Marina Bakutina suspected her parents did not listen because “they were Party
members and my father was in the army and my mother was eligible to travel
abroad. It really was dangerous, because they could put an end to foreign
travel.” Olga Gorelik claimed her father, assistant editor of the Saratov
Communist newspaper, listened “only once out of professional interest, but I
think he had already retired.” Irina Tsurkan believed her parents did not listen
“because of me. I was the only child. Their fear was probably exaggerated.” Nor
did Aleksandr Trubnikov’s parents tune in. As for him, he said, “It was simply
impossible. You had to make colossal efforts, and why did I need that?” But he
began to listen in college: “And by then I began to really get interested in such
things.” That said, Trubnikov emphasized that “you had to listen to them secre-
tively. You had to be careful.” Some of these feelings still lingered when I asked
Natalya Pronina whether her family listened to foreign radio broadcasts. She
barked, “I don’t have to answer that question. It was forbidden to listen.”
Despite the need to be cautious when listening to foreign radio broadcasts,
some Baby Boomers reminded me that, from their perspective, there was nothing
explicitly political about their doing so. Saratov’s Aleksandr Kutin listened to
VOA’s English news broadcasts because they were accessible and comprehen-
sible, and because, as he put it, “It helped me with the political information
classes. I’d record the news on my tape recorder and report on it in English at
school the next day, and everyone would applaud me. The best pupils did the
political information reports, but it was also something of a joke.” Natalya
Yanichkina acknowledged that “back then I didn’t pay much attention to what
was said, but was more interested in saying that I listened to Voice of America.
Ever the more so because it was jammed, and everything that’s secretive and off
limits always sparks one’s interest. But what they had to say didn’t interest me at
all.” Several others claimed that they realized that neither superpower had a
monopoly on the truth and that, as Aleksandr Kutin opined, “You had to chose
somewhere in the middle.” Yevgeny Podolsky remarked that “it was of course
very interesting to me back then, but I believed it was propaganda. But later I
began to see all of this differently. By then we had lost faith.” Recalled Pyotor
Krasilnikov: “Back then I simply wanted to pick up some other information. I’m
not saying that it was objective or not.” “When they broadcast things that devi-
ated from our radio broadcasts, I didn’t believe it,” asserted Olga Kamayurova.
“It seemed to me that they were slandering us, that’s what they pounded into
our heads. I was quite naïve.”
Moscow’s Yelena Kolosova groused about the quality of Voice of America,
“which irritated me with its unintelligent propaganda,” comparing it with BBC,
which her family loved for its “balanced approach and objectivity.” Despite her
critical remarks, Kolosova appreciated VOA and other stations because “it was
information. It was impossible to get by without it, because you had to try to find
out about certain events. Especially the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial [in 1965].”* Her
mother listened to music on German Wave, because she knew the language. They
also listened to Radio Israel, especially during the Six Day War in 1967. They lis-
tened during the invasion of Czechoslovakia. They listened to everything tied to
Solzhenitsyn. Several of her classmates also found fault with the broadcasts, but
it is hard to say whether this is due to the effectiveness of Soviet counterpropa-
ganda or to the programming’s real shortcomings. Vyacheslav Starik explained
that “it’s a question of mentality. It’s simply that foreign powers don’t want what’s
good for us. We couldn’t expect anything good from them. They had their lives,
we had ours.” Vladimir Glebkin lost faith in the broadcasts shortly after gradu-
ating from school, when he heard a BBC report about an incident for which he
claimed to have had firsthand knowledge. “I began to notice that, from time to
time, they indeed had a purpose in conveying information,” he detailed. “The
fact that our side said that all of those foreign voices lie, that they’re the mouth-
piece of American propaganda, well there’s something in that.”
“EVERYTHING SOUNDS ROMANTIC WITH

A S PA N I S H A C C E N T ”
Among the most accomplished spin doctors of the twentieth century, Soviet
propagandists pounded into the Baby Boomers’ heads that “the number of
socialist countries would soon surpass the number of capitalist ones, and that
the transition to socialism was possible in a peaceful manner, without revolu-
tion,” recounted Aleksandr Trubnikov. In the aftermath of World War II, and
especially during their school days, the final blow was dealt to colonialism,
especially in Africa, which the Soviet government depicted as evidence of the
march of progress and further decline of the capitalist world order. “At that
time,” remembered Trubnikov, “they taught us that Africa had awoken. It had
cast off the yoke of colonialism, and all the countries on the dark continent in a
wink became socialist. I really didn’t understand who Patrice Lumumba was in
the Congo. I read the papers and thought that colonialism was a very bad thing
and that Africa became free and that everything instantly was now good there.”
But then the Cuban Revolution brought Fidel Castro to power, eventually
resulting in a superpower crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear
war. Africa remained remote and other. Not so Cuba, and once the love affair
with Cuba began, Latin America became more accessible, too, at least the voice
* In 1965, the new Brezhnev leadership arrested writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, for
slandering the Soviet system in works they published abroad under pseudonyms. Both
were sentenced to labor camps at a show trial held in early 1966. By raising fear of a return
to Stalinism, the trial helped to galvanize the dissident movement.
of actress Lolita Torres and the soccer prowess of Pele, Didi, and Vava. The Cuban
Revolution allowed Soviet citizens to vicariously relive their own revolution.
Reminisced Saratov’s Viktor D.: “There was the affable Comrade Fidel who
invited us to help him. We helped him, and the country prospered.” “Cuba, my
love, island of crimson dawns,” crooned Olga Kolishchyuk. “What an unusual
love we had for Cuba. They were all heroes there and everything was wonderful.”
“Cuba! Oh, we loved Cuba!” enthused Natalya Yolshina, “because Fidel was a
national hero; he was handsome, with a beard, and quite the orator.” Yolshina
remembered a special school assembly when “a teacher got up on the stage and
said ‘Children! A wonderful thing has occurred in Cuba.’ The insurgents, the
revolutionaries, have won! We gave a standing ovation, we were so happy.
Although, we understood very little. We always loved Cuba.” Aleksandr
Trubnikov concurred that “we loved Castro. He was simply a national hero who,
on a tiny little island, defied terrible bourgeois America. He became our friend
and began to build communism.” Castro’s success created expectations: “We
were even fonder of Che Guevara. He was, as they now say in Russia, even cooler
than Castro,” commented Trubnikov.
Yet certain issues confused the Baby Boomers. “Somehow I couldn’t under-
stand why they live so poorly over there,” volunteered Aleksandr Trubnikov.
Hindsight enabled Viktor D. to distinguish between Big Politics and his own:
“The fact that Cuba was a direct threat to America, well none of us really under-
stood this, at least among those my age.” Although positively disposed toward
helping Africa and Cuba, he quipped, “We expressed amusement that we
exchanged grain for sugar cane. Did we really need it?” According to Aleksandr
Konstantinov, “we knew that Cuba existed, that there was a charming man there,
Fidel Castro, with a beard, who was able to speak for six hours without a break.
Initially people felt that the Cubans were a heroic people, yet not for long.” Once
again, things look clearer with the benefit of hindsight: “It was pure ideology,”
concluded Aleksandr Virich. Yet the relationship left a legacy of sorts. Arkady
Darchenko visited Cuba in 1993, after the USSR no longer existed and its aid to
Cuba had dried up. Despite the parting of ways, he “felt that these people were
very open and friendly. When you walked along the street someone would run
up to you and say ‘Hey, Americano, give me a dollar.’ I’d say in Russian, ‘I’m not
an Americano, I’m Russian.’ ‘Ah, Russo. Do you want a drink?’ In general, they
related differently. They were taught, ‘Americano’ is bad, and ‘Russo’ is good.”
Castro cut a romantic figure for many of the Moscow females. Lyubov
Kovalyova remembered, “Cuba, Fidel Castro, with the handsome beard. We
learned all about it, and made a montage at school. We read poems, taking turns
with ‘Cuba-si, Cuba-si, Cuba-si, Yankee-no.’ We did this with great enthusiasm.
Cuba was our ally, we were friends.” Lyubov Raitman also recalled singing
“‘Cuba, my love, island of crimson dawns.’ We didn’t know what was going on
there. Revolution. Romanticism. Fidel, who was so attractive. I can’t say what
I understood at the time about America’s position.” Tatyana Artyomova
maintained, “People liked Cuba thanks to Fidel, because he was so handsome.

All of the other leaders were bent over with age.” Yelena Kolosova explained why
Cuba held appeal for her generation: “Hemingway [then so popular in the
USSR] was on the side of the [Cuban] Revolution.” As a result, “we were one
with Cuba. And this made things similar to the situation during the Spanish
Civil War.” In fact, “it seems to me that Cuba was one of the myths of Soviet
power. Besides, everything sounds romantic with a Spanish accent.”
The Saratov interviewees had remarkably little to say about Cold War fears,
even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, lending credence to the aphorism that
“what you don’t know won’t hurt you.” “I was in school during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. I didn’t know about it, but on my way home from school the
newspaper Izvestiya was posted somewhere on a fence. And it contained an
article ‘How The Times Got into a Fix,’” recalled Aleksandr Konstantinov. “There
was a fake photograph in The Times, which allegedly depicted Soviet soldiers
and bases in Cuba. That very same paper the next day wrote about the ‘wise’
decision to remove our missiles from Cuba. Everyone got a kick out of this. We
didn’t realize that we had been on the verge of war.” Olga Kamayurova also
stated that “with the benefit of hindsight we now know how terrible the
Caribbean crisis really was, after all, we were on the brink of nuclear war. But we
didn’t know the whole truth back then.” Irina Garzanova was not afraid, for
Cuba seemed so remote. “Of course, if it had happened on Kamchatka or
Sakhalin, it would have been another matter,” she conceded. Irina Vizgalova’s
uncle, “an old Party military man,” was in Cuba at the time, but his memories
privileged the ordinary: “He told us that Cubans eat green tomatoes and feed
red ones to the pigs. And they eat squid. He got tanned there and wrote letters.
If you believe him, he mostly rested there,” she recalled.
Igor Litvin and other Muscovites, however, knew of the “strong confrontation
with America. There literally was the feeling that war could begin tomorrow.
And we feared it.” “Poor Cuba,” he felt. “Everyone was afraid of the crisis, I think,
because of all the people here who lived through war.” During the emergency,
Anatoly Shapiro’s father told him that “nuclear war was possible and that the
world could end.” This made an impression on the twelve-year-old, although
“I couldn’t understand who was right and who was at fault.” Tatyana Artyomova’s
parents routinely vacationed in the fall. “They left on vacation. I was at home
with my nanny. They returned home within a week because they were afraid that
something might happen and they needed to be at home. I remember that very
well.” Andrei Rogatnev’s father, who worked for the KGB, was mobilized during
the crisis. “All of us expected war,” recalled Andrei.
“THE CHINESE BECAME ENEMY NUMBER ONE”

Following Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China in
1949, the new Communist kid on the bloc signed a thirty-year Treaty of Friendship,
Alliance, and Mutual Assistance with Stalin’s Soviet Union, feeding Western fears
of a Red menace. But Chinese suspicion, the Soviet leadership’s overbearing and
insensitive behavior toward Beijing, and growing differences over international
political strategies resulted in a rift between the two Communist giants in the late
1950s and early 1960s. As the differences evolved into an open split in 1962, China
challenged the USSR’s dominance of the world Communist movement, claimed
chunks of Soviet territory in the Far East, and slammed the Soviet Union as
a “social imperialist” state. The Kremlin expressed disapproval of Chinese
domestic policies, especially the decade-long Cultural Revolution launched in
1966, a violent and radical mass movement promoted by Mao to root out
“bourgeois” elements in the Communist Party and society at large, resulting in
chaos and economic instability. The tension between the two Communist giants
escalated into the Ussuri River crisis of 1969 over Damansky (Chenpao) Island, a
violent border clash in which the Chinese were determined to show the Soviet
leadership that they would not back away from military conflict.
Natalya Yolshina remembered that, when she attended school in Saratov,
“there was friendship between our nations, and we danced Chinese dances,
always in Chinese outfits. China, our brother. Brothers for a century!” Both
cohorts recalled the ever-present Chinese-made consumer goods on the Soviet
market. “All of us had wonderful blue Chinese outfits made out of wool,” related
Olga Martynkina. “We had fur coats and Chinese toys.” Galina Poldyaeva could
visualize the Chinese towels, enamel dishes, and the Keds, of which she had sev-
eral pairs. Moscow’s Vladimir Glebkin told me that he and his family had “blue
trousers made in China. They were of a very awkward cut, but very durable.
Therefore, when you had to do some dirty work, you’d put on these trousers and
know they’d live up to the job.” Tatyana Luchnikova claimed that, at the time,
“all of our clothing was made in China.”
Following the public acknowledgment of the Sino-Soviet split, the Soviet
media ridiculed the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Lyubov Raitman related that
she found the social experiment “terrifying. The throngs of identically dressed
people, marching, gazing at Mao. It made a disturbing impression.” Especially
since the climate in Khrushchev’s Russia differed so much. Viktor Alekseyev
agreed that the Cultural Revolution made a strange impression “against the
background of the Thaw taking place here at home.” As a result, China soon
became enemy number one, “the new Mongol hordes, with atomic bombs in
their quivers,”24 posing both a revisionist ideological and a political threat.
However, many interviewees linked the Sino-Soviet split to the crisis of 1969
over Damansky Island. Arkady Darchenko recalled, “We were taught that China
was ‘brother number one.’ But then the events of 1969 took place: ‘What enemies
they all are, what vermin!’” Aleksandr Ivanov’s cousin who served in the army
told his family that “the army was almost on full military alert to fight with the
Chinese.” The confrontation dumbfounded Olga Kolishchyuk, who had spent
several years in China as an infant, where her parents were stationed. “How
could this be? When we were there things were fine and we were like brothers.
And then suddenly this.” The episode made an especially deep impression on
Yevgeny Podolsky, who, as a college student, took part in a labor brigade in
Siberia. When his group changed trains near Irkutsk, they heard an announce-
ment over the loud speaker that the Moscow-Beijing train was passing through
en route to China. Prepared to assault the Chinese, “we rushed to the platform,
but they cordoned us off. We were surrounded by police, by troops from
internal affairs. We threw a scene.” Etched in Podolsky’s memory is “the passing
red train, well illuminated, packed with Chinese standing at the windows
reading Mao Zedong.” But there’s more. During the two months he labored at
the construction site, the Chinese broadcast in Russian, urging “Russian girls to
wait for their hot Chinese lovers,” who would soon reach Irkutsk. “We were
outraged.”
When the friendship soured, Saratov’s Natalya Yolshina recalled being told
that “they changed their views, but we continued to stand up for ours, the correct
ones, so we stopped being friends.” Natalya Pronina, who had met a Chinese
girl during the Moscow Youth Festival of 1957, made a distinction: “These hostile
relations stemmed from how the two countries’ leaderships got along, not from
the attitudes of ordinary people. We didn’t understand.” Pyotor Krasilnikov cer-
tainly did not. Later serving in the Red Army some sixty kilometers from China,
he harbored no animosity toward the Chinese either. “It was a shame about our
lads who perished on Damansky. But I think that politicians started this. The
blood of our lads is on their conscience.”
The 1969 shelling of Damansky Island also struck anger and fear in the hearts
of Muscovites. Vladimir Bystrov remembered, “I was very glad when we bom-
barded Damansky Island. I took patriotic pride in this.” Vladimir Glebkin
recalled the change in relations between the two countries “came like a bolt
from the blue, especially since his father’s textbook had been translated into
Chinese. No one understood the essence of the conflict and how it could have
arisen.” The events gave Anatoly Shapiro cause to fear China, “knowing that it
was a large country with an enormous number of people who could pour in
here.” Leonid Volodarsky also heard Chinese radio broadcasts in Russian: “They
were so aggressive, naïve, and uninteresting that they irritated me.”
A significant number of Baby Boomers called the popular mood toward
China in the Soviet Union one of condescension: “You know, the ‘great friend-
ship’ was like a stock phrase. Then there were the incidents over Damansky
Island and the others. Yet this was so far away that the attitude of most, up until
now, is slightly, well, not exactly racist, but people think the Chinese are strange,”
explained Saratov’s Aleksandr Konstantinov. Yevgeny Podolsky confirmed this:
“We thought that the Cultural Revolution was funny and that they weren’t
normal.” Natalya Yanichkina concurred: “The Cultural Revolution was pre-
sented to us as vandalism. Take the killing of sparrows. They shot them so that
they wouldn’t eat grain.” Olga Kamayurova admitted, “We used to make fun of
them. That’s how official propaganda represented China to us, and that’s how
we regarded the place.” Moscow’s Vladimir Prudkin voiced a similar sentiment.
“They reprinted articles about how the Great Helmsman [Mao] swam across the
Yangtze River. There, of course, was the feeling that this was half-Kafkaesque,
and half Gogolian.” Tatyana Artyomova and her friends “didn’t consider China
an interesting or serious country.” She clarified, “And that’s understandable,
because Chinese culture doesn’t at all resemble Russian culture.”
Naturally, not everyone bought into the great friendship garble nor into the
new Party line after the Sino-Soviet split. The influence of family and other close
contacts seems paramount here. Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov admitted that
“to be honest, I never, even as a child, because of something my father said, con-
sidered the Chinese to be our friends.” Nor did China interest everyone. China
had no appeal for Aleksandr Babushkin, who acknowledged that his point of
view might have been shaped by the negative things one of his teachers of
English, who had grown up in Kharbin, a center of Russian émigré life following
the Revolution, had to say about the Chinese. Lyubov Kovalyova found the
country interesting perhaps because her father had traveled there before the
Sino-Soviet split. Georgy Godzhello “always had colossal respect for China and
for its ancient culture and civilization.”
As adults, the Baby Boomers continued to harbor ambivalent, if not negative,
impressions of China. Moscow’s Vladimir Bystrov opined that he “doesn’t like
China,” which he has visited four times on business since perestroika. After the
dissolution of the USSR, Arkady Darchenko also spent a lot of time there. “I
now have enormous respect for them precisely because of their goals,” he told
me. “It’s the oldest of civilizations and one feels it in them. It’s a very powerful
nation and our neighbor to boot. And Siberia is underpopulated. Let’s say, there-
fore, that my attitude is one of respect and fear.” Ironically referring to the
attempt by Czechoslovakian reformers to create a more humane “socialism with
a human face,” Aleksandr Trubnikov credited China with shaping his worldview
in that “on the whole it was a distorted mirror of the Soviet Union. All of the
features of Soviet power became more pronounced there when taken to their
logical extreme and everyone was dressed in the same Mao jackets and ate the
same hundred grams of rice a day. That was real socialism with a human face.”
“ ‘A B R O A D ’ I S A M Y T H A B O U T L I F E A F T E R D E AT H ”
The Saratovites held more tentative attitudes toward the West than those of their
Moscow counterparts, because Saratov was a closed city. This made Soviet pro-
paganda more effective, especially because their parents had fewer firsthand
experiences with the capitalist world that might serve as an antidote to combat
the official Party line. To be sure, official propaganda emphasized the potential
goodness of people everywhere; not they, but their capitalist socioeconomic and
political systems were the enemy. Although the depiction of two Wests—of good
people and bad socioeconomic systems—held sway, popular opinion in the

1950s and 1960s remained hostile toward Germany, owing to the torment Nazi
Germany inflicted upon the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War.
Moreover, Soviet propaganda back then also excoriated the German people. “Of
course, there was hatred toward fascist Germany,” responded Galina Poldyaeva.
Arkady Darchenko elaborated, “When I was a kid I wasn’t fond of Germany.
Like any Russian, I had lost several relatives during the war. And this affects your
view, of course. But now I think that’s stupid. It would be like hating the French
because of the war with Napoleon.”
America held a special place in the Soviet popular imagination because its tech-
nological advances had already by the 1920s made it the modernist nation par ex-
cellence; however, the image was tempered by depictions of racism and exploitation
of workers, and government criticism of jazz and Hollywood movies. The wartime
alliance created in the USSR what historian Alan Ball called an “orgy of good
feeling” toward America, yet it vanished once the Cold War intensified. Soviet pro-
paganda resumed the attack, adding to the above list of America’s shortcomings
unemployment, crime, and the gap between rich and poor that affected access to
education and medical care. It decried vulgar materialism, violence, cynical indi-
vidualism, social stratification, narcotics, and pornography.25 Soviet images of
America softened under Khrushchev, who promoted peaceful coexistence and
opening up to the outside world. Further, the attitudes of professional—and far
more sympathetic—foreign-policy practitioners neutralized ideological prejudices
of the Soviet leadership. As before the war, Soviet class-war rhetoric depicted the
American people as victims of an unfair system controlled by capitalist warmon-
gers, right-wingers, the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Texas oil magnates. But America
became less intimidating, as a result of which most young people in the Soviet
Union harbored more ambivalent views of their Cold War enemy.26
Khrushchev’s September 1959 visit to the United States colored the impres-
sions of the Baby Boomers’ parents, and of the interviewees, too, because Soviet
propaganda gave the journey top billing, for Nikita Sergeyevich was the first
Soviet leader to see the stronghold of capitalism. A hefty propaganda volume on
the “triumphant” trip issued in a press run of 1 million copies declared that
Khrushchev had “throughout the universe revealed and glorified the genius of
our heroic nation.” The book acknowledges the fabulous cars and fine roads in
America, and “American service, which is well known in the entire world,” but
only if green paper dollars are rustling in your pocket. It depicts Americans as
talented and hard working, but also as victims of the “contradictions of
capitalism,” making them so preoccupied with money. The book observes that
Americans like baseball more than books, and a well-appointed kitchen and
bathroom over the theater or music. Such remarks reflected the success of the
1957 American exhibit and propaganda war. The Soviet government could not
deny what its people had seen, so it cast them as the consequence of America’s
location, far from the theaters of war.27 Importantly, the book underscores that
peaceful coexistence was the “only possible form of existence.”28 This rhetoric
struck a responsive chord among the Soviet people, who needed peace to enjoy
the fruits of communism that was just around the corner. According to a public
opinion poll of Soviet citizens carried out by Soviet sociologists in 1960, 96.8
percent of the respondents expressed confidence that war could be averted.29
Saratov’s Natalya Yolshina acknowledged the impact of the Soviet information
system in shaping her views toward the West. “General human values prevailed,
and the fact that people everywhere were the same was perhaps the main thing.”
Reminding me that Saratov was a closed city, she said she “never had any con-
tacts with foreigners” but never felt any “animosity or ill will” toward the West.
She assumed that “things were much better here. No one is oppressing anyone
else. We have no unemployment. And it’s marvelous that we have free education
and free medical care. It’s wonderful to live in the Soviet Union!” In contrast,
“everything is more complicated there. There’s endless competition, the survival
of the fittest.” Maintained Galina Poldyaeva: “We always felt sorry for the unem-
ployed. They had nowhere to live, nothing to eat, and no place to sleep, whereas
here everything was so good.” They also learned that “the Negroes were repressed
in the United States. We read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Of course, everything was
one-sided and seems amusing today.” Irina Garzanova reminded me that “pro-
paganda is propaganda. I, for example, related to America negatively, in the
sense that it threatened us. But I understood that it was military circles there that
were responsible. It was advantageous for them to threaten us. However, the
people were like us.” As Aleksandr Konstantinov claimed, “We formed our ideas
of the West mostly from caricatures in newspapers. The American was always
depicted as Uncle Sam, with a striped flag and with striped pants.” Konstantinov
harbored prejudice toward the West back then: “I probably believed that there
were people there who weren’t interested in our country’s well-being. On the
other hand, I was interested and curious.”
Some Saratovites emphasized that, although Soviet propaganda worked at
the most general level, it also gave rise to reservations that evolved into genuine
doubt. Explained Aleksandr Virich: “What kind of attitude could a school-age
child have toward the West, when they drove home the point all his life that
capitalism was rotting? But some ten to fifteen years later I understood that it
was going to rot for a lot longer, and that for some reason its decay smelled like
roses! We were young back then,” he added. “We loved our country, we believed
that in 1980 we’d have communism, although, for the most part, the adults
already knew there’d be no communism.” Aleksandr Trubnikov also felt this
ambivalence. On the one hand, he affirmed the influence of everything he read
and heard at school and over the radio and on television. On the other hand, it
seemed strange to him that if Americans were all such terrible capitalists, “then
why do they have such a high level of science and technology, and such a high
standard of living? It was impossible for them to hide this from us,” despite the
Iron Curtain. “Even Soviet propaganda was incapable of doing so. This didn’t
make sense. There’s such a terrible class war going on in the West with strikes
and the like and, as they taught us, the working class would soon seize power
because it’s brutally exploited. After all, how much could it take?”
Studying English mitigated the worst effects of Soviet anti-Western propa-
ganda. Viktor D. recognized this. “It brought me closer. I could imagine Hyde
Park, I could imagine the Statue of Liberty. I can say that neither I nor anyone in
my family ever considered Americans as enemies.” Vladimir Kirsanov attributed
his attitude toward the West to his school experience, “which without question
shaped our worldview. We studied English literature, history, and so on. We
became more broadly acquainted with world culture. Therefore, my attitude was
normal.” Irina Chemodurova prided herself in being “raised on Western culture.
They brought me up according to the principle: English poetry, French prose,
German music, and Italian art.” Pyotor Krasilnikov recalled that back then he
saw the USSR and United States as military and technological equals. “But I
wanted more freedom. What kind, I can’t remember, but perhaps to see more
cowboy films, perhaps to chew chewing gum. From today’s perspective, that’s all
trifling stuff. I wanted to travel abroad, but during the Soviet period that was
very problematic.”
Negative publicity about the West did not dampen the Baby Boomers’ interest
in the capitalist other, and often had the opposite effect. In 1966 Soviet citizens
harbored “unequivocal disinterest in the ‘Third World,’”30 whereas 91 percent of
those surveyed were interested in America and admired its technological progress
and living standards. Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were enormously
popular, and many people believed Americans were much like Russians.31
Saratov’s Aleksandr Babushkin agreed that he “was interested in how people
lived there.” Natalya Pronina admitted she was “really curious.” Irina Vizgalova
“wanted to communicate with people over there and to know more.” Irina
Tsurkan “envied their standards of living. There was the sense that everything
there was very good. We were under the impression that to live well over there
you had to work hard, and we saw that here you could work very hard and not
get anything for your efforts.”
Although the Saratovites appear to have had a more positive image of the
United States than Americans had of the Soviet Union, they were not immune
to Cold War fears. Said Viktor D.: “Here there also was a certain degree of hys-
teria. They charged this atmosphere, because, as with the situation between
Cuba and the United States, there were American bases surrounding the Russian
Federation. And there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Tatyana Kuznetsova also
mentioned the trepidation she felt. “I would think, ‘Oh, my, and if war breaks
out? What if they suddenly attack us?’ That was terrible. We knew for certain that
we would never launch an attack against them.” Olga Kolishchyuk insisted, “We
were afraid of nuclear war. We thought that at any moment they could drop
bombs on us and we’d no longer be alive. And we hoped that normal people
lived there, too, who didn’t want this.” Yet Olga Martynkina claimed she and her
friends “never thought about the Cold War. We knew that all of that exists, but
it didn’t concern us.”
The Muscovites spoke more emphatically about the limitations of Soviet
anti-Western propaganda, which, ironically, contributed toward an idealization
of Western lifestyles and abundance. According to Tatyana Luchnikova, “it
seemed to all of us that the West was inaccessible, dazzling, almost a place of
shining asphalt and of crystal-clear clouds.” Tatyana Artyomova concurred:
“I think that, in general, Soviet-era propaganda was very unsuccessful. It was
very unprofessional, because no one in our class believed that America was a
bad country.” Boris Shtein had relatives in Switzerland who had left Russia
before the Revolution. “I remember that, in the 1960s, our families corresponded.
We sent each other souvenirs. The West was always an open world to me.” Shtein
“never feared the West” and found mandatory Soviet civil defense classes “very
silly and annoying. We put on gas masks. But I don’t think anyone took this
seriously.” Leonid Volodarsky unabashedly admitted that “I idealized the West.
I wanted to see Western cinema. I wanted to dress like them.” Vladimir Prudkin
agreed that his views back then were skewed “as if everything there was ideal.”
Igor Litvin saw America as “if it was some kind of promised land. As a child,
I had the impression that it was a first-class country where people really did live
freely, there were no obstacles, and the American dream could be realized.
I always wanted to travel there.”
Andrei Rogatnev spoke good-humoredly about the double standard inherent
in Soviet propaganda, which depicted America and the West as “our enemy, but
all the same with good music and decent films.” From a privileged KGB family,
he and his sister spent a lot of time at the family dacha in Zhukovka, a closed
community built for the country’s leaders, with a clubhouse that showed films
each week. Before each foreign film, a specialist spelled out the shortcomings of
“rotting Hollywood cinematography.” For instance, the night Rogatnev saw The
Born Losers, he recalled the lecturer’s remarks: “And, he says, as an example of
that vileness, we’ll watch this disgusting film. And we, drooling, watched it with
great pleasure.”
Several agreed with Vladimir Glebkin that “at that time we were open to
the West. We saw the shortcomings we had here, we felt them. The narrow-
mindedness, not in school, but, let’s say, on radio, on television, the limited
nature of information and the form of that information, its crudeness, we saw
all of this.” It seemed to Glebkin that a country that could produce the Beatles
was not all that bad and “was of an altogether different quality and more attrac-
tive” than Soviet propaganda would have it. Sergei Zemskov noted the limita-
tions of propaganda—not only about the West but also about the heroic
construction of communism in the USSR: “I’d say that the quality of life was
apparent to everyone. Perhaps it was through our parents. It got through to us
that there was a different standard of living, and, in general, a different
atmosphere there that contrasted with official propaganda for the most part.”
The critical-minded Russian, according to Bakhyt Kenzheyev, “believed that the

Soviet Union was the worst place in the world, that the problems of the American
poor didn’t exist. All of this was expressed in the views ‘if we only had your
problems,’ or ‘if we only had your concerns.’” Kenzheyev remarked that no one
understood the meaning of Watergate and other American domestic scandals:
the Western political system interested the Cold War generation less than the
Western standard of living and popular culture.
The latter especially fascinated them. Vladimir Bystrov “had dreams of going
there.” For Yelena Kolosova, “the West was above all literature, translations of all
my favorite writers. And a way of life.” Western culture and life appealed to
Lyubov Raitman, who remembered, “My sources of information about that life
were girl things.” She recalled the French fashion magazines her mother brought
back from Paris. “And I saw, for example, that women and children could look
different than those surrounding me.” Raitman likewise credited her teachers
with providing them with positive information about America, because “we had
incredibly limited possibilities for finding out.” To illustrate this point, she told
me about Mosaic, a journal published in English in Poland for those studying
the language. “You couldn’t possibly imagine how much we found out from this
very thin publication.” Difficult to get hold of, Mosaic printed the words to con-
temporary songs and stories about American and British schools. “In our youth,
at a time when we thought we knew it all, there was a saying that we liked to
repeat, half in jest, half seriously: ‘There is no abroad. It’s a myth about life after
death.’ But we nevertheless tried to find out about the abroad. We really wanted
to know what it was like there.” Vladimir Prudkin also credited his positive per-
spective to “the teachers who taught the subjects linked to language. They really
loved their subject and naturally native speakers of that language.” As a result,
“they created the impression that there exists a world in which there are no
problems, in which life is harmonious, even ideal, akin to heaven on earth.”
The Baby Boomers’ parents also profoundly shaped their children’s attitudes
toward the outside world. Born in remote villages in Saratov province, Viktor D.’s
parents would have starved to death as children during the famine of 1921–22 if
the American Relief Administration had not fed them. “Both my mother and
father remember this well. They lived in a desolate village and received food
from Americans who fed them twice a day and sometimes handed out clothing.”
Not surprisingly, “they often spoke about this. For that reason, I never had any
negative feelings,” detailed Viktor. He also pointed out that “back then they pro-
pagandized the meeting on the Elbe” between American and Soviet soldiers at
the end of World War II. At home he likewise heard a lot “about the first wave of
Russian migration to America and Canada [during the Revolution]. Many even
corresponded with them, despite all.”
Some interviewees recalled the impressions made on them when their par-
ents returned from trips abroad, often with things as well as impressions.
Marina Bakutina remembered “the artifacts that Mother brought back. They
were a type of window to the West, to a world that we could glance at thanks
to such things.” Sergei Zemskov also concluded that “to a significant extent,”
the idealization of the West “might have had to do with the fact that many
parents traveled abroad and this affected them.” As a teacher of English,
Tatyana Arzhanova’s mother came into contact with foreigners and even
dressed in an “English manner.” “She adored England, and America was also
not completely closed for her” because she worked from a very early age with
a woman of Lithuanian descent who grew up in America. Similarly, Valentin
Ulyakhin’s father worked with Americans in the 1930s and cherished the war-
time alliance. “He always spoke positively of America,” divulged Ulyakhin.
His father especially appreciated American Lend Lease, “and canned Spam.”
Tatyana Artyomova also recalled the atmosphere at home: “Perhaps we at that
time didn’t fully appreciate what was bad in the West. We saw more of the
good.” Yet Vyacheslav Starik’s parents, both trained as economists, a highly
ideological profession, had no interest in the West. Nor did Vyacheslav. “We
were such a self-sufficient state that we didn’t need anyone else. We have
natural resources, human resources, knowledge. What else did we need? Ever
the more so when you were propagating some sort of freedoms that were
incomprehensible to us.”
“ W H E N T H E Y S H O T K E N N E D Y, I T WA S A T R A G E D Y
FOR US ALL”
Despite the tough stance President John F. Kennedy took toward Khrushchev
and the USSR, the Soviet people, like the rest of the world, tended to find him
irresistible—especially after Lee Harvey Oswald shot him dead in November
1963. Viktor Alekseyev observed that “such a handsome figure as the American
president and the contrast with the Russian leaders for the most part evoked
strong sympathy, simply on what I would call a purely emotional level.” He also
called attention to Kennedy’s well-educated demeanor and the appeal of his
glamorous wife Jackie. “All of this created a very attractive image and, accord-
ingly, stimulated interest.” Yelena Kolosova concurred: “It was all so romantic.
Everyone talked about the fact that she had been a reporter and he a young con-
gressman, and all of this took place in the country of the native speakers of the
language we were studying. All of this took on emotional intensity for us, and
almost became something personal.”
In sum, the Soviet Union rediscovered America during the Khrushchev years,
and Kennedy benefited from the deep public interest in the West. Viktor
Alekseyev reminded me that, despite the strained official relationship between
the two superpowers, “at the ordinary level people sympathized with, or in any
case there was a great deal of interest in, America.” For this reason, Kennedy’s
assassination struck hard. Natalya Pronina related that “when he was assassi-
nated the entire country mourned as if he were one of our own. Evidently it was
his appearance. You can see for yourself that he looks Russian.” Leonid Terlitsky
remembered when his father woke him up to tell him that Kennedy had been
assassinated. Terlitsky wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, “for which my
father gave me hell.” “I remember the horror of the news report that November.
I was sick at home. And the repetitive shots shown on TV of him hunched over,
and then of Oswald and Ruby,” detailed Yelena Kolosova. Now living in America,
she moved from Ames, Iowa, to Houston, Texas. “Since the assassination, I’ve
had a fierce hatred of Texas. The first time I flew into Dallas, I couldn’t overcome
that ominous feeling that the tragedy had taken place there.”
Saratov’s Aleksandr Kutin saw Kennedy’s assassination as a calamity. “I can
say that. Everyone was afraid. How could that have happened? Who would
they replace him with? What might come of the agreement that already had
been reached between the governments following the Cuban crisis?” I was
struck to hear from Natalya Pronina the same rumors that reached me growing
up in Chicago, where I attended “the first” John. F. Kennedy High School: “I
even believed that one year they’d reveal the secrets behind his death. They
told us that we’d find out in twenty-five years. How I wanted to fast forward to
that moment, how I wanted to know who and why.” Natalya P. fell under the
influence of conspiracy theory. “It never entered the heads of the majority of
the population that the mass media could name as the assassin not the person
who killed him but, for political reasons, Oswald or someone else. Not because
they couldn’t find him, but because they had to substitute someone else
because of politics.” She was unaware that Marina Oswald grew up in Minsk,
a fact that raised Western suspicions of KGB involvement in Kennedy’s
assassination. Moscow’s Yelena Kolosova knew this. “Of course, that carried
with it some fear because, if the whole thing had been fabricated, then per-
haps there’d be some sort of revenge. It was all so strange and even then
seemed far-fetched.”
Natalya P. had a compelling explanation for the mystique of JFK. “For you,
the president is an ordinary person, with all sorts of family problems, someone
you can feel sorry for, someone you can relate to. He’s one of, and comprehen-
sible to, the people. People now understand, but not back then. The leader was
an idol to whom everyone prayed.” When Kennedy was assassinated “there was
a great deal of sympathy, of course, and indignation on account of this.”
“ W E W E R E T H E C Y N I C A L G E N E R AT I O N ”
The distinctive features of postwar Soviet history define the Baby Boomers’ gen-
eration, as do worldwide trends such as the birth of a youth culture, the global-
ization of Western popular culture, more leisure time, rising living standards,
expansion of education, and a growing consumer culture.32 Although formative
experiences create age cleavages between all generations, the turbulence of
Soviet history before 1953, followed by decades of peaceful, evolutionary change
afterward, left a distinctive mark. Growing up under Stalin, the Baby Boomers’
parents longed for improved living standards and stability. After 1953, the Soviet
system delivered, but not enough to satisfy the Cold War generation as adults,
who believed less and were promised more.33 In judging Stalin, Khrushchev, and
Brezhnev, both generations agree that the Khrushchev era was the best, but the
parents believe the Stalin era was the worst, while their children save that dis-
tinction for the Brezhnev years—when they came of age.34
The Baby Boomers expressed agreement in regard to how they differ from
their parents. Most of them emphasized combinations of five points. Their par-
ents’ generation: knew the fear of Stalinism; endured the hardships and trials of
World War II; had values worth emulating caused by suffering; was less free; and
was far less optimistic than their offspring. As Tatyana Arzhanova put it, “We
didn’t have to prove ourselves in some terrible ordeals, when you had to make
a moral choice. We were lucky. My mother was afraid of practically everything.”
Yet these difficulties, according to Vladimir Mikoyan, made his parents’ genera-
tion “more purposeful than ours.” And, as Tatyana Kuznetsova suggested, “more
pure, more good hearted, more open.” As a result, avowed Irina Garzanova, her
parents “put the good of the collective above their own personal interests.”
Saratov’s Vladimir Kirsanov emphasized, “My parents’ generation was Stalin’s
generation. They were so suppressed by this regime that they withdrew from
public life in all of its forms to live in their internal world.” In contrast, “my
generation was more interested in the outside world, and this evoked a negative
reaction from our parents.” “Our views,” he opined, “were probably freer.”
Aleksandr Konstantinov concurred that “we had less built-in fear. As compared
to 1937 [the height of Stalin’s Great Terror], which for them was drenched in
blood. We didn’t know real repression. And generally there also was great open-
ness.” Yevgeny Podolsky linked his parents’ “very secretive” nature to Stalinism.
His generation “perceived things very differently. We were more open. We
weren’t afraid because we personally didn’t experience the repressions. We didn’t
look over our shoulders.” Moscow’s Vladimir Prudkin stressed that, unlike his
parents’ generation, his “didn’t have to endure such obvious repression and fear.
In this regard our generation is luckier. Although it lived in very restricted con-
ditions, there wasn’t any heavy-duty intimidation.” Khrushchev’s denunciation
of Stalin also profoundly affected the parents’ generation, as Marina Bakutina
underscored. “I know that for many people of my parents’ generation this played
an enormous role in that they began to see things clearly and this forced them
to reexamine their values.”
The Great Patriotic War also molded the Baby Boomers’ parents. Saratov’s
Aleksandr Kutin recognized his parents’ generation “had a hard life,” because it
won the war and then rebuilt the country, which was “half destroyed. Thank
God that we didn’t have to endure it.” Olga Kolishchyuk felt similarly: “They
lived through that horrible war. Our parents suffered more hardships than we
did, more difficult times.” Olga Martynkina believed her parents’ generation
was “more ideological” because of the war. “My father was a Communist, a
commissar, who went through the war ‘For the Motherland! For Stalin!’ They
were brought up differently.” Moscow’s Leonid Volodarsky pointed out that
Soviet history provided few positive examples that could be used to bring up
future generations, but the Great Fatherland War was one of them. “People
didn’t fight for Stalin or for the motherland, but for themselves. Everyone under-
stood that Hitler wanted to destroy the entire country. It was a holy war.”
Many interviewees saw the privations of war as but one more hardship on
top of all the others their parents suffered from the start of Russia’s revolu-
tionary upheavals. For instance, Vladimir Bystrov’s father, born in 1914, “was
forced to leave home and become independent already at age fourteen.” Then
there were the harsh conditions of the Stalin revolution and forced industrial-
ization and collectivization. Tatyana Luchnikova depicted her parents’ genera-
tion as “that of the planned economy” that created all sorts of unplanned
shortages. Acknowledging that the difference with her generation was
“colossal,” she opined: “They were used to living according to the rules.”
Saratov’s Irina Vizgalova confirmed that the hard times her parents and grand-
parents lived through left an indelible mark. Distrustful, “they stocked supplies
of salt, matches, and other essentials, just in case.”
Baby Boomers from both cities depict themselves as luckier than their par-
ents. “First of all, we didn’t live through the horrible, horrible war. And, of
course, we’re more materially secure,” explained Moscow’s Anatoly Shapiro.
“Those were very poor times and, for the most part, the great mass of people
lived in poverty. Back then it was awful.” Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov main-
tained that his generation is luckier because “we got to experience real life. Many
of my friends’ and acquaintances’ parents died before they understood or saw
anything.” He clarified what he meant: “I now understand in what kind of world
I live, and it’s wonderful to experience freedom. Of course, there’s the Chinese
curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It’s quite appropriate, because we lived
through precisely this kind of period.” Trubnikov acknowledged that perestroika
created awful hardships for his classmates, some of whom “lost confidence in
tomorrow. But, as a matter of fact, even they understood that we’re now living
in the real world. This is probably the biggest difference between the genera-
tions. My father never understood what happened. He was old. He believed that
the democrats sold Russia, that Soviet power was better.”
Moscow’s Igor Litvin and many others stressed that “our generation is more
freedom loving. Second, we’re far more pragmatic.” Yelena Zharovova affirmed
that their generation was “more pragmatic, less naïve, perhaps in an everyday
sense in terms of belief in propaganda.” Lyubov Kovalyova saw her generation
as “better educated, freer, with broader views,” and “less inhibited.” Saratov’s
Aleksandr Babushkin insisted his generation “was, of course, emancipated.”
That said, he conceded that “nonetheless, our roots were planted by our par-
ents.” What struck Irina Tsurkan most was her parents’ extreme caution. “Don’t
blab about that which you shouldn’t blab about, don’t say anything that can be
misconstrued.” “Our generation was freer,” said Galina Poldyaeva. “And we had
far more possibilities.”
Saratov’s Arkady Darchenko spoke for others in saying, “Most likely, our gen-
eration didn’t differ all that much from that of our parents. But after us came a
new generation that is completely different.” For Olga Gorelik, it was also a
matter of degrees: “Perhaps we were just a little bit freer, but you can’t say that
this was a huge thing. I believe that, to a certain degree, I’m a repeat of my par-
ents.” Natalya Yanichkina told me that “we’re probably less inhibited or
something, but at the same time we’re products of our parents’ upbringing. They
had so many restrictions and for many years we were brought up on them too
and have a certain internal self-restraint. Nevertheless, we’re freer, but less so than
our children.” Natalya P. felt certain that her parents’ generation passed on their
ideals to the Baby Boomers: “I therefore think that there aren’t any fundamental
differences, although we’re more democratic, we’re freer, we’re less inhibited. We
grew up in different circumstances. Nonetheless, ideology was something that we
had to deal with when we were in school?” “As a matter of fact,” opined Moscow’s
Vyacheslav Starik, “our generation differed little. It’s really hard for me, for
example, to learn how to work for money.” Vladimir Glebkin also believed that
fear “is in me, because the Party system in the Soviet Union, although it began to
get weaker and weaker, nonetheless continued to function.”
Still, the Khrushchevian Thaw left a more permanent mark on the Baby
Boomers than on their parents. “We nevertheless were shaped by the Thaw. We
were more curious. We were more interested in that which was brand new,”
explained Saratov’s Irina Chemodurova. Natalya Pronina concurred that “the
Thaw exerted a powerful influence.” Moscow’s Yelena Kolosova represented her
generation as “more self-assured, more open to interaction with each other and
with other people.” This was not accidental, owing to the Thaw and the greater
flow of information. In short, “there were considerable ties with the West and
we somehow felt ourselves part of the world. It’s very important that we grew up
feeling ourselves part of the world. We grew up with the sense that the culture of
each nation is valuable.”
Americans the same age of the 1967 graduates belong to the “1960s genera-
tion,” but, as Lyubov Raitman explained, the Soviet 1960s generation was “the
generation of our older siblings. It’s the generation associated with the popular
debate between physicists and poets. It’s the generation” of the poet bards. “We
caught the tail end of it.” Leonid Terlitsky remarked that “we did not have a
term attached to us. I think we were the first young generation growing up after
the Soviet system showed the first signs of instability. In my mind, the real
crash of the Soviet system happened largely because information began to
come in. And with the introduction of the tape recorder to this country people
had the technology to distribute information outside of official channels.”
They adapted it to create their own hybrid cultural forms that were both new,
and all too familiar. What was distinctive about them defined the Cold War
generation. Terlitsky came up with a label for it: the cynical one. “We were the
cynical generation because we knew. We had the opportunity to learn that,
what were being sold as universal truths, were nothing like it.” Valentin
Ulyakhin reminded me that the Soviet leadership saw his generation as a van-
guard one that would build communism. Ironically, he concluded, “The tragedy
of our generation is that we spent perhaps the best years of our youth going
along that awful path to nowhere.”
“ O U R G E N E R AT I O N T U R N E D O U T T O B E M O R E O P E N ”
The Baby Boomers remembered having happy childhoods not only because
Soviet propaganda had it this way but also because their parents constructed
a childhood for them reflecting the stability that came to the USSR in the
aftermath of Stalin’s death. This generation experienced no revolution, no
terror, no World War II, no major social cataclysms, but evolutionary social
change that proved to be revolutionary in its own way. Further, the state pre-
pared them to be the first Soviet generation that would live under commu-
nism. Catching up with and overtaking America was not just about aggregate
production statistics, since the Soviet Union, the propaganda organs screamed,
had already forged ahead of the capitalist world in what really mattered: the
system itself.
The circumstances in Russia and beyond when I interviewed the Baby
Boomers early in the new millennium also shaped memories of their childhood.
Except for truly traumatic moments, we remember positive things more readily
than negative ones. When we factor in the weight of youthful confidence, and
growing up in what may well have been the most optimistic period of Soviet
history, it is easy to understand why the Baby Boomers today harbor positive
memories about their carefree childhood years. Many of them recalled their
childhood with nostalgia—although they do not think of it as such, but, rather,
as the truth—in part because I interviewed them when nostalgia had seized hold
of their country in the aftermath of a decade and more of political turmoil and
economic uncertainty following the broken promises of the transition from
communism to capitalism. As émigré Slavic studies scholar Svetlana Boym
observed, this nostalgia does not represent a yearning for a return to a Soviet
past, but for “the unrealized dreams of the past and visions of the future that
became obsolete.” We need to keep in mind that Soviet propaganda promised
the interviewees that theirs will be the best, the most just, and the happiest
society on earth. The dashed hopes and frustrations of the transition period fol-
lowing the collapse of the Soviet system made people long for an imagined past
characterized by stability and normalcy, for the time of their untroubled school
days.35 A shattered and maligned ideal does not necessarily lose its appeal for
proving to be wrong.36
On another level, the Baby Boomers’ childhood was qualitatively different.

The Thaw promoted a Soviet mass culture characterized by the poet bards and
guitar poetry, stylish clothing, Sputnik, Soviet Olympic victories, world chess
championships, and revolution in Cuba, to say nothing of the recurrent crises in
the West and in its relations with the former colonial world. Their childhood
was likewise characterized by the arrival of chewing gum, ballpoint pens, Fellini
flicks, Hemingway and Salinger novels, Beatles music, the Twist, Marilyn
Monroe, and The Magnificent Seven. This incipient globalization of youth culture
took the edge off Cold War anxieties, too. So did the Soviet campaign for
peaceful coexistence that made peace essential in order to achieve—and to
enjoy—communism.
Saratov’s Natalya P. maintained that “they managed to bring us up, the
majority of us, with a strange sense of duty and sense of responsibility. I feel this
even now.” Soviet schools might also have met with some success in instilling
values of collective upbringing, but the government found no foolproof way of
fostering political orthodoxy while accommodating youth culture. The growth
of education, access to foreign radio broadcasts, improved living standards, and
focus on individualism all led to an erosion of ideology,37 creating what Leonid
Terlitsky called the cynical generation. Boris Shtein believed that, as a result, his
generation not only lacked their parents’ fear “but were far more critical. Thereby,
it seems to me, our generation turned out to be more open to democratic
changes.” Shtein placed great importance on this: “I think that our generation
was prepared for and destined for that which began in Gorbachev’s time.” For
this reason, it is hard not agree with Moscow’s Sergei Zemskov, who sees his
generation as “unconscious agents of change.”
4 THE BABY BOOMERS
COME OF AGE
The Baby Boomers came of age at the zenith of Soviet socialism, only to see
the system crumble some three decades later. Ironically, much of this had to
do with the Soviet system’s very success at effecting social change, whose
byproducts included rapid urbanization and a rise in the number of edu-
cated professionals.1 On the eve of World War II, the younger generation in
the USSR had voiced the greatest enthusiasm for their country. But by 1980,
when the Baby Boomers were thirty years old, things were the other way
around. The higher the educational level achieved by the younger genera-
tion, moreover, the weaker their backing was for the regime, with the
exception that support for the system increased with income level.2 Indeed,
in the decades following Stalin’s death people turned their attention away
from state priorities to private concerns such as family and friends. The pur-
suit of new aspirations created a Soviet mass culture shaped by education,
the media, and increasing contact with the outside world, which in time
bred apathy and cynicism. As a result, not long after the confidence inspired
by Sputnik, the Soviet government began to lose its grip over all segments of
the population. The shifting attitudes did not necessarily result in a ques-
tioning of the core values of the Soviet model,3 yet some Western observers
noticed a certain malaise at the time. Sociologist Alex Inkeles, for instance,
claimed that by the time it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1967, the
Soviet state had lost its vitality and imagination.4
But how did those coming of age during the Soviet 1970s, a crucial decade
in the prehistory of M. S. Gorbachev’s later efforts to revitalize Soviet
socialism, remember this period? A survey conducted by Soviet sociologists
in 1966 showed that Soviet youth wanted to land a satisfying job, earn a uni-
versity degree, travel abroad, live well, obtain decent housing, improve their
job qualifications, enjoy close friends, raise their children to be decent peo-
ple, find true love, have a family, and buy a car.5 How attainable was this
Soviet dream?
BABY BOOMERS COME OF AGE | 169
“ P E R H A P S W H AT E V E R G O D D O E S I S F O R T H E B E S T ”
Mirroring a global trend, in the twenty-five years following Stalin’s death in 1953
the number of students enrolled in Soviet institutions of higher education
soared from 1.5 million to more than 5 million.6 Soviet propaganda plugged the
remarkable progress the USSR had made in educating its people since
1917—especially its women. When the Baby Boomers applied to college, women
represented 44.4 percent of university students in the USSR, compared with 39.1
percent in the United States.7 The Soviet Union also ranked first in the world in
the percentage of women studying technological subjects (30.8 percent).8 When
the Baby Boomers graduated from school in 1967, only about 25 percent of those
finishing nationwide continued their education, but virtually everyone from
School No. 20 and School No. 42 did. Despite expanding opportunities, compe-
tition to get into the top colleges remained keen, but varied by discipline.9 Soviet
students applied to be admitted to specific departments, as a result of which
they underwent enormous pressure to decide what professions they wanted to
enter and to prepare for them already at school. The enthusiasm for math and
physics began to subside as competition in the humanities at the top univer-
sities took on new intensity.10
The USSR lacked institutions comparable to American liberal arts colleges or
community colleges, but supported a system of universities, polytechnic schools,
and institutions with specialized profiles roughly matching what one would
expect to find in professional schools at American universities—law, medicine,
education, economics (business), and so forth. Thus those who attended med-
ical school or law school in the Soviet Union did so as undergraduates. Those
completing an institution of higher education received a diploma after five years
of study.* Getting admitted to universities in the Soviet Union also differed
from the American experience in that applicants applied to only one university
during the summer following their graduation from high school. Their
acceptance was based on how well they performed in school, on character rec-
ommendations (this is where belonging to the Komsomol took on meaning),
and on the results of three entrance exams.
All applicants took a written and oral exam in Russian, and two other exams
depending upon the subject area they wished to study. Gold and silver medalists
received exemptions from some of the exams, depending upon their field of
study. As in all other areas of Soviet life, blat (connections) could prove decisive
in admissions. So could unofficial quotas for Jews and other minorities. The
intelligentsia routinely hired tutors to prepare their offspring for the college
* Diplomas offered by pedagogical institutes required four years of study, but this was later
increased to five years, too.
entrance exams.11 This form of private economic activity increased one’s chances
of getting admitted, especially when those providing the service sat on the
admissions committee. If the applicant failed to receive a high enough score on
the admissions exam, he or she could attempt to get into another institution
that held exams later in the summer or try out for the night school of his or her
institution of choice. (Excelling in the evening division while holding down a
job could serve as a springboard for getting admitted to the day division the next
year.) Students could reapply to their chosen institution the following year or to
a different one.
Soviet students attended institutions of higher education locally, except for a
small percentage of super achievers or minority applicants from the provinces
admitted to elite universities in Moscow, Leningrad, and a handful of other cit-
ies. To illustrate, all of the graduates of School No. 20 went to college in Moscow.
All of the graduates of School No. 42 enrolled in Saratov colleges, except for gold
medalist Aleksandr Konstantinov, who attended Moscow University. Although
they viewed their graduation from school in 1967 as the end of their childhood,
they continued living at home and they commuted to college, as dormitories
housed only out-of-town students.
The Baby Boomers’ stunning rate of college admission had much to do with
the elite nature of the schools they attended, as well as with the value their par-
ents placed on education. A great deal was at stake, particularly for males,
because “you either went to college or into the military,” as Leonid Terlitsky put
it. According to Saratov’s Irina Barysheva, “parents played a much more impor-
tant role in their children’s lives than now.” Igor Litvin’s father expected him to
study economics and become a store manager—a lucrative position in the brib-
ery-ridden, goods-short Soviet economy. “When I suddenly decided that I
wanted to enroll at a language institute, he was simply stunned,” said Litvin.
The graduates of Moscow’s School No. 20 enrolled in the city’s top institutions:
Moscow University, the Moscow Institute of International Relations (MGIMO)—
“certainly a good third of the class,” according to Leonid Terlitsky—the Institute
of Foreign Languages (IFL), the Pedagogical Institute, the Aviation Institute, the
Energy Institute, the Institute of Economics, the Medical Institute, and others. The
pressure at elite schools to get into top universities was felt not only by pupils and
parents, but by teachers and principals, too, since how well a school’s graduates
fared in the admissions process determined the school’s prestige.
Some teachers took proactive roles in helping their students. Anna Lyovina’s
homeroom teacher, for instance, dropped in on Lyovina’s parents one day to tell
them: “‘Anna gets very nervous and is facing burn out. She should not be allowed
to take admissions exams. If she does, she won’t get into a single college.’”
Heeding the advice, Anna’s parents managed to obtain a certificate at the local
health clinic exempting her from admissions exams. “My homeroom teacher
saved me. I really would not have gotten in anywhere otherwise. She felt that,”
admitted Lyovina, who enrolled at the Institute of Foreign Languages. Boris

Shtein remembered, “Somehow I got on bad terms with my homeroom teacher
and, as a result, received a very poor character reference from her with which it
would have been impossible to get admitted to college.” Others were in the
same boat as Shtein. “Anton Petrovich [the principal] and Nina Ivanovna sent
the teacher abroad and, after this, we received normal character references,”
related a grateful Shtein.
Determined to study at the Physics Institute, Vladimir Glebkin encountered
difficulties of a different sort. The year he completed school, he and Sergei
Zemskov traveled with Glebkin’s father to a ski resort in the Caucasus. Descending
a mountain in poor visibility, Vladimir collided with a boulder dusted in snow,
and this sent him sailing into a precipice. He would have perished if Sergei had
not been with him, since Vladimir lost consciousness when his ski pole hit him
in the eye. Realizing that Vladimir would not be able to make it through tough
exams, his father convinced him to apply to the Patrice Lumumba People’s
Friendship University, where many Third World students studied. (Vladimir got
admitted and teaches there today.)
The Baby Boomers spoke of the anxiety they felt preparing for college
admissions. For gold medalist Yelena Kolosova this had much to do with the
need to select a major beforehand. Yelena wanted to study art history at
Moscow University, but her parents persuaded her that she would have to toe
the Party line if she did. She also considered her other passion, biology, but a
last-minute change in the admissions exam made her lose confidence in her
ability to prepare for it, so she enrolled in the Chemistry Department instead.
Valentin Ulyakhin became anxious for another reason. Although he per-
formed well on his admissions exams at MGIMO, which trained diplomats,
he recalled, “They didn’t want to admit me, because I was very fat. I weighed
246 pounds.” He got in, however, and graduated with honors in 1972.
Official records show that fifty-four of the fifty-six 1967 graduates of School
No. 42 enrolled in college: eighteen at the Saratov Pedagogical Institute; thir-
teen at Saratov University; ten at the Medical Institute; nine at the Polytechnic
Institute; one at Moscow University; and one each at Saratov’s Institute of
the Mechanization of Agriculture, Law Institute, and Economics Institute.
The near universal college acceptance rate of the graduates of Saratov’s
School No. 42 belies an important consideration. As Natalya Yanichkina
explained, “Some got in through patronage, some without, some because
they knew a lot, some because they had money.” Silver medalist Arkady
Darchenko knew a lot, winning a slot in nuclear physics at Saratov University,
as did Vladimir Nemchenko, who acknowledged a certain pecking order
among colleges. “I’m not sure how to explain it, but those who went to the
university would probably have a lot more in common with you than those
who finished the Polytechnic Institute.” The majority of females enrolled at
the Saratov Pedagogical Institute to study English, the only institution in

Saratov at the time that had such a program. Viktor D. got accepted at the
Medical Institute “without bribes, without money, without anything,” he
maintained. “I submitted my documents, studied, passed the exams, and
graduated.”
It was difficult, but not impossible, to switch colleges. Galina Poldyaeva’s
aunt insisted she enroll at the Medical Institute. Yet her heart was not in it.
Galina did well her first semester, “but by summer she began to perform abom-
inably and gave up everything,” lamented her friend Irina Kulikova. Poldyaeva
then got into the language program at the Pedagogical Institute—but aban-
doned that to return to the Medical Institute to be with her fiancé: “My husband
completed the med institute’s army physician program, got his orders, and we
left with a group of soldiers to East Germany.” After five years there, the
government stationed them in the Zabaikal region, “and as a result I remained
without a higher education,” which she much regretted.
Those who did not get admitted to their top choice college resorted to a
variety of strategies to enroll elsewhere. Until her last year at school, Moscow’s
Tatyana Arzhanova planned to enroll at the Institute of Foreign Languages
(IFL), but she became interested in medicine and prepared with a tutor to take
exams in chemistry and physics. After receiving Bs, she decided to enroll at the
IFL the next year. However, when a neighbor reminded her how expensive it
was for her single mother to pay for tutors, Arzhanova tried out for, and got
admitted to, the Food Institute, “a small and not very prestigious institute,”
where she became a straight-A student. With a transcript peppered with Bs and
Cs, Tatyana Luchnikova was turned down by the IFL. She then considered
MGIMO, but the admissions committee told her, “‘don’t waste your time.’”
After getting rejected at the Institute of Cinematography (IC), she worked as a
secretary, enrolled in correspondence courses at IC, and eventually transferred
in as a regular student. Sofiya Vinogradova dreamed of becoming a doctor but
feared that she would not get admitted to medical school, so she enrolled at
the Institute of Chemical Technology. “Today I never would have gone into
chemical technology,” she insisted. She spent six “bad” years there, but landed
a job upon graduation as a lab assistant for a “marvelously progressive com-
rade.” While working there, she enrolled as a sophomore at the Medical
Institute’s night school and after a year switched to the day division, gradu-
ating in 1982.
Saratov’s Natalya Yanichkina found a job as a draftsman’s apprentice at
the design institute where her mother worked after getting turned down by
the Polytechnic Institute. She got admitted to the evening division the next
year. One point short of getting admitted to the Polytechnic Institute, Pyotor
Krasilnikov attended its evening division, too. This was hard on Krasilnikov:
“All of my friends at school got admitted somewhere. I thought I knew
everything, but I was punished for my conceit.” Reflecting upon the matter,
he concluded, “Perhaps whatever God does is for the best. I found work that
I liked.”
“ I D I D N ’ T G E T I N B E C AU S E I ’ M A J E W ”
A number of Muscovites believed anti-Semitism prevented them from getting
admitted to their college of choice. Yevgeniya Ruditskaya bluntly told me “they
didn’t like to take Jews at the institutes.” She spared me the details of her own
experience of getting admitted to the Pedagogical Institute, but Igor Litvin did
not. He dreamed of going to the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL); however,
“for the first time in my life I really felt that I wasn’t welcome everywhere,” he
shared, owing to the “fifth point,” that is, the fifth question on applications,
regarding nationality. It began at school, where he had trouble getting a character
reference. Several days after turning in his documents at the IFL, he received an
anonymous call. “The person told me that all of the applications were divided
into two piles. In one were those who would be admitted or who would be
admitted on the basis of their knowledge, and in the second one those who
would definitely not be admitted. You’re in the second pile, so come fetch your
documents. This is your friend speaking.” A terribly discouraged Litvin suspected
that classmate Leonid Volodarsky’s Jewish father, who taught at IFL, had tipped
Litvin off, but Volodarsky denied it. Desperate, Litvin turned to one of his
English teachers, Gennady Petrovich, who said that “if I were in your shoes, I’d
retrieve my application and try elsewhere.” Another sympathetic teacher urged
Igor to apply to the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Despite receiving top grades
on all four exams, Litvin later learned that some members of the admissions
committee did not want to admit him because he was Jewish.
Vladimir Sidelnikov, a Russian who got admitted to MGIMO, which had
become an institute where the Party elite sent their offspring, confirmed that
anti-Semitism entered into the college admissions equation: “They didn’t admit
Jews. I attended school with many Jews, but it was the rare exception among
them that got in,” he stated. Anatoly Shapiro affirmed, “I didn’t get in because
I’m a Jew,” reminding me that this took place shortly after Israel’s stunning suc-
cess in the Six Day War. What especially irked him was that, during the exams,
he was waiting with his classmate Vladimir Mikoyan when the institute’s rector
passed by. Patting Vladimir on the head, the rector asked about his grandfather’s
health and assured him that “you’ll get excellent marks” on the exams. “This
took place right in front of me. But that’s how things were back then,” grumbled
Shapiro. A month later he was accepted at the Moscow Finance Institute, “a very
ordinary place. I studied there for five years and can’t say anything good or bad
about the place, only that those five years flew by,” he related.
Vyacheslav Starik first suffered anti-Semitism when he tried to enroll in the
Physics Department at Moscow University. During the physics exam he was
asked a question that fell outside the parameters of the school program. “I had
a surname that he didn’t like,” explained Starik, who had enough time to seek
admission elsewhere. Trying the Moscow Aviation Institute where his parents
taught, he got in without a problem owing to an antidote for anti-Semitism:
“Well, perhaps my father’s name played a role to a certain degree because he
taught economics there.”
Lyubov Raitman also encountered difficulties, but some were of her own
making. She acknowledged, “I would have studied harder and more seriously.”
She tried out for the program in applied linguistics at Moscow University. “It
was always hard for Jews to get in there,” she explained. But officially she got
rejected because of the D she received on the exam in mathematics. Lyubov still
had time to apply to MGIMO. “I got a C on the history exam and had the feeling
that my surname, my appearance, and my nationality were far more the cause
than my insufficient knowledge of history. You feel this the way a teacher looks
at you and asks you a question that falls outside the confines of the school
program, and then bombards you with such questions.” For a male this would
have been a tragedy, because the prospect of serving in the army hung over
them. “But for me it was simply a huge blow to my ego,” admitted Raitman.
“Everyone else enrolled somewhere except me.” She then decided to apply to
the IFL, not only because she was well prepared but also because the father of
one of her classmates taught there. A friend of her parents, he promised to help
her during the exams “because it was hard for Jews to enroll there as well. They
got in with great difficulty thanks to their abilities and connections. Back then it
wasn’t a matter of direct bribes, although there was perhaps some of that, too.”
She fine-tuned her remark: “It was money that parents spent on private lessons
with the very teachers who would then help out during the admissions exams.
They helped by giving you the necessary grade.” She also experienced a form of
gender discrimination at the IFL: “For some reason that’s unclear to me even
today, they didn’t accept young women into the translation department,” griped
Raitman. “I enrolled in the teacher training department and studied for five
years with a group of nine women.”
Since the age of fourteen, Leonid Terlitsky had prepared to enroll in the
Moscow Institute of Architecture by working with tutors and attending evening
classes at the institute for prospective students, but first he had to sit things out
for a year. “I was flunked intentionally, because in 1967 there was the Six Day
War, as a result of which the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with
Israel. Nineteen sixty-seven saw a wave of official anti-Semitism, and I think that
was the only reason why I was not accepted.” Terlitsky acquitted himself well on
all of the exams except for drafting. He faced military service, “but the Almighty
was watching over me. He got me into a car accident that I survived and, as a
result of it, I pretty much faked being sick and not fit for service, and I got a
second chance at school.” He elaborated, “On the second try, my parents didn’t
take any chances. They bribed one of the school officials, and I was enrolled in
the Moscow Institute of Architecture.”
Because everyday anti-Semitism was more pronounced in Saratov, local Baby

Boomers of Jewish descent were discrete about acknowledging their nationality
when a surname or patronymic did not make it obvious. Ironically, none of
them mentioned running up against discrimination in seeking college admission,
unlike their counterparts in otherwise more liberal Moscow. Yet silver medalist
Nikolai Kirsanov felt that attitudes toward nationality constrained his choice of
college. Half Volga German, his surname is Russian, and Russian was the nation-
ality stamped on his passport. When Kirsanov decided to try out for Moscow’s
Institute of International Relations, he remembered, “My relatives said to me,
‘You don’t need to do that, because you won’t get in for certain reasons.’” Heeding
their advice, Kirsanov enrolled at the Saratov Medical Institute. Kirsanov cannot
claim that he was denied admission to MGIMO owing to the fact that he was
Volga German, but this ambiguity was what made discrimination so effective.
“ T H E Y T R I E D T O B R A I N WA S H U S AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y ”
The magnet schools prepared the Baby Boomers so well academically that those
in both institutions who majored in English found that the preparation they
had received at the special schools placed them far ahead of other students.
Those who enrolled at Saratov’s Pedagogical Institute—all female—became “A”
students. Similarly, Igor Litvin recounted that, up until his junior year at the
Moscow Pedagogical Institute, “I didn’t have to do a thing.” Frustrated, he turned
to his instructors, but they discouraged him from trying. “They cranked out
teachers, and heaven forbid you’d want to become a translator. They didn’t want
to teach us. They had their goal: to turn out ordinary teachers for secondary
schools.”
But the elite schools did not prepare the interviewees for the oppressive polit-
icization of college-level instruction that Anna Lyovina called “awful.” Going
against the current, she switched from the daytime to the evening division of
Moscow’s IFL. “I did so after my freshman year. I thought I’d go out of my mind,
because of the History of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union],
History of the CPSU, and History of the CPSU. It was torture. I couldn’t stand it.
Then there was Military Science. There was far less of it in the evening division,”
she said. Yet even there, “they constantly tried to indoctrinate us, ‘You are trans-
lators on the ideological front. You will interact with foreigners and you have to be
careful, you have to be grounded.’” An old Bolshevik who taught Party history
regaled her charges about how she carried out collectivization. As a child, however,
Lyovina had been exposed to a counternarrative: “My dear nanny would tell me
that all of her relatives from Tambov province, hard-working peasants who fed
Russia, were exiled to Siberia. I couldn’t happily reply, Hoorah! Collectivization!”
rationalized Anna.
Lyovina did not exaggerate the extent of the politicization, since the Central
Committee had determined that the risk groups most receptive to alien ideologies
were the artistic intelligentsia and students.12 As a result, the Soviet government
increased the number of required courses university students took on political
indoctrination. For the Baby Boomers this meant mind-numbing classes in
political economy, dialectical and historical materialism, the History of the CPSU,
and the fundamentals of scientific communism.13 Even Vladimir Sidelnikov, a
true believer at the time, felt the heavy-handed politicization of the academy.
“Why did I need these subjects?” he remembered asking himself. Ideology partic-
ularly constrained study of the humanities and social sciences. Tatyana Luchnikova,
who attended Moscow’s Institute of Cinematography, wrote her senior thesis on
social confrontation in American cinematography, “because we could write only
about confrontation. We couldn’t write about the real American Hollywood.”
Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov came to realize that “they tried to brainwash us at
the university, even more so than at school, but by then our contacts were differ-
ent, and I already began to understand what a ‘wonderful’ country we lived in.”
Complementing the growing politicization of university instruction, the
Soviet government stepped up its repression of dissident activities following the
1966 show trial of literary critic Andrei Sinyavsky and short story writer Yuli
Daniel. By raising fear of a return to Stalinism, the trial helped to galvanize the
dissident movement. “We knew that the KGB existed,” remarked Saratov’s
Aleksandr Konstantinov. “This didn’t concern us at all at school. However,
This picture of Vladimir Sidelnikov (left?), taken when he studied at MGIMO and
worked as a translator at the country’s premier Pioneer Camp, Artek, suggests the
influence of a larger youth culture on Soviet young people. It is unclear why the young
man wrote in English “Tuva”—a desolate region in southern Siberia annexed by the
USSR after World War II—on his jeans, but it was a daring thing to do at the time.
Courtesy of Lyudmila Sidelnikova
during the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, we were older then, their existence began to
interest me.” Moscow’s Lyubov Raitman remembered discussing the trial at
school, because a short article on the court case appeared in Daily Worker, one
of the two Communist English-language newspapers they read, and in Moscow
News. According to Raitman, “we knew that this was unfair. We understood that
this was a forbidden topic. They arrested writers.” Leonid Terlitsky concurred
that they talked about such topics at school, “but not in the way you might
think. I mean, we were not actively seeking to join the dissident movement. For
a variety of reasons all of us thought at the time that we all had to build a life
here. We perceived ourselves in a cage. I certainly did.” He added, “No one could
imagine anything else. Maybe you’d get a job. Maybe you’d get an education
with a job that would allow you to travel abroad, and that was certainly a goal
of many in the magnet school because so many from our class enrolled at the
Moscow Institute of International Affairs.”
The KGB closely monitored university life, in 1971 arresting a group of stu-
dents in the History Department at Saratov University and sentencing them to
years at hard labor for setting up an independent Marxist reading group. Named
after the group’s leader, Aleksandr Romanov, the “Romanov affair” became a
cause célèbre in the history of the university. Aleksandr Kutin, who read samizdat
literature, acknowledged that, after the arrest of Romanov and his comrades,
“we realized that they could punish us, too.” Yevgeny Podolsky remembered the
trial held in Saratov: “Even one student from our year suffered as a result of this.
Although he didn’t have anything to do with that group, one of his friends did,
and he, for some reason, showed up at his friend’s apartment where they had all
gathered, after which the KGB naturally began to trail him too. Then they
arrested him.” They eventually released the student, but “they ruined his career.
He was a straight-A student, but he had a really hard time finding work,” reported
Podolsky. The authorities imprisoned the others. As Podolsky concluded, “This
disturbed the entire student body. When the trial took place everyone was really
upset because we knew these people.” University students reacted variously, to
be sure, but he remembered that “they respected them for their courage, because
we didn’t believe they had committed any crime.” Vladimir Nemchenko com-
mented that “we all exchanged whispered secrets” about the Romanov affair. He
also shared that a student in his own department got involved in some sort of
“anti-Soviet” activity. “After they worked him over, he became reserved and
unassuming.” The Romanov affair reverberated throughout Saratov. Olga
Martynkina, who studied at the conservatory, recalled: “Their fates were broken,
and it’s unclear why. They simply read some primary sources.” Gennady Ivanov
mentioned, “There was a dissident group at the [Law] Institute among the older
students and they were locked up for two years. They raised questions that were
unacceptable, although common sense would dictate that they had the right to
ask them. Back then this was considered an anti-Soviet group.” Thus, the
Saratovites sympathized with the students victimized by the KGB, yet outwardly
toed the Party line, suggesting how self-censorship instinctively became part of
the Soviet socialization process.
Soviet leaders pinned the blame for the student disaffection on the qualifica-
tions of those who taught the required courses on Marxism, not on the subject
matter itself. On July 24, 1974, Pravda published a Central Committee resolution
“on raising the ideological-theoretical level of the teaching of the social sci-
ences” at the Bauman Technical School in Moscow and Saratov State University.
Knocking the rigid and irrelevant nature of the courses, the resolution observed
that “more than half of the teachers in the departments of political economy
and philosophy of Saratov University do not have a basic higher education in
these specialties.”14 As everyone knew, these fields did not attract top students,
but Party careerists instead.
“WE WERE BEWILDERED”

Stalin’s death in 1953 and Khrushchev’s denunciation of him in 1956 represented
landmark events for the Baby Boomers’ parents; 1968 became a landmark event
for their offspring. On August 21, Soviet and Warsaw-pact tanks rolled into
Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring associated with Alexander Dubček.
He and his associates had tried to do what members of the Soviet 1960s genera-
tion and intellectual community had expected from Khrushchev and still advo-
cated. They wanted the government to open society further, to modernize its
ideology, to decentralize the economy, and to offer more material incentives.15
The Kremlin lied to its people that the Party and leaders of the Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic had appealed to the USSR and its allies to provide urgent
help. Justifying the invasion, the Brezhnev Doctrine declared that the USSR had
the right to intervene in any bloc country threatened by imperialist forces, but
the graffiti and placards Soviet forces encountered in Prague told a different
story: “The Russian circus is in town. Don’t feed the animals.” “Proletariat of the
world unite—or else we’ll kill you.” “The more tanks you have, the fewer the
brains.”
The invasion of Czechoslovakia may have united the intelligentsia in Prague,
but it divided them in Moscow and Saratov.16 With few alternative sources of
information available other than the official media, most Soviet citizens sup-
ported the Kremlin’s decision to overrun Prague. “Only later, when I was in
Moscow, I learned about the demonstration on Red Square.* Back then we
didn’t know a thing,” quipped Irina Chemodurova. Aleksandr Kutin concurred
that the invasion “was little discussed, because we got practically no information
from there.” Arkady Darchenko remembered that “opinions differed sharply.
There was one false report released by the mass media that, if we didn’t invade
* On August 25, 1968, seven demonstrators protested the Soviet invasion, five of whom were
later sentenced to labor camps or to internal exile.
Czechoslovakia, the German hordes would once again be at our border. Many
believed this.” But the other half “said that this was nothing but a lie, another
attempt at forcing them to accept socialism.” Darchenko’s uncle, who belonged
to the invading forces, got burned in his tank when it was torched. “He always
maintained that the invasion was necessary, but a soldier is a soldier. He couldn’t
see things otherwise, yet I told him that he had no business being there.” Because
of the invasion, however, “we began to understand that we lacked information,”
maintained Mikhail Markovich. This is why most interviewees date their serious
listening to foreign radio broadcasts to 1968.
As Saratov’s Vladimir Kirsanov emphasized, back then “we understood all of
this differently.” Aleksandr Virich underscored that the invasion took place in
the summer. Like many, he had joined a student work brigade and had other
things on his mind. “To be honest, we backed the invasion.” Aleksandr Trubnikov
believed that “what we did was right. I was convinced that you had to nip it all
in the bud.” Olga Kamayurova regretted that “I heard only official information
and saw the invasion as the correct course of action for our country. There were
no conversations at home on such topics in my presence. My parents were
Communists who truly believed.” Moscow’s Vladimir Bystrov confessed, “We
took pride in our army and in our country. I have upbraided myself ever since,
but my views back then were inevitable, because we grew up this way.” Andrei
Rogatnev voted to expel from the Aviation Institute a classmate who had taken
part in an “anti-Soviet” demonstration. Bakhyt Kenzheyev—who soon came to
sympathize with Soviet dissidents—admitted that “back then I still believed in
communism, and I justified the invasion to myself. If it weren’t for the invasion,
the Germans would have come.” His case suggests how subversive an eventual
loss of faith in the system could be.
There were enclaves of liberal thinking, however, among Moscow’s student
population. Yevgeniya Ruditskaya claimed she “understood what had happened
in Czechoslovakia.” Boris Shtein replied, “In our milieu it was severely con-
demned.” Those who studied at Moscow University tended to oppose the inva-
sion. According to Tatyana Artyomova, “no one supported it. They said, what a
disgrace, what an idiot Brezhnev is.” Viktor Alekseyev confirmed that “I don’t
recall anyone who was pleased with it or who even sympathized with it.” In fact,
all of Alekseyev’s school friends “were very critically disposed.” Aleksandr
Konstantinov affirmed, “All of my friends were outraged” by the news.
Those in both cities troubled by the crude show of force acknowledged that
their critical reaction remained passive, owing to indifference or fear. Involved
in his first romances, Moscow’s Viktor Alekseyev observed that they and his
professional interests remained far more important to him. Recalling that he
had been on vacation when the invasion was launched, Vladimir Prudkin con-
fided that “I was more wrapped up in my personal life, and I wasn’t politicized.”
Georgy Godzhello commented that “there were no major protests, but everyone
understood that it wasn’t a good thing.” Natalya Yolshina remembered that
there were conversations on the topic at Saratov University and that “they did
not support the invasion,” but “there were no strikes with placards, and we
didn’t march anywhere.” Leonid Volodarsky maintained that “at the Institute [of
Foreign Languages] I reacted like everyone else did, of course, but at home I was
against the invasion.” Aleksandr Konstantinov explained why young people felt
the need to be restrained. “My cousin Sergei attended a meeting at his institute
at which a resolution was carried to the effect that they supported the invasion
of Czechoslovakia. ‘Does everyone agree? Okay, I see everyone agrees.’ But Sergei
raised his hand and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I disagree.’ They didn’t expel him, but for
a long time afterward he held manual jobs.”
Others recalled their parents’ troubled reactions to suppressing the Prague
Spring. Lyubov Kovalyova and her family returned to Moscow from the Black
Sea when they got word of the march on Prague. “I remember that my father’s
mood soured and that he said that this was very dangerous, that it could be the
beginning of war.” Lyubov Raitman’s parents’ response remains etched in her
memory. “We found out about this when we were in the Crimea. We found out
by radio and in their group of close friends this was an awful shock. All illusions
were lost.” They eventually were: the Soviet invasion heightened the Cold War
generation’s awareness that official news reports were sanitized. It bred doubt.
As Aleksandr Babushkin summed up, “We were bewildered, but then we began
to see things differently.” “All that left its mark, affecting us for the better,” con-
cluded Arkady Darchenko. “We began to understand things about our country
that were not all that good.”
“ P E O P L E G O T H O L D O F W H AT E V E R T H E Y W E R E
INTERESTED IN”
Most of the Baby Boomers date the beginning of their serious reading of
samizdat to the events of 1968, by which time more illicit literature was avail-
able. Saratov’s Yevgeny Podolsky did not keep his reading of samizdat secret
from his parents, both of whom belonged to the Party. “When I was at the
university, we read a lot of samizdat,” he confided. “We moved around little,
traveled little, and, for the most part lived in a closed world. Then, all of a
sudden, such things showed up. They greatly disturbed us.” According to
Olga Martynkina, “everyone read it” at the Saratov Conservatory. “We
read Solzhenitsyn and other stuff. There were cases of repression.” Arkady
Darchenko spent the last years of his university days at a closed science city
near Moscow, Dubna, where he got his hands on samizdat: “It was freer there,
the institute is international, and all the available samizdat could be found
there. Most of it was books published abroad in Russian and smuggled into
the country. I read all of Solzhenitsyn in Dubna.” Pyotor Krasilnikov believed
that students at the polytech where he studied were less politicized than those
at the university or conservatory. His classmate, Irina Vizgalova, however,
remembered otherwise, thereby revealing how problematic it can be at times

to generalize from one’s personal experience. The unpublished works of
Solzhenitsyn, she recalled, “were passed from hand to hand.” Not settling for
what others said about the works, she had “to read them myself.”
The Saratovites active in the Komsomol or otherwise closely affiliated with
the Party through their parents or work steered clear of samizdat. Vladimir
Kirsanov observed that “my attitude toward dissident literature was fully in
accord with my political views. Insofar as I was a staunch enough ‘builder of the
bright future,’ I was indignant when I read in our paper a long article about
samizdat. It included the names of many well-known Saratov university profes-
sors. How could our people take part in such unworthy activities?” An uneasi-
ness still overwhelms Kirsanov when he sees one of these individuals today.
“As Chekhov put it, ‘Either they stole from him, or he stole from them, I no
longer remember, but the feeling remains.’” Before perestroika, rationalized
Olga Gorelik, “samizdat didn’t make its way to me, probably because of the
family I came from.” Natalya P. explained, “You have to understand that it was
all young women who studied at the Department of Foreign Languages. We
were not at all interested in politics. We were interested in boys, in romance, in
studying. Therefore, samizdat didn’t circulate among us.” Aleksandr Trubnikov
“would have read it with pleasure,” but, as he put it, “you had to search out this
samizdat, and I didn’t know anyone who offered me any. It was simply very hard
to get hold of in Saratov.” Aleksandr Babushkin felt similarly: “I had an enor-
mous amount of information on hand, and I didn’t need to read still more, and
to have to search for it.”
Moscow’s Igor Litvin began reading samizdat when he was a student at the
Pedagogical Institute, some of which he obtained on the black market. Aware of
the dangers of keeping such literature at home, he nonetheless became bolder
with age and “had an entire library.” Anatoly Shapiro devoured Solzhenitsyn’s
Gulag Archipelago and the satirical writings of Vladimir Voinovich and Aleksandr
Zinoviyev.* Summed up Lyubov Kovalyova: “If something came our way, we, of
course, read it. I would say that people probably read everything that they
wanted to read.” Yelena Kolosova recalled in particular Boris Pasternak’s Doctor
Zhivago, because the print was so small. Although Kolosova appreciated the
samizdat she examined, she made an astute observation: “It was enough simply
to carefully read all of Russian literature and translated foreign literature to see
that stupidity is stupidity and that terror is terror.”
Owing to the danger of reading and keeping samizdat, families played central
roles in its dissemination, thereby strengthening private life. Leonid Volodarsky’s
* Vladimir Voinovich, the author of satirical fiction and poetry, is perhaps best known for
his The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. Aleksandr Zinoviyev was a
satirist and philosopher, especially known for his biting satire about daily absurdities
during the Brezhnev years, Yawning Heights, published abroad in 1976.
parents showed him samizdat when he attended school. His father was a Party
member, “but he was a man of very liberal views. There were few idealists,” clari-
fied Volodarsky. Lyubov Raitman recounted the time a French acquaintance of her
mother’s with diplomatic immunity showed up at their apartment in the late
1970s with a suitcase jam-packed with samizdat literature. “There was absolutely
everything. I remember how we distributed this literature among our acquain-
tances, read it ourselves, and gave it to others to read. It was rather terrifying.” The
treasure chest included works by Vasily Aksyonov* and Aleksandr Zinoviyev. Her
classmate Bakhyt Kenzheyev affirmed that “Lyuba Raitman’s family helped me a
great deal. It was in that home that I first saw samizdat books. It was a small
window onto another world, but an extraordinarily important one.” Another was
at Moscow University, where Kenzheyev joined a literary group led by a poet Igor
Leonidovich Volgin. “This young Volgin read us Mandelshtam, Akhmatova,
Tsvetaeva, and Pasternak, told us their biographies, and without any politics. He
risked a great deal. It was always possible to find some scoundrel willing to inform.
Even now I can’t understand why this didn’t happen. The club functioned as a
separate education that was objective and, of course, anti-Soviet,” detailed
Kenzheyev. Families also constrained some from searching out samizdat. Son of a
KGB operative, Andrei Rogatnev volunteered, “We read some erotic stories alleg-
edly written by Aleksei Tolstoy, but I didn’t come across any dissident literature.”
Neither did Vladimir Sidelnikov, whose parents belonged to the Party and who
studied at MGIMO. “At our institution there wasn’t any samizdat,” he contended.
“ G O D S PA R E D M E ”
The systemic shortcomings of the collective farm system, the difficulty recruiting
workers for physically demanding jobs in remote places, and an official attitude
that extolled the virtues of physical labor for the urban intelligentsia drove the
Soviet government to enlist city dwellers for “volunteer” fieldwork at harvest
time (usually without pay) or for participation in construction brigades (for
money). Virtually all university students had to contribute their labor and many
continued to do so as working adults. Student work brigades celebrated their
fifteenth anniversary in 1973 with a major campaign involving more than
550,000 people. “We emphasize that this is a patriotic, volunteer movement of
young men and women,” one propaganda study reads. “The brigades become a
school for breeding courage, stamina, and physical endurance, and for testing
citizenship and comradeship.”17
Yet some Baby Boomers failed the test, carping that participation in the brigades
interfered with their educations, and that they found the work unpleasant, even if
* Vasily Aksyonov began publishing in the USSR in the 1960s. Appealing to Soviet youth, his
works became instant classics. He later published works abroad, including The Burn in
1975.
they enjoyed the camaraderie. Saratov’s Arkady Darchenko remarked, “You know,
there’s a great saying in Russian: ‘the harshness of Russian laws is mitigated by the fact
that their fulfillment is optional.’ If we wanted to continue our studies, we had no
choice. But we were always able to ‘get out of it’ somehow, yet we didn’t.” When he
was not taking part in a construction brigade, Darchenko attended sports camps: “I
was on the fencing team. Each summer I had the construction brigade and training.
We were all like that.” Indeed, Yevgeny Podolsky took part in a construction brigade
only once, because after he became a member of the university’s reserve basketball
team, he spent summers training at the sports camp. Aleksandr Virich also belonged
to a construction brigade only once, after which he wormed his way out of repeating
his efforts. “I didn’t go because I had already started writing my thesis.”
Natalya P., who dug up potatoes on local state farms, remarked, “It was, as we
say, voluntary-compulsory. It was possible to get out of it if you wanted, but it
actually was fun. We didn’t overdo it.” Although others echoed this sentiment,
the enjoyment represented the dark cloud’s silver lining. Pyotor Krasilnikov
recalled the “pleasure” of digging potatoes, cutting hay, and learning how to
operate a combine. “We were young, we were with girls, there were dances, and
we celebrated birthdays and organized picnics.” The fond memories, however,
came only after opposition to the idea of going. “It was the policy of the carrot
and the stick. They suggested that we go, we refused, and then they told us that,
if we didn’t, we’d get our vacations in winter. I’d reconsider and say, ‘Okay, I’ll
The Saratovites did field work even before graduating from School No. 42. The partying
that routinely took place afterward made these experiences memorable. Courtesy of
Aleksandr Virich
go to the collective farm, but I need my vacation in August.’ In this way compro-
mises were reached. Plus there were financial incentives.” Said a grateful Irina
Chemodurova: “God spared me. I went to pull carrots only once.”
The experience proved life changing for Vladimir Kirsanov. He concluded
that “it wasn’t so noticeable in town, but in the countryside the illogicality of the
economy was quite obvious. All the shocking things I saw disturbed me.” When
Kirsanov shared his views with a member of his Party cell at work he was told,
“You’re mistaken, things can’t be that way.” Kirsanov, however, knew better. “But
I needed a lot more time to process things and to change my mind. Until I
reached thirty, I was a true builder of communism.” Accompanying his own stu-
dents on such adventures, his doubts began to grow. “It was especially awful for
me to see unharvested fields. It was absolutely incomprehensible. I couldn’t
stand seeing it,” he lamented, referring to red-stained fields of rotting tomatoes.
Irina Vizgalova had a similar reaction to the Soviet countryside. “It was a revela-
tion, the dirt, the mud, the attitude that no one needs to work. They’d ask, why
should you do that when we don’t have to do it? When we’d complete a task
quickly, they’d say ‘You’re done? We thought you’d spend the entire week on
it.’” The conclusion she drew from the experience: “It was a waste of time.” The
“stealing” and “plundering” were “awful.” Vizgalova remembered a slogan
the collective farmers chose to understand in their own way: “Everything here
belongs to the kolkhoz, everything here belongs to me.”
In contrast, the Muscovites recalled their involvement in work brigades
with nostalgia, probably because the countryside seemed more exotic than it
did to those living in provincial Saratov. Vyacheslav Starik saw benefits in
joining expeditions to dig potatoes or in moving cabbage rotting in ware-
houses, both as a student and later as an associate at an aviation research
institute. “It united our collective, because no one went there without vodka
and tons of food. After lunch we’d fulfill our norm, spread the table, and
everybody would mark the end of one more workday at the vegetable store-
house.” Lyubov Kovalyova emphatically agreed: “It meant friends, it meant
memories, it meant songs. And after we returned home the memories bonded
us for years.” Taking part in these activities also gave the Muscovites an oppor-
tunity to mingle with villagers. Kovalyova related that sometimes conflicts
arose as village lads made advances at city girls. “But then we’d begin to
mingle and even become friends.” When she sprained her leg, the villagers
took pity on her. “These were people who, at first glance, seemed like terrible
thugs and who made an awful impression, but then we began to mix.” Yelena
Zharovova was enthusiastic about her experience, which the Physics
Department at Moscow University made mandatory for freshmen. “I liked it
a great deal because it really did bond us. I made a lot of friends in the
building brigade.” Apart from imparting confidence in one’s ability to master
something new, Yelena “learned to be independent because before this I
probably was mother’s little girl.”
Saratov’s Gennady Ivanov saw his involvement in the brigades as “a positive

experience, and as an opportunity to earn some money.” Moscow’s Vladimir
Bystrov participated in construction brigades as a young graduate student when
he found it hard to make ends meet, so he had to do some moonlighting in a
labor brigade. At the time, the Soviet government poured enormous resources
into its last great construction project, the building of the Baikal-Amur Magistral*
(railroad), or BAM, but Bystrov did not go. “When I began to take part in them
the Ural region was being developed and the money was there, and not in BAM,”
he clarified. Vladimir Glebkin also underscored his taking part in summer
building brigades “in order to accumulate some capital.” It turns out that
Glebkin did little building. “I have nothing but the best of memories of this. We
traveled to Siberia with a student music ensemble and we not only worked, but
performed.”
“ T H E PA R T Y A N D G O V E R N M E N T H AV E D E C I D E D . . . ”
Upon graduating from college, the Baby Boomers were assigned to jobs (with a
salary) by the Soviet government, usually for two years, as a way of repaying
society for their educations and of assuring that no region would go without
whatever specialists might be needed. The top students could count on the most
desirable assignments, but the prominence of one’s parents, connections (blat),
whether or not a graduate was married (and to whom), bribes, and luck, among
other factors, determined how things turned out. Parroting Soviet-era propa-
ganda, Anna Lyovina mocked, “They instilled in us that we were the happiest,
the most democratic society, that everything was wonderful. We have free med-
icine, free education! But everyone’s forgotten that you had to work off this ‘free’
education for two years in some out-of-the-way place.” Indignant, Lyovina
exclaimed, “How many broken fates. How many life tragedies!” Yet whatever
difficulties recent graduates may have encountered, all of the Muscovites received
work assignments in the capital.
There is a story behind each, revealing the many ways the experience could
affect their lives. After graduating from the Finance Institute, Anatoly Shapiro
was placed in a Moscow bank, a job he abandoned as soon as his mandatory
term expired. Assigned to a Moscow school to teach, Yevgeniya Ruditskaya
recalled that “everything was wonderful, except that the school was far away.”
She dropped in at a neighborhood school, “where they had no math teachers
whatsoever, so when I went there to inquire, they snatched me up.” Upon grad-
uating from the Moscow Aviation Institute, Mikhail Markovich was assigned to
the Foreign Trade Publishing House’s editorial office for publications on
* In 1974 the Brezhnev government launched the construction of the Baikal-Amur Magistral
to link the European and Asian sectors of the USSR.
aviation. “This changed my life. I began to understand already as an upper-

classman at the institute that aviation wasn’t my calling. Instead, I found a
profession that I could enjoy 24/7.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev took a post in the
Chemistry Department at Moscow University with the understanding that he
eventually would enroll as a graduate student. But, Bakhyt recalled, “I had a
crisis and slipped into a funk, because I had to decide whether I’m a chemist or
a writer.” By that time he had already published in Russia, and abroad, and the
latter was a crime. Kenzheyev shared his doubts with his professors, “bitter
enemies of Soviet power.” One of them told him, “Bakhyt, if you leave us, Soviet
power will destroy you. Stay here. You can do some translations for a couple of
days a week. We’ll pay you 100 rubles a month and you can write your poetry.”
Kenzheyev accepted the offer, remaining the department’s unofficial “writer in
residence” for five more years.
Although it was rare, some Moscow graduates received “free diplomas,”
which relieved the state of the obligation to place them. Lyubov Raitman
explained that this was “sometimes the only way out for Jewish graduates
who did not want to be assigned unwanted jobs in faraway places.” Others
felt pressured into taking free diplomas because the organization to which
they had been assigned did not want them. Some young mothers also found
the option attractive, even though it meant that they had to find employment
on their own.
A noteworthy difference between Moscow and Saratov is that not all of the
Saratovites received assignments in the city. For instance, Gennady Ivanov and
his wife were assigned jobs in Saransk, in Mordovia, but there were complica-
tions: she was pregnant and he faced serving in the army. Ivanov returned to
Saratov to work for the police, while his pregnant wife, released from her obli-
gation, went to live with her parents in Tambov to give birth. The state sent Irina
Garzanova to neighboring Ulyanovsk oblast upon graduation from the Medical
Institute. She complained that “the majority remained in Saratov. Larisa Petrova
was one of them, because her father worked in the Communist Party Oblast
Committee. Even she admits this.” She does admit this: “Of course, my parents
used their connections to bring this about. Otherwise, I would have been sent to
work as an ordinary village doctor.” Olga Kamayurova worked for two years in a
regional hospital in the town of Marx. “I wasn’t assigned to Marx, but my hus-
band was,” she explained. “Our living conditions there were simply extraordi-
nary. We lived on the fourth floor of a large building without water, heat, or
indoor plumbing. How can people live like that at the end of the twentieth
century?” Aleksandr Babushkin and his first wife, also a doctor, spent three years
in Krasnoarmeisk in Saratov oblast. “It was very difficult,” recalled Babushkin.
“Books saved me, because I transported my entire library there. Besides, each
Friday I fled for Saratov.”
State policies at times worked at cross purposes, revealing how stressful job
placement was for the Baby Boomers. For example, Arkady Darchenko spent his
upperclassman years at the nuclear physics facility in Dubna. He recalled that “if
I hadn’t gotten married when I did, they could have sent my future wife wher-
ever they liked. Therefore, we got married so we’d get sent to the same place.” He
had an invitation to work in Dubna, but when he graduated he received an
assignment in Saratov, because the Party had implemented a new policy that
required the best students to teach physics in local schools. Nobel prizewinner
Ilya Mikhailovich Frank summoned Darchenko back to Dubna. “However, they
wouldn’t let us go for a long time. We were nervous wrecks,” volunteered Arkady.
Even the secretary of the Dubna Party organization intervened on Darchenko’s
behalf. As a result, Darchenko and his spouse returned there, but then the
government made it more difficult to obtain a living permit for Moscow and
Dubna. Despite pulling all the strings he could, Darchenko was told “‘the law is
the law. You must leave.’”
Yevgeny Podolsky was assigned to an aviation research institute in Saratov,
but not without experiencing considerable angst when “the Party decided that
all university graduates majoring in physics and mathematics would be
assigned to teach in schools.” Not enamored with the idea, Podolsky planned
to serve in the army for two years after graduation, but the government once
again threw him a curve ball. Determining that the country lacked specialists
in automated control systems, the Party made physics majors spend an addi-
tional semester training to become specialists in this area. Those who refused
had to teach in local schools. After an additional semester at the university,
Podolsky chose what he called “the most desirable option, to end up at a
closed [secretive] research institute, because the work would be interesting and
the pay quite good.”
The many women who majored in English at the Saratov Pedagogical Institute
became teachers in local schools, instructors in Saratov colleges, or technical
translators at one of the city’s military-related factories and research institutes.
Married when she graduated from the institute, Tatyana Kuznetsova remained in
Saratov because her husband already worked in the city, accepting an assign-
ment at the Polytechnic Institute. Also married, Lyudmila Gorokhova became a
technical translator in an electronics firm, but Natalya P., who desperately
wanted a teaching appointment, had to fight her way into one. It was “mostly
the daughters of Party officials and generals who went to teach” at the Polytechnic
Institute or Pedagogical Institute. Like Gorokhova, she started her employment
history as a technical translator.
“ I T WA S A L M O S T L I K E P R I S O N ”
A stint in the Red Army—notorious for its hazing practices and grim condi-
tions—hung like the sword of Damocles above Soviet males not admitted to
college. A university degree or a medical exemption released most young men
from military service, apart from a summer’s basic training and some activities
organized by military departments at each institution of higher education,

which also coordinated first-aid courses for women. For example, at the Moscow
Pedagogical Institute, Igor Litvin and his classmates—mostly women—were
designated “military translators.” This spared them from the otherwise
mandatory overnight maneuvers that involved shooting automatic rifles.
The two Muscovites who spent time in the army griped about the experience.
Anatoly Shapiro saw military service as one of life’s challenges that most shaped his
worldview, “but in a negative sense. It was terribly negative,” he recalled. Shapiro
served as an officer in an antiaircraft unit located near Kuibyshev (Samara today)
after completing college and a year’s assignment as a young specialist. Escaping as
often as he could on furlough to Moscow, Shapiro found his unit “dreadful, and
the mental and intellectual level of the rank-and-file soldiers abysmal. Most were
from the backwaters of the USSR, mainly from Uzbekistan.” He spent some of his
stay in Kuibyshev itself, where the cultural level was higher. “But even there the
conversation would turn only to getting drunk—everyone drank an awful lot—or
to women or fishing. These three topics,” complained Shapiro. His service coin-
cided with the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, “which was also unpleasant. I’m
a Jew, do you understand?” As an officer, Shapiro did not endure hazing, but he
Leonid Terlitsky provided this 1973 photo of what he called a Soviet “ROTC” camp
outside Moscow. As a student at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, Terlitsky (third
from right) was required to attend the camp. Courtesy of Leonid Terlitsky
observed it, and this “was really unpleasant.” After graduating from Patrice
Lumumba University, Vladimir Glebkin spent a year in the army in the Far East on
the Sino-Soviet border at Lake Khanka, where the situation was “very tense.” His
unit built concrete fortifications to fend off the Chinese. “While standing guard
one could see our launch and a Chinese one testing each other’s nerves.” According
to Glebkin, hazing “really does take place, and you have to stand up for yourself. I
somehow managed to do so.” Why had Glebkin enlisted? He explained, “My father
believed that it was necessary,” but “it was almost like prison.”
Saratov’s Vladimir Nemchenko, who joined the army for two years after gradua-
tion, felt similarly. “I hated the army. All of the jokes about the dumb sergeants and
generals are right on target. We mocked that bunch of uncultured blockheads.”
Several others also served, but they found the experience palatable. Having under-
gone officer training in college, Aleksandr Virich shared that “service was not all that
onerous. I might have remained in the army if it had been more interesting, but this
was at a time when the army was beginning to decay.” Pyotor Krasilnikov had a year-
long stint in the army in faraway Zabaikal, despite the fact that he had gotten mar-
ried, because he completed only the evening division of the Saratov Polytechnic
Institute. Krasilnikov considered himself lucky on several counts. “Fifteen people
from Saratov arrived and we were older, twenty-four and twenty-five years old, when
the lieutenants in charge of us were twenty-two or twenty-three. Therefore, perhaps
in part out of respect for our age, there was no particular hazing from the younger
soldiers. It was simply work, but very far away from home.” Viktor D. in 1975 had
been assigned to an emergency orthopedic unit in Saratov, where he remained for
two years. He recalled, “They drafted me into the Soviet army as a physician. I didn’t
go there on my own free will. It wasn’t something I asked for, but it was an alternative
to mandatory service as a rank-and-file soldier.”
One Saratovite for whom School No. 42 was not a good match, Aleksandr Ivanov,
left the magnet school to complete an aviation technical school. Drafted in 1969, he
spent two years in Orenburg oblast, after which he “really wanted to join the army.”
Following six months of training, Ivanov became a second lieutenant. “There was
hazing. I think that’s existed since tsarist times, but not in the way they describe it
today. I’m not against hazing. The older soldiers should help the young ones and
teach them,” he reasoned. Demobilized in 1971, Ivanov married the next year and
went to work at the Saratov airport. “And in 1975 I left for Engels to serve in the army
again. In all honesty, I went into the army to get an apartment. Thanks to the army I
have all this [I interviewed him at home].” Ivanov added, “The second reason I did
so, as I’ve already said, is because I like the army. I like military discipline.”
“ ‘A F O R E I G N L A N G U A G E I S A W E A P O N I N L I F E ’ S
STRUGGLE’”
As graduates of elite secondary schools and mostly top colleges, and as offspring of
professionals, the Baby Boomers’ collective career trajectory sheds light on a key
element of the Soviet dream: guaranteed employment. The Soviet Union had a
five-day, forty-one-hour work week when the Baby Boomers completed college.
Disposable income was on the rise, and housing and services were improving.18
At the time, women made up more than half of the country’s labor force and a
majority of its college graduates; the USSR had the highest rate of female
employment in the world. In 1970, 86 percent of working-age women were
employed (the figure was 42 percent in the United States): 71 percent of the coun-
try’s teachers were women, 70 percent of its physicians (and 23 percent of
Communist Party members). Employed women earned less than men everywhere,
including the Soviet Union; however, Soviet female white-collar workers made
progress toward equality.19 Despite the double burden they faced, 85 percent of
women favored working outside the home. They tended to be satisfied with their
jobs, especially the skilled. But they wanted to work closer to home, better shifts,
higher pay, a shortened workday, and more household appliances.20
Knowledge of English affected the Baby Boomers’ careers in several ways.
A good number of them majored in English in college and afterward became
teachers of English in schools and colleges. A second pattern concerns scien-
tists whose knowledge of English enabled them to read foreign academic lit-
erature in their disciplines. They also drew on their knowledge of English
when foreigners visited the workplace or when they traveled abroad. Those
trained to become Soviet diplomats and who were stationed abroad—all
from Moscow—represent a third pattern. A fourth group of interviewees,
mostly those who went into certain technical fields or into family medicine,
had no practical need of English, and many of them forgot much of what they
had learned; however, some of them drew on their childhood command of
the language when they visited other countries, particularly during the
Gorbachev era. A fifth group comprised those who immigrated to English-
speaking countries.
Those who majored in English in college accepted teaching appointments at
the college level, attended graduate school, or went to work as teachers in local
schools. Saratov’s Olga Kolishchyuk spoke for most of them: “English became
my destiny.” Assigned to teach at the Saratov Polytechnic Institute, she remained
there her entire career. So did Tatyana Kuznetsova. “But I never associated with
native speakers, so it’s very hard for me to speak the language,” she acknowl-
edged. Natalya P. had no desire to remain a technical translator at the research
institute to which she had been assigned. “I really disliked this job, despite the
fact that it was considered a great place to work, so I quit and went to work part
time at the Pedagogical Institute.” To her dismay, Natalya worked part time for
more than ten years, “until I defended my dissertation.” Ignoring her father’s
wishes, she took a graduate degree in English, but not in Saratov, and this
entailed lots of traveling and other difficulties. “Thus, I had to battle for my
English, and therefore I madly love my profession.” Hired as a technical trans-
lator, Lyudmila Gorokhova originally worked on Hewlett Packard computer
manuals. She was employed at the institute for twenty years, “but not as a trans-
lator,” which she saw as dull work. Instead, she found herself attracted to
secretarial tasks, to typing, meeting guests, serving them tea—and to her boss,
whom she eventually married.
After receiving her diploma from the IFL, Lyubov Raitman taught English at
the Bauman Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy before assuming an appointment at
Moscow University. She taught there until perestroika made it financially impos-
sible for her to survive on her teacher’s salary. After graduating from the IFL,
Anna Lyovina settled into a job teaching English, but only after her oldest son
began school. Even then, she taught in the evening division. “My husband came
home from work and sat with the boys while I ran off to class. I never lasted
anywhere for long because there was always something with my parents. How
could I not help them? I’d quit work and take on something a bit lighter.” Leonid
Volodarsky graduated from the IFL, worked for a year in the Institute of Africa,
and then enrolled in graduate school. “But it wasn’t interesting. It was politics
and you had to write what was necessary. I quit,” he stated. Volodarksy found
his “safety-valve” translating Western films. “There was a system of closed view-
ings here and I did some titles for them. I saw practically everything that came
out in the West. I translated them and they paid me for watching movies.” A
graduate of the Pedagogical Institute, Igor Litvin taught English before switching
to a job in a factory supply department that paid better and gave him more free
time. While making a business call, he learned that another factory that had
concluded an agreement with the British firm Wilkinson to produce razor blades
urgently needed an English translator. Litvin talked his way into the job, which
involved working with British visitors. After six years, however, Litvin quit to
teach English in the evenings to adults. “I understood that you can’t earn enough
money to live on at your main job. I needed to work less for the government so
that I could moonlight giving private lessons and working on translations.
Taking on extra work is how you earned money.”
The Baby Boomers who became scientists also believed that knowledge of
English facilitated their careers. Aleksandr Konstantinov emphasized, “I was
able to work independently as a scientist because I know the language fluently.
It made it simpler for me to communicate with colleagues and to write articles
in English for international journals, and this took me to an altogether differ-
ent level.” Yevgeny Podolsky, who went to work in a research institute in Saratov
recounted, “I had to read a lot of foreign literature. I was riding high at the
institute, because those people who completed ordinary schools had a hard
time and often came to me for help.” As an undergraduate physics major, Olga
Gorelik read academic articles in English and continued to do so as a researcher.
“There was a full-time translator, but I didn’t need to use her services. Moreover,
I was able to earn a little extra money writing summaries for those who didn’t
know the language. I felt superior to others because I knew the language.”
Arkady Darchenko, who changed his profession three times in his life, piped in
Lyubov Raitman (far left) translates for delegates to a 1974 conference on labor safety
and hygiene in the mining industry, when she taught at the Bauman Institute. She later
took a coveted position teaching English at Moscow University, which she held until
perestroika forced her to quit teaching in order to accept better paying jobs to make
ends meet. Courtesy of Lyubov Obraztsova (Raitman)
that he used his English “practically all the time.” Darchenko spotlighted his need
of English at the international nuclear institute he studied at in Dubna, where
people communicated in Russian and English. “Then there were a ton of articles I
needed to read in scholarly journals. Finally, I earned some pocket money trans-
lating articles when the professional translators had a backlog.” He also needed
English when he became an electrical engineer. “Once again, there was an enor-
mous number of articles to read,” he related. “Then they began to use computers,
and all of the instructions were in English. I traveled a lot with exhibits, and I gave
my commentary in English, even in China.” Concluded Darchenko: “I changed
my profession again in 1995, becoming a professional computer programmer, and
English, well, I don’t think any explanation of its importance is necessary. That is,
I basically had need of the language all my life.”
Knowing English aided Moscow economist Tatyana Artyomova in graduate
school and beyond “in the sense that I wrote a dissertation on American corpora-
tions and could read any literature.” Boris Shtein volunteered that “many of us
who knew languages looked upon this as a second source of income. There was
always the possibility of doing translations.” Lyubov Kovalyova took advantage of
such opportunities to earn extra money. Moreover, in 1985 she worked in Hungary:
Vladimir Kirsanov remained to teach at the Saratov Medical Institute in the 1970s after
earning his candidate’s degree there, a rough equivalent of the Ph.D. “Knowledge of
English helped me a great deal,” recalled Kirsanov, “in writing my dissertation and in
reading scholarly literature.” Courtesy of Vladimir Kirsanov
“While I was there I communicated with people entirely in English.” As Vladimir

Glebkin claimed, “Studying languages—whatever your field—is necessary, for it
broadens your horizon. Knowledge of languages is power.” He took his graduate
degree at Patrice Lumumba and remained there as a researcher in radio-physics.
The cohort of Muscovites that graduated from the elite diplomatic training
school, MGIMO, found their English skills essential. One of them, Vladimir
Mikoyan, spent nine years in the United States as a spokesperson for the Soviet
embassy. Although he articulated his irritation over America’s “arrogance of
power,” he recalled, “I really liked this work. I traveled across the country, made
numerous presentations, and mingled with people, and this gave me a great deal.”
After his tour with the embassy, Mikoyan worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
but eventually lost his sense of purpose, admitting “perhaps it would have been
important to find something that really captivated me.” His fellow student at
MGIMO Valentin Ulyakhin did. Ulyakhin studied Bhutai and lived abroad in
Bhutan. He later went to work for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, but found bureau-
cratic discipline objectionable and quit. Enrolling in graduate school at Moscow’s
Institute of Oriental Studies, he defended his dissertation and accepted a research
position there. Knowledge of English, he confirmed, “helped me in my scholar-

ship.” He maintains his appointment but also serves as a parish priest.
Then there are those for whom English played no determining role in their
lives. Engineer Aleksandr Virich spoke for many when he observed: “For me,
English played no role, unfortunately. I didn’t use it.” Irina Tsurkan “had no
need for the language.” True, after medical school, she said, “I read article
abstracts of interesting and new things in English that seemed fitting and useful,
but I saw that no one but me needed what I read.” Natalya Yanichkina admitted,
“I did not continue my language instruction, and we forget things if we don’t
use them. Besides, I really didn’t have any passion for the language.”
Yet some of those who did not use their English as young adults found it useful
later in life. Anatoly Shapiro had little need of it until recently, when he came into
contact with foreigners working in Russia. Georgy Godzhello likewise had “almost
no” need of English, but it came in handy when he traveled abroad with sports
delegations to France, Italy, and Finland. “It’s deeply embedded in my memory,”
he maintained. “From the point of view of its practical application, language for
me was not necessary,” explained Vladimir Prudkin. Nevertheless, studying the
language broadened his horizons: “I didn’t feel like I was the inhabitant of a single
country, but a citizen of the world.” When Prudkin spent several months in America
in the early 1990s, “the language returned. By the end, I spoke rather freely. I now
understand everything spoken or written, but I speak with difficulty,” he said.
Leonid Terlitsky told me, “I didn’t speak any English for ten years after school.
When the time came when I needed it, I pulled it right out of memory. I got my first
job only because I spoke English.” Saratovite Gennady Ivanov retained some
facility on “an everyday level. I understand most of what’s said on television.” He
used the language when he served in Afghanistan, and later, when he went on
business trips to the Netherlands or vacationed in Turkey. Saratov opera accompa-
nist Olga Martynkina rehabilitated her English, too. “We had a piece in the theater
in English, and I taught my charges a symphony by the American composer Philip
Glass. Our soloists sang, and I worked with them, taught them. I have no problem
with the language.”
Some Baby Boomers made careers using their English, even though they did
not train to do so at the university. Consider the fate of Tatyana Arzhanova and
Bakhyt Kenzheyev, both of whom immigrated to Canada. Released from the
need to accept a government-assigned position, Tatyana Arzhanova landed a
job as an administrative assistant in the medical field thanks to her mother’s
contacts. Meanwhile, Tatyana’s husband, who worked in the state Sports
Committee, introduced Tatyana to his colleagues who invited her to accompany
three groups of athletes to America as a translator. She traveled to the United
States for the first time in 1974. “After this my life took a slightly different turn,” she
pointed out. Arzhanova planned to enroll in graduate school, but in 1975 received
a job offer from the Department Servicing the Diplomatic Corps (DSDC). “When
they told me how much I’d earn at the American firm, and how many D coupons
I’d receive for clothing,* I had no choice. I went to work where they paid well and
where it was very interesting.” She stayed there for three years before joining her
husband for four years in Indonesia. Upon her return to Moscow she ran into
difficulty finding a position, but in time the DSDC took her back.
Bakhyt Kenzheyev’s arrangement at Moscow University allowed him to write
poetry—and to work as a guide with Intourist, the Soviet agency that hosted foreign
visitors. Intourist took him on for five seasons before firing him when he broke the
rule against guides giving their home addresses to tourists. “Of course, I’d give
them my address. I still have a few close friends dating from that period.” Intourist
taught Kenzheyev the right things to say to tourists from England and America. “At
first, like a conscientious Soviet young man, I tried to lecture them. There was a
brochure, One Hundred Questions, One Hundred Answers, and there were instruc-
tions on how to answer ‘provocative’ questions,” he remembered. “If a tourist
asked provocative questions you had to write a report afterward. Each day you were
supposed to write a report for the KGB.” Kenzheyev believed that Intourist fired
him because he “had too many suspect friends, who had caught the attention of
the police.” Besides, he had published poems abroad in an émigré publication. He
admitted that one of his foreign friends who accompanied tour groups to the
Soviet Union brought Bakhyt “all sorts of literature, including anti-Soviet litera-
ture.” Kenzheyev later published Younger Brother, a novel with autobiographical
overtones about an Intourist guide.21
Aleksandr Trubnikov, who made use of his English both as a physicist and as
an émigré to Israel, voiced the sentiment of others when he explained that his
knowledge of English “played a role in everything. Karl Marx coined a won-
derful phrase, ‘a foreign language is a weapon in life’s struggle.’ Ever since I heard
it, I’ve noticed that it’s actually true. For me it was English. Of course, I’ve kept
up with it my entire life. I’ve lived in Israel now for four and a half years. I don’t
know Hebrew. English is really important for me.”
“I NEVER HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FORGET IT”

Soviet Jews experienced official and everyday forms of anti-Semitism. Ordinary
Russians regarded Jews as smart, rich, clever, and hard-working people who stuck
to themselves, in short, as “other.” The non-Jewish intelligentsia perceived Jews as
erudite, witty, sober, and more liberal than they were. There was an art to being
Jewish in the Soviet Union. Finding themselves in an ambivalent situation, Soviet
Jews at times tried hard to hide their nationality, while at other times they defended
their right to be a Jew. In short, they sought to determine the circumstances in
which they embraced their Jewishness. Statistics reveal the ambivalent position of
* A network of closed stores existed serving diplomats, foreigners in residence, tourists, and
Soviet officials. Soviet citizens working with foreigners were often issued D (Diplomat)
coupons, enabling them to buy items otherwise difficult to obtain.
Jews in Soviet society: they played disproportionately important roles in regard to

their educational achievements, the number of Jews designated heroes of the
Soviet Union, and the quantity of research scholars, but also in regard to the
number of people punished for economic crimes. Although the Suez War of 1956
went unnoticed by Soviet Jews, not so the victorious Six Day War of 1967.22 Igor
Litvin, for instance, remembered that “when I studied at the institute we began to
take great pride in Israel’s war against the Arabs that Israel won.”
Capturing the ambivalence of identifying as Jews, Yelena Kolosova, who is half
Jewish, commented that “I was always somehow on the fence.” “Christian by
nature,” Yelena admitted that “there were things you couldn’t talk about and things
best left unsaid. Like everyone, we learned that we somehow had to cover it up. It
was impossible to hide it, but this meant you had to overcome it. It was a constant
struggle.” Her husband Em, for example, “had to demonstrate that he was much
better than others.” Also half Jewish, Moscow’s Vyacheslav Starik claimed anti-Sem-
itism “affected me a couple of times.” The first took place when he tried to enroll at
Moscow University; the second when he graduated from the Moscow Aviation
Institute. Starik would have gone to work there, “but they didn’t keep me, because
of the fifth point.” Starik turned his disappointment into an opportunity by enrolling
at the Central Institute of Airplane Motor Construction, “where the level was higher.”
Invited to remain there afterward, he ran into an openly anti-Semitic Party member.
“He couldn’t do anything to me in an obvious way,” stated Starik, “but behind my
back he kept me from going abroad on business trips three times. That was the
worst he could do to me. I didn’t feel any anti-Semitism,” he concluded, oddly.
But others did. Snapped Lyubov Raitman: “I never had the opportunity to
forget it.” Anatoly Shapiro insisted that, “while studying at the institute, and
afterward when serving in the army, nationality meant a great, great deal.”
Although Sofiya Vinogradova never experienced discrimination working as a
doctor, she complained that “the tourist business was completely closed to that
nationality. Contacts with foreigners, too. We lost a great deal because of this.”
Vinogradova later revisited her remark about not experiencing discrimination.
“The exception was when I wanted to go to med school.” Yevgeniya Ruditskaya
shared an incident that occurred when she vacationed in the Carpathians after
her first year of college: “A young man began to court me, and when he found
that I was a Jew he was in complete shock. He said he hated Jews and he couldn’t
imagine how such a nice and attractive girl like me could be a Jew.” The second
incident occurred in 2004. “When my mother died, someone wrote ‘death to
Jews’ on the door of the building in which she lived,” related Ruditskaya.
The situation of Saratov Jews appears to have been even more ambivalent.
During my many visits to Saratov since 1990, I observed far more overt anti-
Semitism than I ever did in Moscow, even among the intelligentsia. I suspect
that is why fewer Saratov Jews spoke about it: they tried harder to assimilate.
Olga Gorelik, for instance, insisted that “there was no anti-Semitism whatso-
ever,” but when I pressed her, she reconsidered: “Of course, naturally there was.
They didn’t hire people at work.” At first claiming not to have experienced any
anti-Semitism as a child, Yevgeny Podolsky thought again: “When I was a child
the older kids often called us Yids, but without malice.” Podolsky also related
how, in the early 1960s when the government rekindled interest in an autono-
mous Jewish republic, Birobidzhan,* “our neighbor dropped in, the father of my
close friend, and said: ‘Well, aren’t you going? Are you packing your stuff?’
I remember that very well. It was very unpleasant, and we felt this all the time
back then.” Half Jewish but taken for a Russian because of his Slavic surname,
Aleksandr Trubnikov acknowledged, “I didn’t experience what many others expe-
rienced who had Jewish surnames.” Ironically, Trubnikov is the only interviewee
who now lives in Israel, an apt illustration of the art of being a Soviet Jew.
“ I T WA S A C O N D I T I O N F O R A D VA N C I N G M Y C A R E E R ”
Between 1967, the time the Baby Boomers completed school, and 1981, after
most of them had spent a decade working or pursuing graduate degrees, the
Communist Party admitted 8.7 million people to candidate membership and
8.4 million to full membership. Almost two-thirds of those joining during this
period had remained active in the Komsomol before becoming Party mem-
bers.23 One parent of at least 80 percent of the Cold War generation belonged to
the Party. Roughly one out of three of the Baby Boomers joined, but when their
spouses are factored in the rate approaches that of their parents. Moreover, Party
membership was probably higher among those unwilling to be interviewed or
among those I failed to locate. The overwhelming majority of those who joined
are men, especially among the Moscow cohort, where only two females among
those I interviewed belonged to the CPSU.
Between 1950 and 1977, the percentage of those holding a candidate’s degree
(roughly equivalent to an American Ph.D.) that belonged to the CPSU shot up
from 32 to 51 percent, and among those with a doctorate (a second Ph.D.), from
25 to 65 percent,24 indicating a strong correlation between academic success and
Party membership. Party saturation rates were higher in ideological fields (the
social sciences, education, history) and lower in the hard sciences. Research sci-
entist Aleksandr Konstantinov recounted that “they asked me to join. But, as was
considered proper back then, I said something to the effect that I wasn’t ‘worthy,’
that it was too early for me to consider it. And when they asked me again I said
that I don’t like to subordinate myself to others. One might say that I respectfully
declined.” Did this affect his career? “They always considered me a bit unreliable
in that regard, but they overlooked this because I was an accomplished
professional. I found the right words to convey that I believed that this was
simply not my thing,” he said. “The Lord spared me,” quipped physicist Aleksandr
* In 1934 Stalin’s government established the Jewish Autonomous Region in Khabarovsk

region in the Far East, known as Birobidzhan, which became a forgotten Soviet Zion.
Trubnikov. “There was a long line at the university, and you needed to find some
acquaintances to back you or to suck up to someone.” Claimed Trubnikov: “I
really never had any desire to join the Party. They said it was necessary in order to
move up the career ladder, but I was never a Party member.”
Attitudes toward Party membership ran in families. Nikolai Kirsanov, who
joined the Party during medical school, justified his decision: “I understood
everything differently than others. I was absolutely convinced that I was doing
very important work in the Komsomol.” Therefore, “when I was invited to join
the Party, it was a huge honor.” Larisa Petrova, whose father belonged to the
local Party elite, claimed that she “wanted to join, and even asked to, but it was
difficult.” Membership did not shower her with perks or facilitate her career. She
insisted, “At best, you’d get some food rations on holidays.” Yet she also acknowl-
edged her participation in prestigious international youth camps and coveted
places she received in tourist groups owing to her Party card. Unhappy with the
low pay of a young researcher, Vladimir Nemchenko quit graduate school to
become a plumber after a friend convinced him he would earn a salary others
would envy. He became a Communist. “I worked in shit up to my ears. I didn’t
earn my money for nothing,” he rationalized. Nemchenko had to travel this
path in order to become a supervisor. “Therefore I took it, and later I quit to
become the chief mechanic of a repair department.”
Two women in the class who became university instructors and who taught
in fields with high rates of Party saturation aspired to join the CPSU, but were
not invited to do so. Both of Irina Chemodurova’s parents belonged to the Party.
“At first I thought that I wasn’t ready, but then I understood that I wasn’t needed
there. They always found someone better. I eventually realized that I would have
to build my scholarly career by not belonging to the Party.” Natalya Pronina
lamented that she had no opportunity to join the CPSU. “Well, insofar as I was
not known in Saratov for having eminent parents and, for the most part, made
my own way, I didn’t have the opportunity to join the Party, although I very
much wanted to. I was utterly convinced that Party membership provided the
opportunity to improve things in the country.”
The evidence from the Moscow cohort also underscores the links between
Party membership, career trajectories, and family attitudes. Like his parents,
Vladimir Glebkin felt no burning desire to join the Party to advance his career: “I
didn’t have enough respect for those Party members with whom I had to deal,”
he commented. In contrast, Vladimir Bystrov explained, “Of course I joined, in
1978. I very clearly understood that without this I’d have no career. But it was hard
to get in. They admitted only workers, then only graduate students, then only
students, then only women.” Had he encountered any true believers? “I person-
ally never met any,” he confessed. “By the time I became a Party member, every-
thing was already obvious to normal people.” It was to economist Tatyana
Artyomova, who joined the CPSU in 1976, “because it was impossible to work as
a college instructor if you weren’t a Party member. It was like a license.” Marina
Bakutina, both of whose parents were Communists, received an invitation to

become one, too, during her senior year at the Institute of Foreign Languages.
“They said that there was a unique opportunity available to particularly out-
standing students and hinted that, if you wanted to receive a good work assign-
ment, it was naturally in your best interests to join.” Marina did and accepted an
appointment at the IFL, where she taught until emigrating to the United States.
Belonging to the Party also facilitated career changes. For example, Anatoly
Shapiro in 1977 left a job he disliked at the Construction Bank of Russia to work
at the Exposition Center “thanks only to knowing the right people there and to
being a Party member,” he owned up.
Those who did not belong to the Party saw their status as a matter of prin-
ciple. Arkady Darchenko’s father refused to become a Communist to advance
his career. “This independent worldview greatly affected me. I also never joined
the Party on principle because I never accepted its ideology,” maintained
Darchenko, even though the decision hurt him professionally. He never met any
true believers, either: “As a rule, they were careerists in the most negative sense
of the word. They’d lie to you and they knew that you understood that they were
lying, and this encouraged them even more. That was the down side.” When she
lived in Balakovo, Irina Tsurkan encountered many itching to join the Party.
“But you couldn’t drag me into the Party.” Neither Yevgeniya Ruditskaya nor her
husband sought out Party membership. “People joined only for their careers,
and what kind of career could I have teaching in a school?” She observed, “If I
had wanted to become a school principal or a minister of education, I would
have had to join the Party.”
The female Saratovites whose husbands became Party members argued that
they did so to promote their careers. “You need to understand that if you wanted
to get ahead at work you needed to be a Party member,” emphasized Natalya
Yanichkina. She detailed the “absurdity” of how her husband got in: “He
couldn’t join the Party when he taught, because, at that time, the neighborhood
committee needed to enroll eight workers and one member of the intelli-
gentsia.” Later “he tried to join the Party here in Saratov, already as the head of
a construction site. It turned out that the time was ripe for him to join.” She
clarified: “An accident took place at work, and it was necessary to punish
someone who was a Party member. But he wasn’t a Party member, so they
quickly enrolled him in the Party so that they could issue him a reprimand.”
Pathologist Olga Kamayurova declined invitations to join the Party. “I can’t
really explain it, but the very idea was unpleasant to me.” However, her husband
“joined the Party because he served in the army. He had to join. That was the
situation back then.”
Only one of the Saratovites who enrolled in the CPSU’s ranks claimed to
have done so for any ideological reason. Yevgeny Podolsky, whose parents
belonged, became a Communist “because I had to,” he said. “The situation was
such back then that if you wanted to work and defend a dissertation, you had to
become a member.” Aleksandr Virich recalled, “I dragged out to the max my

joining the Party, but further advancement at work was impossible without join-
ing. I had to and became a member of the CPSU in 1987.” Lest I miss his point,
he hammered away, “First, I joined the Komsomol because I had to get admitted
to college, then I joined the Party because I had reached my ceiling as a non-
Party member.” Making a career in the military, Aleksandr Ivanov “had to join.”
Irina Barysheva became a Communist because she made a promise to her dying
father she would do so. “But once again, I didn’t get by without connections.
Probably everything’s that way in Russia,” Irina rationalized.
Nor did any of the Muscovites claim to have enrolled in the CPSU for any
noble reasons, with the possible exception of Sergei Zemskov, who became a
Communist in 1986 after Gorbachev promised real change. “Perestroika had
already begun,” he remarked. “That is, I didn’t have any career reasons for doing
so.” His classmates, however, linked their membership to their careers. Said
Anatoly Shapiro: “I joined the Party in 1974 when I was in the army, fully aware
of what I was doing and consciously hating it all.” Maintaining the step proved
necessary because it “definitely helped me at work,” Shapiro expressed “shame”
for what he had done and confessed that his wife “constantly told me that she
didn’t respect me because I had joined. After all, many of my acquaintances
didn’t do so, and they achieved things without the Party.” Mikhail Markovich
enrolled in the Party in 1975, “understanding that I couldn’t advance any further
at work if I didn’t become a Party member. I worked at a very good press that
involved contact with foreign firms.” Uninterested in politics, Georgy Godzhello
claimed, “I joined the Party when they invited me. I don’t know about the lead-
ership, say, in the Politburo, but at the lower level everyone was normal.”
Many of those who joined the CPSU stressed that Party meetings at the work-
place lacked ideological charge. Vyacheslav Starik insisted that meetings at the
Aviation Institute dealt exclusively with work-related and financial issues, and
that “everyone understood that nothing gets decided at Party meetings.” Tatyana
Artyomova echoed this point: “You had to go to meetings, but at them questions
about production were discussed. Nothing else, at least where I worked, but I
assume it was the same elsewhere. How to build something, where to put a
toilet, things like that.” Party cells at the workplace also organized voluntary
work Saturdays, subbotniki, to promote various causes; however, people mostly
looked upon them as an occasion to socialize. Remembered Lyubov Kovalyova:
“Afterward we’d set up a table for everyone, from the lowest assistant to the head
of the laboratory, all fifty of us. There’d be potatoes, cabbage, herring and, of
course, vodka. It was a lot of fun.”
The Cold War generation did not know any committed Communists in their
age cohort. Some Baby Boomers claimed to have been apolitical, but many
decided on principle not to seek out Party membership. And those who joined
did so to advance their careers. A political group like this probably had to
implode.
“ L I F E D R O V E U S A PA R T ”
The cohort born in the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1950 on average com-
pleted their education, took their first job, and gave birth to their first child bet-
ween ages twenty-one and twenty-three. Virtually all—96 percent—married, and
only 13 percent had no children.25 Divorce had been simplified in 1965, and by
1970 the Soviet Union had the highest divorce rate in the world after the United
States. Soviet women initiated divorce more often than men, citing their hus-
bands’ alcoholism and violence as the most frequent cause for the breakup of
the marriage, followed by incompatibility and infidelity. By 1977 one in three
Soviet marriages ended in divorce, but the rates were far higher in cities of
European Russia, where most marriages terminated.26 During the time the Baby
Boomers attended college, 80 percent of freshmen believed it possible to find
their one true love, and 92 percent of college students saw love as a factor in their
own marriage. The high divorce rate thus might reflect unrealistic expectations
spouses had.27 Although love may have been highly regarded, both the state and
many women supported pragmatic marriages that sacrificed romance for sta-
bility, seeing them as an antidote to rising divorce rates.
When the Baby Boomers came of age, the majority of Soviet marriages were
homogeneous in social status and educational levels. Saratov data from the
late 1970s, for instance, show that 63 percent of brides with a higher education
married men with this level or one close to it. The Soviet majority looked
favorably upon interethnic marriage, with the more negative attitudes coming
from those far down on the social scale and, interestingly, the upper intelli-
gentsia. But nationality endogamy remained the rule, except for Jews. Marriage
rates among Slavic groups also were high.28 Some of the interviewees married
foreigners, but these were mostly second marriages registered during the diffi-
cult perestroika years.29
By the 1970s, Soviet women worked and benefited from social welfare pro-
grams, which made them less economically dependent on men. Although peo-
ple did not see themselves as bargaining in selecting a mate, fictitious marriages
and marriages of convenience to obtain living space or residency permits, to
avoid undesirable government assignments, or to Jews or foreigners (in order to
emigrate) were not out of the question. And some married when they got preg-
nant. The majority of cases of parental dissatisfaction came from the groom’s
parents because of the greater value of men in the postwar marriage market. Yet
the position of women by 1970 had improved so much that, in the age cohort in
which the Baby Boomers fell, there were 101.8 males per 100 females.30 All but
three of the sixty interviewees (one female and two male) married.
Many married the year they graduated from college, and children usually
appeared early on. Olga Kamayurova rattled off her history: “We met when I was
Yelena Zharovova got married in 1975 at age twenty-five to a classmate, Ivan Proskuryakov,
also a physicist and research associate at the Academy of Sciences. This photo of the young
couple with Aloysha, their elder son, was taken in 1979. Courtesy of Yelena Proskuryakova
(Zharovova)
nineteen and applied to get married when I was twenty. We got married the day
after I turned twenty-one. My daughter was born when I was twenty-two.” Vladimir
Bystrov joked that he lived up to his surname (which means “fast one”) and got
married at the end of 1969. Aleksandr Babushkin “got married very young” to a
classmate during his first year at medical school and a baby was born soon there-
after. To escape their grim living conditions, he went to work for the government
and received “a fine four-room apartment.” Yelena Kolosova met her future hus-
band at Moscow University in 1967 and they married three years later. Pyotor
Krasilnikov fell in love with someone he met at work. They “ended up in the same
collective farm brigade” and married before he got drafted into the army. In 1971
Vladimir Glebkin married a woman who taught Russian to foreigners where he
worked. Olga Kolishchyuk and her husband became acquainted at a New Year’s
Eve party and married that summer, in 1972. Andrei Rogatnev stressed that his wife
comes from a similar family “and that’s probably why we found each other.”
Although it was uncommon, several females married out-of-towners. Moscow’s
Tatyana Artyomova fell in love with a student from Ukraine whom she met at
Moscow University. Assigned to work in Ulyanovsk oblast after graduating from
med school, Saratov’s Irina Garzanova met her husband, also a physician. They
settled in his home town of Lipetsk, where she lived for twelve years before
returning to Saratov as a single mother. Olga Gorelik married someone from

Odessa she met in Saratov who served in the army. Saratov’s Natalya Yanichkina’s
future husband from Donetsk proposed to her the day after they became
acquainted, while both were on vacation. “He had graduated from the Kiev
Polytechnic Institute, was married, but was in the process of getting a divorce. He
had a two-year-old child when we met. Within a month he visited Saratov and
asked Mama for my hand,” she related. His relatives who had worked in desolate
Magadan, a capital of the Gulag, convinced the young couple to go to work there
to earn double salaries that would enable them to establish themselves when
they returned to Saratov. Related Yanichkina: “My mother was beside herself. We
lived far away from his parents—he had a father who was quite authoritarian—
and from my mother, who loved to take care of me. All of the problems of new-
lyweds cropped up, since we had had little time to get to know each other.”
Moreover, “there were the extreme conditions of the Far North, with tempera-
tures of 50 degrees below zero in the winter and freezing weather even in summer.
Besides, it was a small town, where everyone knew each other. But we were young,
and there was so much that was romantic in all this!” Summed up Yanichkina:
“It was a good time for us. Life had its ups and downs, but we’ve been married for
thirty-one years.” Returning to Saratov when she was pregnant, they realized that
they had not saved enough money to buy a flat, so they signed on for a second
stint in Magadan, leaving their daughter with her mother. When they returned to
Saratov in 1977, her husband had trouble finding work. “This was a period of pro-
tectionism, when patronage opened doors for people. Our friend linked us up
with others who had been up north. We befriended this group. They helped him
and hired him for a well-paying job,” she recounted.
Some bucked the trend by delaying marriage. Aleksandr Virich married
“rather late,” in 1975, “a year after I got out of the army,” to a college English
instructor. The oldest to wed, Olga Martynkina married a divorced physicist in
1983. In Moscow, Igor Litvin married a divorcee with a two-year-old daughter
when he was in his late twenties. “We divorced. Then I got married again,” he
told me. The oldest Muscovite to marry, Leonid Terlitsky, who emigrated to the
United States, met his first wife in Moscow before he left the country. “I came
back eleven years later, married her, and took her out of here.”
Most Baby Boomers maintained that the women influenced the men more
than vice versa, probably because, as Saratov’s Larisa Petrova put it, “I didn’t join
his family, but he, mine.” Like many others, Arkady Darchenko held that his
wife made him more cultured: “I was wild and she instilled in me better manners,
besides everything else.” Aleksandr Babushkin expressed appreciation for his
first wife: “She even helped me study and channeled me into the right direction.”
Vladimir Prudkin treasured the fact that his wife, as he put it, “was very capable
of self-development. There’s been no one else with whom I’ve felt so intimate.”
Vladimir Mikoyan admired the fact that his wife “is good at understanding
people,” while “I, even now, cling to a certain naiveté.”
Olga Martynkina and other Baby Boomers got married in Soviet “wedding palaces.”
The government promoted assembly-line weddings in these establishments to create
new traditions as part of its ongoing campaign to limit the appeal of religion. The
wedding attire reflects Soviet styles in the early 1980s. Courtesy of Olga Zaiko
(Martynkina)
Not surprisingly, most of the women insisted their husbands influenced

them little. Saratov’s Olga Gorelik met her husband after graduating from
college, when her worldview and values were already set. Her point: “Papa
mostly shaped my worldview.” Olga Kamayurova insisted her husband of
twenty-five years “did not influence me at all.” Galina Poldyaeva maintained her
husband “didn’t have any effect on me. I shaped him more.”
Spouses or their families sometimes profoundly altered the Baby Boomers’
political awareness. Saratov’s Irina Tsurkan acknowledged her second husband got
her to think. In short, “he affected me greatly and still does.” He called Lenin a
tyrant and opened Irina’s eyes to things she had not considered or encountered
before. Moscow’s Viktor Alekseyev declared that his second wife’s parents impacted
him in all regards. A professor of physics and a surgeon of oncology, they never
joined the Komsomol or the Party. “There isn’t a single area in which they didn’t
open my eyes,” Viktor said with gratitude, “beginning with politics and how to eval-
uate the Soviet past, because my wife’s grandfathers perished in the camps. And this
was always present in their family. Their outlook on politics, literature, and life in
general also affected me, even more so than that of my own family.” Anna Lyovina’s
parents were “in mourning” when she decided to marry, because her fiancé’s parents
had nothing in common with her own. She claimed her husband was “not at all
ideological. He simply took in all that was going on around him with a smile. If it’s
hoorah, then hoorah. If there’s a demonstration for the Motherland, for the Party,
please. He didn’t know any better.” Their first disagreement came because her hus-
band did not know about Soviet-era repression. “I opened his eyes,” said Lyovina.
Reflecting national trends, roughly half of the Baby Boomers divorced,
usually a few years after getting married or during perestroika, which placed
new strains on relationships. Saratov’s Natalya Pronina represents the first
pattern: she graduated from the institute in 1972, married in 1973, gave birth
in 1974, and got divorced in 1975. Explained Pronina: “He drank heavily.
That’s a national sickness. It’s even part of our mentality.” Now on his third
marriage, Vladimir Nemchenko shouldered most of the blame for why he
got divorced: “I’m ashamed to say there were other women. I chased after
young women and fell in love.” Tatyana Luchnikova married in 1973, but
divorced in 1976 after her son was born. As we shall see, during perestroika
she met a Norwegian businessman in Moscow and married him, only to find
that her second marriage was not without problems either. Representing
those who divorced during perestroika, Aleksandr Babushkin told me he and
his wife “spent twenty-five years together, and got along well. But then I met
another woman, fell in love, and had a baby. And we’re very happy together
and live in complete harmony.” Pyotor Krasilnikov also divorced and remar-
ried. “At first, everything’s fifty-fifty, all of your worries, all of your concerns,
but then the reproaches begin,” he regretted.
Some interviewees admitted they had made a mistake by marrying into the
wrong families or by marrying someone whose interests or lifestyle differed too
much from their own. After falling in love with a dental technician, Saratov’s
Natalya P. got married when she and her boyfriend were twenty. Three days
before the wedding, her parents tried to convince her that he was “from the
wrong family.” The head of her department at the Pedagogical Institute, who
had married a dental technician, even admonished her: “‘Natasha, don’t get
married. A dental technician is a special caste of people, not only a profession.
It’s a way of thinking, a personality type. Knowing you and what it means to be
a dental technician—you don’t have a clue—I know it won’t work out,’” she
warned. It did not, and Natalya took responsibility for her decision.
Viktor Alekseyev married an actress at the Moscow Art Theater in 1977. At first
he found the bohemian theater crowd to his liking: “It was an extreme wing of
the creative intelligentsia that had altogether different behaviors and interests
from the one I consorted with, the scholarly intelligentsia.” This gave Alekseyev
much, but it also ended the relationship after five years. “She could not live oth-
erwise, and I could not exist in that circle,” he concluded.
Lyudmila Gorokhova remembered her first marriage as a nightmare. When her
husband’s pathological jealousy turned abusive, Lyudmila lived in fear and isola-
tion: “I put up with it and decided to get pregnant so that it wouldn’t be so terri-
fying and I wouldn’t face being alone and childless, and then I’d leave him.” She
filed for divorce after the baby was born and moved in with her parents. Her love
affair with her boss and future husband—who is twelve years older—began when
they ended up on vacation together. (The Soviet practice of sending work cohorts
on vacation together made it complicated for families to travel together, giving
rise to vacation romances.) “We were together for twenty days in the south. We ate
meals together, strolled together, lay on the beach together, well, that’s it. He was
mine,” she explained. “The secret rendezvous began after we returned here. He
joined me, when my infant was four, and we’ve been together twenty-five years.”
Poet Bakhyt Kenzheyev married someone who found his address book in a
phone booth and called him to return it. The relationship failed. Fearing that if
he remained in the Soviet Union he would be arrested for parasitism, a code
word used to frame anti-Soviet sorts who did not hold down full-time jobs, he
became determined to marry a foreigner. When he proposed to a Canadian who
worked for Progress Publishers, she offered to take part in a fictitious marriage
in order to help him leave the country, but Kenzheyev refused; they married in
1979 and had a child. After their divorce, he married again, fathered two more
children, and later married another Soviet émigré.
“ S H E WA S N ’ T T H E D AY C A R E T Y P E ”
The Baby Boomers sought to pass on to their offspring the same happy Soviet
childhood they remembered. A good number of their children attended the same
magnet schools or similar ones. There were three differences, however, between
the Baby Boomers’ and their parents’ generations. First, the Baby Boomers had
fewer children. At the end of the 1970s, 52 percent of Soviet families with children
had only one child, a figure that rose to 61 percent in the cities (to compare, 37.7
percent of U.S. families had only one child).31 Troubled by the dip in the birthrate
at this time, the government accelerated its development of social services to ease
women’s lot. Second, grandmothers played a less prominent role in raising the
Cold War generation’s children than they had in bringing up prior generations, as
a result of which the Baby Boomers had to rely more on liberal Soviet maternity
leaves, state day care, nannies, and family support networks to juggle graduate
school, careers, and marriage. Third, Soviet child-rearing practices shifted as the
country opened. A Russian translation of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child
Care published in 1946 was issued in the USSR in 1970, just in time for the Baby
Boomers to test it on their children. In justifying its publication, censors under-
scored that opposition in America to the Vietnam War came not only from Spock
but also from young people raised on his principles. Moreover, Soviet pediatri-
cians challenged Spock’s ideas that went against deeply rooted traditions.32
Recalled Natalya P: “I raised my son very democratically. I read Dr. Spock when he
was born. He was completely free and I practically never punished him. Probably
his upbringing was too democratic. But I’m pleased with my son.”
Soviet women were expected to bear responsibility for child care; as in other
industrialized nations this affected their professional life. “I finished school a
year later than [my husband], because my daughter Maechka was born,” related
Arkady Darchenko and his son in the early 1980s. “By this time I was already earning
a decent living,” recalled Darchenko, yet there was little for him to buy his child in
Saratov stores. Courtesy of Arkady Darchenko
Yelena Kolosova. “I took an academic leave for a year, since there was no one to
look after her. It was very hard to begin again after giving birth.” Up until the
time she had become a mother, Kolosova had competed academically with her
husband, but then lost her ambition. “It was a very important moment that
affected me the rest of my life. I never regretted what I might have become.
I acquired so much being a mother.” The birth of Lyubov Kovalyova’s daughter
delayed her dissertation and had a longer-term consequence: the time she spent
in graduate school has been added to her pension eligibility age. Anna Lyovina
had three children, but this, and the need to look after her parents, affected her
career, because she had to settle for part-time work and for giving private lessons.
Money was in short supply. “I tried hard so that our children would not feel our
poverty,” she remembered, by furnishing their apartment with second-hand
furniture: “You could do anything you wanted at our place. It was fun. All of the
other kids came to our flat.” She sewed them outfits from whatever was avail-
able, including her own skirts, following patterns published in magazines.
State policies on maternity leaves improved in the 1970s, yet women still had
difficulty juggling careers and families. Saratov’s Tatyana Kuznetsova explained that
the state allowed a woman to stay home from work for up to three years to raise
their children. “I took off three years when my son was born, but when my daughter
appeared, my mother helped out a little, and I stayed home for only two years.”
Irina Vizgalova stayed home after her two daughters were born, but returned to
work when her oldest began kindergarten and the younger one went to day care.
Her mother, now retired, fetched them at the end of the day. Irina later gave birth
to a son, and by this time her daughters were old enough to take him to kinder-
garten. Olga Kolishchyuk sat home with each of her two children for a year and a
nanny took care of her daughter for another. “And then, at age two, we tried to send
her to day care, but she wasn’t the day care type.” She got sick repeatedly, and “it
seemed to us that she was afraid that we would leave her there, so once again, we
hired a nanny,” recounted Olga. Irina Garzanova gave birth to a son when she prac-
ticed medicine in Ulyanovsk. When her year-long maternity leave ended, they put
him in day care, but he got sick without end. Her grandmother’s sister came from
Saratov, Irina recalled, “so that Andriusha could be at home with her and not in
day care.” Summed up pianist Olga Martynkina: “My grandmother warned me ‘it’s
impossible to combine music with pots and pans,’ but I somehow tried to do so.”
“ M Y H E AV E N S , T H I S I S S O E X T R A O R D I N A R Y ”
In accounting for the evolution of his worldview, one-time true believer
Aleksandr Trubnikov underscored the significance of coming “into contact with
lots of people. I began to travel to other cities, to Leningrad and Moscow. I began
to interact with others. I began to listen to the radio, to ‘Voice of America,’ and to
BBC.” Many others also mentioned how visits to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—
the closest a Baby Boomer could get to traveling abroad without stepping foot
outside the USSR—expanded their outlooks. Part of the Russian empire before
1917, the Baltic nations had become fiercely independent states in the interwar
period, only to be forcibly taken over by Soviet troops at the start of World War
II. Soviet “liberation” meant crushing local resistance groups and resettling Slavs
into the area. The most “western” of the Soviet republics, the Baltic states had
different historical and cultural traditions that opened Russian visitors’ eyes to
other possibilities, especially when Balts met Russian travelers with stony silence
or other forms of passive resistance.
Saratov’s Aleksandr Virich remembered that, when he traveled to the Baltic in
the late 1960s, his group was not sold movie tickets when they asked for them in
Russian. A decade later he returned with his wife. “She spoke German and they
gave her everything and there were no problems. To be honest, they didn’t like
us there,” recalled Virich. Irina Vizgalova had a similar experience in Lithuania.
“I found it interesting that there was such order and that everything was so clean
in Vilnius. The people, however, are very peculiar and would not answer our
questions when we spoke in Russian. I found it offensive to a certain extent, but
also odd.” The living standard impressed her—as well as other, little, things.
“Lithuania is especially famous for its whipped cream. Before this I had never
seen whipped cream and all sorts of pastries. And all the bars!” Moscow’s Boris
Shtein knew Estonia intimately because his father was born there and often
took Boris to Tallinn to visit relatives. “They treated Russians very poorly and
that was understandable. I think I was aware of this already by age six,” he con-
fided. Besides, Shtein’s father had explained to him “how Russia occupied
Estonia and how, after the war, many Estonian families were deported, among
them many of our close acquaintances and even relatives.”
Hearing about family members’ trips abroad and encountering foreigners at
home also broadened horizons. In 1956, 561,000 Soviet citizens visited sixty-one
countries. Only a few Saratov parents journeyed outside the country and none
hosted foreign visitors from the West, because the authorities had slammed the
city shut. But Moscow was different. Moreover, if, in 1955, only 92,500 foreigners
traveled to the Soviet Union, that figure shot up to 486,000 in 1956, and to
1,033,000 in 1964, and continued to rise.33 Beginning in 1957 or 1958, people
from America began to visit Anna’s Lyovina’s family. She recounted: “A cardiol-
ogist, Dr. White, who treated Eisenhower, considered himself my grandfather’s
pupil.* White came to visit us at home. It was a shock for me because he was
altogether different, as if he were from another planet.” Aleksandr Konstantinov
met his first Westerners in the dormitory at Moscow University: “There was Mark
Brayne, who taught me how to play the guitar. He later became a correspondent
with Reuters.”** Konstantinov also mentioned “a Frenchman, Bernard Kreise,
who played in the Moscow University orchestra. He was a philologist who
became a translator of Russian literature. But real professional contacts with for-
eigners started up after my first conference somewhere in Dresden, probably in
1976. It was there that I began to meet people whose articles I had read.”
Like many students at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Marina Bakutina
worked as a guide-interpreter for foreign tourists each summer. She recalled: “This
is the first time I began to associate with Brits and Americans, and without an
intermediary. I was alone with thirty of them, and this was very difficult because it
was 1968 when I first began working with them and they tormented me with ques-
tions about what I thought of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I could think what-
ever I liked, but not say it.” She received daily briefings on how to answer
provocative questions. Such interactions not only made the necessary political
impression on nineteen-year-old Marina but also improved her English. She dou-
bled up recalling the group of “well coiffed and neatly dressed” Australians, mostly
elderly women, who showed up at the Intourist Hotel. “As we’re greeting each
other, one of them said ‘We came here to die.’ ‘Oh my God, not on my watch,’”
thought Bakutina. “In fact, they wanted to say ‘today.’” Lyubov Raitman confided
that her mother, a French editor at Progress Publishers, often brought French col-
leagues home to work, “but only in Papa’s absence,” for his job as an architect
involved a security clearance. Yelena Zharovova cooked dinner for her scientist
husband’s American, German, and British colleagues. Andrei Rogatnev remem-
bered when a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute returned from a trip to
America, stunning everyone with his account of the use of home computers. “Here
a computer occupies half a room. How could someone bring one home?”
* Her grandfather, M. O. Samoilov, introduced the electrocardiogram in Russia.

** For over thirty years Mark Brayne served as foreign correspondent for Reuters and the BBC
World Service. More recently Mr. Brayne runs Dart Europe, a global resource for journalists
who cover violence and trauma.
Nineteen-year-old Lyudmila Gorokhova from Saratov met an American jour-

nalist in the Hermitage in Leningrad and “spent three hours talking with him
without a stop.” Yet encounters of this sort occurred less often for the Saratovites
and mostly had an East European orientation. Olga Gorelik’s journalist father
had friends in the bloc countries and welcomed many of them to Saratov, espe-
cially from Bratislava, Slovakia, Saratov’s sister city. Tatyana Kuznetsova recalled
the time Gorelik’s father invited a group of Czechoslovakian guests to the island
on the Volga where they camped. “We put up tents. We had a boat. Papa caught
fish, and Mama made fish soup. The visitors liked this a lot. They stayed with
us for several days and saw how we lived out in the wild.” Larisa Petrova
corresponded with friends from Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia she made
at international Pioneer camps, and even had occasion to meet a West German,
with whom she became pen pals. “I remember some concern on my father’s part
when he saw an envelope from West Berlin,” she divulged.
The Baby Boomers also continued to have vicarious encounters with foreign
cultures through movies and books. A film buff, Saratov’s Olga Kamayurova
found ways to satisfy her love for cinema by joining a club. “I like the films they
used to show at film clubs, that is, complicated, sophisticated films not for ordi-
nary viewers,” she stated. “They showed us lots of such films, including, my
heavens, Fellini and Antonioni. It was like food for us movie lovers.” Kamayurova
appreciated these opportunities: “Sometimes, when they picked some sensa-
tional film, I would think, my heavens, this is so extraordinary.”
“ W E S AW T H AT T H E R E WA S S U C H A T H I N G
A S A B ROA D ”
Although Soviet citizens took the system for granted, the more the country
opened up to the outside world, the more they blamed the system, and not
specific leaders, for shortcomings. Foreign radio broadcasts, the growing number
of visitors to the USSR, cultural fads such as blue jeans, rock music, and chewing
gum all gave rise to invidious comparisons. So did the subversive influence of
Eastern Europe. Between 1960 and 1975, Soviet imports of better-made consumer
goods from the Eastern bloc tripled, as glossy popular magazines and lively jour-
nals from the bloc poured into the country. More important, between 1960 and
1976, 11 million Soviet tourists, in addition to official delegations and athletic
teams, traveled to Eastern Europe. Further, 2.5 million Soviet soldiers were sta-
tioned in the bloc countries, sometimes with their families. According to historian
John Bushnell, people’s growing opportunity to draw comparisons with living
standards in Eastern Europe led to “mounting skepticism and cynicism about the
values and performance of the regime in other areas as well.”34 Contributing to
the erosion of patriotism and even Soviet self-legitimacy, foreign travel created an
unquenchable thirst for material goods and services, as well as envy and a sense
of humiliation over the Soviet Union’s poverty and deficits.35 While the mass
intelligentsia certainly had far more curiosity about London, Paris, and New
York, than about Sofia, Prague, or Warsaw, the latter had become accessible.
Indeed, all of the Muscovites and the overwhelming majority of Saratovites I
interviewed traveled to Eastern Europe before perestroika in 1985, and most had
done so already in the 1970s. The year they graduated from school, approximately
650,000 Soviet citizens visited the Eastern bloc; in 1972, when they left college,
936,000 did and, by 1976, the figure had shot up to 1,324,000.36
That so many of the Baby Boomers traveled abroad should not obscure the
fact that travel involved voluminous paperwork, requests for character references,
discussions with the authorities, indoctrination, and “nyets.” Thus foreign travel
could also be subversive in that it pointed to the Soviet authorities’ suspicion of
its own people. Moscow’s Vyacheslav Starik went to East Germany on business
in 1977, complaining that he spent half a year filling out forms: “Back then I
belonged to the Komsomol. I had to show up at the travel commission of the
neighborhood committee and prove that I was normal. I was married at the
time, but didn’t have any children yet. My daughter was born, by the way, when
I was in Germany. In other words, imagine that, instead of carrying out the work
that interests you, you had to sit and fill out forms, forms, and more forms.”
Anatoly Shapiro’s trip to Bulgaria began with a visit to the neighborhood
Komsomol headquarters for a conversation. “Everyone knew that you had to
denounce the United States and the West, that they’re bad and we’re good.
I remember that a young man asked me a question about Negroes in America,
the Black Panthers, and about riots in Los Angeles.”
Yelena Zharovova went to East Germany as a guest in 1983. “The family of a
student from East Germany who wrote her undergraduate senior thesis under
my husband’s supervision invited us. They didn’t let my husband go, but let me
accept the invitation,” she recalled. Zharovova did not understand why such
trips proved to be so difficult. “I had to go for a discussion at the Party committee,
where they could have asked me whatever they liked, including who the first
secretary of the Communist Party of Indonesia was. That is, things that had
absolutely nothing to do with my trip.” She collected eleven signatures for the
journey, “some of which I got routinely, but some of which I had to wait for,”
she griped. Natalya P. remembered being called in for an interview before leav-
ing Saratov: “They asked questions about the history of the country we’d be
visiting. They told us not to go out alone.” Vladimir Mikoyan protested the
onerous paperwork needed to visit Bulgaria. “I returned from a business trip to
Switzerland, where I was part of a delegation on disarmament and decided to
travel with my wife to Bulgaria a month after my return.” Yet they told him at
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that he needed to attend a Party meeting and
have everyone recommend him. “I said I’m going to Bulgaria to lie on the beach.
I’m not going for political reasons, ever the more so because Bulgaria was an
ally.” The instructor from the neighborhood Party committee that led the tour
tried to organize a meeting with Bulgarian anti-fascists during the stay, but
Mikoyan refused to take part, complaining, “I came to relax at my own expense.”

Tatyana Artyomova maintained that “the main problem for people like us was
probably that we couldn’t travel abroad freely.”
Millions, however, thought the hassle involved in arranging foreign travel
was worth it. Visiting Poland in 1976, Tatyana Luchnikova described the “won-
derful, very polite people in Warsaw and the market. It’s a fine country,” she
decided. That summer she went on a business trip to Bulgaria to write about the
ballet competition in Varna for Pulse, a newspaper for youth. “I had a fantastic
time. I liked Sophia so much, and the people are open and wonderful. I would
have stayed there for the rest of my life, but that wasn’t my fate.” When Vyacheslav
Starik visited Dresden, East Germany, the well-stocked shops overwhelmed him:
“And I’m from Moscow. What if I were from the provinces?” Taking part in a
student exchange in East Germany, Viktor Alekseyev noticed that “the standard
of living was higher in East Germany than it was even in Moscow. And our
German partners told us that, on the other side of the Wall, things are even
better.” Andrei Rogatnev traveled to Czechoslovakia in 1978. “I saw that the
Czechs live better than we did. I was impressed when I went into a store and saw
five different kinds of sausage and no line.”
Something else irked Soviet tourists, as Natalya P. remembered: “We were
allowed to exchange a ridiculously small amount of money—100 rubles. Or was
it 30? I had wanted to buy some clothes, but decided not to buy anything.”
Instead, while in Poland “I sat in cafes, drank coffee, and simply observed what
was going on. If I’m not mistaken, we even saw a film in English. We bought
some exotic food items.” Whenever Soviet tourists managed to exchange enough
money, they did what Sofiya Vinogradova did in Bulgaria: “I brought back a
suitcase full of children’s things, because back then it was impossible to buy
anything at home. It was possible only to ‘acquire’ things.”
Those who traveled abroad later in the decade were less stunned by foreign
living standards, because they had heard about them from friends and relatives
who had their passports stamped earlier. Remarked Yevgeniya Ruditskaya
regarding her visit to Prague in 1980: “You know, by that time, I already under-
stood everything.” Yelena Kolosova also visited Czechoslovakia in 1980. “There
were no dramatic shocks for me, but I remember the Czechs’ hatred, which was
totally justified.” Similarly, Saratov’s Aleksandr Babushkin saw Yugoslavia in
1978. Prepared for the difference in living standards, Babushkin nonetheless
noted “the smell in the stores was altogether different.” Some such as Tatyana
Artyomova understood the “cultured socialism” of the Eastern European econ-
omies as a function of the countries’ small size. Saratov’s Olga Kamayurova vis-
ited East Germany in 1976, where she was “astounded” by the standard of living.
“But at the same time I understood that they deserved their standard of living.
We deserved what we had, and they deserved what they had. When a country’s
smaller, people take better care of it.”
Coming from a closed city, Saratovites found that foreign travel to Eastern
Europe, especially to Czechoslovakia, opened their eyes in ways they had not
expected. Arriving in the country on the tenth anniversary of the Soviet inva-
sion, Vladimir Kirsanov met a young musician outside Prague who barked at
him: “‘We have a small, beautiful country. Why do you prevent us from living
how we want?’ Right then and there my view began to change a bit. You must
understand that we saw the events of 1968 from the perspective of committed
Communists.” The experience left an indelible impression: “I remember the
Czechs’ dislike of Russians.” Aleksandr Kutin traveled with the Komsomol to
Czechoslovakia also on the tenth anniversary of the Soviet invasion. The group
was warmly welcomed in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia and sister city of
Saratov, but things were different the closer they got to Prague. “We had to
answer some tough questions and defend ourselves,” he remarked. Natalya
Pronina likewise visited Czechoslovakia on the tenth anniversary of the inva-
sion. “They warned us not to go out and to draw our curtains if we were on the
bus. They might throw rocks. Don’t interact with anyone that day. But since I
was much younger back in 1978, I, of course, went out.” She encountered a local.
“He said that in Czechoslovakia people live better than in the Soviet Union.
Something to the effect that American buses are better than the Ikaris [Hungarian]
buses we rode in. This really astonished me because I believed that it was simply
impossible to be better than in the Soviet Union.”
Soviet travelers came to appreciate the differences between East Central
Europe—Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary—and the rest of
the Warsaw Pact and Soviet zone. Sofiya Vinogradova laughed that, back then,
“people used to say, ‘A chicken is not a bird, and Bulgaria is not a foreign country.’”
Anatoly Shapiro concurred, “We swam there, ran around, drank an awful lot. But
we didn’t feel that Bulgaria fundamentally differed from the Soviet Union or that
it was a foreign country.” East Germany, however, was another matter. Anatoly’s
father, a lawyer, spent nine years there; between 1976 and 1989 Anatoly often vis-
ited his parents who lived in East Berlin. Shapiro remembered “watching Western
television broadcasts and movies.” Saratov’s Larisa Petrova visited Bulgaria in
1983 and 1984, and then Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. She was enthu-
siastic about the private shops in Poland—and about the zucchini squashes. “We
didn’t yet have those cute little squashes.” She found Poland irresistible: “But,
then, I knew Poles for years from attending international youth camps, and my
sister and I were always favorably disposed toward them.”
The comparisons were not just economic. Aleksandr Konstantinov first went
abroad after his sophomore year at Moscow University: “We got rewarded for
our good schoolwork, for our successful presentations, with a month-long trip
to the GDR.* Afterward I was in the GDR several more times. I also traveled to
Poland,” he recalled. East Germany was not without its minuses: “Everything
was far more serious in the GDR than it was back home. We realized that people
there were far more ‘in the dark’ than we were. It was just the opposite in Poland.
* GDR is the acronym for the German Democratic Republic, the official name of the East
German state.
Poland was a free country. The people had a sense of humor and one that was
uniquely Polish.” Saratov’s Natalya P. first went abroad in 1972, when she visited
East Germany and Poland with a Soviet youth group. “I was full of impressions,
but by the end I was eager to get home. I loved Poland. I remember the abso-
lutely incredible impression the Catholic churches made on me, ever the more
so, since here I didn’t go to church. For the most part we didn’t have any,” she
recounted.
Several Baby Boomers lived with their families in Eastern Europe for extended
stays. Saratov’s Galina Poldyaeva’s husband, an army doctor, was stationed in
East Germany between 1974 and 1979. “The standard of living was altogether dif-
ferent than ours,” despite the level of destruction there during the war. She
chalked this up to “a national character trait.” “Things are so clean there. They
scrub the streets with brushes. They wipe windows with special chamois. We
hadn’t seen such things before,” she stated. “Why can’t we create similar condi-
tions? This question bugged me then and bugs me now.” Galina drew a contrast.
“Russians try to take good care of their apartments but, as soon as you step out
into the hallway, it’s terrible,” she pointed out. Efforts were made to promote
positive relations between Soviet troops and the locals, but Poldyaeva never
attended these events. Living in Magdeburg on the border of West Germany,
they were warned to watch their tongues on holidays when West Germans vis-
ited relatives in the East. No, she claimed, the Soviet rockets positioned nearby
“didn’t really weigh heavily on us. We thought everything was fine.”
Saratov’s Olga Kamayurova spent 1979 and 1980 in a small town in the
Carpathian Mountains in Romania, where her husband served as the trade rep-
resentative for Soviet gas equipment. The greater opportunities in Romania to
listen to foreign radio broadcasts impressed Olga: “We listened to Voice of
America there quite openly. There was no interference.” She also commented on
the standard of living: “It was a lot higher than ours, and that’s why I decided to
give birth there. I thought, why should I sit there for two years in vain? Everything
was in abundance in the stores there. I don’t think I’m revealing any secrets, but
here the stores were empty.” The locals treated them well, “but when we went to
the capital it was different. When we went shopping we experienced an arrogant
attitude toward us. When they understood who we were, we felt some contempt,
a certain haughtiness,” she remembered.
That such a striking percentage of the Baby Boomers visited Eastern Europe
makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that some applications were rejected.
Natalya Yanichkina’s efforts to travel abroad “shattered” her ideals. “Well, maybe
that’s going too far,” she reconsidered, “but I experienced great disappointment
and great distress.” A member of the Komsomol at the design institute where
she worked while attending college in Saratov, she applied to go to East Germany
as a tourist back in 1969 or 1970. “I filled out the necessary documents and appli-
cation. There were several stages to this. The Komsomol committee had to
approve the application, then a higher committee, then the Party committee,
then it was sent to your workplace, and finally to the neighborhood Party
committee,” she detailed. But when she turned in the recommendation and
documents to the Party organization at her institute, she ran into trouble. They
said, “‘They all seem to be active, conscious Komsomol members, but if they go
there, they’ll gape at everything, and come back screwed up.’ There was the Iron
Curtain, do you understand? Back then we really did feel it. My heavens, how I
suffered! Precisely because I had put all my heart into Komsomol work, and
then suddenly this distrust. And cynical distrust at that.” Faced with such suspi-
cion, “I thought, damn all this Komsomol work. It was as if they had slapped my
hands. And when they spit in your face like this and when they say one thing
and do another! How could this be? They say that the youth is our vanguard
blah, blah, blah, but in fact, they treat you like this.” Moscow’s Tatyana
Luchnikova was denied permission to return to Bulgaria. She remembered, “I
was so upset and didn’t understand. What did I do?” Luchnikova, who now lives
abroad, concluded, “They simply deprive people of their Motherland. They put
you in circumstances where you can’t breathe. You can’t live. You can’t do
anything. You have to stand at attention, as if you were in the army.”
Despite individual disappointments, the country’s opening meant some
Muscovites even visited the capitalist other in the 1970s. During her fourth year
at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Marina Bakutina won a coveted slot on a
summer exchange program in Birmingham, England. “I remember flying into
Heathrow and hopping a bus. We were glued to the windows. For all fifteen of
us, it was our first trip abroad. Someone in our group said, ‘They’re rotting beau-
tifully.’ It was a spontaneous reaction” to Soviet propaganda that accentuated
the rotting capitalist other. Bakutina related, “There were strict rules that we had
to follow. To go out alone was fraught with very serious consequences.” During
the visit she lived in a dormitory with other Soviet students, except for a home
stay in London. The trip proved subversive: “The teachers came to class wearing
jeans, and they’d sit on the desk. For the first time we saw an altogether different
style of teaching. And they sat us in a circle. It was so informal and natural. It
liberated us,” she emphasized. “For the first time I felt I could speak English
without fearing I’d make a mistake.”
When Tatyana Arzhanova accompanied sports delegations to America in
1974, the Soviet delegation—comprising all men except for Tatyana—was housed
in a men’s dormitory on Staten Island. She was compelled to join them “because
[fearing defections] a Soviet delegation couldn’t be split up. It was so unnat-
ural.” Otherwise the trip exceeded her expectations; local families took the
Soviet visitors into their homes and organized the competitions. “They couldn’t
part with us. It was a time when Americans were discovering Russians. They
wrote about us in all the newspapers.” Writers from Sports Illustrated accompa-
nied the Soviet guests. Arzhanova acknowledged that “I discovered a lot of inter-
esting things for myself. It was like a fairytale. It was my first trip abroad and
suddenly I was in America. There were a lot of memories, a lot that was striking,
but the main thing I remember is that we turned out to be almost like family
with the people around us.”
Few members of the cohort managed to travel to the West at this time, but
not for lack of trying. Lyubov Raitman got turned down when she put in a
request to travel to France, but she was not surprised, because the application
required the applicant to spell out why such a trip was essential. Sometimes
politics got in the way of visiting the West, too. Saratov’s Natalya P. expected to
see England as part of an academic exchange in 1979, but the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan nipped these plans in the bud.
The Soviet government understood the risks involved in opening up. Didactic
literature warned travelers about the psychological warfare carried out by the
West, offering templates for how to behave abroad. Concerned over how citrus-
deprived Soviet tourists might react to tables aching with food, travel etiquette
books explained the correct way to negotiate a Smorgasbord. Whenever a Soviet
tourist doubted how to behave, he or she was reminded that “V. I. Lenin illus-
trates for us an excellent example of behavior abroad.”37 Less they forget this,
travelers to the West underwent special preparation and usually had to “prove”
themselves on earlier trips to the Eastern bloc. Despite KGB briefings before each
of his trips to Eastern Europe, Aleksandr Konstantinov emphasized that “the first
real briefing of this sort that I remember occurred when I traveled to Italy in 1980.
It was my first trip to a capitalist country. We all got called in by the Central
Committee of the CPSU.” Konstantinov was handed instructions to read: “I think
there was the phrase that, if during a trip abroad we ended up in a train
compartment with a person of the opposite sex, we immediately had to register
a protest.” He likewise recalled that “on the second day of the trip to Italy—there
was a conference there—I really wanted to sleep and missed the opening and
showed up late. One of the members of our group pressed, ‘Why did you show
up late? Why didn’t you warn anyone about this?’ I thus understood that he was
put in our group to look after us.” Konstantinov and his companions believed
that “there had to be two of them, one obvious, the other clandestine, one dumb
one, and one smart one. The obvious, dumb one collected information about
everything, and the smart one only about what was important.”
Those who violated the Soviet authorities’ expectations for proper behavior
abroad could suffer dire consequences, as Vladimir Sidelnikov found out.
Enrolled at MGIMO, he prepared for a career as a Soviet trade representative in
Finland, and in this capacity arrived in Helsinki in 1971 to work on his senior
honors thesis. Sidelnikov, who had already begun drinking heavily at school,
guzzled a half dozen Finnish beers one day, after which he left Helsinki with a
Finnish female friend he had met when they served as translators at the presti-
gious Pioneer camp, Artek, the year before. Sidelnikov had failed to inform his
Soviet colleagues that he would not return for the evening, and they undoubt-
edly assumed that he had defected. The decision he made under the influence
of alcohol changed his life. “They sent me home for violating the norms of
behavior of a Soviet citizen abroad,” he stammered. The episode proved so

wrenching that he suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in an eight-month
incarceration in a Soviet mental hospital, which he described as “a nightmare,”
and a two-year leave of absence from MGIMO. Thus began his adult struggle
with alcohol and a debilitating neurological condition that made him an
invalid by age forty.
Ultimately, firsthand experience abroad forced invidious comparison, as
Mikhail Markovich, who took part in government delegations to England, soon
realized. “Frankly speaking, these three or four trips a year allowed us to see
what was going on here. I mean the stagnation.” Comparison sometimes cut
both ways. Some Soviet tourists concluded that things were not as good as they
at first seemed in Eastern Europe—and even in the West. Natalya Pronina felt
this way about Czechoslovakia: “It wasn’t that life was better there but that there
were more goods. These are quite different things. There can be lots of goods,
but what if you can’t afford to buy them? We were able to buy everything that
was available in the Soviet Union, but they couldn’t.” In 1985 Moscow’s Lyubov
Kovalyova began an eighteen-month stay in Hungary. She believed that, had she
arrived only as a tourist, the abundance in the stores would have shocked her. In
the time she spent there, however, she realized that people had to watch how
they spent their money: “I wasn’t left with the impression that everyone lives
better than we do. There they pinched each kopeck,” she believed. Economist
Tatyana Artyomova first came to America in 1980 to join her husband, who was
teaching at Harvard. What she liked about America back then she still likes, and
what she did not like, she still does not. Appalled at the cost of education, she
asserted, “I had the impression that, in this regard, things were simply wrong.
And in regard to health care, too.” Vladimir Prudkin went to Italy in 1980; after-
ward, his theater work took him to “all of Western Europe and much of the
world.” As a result, he believed that his earlier admiration for Western individu-
alism had been inflated and that, “owing to the totalitarian regime, the degree
of spirituality was significantly higher here.” The West had disappointed him. “I
had a mistaken understanding that it was something of an earthly paradise, not
only from the point of view of the development of civilization and its possibil-
ities but also in regard to the development of the individual,” he admitted.
T H E I M PA C T O F C O M I N G T O A G E
One of the most consequential Soviet rites of passage, getting admitted to and
attending college gave the Baby Boomers new insights into how the system
worked and, more important, how to work the system. For the Jewish Baby
Boomers, this also meant practicing “where, when, and with whom to be a Jew.”
The fifth point on applications—nationality—forced them to face realities they
had rarely encountered at school as discrimination now constrained and enabled
them in complex ways that were all too “Soviet.”
Targeting university students as a risk group likely to fall under the seductive
lure of alien ideologies, the CPSU stepped up its efforts to indoctrinate Soviet
youth by forcing them to take five years of required, mostly resented, course-
work. Developments in neighboring Czechoslovakia reinforced the Soviet lead-
ership’s belief in those measures. Many Baby Boomers accepted the government’s
version of 1968, but others had doubts that the KGB’s subsequent crackdown on
dissent at home did nothing to alleviate. The political climate in Moscow dif-
fered from that in Saratov. What young students might get away with in Moscow
threatened local authorities far more in Saratov, who sent a clear message to the
student population that there were limits to what was permissible. The lesson
learned sharpened the growing distinctions between Soviet public and private
life. Many Baby Boomers spoke of the discrepancy between their public behavior
and the truths they shared in private only with trusted friends.
Governments reward loyalty, and the Baby Boomers—newly graduated,
newly married, and newly hired—had other things on their minds than politics,
particularly getting established in life, and this required acting Soviet and
espousing the Party truth for everyone. The potential consequences of falling
out of line, intensified political indoctrination, and sweet tastes of the good life
yielded outward, but not necessarily inward, compliance. The state’s measures,
however, proved to be the wrong antidotes for the appeal of American and
Western cultural symbols that spread more broadly throughout the 1970s.
Necessity and conviction compelled the Soviet government to continue opening
up to the outside world, yet the Kremlin’s efforts to control this process proved
to be one of the greatest delusions the leadership of the USSR made in the
postwar era. The Soviet economy’s mass production of tape recorders, for in-
stance, made Western rock music and officially frowned upon Soviet bard poets
more accessible. In addition to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis, and Bob Dylan,
the Cold War generation added Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Bruce
Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Prince, among others, to their repertoire. Knowledge
of English had made the world a smaller place.
The Baby Boomers came of age when alienated European and American
youth took to the streets. Soviet youth, too, felt at odds with older generations
and had some awareness of their foreign counterparts’ activism, but their own
anxieties were due to their age and not to any searching inventory of the system.
Yet, growing up in the comparatively tranquil environment of the post-Stalin
era, their formative experiences differed fundamentally from those of their par-
ents. Visiting the Soviet Union at the time, journalist Georgie Anne Geyer noted
that “it was a generation free of the fear that has permeated Russian life and it
was a generation which . . . might just be able to give us a shadowy preview of
what the future Russian man and world might be like.”38 Fast-forwarding to the
Gorbachev era, Geyer’s observations seem particularly prescient when viewed
through the lens of an important survey of Soviet public opinion, which dem-
onstrated that, ironically, the young and successful in the Soviet 1970s—the Baby
Boomers—were the most politically mobilized in that they had joined all of the
correct political organizations (again, all of them had enrolled in the Komsomol).
None of them belonged to nationalist or dissident movements or otherwise
challenged the authorities. But they were also the most likely to listen to foreign
radio broadcasts, read samizdat, and worm their way out of participating in
Soviet voting and other public rituals.39 When Gorbachev came to power, they
were ready for sweeping change, even if they did not espouse it.
Historian David L. Ruffley takes issue with those who argue that the mass
intelligentsia at this time came to reject the system that “had made them the
most highly educated and materially affluent generation in all of Russian his-
tory.” He maintains that the “children of victory” accepted the role of the
Communist Party and worked within the system to solve the problems facing
society.40 There is a crucial distinction, however, between working within the
system and believing in it. The Baby Boomers’ attitudes toward the CPSU
remained ambiguous, revealing a correlation between career trajectories and
family attitudes in regard to those who became Party members. Virtually
everyone who enrolled in the Party maintained that they had to do so in order
to advance their careers. Although this is the same argument some made
regarding their parents’ generation, none of the interviewees professed to have
been a conscious true believer—or to have known any, whereas a good number
of them cast their parents as such. Voicing these opinions after the system’s col-
lapse, it is possible that their memories are revisionist on this point; nonethe-
less, this tells us how the cohort feels about Russia today. Anatoly Shapiro, for
one, expressed shame that he had been a Party member. Belying the notion that
those who joined the Party had to do so to advance their careers, Shapiro
acknowledged having non-Communist friends who became accomplished
specialists.
“It’s better to see something once than to hear about it seven times,” goes a
Russian proverb. The desire to travel represented an important element of the
Soviet dream that the government delivered on because, in forcing Eastern
Europe to become “theirs,” Soviet leaders had to make it accessible to its own
citizens. Those who traveled—and the vast majority of the Cold War generation
did—changed. Yevgeny Podolsky spoke for many: “They brought us up to
believe that they were our ‘little brothers.’ But, as things turned out, it was the
other way around. When I went to Eastern Europe and compared how they lived
and we lived, it made an impression.” Yelena Zharovova recalled that “the first
impression of foreigners is, My God, they’re just like us, but the second impres-
sion is they’re so different.” Those who never left the USSR changed, too.
Aleksandr Virich mused, “I never had a desire to go abroad. Perhaps subcon-
sciously, I understood that if I see that they live better there, I’d become a dissi-
dent, and who needs this?”
5 LIVING SOVIET
DURING THE
BREZHNEV-ERA
S TA G N AT I O N
“Many jokes circulated back then that reflected how things really were,” com-
mented Natalya Yanichkina. “I remember one joke from the period when
everyone is traveling by train and the tracks come to an end. ‘Shake the train,’
Brezhnev said, ‘and let them think that we’re still moving.’ People told the jokes
freely and weren’t particularly afraid.” One particularly biting one mocked his
fondness for accolades he did not deserve, such as military decorations. “What
would happen if a crocodile ate Brezhnev?” goes one of them. “It would be shit-
ting medals for weeks.” Irina Tsurkan touched upon another characteristic of the
Brezhnev era (1964–82): “Back then,” she related, “we drew up all sorts of fool-
ish plans; everything was, in a subtly cunning way, broken, but living this way
provided us insane pleasure. And we could find fault with Brezhnev on top of
this. We could make fun of him and pick on him! We were unfair to him,” she
concluded. “We should thank him for creating the conditions that allowed us to
live that way.” How did the Baby Boomers remember life in the Brezhnev period?
Why did the vast majority of them subscribe to the image of the Brezhnev years
as a “period of stagnation”?
D E V E L O P E D S O C I A L I S M O R L AT E S O C I A L I S M ?
Leonid Ilich Brezhnev masterminded the coup that toppled Khrushchev in 1964.
After presenting themselves to the Soviet public—and to the world—as a
collective leadership, Kremlin leaders divided the spoils. But Brezhnev as First
Secretary (later General Secretary) of the Communist Party and Alexei N. Kosygin
as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (responsible for the economy) occu-
pied the pinnacles of power. Brezhnev stressed the need to modernize Soviet
agriculture and to build the world’s most powerful military force. In contrast,
Kosygin called for providing Soviet workers with incentives—longed-for
LIVING SOVIET DURING THE BREZHNEV ERA | 221
consumer goods—that would result from giving enterprises more power to pro-
duce for a market, thereby weakening the stranglehold of centralized Moscow
ministries. Similar reforms had already gotten off to a promising start in Eastern
Europe. By the early 1970s, however, and especially after the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968, economic reform had become a dead issue as Brezhnev
secured his position as the USSR’s supreme leader. Brezhnev now pushed to
improve the country’s living standards and, in the aftermath of the negative
fallout from the Soviet Union’s crushing of the Prague Spring, to promote better
relations with the United States by relaxing international tensions, an initiative
known as détente. This policy and a sharp rise in world oil prices allowed the
Soviet Union, an oil exporter, to spend on agriculture, consumerism, Siberian
development, and defense, but not on industrial expansion.1
As a result, crisis conditions fell into place. The Soviet economy had become
more complex, but in failing to implement Kosygin’s decentralization reforms,
planners found it increasingly difficult to manage the economy from centralized
Moscow offices. The concomitant slowdown in industrial expansion in the 1970s
began to erode the Soviet elite’s confidence in the command-administrative
system. There was also the problem of Khrushchev’s unspoken legacy. In 1936,
Stalin proclaimed that the Soviet Union had achieved socialism. In 1961,
Khrushchev declared that the USSR would surpass the United States in per capita
production by 1970 and attain true communism by 1980. Yet 1970 had come and
gone. The Brezhnev leadership dealt with Khrushchev’s promises as if he never
had made them. Instead, Kremlin leaders rationalized that, under Brezhnev, the
country had reached the historical stage of “developed” socialism, a term that
implied an ongoing evolution toward communism.
Moreover, reacting to Khrushchev’s endless assaults on the system and his
attempt to divide the Party into agricultural and industrial constituencies,
Brezhnev left authority relations untouched, promoting a policy known as “sta-
bility in cadres” that secured officials in their positions. This guiding principle
of his rule enhanced his support within the Party, but it ultimately entrenched a
gerontocracy, personified by the Politburo itself, which at the end of the Brezhnev
era was populated by feeble old men. This turn of events proved demoralizing,
because, since Stalin’s time, upward career mobility had guaranteed the loyalty
of Soviet officials and citizens and legitimated the system. It likewise encour-
aged corruption and the misuse of power throughout the system—and society.
What later became known as Brezhnev-era stagnation found reflection in Soviet
foreign policy, too. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 dealt a final blow
to détente, as President Jimmy Carter put a stop to arms control negotiations
and America withdrew from the 1980 Moscow Olympics. And that summer
Polish miners launched the reform movement known as Solidarity, which rep-
resented a stinging critique of Soviet rule.2
Yet it took time for the Cold War generation to realize the real limits of
the Soviet dream. During the Brezhnev era, Soviet propaganda organs, despite
détente, continued to paint a picture of the United States—the preeminent

symbol of the capitalist world—in somber hues as a place where the Almighty
Dollar still ruled. American domestic and foreign policy gave Soviet propagan-
dists plenty with which to work: the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam War,
Watergate, race riots in urban America, economic crises, alarming rates of
unemployment, and an angry youth movement, to name a few. Further, capital-
ism’s own ideological critics from within debated what they saw as signs of
decay in “late capitalism,” a term suggesting that capitalism as an economic
system, like others, is historically limited and destined to be replaced.3 The fate
of the USSR, however, suggests that the Baby Boomers were not only the gener-
ation of developed socialism but also of “late socialism”: the system was
approaching its limits and was fated to be supplanted, ironically, by (late)
capitalism.
During Brezhnev’s late socialism, the Baby Boomers earned acceptable sal-
aries and lived in decent apartments. They owned basic household appliances
and sometimes even automobiles. They felt deep appreciation for state owner-
ship of industry, free education, subsidized day care, afterschool programs for
children, socialized healthcare, generous paid vacations, subsidized housing,
job security (and slack discipline), and an early retirement age (between fifty-
five and sixty). In exchange for compliance, the system offered promotions,
safety, stability, and privileges, including travel abroad.4 Those who conformed
also might have access to foreign goods, special stores, cash bonuses, dachas
(country cottages), cars, and membership in elite professional associations.
But the further opening up of the Soviet Union encouraged the Cold War
generation to make invidious comparisons. By the 1980s Soviet salaries averaged
just over $200 a month, and $250 to $300 when factoring in other free privi-
leges, whereas they fell into the $1,000–$2,000 range in the United States,
Britain, and France.5 The Soviet living standard placed the country between 20th
and 30th in the world.6 Although they knew that their counterparts in the West
lived better materially, many Soviet citizens still believed in the advantages of
the socialist system. In a national survey of the population in 1976, respondents
evaluated the quality of their lives with a grade of “4” on a five-point scale,
awarding the quality of life in socialist Czechoslovakia a “5,” and life in the
United States a “2” or a “3.”7 The Soviet intelligentsia in general, however, more
so than the rest of the population, expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of
goods available to them,8 grousing about food deficits, long lines, and shoddy
consumer goods, and the need for blat—connections—to obtain many coveted
things. Owing to ubiquitous food shortages, many felt that agriculture should
be privatized.9 Furthermore, during Brezhnev’s years in office, the Baby Boomers’
evolving aspirations “magnified social envy,” creating the desire to “keep up
with the Joneses.”10
It would be tempting, but naïve, to conclude that by the 1980s the majority of
people had turned against state socialism; however, dissatisfaction with living
conditions, and the growing feeling that the economic model itself needed
tweaking, was one reason state socialism lost mass support when the time
came.11 To compete on the economic front, the Soviet system needed to supply
more consumer goods despite the wayward work habits and low productivity of
laborers, and the ideological subversion taking place as the country opened to
the outside world. Under Stalin, the Cold War generation’s parents wanted
political peace and an improved living standard. Under Brezhnev, this was no
longer enough: the growth of education had eroded support not only for the
state’s running of the economy but also for its record in human rights. To
improve the country’s image abroad, the Politburo engineered détente without
softening its determination to squash dissent at home. It signed the Helsinki
Accords in 1975, which not only recognized postwar borders but also the
“universal significance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” One
obtained the Soviet dream, however, by working the system, not by challenging
it. None of the interviewees joined the human rights movement, although the
vast majority sympathized with it, tested the limits of the permissible, and ques-
tioned aspects of the Marxist economic model. Later, a good number of them
emigrated, especially during perestroika. Others considered the option and this
speaks volumes to the health of the system.
“ M U S C OV I T E S L I V E I N T H E I R OW N S P E C I A L WO R L D ”
The Moscow and Saratov Baby Boomers experienced the economic realities of
late socialism differently. Saratov’s status as a closed city placed it off limits to
foreigners, except for those from Soviet bloc countries who had an official reason
to travel there. The Cold War generation recalled visitors from Czechoslovakia
in the 1970s, when Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, and Saratov became sister
cities. But the restrictions extended to just about everyone else, even Cubans.
When Irina Chemodurova took her graduate degree in Moscow, she had a
Cuban roommate. “She wanted to come here to visit, but as soon as she inquired
at her embassy they told her ‘don’t even try,’” remembered Irina.
Most of the Baby Boomers did not give Saratov’s closed status much thought
until the Soviet Union opened and they became more aware of what they might
have missed. That was because, as Aleksandr Trubnikov suggested, “When you’re
young, you’re more interested in other things.” Then, too, living in a closed city
made it easier to believe in the system. “You have to bear in mind that I saw a
foreigner for the first time when I was probably around thirty. Life was probably
different in Moscow, but we stewed in our own juices.” Aleksandr Konstantinov
put the issue in larger context: “We knew that Saratov was closed, but that every-
thing else was closed too.” Then, too, according to Natalya Yanichkina, “we
didn’t feel that we lived in a closed city, because if someone’s work or profession
required a trip abroad, they went. For example, Galya Kiselyova attended school
with me. Her father was the first secretary of the local trade union council. They
were in Africa and someplace else.” The city’s closed status, however, troubled
those who believed their professional lives would have been enriched had the
restrictions been lifted. Tatyana Kuznetsova and others who teach English found
Saratov’s closed status “a pity,” because it deprived them of contact with native
speakers. Pianist Olga Martynkina averred that Saratov’s closed status “was felt.
We didn’t have any actors or artists on tour, and they didn’t let everyone from
here go abroad.”
The situation in Moscow differed so much that Soviet citizens inhabiting the
provinces spoke about the capital with pride, admiration, and with sausage
envy. Aleksandr Konstantinov recalled, “When I moved to Saratov as a kid, they
called me ‘Sasha the Muscovite.’ People felt that Muscovites were privileged peo-
ple. Muscovites, and those from Leningrad, too, were people from the two cap-
itals, and people looked up to them.” Konstantinov understood as a child that,
after finishing school in Saratov, he would enroll at Moscow University or at the
Moscow Conservatory. “Things probably would have turned out altogether dif-
ferently had I remained in Saratov,” he believed. “It’s impossible to really carry
out scientific research there. Despite this,” he continued, “I consider Saratov my
hometown and I remain an outsider in Moscow. The city remains ‘other.’”
The economic difference between Moscow and Saratov made a far greater
impression on the Cold War generation than the fact that Saratov remained
closed to foreigners. Packed with military factories, Saratov offered competitive
pay and perks for workers in the defense industry, but the economic situation,
reflecting national trends, began to deteriorate in the late 1970s. The spasms of
the Soviet economy affected Muscovites, too, but many of them could count on
a special system of food orders at the workplace that provided them with other-
wise hard-to-get items, and this, in an unintended way, benefited provincial
consumers who coped with local shortages by traveling to Moscow for meat,
other food items, and special purchases. “What’s green, clatters, and smells like
sausage?” queried Aleksandr Virich. “The train from Moscow that’s approach-
ing.” He counted on two week-long business trips to Moscow each year in
addition to short quarterly forays there to stock up on food. During the week-
long stays he wrapped up his affairs early, freeing up at least two days for
shopping. “Everything was planned out. I knew where all of the stores were, and
what to look for.”
Natalya Yanichkina described a typical trip: “I worked in a construction
company and our trade union paid for half the cost of the trip. We’d hop on the
train after work on Friday and arrive in Moscow the next morning. We’d spend
all Saturday shopping and would leave Moscow on Saturday evening, returning
to Saratov on Sunday morning.” Because trade unions paid half the ticket price,
people did not travel often. However, “people had to do it, for example, before
a holiday or special occasion,” acknowledged Yanichkina, “and they were thank-
ful that an organization helped to make such a trip possible.” Tatyana Kuznetsova
certainly was. She expressed gratitude that she had the option to catch a train to
Moscow. “It was so easy and simple to get a ticket there for 14 rubles and a
ticket back for 14 and to bring back everything you needed.”
The vast majority of Saratovites indulged themselves in Moscow shopping
sprees. One of the few who did not, Irina Chemodurova, insisted that shortages
were in the eye, or stomach, of the beholder. “As strange as it may seem, our
family was almost ascetic. If there is, there is; if there isn’t, we’ll do without.
There were no privileges or no shortages.” Olga Gorelik shared her resignation,
but not Irina’s coping strategies. “It was always hard to live in Saratov. If you had
to go to Moscow, you had to go to Moscow,” remarked Olga. “I didn’t get bent
out of shape over it.” Nor did others. Olga Kolishchyuk’s family lived off of her
husband’s salary, stashing hers away for annual summer shopping sprees in
Moscow. “In Saratov you could get things only through blat. We’d go to Moscow
for meat, sausages, delicacies, smoked fish, and for clothing, of course, and
shoes, and everything,” which, according to Irina Tsurkan, Saratovites called
“imports.” Aleksandr Kutin “never returned from a business trip to Moscow
without meat and sausages. Moreover, it was more expensive here,” he com-
plained. “There you could buy it at state prices, and here only at the farmers’
market.” As a result, “I didn’t like Moscow at the subconscious level.” “All of
Saratov was in Moscow,” joked Galina Poldyaeva. Many of her husband’s rela-
tives lived there, “and they sent us parcels from there,” she recalled. “But it was
easier to make arrangements with a train conductor or go there yourself. People
went there on business trips, to conduct research, to improve their professional
qualifications.”
Indeed, government officials from the provinces made a million trips a year
to Moscow for seminars or conferences, and, in half the cases, without any legit-
imate reason to go.12 The same was true of Leningrad and of the capitals of some
Soviet republics. Irina Tsurkan related that once she spent two months in
Leningrad on a research trip. “When we left there, a girlfriend’s relative loaded
us down with food. He worked at what we’d call a high-ranking sinecure or
feeding trough, and he stocked us up with an inexpensive assortment of things
out the back door.” Irina brought home all sorts of tasty items unavailable in
Saratov. “My husband was outraged,” she related. “He’d eat the things with plea-
sure, but he wouldn’t buy them himself.”
Natalya Pronina spoke for many others when she pointed to a paradox in
Soviet life: “The stores were empty, but people’s refrigerators were full. Life was
simply organized differently.” Most of the interviewees agreed with Natalya
Yanichkina, however, who saw the irony of traveling to Moscow “to buy sausage
that was produced at a Saratov meatpacking plant. Some people thought that
the meat was taken there because Moscow is the capital, and who, after all,
comes to Saratov? No one. Everyone needs to see how wonderful things are in
the capital.” Although people saw this as a crude form of window dressing,
Yanichkina added that “we were tolerant of it. People believed that’s how it
should be.” Aleksandr Trubnikov understood that Moscow was a showcase:
“Foreigners had to see how good things were in the Soviet Union. They simply
weren’t allowed to visit Saratov, so no one was interested in how people lived
there.” For Olga Martynkina this “was the fate of provincial cities. Everything
was sent to the capital. Traditionally, the standard of living had been higher
there.”
Arkady Darchenko and others, however, found this situation humiliating.
“I simply didn’t understand why we had to travel 800 kilometers for sausage. It
seemed to me that something was wrong with our country. The people were the
same here and there. So, why in regard to food were things so different?” As a
student, Darchenko had spent time in the science city of Dubna outside Moscow,
where “things were even better than in Moscow.” Darchenko had in mind more
than availability: “There were always lines in Moscow and crowds. But not in
Dubna. I wondered why the entire country couldn’t live that way. We under-
stood that things weren’t right, but this didn’t turn us into active revolutionaries.
We were busy doing our own thing.” Natalya P. reacted “with indignation” over
the difference in living standards. She often journeyed to Moscow for months
when she worked on her graduate degree, leaving her child with her husband
and parents: “I sent them endless packages of hotdogs and sausages through the
train conductors.” Blaming the situation on a lack of organization, Gennady
Ivanov likewise found it “disgraceful.” This former Communist turned his
response, however, into yet another opportunity to criticize the West: “I realize
that, with the Soviet system, you could hardly achieve the level of abundance
you have in the West,” Ivanov acknowledged. “But does it matter if there are two
varieties of sausage or ten? Is that really the meaning of life?”
Perhaps not, but the inconvenience of obtaining such basics put the system
on trial, as Yevgeny Podolsky suggested in placing the sausage-train phenomenon
in broader perspective. In his youth, Podolsky believed Moscow was entitled to
better provisioning because the most important people in the country lived
there. “But the older I became,” he explained, “the more discontented I grew
over this. I remember the awful times in Saratov in 1962 and 1963 when there
wasn’t any bread, and they passed out a small roll in school each day.” Like
others, he mentioned the “terrible lines” for bread, and the so-called Zabaikal
loaf “of rye, whose color was indeterminate. They baked bricks of it. It had a
crust, but when you’d take it home and cut into it there was nothing but black
dough. You could eat only the crust.” There was no butter at times, either. In
such cases his mother would buy sour cream and have him beat it. “They began
to sell jars. When you cranked the handle it would turn the egg whisks and you
could whip butter from sour cream.”
Things got better until the mid-1970s. “Then the so-called sausage trains to
Moscow appeared, when there was nothing in Saratov and people started to
travel to Moscow. The trains were packed. This really irritated us and some dis-
content began to emerge.” Others, too, observed that provisioning worsened in
Saratov at the time. Irina Vizgalova reminisced about a time in the 1970s when
“you could go to the store and buy only 200 grams of sausage, 200 grams of
cheese, and that was it.” She also recalled, “We didn’t have any oranges, and
there in Moscow they were piled up. Oranges, then bananas. You could find
bananas only in Moscow.”
Saratovites also hated how Muscovites treated provincial shoppers. “When
you stood in line to buy something, they’d say to you, ‘I need to buy just a little
bit, but he’s buying up so much that I have to wait in line for so long because of
it.’ I’d say, ‘don’t get upset, Granny, they’ll bring you more, they’ll bring it from
us,’” recalled Aleksandr Kutin. Irina Vizgalova responded to hostile Muscovites
similarly: “They thought that visitors bought up all of their things and there
would be nothing left for them to eat, even though they received special food
orders at work so that they wouldn’t have to stand in line, and things were
cheaper and more available.” Aleksandr Virich added that Muscovites “who had
relatives in the provinces and who understood our difficult life treated us well.”
Olga Gorelik’s relatives did, but she admitted that other Muscovites “snubbed”
her; after all, “Muscovites are Muscovites.” Vladimir Sidelnikov agreed with the
Saratovites that Muscovites resented provincial shoppers, but, like them, he saw
a lesson in this: “I understood that if they come from Saratov for sausage, there’s
something wrong with the economy.”
Saratovites likewise resented how some Muscovites made them feel inferior,
as if a certain mindset marked someone from the provinces, and they felt a need
to challenge this way of thinking. Irina Chemodurova admitted that she was “in
awe of the big names” she encountered in Moscow, but she did not consider
Saratov provincial because, as she explained, “there’s a university here, and the
same kind of people I saw in Moscow.” Lyudmila Gorokhova recognized a
difference in Saratov’s favor: “Back in those years Moscow felt like a bazaar. We
have more spirituality, more resourcefulness, or something.” Whenever she vis-
ited the capital, Irina Vizgalova also squeezed in a visit to an exhibit or other
cultural attractions. “We tried not only to make our rounds of the stores but also
to have a cultural program—to go to the Lenin Mausoleum, to an exhibit, to an
opening of something, or to do something else. We weren’t all workers and
peasants,” she said derisively.
Many Muscovites might have railed against provincial shoppers and slighted
them, but the Baby Boomer cohort claimed not to have done so. According to
Vladimir Bystrov, “Saratovites don’t vastly differ from Muscovites. I’ve been to
Saratov. The people are the same.” His classmate Georgy Godzhello believed
“a well-bred person relates to others in a well-mannered way, a poorly bred
person in an ill-mannered way,” no matter where someone is from. Valentin
Ulyakhin added that “the overwhelming majority of the population of Moscow
comes from provincial towns. Therefore, Moscow, figuratively speaking, is a
big village.”
Still, “the difference between Moscow and Saratov was huge, and still is,”
observed Olga Gorelik. Natalya Pronina was of the same mind: “There’s no
difference between what was and what is. Muscovites live in their own special
world. They don’t live like the rest of the country does. Both then and now
people in Moscow are better paid and receive the best goods.” Aleksandr
Babushkin confirmed that “Moscow’s still better. It’s a real beauty. It’s reached a
European level in terms of cleanliness and architecture.” However, the rise of a
market economy has benefited those living in Saratov. Olga Kolishchyuk’s
daughter now lives in Moscow. Explained Olga: “When we went to visit her
recently she said, ‘Mama, tell me what you’d like to buy here and I’ll take you to
stores to show you what’s where.’ ‘Nothing,’ I told her. ‘We can now buy every-
thing in Saratov.’” If before Olga and her husband would return home weighed
down with things, they “now travel lightly. In this regard there’s no comparison
with before. Now the only problem is to have enough money. If you have money,
you can buy anything you like.”
“ I T WA S I M P O S S I B L E T O G E T B Y W I T H O U T B L AT ”
Olga might also have said that, back then, the only problem was to have the
right connections, or blat, because everyone resorted to acquiring goods and ser-
vices nalevo (by outright illegal or at best questionably legal methods). “It was
impossible to get by without blat. That’s probably the way it is in Russia,” lec-
tured Saratov’s Irina Barysheva. Blat represented the personal networks that
Soviet citizens used, and the informal deals they made, often in the rhetoric of
friendship, to obtain goods and services. The site where personal needs and rela-
tionships intersected, blat was made necessary by the Soviet economic structure
that had created a socialism of deficits, and became an essential, even defining,
feature of the economy. Everyone had it in some form or another depending
upon one’s social standing, and everyone resorted to it. Although Saratovites
might have looked upon Muscovites with envy, they shared a set of common
survival strategies to cope with systemic problems of the Soviet economy that
everyone faced. Blat topped the list.
By this time the Soviet economy could not function without blat. In fact,
economist James Millar called the Brezhnev government’s accommodation of
private trade and even the theft or personal illegal use of government property
part of a tacit “little deal” struck between the government and its acquisitive cit-
izenry.13 It, too, should be considered, according to economist Alena Ledeneva,
as yet another consequence of the highly centralized and controlled Soviet
system of distribution. Yet the strategies ordinary people designed to make the
system function for them also subverted it.14 Ledeneva’s ethnography of blat also
points to a fascinating paradox: people she interviewed claimed blat permeated
the system, but they did not admit their own role in it, recognizing blat when
others resorted to it, yet describing the phenomenon in terms of friendship and
mutual help.15 The Baby Boomers, however, fully acknowledged their role in the
economy of favors, perhaps because I interviewed them in the new millennium,
after the Russian economy had stabilized and blat had lost some of its Soviet-era
urgency.
But in the 1970s, across the USSR, the need to resort to blat made who one
knew all the more important. “Everyone resorted to blat,” affirmed Olga Gorelik.
“What’s there to say?” For instance, Olga Kolishchyuk remembered how her
mother took charge of obtaining what the family needed: “She had acquain-
tances among pilots. She was a doctor [it was customary to pay Soviet doctors in
kind], and they’d ask her, ‘I’m flying to Moscow. What can I bring you?’” “There
was nothing you could do about it. To recall this now is both funny and
unpleasant,” opined Vladimir Bystrov. “We couldn’t buy a thing in the stores,”
remembered Yevgeniya Ruditskaya, “beginning with food and ending with
everything else. Everything had to be gotten hold of through blat. That’s how we
lived.” Viktor Alekseyev echoed these sentiments, noting that blat was needed
not only to obtain food and clothing, “but also tickets to interesting events, or
slots in tourist groups to popular places. All of this was mostly done through
unofficial ties. Without them, there’s little you’d be able to do.” Anatoly Shapiro
confirmed this: “There was inequality associated with blat, blat, and more blat,
the need to acquire things through blat, to get in somewhere, to go somewhere,
to eat somewhere. It was repugnant.” Leonid Volodarsky agreed: “You felt the
difference between yourself and others whenever you’d visit someone at home
who was able to get hold of things. You could either protest or adapt yourself to
the system.” The inequality of it all also grated on Natalya P.: “I was offended
that the daughters of Party officials could get hold of some wonderful boots,
and I couldn’t, because back then it was necessary to ‘obtain’ everything. It was
a shame, yet we accepted this as a fact of life.”
Saratov’s Galina Poldyaeva and Irina Barysheva offered examples of how
their families resorted to blat so that they could be well dressed on graduation
night at School No. 42. “My mother had an acquaintance who married someone
in the military,” shared Poldyaeva. “They were stationed in East Germany. She
sent me a parcel from there before graduation that had material for a dress and
a pair of shoes—pointed high heels that were the fashion back then.” Thus,
despite the shortages, “we were well dressed because someone knew the head of
a warehouse or a person knew someone somewhere who could get something.”
Irina Barysheva’s family had a different form of blat: access to closed stores for
Party functionaries, diplomats, and foreign visitors known as Berezki, where
goods were exchanged for special coupons or purchased in foreign currency.
“My father was sometimes given coupons for the Berezki. When I graduated
from school, I needed a dress and shoes. My father and I went to Moscow, and
he bought me shoes.”
People also resorted to blat to save time. Natalya Yanichkina explained that,
owing to blat, she did not stand in lines. “I had an acquaintance who worked in
the sausage shop across the street. I’d go to her through the back door and ask,
without humiliating myself too much, if she’d sell me a piece of sausage. It
would all depend upon her mood. Sometimes she’d say no. I felt humiliated
doing this.” Aleksandr Virich related how blat worked during his work-financed
shopping sprees in Moscow. “Let’s say I had to make a call at the ministry. The
parents of one of the officials lived in Saratov. Each time I’d cart an extra suitcase
full of stuff for them. His job was to pack it; my job was to drag it back and
deliver it. Thank God they lived only four blocks from me.” Why did he do this?
“When I’d show up and say to him, ‘hey, listen, I need something,’ he’d reply,
‘Arkady Grigoryevich, we’ll fix things for you right now. We’ll go right now and
settle things.’”
Irina Barysheva’s testimonial suggests the complicated ways blat permeated
the system, causing conflicts of interest and, ironically, even playing a role in
determining Party membership. An acclaimed teacher, she taught English at a
top school in Saratov. “The children of our local Party elite go there. And there-
fore my family had more possibilities than many others. I could get food items
at distribution centers, because the parents of my pupils worked there.” As she
concluded, “My work gave me certain contacts, and there were others left over
from my father. My husband was not badly connected either.” When Barysheva
promised her dying father that she would join the Party, she encountered diffi-
culties after a teacher at the Party cell at the school where Irina taught, a respected
old Bolshevik, voted against her, insisting Irina was an “aggressive schemer.”
Distraught, Barysheva tried to plead her case before the neighborhood Party
committee. “But the solution proved to be quite simple,” clarified Barysheva.
“The first secretary of the neighborhood Party committee that admitted me into
the Party was the parent of a girl in my class. He somehow covered up the matter,
and they admitted me.”
In sum, blat stood at the center of the systemic corruption permeating
everyday life, from enterprises falsifying accounts to on-the-job stealing, private
and illicit economic activity conducted during work hours, and freelance work,
which the state frowned upon. The precariousness of people’s living conditions,
their personal qualities, the routine system of bribing and gift giving connected
with blat, and the lack of fear of punishment fueled corruption, which, in an
odd way, represented yet another form of private activity not controlled by the
state and a lack of respect for collective property.16 Ledeneva may have gone too
far in arguing that blat subverted the Soviet system, but it certainly helped to
undermine it. Blat also served to constrain and enable economic developments
in the immediate post-Soviet Russia. As goods and services become more avail-
able, however, the need for blat began to recede.
“ T H E S H E LV E S B E C A M E E M P T Y ”
Apart from boarding the sausage trains to Moscow and resorting to blat,
Saratovites shopped at farmers’ markets or at a network of cooperative stores
that did not exist in Moscow. As Galina Poldyaeva recalled, “My mother tried to
buy everything at the farmers’ market so that it was of good quality.” According
to Pyotor Krasilnikov, “in regular stores the potatoes were small and dirty. The
quality was better in the co-ops, but they were more expensive.” Irina Kulikova
gave me an example: “If state shops were out of liver sausage, which sold for 3
rubles 80 kopecks a kilo, you could find it at the cooperative stores for 5 rubles
40 kopecks.”
Saratovites also turned to legal second-hand goods or flea markets or to the
illegal black market to satisfy their needs. Natalya Yolshina bought jeans and
blouses at a flea market, claiming that “everyone went there.” However, her fam-
ily’s modest means constrained her from turning to the black market. “Imported
goods were always expensive on the black market, and for this reason it was
practically off limits for us.” Since shoes were forever in short supply, Galina
Poldyaeva felt she had no other choice than to shop on the black market: “We’d
have to go to some basements to get them, because it was impossible to buy
normal shoes in the stores, or else we traveled to Moscow and stood in lines to
get them.” Irina Barysheva also admitted to shopping on the black market: “We
knew who we could buy what from. And I bought good things from them. I’d
economize on something and buy the jeans I really wanted, and they were brand
names,” she recounted. Barysheva saw looking nice as an act of self-affirmation,
explaining why she and others went through such efforts to obtain desirable
things. “Why did we have to wear only things made at the Red Army or Paris
Commune clothing factories? We even had a word for this, to ‘discard on sale’.
You’d be walking along the street and every other person you came upon was
wearing the same hat or coat. I never was able to be one of the pack. I probably
got this from my mother.”
Others helped make ends meet by using ration cards issued to family
members who were World War II veterans. A doctor, Larisa Petrova praised
the Soviet government’s treatment of its veterans, especially those, like her
parents, afflicted with diabetes. “We never left the sick unattended,” she
maintained. “They received privileged ration cards, and we used them. They
gave them things you couldn’t find anywhere. I recently used my father’s
cards.” Irina Kulikova likewise recalled that “they supplied participants in
the war, invalids, and pensioners with goods.” Her grandmother had a friend,
for instance, a war invalid, who received ration cards. “She received a lot and
she shared this with Grandma. Grandma didn’t eat everything and brought
it to us.”
The Baby Boomers fell into line for housing, too, often waiting for years,
even decades, to move up to become next in line for a municipal or factory-
built flat, or to buy into a cooperative. Acquiring their own flat became an
obsession for many, because in the late 1970s, only 46 percent of families lived
in apartments that had all or almost all of the main amenities.17 Pyotor
Krasilnikov regretted that “with my first wife, I was unable to solve the problem.”
It turned out that, before he married, he was ineligible for getting on the list for
state housing and that, after he wed, he could not queue up because his
apartment was 1.5 square meters larger than government standard. “The fact
that the apartment didn’t have any indoor facilities did not interest anyone.
Back then it was also very hard to buy into a cooperative. You needed money
and acquaintances.” He and his second wife purchased their own flat only at
the end of the 1990s. Olga Kamayurova and her husband bought into a co-op,
but felt financially squeezed: “For fifteen years half of my salary went to pay off
the apartment. We never had a chance in hell to receive one from the state.”
Irina Garzanova worked in Lipetsk, where her family waited for their own
apartment for twenty years. “The line barely moved,” she griped. “They built
them rather quickly for those who worked in factories, but not for those on the
general list.”
How did the Saratovites comprehend the state of affairs in the economy? “Of
course, it was a shame that we lived worse than in Eastern Europe,” complained
Pyotor Krasilnikov. “We worked as much, but got less, because on those very
fields that we worked on in the summer, we saw that half of what’s grown never
makes its way to the consumer. I understood this all negatively, but I didn’t
know what we could do about it.” Although people may not have been pleased
with the state of affairs, they saw it as normal. “We were brought up that way. If
that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is,” stated Irina Kulikova. Galina
Poldyaeva, however, remembered being at a loss: “Why are the storefronts
empty, but the store basements full? They never explained to us why this was the
case when we studied political economy.” Otherwise positive about her life in
the Brezhnev era, Lyudmila Gorokhova did not understand why things pro-
duced locally were not available for purchase in Saratov, or why some items
could be purchased in Moscow but not back home. “Lemons and oranges were
considered delicacies that we’d bring back from there. But why weren’t they on
sale here?” Studying the political economy of capitalism, followed by a course
on socialism, made Vladimir Kirsanov wonder. “Everything was turned upside
down, and I had my first doubts back then, when I was a second-year med stu-
dent. I anticipated perestroika.”
If, as it has been said, expectations are premeditated resentments, the Soviet
government must assume responsibility for the Baby Boomers’ growing dissat-
isfaction with the economy. “It was drilled into us since childhood that today’s
generation of Soviet people would live under communism,” emphasized Natalya
Pronina. “We believed in this because we saw that we were living better and
better.” Yet at some point this changed, or people’s perceptions did. When did
the economic situation worsen? Aleksandr Kutin and others observed that, in
the late 1970s, “the shelves became empty in Saratov.” According to Olga
Kamayurova, “it was all gradual. I can’t recall exactly when it all began.
I remember when there was nothing in the stores, but everything was available
at the farmers’ markets.” Aleksandr Virich maintained, “There was nothing in
Saratov. There was still sugar and tea, but the tea was bad. To get hold of good
tea was a real high.” “People had money,” inserted Aleksandr Babushkin, “but
there was nothing to buy.” Natalya Pronina detailed that, when they attended
school, “it was possible to buy everything locally. In 1967, for instance, there
were 167 different types of lunchmeat in the store on Kirov Prospect.” She, too,
linked the shortages to the 1970s.
Even at its worst, “it wasn’t that things were always in short supply,” recalled
Irina Vizgalova. They came and went, yet the overall situation continued to
deteriorate. The government explained away the problems as “temporary dif-
ficulties, associated with growth,” elucidated Aleksandr Trubnikov. “Things
are getting better each year.” However, the deterioration in the economy was
“the case throughout the country. By the late 1970s socialism had actually
began to decline. At the very start of the 1970s things weren’t all that bad. But
then it was real agony. Life began to get worse even in Moscow. Very much so
when the oil money ended.”* The vast majority of Saratovites seemed to
agree with this sentiment; not so Party member Gennady Ivanov: “I think
things improved a great deal here just before the start of the Gorbachev
period. Auxiliary farms began operating in the Engels region.** As a result,
we had fresh vegetables year round. Enormous poultry farms started up and
chicken was available year round.” He praised the local Party secretary, Gusev,
for these “real” improvements. In Ivanov’s scenario, perestroika ironically
doomed this progress.
A few Saratovites voiced wistful appreciation for some aspects of the Soviet
economy. Lyudmila Gorokhova remembered, “On your way home from work
you’d buy what you needed. True, there were lines, but you could buy things at
such low prices.” Pyotor Krasilnikov waxed nostalgic that “on a salary of 180–200
rubles” in the Brezhnev era “we could squirrel away money for a rather expen-
sive item or travel to the sea on vacation, which I can’t do on my salary today.”
He claimed to barely make ends meet today, yet purchased a new apartment at
the end of the 1990s—and a car. This aside, Krasilnikov hit upon something: the
most oft-cited positive reminiscences of the Brezhnev-era economy concerned
its capacity for providing affordable vacations, a real quality of life issue. Irina
Barysheva related that she and her family “traversed practically all of Russia and
the Baltic. Back then slots in tourist groups were very affordable.” Olga
Kamayurova agreed: “Since 1986 vacations have become off limits for me.
Everything’s now possible, but only if you have money. My income doesn’t
allow me anything.” Aleksandr Babushkin mentioned that, economically
speaking, his childhood knew shortages, “but we could permit ourselves a vaca-
tion each year at the Black Sea.” Although otherwise critical of how the Soviet
* As a major oil-exporting country, the Soviet Union benefited enormously—but temporarily—

when oil prices rose precipitously following the world oil crisis of 1973. Oil profits helped
to keep the Soviet economy afloat and masked its declining performance.
** The Engels region is located directly across the Volga from Saratov.
economy worked, Aleksandr Virich saw a silver lining in the role Soviet trade
unions played. “The unions were powerful and had impressive resources. We all
received slots in tourist groups.” He gave as an example the 100 rubles or so he
paid for his family to vacation in Sochi. “And the trade union picked up the tab
for all the rest.”
“THERE WERE LINES EVERYWHERE”

Ironically, the better-off Muscovites voiced more critical assessments of the
Soviet economy than the Saratovites, complementing the findings of a study of
Soviet émigrés that revealed that Muscovites and Leningraders expressed less
satisfaction with the state of the economy than others.18 Yelena Kolosova remi-
nisced that “all of my nightmares at the age of twenty-five had to do with how
I would feed my family in May, when the reserves were used up.” She remarked
that her twenties and thirties were “spent providing for daily needs,” while her
parents and husband moonlighted to earn enough rubles to make ends meet.
Things changed with the privileges and perks that her father received when he
became a member of the elite Soviet Academy of Sciences: “Access opened up to
a system of distributed goods. There were special food orders, opportunities to
travel to resorts, tickets to things.” What the food orders contained depended
upon one’s status, but most Muscovites received them. Vyacheslav Starik main-
tained that food orders “were democratically doled out at work,” and that his
institute’s Party organization’s main function was to assist employees in this
regard.
Describing the strategies her family employed to cope with shortages, Lyubov
Raitman, too, spotlighted “the system of food orders placed at work and passed
out on holidays.” Also “we had the habit, which died out only recently, of
stocking up.” In fact, Soviet women routinely carried string bags in their purses
“just in case,” to be used if they came upon something for sale. “I’ll never forget
those canned goods that I hauled home,” injected Raitman. “When these
Hungarian vegetables—green beans and peas—suddenly appeared they were
sometimes available only for several days and then there wouldn’t be any all
winter. Therefore, we unfortunate women stood in line to buy our ten cans and
try to stretch them out to last the winter.” But it was a fact, she said, that “in
Moscow, even during years of the greatest shortages, our refrigerators were not
empty.” She continued, “There were years when there was, say, no cheese, but we
somehow managed to get it. We didn’t have any underground sources, but we’d
go to the far ends of Moscow when we knew it was available.” Vyacheslav Starik
retrieved a telling example, too: “When our child was young and lived at the
dacha I spent three days a week searching for food. I had made a note of the
stores and knew that on Wednesday I buy this at that one, and on Thursday
something else. On Friday, laden with bags, we’d go to the dacha and feed our
child. We brought food for the week ahead.” “In order to feed my family,
I remember that I had to search for things in short supply all the time,” related
Yelena Zharovova. “There were lines everywhere. How much time I wasted
standing in lines and going on shopping campaigns!” She volunteered that
“things were nonetheless easier in Moscow.” Yevgeniya Ruditskaya, whose in-
laws lived in Odessa, confirmed this: “We routinely sent them packages of meat,
groats, and cooking oil, because life there was even harder.”
Sofiya Vinogradova never got upset over this aspect of life, but admitted,
“Sometimes I’d wonder why things were this way. There was definitely resent-
ment and disappointment.” The more Vinogradova spoke, the more negative
things she recalled. “I remember when my daughter asked for a school uniform.
It was very expensive, and it wasn’t available for sale. You had to ‘acquire’ it
somewhere.” She also dredged up memories of the time “when we stood in line
for five hours to buy some sandals. It was better to go without them. I couldn’t
stand in line because I had to be at work. I could do so only on a day off. I now
think this was wrong.”
Who or what was to blame for the economic difficulties? According to Tatyana
Luchnikova, “the system didn’t work. I always thought that. It was an inner
feeling I had that something was wrong.” Yelena Zharovova was certain she
knew what it was: “It was the incorrect policy of the Party and government
regarding agriculture and the manufacture of consumer goods. That is, when
heavy industry developed, light industry didn’t. Also, the Soviet Union made
itself obsolete because we lived thanks to revenues from the sale of oil.” Tellingly,
two Muscovites trained as economists also indicted the system. The govern-
ment’s efforts to explain away the shortages did not impress Anatoly Shapiro:
“For years they said it was because of the war, that the war was to blame, then
something else interfered. Yet we couldn’t make things better.” Shapiro under-
stood already back then “that the socialist system was bad, that it was impos-
sible to develop normally under it.” Tatyana Artyomova did not know a single
economist who defended the system: “It was clear to me back then that the
economic structure was completely wrong. But it wasn’t so simple to change it.
You had to do it sensibly.” Then, too, Artyomova observed that “there was the
powerful feeling that everything would be okay. Wait just a bit and everything
will get better.”
Some of the Muscovites also blamed the “human factor,” as M. S. Gorbachev
would later put it. Assessing the Soviet economy, Lyubov Raitman concluded,
“I believed people worked poorly, that they didn’t know how to work and didn’t
want to.” Tatyana Artyomova made a similar point: “It always seemed to me
that, unfortunately, in the former Soviet Union things were hard for those who
wanted to do their part, because no one supported them.” She recalled the time
when she proposed at work that the graduate program be overhauled and was
told by a colleague, “‘Tatyana Nikolayevna, wouldn’t it be better for you to direct
your energy at rearranging furniture at home?’ They didn’t want to make things
better. Things were good enough for them.” Vyacheslav Starik also maintained
that the economic difficulties had more to do with how people worked. As a
lesson for today, he pointed out that human “psychology changes more slowly
than economic structures.”
Or countries, for that matter. Historically, the Russian intelligentsia, largely
professional rather than commercial, looked suspiciously at those involved in
private economic activity. These feelings solidified under Soviet rule, which
decried private economic activity, the dark side of daily life, but which made
illegal private economic activity crucial to survive. Like others, Anatoly Shapiro
considered black marketers “thieves.” Tatyana Arzhanova remarked that “all my
life I looked upon people involved in business as people belonging to another
world, with whom I couldn’t interact. It’s the same for me here in Canada now
[she emigrated] when we meet people from that world.”
Viktor Alekseyev’s reflections shed light on the extent to which deficiencies in
the Soviet economy became more pronounced during the Brezhnev era. Viktor
did not realize that the economic situation could be better until he got older, at
which time he looked upon it as “a terribly unpleasant aspect of life you had to
deal with. It was an inevitable part of the system, which could be changed very
little. At an everyday level this began to irritate me more and more.” He admitted
the possibility that some aspects of the country’s living standards continued to
improve and that “perhaps, as we got older, we reacted more strongly to the
shortages.” That proved to be the case, for material conditions got better during
the Brezhnev era in terms of the availability of housing, purchase of durable
goods, more recreational opportunities, and a growth in the number of private
plots. Yet these positive indices—and discrepancies in food availability felt espe-
cially in Saratov—failed to match growing expectations and the awareness that
things were better across the border.
“ I T WA S P R E D I C TA B L E , I T WA S S TA B L E , A N D T H E R E
WA S N O F E A R ”
Coming to power after masterminding a conspiracy to overthrow Khrushchev in
1964, Leonid Brezhnev promoted a policy of stability within Party cadres and
beyond. Often seen in the popular consciousness as “confidence in tomorrow,”
this policy, by the late 1970s, had degenerated into what became known under
Gorbachev as Brezhnev-era stagnation. This term referred to more than economic
malaise: by the 1970s, widespread apathy and cynicism had become palpable.
People spent less time and effort at work and got less emotionally involved in
the public sphere. The role of family and friends grew, as did the sentiment that
everyone exploited “their position for their own personal interests against the
interests of the state and official policy.”19 As Vladimir Sidelnikov reminded me,
people looted everything they could from work: “We ourselves stole everything,
and that’s why things got to be the way they were. Who’s to blame? Ourselves?
There’s no one to blame.”
The term “stagnation” became popular only after Brezhnev died and there-
fore belongs to a specific historical context. Whether one accepts the term reflects
an individual’s social position and perspective. Some Saratovites—mostly
former Party members—balked at using the term. With lives uprooted by the
cataclysms caused by the move to a capitalist system after 1991, they looked back
upon the Brezhnev era as one of stability. Vladimir Kirsanov is one of those who
objected: “Insofar as we really didn’t know any other life, it seemed altogether
normal to us.” He recalled a conversation he had with a law professor when
Kirsanov was the deputy secretary of his institute’s Party committee. “He said to
me, ‘You’re a young man. You will remember these times as the best in your life.’
That’s what people thought then.” Aleksandr Babushkin was of the same mind:
“We had a stable, normal life. Everyone did his own thing. There were no illu-
sions, no changes. We lived, we worked, we rested, we read, we went to the
movies. Our life didn’t change, but it was predictable, it was stable, and there
was no fear.” Pyotor Krasilnikov insisted, “There absolutely was no stagnation.
You can’t say that anyone starved. We worked day and night. We were confident
that, if we set aside money, we’d be able to use it. Unfortunately, that’s no longer
the case today.” Alexander Ivanov remarked, “As the common people say, he
lived and let others live. I wouldn’t say that we had it bad.” Aleksandr Trubnikov
concluded that, “as people like to say today, there was stability. Under Brezhnev
things weren’t so bad in regard to ‘confidence in tomorrow.’”*
Viktor D. was one who felt that way. “True,” he told me, “there was a disparity
between what was said and done,” but he ticked off many positive things. “The
country picked up momentum, industry developed, factories and plants opened.
There was no unemployment. There were no poor, no shootings. We traveled in
space, we built BAM, we opened new mines, developed new industries. We have
more stagnation today than back then.” He admitted that “somewhere far away,
in Moscow, they imprisoned dissidents,” and that he knew of “two or three
instances here in Saratov, involving people who expressed anti-Communist
thoughts. But they did so more out of stupidity than out of any rational rejection
of the system.” A doctor, he observed that “health care was free and unequivo-
cally on a higher level than now. Education was free, including higher education
and graduate school.” He went on: “People received apartments, they had
confidence in tomorrow. Maybe everything was on a lower level than in
America, but there was stability.” On his salary, augmented by bribes and gifts,
he could buy a cooperative apartment and build a dacha. “I could save up for a
car and other things,” he emphasized. “Back then the problem was that there
wasn’t much to buy and you had to ‘acquire’ things.” Viktor admitted to ridi-
culing Brezhnev at the end, but emphasized, “People in my circle had stable,
* During the economic turmoil associated with the transition to a market economy in the
1990s, President Boris Yeltsin’s detractors employed the trope “confidence in tomorrow” in
reference to the “good old” Soviet days.
normal, balanced lives.” To Vladimir Nemchenko, Brezhnev also looks better in

retrospect: “I didn’t like him at all back then, but now I understand him.”
Reflecting on his own, difficult, experience during perestroika, he concluded,
“Society itself is to blame for everything. It’s true that the leaders are to blame
for some things, but first you need to take your own inventory.”
Other Baby Boomers from both cities emphasized the positive developments
in their professional careers under Brezhnev. Moscow’s Viktor Alekseyev, for in-
stance, believed his work in psychology—a discipline suppressed under Stalin
and now rehabilitated—spared him some of the downside of the Brezhnev years,
because the discipline had some catching up to do and came into its own at that
time. As a result, he claimed, “I never felt any stagnation at work.” Others took
issue with the term because they disliked aspects of their post-Soviet realities at
the time I interviewed them. Saratov’s Larisa Petrova recalled that the Brezhnev
era “was a period of personal growth for me. I managed to improve my creden-
tials, study in Moscow, and defend my dissertation. Now we cry over the fact that
we can’t get a lot done these days because everything depends on money.” She
also took issue with many Baby Boomers’ view of the economy back then. “Under
Brezhnev the food situation in Saratov improved. It was much better than in our
childhood. It became possible for us to dress better. You can even see this in pho-
tographs. The gray mass that was characteristic of the 1960s gave way to far
brighter colors in the 1970s.” Moscow’s Yelena Zharovova voiced similar senti-
ments, but with a twist: “I don’t like the term stagnation because we developed,
the country developed, everything developed, science developed, space devel-
oped, industry developed, but perhaps not in the right direction.”
Arkady Darchenko and most other Saratovites, however, found stagnation
“the most apt epithet for the Brezhnev period. There was so much despair.
Everything surrounding us seemed irreparable. Take television,” he offered,
“which was unbearable. Our ‘leading newspaper’ Pravda elicited the same reac-
tion, and the cinema was completely censored. Then there was the unpleasant
political and economic side of things.” Darchenko recalled trying to find
chocolate or something else to buy for his son. “I searched the entire city and
wasn’t able to buy anything. So, I came home and stashed away this play money.
Not in a bank. The bills were nothing but tokens. They were never worth the
amount of money indicated on them. For these reasons, the stagnation was real.
It was awful.” According to Olga Martynkina, “everyone felt the stagnation when
we were older. It was disgusting to see what was going on. But, on the other hand,
there was a semblance of order.” Aleksandr Virich remarked, “Perhaps it wasn’t
necessary to call the period one of stagnation,” but the country “was developing
in an incomprehensible direction. I realized that something was not right.
Naturally, everyone cursed old-man Brezhnev, despite the fact that they swiped
everything they could from work. He stole, and he let everyone else steal, too.”
Most of the Muscovites found the term “stagnation” an appropriate one.
That was not surprising, because they griped more about the economy even
though—and perhaps because—they lived better than those in the provinces.

According to Tatyana Luchnikova, “stagnation was visible because, if things
had been normal, there would have been food in the stores but there were
perpetual shortages.” Anatoly Shapiro saw “absolutely nothing good about the
economy.” He argued that blat created a cohort of committed believers, espe-
cially among the military, yet not many among his Party acquaintances. “They
lived better because they had privileges, a horrible word for me. Perhaps it was
only a piece of bacon fat, but it belonged to them and not you. I understood
them, but they disgusted me.”
Several Baby Boomers found stagnation in other aspects of their lives. Viktor
Alekseyev acknowledged that, in time, he fell under the influence of friends and
of what he read. “I developed a more critical attitude and the sense that there
was stagnation mounted. This was tied to the Czechoslovakian events and then,
of course, to the events in Afghanistan.” Valentin Ulyakhin dated stagnation to
his parents’ deaths in 1975 and 1976, and found it manifested in something no
one else mentioned: “By this time they stopped persecuting you for going to
church.” Foreign travel also fed popular sentiments that the situation back home
needed fixing. Mikhail Markovich highlighted the many aspects of Soviet reality
that he considered funny. The comedian “Zhvanetsky* was famous at that time,”
explained Markovich, “and he described it all. How you go about getting a tele-
phone and everything else.” Accepting the humor in it all allowed Markovich to
“keep morally healthy.”
What irked Sergei Zemskov most was “running up against all sorts of
far-fetched bureaucratic obstacles” that choked initiative: “When I began
working, it would take three to four years for the simplest job. The bureaucracy
managed to turn a routine procedure into a complicated one.” Zemskov
expressed utter amazement that the USSR managed to launch Sputnik in 1957
and send Yury Gagarin into space. “This is a mystery to me. I think it was aliens!”
Yet Zemskov had an explanation: things had been better under Khrushchev. By
the time Zemskov went to work, “things had gone to hell.” He especially criti-
cized the penchant for looking to the West before embarking on something
new. “That is, you’d come with a plan for something and the first question they’d
ask is ‘And over there? Do they do this?’ They didn’t ask this question under
Khrushchev.” Yelena Kolosova also singled out the stifling Soviet bureaucracy
for censure: “I wasn’t aware at what moment stagnation occurred, perhaps
because I fell in love with Em.” They courted, married, and had a baby. Five
years passed. “Then I woke up: there was Allende in Chile. And here? Reprints of
Gulag Archipelago. I looked around. My God, it didn’t seem like the same country
in which I completed school. Such changes occurred between 1967 and 1973!”
* Born in 1934, Mikhail Zhvanetsky became a writer of satire and enormously popular
stand-up comedian, appreciated for his monologues aimed at the shortcomings of Soviet
and post-Soviet daily life.
exclaimed Kolosova. “Things were a bit easier and more serious, but at the same
time more ridiculous.” Kolosova mentioned all of the foolishness surrounding
Brezhnev. “This bureaucratism became corrupt and arrogant, perhaps less fright-
ful, like a Teddy bear, but the machine behind it was oppressive.”
Vladimir Mikoyan reminded me that “there, of course, was stagnation. That’s
irrefutable, but it wasn’t felt. We lived well for us. We knew that you couldn’t find
some things in the stores, but we got used to this.” He elaborated, “Everyone
knew that there were limits and norms. But it was hard to say what they really
were, because they decide, and in each case they might do so differently. We
lived with this, however, and I can honestly say that we weren’t pessimistic.” On
the contrary: “This was the way the country was,” he stated, “and we were born
and raised within these boundaries. Of course, shortages irritated people, yet
that wasn’t that bad.” As Marina Bakutina summed up, “The awareness of stag-
nation came only when they began to call the period that.”
“ I T WA S C O N V E N I E N T . . . T O K E E P H I M I N P O W E R ”
Stagnation also found reflection in people’s shifting attitudes toward Brezhnev.
Most Baby Boomers at first harbored hopes for bushy-browed Brezhnev and the
new Soviet leadership, but had a change of heart by the mid- to late 1970s after
he had survived several strokes, had been named Marshal of the Soviet Union,
and been awarded the Lenin Prize for his ghost-authored books. As Natalya
Pronina put it, “During the early years he was a real leader and people thought
rather highly of him. That’s not in dispute. However, this changed.” Arkady
Darchenko echoed these sentiments, adding: “Sometime in the mid-1970s, the
idiocy turned into a real avalanche once they began awarding him all sorts of
medals and titles and he could no longer speak clearly. By then it had become
an awful spectacle.” “What kind of leaders do we have when all of the members
of the Politburo were his age and had to be led by the arm?” queried Yevgeny
Podolsky. “There was disgust and mockery,” averred Boris Shtein. An irked
Vladimir Sidelnikov hated the hypocrisy: “Brezhnev preached one morality, but
lived according to another.” “There was the feeling that someone had applied
the brakes,” recalled Viktor Alekseyev. Concluded Natalya P.: “It was obvious
that something had to give.”
Several Baby Boomers had acquaintances who had met Brezhnev and who
had positive things to say about him in his youth, thereby spotlighting the con-
trast between his early years and those of his decline. Lyubov Kovalyova shared
that “I met people who worked with him. They spoke very highly of his energy
and problem-solving abilities.” Yet she, too, underscored the change after he
became old and frail. “Even back then it seemed to me that he should have
retired from politics.” Vladimir Bystrov’s grandfather, who had worked with
Brezhnev in Dnepropetrovsk, “had a very high opinion of his organizational
skills.” That said, Bystrov asserted that “one shouldn’t occupy the same position
for so long. There should have been rotations.”
Some Muscovites claimed to have disliked Brezhnev from the start. Igor
Litvin believed that early on in Brezhnev’s reign “people considered him an
idiot.” Lyubov Raitman remembered, “I always found it excruciating to listen to
how he spoke. It was ungrammatical, silly, and meaningless. Not long ago they
showed some documentaries from when he was young, but this is something
I didn’t remember. He always seemed awful to me.” Agreed Viktor Alekseyev:
“I saw Brezhnev from the beginning as something of a comic figure in all regards,
his appearance, his behavior, and what he did.” According to Leonid Volodarsky,
“now many recall this period as the good times. Besides, leaders people laughed
at didn’t seem dangerous.”
Saratov’s Larisa Petrova believed that Brezhnev held onto the reins of power
for so long because “it was clear to everyone that others manipulated him and
that he wasn’t in charge. Everyone saw this and worried.” Moscow’s Yelena
Zharovova remembered, “I felt sorry for him when he was old. And later, when
I read that he had twice asked the Politburo to let him retire and was turned
down twice, I felt even sorrier for him. It was advantageous for some to keep
him in power.” She saw this as a tragedy: “They let an old man become the
laughing stock of the whole world, and you must take this into account in eval-
uating him.” Why did they allow this? “Because when a new leader comes to
power a large stratum of the most powerful are replaced, too.” “It’s a shame,”
began Georgy Godzhello, “If our leaders had somehow rejuvenated themselves
in time things would have been a lot easier, a lot better, and the country today
would be altogether different.” He elaborated, “There’s the Chinese example,
which is simply astonishing. There are the two Koreas, and the two Germanys.
There’s no going against the truth. History has shown that all large empires in
time decline. And it’s really hard on your nerves when it’s your own country.”
“PEOPLE TOLD THESE JOKES ABOUT HIM AND NO

O N E WA S I M P R I S O N E D ”
Yet before empires collapse and revolutions topple old authorities, the latter
need to become fully discredited in the eyes of the public. This type of desacral-
ization of the old regime took place in France before the French Revolution of
1789, in Russia before the Revolution of 1917, and in the Soviet Union during the
late Brezhnev era before the Gorbachev Revolution, when the Baby Boomers
openly began to heap scorn on Brezhnev. As Olga Gorelik put it, “Everyone
began to mock him on account of how he looked and his health.” Galina
Poldyaeva recalled that “it was unpleasant to watch,” especially since, when he
made an appearance, “everyone gave him a standing ovation. It gave me the
creeps.” Tatyana Arzhanova observed that “Brezhnev was considered a talking
puppet and it was clear that someone in that state could not understand what
was going on in the country.”
Worse yet, fading apparatchiks packed the Politburo. “It was an embarrass-
ment for our country,” insisted Irina Kulikova. Natalya Yolshina stated that “in
his later years Brezhnev at best evoked laughter, and at worst sarcastic laughter.”
She believed that eventually everyone shared the negative assessment of him,
“because it had become so apparent, and it went on and on and on.” Remarked
Leonid Terlitsky: “He and his cronies were these gray faceless men without
character or with a dull character and of low intelligence who were trying to run
our lives.” As a result, Terlitsky continued, “You had to somehow take control of
your own life, and that was what our plans for the future were based upon, that
we will be able to live a full, creative life in that system. It turned out be a total
fallacy at least for me, and that was one of the reasons why I left this country.”
Viktor Alekseyev declared that “the older they got, the entire Politburo evoked a
negative and humorous response. Not only in regard to good jokes. There was
also a certain repulsion because of all those icon-like portraits.”
People told countless jokes—a quintessential form of Soviet public opinion—
about Brezhnev. Some feared doing so, but told them anyway, while most simply
no longer were afraid. This is a key moment in the history of Soviet political
culture. Andrei Rogatnev recalled that “you could tell the jokes out loud and
there were no longer any punitive sanctions. Nothing of the sort.” Aleksandr
Trubnikov remembered that, by the time he established himself at work, “atti-
tudes toward Brezhnev were expressed in jokes that circulated about him. He
wasn’t taken seriously; there was nothing but jokes at his expense.” More to the
point, “no one was afraid of him. At work you could quietly tell jokes about Leonid
Ilich and no one would inform on you, even though in every organization there
were people who reported on who said what.”
“ H E WA S E V E N W O R S E T H A N B R E Z H N E V ”
Because the Soviet Union lacked an open, public procedure for selecting its top
leaders, Brezhnev’s death in 1982 caused alarm. “I recall how apprehensive
everyone became when Brezhnev died,” remembered Saratov’s Olga Gorelik,
who was at home at the time with her infant daughter and a pediatrician who
had made a house call. They felt something was wrong. “That’s because during
such moments they typically played symphonic music on television. Knowing
that he was ill, we thought it was the end. They finally informed us.” Irina
Vizgalova related that her grandmother “was terribly upset when Brezhnev died.
She would say, ‘What’s going to happen now? The entire Soviet Union will
collapse.’ It was terrible when he died, but things didn’t fall apart.”
The Politburo’s selection of Yury Andropov, former head of the KGB, as
Brezhnev’s successor alarmed many, as he had presided over the crackdown on
dissent. “When Andropov came to power I became frightened, because my hus-
band knew no restraint in telling jokes and there had been a time when they’d
imprison you for this. I thought life wouldn’t be as stable as it had been under
Brezhnev,” volunteered Moscow’s Yelena Zharovova. Others believed that
Andropov’s tenure in the KGB allowed him a unique vantage point from which
to assess the country’s problems, and they hoped he would reinvigorate the
Party and its policies. The mass media presented him as a progressive thinker,
especially when he replaced ministers and regional leaders with younger Party
members. Andropov survived only fifteen months in office, however, before suc-
cumbing to renal failure. Ill much of this time, Andropov nonetheless launched
efforts to enforce worker discipline and raise productivity. “But with unsuc-
cessful measures,” explained Vladimir Bystrov. Vladimir Kirsanov regretted that
Andropov died so soon: “I think that the majority of people were in favor of his
attempt to bring order to the country. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time and
therefore it’s hard to judge him.”
When he died, the Politburo replaced him with Konstantin Ustinovich
Chernenko, who many saw as Brezhnev’s alter-ego and under whom the Soviet
Union slipped into suspended animation. “After Brezhnev,” quipped Natalya
Yanichkina, “we had what we called the ‘five-year-plan of lavish funerals,’ as the
septuagenarians populating the Politburo died one after another.” Moscow’s
Lyubov Raitman decried the situation after Brezhnev expired: “Those years after
his death were terrible, when everyone was replaced, Chernenko, Ustinov,* and
the others.” To illustrate the point, she told me about a conversation with the
mother of one of her college girlfriends who was an “awful Communist, and
who, in our youth, worked for the KGB and was fanatical.” Reminisced Raitman:
“It was after one of Chernenko’s speeches, when I was at their place. She was
absolutely crushed and shocked. She said, ‘What a disgrace. How can it be that
he’s the head of our country? How could they let this happen?’ Even committed
Communists were appalled by what was going on.” Yelena Kolosova recalled
asking, “Who’s Chernenko? He was even worse than Brezhnev, absolutely
nothing more than a joke.” According to Saratov’s Larisa Petrova, “we were really
afraid after the death of, what’s his name, Chernenko. We feared that there
would be another sick, old, decrepit leader no one wanted. How much could we
take?”
“ I F Y O U I N F O R M O N C E , Y O U ’ L L H AV E T O I N F O R M
YO U R E N T I R E L I F E ”
People also feared—but likewise cracked jokes about—the much-maligned
KGB, who represented another essential feature of late socialism. One joke goes
like this: “Two KGB agents pass each other in the corridor. One asks the other,
* Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov became Soviet minister of defense and a member of the
Politburo in 1976. During his tenure, the Soviet leadership invaded Afghanistan.
‘what are you laughing about?’ ‘Someone just told me such a funny joke that I’m
still laughing.’ ‘Really, tell me!’ ‘No, I can’t, I just gave him ten years for telling
it.’” How much did the political police meddle in the Baby Boomers’ daily lives
as they found their niche in the system? Although a good number of them emi-
grated, none who remained in the Soviet Union turned to open dissent.
Moreover, none admitted to informing for the KGB—not that they would. Their
experiences reveal that the Western imagination dividing Soviet citizens into
diehard (or disingenuous) Communists and dissidents conceals a far more
complicated yet commonsensical reality: most simply lived in search of the
Soviet dream—or in search of the next sliver of sausage, staying clear of the KGB
as best they could.
Of all the interviewees, only Moscow’s Andrei Rogatnev made a career in the
KGB, lasting until perestroika drove him into private business. Growing up in a
KGB family, Rogatnev admired his father’s “sense of duty and integrity” and
“didn’t see any alternative” other than to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Rogatnev’s family was in Budapest during the Soviet invasion of 1956, an experi-
ence that left vivid, perhaps even traumatic, memories and made confident his
belief that “our cause was right.” His upbringing told: as a Komsomol activist
and self-proclaimed patriot, he did not read samizdat, and he voted to expel
from the Aviation Institute a classmate who demonstrated against the USSR’s
invasion of Czechoslovakia. He also married someone “from a similar family.”
Rogatnev neither regretted the career choice he made nor justified himself.
Instead, he seemed to personify the conflicting influences his generation faced.
He may not have read samizdat, but he worshipped the Beatles and soaked up
the Hollywood films shown to select audiences. He also loved a good joke, espe-
cially when it was at the expense of Soviet leaders. Traveling abroad affected him
in the same way as it did his classmates. Visiting Czechoslovakia in 1978, he con-
firmed that its inhabitants lived better than he did. Prague’s well-stocked shops,
absence of snaking lines, and abundance of world-renowned beer delighted
him. None of these experiences undermined his commitment to serving in the
security police until the Soviet Union expired, but they helped to prepare him
for life in post-Soviet Russia. So did the lifelong friendships and connections he
made at School No. 20. Although his classmates spoke disparagingly about the
KGB, many looked upon Rogatnev as one of their own. Adding a personal
dimension to the otherwise faceless security organs softened them for those
who had not had any run-ins with the KGB. Then, too, Rogatnev’s work involved
foreign, not domestic, surveillance.
But at home, the KGB suppressed dissidents and monitored the intelligentsia,
while propaganda organs countered Western accusations of human rights
abuses. Aleksandr Trubnikov explained how, at an everyday level, the Party
explained away Western charges that people in the Soviet Union lacked basic
rights, freedom of movement, for example. “They’d say, we have no unemploy-
ment and our medical system is free. We have confidence in tomorrow. We have
equality. But there’s a price that has to be paid for this. And we pay it. We have our
laws, and they’re better than yours. Who needs this freedom of movement if
everyone in the West is poor and exploited?”
Such justifications did not sit right with many. Remarked Saratov’s Arkady
Darchenko on the topic of human rights: “I knew, of course, that we simply
didn’t have any. But I never took part in demonstrations on this account. I was
busy doing my own thing.” That said, continued Darchenko, “I supported
Solzhenitsyn from the start, and Sakharov* even more, because he was someone
who consciously did what he had to do, even though it cost him everything. In
sum,” wrapped up Darchenko, “I respected those people who struggled for
human rights, but, in all honesty, I didn’t myself. It was a special category of
political people who were like that.” Aleksandr Konstantinov volunteered that
“we understood that things here were bad in regard to human rights. But the
way the Western radio stations discussed the matter always seemed a bit artificial
to us, because they harped over and over again on the same thing.” Irina
Chemodurova “strongly believed that everything was as it should be” in regard
to the Party’s crackdown on dissent, but changed her mind when she completed
her graduate work in Moscow and witnessed the so-called Volobuev affair**
unfold “before my very eyes” at the Institute of History. It was then that she “for
the first time felt that things were not so simple.” These three Saratovites studied
in Moscow. Many of their classmates who remained in Saratov saw things differ-
ently. Olga Kamayurova, for instance, admitted “all of this passed me by. We
took the word ‘dissident’ as some sort of swear word. How I regret that I was far
removed back then from people who understood everything. There were people
who understood things already back then. It’s a shame that I wasn’t one of
them.”
Most Muscovites agreed with Leonid Volodarsky’s analysis of the Soviet
human rights movement: “There was a lot of commotion. Only a very small
number of people got involved. I believe they’re heroes. They challenged the
system. My acquaintances and I supported them, but we ourselves did not take
part in demonstrations.” Applauding the deep convictions of writers Sinyavsky,
Daniel, poet Joseph Brodsky, physicist Andrei Sakharov, and other dissidents,
Boris Shtein concurred that human rights was “an important subject for us.”
This was the case for him especially when his ex-wife applied to emigrate and
encountered enormous problems. Igor Litvin kept informed of dissident activ-
* Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov was a Soviet physicist and political dissident who received
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. Exiled to the city of Gorky (today Nizhny Novgorod), he
was allowed to return to Moscow during the Gorbachev era and was soon elected a
member of the Council of People’s Deputies.
** P. V. Volobuev became director of the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History in
1970 until his dismissal in 1974. During this period, revisionist historians collided with the
Brezhnev leadership, which imposed bureaucratic controls over the nonconformist
historians by the time of Volobuev’s ouster in 1974.
ities, particularly the Sakharov affair, by listening to foreign radio broadcasts. “I

honestly don’t know if I would have gone to take part in a demonstration of
some sort had they asked me to. I found all of this really interesting, but in our
milieu there wasn’t any of that among my closest friends.” Beginning in 1977,
Litvin vacationed in the Crimea at a resort known as New World that attracted
“dissidents, refuseniks*, the first devotees of karate, Osho,** and yoga. There
were many people of this sort there. There were open conversations there. But
here in Moscow I didn’t socialize with such people.”
Anatoly Shapiro did. He met the dissident author Vladimir Voinovich at a
friend’s dacha before the KGB forced Voinovich into exile. Shapiro also fell
under the influence of Alik Polishchyuk, the executive editor of the journal Asia
and Africa Today. Shapiro recounted that the KGB arrested Polishchyuk, who
“lived in the neighboring apartment building, when they arrested Natan
Shcharansky.*** Polishchyuk had ties with him. They followed Alik,” remem-
bered Shapiro. “He visited us at home, but I wasn’t all that afraid.” Polishchyuk
emigrated when the KGB gave him the choice: arrest or emigration.****
In Saratov the KGB cracked down on dissident activities when the Baby
Boomers were in college, targeting student groups at Saratov University, the
Saratov Conservatory, and the Law Institute. This might have been a critical
lesson, for unlike the situation in Moscow, none of the Saratovites admitted to
having had any direct encounters with the KGB. Typical was the response of
Pyotor Krasilnikov: “I knew there was such an organization, but it didn’t touch
anyone in my milieu. Therefore they didn’t concern me much. There were even
jokes back then about the organization.” Aleksandr Virich acknowledged that
people realized there was an informant in every group, “but in our time this
wasn’t that bad. It was okay for five or six people to gather in the kitchen and
discuss things over a bottle of vodka. It was only if you’d begin to print and pass
out leaflets that things got bad.” Arkady Darchenko concurred, “You know, here
there wasn’t any uproar over political events as there was in Piter [the colloquial
name for St. Petersburg] and Moscow, and within our circle we always felt free
to speak our mind. We talked openly. Our conversations were the same. There
* Soviet citizens denied permission to emigrate abroad, mostly Jews, were known as
refuseniks, derived from the refusal they received from Soviet authorities.
** Osho or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was born Rajneesh Chandra Mohan in central India.
In 1981, Osho moved his ashram community to Antelope, Oregon, where the ashram’s
controversial lifestyle and reports of all sorts of abuses sparked enormous controversy
that resulted in Osho’s arrest and deportation on charges of immigration fraud.
*** Anatoly (Natan) Shcharansky is one of the original members of the Helsinki Group,
the oldest human rights organization in the Soviet Union, which emerged in 1976. As a
prominent Jewish dissident, Shcharansky applied to emigrate and was arrested and
sentenced to fourteen years in prison in March 1977. Released in February 1986, he
emigrated to Israel, where he founded the Yisrael B’Aliyah Party. He has also held
several ministerial positions in the government.
**** After emigrating he became an official representative of Soviet Pentacostalists abroad.
basically wasn’t anything special that set us apart.” These testimonials suggest
how the realm of the private gained depth and intimacy within a wider system
of constraints.
In contrast to their Saratov counterparts, some Muscovites had intimidating
run-ins with the KGB. One Baby Boomer, “Nina,” who asked me not to use her
real name, began to study Hebrew, associating with Soviet Jews preparing to
emigrate. Many of them sought to remain anonymous by using pseudonyms.
“Of course, the KGB followed them,” she remembered. Later the KGB sum-
moned her at work. “I was terrified and couldn’t tell my parents a thing,” but she
confided in a classmate’s mother who told her “Understand one thing. If you
inform once, you’ll have to inform your entire life.” Taking the advice, Nina
refused to cooperate with the police, who called her in three more times. At each
encounter she denied she was a “Zionist.” The last time she saw them she told
the KGB that her fiancé forbid her to study Hebrew any longer. Upon parting,
they gave Nina a telephone number to call in the event she “had a change of
heart” about informing on those with whom she studied Hebrew.
The KGB tried to recruit Moscow’s Bakhyt Kenzheyev: “There was one
sympathetic investigator, and another mean one,” recalled Kenzheyev, who
wanted him to “prove” that he was a loyal Soviet citizen by meeting with them
regularly to report on anti-Soviet activities, “in order to help your friends, since
they might otherwise lose their way.” When Kenzheyev refused, the KGB threat-
ened to prevent him from publishing in the USSR and to get him dismissed
from his university post. Fearing that his lifestyle would get him into deeper
trouble, Kenzheyev knew he needed to find a way to leave the country. In the
meantime, he had an opportunity to see how poorly the police functioned. After
marrying a Canadian who worked in Moscow as a translator, Kenzheyev trav-
eled with her and others from the publishing house that employed her to visit
the historic towns, Vladimir and Suzdal. A year later his frightened mother
phoned: “‘Bakhytik, the police came and asked me and Papa why, a year ago,
you spent the night in a hotel in Vladimir with a foreigner.’ The police worked
very, very poorly.”
Not always. The KGB sent Vladimir Sidelnikov home from Finland in dis-
grace during his senior year at the Moscow Institute of International Relations.
Before then, he had not feared them, because both his parents, owing to their
positions, had “direct ties” with the KGB. “And if I hadn’t gotten sick,” Sidelnikov
claimed, “I might have attended the KGB training school to become a professional
intelligence officer.” Sidelnikov shared that the KGB tapped his phone after
throwing him out of Finland. Later he was locked up in a mental hospital after
he had a nervous breakdown. “And that’s a stigma for your entire life,” he
lamented. “You’re like a prisoner. My parents couldn’t interfere.” There was
more to his story than that: “I was in the nuthouse with dissidents. There was a
guy from the Bolshoi Theater, a totally healthy person, who they put there
simply because he applied to leave the country. That’s how things were.”
Tatyana Luchnikova expressed indignation that the KGB ran a “thorough

check” on everyone who applied to go abroad and put a stop to her visits to
Bulgaria. “They told me that I had to turn down some work that the Bulgarians
offered me. I had earned a lot of money there.” From the KGB’s perspective,
Bulgaria was not, as the popular imagination had it, just another Soviet republic.
“They told me to say that I was sick and didn’t want to go back.” She fired off
complaint letters, but to no avail. This was not Luchnikova’s first run-in with the
KGB. When she studied at the Moscow Institute of Cinematography, a French
student invited her to a film preview at the French embassy. Afterward, she
received a routine summons from her department chair, only to find that the call
had been a KGB ruse. “They told me that if I were to continue seeing foreigners
they’d expel me from the institute, and not to tell a soul about our meeting.”
Lyubov Raitman’s mother had an encounter with the KGB that cast a some-
what softer light on the organization. Despite the fact that she was not a Party
member and was a Jew, she was included in a group that traveled to France in
1961. “In each group there had to be, and always was, a member of the KGB,
observing and guarding, maintaining control and surveillance. There was one in
their group, too, but he was one of those rare members of the KGB,” noted
Raitman. He looked after her mother, who translated for the group, and often
took her and her girlfriend for walks, thereby allowing them to see more than
the rest of their party. He took no steps to continue the acquaintance after their
return to Moscow. “Yet it’s interesting that he didn’t forget that they had known
each other and helped her many years later,” reminisced Raitman. Her mother
sought to return to Paris in the 1970s when it became theoretically possible to
accept private invitations; however, her application got turned down time and
again. “Then she searched out the telephone number of that very Sergey
Ivanovich and called him. They met and he said he knew what the problem was.
Shortly afterward he called her and said ‘Try again,’ and she did and received
permission. It was unbelievable that she saw Paris a second time,” interjected
Raitman. “She traveled several more times before getting another rejection. But
this time, Sergey Ivanovich told her ‘you went, that’s enough. I can’t help any-
more.’ That ended their contact.”
Raitman recalled another episode that demonstrates how the shady organi-
zation operated. After a group of American children visited School No. 20, she
and many of her classmates corresponded with their new foreign friends. One
of Raitman’s classmates, Tatyana, exchanged letters with her American pen pal
for several years, only to have this come back to haunt her. When she later
applied for a job that required a security clearance, she had forgotten all about
the correspondence; however, the security police had not. Tatyana got the job
she wanted, but had some explaining to do.
Mikhail Markovich admitted to several instances of KGB interference: “We
got through it all, suspecting that in each organization there was someone who
informed on us. You had to be careful.” As Vladimir Mikoyan explained, “The
spirit of caution was, I think, instilled in just about everyone. People knew
where, how, and with whom to express themselves.” Moscow’s Boris Shtein put
it this way: “The KGB was a threatening symbol in my life that resulted in a
certain level of self-censorship. I never had any direct contact with the KGB but
it indirectly made itself felt. We always thought about what we were saying.” At
what point did Shtein become conscious of this? “As a child my parents warned
me not to tell others what was said at home.”
Understandings of freedom are specific to the culture and society in which it
is experienced. The Russian sociologist L. G. Ionin suggested that Soviet citizens
did not feel lack of political freedom as a lack of freedom per se. “The Soviet
people chose from among the available choices and understood freedom as
having choices from among what was.” In this regard, for a free person, the
Soviet Union was a free society. Freedom existed as a real choice, as an individual
emotional experience.20 Freedom, Soviet style, included informing for the KGB.
Some did so because they had been compromised, but others chose to do so, or
not to, in order to exercise their freedom.
“ H O W C O U L D W E FA L L F O R A L L T H I S N O N S E N S E ? ”
The widening gap between the Baby Boomers’ personal experience exercising
their freedom and proclaimed government ideals produced deficits in what
might be called the Soviet myth economy. The government not only used the
school system to indoctrinate but also subjected its people to two systems of pro-
paganda, one based on the mass media, the other on oral communication
through lectures and seminars presented by Party activists as part of state “cultural
enlightenment” activities. Controlling information and data, the government
offered a sanitized version of the past, suppressed information it found dam-
aging, and falsified facts. It used data and cultural artifacts from the West,
including feature films, to criticize the capitalist world. The more flexible and
dynamic covert propaganda allowed the state to transmit messages it considered
inappropriate for the mass media. For instance, it used oral communication to
discredit Khrushchev after his ouster, to tarnish the reputation of the dissidents,
and to cast a Soviet gloss on the “Jewish question.” In turn, people expected to
hear things from lectures that found little or no resonance in the press or on
radio or television. Oral propaganda became necessary because, in opening up,
Soviet society grew more sophisticated. This was especially true of the intelli-
gentsia who, more than any other group, resisted the government’s attempts to
mythologize reality through propaganda.
What myths did the Soviet government want people to believe in to inspire
patriotism? “The main myth was that Soviet power was the best and most just in
the world,” observed Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov. “‘Just’ was the key word.
We didn’t have exploitation of man by man as you did under terrible capitalism.
Everything we had belonged to the people. We didn’t have private property,
which is the source of all misfortune. I honestly believed that it was a good thing
that everything belonged to the people, because it was mine, too.” People inter-
nalized these myths at an everyday level, which became stereotypical ways of
thinking. Natalya P. believed that “we were the most powerful country in the
world, that things were fine here and that everything in the West was terrible.”
Tatyana Luchnikova knew that the Soviet Union “was the best country in the
world, with the greatest possibilities, free education, free healthcare, free every-
thing.” As an etiquette book from the time reads, “Unlike the capitalist order,
where ‘man is wolf to man,’ in our society man is comrade and friend to man.”21
“In my opinion,” Irina Chemodurova maintained, “the majority firmly believed,
and I believed, and believe today, that we were given social guarantees, that the
main thing was to work honestly, that we, our country, defended the world.”
Saratov and Moscow Baby Boomers alike remembered how, in their youth,
they took for granted that the Soviet Union was building communism and
that the Soviet system had the advantage over all others. “We didn’t go to bed
with thoughts of communism on our mind, but we believed in our
Motherland,” clarified Saratov’s Galina Poldyaeva. The myth that everyone
who worked responsibly would enjoy material plenty under communism
appealed to Aleksandr Trubnikov. “It really had an effect on me. Many really
believed that communism was a good thing, when we’ll have full equality,
when everything will be in abundance, when there will be no poor, no hungry,
and when everyone will be employed.” Natalya Pronina remarked that “the
central myth that we were building communism strongly united people.
Everyone was in favor.” Sergei Zemskov certainly was: “We really did begin to
build communism. We lived under communism, for it was a carefree life.”
Boris Shtein commented on the related Khrushchev-era campaign to overtake
America. “Of course, this myth-making affected us, especially the promise ‘to
each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ because no one
really wanted to work. I think everyone lived the myth. It was an attractive
one and our minds weren’t yet developed enough for us to understand that it
wouldn’t work.”
Like so many others, Saratov’s Aleksandr Virich agreed that the central myth
of his youth was “that we were building some sort of ideal future that would be
just.” But delayed gratification had its drawbacks: “Then, sometime in your
twenties, you realize that an ideal future is not for everyone.” He asked if I had
heard that communism had been built, but only “inside the Kremlin walls.”
None of the Baby Boomers claimed to have known any true Communists from
among people their age. Most people, however, accepted the fundamentals of
the Soviet system, still strong enough to punish and discipline, but put their
own material interests ahead of those of the state.22 Sociological research con-
firms that the values of private life and individualism became more important
for the Baby Boomers than they were for the interviewees’ parents.23
The Baby Boomers may not have anticipated the system’s collapse, but they
were ready for it when it came, thereby exposing the ultimate failure of the
Soviet myth economy. Olga Kamayurova, for instance, did not lose faith in the
system until perestroika, but she maintained that, “by the time we had become
adults, the slogans found on buildings seemed silly to us: ‘Communism is our
goal.’ ‘Communism is a radiant future.’” She continued, “It was part of our
everyday prosaic existence. We didn’t even notice. The hammer and sickle was
everywhere. It even seemed a bit funny, but, then, with the advent of
information, it all caved in and I saw the light. Good heavens, where had
I been earlier? Where were my eyes, my ears, my brain? How could we fall for
all this nonsense?”
Many fell for it because the media provided people with a pantheon of his-
torical and contemporaneous examples of self-fashioned Soviet heroes. Olga
Gorelik, for example, cited the example of Pavel Morozov, “the hero of all
Pioneers.” And not only: “There were war heroes, labor heroes, female heroines,
female labor heroines, and mother heroines. We were all inspired by these
examples.” There was also the example of Soviet leaders. Irina Chemodurova
When Yevgeniya Ruditskaya and her class posed for their annual portrait in the school
auditorium in 1986, Lenin still remained at the center of Soviet mythology—but he
would not be for long. Courtesy of Yevgeniya Kreizerova (Ruditskaya)
related that “the first book I read when I was four years old was called Russian
Heroes, and my second one About Lenin and Stalin, with celebratory verses that
I still remember today. I now understand that the idea of a charismatic leader
was deeply rooted in mass, and individual, consciousness.” She elaborated,
“Everything they did was right. That was the voice of the people.” She also
recalled seeing portraits of three leaders hanging on the Saratov post office when
she was a young girl. Stalin was in the center, flanked by Lenin and Molotov.
“Then they changed them.” But this did not shake her faith in the system. As
Lyubov Raitman explained, later people believed “that things are bad, not
because the system is bad, but because of bad rulers.” Leonid Terlitsky con-
curred, “I had an idealistic view of the world, that the system itself is not that
bad, but it’s the bastards who are running it. So, if you have good people in the
government, then things may look different. Sort of like Gorbachev’s point of
view.” Were the bad people at the very top, I asked? “They were everywhere,” he
snapped.
The myth of the good Lenin lay at the center of the Soviet belief system, espe-
cially after Khrushchev’s stinging denunciation of Stalin. “There was the myth
that if Lenin hadn’t died that everything would have been okay,” explained
Leonid Volodarsky. Like others, Saratov’s Yevgeny Podolsky believed in Lenin’s
greatness. “But when I read his works I was horrified,” claimed Podolsky. Lenin’s
readiness to resort to terror and his animosity toward the intelligentsia appalled
Podolsky, as did the fact that Lenin never held a job. Decrying Lenin’s reliance
on the semi-literate, vodka-infused masses, Podolsky queried, “How could he
teach people how to work, when he himself didn’t know what work was?”
Musing over the course of Russian and Soviet history, he concluded, “They began
to shoot and kill people. Beginning with terror is the worst way to build a new
society.”
Apart from the Lenin cult, a mythologized cult of the Great Patriotic War
grew up with the Baby Boomers, replacing the Revolution of 1917 as the
foundation story for the Soviet state that people could identify with, because
they lived through the conflict. The cult of World War II evolved after 1945 to
serve changing state needs, reaching its apogee under Brezhnev. He and his
cronies orchestrated an extensive agenda of displays of loyalty, undoubtedly
hoping that they would increase popular support for the regime and its goals.24
In 1965 the state declared Victory Day a national holiday, erecting giant shrines
and memorials to shape collective memory. These measures worked. “There was
a great deal of respect for everyone who took part in the war,” remarked Aleksandr
Konstantinov. As Moscow’s Leonid Terlitsky so aptly put it, people viewed the
war “as something honest as opposed to something fake.” Aleksandr Babushkin
believed the “victory and heroism of the Russian people” unified the country.
He, like countless others, underscored the colossal human losses the Soviet
Union suffered: “There were deaths in each family.” Ironically, Vladimir Prudkin
explained that the war days were the best for his parents’ generation “because
the absolute worst days of their lives had been between the wars [during the
Stalin terror]. They felt happy only in the trenches, in these hardships.”25 They
won the war, as Vladimir Sidelnikov put it, “because they were fighting for
socialism, and therefore could not lose.”
Saratov’s Tatyana Kuznetsova pointed out that the war also united the Baby
Boomers because they modeled themselves on their parents. “We looked up to
them. They were an outstanding example. We tried to take what we considered
was best from them.” As Pyotor Krasilnikov underscored, “We are perhaps the
only generation in Russia that never experienced war. Of course, all of those cat-
aclysms united people. What united us was probably rebuilding the economy.
We were brought up in this spirit. We developed new lands, developed Siberia,
built all of those factories and apartment buildings.”
The Baby Boomers contended that the USSR won World War II. “I still
believe that Russia won, and that America certainly made a huge contribu-
tion, but for me that’s secondary, although I know about the large number of
Studebakers, food, and other things,” said Igor Litvin.* For him and others,
Russia’s colossal human losses—27 million—gave them the moral right to
claim victory. “I know that my Mama at age sixteen was left an orphan, and I
know how this affected her. She suffered from neuroses and illnesses all her
life.” Explained Yelena Zharovova: “My view of the war was formed without a
doubt by the government, because all of the media conveyed the govern-
ment’s point of view. I sincerely believe that the Soviet Union’s contribution
was decisive. I believe that in the West the role of the Soviet Union in the war
is vastly underappreciated.” Concluded Zharovova: “Our evaluation has to be
objective. One [read: Americans] should never over-emphasize the impor-
tance of one’s condensed milk or tinned meat, and forget how other people
lost their lives.”
According to Leonid Volodarsky, before the Great Patriotic War the mytholo-
gized Red victory during the Russian Civil War united people until the cult of the
Great Fatherland War replaced it. Yet Volodarsky noted that the cult of the war
became “exaggerated and inflated” under Brezhnev, who abused the myth: “It
was funny that the main hero of the Great Fatherland War turned out to be
Brezhnev.” Added Aleksandr Konstantinov: “The first cracks in this myth took
place when someone argued that it hadn’t been necessary to involve so many
people in senseless assaults, to lead people into battle regardless of obstacles
when things could have been done otherwise. Then someone said that perhaps
the Germans weren’t responsible for the starvation during the blockade of
Leningrad, but Stalin, who senselessly held on to the city. Such questions began
to surface, and people looked upon the myth of the war somewhat differently.”
Indeed, Olga Martynkina felt “we exaggerated the role of the war for far too
* A reference to the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, which allowed the U.S. government to ship food,
weapons, and equipment to its allies.
long. I agree that in the West many don’t know history. Yet we have a warped
view of the war. They’re still making movies about the war. How much of this
can you take?”
Aware of the deficits in the Soviet myth economy, the Brezhnev leadership
realized it needed to inculcate a spirit of patriotism and inclusion in the coun-
try’s younger generations that had not participated in the Great Patriotic War. In
1975 it launched the laying of the Baikal-Amur Magistral Railway (BAM) to link
the European and Asian sectors of the USSR. The last of the Soviet Union’s great
construction projects, BAM’s ostensible purpose was to bolster trade with the
East Asian economies, securing an alternative transportation route in the event
the Chinese seized the Trans-Siberian Railway. At one point, more than 500,000
Komsomolites joined in the wasteful and inefficient endeavor, which wreaked
havoc on the ecology of the BAM Zone.26 Revealingly, none of the Baby Boomers
took part in building BAM; the campaign surrounding “Brezhnev’s folly” did
nothing to bolster their backing of the Soviet system. “We knew that BAM was
being built,” explained Lyubov Kovalyova. “Songs were written about it, but on
the scene things weren’t so romantic.” Like many others, Leonid Volodarsky
recalled that “we didn’t take part in it. We were absolutely indifferent, but there
was lots of clamor over it.” Georgy Godzhello concurred: “It passed us all by. We
were already working.”
The Saratovites felt similarly about BAM. Yevgeny Podolsky cast BAM as
“just another myth, that it was the largest construction project in the world,
unlike anywhere else. But why build it? No one posed the question.” At the
time, Podolsky’s work took him to a meeting at the State Committee for
Planning, Gosplan, where he spoke with those responsible for building BAM.
“It turned out that we built the road in a marsh and much of the expensive
equipment sunk and was abandoned. If something broke down, no one
repaired it, because each year they’d go to the government with requests for
more money and they allotted them exorbitant sums.” Complained Podolsky:
“People were going hungry, there was nothing to eat, but they bought every-
thing for BAM and built this stupid railroad.” Aleksandr Konstantinov remem-
bered that “people’s attitudes toward it were tongue in cheek. We understood
that there were two sides to things, the official one and the personal one. There
were people who exhibited real interest, courage, and probably some romanti-
cism.” Did he know any? “No. There were no such people among my acquain-
tances,” he laughed. Some of Irina Vizgalova’s coworkers at a major Saratov gas
firm took part in building BAM; however, according to her, “there were so many
disappointments, because they had left for Siberia on such a positive note.”
A lone dissenting voice reflecting his attitudes toward the post-Soviet present,
Viktor D. believed “The country needed BAM. The fact that they don’t use it,
that they abandoned it incomplete is not the Communists’ fault.” But he could
not explain why.
As a student, Yevgeny Podolsky took

part in a construction brigade in
Siberia during the summer of 1969, not
far from the place where the Baikal-
Amur Magistral Railway (BAM) to link
the European and Asian sectors of the
USSR would be built. He had little
positive to say about the experience,
and plenty of scorn for the building of
BAM. Courtesy of Roza Bazyleva
Some Baby Boomers understood my use of “myth” as something that was

not true or else was impossible to achieve. Yelena Kolosova believed the hype
surrounding the Cuban Revolution “was a myth.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev told me his
aunt received a pension of 20 rubles a month. “I remember that amount. It’s a
myth when they say today that pensioners lived well before perestroika.” In
emigration, Bakhyt Kenzheyev soon discovered that “it was a far-fetched myth
that Americans are like Russians.” Criminal investigator Gennady Ivanov recalled
how much emphasis was placed “on fighting against crime, which was seen as
an abnormal phenomenon. Speaking about myths, here’s one for you, that we
could eliminate crime in our society. They used to demand that we achieve a 100
percent detection rate, which cost them some good investigators.”
Vladimir Prudkin perhaps summed things up best: “All of Soviet society was
completely mythologized,” he maintained. “After all, the starting point of the
society created in Russia was the attempt to realize the ideas of Jesus’ Sermon on
the Mount through force and violence.” Taking me on a personal tour of Russian
and Soviet history, Prudkin judged things harshly. No, the majority of people did
not realize they lived in a mythical world, “But during the Brezhnev era a healthy
cynicism began to develop, as more and more people understood that it’s a myth.
However, people had to live and somehow establish themselves in the system.
And this led to its collapse because common sense prevailed. There was no
alternative to the Stalinist regime. You weaken it for a second, its policies, and it
collapses.” What enabled the Soviet state to organize society, posited Prudkin,
was “the two wars, the Civil War and the Second World War. As soon as an
external enemy appears, all problems are set aside.” In other words, the common
sense that brought down the system developed “because there was no World War
III.” If war had broken out again, people would have “defended the Motherland,
relinquishing everything. But there was no war for ten, twenty, thirty years. Life
without war became more and more significant as people asked ‘what kind of
pants am I wearing? What kind of shoes are these? What kind of music am I
listening to?’”
“I’M CHANGING ALL THE TIME”

I asked the Baby Boomers what forces shaped their identities and how the
Brezhnev years affected them. Apart from the role of state propaganda, the
Baby Boomers acknowledged the place that family, friends, books, spouses,
career choices, gender, and anti-Semitism played in shaping how they saw
themselves in the world of late socialism. Saratov’s Natalya P., for instance,
believed “the opinions of those surrounding us and our parents” most influ-
enced the formation of her identity. Aleksandr Konstantinov detailed how
certain childhood experiences determined his relationship with others, both
back then and later. “As a child, I got the message in dealing with my nanny
that I was selfish and mean. Moreover, my father was rather rigid. I tried to
suppress these character traits, but apparently without success.” Drawn
toward people who were more spontaneous, he thought “they possessed
some sort of internal truth” that he lacked. “I was driven by the mind and
they were driven by the soul, by the heart,” as he put it. In order to under-
stand who you are, he added, “It’s essential to know how the world is ordered,
and you do this through reading.” He mentioned specifically Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, and Sartre. Moscow’s Georgy Godzhello believed one’s choice of a
profession reflected a confluence of influences: “An engineer, someone in the
humanities, and an artist, have altogether different casts of mind,” Godzhello
observed.
Most of the interviewees shared Vladimir Bystrov’s observation that identity-
making “is an ongoing process that is not yet over,” shaped, as Leonid Volodarsky
put it, by “my life experience and nothing else.” Vladimir Prudkin elaborated,
“I fully realize that I’m changing all the time and will continue to do so, and that
I’m unbelievably happy about this and afraid that at some point I’ll stop chang-
ing.” Aleksandr Trubnikov also remarked that “the evolution was very strong
throughout my life, beginning with my real desire to become a Soviet patriot.”
He offered an example from during the Vietnam War, when the Soviet Union
backed the North Vietnamese in their fight against Americans: “I remember
saying to my father in all sincerity, ‘Why don’t all the people working in the
Soviet Union give a portion of their wages to help battle against American impe-
rialism?’” Trubnikov called his transformation into a Russian émigré a gradual

one. “I acquired information through experience, and from what I saw, and
from what reached us, say, from abroad. When I began conducting research the
difference in the level of science became obvious, despite the fact that the Soviet
Union had so many scientists.” As a result, he spotted a contradiction between
what they wrote in the papers and said at Party meetings at the university. Then
people were allowed to immigrate to Israel. “This too had a big impact on me,
because one assistant professor working with me left,” remembered Trubnikov.
“First his mother, an old woman, left. They called a Party meeting and insisted
that he denounce his mother, to say that she betrayed her homeland.” When he
refused to do so, he got sacked from work and ended up following her. “I saw
people foaming at the mouth denouncing him and saying that he, too, betrayed
his country. This also made a big impression on me,” concluded Trubnikov. “At
that time much depended upon nationality, and my Jewish friends were almost
all quite critical.”
The experience of Moscow’s Igor Litvin resonates with Trubnikov’s assessment
of his Jewish friends. Litvin linked his identity to the anti-Semitism he encoun-
tered getting into college and landing a job. “When they opened the file and saw
my surname their eyes turned blank. And this gave rise to an inferiority com-
plex.” Not surprisingly, Litvin later made new friends, also Jews, who “under-
stood that it was time to get out of here, that there was nothing to do in this
country.”
In all societies, one’s professional or work life constitutes a crucial element
of how one sees oneself in the world. Arkady Darchenko’s experience offers a
telling example of how features of the post-Soviet period would come to
challenge people’s sense of self. For Darchenko, this meant “starting life over
three times,” by launching new careers. Summed up Darchenko: “The first
time I was still young, and I could do it without much difficulty. But when
I had to for the second time in 1995 it was really hard, because I was well
known at the institute, and I became a nobody, a programmer trainee in a
commercial firm. It was very tough going, and I didn’t know that I had it in
me to pull myself up once again.” Darchenko, however, delighted in the fact
that he could do it: “Thank God the most important thing that I learned at
school and then at the university was how to learn,” he concluded. “I don’t
have a low opinion of myself, since I was able to retool myself three times.”
In some respects his remarks hold true for many other Baby Boomers, if not
for Russia as a whole.
“ I T ’ S H A R D E R F O R W O M E N T O H AV E A C A R E E R ”
The female Baby Boomers had far more to say about how their gender shaped
their identity than their male counterparts, but the statements of both sexes
reveal deep-rooted attitudes toward innate gender roles that spilled over from
the home into the workplace. Natalya P. spoke for others when she volunteered
that “in Russia we women spoil our men. At first we shoulder all of the respon-
sibilities and then wonder why our men stop being men.” Natalya Yolshina
voiced another widely held view that “men are always more interested in politics
while women live more in the emotional realm. If a woman’s in politics, it’s an
exception.” Yolshina believed that women do not strive to succeed in a man’s
world, but that “those who want to, achieve something.” Yelena Kolosova found
it “interesting being a woman.” Raised by her parents “to endure thirst, to rise to
the occasion, not to ask, not to complain,” she made a name for herself in sci-
ence “for the pleasure of it, not to get ahead.”
Many Soviet women had a highly negative understanding of the label “femi-
nist,” as Natalya Yanichkina, who “never” felt discriminated against because she
is a woman, suggested: “I’ve always been very much a woman and very much a
man at the same time. I’ve never differentiated between what might be called
men’s or women’s work. If I have the physical strength and ability to do
something, I do it.” Yanichkina was quick to point out that “I don’t have any
feminist feelings of any kind. I’m very much a Russian woman, the kind about
whom Nekrasov wrote, who can bring a horse to a gallop and charge into a
burning hut if I sense that I’m defending my family.”*
The Soviet Union had more women in the workplace and more female scien-
tists and engineers than any other country, but state policies did not necessarily
undermine men’s traditional attitudes. A case in point, Arkady Darchenko
believed that the professions he picked all his life were men’s professions, par-
ticularly nuclear physics. “It’s not that women are inferior, but that they’re dif-
ferent. They’re more emotional, and emotion has no place in science,” he
explained. “Moreover, emotion keeps you from concentrating on what’s most
important, especially when you add to this the distraction of taking care of the
household.” He also considered computer programming a man’s profession.
“Although there are female programmers, it’s simply not their thing. In the same
way that being an electrical engineer is not a woman’s thing and a nuclear scien-
tist even more so. It’s a guy thing even in regard to your health. The radiation we
received affects women even more.” When I asked about female physicists, he
replied, “We didn’t take them seriously.” Pressed, Darchenko tried to back out
of the corner he had talked himself into. “Women are very smart, but they’re
smart in a different way. They’re just different.” Viktor Alekseyev now under-
stands that, back then, he unconsciously assimilated the widely held conviction
that the possibilities were greater for men. “In this regard, Soviet society was
half-Asian, by which I mean openly oriented toward having men dominate.”
* Poet Nikolai Alekseyevich Nekrasov is especially appreciated for his “Russian Women”
(1872), which paid homage to the wives of the so-called Decembrists, who followed their
husbands into Siberian exile when they tried to provoke the introduction of political
reform in Russia in 1825.
Despite this widespread belief, a study of Soviet émigrés shows that women,
constituting the majority of professional occupations, voiced a remarkably high
degree of job satisfaction. In fact, they expressed greater satisfaction with the
aspects of life measured in the survey than men, except in regard to the avail-
ability of goods. And this is crucial, as the Soviet state sought legitimacy along
gendered lines, ascribing an inferior ideological role to women, but empower-
ing them in their capacity as consumers.27 Be that as it may, both men and
women “ranked women’s life as more difficult” in the USSR,28 underscoring the
widely acknowledged impact of women’s double burden.
Women, and the state, took measures to do something about it. Sociologist
Vladimir Shlapentokh documented an exacerbation of conflicts between men
and women in the marriage market and at home, where most of the burden of
running the household fell on women.29 The dilemma found reflection in a
manners book from the era reminding men that women hold jobs and have
endless concerns as mothers. “So, all the household chores rightly should be
divided in half,” with the men taking on the physically more demanding tasks.30
Moreover, to counter social trends, under Brezhnev the state stepped up media
emphasis on the value of women’s feminine appearance and behavior, rehabil-
itating “natural” female roles connected “with love, family, and children.” Yet
the marriage rate continued to decline.31
The female Baby Boomers’ remarks complement the survey findings regarding
women’s high degree of job satisfaction, regardless of the double burden. Many
insisted that they had not encountered professional discrimination in their
lives. One of them, Larisa Petrova, had been the class elder at school, a member
of her Komsomol bureau, a member of the Communist Party bureau at work,
and now academic secretary at her research institute and head of a department.
“A female activist,” she insisted, “always rises to the top, but I never wanted to
occupy any really high posts.” Lyubov Kovalyova also claimed never to have
encountered job discrimination, but this had much to do with her own atti-
tudes and career choices shaped, undoubtedly, by her childhood when she
recalled being terribly disappointed that she had been born a girl: “It was ter-
rible, because boys could run in the woods while we had to wear skirts and tie
bows in our hair. But later the question didn’t concern me all that much.” Being
a woman did not limit her; in fact, she maintained, “I began to find definite
advantages in it.” Her mother was the ideal housewife who took excellent care
of the family; however, once her children were grown, she returned to work until
well into her seventies. As a result, Lyubov informed me that “I never dreamed
of sitting home. Right after finishing school I went to college, then to graduate
school. Along the way I got married, gave birth to a daughter, and wrote a dis-
sertation, but it never entered my head that I could stay home and be a house-
wife.” Because she worked as a chemist in the textile industry where women
predominated, she observed, “When a man appeared like a ray of sunshine,
we’d always elevate him into a leadership role.” Although Kovalyova acknowl-
edged that “it’s harder for women to have a career,” she believed she was “equal
with everyone else. Later, I traveled a lot across the Soviet Union on business,
and I saw that, in many enterprises, women held the very highest management
positions.” As a result, she concluded, “I would not say that discrimination
affected us women all that much.”
Several women ran up against discrimination, but they did not see it as con-
fining. Physicist Olga Gorelik acknowledged that “at conferences they perceived
women a bit differently,” but her advisor “did not distinguish between men and
women. Many women worked in our lab and he demanded the same from
everyone.” Irina Kulikova encountered some discrimination depending upon
the boss. Explained Kulikova: “I had two small children, one after the other, and
they naturally got sick and I had to stay home with them. Who wants to have
such an employee on board? They sometimes didn’t give me a bonus.” Yet
Kulikova enthused over her collective at work. When she had to go away on
business trips, “comrades from work would take my kids to school and feed
them. If someone got sick and needed to be attended to in the hospital and the
person didn’t have any relatives, we took turns sitting with him. The same is true
today. I lucked out at school with the group I was with, and again at work.”
Many women felt straddled by the double burden, regardless of any job
discrimination. Speaking for many others, Natalya P. remarked that “although
I think women obtain fulfillment from their family, their children, and their
husbands, work also means a lot to them. I’m always trying to find some balance
between the two. It’s really hard.” Tatyana Kuznetsova added, “I enjoy being a
woman, but have always had it harder than men, be they in Russia or America.
There’s work, the home, and the need to at least try to look nice.” Olga Martynkina
also expressed satisfaction at being a woman and pointed out that her gender
did not affect her career in music where, as she put it, “Everything is based on
talent. But a man is freer of daily concerns. A woman has to spend a lot of time
with the children, the household, and with school. Yet what can I do? I like it.
I’m a mother.” Yelena Zharovova believed her endless chores as wife and mother
complicated her professional life and made her far less interested in politics. She
recalled a meeting with Americans during the Soviet era who asked her how
much time she spent shopping each week. “It was an incredibly stupid question,
especially for those years. A Russian woman always has one foot in a store or
thinks about doing so.”
Because of the double burden, Olga Kamayurova recalled her married
years “as a nightmare. Two children, all the household chores, and work.
I couldn’t afford to work only one shift, and was always moonlighting some-
where.” Books, good movies, and a special friendship saved her: “I’m happy
that I have had a close girlfriend for thirty-four years. Some people are blessed
with meeting the love of their life, but for me it turned out to be a close
friendship.” Since divorcing her husband she has had boyfriends, “but I am
not dependent upon anyone and no one can demand that I clean or put
dinner on the table. You can’t believe how much that frees you on a spiritual
level. I now breathe freely and pity those who haven’t experienced this in
their lives.” Olga underscored that “I’m not all that typical in this regard.
A woman, after all, is supposed to appreciate the family and the home. But
not me. I like being alone.” Concluding that “this independence has perhaps
become the defining feature of my life,” she enjoys her work as a pathologist
because “no one’s supervising me.”
Others also lamented women’s lot in Russia. Natalya Pronina asserted,
“I understood all too well already as a child that things are a lot easier for men.
If there’s a family, then I have to do everything and free my husband of any
responsibility.” There was also discrimination at work. “If a man and woman
compete for the same vacancy at work, the man gets it. That’s 99.9 percent
certain.” Irina Vizgalova added that she “always had to prove myself as a woman.
Maybe it’s not this way in America, but here when they’d ask, ‘can you do this?’
I’d always answer, ‘of course, I can. I’d think that, even if I didn’t know, I could
read about it and learn it. At work I had to prove myself.” Irina Garzanova “used
to think that my gender didn’t limit me, but then something happened in 1995
or 1996.” Her boss decided to appoint her head of a department based on her
seniority and experience, but he was overruled and the only male in the group
was appointed instead. Similarly, the only time Irina Chemodurova felt
discrimination “was when there were promotions at work, because they always
preferred a man when there was a vacancy.” She does not believe much has
changed in this regard. “I think the idea that men must be in charge remains
intact today, regardless of his talents or even his transgressions.”
“ I T G AV E U S N O T H I N G B U T C R I P P L E S A N D D R U G
ADDICTS”
The 1970s, so decisive in the Soviet Union’s evolution, closed with an arresting
example of how stagnation had even influenced Soviet foreign policy. In
December 1979 the Red Army invaded Afghanistan because the Politburo feared
that the Afghan government, which had come to power in the wake of a revolu-
tion in 1978, would drift out of the Soviet Union’s orbit. Maintaining that Afghan
leaders had requested Soviet help to stabilize the country, the Kremlin established
bases throughout the country while much of the rest of the world denounced
Soviet actions. To register their discontent, the United States and other countries
boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The United States and some
of its allies likewise provided aid to opposition groups known collectively as the
Mujahedeen who battled both Soviet troops and those of the newly minted
People’s Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The training and support from the
outside strengthened the Mujahedeen’s hand, locking the Soviet Union in a gue-
rilla war that some Soviet citizens equated with American efforts in Vietnam, not
only in terms of military stalemate and defeat but also in regard to how the ill-fated
conflict eventually damaged domestic morale. There were also the losses: most esti-
mates put the number of Soviet troops who perished during the ten-year war at
15,000, with more than 460,000 wounded or otherwise incapacitated.
One Muscovite Baby Boomer who served in Afghanistan, KGB operative Andrei
Rogatnev, justified the invasion, but slammed hardened Party ideologists for
mechanically applying to this alien culture slogans used during the Russian Civil War
to win peasants over to the Bolshevik cause. As he put it, “They decided that the slo-
gans were so universal that they’d work in Afghanistan, but there they had the
opposite effect.” Rogatnev explained that “even our political advisers didn’t under-
stand this. They were mostly regional and oblast Party people with fossilized
thinking.” Rogatnev thus decried Party (civilian) interference, but praised the younger
Soviet military officers who “appeased entire regions, not by force, but by reaching
agreements with people.” Whether he intended to or not, Rogatnev conceded that
the USSR’s prosecution of the war exposed some deep-rooted problems back home.
All of the other Muscovites denounced their country’s invasion of Afghanistan,
either from the start or in time. Vladimir Sidelnikov spoke for many in remind-
ing me that “no one needed the Afghan war. Our soldiers died there in vain.”
Indicting the Brezhnev leadership for attempting to shore up a feeble Communist
government in Kabul, he repeated what the Afghans themselves purportedly
told invaders, “‘You’ll never defeat us.’ And we didn’t.” News of the offensive
disheartened Anatoly Shapiro, especially because the people with whom he
KGB officer Andrei Rogatnev served his country in Afghanistan in 1985, the year M. S.
Gorbachev came to power. In February 1988, Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of
Soviet troops from the country. Courtesy of Vyacheslav Starik
worked, retired military officers, KGB agents, and Ministry of the Interior offi-
cials, “were delighted.” Shapiro recalled the reaction of one of them who read
the sour look on his face when he heard the news: “‘You’re an individualist,’ a
former colonel told me. It was terrible. These people were unpleasant, and
I worked with people such as this practically all my life.”
Some Muscovites initially did not give the matter much thought, but eventu-
ally condemned the invasion. Igor Litvin remembered, “When the first young
men began to return and we saw how psychologically damaged they were and
heard about their experiences, we understood that a carnage was taking place and
that things weren’t at all as we had presumed, that we were helping a brotherly
country so that there’d be socialism there.” Mikhail Markovich responded simi-
larly. “We began to understand when the first victims appeared among acquain-
tances, especially when I visited [relatives in] Yasnaya Polyana. Few of our Moscow
acquaintances went to Afghanistan. But the bodies of the dead from Yasnaya
Polyana began to return. Naturally, for years we were under the impression that it
was a localized conflict and not a war, but then Andrei Sakharov spoke out against
it, there was the radio, and information surfaced. We began to understand things
altogether differently.” Aleksandr Konstantinov called the invasion “an absurd
stupidity. This was clear to everyone. I can’t recall encountering a single individual
who supported it.” He clarified, “People weren’t indignant as they were in the case
of Czechoslovakia, but simply astonished by such extraordinary stupidity.” Leonid
Volodarsky did not react at all to the news of the invasion, “because we had prac-
tice. There was Hungary. There was Czechoslovakia. And now Afghanistan. The
only thing that surprised me was that we couldn’t win the war.”
The more diverse reactions of the Saratovites also suggest that a tectonic shift
in popular attitudes had taken place during the 1970s. True, a handful had other
things on their minds at the time and simply did not give Afghanistan much
thought. Aleksandr Babushkin, for instance, explained that “it was hard to
understand from afar. Moreover, I’d underscore once again that Saratov is a pro-
vincial, although very cultured, city. We didn’t pay much attention to these
things. Life in the provinces is all about us.” Yet the majority of his classmates
had a far different take on the war. As young college students, some of them had
supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but they slammed the
Politburo’s decision to march into Afghanistan in 1979. As Aleksandr Trubnikov
remembered, “I was very much against it. When the Soviet Union had invaded
Czechoslovakia I didn’t understand a thing and ‘voted’ yes, so to speak. But
when they invaded Afghanistan, people even told me that I might get in trouble,
because I so disliked what had happened.” Like many others, “I understood that
it was all too similar to the Americans in Vietnam, but in a worst-case scenario,
and that no one needed this. I knew people who perished there. It was terrible.
By the way, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. This was an altogether differ-
ent time. Society had matured and most people opposed this.” Olga Martynkina
opined that “everyone understood that it was terrible and unnecessary.” Irina
Vizgalova said she didn’t grasp “why we needed to send our boys to Afghanistan
to solve their problems. I think that many felt this way.”
As in Moscow, some Saratovites came to have a change of heart about the
invasion. Vladimir Nemchenko explained that “at first we didn’t realize what
was going on, and we were influenced by propaganda.” He soon concluded,
however, that “you should never force another country to live by your rules.”
Galina Poldyaeva detailed that at first it was as if “well, the Party decided, so it
must have been necessary. But then, when it began to affect acquaintances, rela-
tives, people close to us, when people began to perish, we became apprehensive
lest it touch us. Of course, those of us whose husbands were in the army were
afraid.” Natalya P. linked her response to being a woman: “Any woman who has
given birth is against anything that might harm her children. I always say that, if
we had a female minister of defense, she’d have solved these problems a long
time ago,” she opined. “But men decide things. Behind any war there’s always
big money and the political ambitions of leaders, who think little of who might
be affected by this. The ordinary people rarely enter into the equation of politi-
cians, ours or yours.”
A few Saratovites succumbed to Soviet propaganda. Nikolai Kirsanov “could
not say” that he opposed the attack on Afghanistan. “We were blinded by ide-
ology,” he explained. “I accepted the official version that they put out,” admitted
Olga Kamayurova. “I now understand that it was just like the Americans in
Vietnam. They sent our eighteen-year-old boys over there and they died by the
hundreds. Many were maimed. It was terrible. But back then I simply didn’t
understand that we had started the war, that we had invaded another country.”
Tatyana Kuznetsova, whose family belonged to the local Party elite, did not
hesitate to say that “I didn’t react as if we had invaded Afghanistan. I always
believed that our country was helping. I don’t believe that we invaded
even now.”
Saratovite Gennady Ivanov worked in Afghanistan in 1987–88 and, like
Moscow’s Andrei Rogatnev, justified his time there, making me all too aware that
I was an outsider: “I was there as an advisor on criminal investigations. We had
to deal with all sorts of contraband,” he related. Unlike any of his classmates, he
cloned Soviet boiler-plate justifications for the invasion: “I think going in was the
right thing to do. If we hadn’t done so, someone else would have. From a legal
point of view, there was a mutual aid agreement, so our actions were 99 percent
correct. They asked us to go in.” Then he got to the real point: “It was far more
legal than America’s going into Iraq. America felt it had to, so it invaded, although
there were absolutely no grounds for doing so, ever the more so because Iraq is
far away and the weapons of mass destruction there turned out to be mythical.”
“But in Afghanistan,” he lectured, “they overthrew the [legitimate] ruler. We
invaded on legal grounds, yet then got drawn in deeper for nothing. We should
have given them more opportunity to do what they needed to do, especially
because we had the American experience in Vietnam to go on. In today’s world
nothing gets decided by the use of force.” Despite his emphasis on the USSR’s
right to intervene militarily in Afghanistan, Ivanov let slip the real reason for the
Soviet invasion: “We needed to go in so that we’d have a base there. After all,
from the mountains all of Central Asia is visible with radar. It’s our weak under-
belly,” he opined. Letting his guard down, Ivanov drew a conclusion about the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with which many would have agreed: “Besides
heroism, it gave us nothing but cripples and drug addicts.”
“HE AND THE OTHERS REMAINED IN OFFICE

TOO LONG”
The Baby Boomers’ value systems evolved in relation to their personal experi-
ences reaching for the Soviet dream and negotiating late socialism, and to the
major social and historical developments that provided the broader context for
their individual stories and collective biography. The continued opening up of
the Soviet Union and spread of information via tape recorders, foreign radio
broadcasts, film, television, samizdat, foreign travel, and encounters with for-
eigners visiting the USSR in the midst of a remarkable expansion of the number
of people with a college education represent core elements of the late socialism
they experienced, as do the further consolidation of the nuclear family, now
shaped by a rising divorce rate and declining marriage rate.
Yet another of late socialism’s features is the emergence of a genuine human
rights movement. It subjected the Soviet Union to critical scrutiny on the world
stage, and posed a fundamental challenge to the Soviet myth economy, since it
had evolved organically from within the system. Diluted state repression
remained an element of late socialism mostly because it constrained people’s
choices by switching on their self-censorship. Few Baby Boomers had direct
run-ins with the KGB, but all felt its presence. Moscow’s Yelena Zharovova
admitted her “apprehension that someone could inform about a conversation
they had with you, but I soon forgot about this, because I couldn’t imagine
who among those in my group would be capable of this. Judging from the fact
that no one ever called me in, there probably weren’t any informants among
them.”
Zharovova’s remark hints at the growing importance of private life for the
Cold War generation, as self-interest became far more of a motivating force than
self-sacrifice for public, societal, goals. This came about both as a result of suc-
cessful Soviet social policies which, in the long run, ironically weakened the
system, and as a result of failures in the economy, which represented the feature
of late socialism that the Baby Boomers encountered everywhere they turned. In
omnipresent ways, ideology molded the interviewees, but they also were prac-
tical: they had to violate rules and principles in order to make the economy
work for them and survive. Resorting to all sorts of strategies to make ends meet
and to satisfy their self-interest, they compensated for the shortcomings of the
Soviet economic model, which afforded Moscow a privileged place. Enduring a

more precarious economic situation than that of people living in Moscow, many
Saratovites traveled to the capital to purchase food and consumer goods. Yet, for
the most part, the strategies both cohorts perfected bear an uncanny resem-
blance: semilegal and illegal economic activities facilitated by blat. Bringing
individuals together on their own initiative in ways that were not controlled by
the state and that were usually frowned on, these strategies further strengthened
private life as they weakened people’s faith in the system.
Aspirations rising faster than Soviet living standards during the Brezhnev era
and the expansion of private life and values eroded the hold of ideology in the
1970s and beyond, but no new belief replaced the one losing its grip.32 History
offers many examples of what happens when aspirations grow faster than the
likelihood of their fulfillment. Ironically, privileged Muscovites expressed far
more critical evaluations of the Soviet economy than their Saratov counterparts.
But stagnation had more to it than just economic concerns, for the Soviet system
also created a socialism of deficits in the myth economy. Saratov’s Irina Barysheva
captured this sentiment when she shared that “there was something missing
regarding the moral side of things, what’s inside. The phrase ‘how lucky we are
that we were born in the Soviet Union’ always grated on me. I’d think, why are
we so lucky?” She recalled how her classmates got together when someone trav-
eled somewhere special, say to an international youth camp. “We’d exchange
impressions, and I’d have the gnawing feeling that there was something missing
in life.”
What was it? Tracing the Baby Boomers’ life trajectories suggests that their
parents’ generation experienced a different version of the Soviet dream. Growing
up under Stalinism and during the war gave them low expectations and plenty
of opportunity for self-sacrifice, upward and geographic mobility, and career
advancement. The Soviet dream appeared real to them, but perhaps out of reach
for most of the Baby Boomers. Moscow’s Sergei Zemskov understood this.
Remarking that Brezhnev came “from a very poor gene pool” and that “he and
the others remained in office too long,” Zemskov concluded, “But our parents’
generation propped them up. They, of course, saw that the generation steeling
up to them was much stronger than they were. And it’s altogether clear that, if
you look at our generation, no one, extremely few, made their way [to power].
That’s why the regime was the way it was.” Zemskov believed that perhaps in the
provinces “there were still attempts to break in, but they were anemic. In Moscow
that was extremely difficult and complicated.” The Cold War generation had
reached a glass ceiling in regard to achieving the Soviet dream.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan can be understood as yet another facet of
the Brezhnev-era stagnation. Although Soviet controls prevented public discussion
of the inauspicious decision and its consequences until Gorbachev’s era of glas-
nost, the invasion ultimately pounded another nail into the Soviet system’s
coffin. Yet this was not obvious at the time, for Soviet society was “perplexingly
contradictory.”33 As Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov reminded me, Soviet power

seemed “really very stable, and it got things done.” Trying to make sense of the
Soviet use of force in Afghanistan against a larger backdrop, Aleksandr Virich
mentioned people’s “infantile attitude toward all Party slogans.” People were fed
up with them, but “no one asked what’s the Party doing in Afghanistan.” Still,
Virich emphasized that “everything was clear to those involved in planning
things. True, we didn’t think that this would lead to the collapse so soon. I
thought that my children and I would have a tranquil future, but things changed
when everything came together and Soviet power ended.”
6 “BUT THEN
EVERYTHING FELL
A PA R T ”
Gorbachev Remakes the Soviet Dream
In the 1980s, Natalya Yanichkina and her husband left Saratov once again to
work in the Soviet Far East, not in Magadan oblast, but this time in the town of
Pevek on the Chukhotka peninsula in the Arctic Circle. “It was there that we wel-
comed Gorbachev to power and experienced perestroika and all that was
connected to it,” she recalled. “We welcomed his program with open minds, like
something we had longed for,” she stressed. “You know, it’s one thing to discuss
things in the kitchen, but another thing altogether to be able to say openly that
it’s impossible to live like this any longer.”
Time Magazine’s 1987 “Person of the Year” and 1990 winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born in 1931 in a village in
Stavropol oblast. Elected to the top leadership position in the Soviet Union
in 1985, he remained general secretary of the Communist Party until the last
days of the USSR at the end of 1991. His peasant family had experienced first-
hand Soviet-style repression, war, Nazi occupation, and hard times. An exem-
plary worker, talented student, and Komsomol activist, the young Mikhail
Sergeyevich—against extraordinary odds—got admitted to Moscow University
in 1950 to study law, an accomplishment that presaged his brilliant political
career. Stalin died in 1953 while Gorbachev studied at Moscow University,
where the atmosphere of free discussion that temporarily reigned there deeply
affected him. Returning to his native Stavropol upon graduation, Gorbachev
climbed rapidly through the ranks of the local Komsomol and Party organi-
zations, becoming local Party boss in 1970, and shortly afterward a Central
Committee member. Apart from his enormous talents and ability to win
friends, he had another advantage: located in spa territory, Stavropol attracted
Politburo members on vacation, providing Gorbachev with an opportunity
to impress Moscow leaders, such as long-term Politburo member Mikhail
Suslov, who was responsible for ideology, and Yuri Andropov, both of whom
“BUT THEN EVERYTHING FELL APART” | 269
supported Gorbachev’s appointment in 1978 as Central Committee secretary

responsible for agriculture.
The Politburo members’ election of robust, articulate Gorbachev in 1985 not
only ended the succession crisis that began with Brezhnev’s death in 1982 but
also marked the coming to power of a new generation of Soviet leaders that had
radically different formative experiences from those of their predecessors.
Gorbachev’s generation knew repression, but usually not firsthand. Their histor-
ical baptism into the twentieth century involved not the Russian Revolution and
Civil War, but World War II, the Thaw, de-Stalinization, and the country’s ascent
to superpower status and opening up to the outside world. Better educated than
their predecessors, they joined the Party and began rising through its ranks dur-
ing Khrushchev’s campaign to overtake America. Yet few made it into the top
echelons of the Party, owing in part to Brezhnev’s “trust in cadres.” A reaction to
Khrushchev’s endless reshuffling of Party cadres in an effort to reinvigorate the
organization—and country—this policy guaranteed Party officials that they
would hold their posts until death. As a result, the Party leadership ossified into
a much maligned gerontocracy. The ailing Politburo that selected Mikhail
Sergeyevich had no inkling that they had brought a reformer to power.
Gorbachev’s writings and speeches, however, soon made clear that he believed
in economic reform (perestroika), in the benefits of liberalizing the political
system (demokratizatsiya), in removing ideology from foreign-policy decision
making, and in stopping the fighting in Afghanistan (novoe myshlenie or new
thinking). And, following the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in April 1986, when
news of the disaster came to Soviet citizens from the outside world rather than
from within the USSR, Gorbachev came to believe that without glasnost—frank
public discussion of all issues, including topics formerly taboo—he could not
have perestroika.
Far ranging in its consequences, glasnost narrowed the gap between living in
Moscow or Saratov. The same information now became accessible to everyone
who sought it out, fashioning new forms of collective consciousness that tended
to melt away the disparity in the replies to my questions that I received from
Muscovites and Saratovites. Thus I no longer segregate their responses.
The astonishing quickness with which the idea of reform built momentum in
society, especially after the glasnost revelations involved tens of millions of peo-
ple in a public debate over the country’s turbulent past and uncertain future,
convinced Gorbachev that the system needed not only economic reform but
sweeping transformation. Soviet society came to life as the atmosphere of open-
ness enabled political liberalization to evolve to such an extent that, by the
summer of 1988, Gorbachev convinced the Party to allow contested elections for
a new legislature, the Congress of People’s Deputies. Serious transformations
also came to the economy as Gorbachev and those he had appointed to power
experimented with ways to switch to a socialist market system in 1990. Gorbachev
implemented, but then backed down from, an ill-advised radical plan to
establish a market economy in five hundred days by privatizing the bulk of

Soviet enterprises. The resulting economic chaos and opposition from the Soviet
military-industrial complex forced Gorbachev to attempt a compromise bet-
ween market enthusiasts and those who wanted a regulated market economy.
Gorbachev’s wavering in this climate of openness, which exposed all the ills of
the Stalinist past, encouraged moves toward greater autonomy and even
independence in the union republics. This provided the context for the exhila-
rating but explosive atmosphere that resulted in an attempted coup d’état against
him in August 1991 undertaken by Party conservatives short on ideas. The bun-
gled coup doomed Gorbachev’s leadership, catapulting Russian President Boris
Yeltsin to the top of the political hierarchy. It also encouraged the disaffected
nationalities to push for independence. On December 8, 1991, leaders of the
three Slavic republics—Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia—signed the Belovezh
Accords, which established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS),
put an end to the USSR, and forced Gorbachev to resign his post of president of
the now defunct empire.
Saratov’s Gennady Ivanov reminded me of a joke circulating at the time that
captures how many felt about the six years that shook the world. “Do you think
perestroika was launched by scientists or by politicians? Of course, by politi-
cians. Scientists would have first experimented on dogs.” This sentiment
expresses the fact that, even today, Gorbachev remains far more popular outside
Russia than at home.1 How does the Cold War generation evaluate the man who
presided over the USSR’s transformation and decline? How do its members
account for the launching of perestroika? How did they respond to the barrage
of information unleashed by glasnost? What sentiments did they express about
the breakup of the Soviet Union? Finally, how did the greater freedom of choice
and movement ushered in by perestroika impact them?
“ T H E R O A D T O H E L L I S PAV E D W I T H G O O D
INTENTIONS”
Gorbachev certainly fed popular expectations of reform, which unfolded in
ways that no one could have predicted. As a result, his policies, which many at
first welcomed, disappointed some Baby Boomers. “At first it was very inter-
esting, because of the things he said. It seemed so fresh after all the years of
stagnation,” remarked Yevgeny Podolsky. “But then he began to get carried away
by the sound of his own voice. He talked a lot but did little, and things got
worse.” Gorbachev’s verbosity also irked Irina Vizgalova. “He couldn’t give a
straight answer. He never answered with a simple yes or no. He was a dema-
gogue.” Like others, Aleksandr Ivanov felt that “Gorbachev himself didn’t know
what he wanted.” Aleksandr Babushkin claimed he “liked Gorbachev as a
person, but his impetuous perestroika was, of course, wrong. Things should
have been done gradually.”
Irina Garzanova remembered when a colleague told her, soon after Gorbachev
came to power, that “‘nothing good will come from that Don Cossack.’ And he
was right,” she snapped. Garzanova conceded that Gorbachev had good inten-
tions, “but his mission was doomed to failure because you either had to change
everything or nothing at all. And he tried to do things only half-way,” she clari-
fied. Judged Leonid Volodarsky: “Perhaps his ideas were good, but everything
else was quite wretched. I dislike him, and I wouldn’t shake his hand.” Others
in this camp took pity on the Soviet leader. Lyudmila Gorokhova, for instance,
volunteered, “I’m critical, of course, but also feel a bit sorry for him as a person,
because he didn’t expect what happened. He turned out to be a pioneer. Before
him no one dared to raise the Iron Curtain, and to do so required courage.”
Some of Gorbachev’s critics reminded me that his popularity abroad did not
translate well back home. Explained Vladimir Kirsanov: “Probably like any
other politician, he is viewed from two points of view, that of his domestic
policy and that of his foreign policy.” Acknowledging Gorbachev’s status in the
West, it seemed to Kirsanov that “the majority of people inside the country
viewed him negatively.” Natalya Pronina voiced similar sentiments, empha-
sizing that how she and others feel about Gorbachev is “not what you think in
the West. That’s absolutely for certain.” Pinning the blame “for all of our mis-
fortunes over the past ten years” on Politburo members Eduard Shevardnadze,
Gorbachev’s foreign minister, and Yegor Ligachev, Aleksandr Virich claimed
that Gorbachev danced to the West’s tune. “That which Shevardnadze did—
withdrawing the Soviet army from Germany and Europe [without getting
anything in exchange]—was pure betrayal.” Yelena Zharovova expressed
“amazement” by the enthusiastic reception Gorbachev received from Margaret
Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and others. “I was simply astonished that people
were so blinded.”
But most Baby Boomers recognized Gorbachev’s role and the stumbling
blocks complicating what he sought to accomplish, and some even shared
Margaret Thatcher’s enthusiasm. Irina Barysheva saw Gorbachev “as a ray of
light that appeared in a land of darkness.” According to Arkady Darchenko,
“Gorbachev came along just in time, as, I believe, did Yeltsin. I think there were
two turning points, during which God gave us the very interesting and flexible
Gorbachev and then the original Yeltsin.” Olga Gorelik believed “that Gorbachev
did a lot that was good and positive and that he was a good man”; however, she
acknowledged that some curse his perestroika. “When Gorbachev came to power
he was basically a young man. Besides, he was charming. And when he began to
speak so clearly, you wanted to listen,” recalled Natalya Yanichkina. “I like
Gorbachev a great deal. I know for a fact, no matter what they accused him of
later, that it’s his colossal achievement to have said that we can’t go on living
like this any longer. Gorbachev started it all.” Yanichkina appreciated the mag-
nitude of what he sought to accomplish: “You have to keep in mind that there
was no fail-proof program. Although I don’t know much about American
history, I think that the United States, too, at one time got things done by trial
and error.” She concluded, “They wanted things to be better, but they turned out
like always.* There were a lot of good intentions in his actions. As they say, the
road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Lyubov Kovalyova and others also defended Mikhail Sergeyevich. “As a
political figure he was progressive, and as a person, charming enough. Later,
former Communists accused him of all sorts of transgressions. But back then
people pinned their hopes on him and believed in him.” Speaking to the cyni-
cism that pervaded Soviet life, including the Party itself, CPSU member Vladimir
Bystrov remarked, “He did a beautiful job of destroying the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union. It’s unlikely that someone else could have done it. I think his-
torians will appreciate this in the future.” Vladimir Glebkin felt this way, too:
“Many forget he was one man against everyone else in the Politburo, and he was
able to reorganize our society in such a way.” According to Glebkin, Gorbachev
needed to have been a better intriguer to deal with the troglodytes within the
leadership. “Be that as it may, I really liked him back then, and I really like him
now. He didn’t deserve to be brushed aside. It’s unfair to forget what he did.”
Yevgeniya Ruditskaya also “took a strong liking to Gorbachev,” adding, “I think
that everyone living in the Soviet Union should be thankful for what he did.”
Tatyana Luchnikova agreed, “We need to say ‘many thanks’ to Mikhail Sergeyevich
Gorbachev, who raised the Iron Curtain, and gave people some oxygen.”
Luchnikova acknowledged that most people became disappointed when the
long-awaited capitalism became robber-baron capitalism, but she saw no way
out of this, since “capitalism in the West developed over a thousand years.”
Marina Bakutina applauded Gorbachev’s contributions, too: “I’m hurt and
offended that his fellow countrymen don’t give a damn about him, blaming
him for the breakup of the Soviet Union.”
Bakhyt Kenzheyev saw Gorbachev as a hero. “I like him. I believe he’s beyond
reproach, a courageous man, smart, and talented. He had only one shortcom-
ing—he was a prisoner of his time. He wanted to perfect socialism. But I’m infi-
nitely grateful to this person who did so much to ruin this monstrous regime.”
Kenzheyev marveled that the Soviet system produced a Gorbachev: “In some
incomprehensible way he wormed his way from the Stavropol region into the
Central Committee. He was able to do a great job of deceiving the Central
Committee members. He was like the Trojan horse in that he pretended to be a
normal apparatchik, but turned out to be a normal person.” Kenzheyev con-
cluded by reflecting upon a photograph of Gorbachev’s office that Kenzheyev
had studied. “To my great surprise and delight I discovered a Bible among the
books. I don’t think it was placed there on purpose.”
* Here Yanichkina is repeating an aphorism made famous by Viktor Stepanovich

Chernomyrdin, who served as Boris Yeltsin’s inarticulate prime minister of the Russian
Federation from December 1992 until 1998.
A number of others felt positively toward Gorbachev, but understood why

many turned against him. Recalled Larisa Petrova: “It was as if we got a breath of
fresh air, and all of us welcomed it. We were all for Gorbachev. It was all so inter-
esting as we began to find out things we didn’t know before.” However, “all of us
had to live on food coupons. We literally faced going hungry.” Explained Petrova:
“People don’t like him because the hopes he gave us did not materialize, but in
the beginning it seems to me that 90 percent of the population supported him. I
judge by my father, a true Communist. Even he said, ‘I want Gorbachev.’” But “as
soon as people encountered economic difficulties, they turned against him. The
mass of ordinary people, the makers of history, don’t like Gorbachev precisely
because many literally had nothing to eat.” Petrova opined that “he was sur-
rounded by the wrong people who were authoritarian and reactionary.” If he had
had the right kind of support, she maintained, “He wouldn’t have had to blindly
take examples from the West and experiment in our country, because Russia is
not America, is not Germany, is not England. You have to do things differently
here. But he threw himself at the West for help, and things got worse.”
Viktor Alekseyev looked more favorably upon Gorbachev when I interviewed
him than he did at the time of the Soviet Union’s demise. Alekseyev recalled that
“at first Gorbachev was an altogether fresh figure, and we had great hopes that
he’d take things through to the end. But then, at some moment, this was replaced
with strong disappointment. I probably don’t differ in that regard from many
others. Things began to disintegrate, especially in connection with the exacerba-
tion of ethnic relations in Karabakh and in Azerbaijan* and the use of force that
still went on under Gorbachev.” Alekseyev continued, “There was the shooting
in Tbilisi, and in Lithuania.** We were shocked. However, now I’m able to look
back at this more soberly.”
Several male interviewees defended Gorbachev yet disparaged his anti-alcohol
campaign not only because of its effect on the economy but also because it
infringed upon their freedom. Urged on by Yegor Ligachev, Gorbachev supported
the drive, launched in 1985, which curbed the production, sale, and distribution
of alcohol, damaging an economy that generated revenue from selling spirits
and giving rise to ubiquitous moonshine production. The loss of alcohol reve-
nues, moreover, coincided with a drop in world oil prices at a time when the
state needed additional funds to clean up after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl
in 1986 and a major earthquake rocked Armenia in 1988. According to Pyotor
* Karabakh is an Armenian populated enclave in neighboring Azerbaijan. Glasnost and

perestroika inflamed Armenian nationalism, especially over Karabakh, when the
Karabakh Soviet in February 1988 called for the territory’s transfer to Armenia.
Demonstrations followed, prompting Azeris to launch pogroms against Armenians living
in Azerbaijan.
** In April 1989, security forces brutally broke up strikes and demonstrations in Tbilisi. In
January 1991 Soviet troops took over the television station in the Lithuanian capital,
Vilnius, resulting in fourteen deaths and the wounding of many others.
Krasilnikov, “the only time he went too far was with his anti-alcohol campaign,
and the uprooting of all those grape vines and the enormous lines this caused
in the stores. Because this was a state monopoly, you couldn’t get around it.
There, of course, were people who were able to buy it in the stores and resell it
on the street at a higher price.” Viktor D. acknowledged Mikhail Sergeyevich’s
“positive influence” at first, yet peppered his remarks with lots of “if onlys,”
especially “if only there hadn’t been prohibition. It’s been proved through the
ages—America went through it—that prohibition is accompanied by a growth
in the use of drugs and in the mafia and a sharp rise in the criminalization of the
country.” Aleksandr Virich slammed conservative Politburo member Yegor
Ligachev for encouraging Gorbachev to implement this policy. “It ruined Russia’s
economy when they uprooted acres upon acres of vineyards, hundreds of thou-
sands of grapevines, and shut down the production of vodka.”
In sum, most Baby Boomers appreciated Gorbachev’s efforts to end the Cold
War, to open up society, and to democratize it. As Boris Shtein put it, “He accom-
plished the most important thing: he turned the country around. Whether
things went well or poorly, it was no longer possible to put a stop to the pro-
cess.” But many of the Baby Boomers, like the majority of their countrymen,
decried the unintended consequences of his efforts, especially the economic
ones, and the breakup of the Soviet Union itself. Few people like belonging to a
former superpower.
“ Y E S , S O C I E T Y WA S R E A D Y ”
The personal experiences of the Cold War generation, their family genealogies
that offered alternatives to sanitized official histories, and the transformations
that came to the USSR in the decades following World War II provided fertile
ground for perestroika. The loosening of controls after Khrushchev’s denuncia-
tion of Stalin in 1956, the cultural Thaw, and the closing down of the Gulag gave
the Soviet people “freedom of speech in one kitchen”2 that eventually evolved
into a bona fide human rights movement with which broad strata of the intelli-
gentsia sympathized. The strengthening of the nuclear family and mass exodus
from communal flats into single-family apartments fortified the private sphere
in the Soviet Union. At the same time, publication of anti-Stalinist literature and
the growing availability of alternative sources of information, from foreign radio
broadcasts to samizdat, made people aware of choices and alternatives Soviet
leaders might have followed. The withering of Khrushchev’s utopian vision,
dramatic rise in the number of college graduates, and ever-creeping corruption
during the Brezhnev years furthered the subterraneous erosion of Communist
ideology. So did the system’s sputtering economic performance that deepened
skepticism and consumer pessimism by the late 1970s, especially as the Baby
Boomers returned home from trips to Eastern Europe not only with newly
acquired goods but also with impressions and doubts.
Some interviewees also believed that opportunities for upward social mobility
were drying up, too, complementing studies showing that, by the 1970s, Soviet
young people were more disenchanted than their elders. The international envi-
ronment likewise contributed to the preconditions necessary for perestroika.
The country’s signing of the Helsinki Accords of 1975, and the USSR’s controver-
sial invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 made some
people question official policies. Technology, as well, played a role in bringing
about the end, from the mass production of cassette recorders and production
of audio cassettes, to the rise of direct telephone dialing to the USSR, and the
appearance of VCRs, fax machines, and, later, computers. By the time people
openly began to mock Brezhnev, their per capita income was declining and
many people, even within the upper echelons of the Party, felt that things could
not go on like this. The collapse of détente—usually dated from the Soviet inva-
sion of Afghanistan in December 1979—and the rise of the Solidarity movement
in Poland triggered ideological debate within the Central Committee. To be
sure, no single development proved primary in reforming the system out of
existence, but their lethal interaction changed values and magnified social
pathologies.3 In this regard perestroika represented something far more than
another revolution from above launched by Russian tsars and commissars to
strengthen the imperial or Communist order. This is why the reforms Gorbachev
set into motion came to threaten and ultimately undermine the system.
Western academic and popular understandings of the causes of perestroika
tend to run along two axes with plenty of overlap. One line of reasoning sees
perestroika’s origins in Soviet domestic developments, whether from economic
causes or cultural-political ones. The other axis weighs the importance of internal
(domestic) vs. external factors in bringing about the Soviet reform movement.
Not surprisingly, many analysts see the origins of reform in the country’s
economic crisis characterized by declining growth rates, standards of living, and
overall stagnation, because that is what motivated the Kremlin to act. The ruling
elite understood that the Stalinist economic system’s shortcomings increasingly
manifested themselves as the economy became more complex, accepting the
need for reform.4 Some observers link the economic argument to a military one,
locating the “real” cause of perestroika in the leadership’s “ambitions to preserve
the military parity between the USSR and the West.”5 Still others emphasize that
the legitimization crisis—the growing demoralization, public discontent, system
of privileges, and ubiquitous corruption—proved as important.
Many interviewees articulated explanations for the origins of reform that
reflect these Western understandings. Still others advanced spin-off theories,
tracing perestroika to elements within the ruling elite that sought to privatize
the property they had accumulated; to a CIA plot; to Gorbachev’s democratic
design, kept well hidden before coming to power; to generational change as
liberal reformers from the Soviet 1960s generation who supported Gorbachev
came to power with him; to the sustained pressures applied by dissident groups;
or to the depoliticization of the Party brought about by the rise of an

administrative class that placed its own privileges above the common good.
Ultimately, how the Baby Boomers understood the sources of perestroika reveals
their conception of the country’s history and their place in it. These attitudes
also help to constrain and enable developments in post-Soviet Russia.
Only a handful of Baby Boomers viewed perestroika as a revolution from above,
even though this represents an all too familiar scenario in Russian history. One of
them, Natalya Yanichkina, mused, “You know, perestroika came from the top. I say
that because, if Gorbachev hadn’t set things in motion, they would have continued
as before.” Anatoly Shapiro also backed a great person view of history. “If someone
else would have come to power, we wouldn’t have had perestroika.” Like many
others, Shapiro expounded a secondary argument as well. “The economic situation
probably indicated that we couldn’t go on living this way. There was nothing being
done for the people’s general welfare.” Calling Gorbachev’s contribution “fantastic,”
Vladimir Glebkin reminded me that “he could have supported the status quo,
which could have lasted a long time.” Glebkin gave agency to Gorbachev but,
unlike Shapiro, believed the economy could have continued bumbling along: “We
have oil, we have gas, we have timber, and we can sell it despite our poor economy.”
Pyotor Krasilnikov stressed Gorbachev’s part, too. “It began with Gorbachev’s
desire to stand out at something. He probably also understood that, for the most
part, life was hard, because a lot of money was spent on military needs, and nothing
was left for the people. I think he wanted to reach some sort of equilibrium with
the West, whereby military spending would be cut back and the funds transferred
to better supplying the citizen.”
Bakhyt Kenzheyev, who today divides his time between Moscow, Montreal, and
New York, also presented a Gorbachev-centered argument for why perestroika
came about. Kenzheyev lived in Canada when then Soviet Minister of Agriculture
and Politburo member M. S. Gorbachev led a delegation to that country in the
summer of 1983. Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev, who later became one of the
most pro-reform members of the Gorbachev team, served as Soviet ambassador to
Canada at the time. Many analysts see the visit as a formative one for Gorbachev.
So does Kenzheyev, who believed “that we need to thank Canada for perestroika in
Russia.” Kenzheyev pointed out that Gorbachev traveled throughout the country
during his visit. “He was in farmers’ homes. He was in workers’ cafeterias. He was
in factories and plants. He met with masses of ordinary people. And something
made an impression on him. I think he felt, what the hell, the country’s climate is
similar to Russia’s yet people live like this.” The trip ended in Ottawa, where he met
Yakovlev. According to Kenzheyev, “he obviously was able to encourage Gorbachev
to be open to an alternative model.” Later, when Gorbachev became Party general
secretary, “Yakovlev returned from Canada and became Gorbachev’s closest confi-
dant. In this regard Canada played an indirect, but very gratifying role.”
Kenzheyev proffered an idiosyncratic interpretation of why ordinary people
supported perestroika. “The Russian people are very patient.” Yet something
snapped at the end of the 1970s that he interpreted as the beginning of the end:
“Vodka began to go up in price.” Moreover, “they began to bottle it in green bot-
tles intended for juice. And they sealed it with a cap made out of foil that had
lost its pull-off tab.” This offended the Russian people, who could not help but
feel that the leadership was treating them like cattle. “There was no tab to pull
and you had to open it with your teeth or with a knife. I think the average
worker could not help but feel offended, for, I repeat, it showed the authorities’
huge lack of respect for people.”
The majority of Baby Boomers, however, perceived perestroika as inevitable,
and a good number believed it would have taken place even without Gorbachev.
Olga Martynkina stated, “As they say, ‘no matter how much rope you use to hold
things up,’ when the time’s right it had to happen. It was the period of stagnation.
People wanted their freedom. It began with the economy, because it was impos-
sible to go on with it any longer. Society was ready.” “Perestroika simply became
inevitable. People blame Gorbachev for it, but it was not Gorbachev, it simply hap-
pened during his years in office,” argued Irina Kulikova. “Yes, there is no doubt that
something had to be done. It was necessary to change, it was necessary that the old
guard who remained in office for ages left the scene so that a new system could
emerge.” Stunned by how quickly Soviet society, seemingly a united and ideologi-
cally unwavering one, began to unravel, Galina Poldyaeva underscored that society
was ready for the changes: “Yes, without a doubt, because of all those conversations
in the kitchen and elsewhere. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction.” “It was
simply all interrelated,” clarified Irina Vizgalova. “The system had become obso-
lete. Something had to happen, because everything had become so interconnected
that it had to collapse. Yes, society was ready. It would have occurred even without
Gorbachev. If it weren’t he, it would have been someone else.”
Perestroika, responded Aleksandr Trubnikov, “probably was predetermined by
fate, because everything simply gave out. The internal spring broke that kept
socialism going.” He elaborated, “Money came to an end, oil came to an end, as did
everything else. I think that even without Gorbachev, all of this would have come to
an end. It was clear that people had changed. They no longer could put up with all
of that. It was no longer possible to continue deceiving people.” Similarly, Olga
Kamayurova explained that “it was time. Everyone says Gorby, Gorby, he got things
moving. But it wasn’t he. He was simply a pawn in the hands of higher forces. When
the need came for such a man, he surfaced. If it were not he, someone else would
have gotten things moving. Someone always appears at the right time.”
Others highlighted the coming to power of a new generation and the circum-
stances of the transition that turned the tide in favor of the reformers. Irina
Chemodurova believed that “the system simply could no longer keep up because
of economic and political conditions, and because the power structure fell short.
Society had evolved. Some of those in power understood that they needed to
reconstruct the existing government model.” She added that these young people
who came to power “began to search for alternative ways. Whether or not they
were successful will become clear much later.” Aleksandr Babushkin also cred-
ited agency to the new generation of leaders, since the old ones were “both phys-
ically and morally worn out. They could not endure all of the stress. Consider
the average age of the Politburo members. How could they lead such an enor-
mous country? And their education level was surpassed by the rest of the country.
These people could no longer govern. They were forced out by the times.
Perestroika took place because society had evolved, but they hadn’t.” As Tatyana
Arzhanova put it, “It was already time when our generation grew up and reached
adulthood, because it was the generation that was not too intimidated.”
Vladimir Mikoyan complicated this perspective. He, too, felt the time had
come for change, “although there were no preconditions, no revolutionary mood,
no crisis that had come to a head, and no uprisings in the country.” Mikoyan had
positive things to say about Gorbachev. “He was smart enough and had the fore-
sight to accept the new ideology if we were to call it that.” Mikoyan maintained
that “perestroika was so easy because the mass of people supported greater
democratization and openness.” This held true of the Party elite, too, even of his
father’s generation: “When my father’s friends visited they had similar conversa-
tions and similar feelings. All of them worked within the system. They all were
democratic-minded people, who accepted perestroika in the political sense, in
terms of democratization, but not in the economic sense, because it would be
hard for a normal person to accept.” He added, “They morally were prepared for
this, despite the fact that they worked in the Central Committee, KGB, Ministry
of the Interior, or elsewhere. They were democrats at heart.”
Although the Baby Boomers sympathized with the dissidents, it is instructive
that, in contrast with a widely held view outside Russia, only one of the inter-
viewees, Igor Litvin, credited them with bringing about perestroika. He had
some tangential interactions with the latter, which undoubtedly influenced his
thinking. “The contribution of the dissidents, in my view, was like that of a
virus. They were courageous people. I personally have the greatest respect for
their courage, and I believe it played an enormous role,” he opined.
Some Baby Boomers affirmed that things had reached a crisis point, labeling
the situation a “revolutionary” one, a phrase that Marxist historical writings had
pounded into their heads. Yelena Kolosova believed that “perestroika was like a
revolutionary situation when ‘the leaders no longer could lead and those being
lead didn’t want to.’ The idiotism of our former life, namely the spiritual empti-
ness, the falsifications, the trampling of all our ideals, had exceeded all bounds.
The Brezhnev-era stagnation had produced such a stench that someone sug-
gested perestroika and it took off. Things had gone too far. That’s how things
happen in life.” She explained, “You have to take things to the absurd, to the
point when everything was being pilfered, when things weren’t going anywhere,
when everyone had taken to drinking.” According to Arkady Darchenko,
“Gorbachev had some sort of special sense and understood that, if he didn’t
start to change things from above, they would start to change from below.
Everything collapsed and had rotted through. It was a very dangerous moment.
Perestroika came just in time.” Added Darchenko: “The fact is that economics
determines everything, and objective reality determines consciousness.”
Similarly, Vladimir Bystrov lectured, “I try to find economic causes for every-
thing, because economics determines politics.” When I tied his remark to a
Marxist line of reasoning he barked at me: “That’s the way it is. If America were
a weak country, would there be war in Afghanistan? Would there be war in Iraq?
Of course not.” Returning to the topic, he explained, “The economy no longer
could endure all of the methods that the Bolsheviks dictated.”
Anna Lyovina recalled that “we simply did not realize how much everything
had rotted through. I believe it rotted mainly from an economic point of view.
We didn’t realize that we lived only thanks to oil exports, because everything
was secret. You know the economic structure had rotted so much that all it took
was one puff, and it came tumbling down.” Irina Barysheva likewise used this
metaphor: “It was simply that the lie had become so pronounced, that every-
thing had rotted through under old man Brezhnev.” Barysheva, too, spotlighted
the economy, tracing her awareness of the enormity of the country’s problems
to her college days, when her economist mother praised Kosygin’s reforms* and
maligned the socialist economic model. Studying the political economy of
socialism in college amounted to sheer torture. “We at long last understood
everything. How long can you live in the kitchen? Let’s put it like this.” She
claimed that “from the very beginning there was something I didn’t like. I didn’t
know what, but something was not right. Everyone worked their tails off, but
there was nothing in the stores.” Aleksandr Virich also evoked Soviet boilerplate
language about a revolutionary situation, but put a different spin on it. Late in
coming to power, Gorbachev “was always late, by a month, by a year. The first
thing he should have done was to dismiss the old Politburo and not hold onto
those orthodox ones who, excuse me, could no longer hold their pee.”
A cynical offshoot of the economic line of reasoning underscores the ruling
elite’s desire to legalize its and others’ ill-gained fortunes. Interestingly, only
Saratovites subscribed to this position, which I believe reflects their under-
standing of life along the Volga in the years following the Soviet Union’s col-
lapse, and which does not detract from the argument that glasnost, by making
information accessible to everyone, generally erased the differences between the
responses of Baby Boomers from Moscow and Saratov. Aleksandr Kutin main-
tained that perestroika occurred because “people wanted freedom,” but also
because “Party activists at the top had deposited so much money abroad that
they had to legalize their fortunes.” Olga Gorelik commented that “perestroika
* Also known as the Liberman reforms after the economist who espoused them, the reforms
were sponsored by Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, appointed chairman of the USSR
Council of Ministers or prime minister in 1964. The reforms sought to give economic
managers greater autonomy.
occurred because a large number of people were unhappy with their lives, those
people who felt that they could fulfill themselves, but weren’t allowed to.
Remember, there was underground manufacturing. To a certain extent they had
already accumulated their capital, but it was criminal. It was illegal, but those in
power also understood that the money wasn’t going where it should.”
Irina Garzanova concurred that “there were rich people who simply remained
in the shadows. The circumstances satisfied them, but then, I think, they felt that
it was time to come out into the open. They were tired of hiding.” Gennady
Ivanov believed that “nothing takes place without preparation. They stole an
awful lot during the last years.” I pointed out that many Party members were
among those who ripped things off. “Yes, there were Party members, too. During
the period of stagnation the wrong people ended up in higher and middle-level
Party organs and Soviet organizations.” As a result, he concluded, “It had to
unfold this way. On the one hand, they had to put their capital somewhere so
that they could go abroad and finally talk about this.” Similarly, Viktor
D. indicted the Brezhnev generation for “grabbing what they could. Having
pilfered what they could, they had money. But back then if you had a large
amount of money you were obliged to live like everyone else.” He continued,
“You couldn’t show off and flaunt your wealth. They had more in the refriger-
ator than others and more cars, but they began to demand something more for
their money. They wanted to use it. This is where perestroika came from.”
Others, too, underscored perestroika’s inevitability, but not necessarily at the
historical juncture during which it unfolded. Maintained Natalya P.: “Well,
probably the country had reached a critical state when something had to give.
And probably the role of the individual in history is another. If there had been
no Gorbachev, then perhaps someone else would not have been able to manage.
And if no one had been given that power, things perhaps would have occurred
later or else differently.” She concluded, “We see here the role of the individual,
of the human factor, and also of chance, upon which much in politics depends.”
Aleksandr Konstantinov also felt that the Soviet Union could not survive, but
he never expected the collapse to come when it did: “In regard to the argument
that the Soviet Union had to break up, I’d point out that we didn’t know when
this would take place or how. But I do have one very clear memory. Schiller
wrote a wonderful historical essay about Sparta and Athens,* and when I read it
I understood that Sparta was very much like the Soviet Union,” he sighed, “and
Athens was very much like the United States and that for the very same reasons
that Sparta lost to Athens [in the sense that its ideas ultimately prevailed], the
Soviet Union would lose to America. Everything hinged on brawn instead of
brains, and this eventually resulted in the muscles becoming atrophied. An
* Konstantinov is referring to Friedrich Schiller’s “The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon,”

delivered in 1789, which outlines two alternative conceptions of government, a republican
(Athenian) and oligarchic (Spartan) form.
empire not founded on a realistic basis cannot survive for long. However, I could
not fathom that this would occur so quickly.”
A handful of interviewees dissatisfied with aspects of life in Russia when
I interviewed them implicated the West in promoting Gorbachev’s radical
program. Natalya Pronina pronounced that perestroika “took place owing to
the enormous influence of America.” When I pressed for the details, she
demurred, insisting “you have to understand that it’s not something clear and
concrete.” Yelena Zharovova argued that perestroika came about “when
Gorbachev used the plans drawn up by an institute dealing with social issues
and simply made the program public that they had given him.” But there was
more to her explanation: “Secondly, there was very strong influence from the
West. I can’t say which elements exactly, I can’t say which countries. But pere-
stroika took place because they pressured him.” Gennady Ivanov likewise
believed the West played a hand behind the scenes, giving the example of
Gorbachev unilaterally withdrawing Soviet troops from Germany without get-
ting anything in return. “They’re withdrawn from there and everyone is aston-
ished that he gets no political or economic benefits from this. Then he gets a
Nobel Prize and opens some sort of Gorbachev Fund. However, where does the
money for this come from? I think it’s clear.”
Several Baby Boomers did not understand why perestroika occurred, but voiced
strong opinions about how it turned out. As Yevgeniya Ruditskaya retorted, “I
don’t know why it occurred. However, it changed our life for the better. I’m very
grateful to Gorbachev.” Her classmate Sofiya Vinogradova felt the same way: “I
don’t dig so deep. That’s not my thing. However, it’s a very good thing it occurred.”
A rare dissenting voice, Leonid Volodarsky snapped, “I don’t know where it came
from, but I know that it turned out terrible. I see this, and any normal person sees
that it’s bad, because any period of change such as this should have been carried
out under the strictest of controls. We see what happened. Here in Moscow no
economic or financial laws are at work. Then there’s the rest of Russia.”
Father Valentin Ulyakhin’s remarks remind us of how one’s understanding of
history depends upon one’s own subjective vantage point. He knew exactly
where perestroika came from: “God makes his will known. God creates every-
thing. It’s all God’s will.” Yet perhaps Vladimir Nemchenko spoke for most of
the interviewees. He cast perestroika as something that was “historically
necessary. How shall I put it?” he asked rhetorically. “The whole world does
things one way, and we alone, for some reason, thought we could do things dif-
ferently. That’s silly, isn’t it? Maybe Lenin and the Revolution simply came too
early. After all, many of the ideas behind it are humane.” Aware of the many
theories explaining perestroika, Marina Bakutina did not know which one to
subscribe to, but emphasized “there is no doubt that it fell on well-prepared
soil, at least among the intelligentsia. I don’t know what behind-the-scenes
intrigues took place, but it’s absolutely certain that the ground was prepared.”
And this is the point on which the vast majority of Baby Boomers agree.
G L A S N O S T “ O P E N E D E V E R Y O N E ’ S E Y E S D I F F E R E N T LY ”
Perestroika sought controlled change and reform, but the revelations of mass
repressions, corruption, abuses of power, and outright lies found an apprecia-
tive, ready audience among the public, and stirred national independence move-
ments in parts of the USSR. Glasnost also aggravated the political struggle within
the Party and beyond, which culminated in the attempt to overthrow Gorbachev
in August 1991, because the new, increasingly participatory public life that glas-
nost brought into play propelled Gorbachev to take still more radical measures.
For instance, the introduction of popular elections provided alternatives that
eventually forced the Party to relinquish its monopoly on power, as popular
forces from below challenged power from above.
Whether intentionally or not, glasnost thus turned into the most successful
reform because, in seeking the support of the intelligentsia by promoting glas-
nost, Gorbachev took a path of no return. There could be no such thing as half
or partial glasnost; it was an all or nothing deal. Many in the West have called
the Soviet Union a country of words rather than deeds. But to understand glas-
nost’s impact, it must be stressed that in Soviet society words were deeds.6
The problem with glasnost, however, as Soviet citizens joked at the time, was
that you could not eat it. Marina Bakutina recounted a perestroika-era joke that
captured this sentiment. “During the early years of perestroika a dog dies and
goes to heaven, where he sees a friend from his years on Earth. The friend, who
had been in canine heaven for some years, asks, ‘Well, tell me how things are
down there. I hear that all sorts of news items are being published and that
everyone’s talking about perestroika. What’s perestroika?’ ‘Well, as for new
things,’ says the newcomer to heaven, ‘what can I say? Imagine that they lengthen
your chain by six feet, but move your food bowl away by twelve feet. Yet you’re
able to bark at whomever you like and as much as you want.”
Listening in on this “barking,” anthropologist Nancy Ries observed that, in
the early years of perestroika, private discussions with ordinary Russians revealed
a penchant for litany and lament that soon spread from people’s kitchen tables
and the emboldened media into politics. Paradoxically, Ries maintained that
this public airing of the country’s tragic past did not revitalize Soviet society, as
Gorbachev had expected, but indicted the ideals of Soviet socialism—even those
worth keeping.7 In a dramatic ritual inversion, the media now portrayed the
capitalist West in idealized terms. Works of long maligned Western historians
on Soviet history were now presented as “objective.” Nostalgia took hold for
prerevolutionary images and forms—including family histories, as people
searched out their genealogies. Russia proclaimed itself an Orthodox Christian
country. Even the old notion that women should stay home and take care of the
family was temporarily resurrected.
Yet the wringing of hands and narratives of victimhood had a powerful

cleansing effect, providing people with new, temporary identities as survivors of
Soviet power—or of perestroika. How the Cold War generation collectively
remembered the past constantly underwent change as they sought to make sense
of the historical era in which their lives unfolded by drawing on the larger stories
available to them.8 How the Baby Boomers remembered the Soviet experience
and perestroika also reflected their social status as members of the country’s well-
educated urban intelligentsia.9 In this regard, what they had to say is emblematic
of what so many others of their social standing thought, felt, and said.
Lyubov Kovalyova recalled how the euphoria associated with glasnost eventually
gave way to more complex feelings: “At first it was very interesting. Everyone simply
lapped up this information. People stayed glued to their television sets, avidly read
newspapers, and discussed everything. It made us feel better, but then there was a
deluge of all sorts of depressing, and perhaps unnecessary, things.” Vladimir Kirsanov
recounted, “We didn’t read books, but devoured them. The first books that began to
appear weren’t political publications, but belletristic writings.” A physician, Kirsanov
read about Soviet geneticists who had fallen victim to the Stalinist terror, as well as
works of history. “This literature greatly shaped public opinion,” he concluded.
According to Marina Bakutina, “it was absolutely amazing! There was such euphoria
when they began to publish all of those works that had been forbidden before. It
was like a clap of thunder on a clear blue day.” She told me how, years earlier, she
had wondered aloud with university friends where all the talented writers had dis-
appeared to. “Why is there nothing but mediocrities? There was nothing but pon-
derous prose and then, suddenly, it was as if the dam broke and there was the feeling
that we had been taken for fools all those years.” Lyubov Raitman also evoked the
excitement of the time “when you could read things in the press, when it became
possible to watch things on television and hear them over the radio. It was a bomb-
shell! The newspapers from those years, the magazine Ogonyok (Little Flame). It was
amazing.” Ogonyok soared in popularity during perestroika under the editorship of
Vitaly Korotich, owing to its stunning revelations about the Soviet past. Indeed,
Yelena Kolosova likewise attached importance to that publication. “Nowhere else in
the contemporary world has anything like this happened. There was freedom of
speech, and Ogonyok played a huge role. It was all so interesting for the reading
public.” She explained why: “Because, after all, you could only, as they say, influence
a country that read a lot by publishing something.”
Many Baby Boomers mentioned specific books, publications, or bits of infor-
mation that particularly resonated with them. Vladimir Kirsanov, like millions
of others, found Viktor Suvorov’s Icebreaker*—a different kind of history—
compelling, because it attempts to document vast Soviet preparations to invade
and Sovietize Europe in the summer of 1941 on the eve of the Nazi attack.
* Viktor Suvorov (real name, Vladimir Rezun) served in the Soviet military intelligence.
After defecting to England he published Icebreaker in 1988.
“I remember that a book by a Soviet dissident, who fled to England, a KGB

agent, made an impression on me. It was an altogether unusual view of history.”
But revelations about the Stalinist terror resonated most with the Cold War gen-
eration. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, for instance, astonished Kirsanov, who
had seen the book for sale in Yugoslavia twenty-five years earlier, but did not risk
bringing it back home. He began reading it only during glasnost. “However, I
wasn’t able to finish it. It was too morally distressing and I couldn’t go further.”
Singling out Yevgeniya Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind and Shalamov’s
tales,* Vyacheslav Starik also found the camp literature disturbing. “After all,
you lived not knowing anything about it and weren’t even interested in such
things.”
Some interviewees averred that the glasnost revelations destroyed their belief
in the system. “When perestroika began we were flooded with information. I
was happy that my father didn’t live to see this. I don’t know how he would have
endured having his ideals destroyed,” weighed in Olga Kamayurova. She found
this a “horrible thing” for her generation too: “We lost our anchor. We’re like a
balloon that’s lost its air. We began to see things differently. It’s really awful to
live in a period of extraordinary changes. I’m not speaking of material hard-
ships, but of the collapse of one’s belief system. It turned out that everything we
believed in, everything that we considered sacred and holy, turned out to be not
only unholy, but even the handiwork of the devil.” Olga Gorelik also recalled
how hard the period was: “It was unpleasant to know that you had been deceived
for a long time on so many questions. I remember the feeling; it was as if there
was deception everywhere, a conspiracy of silence, and the sense that we really
could have lived through those years differently.”
The availability of new facts forced some Baby Boomers to reconsider their
understanding of Soviet history. As Vladimir Kirsanov remarked, “We were
altogether in the dark about the annexation of the Western territories, Western
Belorussia, Ukraine, and Moldavia” during World War II.** Pyotor Krasilnikov
singled out the scandals exposed about the Communist Parties in the union
republics. “They found the first secretary of the oblast Party committee, a public
figure, with large reserves of gold and valuables.” Revelations about corruption in
Uzbekistan also troubled Natalya Yolshina, as did reports that “our leaders were
far from innocent.” Glasnost enabled her to see how much they had embellished
things. “The fact that things weren’t so good in regard to our production levels as
they always said at Party congresses, and that in agriculture we didn’t have the
* Yevgeniya Ginzburg’s enthralling memoir of her falling into Stalin’s repressive Gulag, and
writer and Gulag camp survivor Varlam Shalamov’s poignant and lyrical fictional tales
represent two of the most widely read and acclaimed publications on this dark chapter of
Soviet history.
** This is a reference to clauses of the Nazi–Soviet (Molotov–Ribbentrop) Pact of 1939 kept
secret from Soviet citizens.
harvests that we might have, for instance.” She admitted that she and many of her
friends took in the new information with resentment. “The dethronement of
Pavel Morozov for many was a real tragedy, but for me it wasn’t for some reason.”
Yolshina, however, railed against attempts to challenge sanitized Soviet depic-
tions of World War II: “I don’t want to know or to hear that Zoya
Kosmodemyanskaya’s feats never happened.* The war was always a sacred topic
in my family. I continue to believe that the people fought for justice and for
independence and that the country and the people were united like never before.
For me the war is sacred, and I don’t want to subject this to reexamination.”
Others felt similarly, since World War II remains a defining autobiographical
memory of the Cold War generation’s parents and other family members. Victory
and sacrifice legitimated Soviet power more than Stalinist repression discredited
it. The resulting myth of the Great Patriotic War became a vital aspect of the Baby
Boomers’ own “post-memory,” that is, an emotional investment on the part of
those born after the war to remember it based in part on the stories told by their
family members who lived through it.10
Glasnost also elevated the political consciousness of many Baby Boomers.
When visiting London right after Gorbachev had been there in 1989, Yelena
Kolosova recalled, “I was so proud, because the elections to the Supreme Soviet
had just taken place.** It was one of the greatest moments in history. We
watched the Supreme Soviet sessions live over television.” Owing to glasnost,
Tatyana Arzhanova and Vyacheslav Starik got involved in public life in ways that
had been impossible before—and in ways that ultimately disappointed them.
“One revelation followed another, and it suddenly became clear that there’d be
nothing left, for it turns out that there was nothing about us that was good,”
Arzhanova remembered. Her political awakening occurred when Nobel Prize
winning physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke at the Congress of People’s Deputies
and Gorbachev switched off the microphone on him. “I cried. I stood in front
of the television and stomped my feet. It was so intolerable. It shouldn’t have
happened,” she contended. “This was the only period in my life when I got
involved in politics.” Tatyana gave her political support to a maverick pilot with
political pretensions who lived in her apartment complex. “He was a Communist,
he was a Party member, and he decided that he, an honest and decent person
who wanted Russia to become a real country where people could live a real life
as in the West, had to promote this,” she explained. He ran—unsuccessfully—
* Komsomol activist and partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a World War II hero
after being tortured to death by the Nazis for blowing up an ammunition dump. A cult
arose in her honor during the war, used by the propaganda machine to whip up patri-
otism and to instill hatred toward the Teutonic invaders. During perestroika, the media
revisited the cult of Zoya, raising questions that poked holes in the Zoya myth.
** The Communist Party’s decision to introduce contested elections in 1989 for a new
legislature represented a decisive break with the past. A new body, the Congress of
People’s Deputies of the USSR, elected a smaller body, a bicameral Supreme Soviet.
for various offices, during which time Arzhanova typed all sorts of things for
him. “Unfortunately,” she concluded, “it didn’t amount to anything.” Starik
related how, in 1989, his team at work spent three months on the job to elect a
deputy to the Supreme Soviet. Their candidate had numerous positive attrib-
utes: He did not belong to the Party, he came from a simple family, he lived
modestly, he distinguished himself at work—and he agreed to be nominated.
“We printed leaflets for him. Back then the first laser printer appeared at work.
We used the laser printer bought for our aerodynamic experiments to print leaf-
lets for him,” confessed Starik. “For two or three months I ran around with him
throughout the neighborhood, and, as a result, we won. It was a very interesting
experience. But then he sided with the Communist faction. We really resented
this!” exclaimed Starik.
A good number of interviewees felt that the essence of glasnost lay not in the
specific revelations, but in the act of making them public. “In the early days we
walked about stunned by glasnost, because we didn’t expect such things at all,”
shared Natalya Pronina. “We knew all of these things, but it was a shock to be
able to articulate them. Don’t think, though, that they divulged something new
for me. They didn’t disclose a single thing I didn’t know, absolutely nothing.”
Aleksandr Babushkin agreed. “You have to understand that any cultured person,
intellectual, is able to distinguish between true and false information.” He fine-
tuned his remark: “It was really interesting and wonderful that they began to tell
the truth, but it wasn’t shocking. I was prepared for this.” Tatyana Artyomova
likewise held that nothing shocked “intelligent people, who read and talked to
each other.”
But, as Tatyana Kuznetsova perceptively pointed out, glasnost “opened every-
one’s eyes differently.” “I’d say that 60 percent of the information that came out
between 1986 and 1990 was a shock to us,” remarked Aleksandr Virich. “We
knew a lot, and suspected a lot, but when they began to speak frankly, began to
divulge information—the popular magazine Ogonyok was a big hit among us
back then—began to say things openly, well, they began to destroy Soviet power
by bombardment, and each edition of Ogonyok was another round.” For many,
according to Virich, “‘Did you read it?’ became a sacred question.” Saratov Party
member Natalya Yolshina found “glasnost was a real shock, and my faith began
to waver when it became clear that things weren’t as good as we were accus-
tomed to believe.” Irina Vizgalova also felt that “many things were a revelation.
There was a great deal that was unexpected.” “The truth about how things had
been under the Bolsheviks” stunned Vladimir Bystrov. “It was practically geno-
cide of one’s own people. The most awful thing was that tens of millions passed
through the camps for no reason at all. And one who’s passed through the
camps remains scarred for the rest of his life.” Could Bystrov—a Party mem-
ber—not have known this, or was his selective memory a strategy for rational-
izing his belonging to the organization that had institutionalized the repression?
Given the responses of the other Baby Boomers, I suspect the latter. Yet Vyacheslav
Starik reminded me that he had had little access to samizdat literature, which he
associated with people in the “free professions,” not engineers such as himself
with a practical bent of mind. “It was things connected with the camps, above
all, the repression” that shocked him. No one in Starik’s family had been
repressed, and this fact may have made his family more receptive to the positive
aspects of the Soviet regime and its propaganda.
By barraging people with conflicting viewpoints, glasnost taught the Cold
War generation a valuable lesson. Recalled Arkady Darchenko: “I was blown
away! It was as if the floodgates had been thrown open, and at first we believed
everything that we heard. But it gradually became clear,” he admitted, “that
much of what was being said was a bunch of nonsense. You begin to under-
stand there is such a thing as yellow journalism, a radical press, and a normal
press. We began to discriminate more.” Lamented Olga Kolishchyuk: “It always
shocked me when they’d praise someone to the skies and then suddenly rub
his name in dirt. More than anything else it shocked me when there’d be a
switch from one point of view to the opposite one. God and tsar and then sud-
denly the devil, as they say.” The dilemma for Irina Kulikova was that “there
was conflicting information about the same thing. It was terrible. How was one
to know where the truth lay?” The result? “There was so much that, now, for the
most part, no one watches anything, or listens to anything. There’s a constant
twisting of facts, and I stopped listening to any of it.” Galina Poldyaeva agreed:
“So much came out that we were stunned. And now we, by and large, quit
reading papers.”
The revelations created a hostile work climate for some members of the old
guard. Larisa Petrova recalled that “I was in favor of glasnost, and my father at
first was, too. But then glasnost took on some abnormal tendencies.” She criti-
cized the “primitive thinking” of those people who turned yesterday’s negatives
into today’s positives. “When glasnost took on these forms my father turned
against it.” She blasted the “radical” press for writing that “all of those in the
oblast and city Party committees were dishonest and corrupt. Of course, there
were some like that; you’d find them in any society,” she rationalized. Some of
the falsely accused lost their pensions. Her own father, she shared, “became a
social outcast. And he had many friends like that.” Irina Chemodurova
recounted that her father, a historian of the CPSU, was eased out of his job at
the university where he had taught since 1944. Yet, remarkably, he and his
family found glasnost exhilarating: “We sat from morning until night in front
of the television set and watched all of the congresses and wanted Sakharov to
speak,” Irina exalted. “It was the first time in my life I saw such passion at
home. I’d even say we became inspired. My father at age seventy was encour-
aged, and believed something new was happening. Thank God he lived to see
what took place in 1991.”
Father Valentin Ulyakhin was hard put to say anything positive about
Gorbachev, who remained a Communist and gave only lip service to religion.
But even Ulyakhin had to conclude that “his main service is that he illuminated,
threw light on the secrets, that is, glasnost.”
“ T H I N K I N G P E O P L E A C C E P T E D P E R E S T R O I K A”
Gorbachev’s inconsistent, hesitant move toward market socialism set into
motion forces that eventually wreaked economic havoc, resulting during the
1990s in a breakdown of the world’s third largest economy on a magnitude not
seen since the Great Depression. For this reason, many interviewees’ assessments
of perestroika singled out economic difficulties as the reform program’s most
nagging problem with which they had to cope. They did not voice regrets over
the program itself, revealing their overall acceptance of market forces. According
to Olga Kolishchyuk, “it was great. Perestroika and the introduction of market
relations were necessary because the planned economy didn’t work. But they
didn’t think things through and all sorts of problems arose. They should have
weighed things more carefully at first, and then tried.” “Perestroika was too
rushed, and perhaps it all should have been done differently,” suggested Olga
Gorelik. “On the one hand, it gave freedom to several strata of the population,
to the intelligentsia, for example. But, on the other hand, it created complicated
economic problems. Not everyone can restructure themselves, namely our gen-
eration.” As Natalya P. summed up, “I didn’t expect some sort of unusual leap
forward. But we lived through some hard times when perestroika began. Things
are more stable now, far more so. Periods of great change are always accompa-
nied by a downside.”
The downside impacted many Baby Boomers’ jobs. Irina Vizgalova recalled,
“First of all, perestroika affected us in that it became practically impossible to
work. Ours was a very large design institute. Not only ours, but others, too.
Ours, where there were more than 500 people employed, shrank to 20 people,
and there was no work.” How did people cope? “The entire nation sold things
on the street at the bazaars, because they had to live. I didn’t end up on the
street, but my colleagues did, and began to peddle things. I moved to another
organization, although at first things were not so good there either financially.
That’s how perestroika affected us—very strongly.” She also complained about
tuition fees introduced in colleges and her family’s concerns over funding her
children’s educations. Yet her own son got in under the old system and her
daughter received a scholarship. “We were in time, but now there are fewer and
fewer possibilities of this sort.” There’s a lesson here: Vizgalova did not end up
peddling things on the streets, and her children did get into college without
paying.
Numerous Baby Boomers focused less on how perestroika affected them eco-
nomically and more on how it, and glasnost, altered the climate at work.
Vladimir Glebkin, who taught physics in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the
early years of perestroika, became more and more outspoken owing to the
impact of the heady climate he encountered during his summer visits home to
Moscow, and this almost got him into trouble. He recalled an episode that took
place in 1988, when the concept of “socialist competition” was introduced
among Soviet citizens on foreign assignment. Glebkin did not see the logic in
introducing the campaign in Ethiopia. “How could you determine who is better?
I asked this in a neutral, nonconfrontational way, but it was seen as a mutiny,”
he remembered. Glebkin reminded me that “problems with Soviet citizens
abroad were solved very simply. Within a week, you were sent back to the Soviet
Union, and suddenly this prospect loomed large for me. I’m not sure what hap-
pened, but I think that, as my case was reviewed higher and higher up, appar-
ently someone high up understood that it was time to put an end to this, and
things came to naught.” How does Glebkin evaluate perestroika? “Very favor-
ably. Despite all the shortcomings, no one wants to return to what we had
before, with the exception, perhaps, of the very oldest people, who received
certain privileges under communism. Yet we didn’t receive any, therefore there’s
nothing to remember; perestroika’s an indisputable plus.”
Mikhail Markovich saw enormous changes in the publishing world where he
worked with the onslaught of perestroika. Before, the publishing house was
supervised by “an absolutely horrible person, a Stalinist. We had a huge conflict,
and I was planning to quit, because for two years it was impossible to work.
Literally things changed with the October plenum that elected Gorbachev. They
removed my boss the next day. For me, the Gorbachev period began with a
bang.” For this reason, Markovich considered 1985 “a turning point for me. The
centralized system collapsed, and we very quickly began to understand this.
I remember the absolute euphoria in connection with Gorbachev’s coming to
power.” Markovich happened to be in the Baltic when Gorbachev’s key advisor
Yakovlev spoke there. His visit not only emboldened the Baltic states’ popular
front movements that soon pressed for independence but also Markovich and
his colleagues: “We, in one and a half years, ended censorship. The first
independent publishing houses opened,” he recalled. “I can honestly say that
for three years I unselfishly worked for the good of the country. I’d come to work
at 7:00 P.M. and leave the next day at 2:00 P.M.”
Perestroika posed unfamiliar challenges at work for television journalist
Natalya Yolshina. Before then, she said, “I always felt sorry for those people I
had to say something negative about over the air.” Then they began a new broad-
cast. She recalled the time they waited for local “democrats” to show up follow-
ing political meetings so that they could broadcast live. “They came and said
that the Communist Party was bad, that we needed a multiparty system, that
you had to abolish it. I began to die inside, but kept my composure before the
camera. You must understand that I don’t see any internal contradictions bet-
ween that which I was, not only was, but remain. I was a patriot and a Communist,
and I consider this normal, authentic, and correct.” She continued, “I saw no
contradiction between this and when they began speaking about democracy,
about glasnost, about freedom of speech, and the like, and that the government
and system should be different. This struck a responsive chord in me, because I
really did see some things that were wrong, even in our wonderful society. And
I was totally in favor of perestroika.” Yolshina welcomed the notion of elected
organs that would speak for the people, but expressed disappointment over an
elected official from Saratov, who, after settling in Moscow, forgot about his
constituents and focused on his self-aggrandizement. As a result, Yolshina con-
cluded, “I don’t understand a thing about it.” But I was not satisfied with why
she backed perestroika, so I pressed. “It was all of the publications at the
beginning of perestroika,” she replied. In other words, glasnost.
Vyacheslav Starik described how he shut down the Communist Party
committee at the Aviation Institute where he worked. He reminded me that,
owing to the fact that he could not hold his tongue—a personality trait that had
gotten him in trouble already back in school—he irritated a member of his Party
cell at the institute. “As a result, two or three times I didn’t get to travel abroad,
because he didn’t let me.” This was in the 1980s, but before the Gorbachev era.
Once perestroika began, Starik was elected to the Party committee during a
period of great uncertainty. “The uncertainty,” he clarified, “lay in the fact that it
wasn’t clear what we should do. This was a period of elections and democracy.
What should the Party committee do in this climate?” Starik proposed abolish-
ing the committee.
Others felt like Starik, too. Saratov’s Yevgeny Podolsky, who resettled in
Moscow in the mid-1970s, saw the writing on the wall: “I turned in a written
request to quit the Party in 1990. At the time,” he said, “I worked at Gazprom
[the Soviet gas industry]. Moreover, I had a serious conflict with my boss. When
perestroika began I thought, ‘Now’s my chance.’ I saw things were getting worse.
I began to speak at Party meetings, and this led to conflict.” He added that “nat-
urally everyone voted to expel me from the Party, but in the corridors each of
them came up to me, including some from the administration but not the top
bosses, and whispered to me, ‘Everything you wrote is true. We’d do the same
thing too, but we can’t right now. If we write a statement they’d boot us out.’”
Podolsky had already decided to quit his job and to strike out on his own, tak-
ing advantage of the new opportunities for independent business initiatives that
perestroika offered.
Despite the problems the Baby Boomers encountered negotiating the rocky
transition to a market economy, many of them, appreciative of the fact that hard
times often provide unexpected opportunities, placed great value on the free-
doms they had won. For Anna Lyovina, “transitional periods are always a
two-sided phenomenon. Perestroika greatly benefited some, but completely
ruined the lives of others.” Her oldest child was born when she lived in East
Germany, where her husband was stationed in the Red Army. “Back then it never
entered my head that my children at some point would be able to leave the
Soviet Union!” She remarked that “freedom of choice is a wonderful thing,
especially when you consider how we were brought up, when everything was
decided for us.” She offered examples to illustrate her point: “When you’d enroll
in college no one asked you where you planned to work afterward. They sent
you. A living permit tied you to where you lived. You couldn’t move from one
city to another if they didn’t send you there. There were an insane number of
regulations. You were tied to one place, to one social structure, to your level,
beyond which you couldn’t move or advance.” Lyovina acknowledged, however,
that perestroika “was a tragedy for others. The ground fell out from under their
feet. They psychologically could not restructure their lives, and they suffered a
great deal materially.” She told me about a cousin in Siberia who could not live
on his miserly pension. His children, who also had become engineers, lost their
jobs and had no prospects.
Bakhyt Kenzheyev, who had emigrated to Canada before perestroika took off,
appreciated the newly won freedoms even from afar. “I’m thankful to Gorbachev
for everything, but in particular for what I felt personally. For example, I had a
hybrid document called a Soviet passport for citizens living permanently abroad.
With this passport I needed a visa to travel to Russia. I remember the day they
abolished this. It became a full-fledged passport. I could travel to Russia on
short notice, without any visa.” There was more: “Then they returned my right
to vote. I had been deprived of this when I left. Of course, it wasn’t much needed,
but nonetheless, the hell with it, it’s an attribute of citizenship. I can opt not to
vote, but I enjoy having the right to do so.”
Aleksandr Virich summed things up: “Thinking people accepted perestroika.
Of course, 90 percent of us at first thought that this would be a new current.” But
old ways of thinking did not change overnight. “On the one hand, people
wanted freedom; on the other hand, they didn’t want to lose what they had.”
“COMMON SENSE LED TO THE COLLAPSE”

In August 1991, hard-line Communists plotted to overthrow Gorbachev to pre-
vent signing of a new union treaty that would have created a Union of Soviet
Sovereign Republics. What most upset those engineering the putsch was the tacit
understanding that the six Soviet republics not involved in the negotiations—
Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova—were free to go
their separate ways. Irina Barysheva recalled, “When they began the putsch, it
was in the summer. My mother, who was still alive, said that it was like the state
she was in when war began.” Those in Moscow felt a more immediate threat—
and could do something about it. KGB operative Andrei Rogatnev related that
“it turned out that, in 1988, I left for Iraq and returned home in 1991 to an alto-
gether different country. And I didn’t return the same. The country moved in one
direction, and I in a different one. True,” he continued, “the putsch began imme-
diately after my return, and I had no choice and I rushed, as they say, to the
barricades. I didn’t hesitate over whose side I was on.” The turning point for
Rogatnev came when open elections began. He told me a joke from the period:
“When were the first democratic elections held? Answer: When God brought Eve
to Adam and said, ‘Well, Adamchik, choose a wife for yourself.’ Our elections
were the same. Then, finally, for the first time in my life, I could choose from
among three or four candidates.”
Like many Muscovites, Mikhail Markovich had spent the weekend before
the coup at the dacha. When he returned to work on Monday morning from
the suburbs, tanks rolled along the Minsk highway. He remembered remark-
ing to a friend, “‘Lyosha, I don’t think this will last long. At most, it will last
for only a year or two,’ because we had already gotten used to living differently,
and deciding everything for ourselves. We saw how intelligent people came to
power with whom you could carry on a conversation. Before this, things were
difficult.” When he and an acquaintance, like innumerable other Muscovites,
responded to Boris Yeltsin’s appeal to the Russian people to resist the conspir-
ators by spending the night of Monday, August 21, at the Russian White House
where the Congress of People’s Deputies convened, they “experienced nothing
but the sticky feeling of fear.” Anatoly Shapiro recalled that “the putsch was
the most terrifying moment for me, and for my family.” Like so many others,
he quit the Party that week. Justifying his actions, he pointed out that, “as a
petty Party functionary, as secretary of a small Party cell, I didn’t convene a
single Party meeting the entire time. They should thank me for that. People in
my collective more or less understood. I didn’t betray them, and they didn’t
betray me.”
Like all great historical events, the Gorbachev revolution and breakup of the
Soviet empire has provoked extensive debate in the scholarly and popular liter-
ature, as well as in public opinion. Some explanations for the collapse of the
Soviet system accent the worsening economy, while others locate the collapse in
the very (illegitimate) nature of the Soviet regime itself, or in the burdens of
empire. Although caution advises against interpretations that smack of inevita-
bility, the confluence of several developments and the consequences of state
policies created the necessary preconditions that made the end of the USSR pos-
sible, even likely. That Gorbachev himself was a product of the Soviet system
and rose to the Party’s top leadership position makes this abundantly clear.
Indeed, the Baby Boomers’ life stories suggest that the Soviet system reformed
itself out of existence, as the stagnating political and economic structure
attempted to catch up with changes that had come to society and to people’s
mentalities. These transformations were, in part, the ineluctable but often
unplanned consequences of the state’s own social policies. They alone doomed
the unreformed regime, since they would have continued to evolve organically
toward a further opening of society.
Despite the deep-rooted origins of the decline of the Soviet empire, the
Gorbachev years, ironically or tragically, contributed to the collapse.11 As Lyubov
Raitman maintained, “It was no longer possible in the circumstances that had
arisen in the country by 1991 to preserve central power and govern an enormous
country that had exhausted itself.” Raitman did not regret the collapse, but “that,
for various reasons, including age, I didn’t succeed in taking advantage of the
fact that, at one time, it had been one accessible country. Now it’s a problem,
and it’s likely I won’t see it all.” Yet Raitman harbored no illusions about Soviet
times. “The petty rulers, governor generals, and general secretaries of these
republics always made an awful impression on me. I understood that these
autocrats were extremely dependent on the Kremlin, like puppets, with someone
pulling the strings, that this subordination existed, and that something hap-
pened that destroyed it.”
At the start of the new millennium, 70 percent of Russians polled believed
that Russia had lost a great deal owing to the breakup of the Soviet Union.12
Many interviewees felt the same way. Yelena Zharovova, for example, posited
that “glasnost made it possible to let out steam and that was it.” Still, she
believed that, except for the Baltic states, “the other republics did not want
independence from the Soviet Union.” Critical of the destabilizing role played
by the Baltic states, Zharovova opined, “They received more than other repub-
lics, they received more attention, more money, more everything at the expense
of Russia and Central Asia. Apparently, he who receives more expects more.”
Lyubov Kovalyova, too, regretted “that a country so big broke apart. Although,
probably many welcomed these events.” She clarified what she meant: “It all
depends upon the person, upon his or her circumstances, upon what they got
from perestroika. It seems to me that, at the moment of the breakup, those who
turned out to be working at a feeding trough did alright, but those who weren’t,
well, they were worse off in a purely material sense.” Olga Martynkina believed
perestroika was inevitable but “regretted the breakup of the union. It was some
kind of explosion. Suddenly everyone wanted their freedom, everyone went
their separate ways, despite the economic and cultural ties.”
Vladimir Kirsanov explained, “You probably can’t overcome human nature.
No matter how much nationalism was repressed, it very quickly rose to the sur-
face. I was stunned by how suddenly this occurred, since before there wasn’t any
evidence of this.” Kirsanov believed that Islamic fundamentalism played a big
role in this. “It began in Kabul and spread from Afghanistan. God forbid that the
soothsayers are right who prophesized that a third world war has already begun.”
Bitter over the dissolution of the USSR, Kirsanov detailed how the discord bet-
ween nationalities affected his relatives in Baku. “My brother’s family fell apart.
An engineer with a Ph.D., he lived in Azerbaijan, in Baku, and worked in one of
the ministries. Neighbors denounced his wife, who is Armenian, warning him
that ‘they’re coming to get you.’ He packed his wife and young son into the car
at night and fled Azerbaijan. They now live in Moscow, where he drives a cab,”
related Kirsanov. Viktor D. likewise expressed deep dissatisfaction: “It offends
me that they’re now separate states. Moreover, that’s the opinion not only of
Russians but of Armenians, Azeris, and all the others. The collapse of the union
didn’t have a beneficial effect on anyone.” Viktor, like many others, regretted
how expensive and complicated this has become owing to the breakup of
the union.
A minority of the Baby Boomers, however, had no regrets about the unravel-
ing of the union. As Tatyana Luchnikova quipped, “I like the fact that the Soviet
Union no longer exists, but that doesn’t mean I’m right. Many people I know
don’t like this. Some of them even say that ‘we had communism under Brezhnev.
Caviar was cheap at 5 rubles and meat at 2 rubles a kilo,’ but what kind of com-
munism was it?”
“ W H E N W E L I V E D I N S A R AT O V W E A LWAY S WA N T E D
TO L I V E I N M O S C OW ”
Late Soviet society had been on the move; the 1979 census, for instance, revealed
that less than half of the population lived where they were born.13 Gorbachev’s
revolution furthered this trend by providing opportunities to relocate within the
Soviet Union, greater freedom to travel abroad, and more possibilities to emi-
grate. Nationalist animosities magnified by the breakup of the Soviet Union
also created a refugee problem of considerable proportions, as hundreds of
thousands fled their homes. Moreover, the dissolution of the USSR resulted in
tens of millions of Russians now living in the Near Abroad, as the newly
independent states once part of the USSR were now called, giving rise to poten-
tially explosive diaspora problems.
The gap in the living standards between Moscow and much of the rest of the
country made moving to the Soviet capital a dream of many from the provinces
long before perestroika. Seven members of the graduating class of Saratov’s
School No. 42 now live in Russia’s capital, and two others, both women, left
Saratov for other cities to accompany their husbands. I located three of the
seven. Each of their experiences reveals strategies for relocating to Moscow at
different points in Soviet history. Aleksandr Konstantinov left Saratov for
Moscow to attend Moscow University in 1967; his brilliant academic career
allowed him to remain there. Marrying a Muscovite represented another way to
obtain a Moscow living permit. Yevgeny Podolsky resettled in Moscow in the
mid-1970s after meeting his second wife-to-be at the Moscow branch of the
Saratov research institute that employed him. Podolsky claimed to have had no
desire to leave Saratov and that his wife’s parents categorically refused to let her
move to Saratov, “so I had to abandon everything there and transfer here.”
Podolsky stressed that at one point he regretted moving to Moscow. Comparing
the situations at work for young specialists, Saratov came out on top. His col-
leagues in Moscow told him, “‘Here the leadership tells us that you won’t get
promoted for at least seven years.’” This made no sense to Podolsky, who waxed
nostalgic about the work climate in Saratov, where, as he put it, “everything was
different.” What irked him about Moscow was that “the directors were very old.
They had their own clan and didn’t admit us into it.” After four years, he found
a new position with the country’s gas monopoly, where he worked until pere-
stroika made it possible for him to strike out on his own.
Larisa Petrova is representative of those who relocated to Moscow during per-
estroika. As director of the research department of a medical clinic in Saratov,
Petrova defended her dissertation in Moscow on lung diseases and work condi-
tions and the work environment. She stated: “They transferred my husband to
the Ministry of Internal Affairs when they began to set up an independent
Russian one in 1990. In this case no one’s parents arranged this. It was purely his
personal qualities as a professional that played a role.” Owing to the ties she had
made while traveling back and forth between Saratov and Moscow to work on
her dissertation, she secured a job at the recently opened Institute of Criminology.
The moved taxed them, as they “arrived in Moscow at an unfortunate time,” as
she put it. “When we lived in Saratov we always wanted to live in Moscow. We
envied Muscovites.” Settling in during a time of critical shortages, they experi-
enced disappointment and had to make compromises. She, for instance, had to
settle for a position as a junior researcher. Moreover, Muscovites’ attitudes
toward provincials irked her. “I’d say we faced hard times for two or three years
before things gradually began to fall into place and now I’d say that things are
more or less okay.”
“THE FIRST TRIP MADE A STUNNING IMPRESSION”

For some Baby Boomers glasnost meant fulfilling a life-long dream of traveling
abroad to Eastern Europe, to Russia’s other neighbors, or to the capitalist West.
Traveling to Varna, Bulgaria, in 1986, Igor Litvin reacted the way his classmates
had who preceded him by a decade: “It seemed to us back then that we were
abroad, because you could buy cold beer at any stand, whereas in Yalta there
would be a line for it.” Similarly, Yevgeny Podolsky in 1987 spent “an altogether
wonderful trip to Prague, where I worked in an exhibit for six weeks.”
Underscoring the “night and day” difference between Prague and Moscow, he
drew comparisons at the latter’s expense: “I saw all of the abundance, everything
was affordable, people were polite, and things were beautiful and clean. I was
stunned.” Podolsky expressed amazement that he was allowed to go abroad
because he had divorced in 1985 and had no “hostage” back home. Since then
he has traveled across all of Europe.
Those traveling at the start of perestroika felt the suffocating effect of Soviet-
era suspiciousness toward its own people. Irina Barysheva, whose husband had
a top security clearance, first traveled abroad in 1986 to Finland in part with the
help of the mother of one of her pupils, who worked in OVIR, the organization
that grants permission to travel. Barysheva had to attend two evening discus-
sions with the KGB before leaving the country. On arriving in Helsinki, she saw
that nothing was as she had imagined it, especially after she visited her tour
guide’s home and observed how ordinary people there lived. “It was then that
my eyes opened a great deal,” she recalled. Barysheva challenged the restrictions
imposed by her Soviet group leader, creating something of a row when she
refused to leave a night club to adhere to the group leader’s curfew. “There were
threats that they’d expel me from the Party and inform my workplace of what
happened, and that things would get unpleasant for me. I remember crying my
eyes out, even though I don’t cry easily. But I didn’t repent,” Barysheva explained,
because she had paid for her own trip and did not understand why she had to
submit to the unwelcome interference of her Party chaperone. On the trip home,
the Party busybody suggested to Barysheva: “Let’s leave everything that hap-
pened there behind with us.” Irina’s husband believed that, “more likely than
not, she was afraid that they wouldn’t send her abroad any more.”
Thanks to perestroika, Vyacheslav Starik spent a month with his wife and
daughter in Cambridge, England, and afterward visited the United States. The
fact that the first trip materialized did not dampen his feeling victimized by the
Soviet bureaucracy. Starik received his foreign passport at 9:00 P.M. on Friday
and flew out early the next morning. “Up until the last minute I didn’t know
whether they’d give me a passport or not, so I didn’t pack anything, because, as
always, it’s a bad sign,” he explained.
As perestroika opened up the country, foreign travel for some became rou-
tine. Viktor Alekseyev visited Finland in 1989 with his classmate Igor Altshuller.
Afterward he traveled with Altshuller to West Germany. “Then, pretty soon there-
after, professional trips began. Within a year I went to Seattle to a conference,”
he observed. Once perestroika began, Anatoly Shapiro traveled to Sweden, West
Germany, and Finland. And he joined his wife for a month in Paris, where she
spent four months on a study trip. Yelena Zharovova’s husband worked in
Holland for several years, during which time she visited him often. In his
capacity as principal of a sports school, Georgy Godzhello went to Italy, France,
Spain, and Finland, and then to the United States for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic
Games. Recalled Godzhello: “The first trip made a stunning impression. But you
adapt pretty quickly, ever the more so because changes started occurring here at
that time. Rich people began to appear, luxurious buildings began to appear,
they began to pay more attention to cleanliness and the like, but the first impres-
sion, of course, is a powerful one.”
They certainly were for Igor Litvin who, in 1988, flew to California to visit a
classmate who had emigrated. There he encountered “the bluest of skies, mar-
velous, almost spotless automobiles, and clean streets.” Larisa Petrova traveled
to Edinburgh to visit her sister, who had married a Scotsman. She returned the
next year, and in 1996 was in the United States. She later visited Spain, Italy,
Germany, Sweden, and France as well. The first thing she noticed in the capitalist
countries was “how good their stores are and how lousy ours are.” The excellent
roads also made an impression. Olga Gorelik vacationed in Turkey and visited
Israel, where her daughter now lives. The two of them also traveled to Italy. By
then the fully stocked stores did not surprise her, but the abundance of household
appliances did. “Daily life amazed me, the fact that everything was more devel-
oped and it was easier to live. I observed this visiting relatives and friends, and
I thought how easier it all is for them. Sure, they had their own problems, but
life is for people and not the other way around.” Gorelik emphasized that little
things astonished her, quipping: “We fly in space, but eat with tin spoons.” She
also compared her mother’s situation with what it might have been had she
been a retired surgeon abroad. “She now lives with us, and it is unlikely that
she’d live with dignity, as they say, if she lived alone, because her pension
wouldn’t be enough.” Irina Kulikova visited Katowice, Poland, for only a day in
1990 to attend a funeral; however, she called attention to the cleanliness and
order noticeable the minute she crossed the Polish border. “When you returned,
it was a nightmare.”
Having a top security clearance made it impossible for Arkady Darchenko to
go abroad until perestroika. Darchenko, who arrived in East Berlin in 1989, just
before the wall came down, remembered: “It was my first time abroad and it
goes without saying that I found everything interesting. The German sense of
cleanliness stunned me.” Another thing he noticed was that “people dressed dif-
ferently. I could spot a Russian in Berlin in a coat and tie three blocks away. Not
like in Russia. It simply wasn’t acceptable here.” Finally, the quantity and quality
of German beer impressed him. “Our beer was terrible back then. I love beer.
I drank to my heart’s content for the first time there in Berlin.” Afterward, he
traveled to Belgium, Cuba, and China. About Belgium he recalled that “the
quantity of technical equipment in the stores, which I’m not indifferent to,
simply blew me away. I had stashed away money and in East Germany bought
some decent audio equipment at a special store. But in Belgium, I went into a
store and it had everything. My God, I thought, I can’t believe how much they
produce, and it’s all so different. You can buy whatever you want. The colossal
assortment. That was my first impression.”
Some who traveled abroad at this time (especially former Party members)
acknowledged what the West had to offer, but also drew comparisons that vali-
dated their own professional attributes. Vladimir Bystrov first traveled abroad in
1988, to East Germany, and then to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington,
D.C., where he took part in an Emerging Leaders Summit, organized by Rotary
International and involving more than 300 people from the Soviet Union rep-
resenting a dozen disciplines. He found Chicago’s skyscrapers and the people to
his liking, except for one thing: “They allowed us to bring with us whatever we
liked in terms of vodka and cigarettes that we wanted to give away as gifts. But
no one smokes there, and no one drinks.” Traveling by car, he returned to
America to visit “practically all of the universities located between Boston and
Washington. You’d take something away that was useful and also saw what we
do better,” he remarked. Larisa Petrova noticed much to admire in the United
Kingdom and United States, but not so in her own area of medical research:
“I believe that the depth of research is more detailed, the digging is deeper, and
the desire to get at the heart of things scrupulously is greater in Russian minds,”
she told me. After retiring, Gennady Ivanov became head of security for a joint
Russian-Dutch transportation firm in Saratov, and in this capacity visited
Holland. “We traveled around and saw what there was to see, but I was bored
there, because toward evening life dies down,” he observed.
In sum, like those who went before them in the 1970s, the Baby Boomers who
traveled abroad for the first time spotlighted Europe and America’s material
abundance, the cleanliness of public spaces, and the politeness of the people
they encountered. Yet in making it routine for the Cold War generation to travel
for professional or personal reasons and far less bureaucratically cumbersome,
perestroika allowed the generation to replace imagined Europes and Americas
with more life-size ones, especially as the post-Soviet Russian economy shed its
autarkic tendencies in favor of integration into the world economy and
globalization.
“THINGS ARE FINE WHEREVER WE’RE NOT”

Emigration crossed the minds of just about all Soviet Jews at some point, owing
to popular and official anti-Semitism, as well as to prevalent images of the
glamour of life abroad. Anatoly Shapiro and his wife considered emigrating,
“but the idea was frightening,” he explained. His father worked abroad at the
time and risked losing his coveted position, but understood what potential
obstacles his son faced if he remained in the USSR. “He didn’t object,” recalled
Shapiro, “but he knew that this would end his career.” Shapiro’s wife backed the
idea of leaving, but they ultimately decided to stay put. Lyubov Raitman’s family
seriously considered emigration in the late 1970s at her husband’s initiative.
Recalled Raitman: “But we didn’t leave because of his family, because they were
very much against it and explained to him that, if he left, it would ruin their
careers.” Pyotor Obraztsov came from an eminent family: his grandfather
founded the famous Moscow Puppet Theater, and his aunt, an actress, regularly
toured abroad. She put pressure on him to stay put, as did Pyotor’s mother and
stepfather who was deputy director of the Institute of Africa whom Raitman
described as “an important Communist and someone involved in ideological
work, a fighter on the ideological front.” Ironically, Pyotor—who is not Jewish—
wanted to emigrate and Lyubov—who is Jewish—lacked enthusiasm for the
idea. “Perhaps I regret that now. I can’t say for sure,” she proffered.
The Baby Boomer I called Nina in chapter 5 described the “tragedy” Soviet
Jews faced under late socialism. She befriended a young man at college who
filed papers to leave for Israel and got turned down. Afterward she spent time
with him and other so-called “refuseniks,” as those denied permission to leave
were called. At first Nina did not understand why they wanted to leave, but
“when I began to hang out with these people, I came to understand why,” she
related. Nina’s friend had asked her to go with him. “In all honesty, I would
have left back then with great pleasure, but I understood that I couldn’t do that
because they’d sack my mother from work, and it wasn’t clear what would have
happened to me,” she admitted. “For me it was a matter of weighing my choices.
It was an awful tragedy.” Her father banned the topic from family discussions.
Years later, after she married, her father expressed some regrets, suggesting they
might consider leaving for Israel. “But my husband never wanted to emigrate.
I wanted to all my life, but he never did.”
Leonid Terlitsky had a refusenik in his own family. When détente opened up
the possibility of emigration in the 1970s, some of Terlitsky’s relatives took the
risk. His cousin went first, in 1970, but not without high drama. When he tried
to emigrate, the government attempted to force him to pay for his education.
“He and a group of other scientists staged a hunger strike. Western governments
got involved, and eventually they were let out. He moved to Israel, and now lives
in Holland,” related Terlitsky. His own family considered leaving in 1974, but his
father died the next year, so they filed to emigrate in 1976. Only Leonid and his
mother received permission to leave. Turned down, his brother spent the next
eleven years as an unemployed refusenik. “My mother stayed with him,” added
Terlitsky. “He supported himself mostly by driving a cab, a gypsy cab.”
Taken in by his brother’s wife’s relatives in Philadelphia, Terlitsky “spent the
first three weeks in America on their couch.” But, after landing a job in an archi-
tect’s office, Leonid recalled, “I rented myself a studio in downtown Philadelphia
and started my own life.” He became a licensed architect, took on some good-
sized projects, and then moved to New York in 1981. Returning to Moscow in
1987, eleven years after leaving—he married a woman he had met before emi-
grating. “It was probably the closest I will ever get to travel in time,” declared
Terlitsky, “because I ended up in the same apartment from which I left with the
same woman who saw me off to the airport with the same towels, cups, and bed
linen, with the same stores with the same stuff on the shelves for the same prices,
with people at the same addresses in the same jobs with the same telephone
numbers. I never experienced anything like it before or after.” Terlitsky had no
regrets “whatsoever” about emigrating. When I interviewed him, he had been
living mostly in Moscow for the preceding eight years and had just purchased a
spacious apartment in a prestigious neighborhood near former School No. 20.
Many Soviet Jews who decided not to take the risks involved in applying to
emigrate saw things the way Sofiya Vinogradova did. Because her parents would
not have left Russia, she did not give the possibility serious thought, although
she acknowledged that, if she really had wanted to make things work out, she
could have. Her family led a “normal” life in Moscow. Improving their material
conditions was not high on their wish lists, and the concept of freedom seemed
abstract. In relating her experience, she shared a Russian proverb: “Things are
fine wherever we’re not.” Besides, some of her classmates and relatives who emi-
grated had a “terribly awful time” and faced all sorts of stresses and even illness.
She and others recognized the USSR’s shortcomings, but the country was home
and its faults were “familiar.” In the 1990s she briefly regretted her decision to
remain in Russia; however, these feelings passed as circumstances improved.
Taking a philosophical bent, she emphasized she had no regrets about how her
life had unfolded and reminded me of the adage that, at life’s end, most people
would not want to trade their life for someone else’s.
“ N O O N E S A I D T H AT W E W E R E B E T R AY I N G
OUR HOMELAND”
Glasnost took the risk out of leaving Russia, but it also gave Soviet Jews hope
that real change would come to their own country thereby decreasing the urge
to emigrate for political reasons. For instance, Leonid Volodarsky spent four
months in America in 1988. “It’s a great country, but not for everyone. It’s fine to
leave for America with your parents when you’re five years old. Within three
months you’d become an American. But at a later age, when all of your roots are
here and everything else, it’s difficult. It’s not for nothing that the German writer
Erich Remarque said that immigration is always a tragedy,” said Volodarsky.
In tracing his decision to emigrate, Viktor Alekseyev acknowledged the role
his classmate, Igor Altshuller, played in the evolution of his own thinking on the
subject. Altshuller emigrated because he had a parting of ways with the Soviet
system and because glasnost disappointed him. “Under his influence and the
influence of what I read, I, too, became critical,” shared Alekseyev; however, he
emigrated in the early 1990s, “without any underlying political motives unlike
many others, because it became possible to work abroad, in the West, and this
possibility appealed to us.” He and his wife received invitations to work abroad,
but from different countries, she from Switzerland, and he from Holland.
Alekseyev eventually joined her in Switzerland. They lived in Europe for eight
years before receiving an invitation to teach in Cleveland. The next year his wife
accepted an appointment at the City University of New York and he at the
College of Staten Island in New York City.
Tatyana Artyomova visited the United States often before she and her hus-
band settled down in Connecticut in 1996, “only because we were offered jobs,
and for no other reason.” She emphasized, “I never dreamed of living in America.
It was not a goal of mine. You live where you work.” Quick to add “but I don’t
regret this for a minute,” she fessed up that she and her husband also wanted to
give their daughter an American education.
Yelena Kolosova visited the United States in 1991 as a postdoctoral student. At
that time emigration did not seem possible, “because it meant leaving my friends
and my parents’ graves. It had nothing to do with the idiotic notion that I’d be
betraying my Motherland. No, it was simply that it seemed to me that it was
impossible to sever ties with everything that made me strong.” It was her hus-
band Em, who was Jewish, who forced the issue by filing to emigrate. They
received permission to do so in 1994, but Kolosova had a hard time making up

her mind when her husband placed the burden on her to come to a decision.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that for two weeks I couldn’t decide. Then, one
day, I came home, put the key in the door, and knew that we’d go.” Thus inspired,
Kolosova realized that “one of the most important reasons” for leaving was to
save her son Misha from service in the Russian army in the Chechen war. They
left Moscow in 1996.
Tatyana Arzhanova, who had traveled abroad frequently and had lived in
Indonesia before settling in Canada in 1991, admitted that they thought about
leaving the USSR for good already during their youth, “but since we’re not Jews,
we didn’t have a chance and couldn’t. Neither could we become refugees some-
where.” She explained: “First of all, we didn’t have any basis to do so, and sec-
ond, it would have been very dangerous for the relatives we would have left
behind.” Lest I underappreciate her fear of the possibility of a chain reaction
that could harm her loved ones, Tatyana confided that, as a schoolgirl, the father
of a friend she made at Pioneer camp unduly suffered because he had written a
letter of recommendation for Oleg Penkovsky—arrested in 1962 and later shot
for espionage—when he sought to join the Communist Party.14 Tatyana’s mother
had taught Penkovsky English. When the Gorbachev revolution made it pos-
sible for Tatyana and her husband to work abroad, they seized the opportunity,
because she “had an enormous desire not to die and be buried in Russia.” She
elaborated, “I had interesting work, I had friends, my mother was there, but at
some point I really wanted to tear myself away from there, even though it was
the most encouraging time in regard to freedom.” By this point, her daughter
had left Moscow to work as an au pair in Ireland and then in Austria.
Marriage to a foreigner represented a ticket out for Tatyana Luchnikova who,
in the early 1990s, worked as a secretary in a Russian-Finnish transportation
firm. She recounted: “My future husband was here on a business trip and we
met at a party and suddenly got married, because I was tired of everything and
thought I’d go with him to Norway. It was too hard here. So, I left the country in
1992, got pregnant, and gave birth that same November. My son and mother
came to visit that summer.” The marriage of convenience barely survived, espe-
cially once Tatyana determined to live vicariously through her son, who fulfilled
her own dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Rostislav (Stas) studied ballet in
St. Petersburg and thus Norway had no attraction for him. After Tatyana filmed
him and sent the videocassette abroad, he was invited to London for an audi-
tion. “My husband left for Africa on business and I, along with my baby daughter
and her carriage, and my son, arrived in London at Heathrow,” she detailed. Her
second marriage almost ended when her husband later visited them in London.
She had just rented a two-bedroom flat. “I sold all of my family heirlooms at
Christie’s in order to pay for the apartment, because I didn’t want to take my
husband back.” Then, to her surprise, her son told her he wanted to go to New
York to study.
Just before Christmas in 1993 she, Stas, and baby Masha in her carriage arrived
in New York. At first they rented a flat in Brooklyn, but then she bought an
apartment on West 49th Street, near the Russian Samovar restaurant, which was
owned by Roman Kaplan, a teacher at School No. 20. Luchnikova found work as a
model. After auditioning with the Moscow Classic Ballet when the company vis-
ited America, however, Stas accepted an invitation to return to Moscow. During the
next several years she moved back and forth between Moscow, New York, and
Norway before settling down in New York with her daughter in 1998. Masha was
vacationing with her father on Cyprus when the 9/11 tragedy raised everyone’s con-
sciousness of the terrorist threat, after which she was afraid to return to New York.
Tatyana turned to yoga, “and this helped me a great deal,” she recalled. In fact, she
soon left for Arizona to study yoga seriously. “We meditated there, in the moun-
tains. It was a fantastic time. The best in my life,” she told me. Eventually, her
daughter convinced her to return to Norway in 2003. She considered the five years
she lived in the United States “the best time of my life. It was a gift of fate.” Separated
from her husband, she now thanks fate for bringing her to Oslo, which she has
come to appreciate.
One-sixth of the Baby Boomers interviewed for this book emigrated, but only
one of them, Aleksandr Trubnikov, now resides in Israel. Trubnikov’s decision to
live there is not without irony. Half-Jewish, his Russian surname masked his
identity and, as a result, he did not suffer discrimination. He emigrated for many
reasons, but especially because his eldest daughter, who went to Israel to study
for three years, liked it, married there, and had a baby. Moreover, he shared, “I
began to intensely dislike Russia at that particular moment. It was during the
crisis of 1998 [when the ruble defaulted on the world market, resulting in an
immediate, but short-lived crisis]. Over a two-month period, the ruble fell six
times. People began to receive unimaginably low wages of about thirty dollars a
month. And the outlook was grim, especially for those at the university. Things
became really awful for us, because in Russia at the time the work of university
professors was not appreciated. We were at the bottom of the food chain. All of
this had an effect on me.” Trubnikov justified his decision in more than personal
and economic terms. “For seventy years they oppressed people. Then, when they
opened the locks, everything poured out. And who ended up on top? You know
what always rises to the surface, it’s always the foam. That’s what happened in
this case.” Trubnikov indicted Soviet power: “It’s all understandable, but, unfor-
tunately, we have but one life and I thought why wait until things become normal,
it’s already so hard.” Unlike those who emigrated before perestroika, Trubnikov
did not encounter any difficulties. “I remain a Russian citizen. I have a Russian
passport and I can return whenever I please. In this regard Russia’s become a
normal country. A democratic one.” Trubnikov’s mother and his wife’s parents
remained in Russia, and emigration did not present the threats to those who
stayed behind as it did during the Soviet days. “They were fine about our decision
to leave. Life in Russia had undergone sweeping changes. No one said that we
were betraying our homeland.”
“THE WEST TURNED OUT TO BE DIFFERENT”

The Baby Boomers who emigrated acknowledged the help they received in their
new home from friends and relatives who had left the USSR before perestroika.
Those who emigrated during the Brezhnev era had faced obstacles finding suit-
able employment and coming to grips with the fact that the West they thought
they understood had been an imagined one. For instance, Bakhyt Kenzheyev mar-
ried a Canadian graduate student in Slavic literatures who worked as a translator
for Progress Publishers in Moscow. Kenzheyev and his Canadian bride, eight
months pregnant, arrived in Montreal on June 24, 1982, at the peak of an economic
downturn. Confident he would fit into Canadian life, he ran up against some real
obstacles, for Canadian realities did not at all live up to his expectations. For in-
stance, after reading job ads in a paper, he applied for a position as a lab techni-
cian. “And I went there to be hired, absolutely certain that they’d welcome me
with open arms, me, a graduate of Moscow University’s Chemistry Department.”
Aleksandr Trubnikov and his wife decided to emigrate to Israel after the ruble defaulted in
1998 and many university faculty and research scholars stopped receiving paychecks. This
picture of Trubnikov and his family in Israel was taken in 2005. “My first boss was from
America, and that, of course, was a direct result of the fact that I had studied English and
still kept up my skills,” recounted Trubnikov, gold medalist in School No. 42’s A Class.
Courtesy of Aleksandr Trubnikov
The West required some getting used to. “It was one of the biggest shocks that
there is. Back home we came into contact only with foreigners who had a special
interest in Russia. But when you find yourself in America or Canada you see
that, there, absolutely no one’s interested in Russia, the entire value system is
different, and the entire way of life is different, not worse or better, but simply
different,” explained Kenzheyev. He also felt victimized by the widespread Soviet
belief that Americans had a lot in common with Russians. “It’s altogether pos-
sible that rednecks are like Voronezh truck drivers. But the difference between
the American and Russian intelligentsia and middle class back then on the
whole was enormous.” Regarding attitudes toward everyday life and toward the
world, “there was an enormous difference between a Russian of the 1970s and an
American from the 1970s,” commented Kenzheyev. “Of course, we didn’t know
this.” In short, “it came as a huge shock. The West turned out to be different.”
Yet Kenzheyev felt grateful that he found work to his liking in Canada. The
country also broadcast Russian-language radio programs to the USSR, and the
Canadian station hired him on the spot. He devoted his first radio broadcast to
Xerox machines. Recalled Kenzheyev: “Back then in the USSR, Xerox machines
were kept under lock and key. In order to make a single copy, you needed to get
three signatures.” Thus, his first story spotlighted Western copy shops, where
customers could duplicate as much as they liked. Staying with the station for
seven years, Kenzheyev liked the atmosphere there, which he found far less
politicized than at its American counterpart. During this time he returned to
Moscow only twice. Once perestroika began in earnest, he realized that “as a
writer, I was obliged to go back as often as I could,” so he quit his radio job and
signed on with what turned out to be a rogue firm that sold frozen bread dough,
but which enabled him to travel to Russia a half-dozen times a year.
The Baby Boomers who emigrated during perestroika or after the collapse of the
Soviet Union also faced difficulties, but they adapted well because of the help they
received from others who had left Russia earlier, because of the survival skills they
learned under late socialism—how to work the system—translated well in their
new context, and because they knew English. Aleksandr Trubnikov’s knowledge of
English helped him land decent jobs in Israel in his field, physics, thereby assuring
a smooth transition. At first he found a position in a high-tech start-up firm run by
an American, but the company went under with the fall of the high-tech business.
He now works for another start-up firm, but one that is more stable. “I’m doing
what I did in Russia, but at a somewhat different salary,” he ribbed.
Trubnikov felt he had an easier time settling into his new life than those who
emigrated to the United States: “I wouldn’t really call my move to Israel emigra-
tion, as I understand the word—torn from your roots, in a foreign country, hard
to adjust, hostility from the native people, etc.” Why? “It turned out that, at the
time of my arrival, almost all of my close friends, with whom I had been
connected for decades in Saratov, lived in Israel. Moreover, there’s a tolerant atti-
tude toward repatriates who don’t know Hebrew.” He explained, “This is
something specific to the country—its ideology is founded on the return of Jews

to their historical homeland. I received citizenship and all rights immediately,
along with a passport. In order to move here I only had to prove my Jewish her-
itage at the Israeli embassy to get a visa.” The Israeli government gave him a free
ticket to the country, where his daughter and friends welcomed him. “Within
two months, with their help, I found work in my field and ever since then have
not experienced any special problems,” he maintained. “I get together with my
friends more often than I did in Russia, even though we live in different cities.
Therefore, I didn’t lose the luxury of human contact—and as far as I know that’s
one of the biggest problems, for example, for émigrés in America.”
The Soviet dream shaped émigrés’ expectations of the America they had imag-
ined, just as it had for Kenzheyev who emigrated a decade earlier. Tatyana Artyomova
and her husband, both economists, traveled extensively to Eastern Europe in the
1970s. She visited the United States for the first time for several weeks in 1980 to see
her husband, an exchange scholar at Harvard University, complaining about “the
absurd cost of higher education and healthcare.” Now that she has built a life in
America, she has other concerns, too. “To this day, I can’t understand how people
can retire,” she remarked. The precariousness of the labor market in America also
made Artyomova anxious. “I was accustomed to being assured that I’d always have
work. Here I have the sense that people lose work not only because of their own
fault but also because of circumstances. I can’t get used to this.”
Before emigrating, Yelena Kolosova thought that the cultural difference she had
heard so much about was overdrawn, but discovered that the cultural barrier chal-
lenged, as she put it, “my belief in friendship, my unwillingness to squeal on others,
and some of my moral values.” Adjusting to the world of academic scientific research
presented an ordeal, for she found “a lot of pettiness and a reluctance to interact within
the collective.” Her conclusion: “Everyone suffers here. Everyone needs to protect his
job security; everyone has to receive more grants; everyone has to make mortgage
payments and pay for his children’s education.” She found relations at work more
patriarchal than back home; however, insofar as she worked at Iowa State University,
she encountered many cosmopolitan sorts who traveled a great deal. She acknowl-
edged that some barriers had to do with her “uninhibited personality, of course.”
Having lived in Europe for eight years, Viktor Alekseyev and his wife had
adapted to Western life. They nonetheless found the difference between Europe
and the United States to be “considerable,” even though Europe had prepared
them for the obvious differences in everyday life, and also for “the different
approach to research, different understandings of research standards, a different
way of writing up your results.” Their young daughter, however, had a harder
time. After a stressful year not being able to communicate at school in
Switzerland, she began to speak Swiss German, only to find herself shortly
thereafter in the United States. “She once again had to master a new language
from scratch. We went through a rough period with her, because she was always
stressed out.”
The prehistory of Marina Bakutina’s emigration to the United States began

with visits her mother made there in the 1950s and the things she brought
back at which Marina marveled, especially the View Master. Her own study
trip to England in the 1970s and her working with foreigners as an Intourist
guide broadened her horizons further. Then, in 1988, she took part in an
exchange program that brought her to Reed College in Oregon. After her stint
ended, the college offered her a contract to continue teaching there. “Unlike
my mother, I was ready to stay, I wanted to stay, but I had to return to Moscow
for my children,” related Marina. With great difficulty she managed to renew
her foreign passport and come back to America. “I arrived with two suitcases
crammed with teaching materials to begin a new life. And I’ve never regretted
this, not for a single day,” she added. Marina’s parents and her in-laws vehe-
mently opposed her decision to give up her prestigious job in Moscow to
return to the United States: “I didn’t have a permanent job, I didn’t have a
place to live, I didn’t have a thing. No bank account, nothing.” Her husband,
a physicist, wanted nothing to do with this “shady enterprise” and divorced
her. Eventually her children joined her. In the meantime, Marina accepted a
better-paying position as assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. A
year later a man she had met in Oregon, a doctor, proposed to her. They mar-
ried, and she moved to Portland where she eventually took a position at
Portland State. As an only child, she brought her aging parents to Portland,
too, because of the terrible conditions older Russians without children or
other support systems endure.
Boris Shtein left Russia because his son from Shtein’s first marriage lived in
America since 1987 and asked Boris to come. Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet
Union, constitutional crisis of 1993 that led to violence, and growing anti-Semi-
tism clinched the deal. The fear of pogroms in the early 1990s upset his second
wife so much that, on occasion, they even spent the night with Russian friends.
Although Shtein acknowledged that she overreacted, he concluded: “I now think
that, if we were so afraid, then it was clear that the authorities were too weak to
prevent something.” His family and friends supported Shtein’s decision to emi-
grate in 1994, for it had become “ordinary” back then. Friends at work saw him
off without fear. Shtein and his family lived with his first wife in California for
a month, arriving shortly before an earthquake rattled Northridge that year.
They spent a week without electricity or water. But other than that the transition
proved to be a smooth one. Knowing the ropes, his first wife helped him acquire
a Social Security number, a driver’s permit, and a license. His classmates who
had preceded him offered advice and helped him craft a resume. A week after
circulating it, he got called in for an interview—the only one—and an offer soon
followed. He started off as a low-level engineer, but over the years rose to become
a vice president of the company.
America differed from Shtein’s expectations as it had for some of his
classmates. “I imagined America to be like Europe, but with a higher living
This book put some Baby

Boomers back in touch with
each other. Boris Shtein (left)
flew from California to Portland,
Oregon, in March 2007 to see
his former classmate Marina
Bakutina and to let me interview
him. Courtesy of Donald J. Raleigh
standard. But it’s an altogether different country.” He clarified, “It seems to me

the people are different, the tempo and rhythm of life is different, there’s greater
motivation to work and correspondingly a person has far less time for him-
self.” Shtein came to see this as normal and like it, yet he acknowledged that
the social security network was greater in some other countries. Yet he, like
others, finds the United States more democratic, especially at the workplace.
Moreover, “I think that there are many, many very good people and naturally
that’s important to me.”
“ F O R S O M E R E A S O N I T ’ S M O R E C O M F O R TA B L E H E R E ”
None of the Baby Boomers regretted the decision to emigrate, undoubtedly
because they can return to Russia whenever they like and because the country
today is not the one they left. Yet some of them could not imagine going back
for good. Tatyana Arzhanova insisted it was “too late” for her to return to Russia
to live. She has kept her Russian passport and visits on occasion. “I haven’t
parted with my homeland for keeps. It’s not my enemy,” she explained. “But for
some reason it’s more comfortable here. I’m calmer here. I like it here.” Similarly,
despite the difficulty she had adjusting to life on Cyprus, Yevgeniya Ruditskaya
made clear that “in all honesty, I really don’t want to live in Russia, although it’s
unlikely that I’ll stay in Cyprus. I don’t know what the future will bring.” Bakhyt
Kenzheyev travels to Russia as often as possible, but he would not return there
for good. “I can cite Heraclites here: ‘it’s not possible to step into the same river
twice.’” He clarified: “The other reason is that, despite how often I traveled to
Russia during the past twenty years, I lost the skills to live in Russia, especially
since I didn’t have any skills living in contemporary Russia. I don’t know the
culture. I know it from the perspective of a writer and of an observer, but to settle
in, to earn money there and live there, you have to know it differently.” Kenzheyev
added, “It’s very important to emphasize that the fact I don’t want to return to
Russia should not be at all understood to mean that I think Russia is worse. It’s
not.” Tellingly, he acknowledged, “I’m made in such a way that I don’t want to
live in any one place.” Today, Kenzheyev, a Canadian citizen, divides his time
between Montreal, Moscow, and New York, where his current wife, a Soviet émi-
gré, lives and works.
Marina Bakutina emphasized that she is the only one of her classmates to
have married an American. She has lived in the United States for over twenty
years and does not mix with the Russian émigré community. “I feel more at
home here in America than I ever felt in Russia,” she insisted. So do her chil-
dren. When she asked them how they felt about her bringing them to the
States at such a “tender” age, they told her: “There are more opportunities here
to realize your potential. There are more possibilities for finding your own
path.”
Others told me that they would not discount the possibility of returning to
Russia, but no one had plans to do so. Tatyana Artyomova said, “I see no obsta-
cles for myself in returning.” She tempered her remark: “But for now I’d like to
remain here because things are much more interesting.” She admitted that many
of her Russian friends who visit cannot understand so many things that
Artyomova takes for granted. “You have to live [here], you have to see [for your-
self], you have to feel. These things are not found in books. You have to pay your
taxes, you have to pay for your own X-ray, you have to pay your co-pay.”
Emigration is not for everyone, and she knows people who have had nervous
breakdowns negotiating American realities. “But if circumstances allow, it’s
enormously interesting here,” she concluded. Similarly, Viktor Alekseyev and
his wife have not ruled out returning to Russia someday, “but we have no
immediate plans to do so. We like it here.” Explained Alekseyev: “My colleagues
like me, and I feel good about my university, too.” He got tenure. Apart from
liking the United States, Alekseyev reminded me that pedagogical psychology in
Russia is not in the best of straights and that the academic lifestyle is not what it
used to be in Russia. Yelena Kolosova did not exclude the possibility of return-
School No. 20 classmates Tatyana

Arzhanova (far left) and Bakhyt
Kenzheyev (far right), both of
whom immigrated to Canada, at
Tatyana’s “dacha” outside
Montreal in March 2003.
Kenzheyev’s wife Lena is a lawyer
in New York; Tatyana’s husband
Viktor is a freelance translator.
Courtesy of Donald J. Raleigh
ing to Russia for the benefit of the country in which she was born, but she would
not remain there to live. She now looks upon many things from an American
perspective, “although,” as she put it, “I preserve the memory and some of the
baggage of the country where I was born.” That said, Russia has changed, and
she no longer can imagine living in the new Moscow. “I no longer miss Moscow
because it’s a different city, although there’s a connection of course with the
roots from which I grew up.”
In reply to my query about the possibility of returning to Russia to live,
Aleksandr Trubnikov took a philosophical turn: “This is a really difficult
question. Even the Lord is unable to predict what will happen in the future in
Russia, in Israel, and in my family. I don’t think there’ll be a peaceful life any-
where—take the example of the World Trade Center as confirmation.” The com-
plex—and its fate—left an indelible impression on him because he saw the twin
towers about two weeks before the tragedy on September 11. Importantly, he
does not feel cut off from Saratov: “At least the road back to Russia is not closed.
I’m a Russian citizen.”
“ I ’ M H A P P Y T H AT T H E P E R I O D E N D E D W I T H O U T
BLOODSHED”
Saratov’s Galina Poldyaeva marveled: “It’s interesting how quickly our society, a
unified and ideologically unwavering one, went to pieces.” The country’s official
belief system unraveled because the Soviet people had been changing all along
and had become ready for perestroika, most unconsciously, but some con-
sciously so. In fact, all of the strategies they had perfected over the years to
realize the Soviet dream, to work the system, or to beat the system represent
personal “acts of perestroika.” Many of them recognized the structural issues
that had given rise to stagnation and kept the USSR locked in a race to catch up
with the West. Boris Shtein summed it up best: “Educated people increasingly
saw eye to eye on things, understanding that the country was at a dead end.”
Indeed, since Stalin’s death, the people of the Soviet Union became more and
more aware of how the system functioned; their mastering the rules of the game
contributed to the system’s downfall.15 During the Baby Boomers’ lifetime, the
Soviet Union, despite specific successes “remained an awkward industrial mon-
ster,” while the West prepared the basis for postindustrial society.16 Large num-
bers of Baby Boomers suspected this, and that is why most of them believed that
perestroika had to happen, that something had to give. Still, as the oral testi-
mony suggests, it might be less a matter of whether people felt perestroika was
inevitable than of when they began to think that this was the case. By 1991 the
population no longer viewed the system as legitimate; however, that does not
mean they felt that way earlier. Regardless, they see the second half of Brezhnev’s
tenure as a turning point in their country’s history and in the evolution of their
own consciousness.
For instance, by the time perestroika began, Yevgeny Podolsky “had con-
cluded that the very doctrine [of Soviet socialism] itself had turned out to be
false. Although the goals were good ones, in reality everything was just the
opposite, absolutely everything.” Then perestroika, and especially glasnost,
turned their worlds upside down. Irina Barysheva likened the Soviet people’s
condition to that of her neutered cat who is not allowed out on the street.
“Everyone says to me, ‘don’t let him out. He’ll like it immediately, and then
it’s all over.’ And that’s what probably happened to all of us. We’re different.
We no longer can live as we had before. Even if it’s worse, but not like
that!”
The Baby Boomers believed the Soviet economic model had lost its viability,
but not the multinational Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Remarkably few
of them linked perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union to what Western
scholarship has cast as the USSR’s volatile nationalities problem. Tellingly, all
but a handful regretted the breakup of the union, remembering the Soviet
period, in this specific regard, positively. It is possible that such attitudes might
have implications in the realm of foreign policy, since this position might make
them critical of outside involvement in the CIS and beyond, and inclined to
support government measures to restore some features of the former union, and
of the country’s superpower status.
In opening the USSR to the outside world, the Gorbachev revolution
made travel abroad routine for many. Perestroika facilitated emigration,
allowing a sizeable number of Baby Boomers to realize the Soviet dream
outside the country. Seventeen members of the graduating class of Moscow’s
School No. 20 live abroad, all but three of them in the United States and
Canada. Perhaps more than anything else, these figures demonstrate how
late socialism lost the allegiance of its most educated and in many ways,
privileged, class. They also reveal the structural and everyday disparities bet-
ween Moscow and Saratov. Six of the graduates of Saratov’s School No. 42
live outside Russia, three in the United States, two in Europe, and one in
Israel. Three of them played their Jewish trump card to emigrate; two of them
married foreigners; and another left to join her daughter who had married
an American.
The Soviet Union and Russia between 1985 and the early 1990s was a society
in disarray yet, despite the untold difficulties, the Boomers demonstrated
extraordinary resiliency in negotiating the years of perestroika. Seeing the sil-
ver lining in the otherwise dark cloud of despair, Arkady Darchenko, for one,
expressed gratitude: “I’m happy that the period ended without bloodshed. It
could have turned out violent, because things had reached the limit. I have to
say that, no matter what you think of Gorbachev, he’s a great man because he
was able to avoid bloodshed. There could have been a horrible civil war.
Thank God things turned out otherwise.” The Soviet experience constrained
and enabled developments in the new Russia. Explained Darchenko: “The
old ideas still linger. They’re good ones, even wonderful ones, but they’re the
ideas of the 1960s generation and they’re not for this life. For this reason we
have to retool, too, and it’s not easy. But what can you do about it? Life has
sped past us. Our entire generation, and I speak for all of us, that is, for our
graduating class, welcomed perestroika.” Darchenko admitted, “It was really
hard. For several years most of us barely got by. Yet we survived, and didn’t
lose anyone. We all found ourselves. But it’s been hard for us. And our chil-
dren grew up under different circumstances. For this reason they’re so
different.”
7 SURVIVING RUSSIA’S
G R E AT D E P R E S S I O N
Saratov’s Irina Vizgalova remarked, “Our people laugh even when things are
bad. They love to tell jokes about themselves.” Recalling the tumultuous 1990s,
she shared a joke with me from the time: “Two friends meet and one complains
to the other, ‘Everything’s so awful. My apartment is small, my salary is low, and
my mother-in-law and children live with us. I don’t know what to do.’ His friend
says, ‘I suggest you buy a goat.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Buy it, and then you’ll find out how it
helps.’ Some time later they meet again. ‘So, did you buy a goat?’ ‘I bought one
and things got even worse. It’s a real nightmare, with the children, the small
apartment, and now a goat.’ ‘Now sell the goat,’ his friend advised. A short time
later they meet yet again. ‘So, did you sell the goat?’ ‘I sold it, and things are so
good now. We have so much room!’”
For many Russians, surviving the 1990s, a decade of painful economic
transition, was like acquiring and then getting rid of a goat. Tens of millions of
people associated poverty, loss of “confidence in tomorrow,” and a deterioration
of cradle-to-grave welfare with the introduction of a market economy, privatiza-
tion of state-owned industries, and establishment of Russian-style democracy.
The statistics say it all: already by 1994, 67 percent of the population had no
savings or extra cash. That was the worst year, when the number of murders, sui-
cides, and divorces reached extreme levels, and a million migrants from the Near
Abroad poured into the country. As the decade progressed, Russian citizens feared
impoverishment and unemployment: the Russian gross domestic product
plunged by nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 1997. (The World Bank estimated
the per capita GDP at the time to be $4,500.) Between 1992 and 1997 life expectancy
for men fell from 67 to 57 years and for women from 76 to 70. Heart disease and
stroke followed by accidents, suicide, and murder combined surpassed cancer as
the leading causes of death among males. By decade’s end, there were 3.7 million
fewer children than in 1990, and the suicide rate was twice that of the 1980s.
Abortion rates remained extremely high. Tuberculosis and diphtheria had
returned. Russia’s population declined, despite the influx of over 4 million refu-
gees—Russians and others from the Near Abroad fleeing untenable and some-
times dangerous circumstances. Fearing crime, people had little reason to trust
law enforcement agencies. Moreover, all political leaders during the decade
S U R V I V I N G R U S S I A’ S G R E AT D E P R E S S I O N | 313
depicted the opposition in apocalyptic language, warning that their opponents’

policies would result in civil war or social disintegration.1
Remarkably, between 1994 and 1997 the number of pessimists in the country
expecting bad things to happen declined by 2.5 times.2 In addition, throughout
the 1990s, the percentage of Russians looking favorably upon private property
and the market economy stayed relatively fixed at 34 percent.3 The Cold War gen-
eration and young people were among them, especially in Moscow, where, in
1999, 23.3 percent of the population lived below the subsistence minimum, the
lowest in Russia (in contrast, 43 percent of the population of Saratov did, ranking
the region twenty-seventh out of forty-two regions).4 True, people had plenty of
negative things to say about President Boris Yeltsin’s impact on Russia when he
announced his retirement on December 31, 1999. Even amid the despair, how-
ever, a sizeable minority of respondents polled focused on the positive, acknowl-
edging the rise of democracy and political freedoms; the end of shortages, ration
cards, and lines; the acceptance of private ownership; freedom to thrive for moti-
vated people; the removal of Communists from power; and the end of the total-
itarian regime and improvement of relations with the West.5
There were things to be thankful for. After the breakup of the USSR, about
three-fourths of the industrial enterprises, organizations, and institutions
remained in Russia. The empty shelves and long lines of 1990–91, and the tem-
porary vanishing of items from the Russian market, gave way to shelves aching
with goods as consumers learned how and what to buy, and the state learned
how to regulate. Freedom of speech and conscience were real. The state no
longer persecuted religion and people could travel abroad and earn money
without limits. Many people grew accustomed to the overblown language of
Russian politics and did not buy into the belief that things were so disastrous
and therefore no longer feared the future.6 Belligerent Russian nationalism did
not become the country’s political ideology, despite the fact that the country’s
leaders increasingly blamed the West, and America in particular, for Russia’s
troubles.7 Mass burn out and disillusionment with politics, however, had bred
political apathy.
Russia in the 1990s was thus a country in disarray but also a country in the mak-
ing. This transition period fashioned people’s fates as they focused on the neces-
sities of economic survival. How did the transition of the 1990s impact the Baby
Boomers? How do they remember and assess the period? How do their views as a
cohort correspond to those of their countrymen? How do they evaluate the differ-
ences between their generation and that of their children?
“ G O D D E A L S U S O N LY T H O S E C A R D S W E ’ R E C A PA B L E
OF HANDLING”
The painful transition of the 1990s gave rise to conflicting trends that compli-
cated and worsened people’s lives in some ways, while enhancing them in
others. On the one hand, during that decade, the Yeltsin government managed
to prevent massive unemployment, but not the erosion of real pay, government
subsidies and pensions, or the loss of personal bank accounts. All of this dras-
tically cut buying power. The quality of preschool education declined, arguably
of education in general, and there were fewer opportunities for children’s
leisure. On the other hand, real trade unions functioned and workers had the
freedom to strike and take collective action. The market economy ended
consumer deficits and led to a growth in consumption of industrial and
everyday technology, greater access to cars and telephones, the ready avail-
ability of cultural and political information, the freedom to travel abroad, and
the appearance of new free time and leisure activities. The gap between (low)
legal pay and the realities of life that required money inspired an astonishing
system of hidden salaries located in a shadow economy and criminal action, as
people took on work outside their main job, or received illegal pay at their
place of employment. Employers, including the government, contributed to
these survival strategies by holding up payment of wages, pensions, and wel-
fare, in effect creating no-interest loans. This phenomenon became more wide-
spread from 1996 through 2000, with the fewest people receiving their salaries
on time in 1998.8
Survival skills learned during the Soviet era helped people navigate the 1990s.
Indeed, economist Alena Ledeneva argued that, instead of focusing on what
does not work in Russia, we might look at what does. Citing the oft-repeated
remark heard in Russia that the imperfection of our laws is compensated for by
their nonobservance, she concluded that everyday reliance on unwritten rules
represented the result not only of the inefficiency of formal rules and lack of
mechanisms for enforcing them but also people’s lack of respect for formal
rules. As long as the battle between the Soviet past and market-oriented future
continues, the demand for unwritten rules will remain a defining feature of
economic life.9
During the decade, the family also helped people cope with the changes
bombarding them.10 Generally speaking, Soviet “marital quality” did not prove
to be highly related to the economic status of families as is often the case in the
United States. Instead, educational differences between spouses proved more
important in causing difficulties.11 Yet, several Baby Boomers linked the dissolu-
tion of their marriages to the terrible economic situation in the early 1990s,
although it is possible that they would have ended regardless the special circum-
stances. For instance, Olga Kamayurova related that “perestroika had begun and
I grew estranged from my husband. The situation at home was strained and we
were in awful economic straits. I was depressed. I searched for a way to over-
come it.” They divorced. Marina Bakutina’s first marriage ended when she
decided to stay in the United States and bring her children there to live. Her hus-
band could not reconcile himself to her “embarking upon adventures.”
Some Baby Boomers, particularly those employed in academic and research
institutes, spoke of how, in the new environment, professional status declined
as the allure of making money replaced it. “A sharp decline in the prestige of our
profession took place,” remembered Aleksandr Konstantinov. “This was deeply
felt, and it, of course, fundamentally affected my life and the lives of many
whom I know.” Konstantinov realized how his career would have unfolded if
Soviet power had survived. “Then everything fell apart, and people were left to
their own devices. There was a loss of valuable reference points.” He told me
how his younger half- brother insulted their father by calling him a “miserable
little professor.” Concluded Konstantinov: “Such cheap material interests
strongly affected our lives and we ended up in an awful situation. At times we
swam and swam toward shore only to see it recede still further, or else we had to
start out on our own, not knowing how accurate our navigational equipment
was. This perhaps was the strongest sensation.”
Many Baby Boomers switched jobs to make ends meet, lost jobs, changed
professions, or found ways to supplement their income. Natalya P. gave up her
position teaching English at the Pedagogical University in Saratov to take a
position at the Police Academy, despite the drop in prestige. Her explanation:
“Well, the pay was a lot higher there than what I had been receiving.” Lyubov
Raitman ended her teaching career at Moscow University when she accepted a
job as a secretary. “I had to. The salary they offered me was fifty times greater
than what I had been earning. Fifty times! What choice did I have? I probably
regret that I was forced to do this. But I didn’t regret that, all of a sudden, I had
money and possibilities. Within several years,” she added, “I understood what
a watershed this had been. That is, it was as if my entire life before had been
severed.” Reiterating that she took on this, and then other jobs “only for the
money,” she underscored that what happened to her was “not the worst
possibility.”
Arkady Darchenko changed jobs owing to perestroika, recalling “in connec-
tion with perestroika, the institute where I worked practically shut down. Well,
it’s open, but you can’t work there, because they don’t pay a thing. I changed
my profession in 1995 and became a professional computer programmer, and
English, well, I don’t think any explanation of its importance is necessary.”
Darchenko admitted how hard it was for him to let go of his previous job at an
institute that manufactured measuring equipment. “I worked there for twenty-
five years, from an entry-level engineer to positions of authority. Even though I
earn money elsewhere, I now sometimes drop in there once a week, purely out
of professional interest, and do what I formerly did,” he acknowledged. A pro-
fessor of (Marxist) economics, Natalya Pronina expressed gratitude for the
home economics course required at school that taught girls how to sew: “Later,
when we lived through some rough times, during so-called perestroika, I even
earned some money on the side sewing, and I am not at all ashamed of this,”
she told me.
Aleksandr Kutin identified a real dilemma: people were now free to work as they
pleased, but the economic downturn often made it impossible to strike out on one’s
To her surprise, Natalya P. found

fulfillment when she gave up her
teaching position in the 1990s at the
Saratov Pedagogical Institute for a
better paying one at the less prestigious
Police Academy. “They didn’t have a
department, and I started one up from
scratch. Everything that exists there
now was created under my leadership,”
she explained. Courtesy of Natalya P.
own. Moreover, he added, “I’m not used to working like that. Not all of us are able
to set up our own business. I, for one, can’t, but some members of my age cohort can
and do so successfully, but there aren’t many.” The experience took one of them,
Vladimir Nemchenko to new heights—and depths, as a result of which he likened
himself to the philosopher Diogenes, one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.
Nemchenko told me, “It was only recently that I woke up, because earlier I harbored
thoughts about suicide.” He had made a fortune during the privatization of state
industries that gave the advantage to insider trading, which he claimed earned him
tens of million of dollars. Although he managed to lose it just as easily as he had
made it, he was now slowly recovering financially. “I sold two apartments and am
living off the money. At the moment I’m not working and decided to gather all of the
documentation and try to sue to get my money back. Maybe something will come of
this,” he posited. Proud that he works for himself and not for others, Nemchenko
plans to continue in the world of “business” but at a “less grandiose” level.
A good number of respondents explained how deeply ingrained Soviet atti-
tudes and experiences made it difficult for them to adapt to the new circum-
stances. Describing the Soviet system of wages, bonuses, and other perks to which
he had become accustomed, airplane engineer Vyacheslav Starik concluded that
“I never formulated a tie between money and work.” Finding it hard to learn how
to “work for money,” he recalled that, in the old days, he “worked as much as I
could, because it was interesting to me.” English teacher Anna Lyovina main-
tained that the Soviet system’s leveling process had given rise to a consumerist
attitude toward the government. “The government has to decide everything for
us, has to provide for everyone. Even if it’s only a bit, but it has to give everyone
something,” she opined. Contesting the Soviet propaganda mantra that there
was no unemployment in the Soviet Union, she explained, “There was hidden
unemployment especially at the numerous research institutes. At work women
sat and knitted or went shopping, and the men walked around and smoked or
discussed soccer. There was nothing to do.” She blamed this on the overproduc-
tion of specialists. “For this reason I believe that seventy years of Soviet power
had a pernicious effect on people’s attitudes. It created a consumerist attitude
toward the government that the government owes us something. Now people are
lost when they have to make decisions for themselves.”
The emergence of fifteen independent states from the ruins of the former
Soviet empire also complicated life for the Cold War generation. As Natalya
Yanichkina affirmed, “To be honest, a lot of problems appeared. Before, we lived
in a single country, and keep in mind that my husband is from Ukraine. During
those years before strict customs were set up we could still manage to visit.
When his mother died two years ago the telegram served as our so-called visa to
let us enter. But a lot of extortion goes on. They stamp your documents in the
wrong place and you have to bribe.” Yanichkina also complained about the frus-
trations she and her husband felt when they completed the voluminous paper-
work necessary to bring her husband’s sister, in dire need of medical care, to
Saratov for treatment. “She needed an operation, so we had to bring her here.
But all of those customs and passport and visa controls have separated people.
Before we could travel anywhere within the USSR. Not now.” Lyubov Kovalyova’s
personal experience illustrates Yanichkina’s point. Kovalyova met her second
husband, from Minsk, when the two of them were on work assignments in
Hungary. “He had his career and work, and I had mine. Besides, I had a young
daughter who was about ten at the time. Moreover, my mother was sick and
alone. Therefore, I didn’t move there, and somehow it wasn’t that hard on us,”
she explained. A train ticket to Minsk at the time cost only 8 rubles, and an air-
line ticket, 12 rubles, so they took turns visiting each other. “Everything was
wonderful until the awful inflation begun, until Belarus became independent,
and until they began to use their own currency,” Kovalyova related. “As a result,
perestroika took itself out on our family, which fell apart. It’s a personal tragedy
for me. My husband said the same thing. For us, perestroika turned out sadly.”
The wrenching changes associated with the 1990s also corresponded with
some momentous life passages. Natalya P. remembered, “First, my father died in
1990. It was a great loss for me. He’s absolutely irreplaceable. Then I had other
things to think about as my son grew up. A child is a big responsibility. We have
closer relations [than Americans do], but they breathe down our necks. They live
with us for a long time. This causes problems.” Natalya appreciated that wisdom
often comes with age—and with hard times. Getting sick in the early 1990s trans-
formed her outlook on life: “I no longer get all caught up in little things. I now
know what the most important things in life are. Therefore, it actually became
easier for me to live after I got sick, because I found out the true value of life and
death. My disposition, my attitude toward life, changed altogether and I’m much
happier. What a paradox!” She concluded, “They say that God deals us only
those cards we’re capable of handling. I’m so happy, knock on wood, that I’m
still alive, that I can live and enjoy life, and not sweat the small stuff.”
Several Saratov Baby Boomers called attention to an ironic consequence of
the economic dislocation of the 1990s regarding the local environment. Both
under Soviet power and afterward there was a lot of talk about environmental
degradation, but no money to do anything about it. Many Saratovites recalled
drinking from the Volga as children, but things changed by the time they
reached adulthood. Admitting there had been a problem, Olga Gorelik related
that “we nevertheless lived at the dacha, swam in the river, and boated.” She
acknowledged, however, that guests from Yugoslavia “were afraid to swim.”
Then came perestroika, explained Aleksandr Virich: “The ecological situation
has improved ten or fifteen times for one reason—the majority of military pro-
duction has stopped. Therefore, there’s no polluting. Fish have reappeared and
the Volga’s become cleaner.” Arkady Darchenko concurred: “I can’t say that
everything’s fine now, but the Volga is much, much cleaner because they shut
Like many other Saratovites,

Pyotor Krasilnikov noticed an
improvement in the Volga’s
cleanliness—and a willingness to
eat its bounty—already in 1994
after the closing of many factories
that polluted the river. But no one
observed that the river is as clean
as he or she remembered it as
children. Courtesy of Pyotor
Krasilnikov
down many of the unproductive [military] factories. What was in effect an

economic misfortune was not altogether a bad thing. The Volga became cleaner.
The air became cleaner. It had been absolutely disgusting before, but we
accepted all this as part of our overall, how shall I put it, standard of living.”
“ M Y H E A R T, M Y S O U L , T H AT ’ S M Y C H U R C H ”
To deal with the turmoil in their lives in the 1990s, the Baby Boomers resorted to
time-honored coping mechanisms and leisure activities, likewise taking
advantage of the circumstances to explore new ones. Market conditions, for in-
stance, changed the country’s reading habits, particularly for this generation of
readers. Library use had fallen off significantly by 1991, largely because readers
could now readily obtain things they wanted to read on their own. If, during
perestroika, Russian readers devoured belletristic and literature exposing the fal-
sifications in official Soviet histories, the most popular book of the early 1990s
was Gone with the Wind. Russian classics remained in demand, but readers by
2001 also consumed in record numbers detective novels, love stories, adventure
books, satire, and humor. Readers under twenty-five expressed less interest in
every genre except, to the chagrin of their elders, erotica.12
Historically a problem in Russian culture and society, alcohol during the
strenuous 1990s served as a dangerous balm for many addicted to the substance.
The production and sale of often contaminated spirits that began during
Gorbachev’s campaign to curb excessive drinking complicated the situation.
One Saratov Baby Boomer drank himself to death, and another’s disease had
progressed so far that I was asked to spare him the indignity of an interview. The
transition did not necessarily bring this about, since alcoholism is a progressive
illness; however, statistics document alcohol’s debilitating effect on the
population at this time, owing to the decade’s unusual stresses, contributing to
declining male life expectancy. Afflicted with alcoholism and a nervous disorder,
Vladimir Sidelnikov offered a telling example of how perestroika affected his
disease and Sidelnikov materially. His mother had left him a considerable inher-
itance by Soviet standards, “enough to buy three Zhigulis [cars],” he explained.
But the value of the amount evaporated with the hopes he had for living better.
“They compensated me recently by giving me ten thousand rubles [roughly
$400] in today’s money. How much is that? See the television over there? It cost
nine thousand rubles. So, I turned from a rich man into a poor one. But I’m an
optimist. I believe that everything will be okay.” Indeed, Sidelnikov saw himself
as “a darling of fate,” but that outlook came from his experiencing life’s down-
side, first, when he was expelled from Finland as a student and, again, in 1992,
when he was locked up in a mental hospital. “In 1992 they gave me a long-last-
ing injection, after which I felt terrible for years. Very terrible, and I didn’t know
what world I lived in. But then the shot wore off.” He credited his wife, Lyuba,
with helping him afterward. “By the way, she thought back then that I wouldn’t
come out of it after the shot. But God let me live. And now I have to fulfill some
kind of mission in this world. I believe that each person comes into this world
with a mission. When I fulfill mine, I’ll die.”
Given the strong school-age bonds they cherished, many members of the
Cold War generation continued to rely on each other for help. Especially close,
the members of Class B of Saratov’s School No. 42 shared memories of coming
to each other’s assistance during the challenging decade. Irina Barysheva, for
example, turned to a classmate to determine the “biography” of a car she consid-
ered purchasing. “He clarified everything literally within a few minutes and called
me back. He said, ‘Don’t risk it! It has a checkered past.’” She likewise remem-
bered how her classmate turned to Olga Kamayurova when her son was dying of
lung cancer. “She did everything she could in her hospital. She couldn’t save him,
but she relieved his pain.” Not one for nostalgia, Olga Kamayurova had no desire
to meet with her classmates until the 1990s. “I’m [now] drawn to them the same
way I am to my relatives. You know, I look at them and I think, my heavens, we’ve
known each other for almost fifty years. They’re all my brothers and sisters.” Olga
Martynkina recalled consulting with a classmate regarding her son’s language
skills in English. She also singled out Viktor D., with whom she shared a desk at
school. Two years before I interviewed her, she—a pianist—fell during an ice
storm on New Year’s Eve and shattered her arm. Panic-stricken, she asked to be
taken to his emergency room. “I said to him, ‘Vitya, save me.’ And my classmate
Vitya found room for me and stayed there himself to help,” she disclosed. “It was
already evening. He fussed with me for four hours, until 10:00 P.M., and left two
doctors to look out for me. He saved my arm.”
But time and life’s challenges weakened these bonds for many of the cohort,
especially in Moscow. As Leonid Volodarsky recapped, “We got together for a
while and saw our friends from school, but then, life is life. People dispersed,
new friends appeared. Yet there are people from school with whom I still
associate.” Georgy Godzhello regretted that he has not kept in touch with his
classmates except for an occasional reunion at school. Many of his closest friends
have emigrated. Tatyana Luchnikova, who moved to Moscow in ninth grade, has
not maintained ties with her classmates. “We went our separate ways and
everyone was busy with their own lives,” she stated.
Experiencing a robust revival at this time, religion also helped some peo-
ple cope with the decade of promise and turmoil. The cessation of state
repression of religion and tough economic straits of the 1990s brought about
a religious revival as the Russian Orthodox Church reclaimed its role as a
state religion with new freedoms, creating mostly favorable conditions for
people to practice alternative faiths as well. Valentin Ulyakhin grew up in a
home in which religion was respected and practiced. His personal conversion
began with the death of his father in 1974. After his mother died in 1982 he
became a “conscious believer.” “When you see your relatives lying in their
coffins you understand that eternity exists,” he explained. Ulyakhin believed
Members of the Saratov B Class meet at least yearly. I interviewed all of those gathered
here in 2003, except for Natalya Khamidulina (center), who hosted this get-together in
her Saratov apartment, and two others who married foreigners and now reside in
Germany and the Netherlands. Courtesy of Arkady Darchenko
that World War II, which brought about a religious restoration the state had
to embrace, postponed the total destruction of religion in Russia until pere-
stroika, by which time communism was exhausted. After celebration of the
thousandth anniversary of Christianity in Russia in 1988, churches and
seminaries reopened. In 1991 Ulyakhin enrolled in St. Tikhon Seminary and
became an Orthodox priest.
Like so many others, Tatyana Luchnikova got baptized in the 1990s. “I made
my own choice and got baptized along with my son. No one forced me. I got
there only through suffering.” So did Vladimir Sidelnikov, for whom religion
played no role in his life until he got baptized at age thirty-nine, “after which life
has been altogether different. I understood there’s a God and that God will help
me. When I came to believe in God, I became an altogether different person,” he
related. This occurred in 1989, following a difficult stint in a hospital—necessary
for him to be recognized as an invalid and to receive government welfare.
Released on August 3, 1989, he was baptized on August 5, and met his future wife
Lyuba the next day. Elaborated Sidelnikov, “The more I believed in God, the
more time I spent with Lyuba and her relatives, the less I drank. And then I
stopped altogether.” He had been sober for four years when I interviewed him
in 2008.
For some Baby Boomers getting baptized in the 1990s began a spiritual journey
away from Orthodoxy. Tatyana Luchnikova became a Buddhist while living in
New York after meeting a young man in a dentist’s office. She took him up on an
invitation to visit his Buddhist group: “I showed up, found it interesting, and liked
it. And I began to read. I really like this religion because it doesn’t weigh upon
your mind the way Orthodoxy does. It’s more of a philosophy of life than a reli-
gion, an attitude.” When a teacher asked her whether she had renounced
Orthodoxy, she replied, “My God, I said, I haven’t renounced anything. What’s
with the big words? What’s with the drama? One does not negate the other.”
Underscoring the violence and hypocrisy she found in organized religion, she
concluded, “My heart, my soul, that’s my church, it’s all within me. What you
reap, you sow.” Olga Kamayurova explained how perestroika led her to Osho, to
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian mystic,* and to a life of spirituality. Because
of economic difficulties that strained her marriage to the breaking point, she
became depressed. Searching for a way to overcome it, she discovered Osho. “In
the first book I read of Osho’s, I came across his understanding of Orthodoxy, of
Christianity. It’s so odd that Christianity doesn’t appeal to me. After all, we live in
a Christian country and I should be drawn to that religion, but they altered it
basically for the needs of the priests,” she stated. “It frightens people, it oppresses
them. It’s such a strict religion—standing in churches for hours during a service,
while they threaten you with hell and terrible punishments. Osho interprets
Christianity not as something radiantly joyous but as something that’s been rad-
ically changed by the clergy,” Kamayurova concluded.
Another Baby Boomer who asked to remain unnamed grew up an atheist and
did not believe in anything; however, “in 1991 or so we got baptized together. I,
my son, then my sister and her son. Perestroika had begun and people flocked
to religion, even Party leaders,” she emphasized. “There was a flood of positive
feelings toward religion and the church. But later I became very negative toward
this. My son too.” She experimented with transcendental meditation, “but it
wasn’t enough. I abandoned it, perhaps because I wasn’t very good at it. Yet I
didn’t like the tendency toward making it a business,” she clarified. Then
astrology captivated her. She studied it seriously, obtaining a “bachelor’s” degree
in it from the St. Petersburg Academy of Astrology. Practicing for fourteen years
when I met her, she exclaimed, “Astrology is my love!” Yet a year and a half
before I interviewed her, she also embraced Scientology. “I don’t want people to
know about this,” she explained, “because in Russia people are very critical of
Scientology. The patriarch sees it as an irreconcilable enemy.” She elaborated:
“I’m hostile toward religion. You can’t study astrology, you can’t study meditation,
you can’t study Scientology. What’s left? As far as I understand things it’s to go
to church with your money.” This handful of testimonials gives some credence
* Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh—Osho—was born Rajneesh Chandra Mohan in central India.

See ch. 5, p 246.
to the argument of a Russian writer who maintains that Russian society today
remains unreligious, because contemporary Orthodoxy does not touch people’s
hearts, leaving them indifferent.13
“ P E O P L E A R E F U L F I L L I N G T H E M S E LV E S ”
A psychological dimension to the transition also weighed on people’s psyches
and shaped their attitudes. Recalling her carefree childhood, Lyubov Kovalyova
insisted, “We lived well back then. I felt that I was born in a large, wonderful,
highly regarded country. Perhaps they inculcated this in me during my childhood,
but that’s how I felt. I personally never experienced any oppression or persecu-
tion.” Similarly, Natalya Pronina underscored, “It seems to me that, at present,
we lack an aim and purpose. If before we had a goal, communism, even if it was
an unobtainable one, we at least had a purpose. However, there’s none now.”
Many Baby Boomers, and people throughout Russia for that matter, would agree
with Leonid Volodarsky: “I believe our generation had it really tough, because
we lived through a revolution. We lived peacefully under Soviet power. Lots of
negative things have been said about Soviet power, and they’re correct. But there
also were many things that were good under Soviet power, and there’s no
denying that.” Volodarsky underscored stability, “which is very important for
the overwhelming majority of people.” The switch from Soviet-style stability to
“robber baron capitalism and not real capitalism” took its toll.
Indeed, some Baby Boomers waxed nostalgic about the comparative low
crime rate in the Soviet days, seeing this as another benefit of the former
system. But back in the Soviet period, people did not know how much crime
actually existed in society. I asked criminal investigator Gennady Ivanov why
such information was kept secret. His answer speaks volumes about the
cultural differences that help sustain a closed society—and constrain it after
it opens: “I’m not sure that all of those headlines that we have today are
necessary. The papers describe in detail how a crime was committed and
who the victim was. Why? Who needs this?” He added, “There’s also a
difference in the number of murders today and back then. It’s about five
times higher. Why tell people that there were a 100 and now they’re more
than 500? Will this affect the crime rate? Why frighten people so that they’re
afraid of every shadow they see? What’s the sense of telling people that
there’s a murderer on the loose? It doesn’t affect you in the least,” he insisted.
“Therefore, I’d say it wasn’t only that we had less crime back then. It played
an altogether different role.”
Despite the Baby Boomers’ real concerns and even disgruntlement, the vast
majority of them—like most members of the highly educated urban intelli-
gentsia of their age cohort elsewhere in Russia—felt that the changes of the
1990s and beyond were worth it, thereby passing strong judgment on the
Soviet era. They likewise understood the enormity of the task Russia faced
transitioning to a market economy. Explained Aleksandr Virich: “The very first

economist, Moses, wandered for forty years. What do you want to achieve in
ten? Especially with so much opposition from the Communists in the Duma?”
Natalya P. also recognized the difficulty Boris Yeltsin had trying to pick up where
Gorbachev had left off, maintaining “people remained the same as before, the
country remained the same. It’s possible to destroy things in a short time, but to
change things fundamentally, time is needed.” According to Arkady Darchenko,
“We’ll never have the order that they have, say, in Germany. We’re simply differ-
ent. In many ways, Americans are more like us. In lifestyle, for instance.” That
said, Darchenko appreciated an important difference, commenting on the fact
that, in Russia, some people used the entranceways to buildings to relieve them-
selves. “It’s basically a matter of the level of cultural development. We need sev-
eral generations for that. The general level is awful. I believe that change will
come, but not tomorrow.”
Sofiya Vinogradova did not grasp why perestroika took place, but believed
“it’s a good thing it occurred. A very good thing. Even though you now have to
hold down three jobs to make ends meet, whereas before you could get by on
one.” True, Vinogradova expressed nostalgia about her carefree childhood, but
she liked what was better today. “The fact that you can go out and in five min-
utes lay the table, the fact that you can buy anything you want if you have the
money. That you can buy clothes, travel wherever you like, invite whomever you
like to visit, and that you and I can now speak with each other. This is all very
good. That’s my opinion. And that you can work, and that many doors have
opened.” The result? “People are fulfilling themselves. I know such people.
They’re realizing themselves; doors opened for them that they never expected.
Before they couldn’t work where they wanted because of their nationality or else
simply didn’t imagine that they could do so. Simply put, new horizons have
appeared.” She especially appreciated the fact “that it’s possible to travel, to see
other things, other countries, different cultures, indescribable sites. To speak
with people in person, not on the telephone. To accept someone’s invitation to
come and visit. This was impossible before. Even for my parents. No one could.
Even people who didn’t emigrate, but worked abroad, couldn’t invite their par-
ents to visit.”14
Some devout Communists also had a change of heart. Bakhyt Kenzheyev’s
father, for instance, has visited him twice in Canada. “He gradually began to
acknowledge that things weren’t so good after all” in the USSR. Kenzheyev
valued the difficulty of such self-reflection, insisting we have no right to judge
the views of earlier Soviet generations. Larisa Petrova, too, acknowledged the
positive changes that have come to Russia as a result of the country’s switch to a
market economy. “But the main thing that dissatisfies me today,” she injected,
“is my salary. I work from morning until night.”
People’s optimism continued to rise with the economic stabilization setting
in after 1998. Speaking in 2003, Irina Vizgalova remarked, “Now things are a bit
better. Now many enterprises are reemerging, there’s a lot of new construction
going on, and natural gas is being exported.”
T H E P R E S I D E N C Y O F B O R I S Y E LT S I N
In August 1991 the world watched as Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, standing atop a
tank in front of the Russian parliament, denounced the attempt by Communist
hard-liners to remove Gorbachev from power and to prevent the signing of the
new union treaty that would have transformed the USSR into a (voluntary) smaller
Union of Sovereign States. Calling for a general strike, Yeltsin issued an appeal to
the citizens of Russia to stand firm against the conspirators. This was his finest
moment. By the time the coup failed at week’s end, Yeltsin had eclipsed Gorbachev
as the most influential political leader in the country, becoming, when the USSR
ceased to exist in December 1991, independent Russia’s first president; he served
from 1991 until December 31, 1999. Yeltsin’s biographer Timothy Colton acknowl-
edges Yeltsin’s flaws, but considers him a hero in history, a democratizer, who
commands respect and even sympathy.15 Yet the most popular Russian leader dur-
ing the early 1990s ended his decade in power in disgrace at home.
Yeltsin was born in 1931 in the village of Butka in Sverdlovsk (now
Yekaterinburg) oblast into a modest family that knew repression firsthand: his
father Nikolai, convicted of anti-Soviet agitation, spent a three-year stint in the
Gulag, after which he labored as a construction worker. His mother Klavdiya
worked as a seamstress. Biographical accounts of Yeltsin mention the fact that,
as a youth, he lost the thumb and index finger of his left hand while trying to
disassemble a hand grenade. The point: already as a teen, Yeltsin took risks.
In 1955 he graduated from the Ural State Technical University in Sverdlovsk,
where he majored in construction. Rising through the ranks of the local
construction industry, he in time assumed a position of power and authority
over this sector of Sverdlovsk oblast. He joined the CPSU in 1961—the year
Khrushchev promised to achieve communism by 1980—and in 1976 became
head of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Communist Party Committee.
Gorbachev invited Yeltsin to Moscow in 1985, and soon thereafter he became
first secretary of Moscow’s Communist Party Committee, a position akin to
mayor, and was elected a candidate member of the Politburo. Exposing the
perks enjoyed by the Party nomenklatura, Yeltsin quickly won over the support of
Muscovites by rubbing shoulders with them on public transportation, making
surprise visits to stores and enterprises, and wrestling to preserve the city’s archi-
tectural treasures. Anxious, Yeltsin soon blasted the pace of perestroika and its
architects—including Gorbachev and the senior Party leadership. That October,
Yeltsin reiterated his disappointment with the pace of reform, lashed out at
conservative Politburo member Ligachev, and decried the emerging cult of
Gorbachev. Angered by Yeltsin’s remarks, Gorbachev accepted Yeltsin’s resigna-
tion and removed him from the Politburo.
In March 1989 elections to the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies, the first
contested elections in Russia since 1917, created advantageous conditions for
Yeltsin’s political comeback. Winning 90 percent of the vote in Moscow, Yeltsin
got appointed to the new Supreme Soviet. Elected to the Russian (as opposed to
the Soviet, or national) Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1990, Yeltsin
became chair of the Russian Supreme Soviet. In July he demonstrably resigned
from the Communist Party. The next summer, the citizens of Russia elected him
the first president of the Russian republic (the largest and most important of the
fifteen Soviet republics) and thus, unlike Gorbachev who had been chosen
president of the USSR by the Congress of People’s Deputies and not by popular
vote, Yeltsin claimed that he had greater legitimacy. The public enmity between
the two leaders intensified as Yeltsin demanded Gorbachev’s resignation. This
was but one of the events leading to the attempt by hard-liners to remove
Gorbachev from power and to prevent the signing of the new union treaty on
August 20, 1991.
As president, Yeltsin proved more successful at preventing a Communist res-
toration and at integrating Russia into the global economy than at creating a
stable institutional foundation to underpin the freedoms gained at that time.
Yet he had also faced the Sisyphean tasks of establishing a new democratic
political order, introducing a market economy, and negotiating a new interna-
tional position for a now defunct superpower. Given the confluence of circum-
stances, Yeltsin put off forming a political party, writing a new constitution, and
electing a new parliament in order to introduce radical economic reform. Prime
Minister Yegor Gaidar, a proponent of shock therapy designed to move Russia as
quickly as possible to a market economy, freed most prices on January 1, 1992,
while democratic reformer Anatoly Chubais drafted a program to privatize state-
owned enterprises. Feeding crime and corruption, these policies pushed Russia
to the brink of economic collapse and provoked widespread criticism, even
from Vice President Aleksander Rutskoi and the speaker of parliament Ruslan
Khasbulatov.16 Most people were simply not prepared for so sharp a change in
their economic lives. Less than a quarter of the population—mostly the young
and middle aged with decent incomes—maintained their optimism, compared
with 60 percent of the population who saw the situation as catastrophic. People
feared social conflict and civil war.17
The mounting rift between Yeltsin and the Soviet-era Supreme Soviet over
economic reform climaxed in the fall of 1993 when Yeltsin sought to dissolve
parliament and hold new elections. The opposition’s refusal to submit to
Yeltsin’s demands prompted him to storm the Russian White House, where par-
liament met, resulting in more than one hundred deaths. At the time, half the
population believed the use of force had been necessary, a figure that inched up
to 52.8 percent for the Baby Boomer age cohort and shot up to 62.1 percent for
young people under thirty.18 The showdown sped up ratification of a new super-
presidential constitution, which governed parliamentary elections in December.
By then, at least thirteen parties had registered in Russia, including the

Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), successor to the CPSU, led
by Gennady Zyuganov, and the Liberal Democratic Party of ultranationalist
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, which was neither liberal nor democratic. The architect of
Yeltsin’s economic policies, Yegor Gaidar and his market-oriented Democratic
Choice of Russia won only 15.5 percent of the votes, while the Liberal Democratic
Party captured 22.9 percent and the CPRF 12.4 percent.
To accommodate the nationalist–Communist coalition in parliament, Yeltsin
eased up on the pace of market reform. Privatization, however, entered its sec-
ond round, giving rise to a class of rich businessmen, as well as to a cohort of
entrepreneurs who had accumulated massive fortunes, soon to be known as the
oligarchs, who acquired enormous holdings through insider trading and there-
fore backed Yeltsin. The resulting social inequality and effrontery of the new
rich fed disillusionment with market economics and the democratic political
system. Retirees looked back upon the Soviet days with nostalgia.19 By this point
roughly two-thirds of the population felt shame for the position in which Russia
found itself, saw the situation as intolerable, and feared growing crime and dis-
order.20 Roughly 88 percent of the population believed people needed to respect
law and order. Seventy percent felt that Russia needed a strong leader.21
By the time Yeltsin ran for reelection in June 1996, his popularity ratings had
plunged into the single digits. Moreover, his declining health and excessive
drinking, about which there had been much gossip and public discussion since
the early days of perestroika, took their toll. Poking fun at his slurred speeches
and swollen countenance, popular jokes likened him to a second Brezhnev. The
oligarchs and Western supporters funded the election campaign, which pre-
sented Yeltsin as liberator of the new Russia and his chief opponent, Zyuganov,
as a return to Stalinism. Yet Yeltsin had to face Zyuganov in a second, run-off
election, before which he suffered a massive heart attack. Only after Yeltsin won
the run-off did news of his fragile health reach the public. Afterward, he under-
went quintuple bypass surgery with a long recovery during which his daughter
and Chubais ran the country. Seen as an emerging epithet for the Yeltsin era,
already in 1997, 40 percent of those polled preferred living in Brezhnev’s Russia.
People believed the country was mired in dire crisis and that even the economic
chaos had reached catastrophic dimensions.22
Marked by growing crime and corruption, a constant turnover in the office
of prime minister, a troubled economy, and the default of the Russian ruble in
1998, which triggered what fortunately proved to be only a short-lived setback,
Yeltsin’s second term did nothing to restore his popularity. The monthly salary
of the humanities intelligentsia plummeted from $354 to $158, and white-collar
workers from $317 to $114. Favoring Yeltsin’s forced retirement, the population
backed returning strategic industries such as oil, gas, and energy to the state,
restoring a state monopoly on alcohol and cigarettes, reinstating government
control on prices, and even the state’s taking control of large industries. People
feared for their children’s future. They feared being without resources to sur-
vive. They feared getting sick and being without medical care. They feared
unemployment. They feared crime.23 Yeltsin’s poor health prompted him to
secure his legacy by guaranteeing a successor that would grant Yeltsin and his
family immunity. That man proved to be a relatively unknown ex-KGB agent,
Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin appointed prime minister in 1999. Astonishing
the world, Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999, announcing that he had
done the best he could in leading the country. He was succeeded by Prime
Minister Putin, about whom we will hear more later.
“ P E R I O D S O F G R E AT C H A N G E A R E A LWAY S
A C C O M PA N I E D B Y A D O W N S I D E ”
Irina Garzanova explained that, born on February 1, Yeltsin was an Aquarius: “It
was demanded of Yeltsin to destroy; he was unable to build.” She voiced grati-
tude, however, that Yeltsin won his second term in 1996, “because there was a very
real threat of a Communist restoration. We were anxious for Yeltsin to stay in
power, because the Communists would have been a step back.” In 1996 Yeltsin
ran against Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Although Garzanova had sympathized with the Communists earlier, she declared
Zyuganov a “terrible man. I saw his horoscope. He’s an awful man.” Like many,
she backed Yeltsin, believing the alternatives were worse.
Valentin Ulyakhin praised Yeltsin because Ulyakhin became a priest while
Yeltsin ruled Russia. “I pray for his health,” said Father Valentin. “Because under
Gorbachev I couldn’t have become a priest. The church’s rebirth began for real
only under Boris Nikolayevich.” Yet Natalya Pronina, for one, maintained that
Yeltsin promoted the revival of religiosity as an insincere effort to win popular
appeal. Claimed Pronina, Yeltsin “exerted a negative influence on the intelli-
gentsia when he, a Party functionary, suddenly appeared in church and crossed
himself. It’s deceitful! I don’t think that he’s a true believer. You can call it what
you like, but it’s insincere. If this is insincere, how can you believe in other
things he says or does?” Those applauding the religious revival, however, did not
care what drove Yeltsin to back the church.
Natalya Yanichkina concurred that Yeltsin played a positive role: “I have to
agree with Yeltsin that we should take only as much freedom as we’re capable of
handling. They overstrained themselves a bit. Today’s politics are a consequence
of what happened back then. But man, after all, descended from the apes, right?
He can’t learn from others’ mistakes, and must experience everything himself.
That’s what all the fuss is about.” She continued, “I was thankful to Gorbachev
and Yeltsin. I like Gorbachev a great deal. I like Yeltsin too because, for the most
part, I think that a lot was gained during this period.” Irina Barysheva chortled,
“How we rooted for Yeltsin.” So did her mother. In fact, during his first
presidential election, her mother was house bound and, when it appeared that
she would not be allowed to vote from home, she made phone calls until
someone brought her a ballot. “She supported his ideas and the fact that he
replaced the Soviet regime.” Apolitical, Yevgeniya Ruditskaya, when pressed,
acknowledged, “I have a great deal of respect for Yeltsin.” Similarly, Vladimir
Sidelnikov stressed that he was the first to speak out against the Central
Committee. “Yeltsin spoke the truth. The problem was that he drank. Yes, he got
drunk, but his politics were correct. Russia had to switch to a market economy,
like all of the other countries.” As a result of Yeltsin’s drinking, Yelena Kolosova
believed that Yeltsin was more familiar to the Russian people than Gorbachev
was. “He was a massive man who drank, and therefore could be trusted.”
Yet most Baby Boomers, like most educated Russians of their generation,
spoke ill of Yeltsin. Leonid Volodarsky vehemently opposed Yeltsin’s economic
policies: “I believe that he’s probably the person who, in the entire history of
Russia, brought his country the most harm. It’s hard to imagine anyone doing
something worse for his country.” Critical of Gorbachev, Larisa Petrova likewise
scolded Yeltsin: “For one thing, he’s dishonest. Because of him, crime has begun
to strangle Russia. I believe that the years he ruled were unlucky ones for Russia.
These were years when much that was started and could have been nurtured got
squandered.” Viktor D. from Saratov maintained, “He’s too much of a specu-
lator. He was in the wrong place. He didn’t do what was necessary or how it
should have been done.” Yeltsin disappointed Lyudmila Gorokhova, who did
not mince words: “We hate Yeltsin and his entire clique.” She griped about the
“young snots” populating government bureaucracies, “who lacked an ounce of
intellect.” They belong to the “lost generation” that came of age during Yeltsin’s
decade in office, and who were raised on post-Soviet television, whose program-
ming comprised a dangerous cocktail of “horror, pornography, and shoot outs.”
“He’s only for himself,” opined Aleksandr Ivanov. “He did nothing sensible
for Russia.” Ivanov regretted that Putin granted Yeltsin and his family immunity.
“Just as the leadership was all for itself back then, the leadership is all for itself
now.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev cast Yeltsin as an “opportunist.” Stressing his lack of
interest in making big money and his love of scholarship, Vladimir Glebkin
lamented that the need to make ends meet left little room for anything else.
“Thus, what Yeltsin did in this regard is a total catastrophe. And no one yet has
understood this. Moreover, there are many people today who are spoiled by
money. Because when you receive low salaries, you’ll readily agree to make
more.” The resulting corruption even penetrated academia, resulting in a low-
ering of standards. Tatyana Artyomova argued that “he appeared at that histor-
ical moment when he was given a chance to turn Russian into a real democratic
country. But I can’t say that he used that opportunity.” Speaking condescend-
ingly, Vladimir Glebkin reminded me of the gorillas and chimpanzees in the
film Planet of the Apes, likening the chimpanzees to the intelligentsia and the
masses to gorillas, “who only recognized force.” To keep the gorillas in check, a
rigid structure needed to be in place. “One should never do what Yeltsin did. He
let go of everything at once, understanding democracy as allowing everything.

Our society was clearly not ready for that.”
Andrei Rogatnev opposed the putsch of August 1991 and went to the Russian
White House to support Yeltsin, “but I didn’t do this so that Yeltsin’s daughter
could build a palace,” he barked. Natalya Yanichkina also castigated the oli-
garchs for negative developments during the Yeltsin era: “Why did the country’s
wealth end up in the hands of a few? True, many people were duped by various
financial scams, but that’s nothing in comparison with what these rich people
have done. They took advantage of the situation. I don’t think this is right. But I
also think there’s no going back. Perhaps in time a different political climate
will arise.”
Others condemned Yeltsin’s Chechnya policy. As president, Yeltsin has been
credited with promoting a nonethnic definition of citizenship in Russia and for
rejecting the use of force on behalf of the estimated 20 to 25 million ethnic
Russians living in the Near Abroad. But his launching of two wars against
Chechen separatists provoked widespread criticism. As background, the Yeltsin
government signed a series of bilateral treaties with the twenty-one “republics”
within the Russian Federation populated by ethnic minorities. One of them,
Chechnya, had become a center of arms smuggling, drug running, and violence
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When Chechnya refused to recognize
Moscow’s authority, Moscow invaded in December 1994, and the war ended in
stalemate in August 1996. From the start, critics questioned Yeltsin’s reason for
invading. Did Russia attack to defend the Chechens’ challenge to the state’s
integrity (indeed, President Bill Clinton called him Russia’s Lincoln) or because
Yeltsin grasped at any means to recover his declining approval ratings?
Russia invaded a second time in September 1999 following a Chechen attack
against neighboring Dagestan and mysterious apartment explosions in Moscow
and two other cities that killed more than 300 civilians. Led by Yeltsin’s
new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, the second war “against terrorism” proved
enormously popular—initially—and helped to keep Putin in power after
Yeltsin’s resignation at year’s end. Viktor D. believed he understood the wars in
Chechnya the same way everyone else does. “Someone was interested in
something; someone needed it, both from the Chechen side and from ours.” He
was puzzled: “Why did we let go of the Baltic states and Belorussia but not
Chechnya? Why did we let go of the Georgians, but not the Chechens?” He wor-
ried about his son: “Thank God they invited him to enroll in graduate school
when he finished college. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to do to keep him
from being sent to Chechnya. No one has any desire to fight for someone else’s
interests there. No one.” Vladimir Prudkin believed he understood the dynamic
that led to war, commenting, “The stealing [of state resources] that occurred in
appalling, unprecedented levels in the 1990s was, in fact, a continuation of the
stealing of the 1970s and 1980s. It’s the same people, the same faces, who, back
then, took only small bribes up to 100 rubles, but who take up to 100 million
dollars today. That’s why they need Afghanistan, Chechnya, and all the other
conflicts. It’s like a covert Third World War, a latent one.” On a lighter note,
Georgy Godzhello saw a link between Russia’s war against terrorism and the
piles of trash that littered city streets. “The garbage reflects a lack of culture,
there’s no way around it. Yet because of all the terrorism there are far fewer gar-
bage cans,” he quipped.
Speaking for those who struck out on their own in the new economic cli-
mate, Yevgeny Podolsky acknowledged Yeltsin’s “colossal” influence on Russia;
however, he owned up that “not enough time has passed” to evaluate him.
Podolsky did not deny the many negative things associated with the Yeltsin
presidency, but he underscored the fact that Yeltsin broke from the Party and
created conditions for a new life. “You have to guarantee your own well being
and how you do so is your own business. If you can’t work, you can live on wel-
fare.” Podolsky did well in the new circumstances but admitted that his parents
and their generation adamantly opposed them.
Natalya P. disliked the fact that Yeltsin, “in a flash,” had abandoned commu-
nism for capitalism. “That means that he either was a bad Communist, or else
he wasn’t telling the truth now.” Acknowledging that people placed great hopes
on Yeltsin, she remembered how she and her husband argued over this “until
we were blue in the face. He believed in Yeltsin 100 percent, and said that now
things would be different. I disagreed. Women are more realistic. Yeltsin, after
all, came from the Party elite and he was already of an age that it would be dif-
ficult to completely change. For one thing, even if he really wanted to, it’s very
hard for someone to change after holding office for so many years.” Natalya
understood that it was easier for the iconoclastic Yeltsin to destroy than it was to
create something new. Waxing philosophical, she observed, “We lived through
some hard times. Things are far more stable now, far more so. Periods of great
change are always accompanied by a downside.”
“ W H AT D O E S Y O U R O R D I N A R Y A M E R I C A N R E A L LY
CARE ABOUT . . . RUSSIA?”
In embracing the “American way” and in teaming up with Harvard economists
Jeffrey Sachs and Robert Allison, who promoted economic shock therapy, Yeltsin
and his economic gurus expected the United States to pour aid and investment
money into the country to ward off a Communist restoration and a global
economic crisis. Newly independent, the mainstream Russian media in the early
1990s bashed Communism while supporting shock therapy and idealizing the
American other. As a result, many people believed that Russia should model
itself after the United States or European countries such as Germany or
Sweden.24
When economic catastrophe turned expectations into resentments, Russian
public opinion became critical of the United States. Making no systematic effort
to raise Russia from the ashes of economic ruin, the George H. W. Bush
administration (1989–93), concerned above all with the fate of Russia’s nuclear
arsenal, left assisting Russia to NGOs, philanthropists, companies, and individ-
uals. Instead of a new Marshall Plan for Russia, the country was inundated with
chicken-leg quarters that America overproduced and few other countries wanted,
known derisively by Russians as “Bush’s legs.” Injured pride stirred Russian
nationalism—and anti-American rhetoric. As Russia searched for a post-Soviet
identity, many ordinary people came to believe that the United States con-
sciously sought to keep Russia weak, becoming the scapegoat that many
needed.25 Disappointed with their former Cold War enemy, some saw Russia’s
future as lying in Europe, while others promoted the country’s Eurasian tradi-
tions. It is possible that Russian neoconservatism and anti-Americanism resulted
from the frustration over loss of Russia’s superpower status, lack of economic
investment in Russia, and the country’s exclusion from important decision mak-
ing. The worst eruption of anti-Americanism came in 1998–99, following the
August 1998 devaluation of the ruble, in which millions lost their life savings. In
December the United States and Britain bombed Iraq, ostensibly over Saddham
Hussein’s noncompliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Moreover, the issue of NATO expansion into former Soviet-bloc countries
loomed larger as the Russian media portrayed the United States as arrogant and
expansionist.26
Thus, if at the start of the 1990s people expressed optimism over U.S.–Russian
relations, by the end of the decade Russia’s romance with America had cooled:
Ordinary people voiced disillusionment with American-style privatization and
liberalization, feared NATO expansion into the independent Baltic states and
elsewhere after the United States announced that Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Hungary would join, and decried the NATO-backed U.S. bombing of
Kosovo in Serbia in 1999. The latter inflamed Russian public opinion against the
United States because of the long-term historical and religious ties between
Serbia and Russia, both Orthodox countries.27
Some Baby Boomers subscribed to these views of America. Angry at the U.S.
bombing of Kosovo when I interviewed him, Sergei Zemskov snapped, “I’d say
I had a far better attitude toward the West back then than I do now.” In the
1960s “we idealized the West and the Western way of life.” The disappointment
of the 1990s taught Gennady Ivanov that “no one wishes us well and it’s up to
us to solve our own problems.” Ivanov cynically queried, “What does your
ordinary American really care about what goes on in Russia? That was the case
back then and probably now, too. What’s it to him?” Interestingly, a few Baby
Boomers voiced greater concern over cultural issues than over U.S. foreign
policy objectives. For instance, Vladimir Prudkin observed that his childhood
notion that the West produced individuals who were “highly developed”
amounted to something of an illusion. Western popular entertainment, its cult
of stars, and other “primitive” features especially troubled him, owing to their
popularity in Russia. “Now, when Russia has become freer, it’s cloning much of
this. Under the weight of the totalitarian regime the level of spirituality here
was greater.”
Yevgeny Podolsky’s attitudes toward the West changed, but for the better.
“Before they told us that in a capitalist society they oppress the poor, but in fact
it’s not like that at all. You work, you earn money, and you live normally. And if
you don’t work, the government helps you.” He saw benefit in the fact that
people could be fired for not producing. “We didn’t have that. Here people got
drunk at work. The proletariat was hegemonic. He could drink, knowing that, if
they fired him, he could go across the street and they’d hire him and the same
thing would happen.” Podolsky’s vantage point accounts for his views: today he
is a successful businessman in Moscow. He worked hard to achieve what he did
playing by Western rules adapted to Russian circumstances.
P OW E R P E R S O N I F I E D : P U T I N I N P OW E R , 2 0 0 0 –2 0 0 8
Born in Leningrad in 1952, only a few years after the Baby Boomers, Vladimir
Putin became president of Russia in 2000, confirming that the country is one of
great opportunity. Interested in the martial arts and in a KGB career already as a
young man, Putin studied law at Leningrad University where he was taught by
reform-minded Anatoly Sobchak, who later became mayor of St. Petersburg and
a Putin promoter. Assigned to the KGB office engaged in foreign spying, Putin
served the KGB in East, not West, Germany, compiling a run-of-the-mill dossier.
In 1990 Mayor Sobchak appointed Putin an advisor on international relations
and then on foreign investments. His ability to get things done and other
personal qualities did not go unnoticed by Anatoly Chubais, who linked Putin
up with the person who ran the presidential staff in the Kremlin, Pavel Borodin.
He offered Putin a position in Moscow.
Putin’s effectiveness and apparent lack of any bald-faced political ambition
caught the attention of Yeltsin, who invited Putin to head up the Federal Security
Service, the successor to the KGB, in 1998. In August 1999 Yeltsin surprised his
countrymen, and the world, by appointing Putin his prime minister and pos-
sible successor. That month, Chechen terrorists took credit for blowing up
apartment houses in Moscow and two other cities, resulting in over 300 casu-
alties. Demanding action, the Russian people applauded Putin’s launching of a
new war in Chechnya to defend Russia. Yeltsin’s resignation on December 31,
1999, stunned people even more, since it made Putin acting president for ninety
days. He then presided over what was still a popular war in Chechnya when he
stood for reelection in March 2000. Ordinary Russians voted for the stability
Putin represented, electing him in the first round. Putin’s popularity can be
understood only against the backdrop of Yeltsin’s intense unpopularity. In 1999,
only 2 percent of the population had nothing bad to say about the Yeltsin era;28
at the start of the millennium, 88 percent of the population viewed Yeltsin’s
resignation positively. Sixty-nine percent applauded the Kremlin’s new “antiter-

rorist operation” in Chechnya, and a roughly equal percentage Putin’s appoint-
ment. Russian liberals and others backing a free market system believed political
freedoms remained as important as a strong leader; however, Russian Comm-
unists, nationalists, and supporters of Putin’s umbrella organization, Unity,
stressed the need for an authoritarian order in the country.29
Either Russia will be great, Putin pronounced, or it will not be at all. Based
on public opinion, Putin’s mandate became clear: to win the war in Chechnya,
to overcome poverty, to end corruption, to introduce law and order, and to limit
the influence of the oligarchs.30 His hard-hitting Millennium Speech of 2000
offered a solution to the country’s problems through rebuilding a strong Russian
state. Stabilizing the country owing to fortuitous circumstances on the world
market when prices for energy soared, oil exports over the next several years led
to robust growth rates that boosted Putin’s popularity and provided an auspi-
cious climate for his leadership style to emerge. It involved centralizing power,
relying on networks of former KGB officers, the military brass, and others from
his base in St. Petersburg; curbing the independent press; restoring some impor-
tant symbols of the past such as the Soviet national anthem; and stepping out
confidently on the world stage. He also battled with the oligarchs. With the
backing of almost 75 percent of the population, Putin arrested some oligarchs
who manifested political aspirations.
By the middle of Putin’s first term in office pollsters documented a depo-
liticization or de-ideologization of society. In some respects, however, this
phenomenon reflected a large measure of growing public confidence: In
responding to various scenarios of the Russian future, more citizens believed
that Russia would remain a united state, strengthen its position in the world,
restore its economy, and embrace principles of democracy and a state based
on rule of law than feared that the economy would further deteriorate. Half
of the population wished to have the country’s superpower status restored or
to see it become one of the five most developed economies in the world. Less
than 5 percent of the population received its news about domestic and
foreign affairs from foreign television, publications, or the Internet, giving
Putin’s subsequent crackdown on the press even greater significance, for it
may have contributed to the country’s growing optimism. Between 1998 and
June 2002 the percentage of the population that saw the county’s situation
as normal rose from a low of 2 percent to 22 percent; concomitantly, the
percentage of those who felt the situation was catastrophic fell from 51 to 13
percent.31 It has been argued that the Russian people will accept a new pact
with a government only insofar as it taps into popular elements from the
previous moral economy such as equality, justice, solidarity, faith, and
mutual support.32 Suggesting the beginning of a break with the Soviet past,
however, 65 percent of those polled replied that they rely on themselves in
solving personal problems, followed by help from those close to them (23
percent). Only 6 percent relied on the government.33 The 1990s had not been
in vain.
Putin’s move toward “law and order,” “stability,” “greatness,” and “patriotism”
also needs to be understood against the backdrop of Russia’s war against terror-
ism. Opponents at home and abroad had condemned Russia’s second invasion
of Chechnya, but after 9/11 the Kremlin conflated Chechnya with America’s fight
against terrorism. This made a military solution there more acceptable, especially
when terrorists in October 2002 seized over 800 hostages in a Moscow theater,
and in August 2004 approximately 1,200, mostly children, in a school in Beslan,
resulting in more than 300 deaths. These events also provided favorable ground
for the move toward centralizing power and toward curbing the power of parlia-
ment, the activities of political parties, the independence of the media, and the
influence of foreign NGOs.34
The 1993 constitution prevented Putin from running for a third term in 2008.
Elections brought Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (b. 1965) to power, the youn-
gest head of state since Tsar Nicholas II and the first Russian leader without any
links to the Communist Party or to the KGB. Well educated with a Ph.D. in law
from St. Petersburg University, Medvedev met Putin in Mayor Sobchak’s office
in the early 1990s and appointed Putin his prime minister. Because of his strong
link to Putin, who guaranteed Medvedev’s victory in the 2008 elections, some
observers have depicted him as Putin’s puppet, while others have pointed to
strains in the relationship. Given Russia’s political culture and the retreat from
open to “managed” democracy, it seems doubtful that “dual power” will survive
in Russia.
“SOCIETY HAS LOST INTEREST IN POLITICS”

The Putin presidency was in its infancy when I began to interview the Baby
Boomers and into its second term when I wrapped up this phase of my research
(with one exception). Leonid Volodarsky emphasized that “so far he didn’t have
enough information” to assess Putin. Volodarsky wanted things to get better,
but so far they had not. That said, he appreciated the greater stability that had
come to Russian society, affirming a phenomenon captured in public opinion
surveys: “People have calmed down and are not politicized. Society has lost
interest in politics.” Larisa Petrova initially saw Putin as an extension of the
Yeltsin clan and therefore did not vote for him. But she later changed her mind
about him and explained why: “First, I respect what made him tick. I respect
many of his ideas and the things he says. Not all, of course.” She backed his tak-
ing decisive measures against the oligarchs. “It’s okay to put an end to the coun-
try’s criminals. He’s trying to do so, but with timid measures. However, we
understand how difficult this is.” Echoing a popular sentiment, she added, “At
least I’m personally not embarrassed for our president. I was ashamed when
Yeltsin was president. I like what our president is doing now.”
Natalya Yanichkina approved of Putin but for different reasons: “I like the
respect he shows to those who preceded him,” she opined, clearly having in
mind Putin’s granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution. The only Baby
Boomer I interviewed after the 2008 elections brought Dmitry Medvedev to
power, Vladimir Sidelnikov, extolled Putin’s virtues. In so doing Sidelnikov
revealed his upbringing in the 1950s: Putin is “a young, forward looking, won-
derful president, and his politics are correct. God help that Medvedev continues
these policies. In that case Russia will move forward and, in the end, we’ll catch
up with and overtake America, not with a socialist economy, but with a capitalist
one. Just give us time.”
A few others liked Putin, but had plenty about which to complain. Lyudmila
Gorokhova, for instance, found Putin “very likable. Although he’s not hand-
some, he has a great deal of charm,” she pointed out to me. “His range of
interests is indisputably wide, and he’s intelligent.” Aware of his KGB
background, she nonetheless preferred his self-control to Yeltsin’s extreme
behavior. Nevertheless, she faced the future with trepidation. “Man is wolf to
man,” she reminded me. As our conversation unfolded she and Galina
Poldyaeva lambasted the oligarchs. Like others, they suggested that one had to
have the right “disposition” to survive in the new Russia, but the personal
traits this required were foreign to them. Concluded Poldyaeva: “In sum, that
which is transpiring right now is not to our liking.” “It’s a crying shame,”
replied Gorokhova. “They deprive us of all of our achievements and create
conditions in which we don’t know how we’ll live.” Besides, added Poldyaeva,
“No one is held accountable.” “There’s no one to complain to,” confirmed
Gorokhova. Her friend corrected her for my benefit: “Now the courts decide
everything. Go sue. That’s America for you. They sue each other there on any
grounds.”
Irina Garzanova liked Putin better when he came to power than she did
when I met her. “I believe he’s a decent, honest man, who is trying to get
something done. But I don’t know how real this is. It’s possible he won’t be able
to do anything.” As she put it, “I voted for Putin because there really was no
alterative.” It doesn’t matter, she added, “because what will happen is meant to
happen, no matter who is in power.”
But in September 2000, 38 percent of the Russian population polled already
feared the advent of an authoritarian regime.35 Most Baby Boomers are among
them. Seeing Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin as “soul mates,” Gennady Ivanov
sharply criticized Putin: “Under Putin they say one thing and do another. Take,
for example, the fact, that practically not a single nongovernment television
broadcast exists any longer.” Also disapproving of Putin’s attack on the oli-
garchs, Ivanov emphasized, “It’s absolutely illegal to victimize the oligarchs.
We need to introduce specific legislation and not just can them. Let them
spend time, pay up, and release them. I believe that the laws should work. You
need to build a government based on laws.” Aleksandr Virich also took a long
view: “Look at those in power over the past ten years. Do you see these demo-
crats anywhere?” he queried. “The ones who marched with flags and cried ‘give
us freedom’? You can’t find them anywhere. All those in power are former
Party members. Wasn’t Mr. Putin, a KGB colonel, a member of the Party?
Aren’t the directors of factories and the largest construction operations who sit
in the Duma former members of the Party?” Ivanov chided Putin for granting
Yeltsin immunity from prosecution: “Just as the elite was all for themselves
then, that’s how they remain now.” Ivanov rebuked the Kremlin’s pouring of
resources into rebuilding Chechnya, now controlled by pro-Moscow Chechen
forces, as a result of which officials “made money on it. Why do I as a taxpayer
have to give money to pay for the war there? It’s unnecessary. Buildings are
falling apart here and we’re spending money on Chechnya. Who needs this?”
He also chastised Putin’s making oblast authorities responsible for some mat-
ters he saw as federal concerns, such as providing benefits for World War II
veterans.
Finally, Ivanov saw Putin’s reliance on revenues from exporting oil and gas as
a myopic, even dangerous, policy that would create greater problems for the
Russian economy in the future. Other Baby Boomers felt this way, too. Viktor D.,
for instance, saw real improvement in the economy; however, like others, he
linked this to higher world oil prices. “There’s no rise in industrial production,
no improvement in what’s necessary for the country to grow rich and the people
to prosper. Yet, at the same time, I see order is appearing, but only at certain
levels. His first term is coming to a close and I can’t say I’m as satisfied as I’d like
to be with the young president. I’m not the only one who feels this way.”
Gennady Ivanov, too, lambasted the fact that “no one is looking for new oil-
fields to tap. What will be left for our grandchildren?”
A few Baby Boomers supportive of the demise of Communist rule nonethe-
less saw few prospects for a better life now. Anatoly Shapiro, for example, related
with typical pessimism: “I don’t believe in Russia’s normal development, because
several generations need to die off in order for this country to move along a
normal, West European path, not an American one, but a Western one.” Stating
that the same people, or the same type of people, remain in power as under
communism, he observed that he was speaking of Moscow and that it was actu-
ally “worse in the provinces.” Denouncing the vertical hierarchy of power recre-
ated under Putin, Shapiro concluded that “in the end it will be the same as
before and nothing good will come of the economy. At some point the oil
reserves will be depleted or something else will happen and things will worsen
and we’ll have another collapse.” Shapiro acknowledged that he had not been
in the backwaters of Russia. “But I heard what’s going on there. Take any kol-
khoz chairman, or whatever he’s called today. He’s tsar and god. It’s the same as
before. The courts and police are under him. He can give you an apartment or
take one away from you. He can put you in jail or decide not to. It’s all about
loyalty to him. It’s the same everywhere.”
Some members of the Cold War generation who emigrated shared their
views on Putin, which roughly correspond with what their classmates living
in Russia had to say about him. Speaking metaphorically, Tatyana Artyomova
said, “You can take out an appendix under a general or local anesthetic, or
without either. In Russia they opted to remove appendixes without any
anesthetic. What can one do? It’s very painful, but necessary.” Viktor
Alekseyev admitted, “I personally don’t like him. I don’t like what he’s
doing. I don’t like the people who helped him come to power and create the
system around him. Beginning with his image and ending with his economic
position, I don’t think he bodes well for Russia.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev attacked
the oft-repeated argument that the Russian people “need a tsar.” Instead, he
argued, “Putin is a genius at PR. He meets with the people, builds schools
and hospitals for them. And after the period of pauperization, which is
ending if it hasn’t already, after this period people like that a strong man
appeared who brought pressure on the oligarchs, who pays people on time.
But, in fact, the reason for this has to do only with the high price of oil.”
Apolitical, Tatyana Arzhanova did not understand Putin’s popularity in
Russia, but recalled that her mother told her that he would be reelected
president in 2004 and that the “other candidates were nominated for show.”
Yelena Kolosova made a decision upon leaving Russia that she no longer
had the right to judge what was going on there. Yet she granted that “Putin
is far from being the worst possibility.”
Most of the Baby Boomers supported Yeltsin during perestroika, but ulti-
mately expressed disappointment in him, owing to the economic dislocation
and corruption associated with his ten years in power. They also acknowledged,
however, that he prevented a Communist restoration and allowed religion to
thrive. Most look upon Putin with some skepticism, regretting the constraints
he placed on the media and on political life. While appreciative of the economic
stability that began to set in during his presidency, they nonetheless realized
that it was mostly due to revenues from the sale of oil abroad. At the same time,
however, they did not see many, if any, real alternatives to his coming to power
at the end of the 1990s.
“ I F Y O U W O R K A L O T, Y O U M I G H T G E T PA I D A L O T ”
How do the Baby Boomers depict their children’s generation, the “children
of perestroika” coming of age in the new Russia? Most of the interviewees
had children early in their marriages during the 1970s. Those born at that
time encountered perestroika during their formative teenage years. Those
born later were young children when Gorbachev came to power, completing
college during Putin’s presidency. I consider all of the offspring as belonging
to the same generation, but also point to differentiation within it when pos-
sible. As Gennady Ivanov observed about his two sons born in 1971 and in
Attending to the needs of

aging parents is a problem
affecting Baby Boomers
worldwide, and one made
more complicated when the
parents live on different
continents. In September
2007, Tatyana Arzhanova
(Koukharskaya) and her
husband, Viktor, and two of
their grandchildren
welcomed Tatyana’s mother
to Canada, where she
moved from Moscow to live
with her daughter. Courtesy
of Tatyana Koukharskaya
(Arzhanova)
1981, respectively: “The older one is more like us, and the younger one is
more contemporary. A lot changed in those ten years.” Ivanov works in the
suburbs, rarely visiting downtown Saratov “with its new billboards and
advertisements. For me, it’s a different city, but my youngest is like a fish in
water there.”
Coming of age during the challenging transition to a market economy
resulted in growing rates of smoking among young people in the 1990s, wider
use of drugs and other toxic substances, a rise in alcohol consumption, and a
lowering of the age when youth committed suicide.36 The work of anthropologist
Fran Markowitz, however, who interviewed Russian teenagers in the mid-1990s
corresponding to the Baby Boomers’ youngest children, challenges the widely
accepted view that cultural stability is necessary in order to assure that adoles-
cents become well-adjusted adults.37 Her positive gloss on things also takes issue
with adult views of adolescent rebelliousness, which she believes adults confuse
with what, at heart, young people perceive as conformist behavior. Similarly,
she disagrees with observers who maintain that the children of perestroika
opted out of the political and economic fray in order to have fun, indulging
themselves in an anticulture based on sex, drugs, and rock music. What

amounted to a radical transition for the parents seemed far more “ordinary” to
teens. Although they rarely mentioned politics to Markowitz, they detailed the
economic impact of perestroika on their lives and the disintegration of the
Soviet empire, too. Between 1985 and 1995 they believed life had become “more
free,” both materially and in regard to their ability to express their individu-
alism. For instance, they appreciated not having to wear school uniforms, voic-
ing far fewer regrets over the lack of Pioneer and Komsomol organizations than
their parents.38
Markowitz found that, despite the radical economic and political transfor-
mations during these years, most teens spoke about their lives in terms of
continuity.39 Busy with getting an education and preparing for adulthood,
they felt that their fates hinged on the caprice of the government and fortunes
of their parents. But they told their life stories within a framework of stabili-
zation. They welcomed the availability of goods, but not the concomitant
crime, corruption, and all-too-visible gap between rich and poor. They wanted
to live well, yet they also wanted to reap the benefits of their parents’ earlier
efforts to transform the world.40 Her conclusions reassure. Social insecurity,
she argues, “may not play as central or discordant a role in teenagers’ lives as
adults would expect.” Impressed by the children of perestroika’s pragmatism,
she suggests that “their combination of cynicism and doubt plus kindness
and ingenuousness should give everyone hope.”41
Markowitz’s findings offer a unique perspective on a period generally viewed
through the alarming statistics that otherwise define it. Although crises that
affect society negatively can leave their marks for a lifetime, the post-Soviet 1990s
also afforded enormous opportunities. Russian youth were not in a position to
lead the switch to a market economy; however, they embraced new attitudes
and in this way corroborate a historical law of sorts linking change to the
young.42
In a 2003 conversation, Saratov’s Galina Poldyaeva and Irina Kulikova
chewed over my question regarding how their children’s generation differed
from their own. “Young people today are far more grown up than we were at
that age,” began Poldyaeva. “For some reason they’re drawn to this new life.”
Kulikova saw a downside to this: “I believe it’s harder for them to live, although
they’re more satisfied, better provided for, and freer than we were.” Poldyaeva
agreed. “We had fewer problems, because we knew that we’d study free of
charge, we’d go to college. It depended on us, on how well we did on our
exams. When we’d get sick, they treated us free of charge. It’s another matter
altogether how they treated us, but we didn’t have to worry about these things.”
Affirmed Kulikova: “Besides, we knew that we’d receive our salary on time.
And people somehow managed, on their wages, to build apartments, to buy
cars, and to vacation in the south.” Poldyaeva unleashed her parental anxiety
in post-Soviet language: “There’s no confidence in tomorrow, and we’re
concerned about our children, because we don’t own stocks in any big com-
panies. We don’t have any investments that we can leave our children so that
they could live off the interest or reinvest it.”
Illustrating her earlier point about how hard young people have things today,
Kulikova offered the example of her son-in-law, a soldier who served several
tours of duty in Chechnya. He’s been job hunting for months, “and nothing
works out.” She believed he’s most fit for a military career, but he quit the army,
announcing, “‘I’m ready to sacrifice my life for my country, but not there.’ He’s
worked as a guard, a driver, and a construction worker,” Kulikova continued.
“Now he wants to start his own business, but he doesn’t have any start-up
capital.” Like parents everywhere, Poldyaeva lamented that her own son does
not seem to care that he does not know the things she does: “If you’d ask young
people today who so and so was, they probably wouldn’t even have heard of
him. There are lots of things they don’t know, and don’t want to know. All of
their thoughts are focused on the future and how to get set up well in life.”
Concluded Kulikova: “Young people have become obsessed with money. We
didn’t think about money.”
Given the age-old clash between generations, the Baby Boomers would have
criticized their children’s generation even if the country had not unraveled and
perestroika had not occurred. For this reason, I often found it hard to separate
out the consequences of perestroika from laments over time-honored differ-
ences between parents and their offspring. Yet perestroika did affect the country
and its people in indelible ways. Considering how the Baby Boomers see their
children’s generation, then, serves as a foil that reflects back the interviewees’
own values, priorities, and historical sensibilities.
Take the example of Lyubov Kovalyova, who claimed that her daughter’s
generation “catastrophically differs from ours.” Acknowledging that “of course,
each generation differs from the preceding one, otherwise there’d be no progress
and development,” she explained her negativity. “We, the preceding generation,
had a spiritual tie with our parents and there was continuity between genera-
tions. My daughter grew up in altogether different circumstances. Perestroika
took place as she was growing up, and not in the best way.” Her daughter
attended a magnet school and “was under my thumb until the fifth grade.”
Kovalyova recalled what an honor it had been for her to be inducted into the
Pioneers, but when her daughter reached that age “they announced that the
Pioneers were awful, that the organization enslaved people.” The new freedom
and move toward a system with different ideals, according to Kovalyova, “has
led to confusion.” It resulted from the “rejection of all of the achievements and
convictions by which their parents lived.” They say, “We’re going to live differ-
ently. We have perestroika.” It stung Kovalyova to hear “you didn’t live right, you
lived wrong.”
Sofiya Vinogradova also felt at odds with her children’s generation, “but I
can’t say that I know why,” she admitted. “It also depends on the person. It seems
to me that certain moral values have probably been lost. But again, I wouldn’t
treat them all alike, just as with our generation.” She mentioned that “they ask
us, why is everything so hard for you? Even now things are hard for us. Yet they
promise to do something and don’t do it. If I had promised, I would have done
it. That’s how it was for us. We were responsible.” Anatoly Shapiro observed that
the generational differences “are very large. Judging by my daughter—I have very
complicated relations with her—they have no sense of purpose. I’m not saying
that I did, but they also don’t have a sense of responsibility. That’s a terrible
thing. It’s not only a matter of coming in at all hours, but of saying you’ll do
something and not doing it. This upsets me. And they don’t want to learn
anything,” he added. “They have no yearning for knowledge, and if there is, it’s
to learn something in order to make a career. However, that’s not all bad.”
Hundreds of miles away on the Volga, Aleksandr Babushkin voiced similar sen-
timents: “The younger generation got worse, it’s spoiled, because the living stan-
dard is better. We had far better relations with and were closer to our parents.”
Remarried to a younger woman, Babushkin started a second family and had a
young son when I interviewed him. Upset over the strain he felt between him-
self and his older children, he rationalized: “I’m trying to bring up my son dif-
ferently. We’ll see how things turn out.”
A surprisingly large number of Baby Boomers criticized the children of pere-
stroika, but not their own offspring, whom most described in positive terms. By not-
ing that their own children are successfully negotiating the challenges of post-Soviet
Russia, they mitigate the otherwise negative impression they give of today’s young
people in Russia. For instance, according to Aleksandr Ivanov, “the most important
thing for them is to have fun. For the most part, they live only for today.” Describing
how he and his wife struggled to make ends meet, he complained that young people
“receive their pay and, a week later, they’re broke. They go to cafes all the time. They
have nothing in their apartments, and no money.” He clarified, “Well, not our chil-
dren, but today’s youth. Perhaps not all of them, but 50 percent, say.” Arkady
Darchenko found fault with young people’s fashion and taste in music and movies.
“It’s as if they’ve followed a different path. We have few points of contact. Yet I have
to say that my son’s not like most.” Although she believed her own generation is
kinder, Irina Vizgalova claimed, “Personally I really like my children and their friends,
and I share many of their views.” She did admit that some children today “don’t see
or know a thing apart from the computer.” More troubling are those who succumbed
to the allure of drugs and alcohol. “When they speak they can’t do so politely. Every
other word’s the f-word, and they don’t even notice. They can’t speak any other way.
What especially rankles me is that this, for the most part, is also true of young
women.” Worse yet are the drug addicts. “It’s awful when you see the heroin addicts.
It’s awful when you look into their eyes.” Vizgalova, however, stressed that, although
some young people smoke, drink, and take drugs, others are totally abstinent.
One interviewee, who asked to remain nameless because of her interest in
Scientology, agreed. “My son always told me, ‘Don’t compare me with others.
Yelena Zharovova’s son Alyosha and

his wife Lena on their wedding day,
April 26, 2003, outside the Kremlin,
where many newlyweds still go to
place flowers at the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier (lost in World
War II). Like so many others,
Zharovova boasted about her
children but criticized their
generation: “It’s the generation that
accepts Western standards of living.
It’s a generation that simply
basically doesn’t think.” Courtesy of
Yelena Proskuryakova (Zharovova)
I’m different.’ And I’m really convinced of this. He never smoked and didn’t try
alcohol until he was twenty-four years old.” I pressed for more. “He now has
a goal in mind in Scientology, and he brushes aside everything that keeps him
from achieving it. He has an iron will. He can’t stand any gathering of young
people, and absolutely never even stepped foot inside a discotheque.” When I
asked how she would characterize her son’s generation, she responded, “I
believe today’s youth are awful.” She claimed that, statistically speaking, 20
percent of the male population manifested some form of psychopathic ten-
dencies before perestroika and that the figure had shot up to 80 percent. How,
as a doctor, did she understand this phenomenon, I inquired. “Well, it’s prob-
ably lots of things, but I know the wars contribute a lot. We see many Afghan
vets, and many more after the wars in Chechnya. Military action has a very
negative effect on people. As a rule, they often become apathetic or depressed.”
She also called my attention to widespread alcoholism. “I don’t know anyone
today who has a happy childhood. Very few.” Unlike before, she claimed, “our
government doesn’t need children. Apart from their parents, no one needs
children, and when their parents don’t need them it’s a tragedy. Young parents
bring up their offspring poorly. That leaves a tell-tale mark on them.”
Like some others, Olga Martynkina found her seventeen-year-old son’s gen-
eration more patriotic. “Although we didn’t suffer from lack of this, there’s a rise
in patriotism among people his age,” she recounted, thereby putting a face on
the impersonal statistics showing that Russia’s youth tend to support Putin’s
effort to create a strong Russia. “That’s simply astonishing,” she continued,
“because many kids these days are riff-raff and drug addicts.” She also finds her
son’s generation “more materialistic. They’re already disposed to earn money
somewhere, to work part-time. We weren’t like this. They’re more rational.”
Lyubov Kovalyova also called her daughter a patriot: “She’s comfortable living
here. She says, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to live here. I’m happy here.’
And somehow things are turning out for them.”
The Baby Boomers who teach at the university level, coincidentally all
Saratovites, made sweeping generalizations, often critical, about their students.
According to Aleksandr Kutin, “there are kids who are dying to study, and the
competition to get into college is significantly greater than, say, five years ago.
But during this time some undeserving people came of age, who are probably
under the influence of drugs.” Carped Kutin: “First of all, there is their inappro-
priate behavior in public. It’s their style of clothing, their shaved heads, their
obscene language, their lack of restraint.” He observed that those students whose
parents paid for their tuition often treated their studies inattentively. “My
daughter told me that this is not the case in America. If you pay money for your
education, you study day and night until you’re kicked out of the library,” he
noted naively. Natalya Pronina believed that “those who came after us don’t
think about lofty matters at all.” She linked this attitude to the new economic
climate. “To buy something cheaper somewhere, to deceive the person next
door because he’s easier to deceive. These are the attitudes being cultivated right
now. It’s a shame. I work with young people. I see this. I’m concerned.”
Natalya P. cast many of her students as irresponsible. “There is no doubt that
there are students today with a very developed sense of responsibility, those
who sit from morning till night studying. But more often than not these are
students who have no one standing over them and who lack their parents’
support. For example, it’s the student who arrives from the village who has to
make his own way.” Why? “The majority of kids these days are spoiled by their
parents. A sense of responsibility is a trait that’s unfortunately all too rare among
today’s young people, and they lack a real thirst for knowledge because they’re
pragmatists. It’s the times.” She lamented that “there’s no longer a Komsomol,
no longer any organizations for young people. Children are left to fend for
themselves. The parents are either unemployed or work from morning until
night—and this gives rise to a bunch of problems.” Her Soviet education revealed
itself: “Whereas before we discussed whether or not someone acted decently, we
now think about whether or not something is advantageous to us. This influence
came from the West. Our reality had been different.” She added that, before,
“You could earn a lot of money only in some criminal way. Now there is a legal
way to do so. Speculation is now called business.” Vladimir Kirsanov taught at
the Saratov Medical Institute before moving to the Law Academy. “In the past,
we had to get hold of information on our own by reading books, and by research-
ing something, and this always makes the brain work more actively, but now
information is absorbed passively. This is the main thing that distinguishes the
two generations. Today’s students don’t like to read.”
The subject of work also took central stage in the Baby Boomers’ ruminations
about their children’s generation. Some interviewees underscored that the Soviet
system guaranteed them a job after college, unlike today. As a result, Olga
Kolishchyuk judged that things are “more complicated for today’s young people.
I knew that when I graduated from college, I’d go to work.” Echoing an oft-
heard refrain, she continued, “We had confidence in tomorrow. We knew we’d
go to school, attend college, and get a job. Now, there’s school, college, but
work? What kind? Where? This remains a big question. You no longer feel pro-
tected.” Tatyana Artyomova agreed. “Everything was clear to us, but for them
nothing’s clear. That’s the main difference” between Artyomova’s generation
and that of her daughter, born in 1977. Despite her enthusiasm for today’s youth,
Olga Gorelik concurred that “it’s become more complicated for them to live.”
Anna Lyovina recalled, “I pounded into their heads, Children, we don’t have any
blat. Get an education on your own. Achieve what you can on your own. I can’t
help you in any way other than loving you and helping you at home. We can’t
arrange jobs for you. You’ll have to do this yourselves.”
Despite the Baby Boomers’ concerns about their children’s professional
futures, the children of perestroika appear to be doing just fine. Vladimir
Mikoyan pointed out that his children’s generation is “completely without
complexes, and unflinchingly change jobs.” He gave the example of his oldest
daughter: “She’s almost thirty and is always learning things for one job, then for
another. They’re quick on their feet. That’s the greatest advantage of today’s gen-
eration. They’re not afraid of change.” Aleksandr Virich also cast his son’s gener-
ation as more mobile: “I know that my son, if he were somehow able to
accumulate the start-up capital—which is difficult—would launch his own
business. He’s smart enough. He grasps things well enough. He knows how to
work and found a job on his own as a young specialist who is not poorly paid.”
Reiterating how mobile his son is, Virich generalized, “Based on his example
and on the example of many his age, I know that there’s no unemployment
among youth. It’s a lie that there is. Those who don’t want to do anything
become unemployed, just as in our time. But in our day they received their 120
rubles for sitting there.”
After graduating from college, Irina Barysheva’s son turned down a job at
one of Saratov’s closed military enterprises in order to launch his own business.
Following a false start opening a joint stock company, he went into adver-
tising, a field with potential once the market economy cranked up. “Of course,
at first it was difficult, and he put more money into it than he made,” recalled
Barysheva, who tried to give him unsolicited advice. But he reminded her that
he “‘makes money out of thin air. I don’t manufacture anything.’” Mikhail
Markovich emphasized that his children “are different than we are in
regard to how they solve their problems.” His daughter is the assistant to the
director of a large telecommunications firm. “It’s a rather important position.
She works there until 9:00 P.M. at night.” He explained that “now, if you work
they pay you real wages and, if you have money, there are no problems. You
can solve them today.”
Like many, Arkady Darchenko maintained that “we were most likely a repeat
of our parents, but after us came a new generation that was completely different.
This change can be seen, moreover, not only in Russia, but globally.” That said,
he appreciated the impact of perestroika on Russia’s youth. “Our children grew
up at a time when it was clear that you need money for everything. That is, to
work ‘for the love of it,’ well, that’s the other extreme, and that’s foolish. They
now see us as dinosaurs, as fossils, in the sense that well, ‘you still go to work for
the same lousy wages. They don’t do anything at your research institute. They
pay nothing. What do you do there all day? Work?’” When confronted like this,
Darchenko would respond, “‘Well, you know, I like it, it was my job, it was
everything.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ they reply. ‘I work only if they pay me.’”
Darchenko concluded: “That’s how the new generation’s been brought up.
Moreover, for this life it’s right. It’s likely that our working for ‘the love of it’ is a
remnant of socialism. That is, you could work or not and receive your due.” But
“they understand that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. It’s that simple,”
summed up Darchenko. “If you work a lot, you might get paid a lot. That’s how
it should be and it corresponds to the laws of nature.”
Larisa Petrova also felt that her son’s generation differs from her own “far
more sharply than we did from our parents.” According to Petrova, he’s different
“because life changed so drastically. He subscribes to the new views. He works in
a firm. He didn’t go into his major, although what he learned is helping him. They
now go where they pay. Their worth is how much money they make, not the grad-
uate degrees they’ve earned as it was for us. Their self-esteem is linked to their
ability to succeed in business. They’re building resumes.” This created tension at
home. “He entered graduate school, but then said ‘I don’t need this. All my life I
watched as you defended your dissertations, and from childhood saw nothing but
your back at the desk. And what did this get you?’ That’s how he thinks.”
“ I S E E I N T H E M A F R E E D O M T H AT W E D I D N ’ T H AV E ”
The children of perestroika not only have embraced Russian-style capitalism but
also the personal—not necessarily political—freedoms unleashed by perestroika
and glasnost. Again and again, the Baby Boomers cast their children’s genera-
tion as freer. Olga Gorelik remarked, “Our children are very free. They’re really
communicative. Computers are their reference books. They never leave the
Internet, and over the Internet chat with people throughout the world. They
have their own point of view on absolutely everything.” Her daughter had been
a Young Pioneer, but her eighteen-year-old son never had to participate in
Soviet-era children’s organizations. “He’s absolutely free in this regard,” she

injected. Well prepared for university study, he is majoring in computer science
and technical translating. “He’s going to become a network translator. He’s free,
really free, and I think that’s wonderful. If I had been that free, I think that it
probably would have been easier to live. I think it was a shortcoming that we
were raised within limits and had all sorts of hang-ups.” Yet she had reserva-
tions. “On the other hand, I sometimes wish their spiritual development was
greater than it is. It seems to me it was deeper with us in regard to how we
related to each other, perhaps because we had more problems or because we
had less information.”
Olga Kamayurova felt similarly. Describing her son as a “smart young man
without hang-ups,” she stressed, “He’s free. He probably would have had a
rough time back in the Soviet Union. We were kept harnessed. Things are hard
for him right now in a material sense; he’s making his way in life. My married
daughter,” she added, “gave birth and is more materially minded. She’s con-
sumed by daily life. But my son’s free and it seems to me that our young people
today are better off than we were.” Bakhyt Kenzheyev echoed, “Children are
absolutely free people in contrast to us. We are veterans of the Soviet system.
There’s such a thing as war veterans, be it of the Second World War or the
Vietnam War, and all of these people are wounded psychologically. They cling
to their military experience in the same way that people of my generation hang
on to their Soviet experience.” A writer and poet, Kenzheyev also observed, “I see
in them a freedom that we didn’t have. I’m not speaking about the Internet or
the possibilities to travel, but the feeling of inner freedom. It’s very important
for poetry. I’m envious. But on the other hand,” he continued, “it’s not so
clear-cut, because it was an experience that we, to a significant degree, overcame,
and Soviet power no longer exists. I don’t know what kind of obstacles these
young people will have to overcome, and what kind of obstacles you need to
overcome in order to write good poetry today.”
Some Baby Boomers wondered if there might be too much freedom. Viktor
Alekseyev told me about his son, born in 1979. “His generation is freer than is
necessary.” Alekseyev reminded me that his generation earned the same as their
parents and that there had been a great leveling in Soviet society. “But my son
became an adult at a time when a sharp stratification took place among people
in regard to living standards, in income, and in possibilities. And this strongly
affects children in terms of which schools kids go to, what’s discussed at school,
even who the teachers are, and naturally the quality of instruction.” Viktor’s son,
an actor, took part in an exchange program at Harvard the year before I inter-
viewed Viktor and visited his father in New York. “He told me about his acquain-
tance who invited him for a ride in a private airplane. They rented a private
plane in New Jersey, flew across the bay, and landed somewhere on Long Island.
Then they rented a car and returned to Manhattan. They could allow themselves
such things, which I could never have imagined.”
On a similar note, Natalya Yanichkina told me that her children’s generation

“differs a great deal. If we were raised strictly, then it sometimes seems to me that
today’s youth are completely unrestrained. Our freedom had limits. Then we
were given complete freedom, but a culture of regulating this freedom has not yet
been created. For this reason, this freedom sometimes turns vulgar.” Offering an
example from an unusual angle, Andrei Rogatnev waxed nostalgic about “our
first loves dating back to our school years, which we still remember and cherish,
and about which our wives are in the know.” He described his classmates’ first
loves as “very touching. But I look upon my son, who will be twenty-five in the
fall, and I recall when he was fifteen or sixteen. Their relations were different. We
learned about love only from our parents or from literature available to us, the
cinema, theater, and other works of art. Everything was very puritanical, and per-
haps that was good because it’s more romantic.” When his son turned sixteen in
1992, “a flood of eroticism and pornography bombarded them. As a parent I told
him one thing, but he saw, read, and heard other things.” Rogatnev concluded
that “they’re richer in terms of sexual experiences, but not romantic ones.”
A number of the interviewees linked their children’s demonstrable freedom
to their absence of fear, contrasting the latter with the Baby Boomers’ own expe-
riences. “Our children are altogether different. They’re freer, more uninhibited,”
replied Yevgeniya Ruditskaya. “Perhaps I’m speaking only for myself, but we
nonetheless have a certain fear. They don’t. We were brought up in such a
manner that there are many doors I can’t open. But my son can open any door.”
Anatoly Shapiro agreed that “they lack fear, fear of the authorities, of the police.
We were afraid of everything.” Tatyana Luchnikova quipped, “My son Stas
doesn’t give a damn about anything.” In contrast, Luchnikova reminded me that
“from childhood they taught us not to be upstarts. They needed for all of us to
be like mice, like a marching army. And they constantly suppressed our desire to
fall out of line.” Determined to pursue a career in ballet, her son Stas “lacked the
fear I had. He goes after his goals, and doesn’t take into account that it was hard
for me with an infant to fly across the ocean from London. But he needed this.
He said, ‘If you don’t go with me, I’ll fly alone.’ How could I let him? That’s the
difference. I would have subordinated myself to my mother’s wishes. He has a
lot more egoism. Good egoism,” she added. “Perhaps that’s why he achieved
more than I did.” Anna Lyovina expressed gratitude “that my children don’t
have the genetic fear that I’ll never outlive. They’re children of the world. They
think differently. They already rub shoulders with others internationally.
I believe that our future, the rebirth of Russia lies in this, in the passing of the
generation of bureaucrats and reactionaries, with their old way of thinking,
the Party-line.” Summed up Lyovina: “The future is with people who have seen
the world, analyzed things, compared, and took what they liked that was good
and interesting, from wherever.”
The freedom enjoyed by the new generation also finds reflection in the fact
that a good number of the Baby Boomers’ children live abroad, and not only
because their parents emigrated. Aleksandr Kutin looks positively upon his
daughter’s generation born in the 1970s, “although there’s the eternal problem
of fathers and children.” His description of the choices she made demonstrates
how enabling perestroika could be for some. After completing the Saratov
Medical Institute, his daughter did her residency in Moscow, set up a private
practice in the capital, and supported herself until she married an American
tourist. Kutin was hard put to find the right words to tell me what his son-in-law
does for a living: “You don’t encounter such terms here. They own a building
that he rents out. That’s where their basic income comes from. He also repairs
cars. He can turn a jalopy into a real beauty. He’s educated and aware of what’s
going on there and in Russia.”
Born in 1980, Lyubov Raitman’s daughter, Anna, traveled abroad for the first
time already in 1989, when her mother and grandmother took her to France.
“During the final years of school many of my [richer] classmates took regular
trips to Europe and summer tours to nearby Europe became popular and
nothing out of the ordinary,” recalled Anna. Her teen years began with the
demise of the Soviet system. She remembered that Russian money kept chang-
ing, “completely random imports” flooded the market, and both of her parents
changed careers. “Flux was normal! No one knew what would come next.” By
the time she left to spend her senior year as an exchange student in Wausau,
Wisconsin, in 1996, “things started to feel good again and normal.” After com-
pleting high school in Wausau, Anna graduated magna cum laude from Knox
College, took a Ph.D. in psychology from the City University of New York, mar-
ried a New Yorker, and currently is enrolled at Columbia University, working on
a degree in architecture.43
Aleksandr Konstantinov’s son lives in Arizona with Konstantinov’s former
wife, and his daughter, a musician, resides in Germany. How do they differ from
him? “To answer your question, I’d say that perhaps it’s their practicality. I can
detect this, for instance, in my daughter. In contrast, it seemed to us that our
generation was more concerned with ethical questions. They’re more practical
than we are and rightly so place greater value on important, practical things.”
Saratov’s Aleksandr Trubnikov, who lives in Israel, shared these sentiments, but
it is important to note that his daughter moved to Israel first: “They altogether
lack the stereotypes we had. Nothing has been pounded into their head since
childhood. I think they’re simply normal people. We remain abnormal.
Unfortunately, some [from my generation] will remain that way until they die.
Probably about half or so. But our children are normal. They’re simply people,
citizens of the world who live altogether differently. They’re normal in that they
live without an ideology, unlike us.” Olga Gorelik’s daughter also lives in Israel.
Gorelik had little to say about her daughter’s reasons for leaving Russia, but
described her daughter as “an altogether independent person, in part thanks to
the fact that I devoted a large part of my life when my children were born to
their education, despite the fact that I worked.” She described her daughter as
“well read. She also attended School No. 42. She’s an independent person, as
they say, who has her own opinion about everything.”
According to Leonard Terlitsky, “the generation that followed us was even
more cynical than we were if anything, because they were the ones who actually
took the system apart.” “Yes, they’re different,” repeated Arkady Darchenko.
“But what we call cynicism might be common sense, which we lack.” Natalya
Yolshina does not have children, but sees her generation as being “more narrow
minded. When we’d associate with one another, we believed more in what was
said, and what was fed to us. The new generation takes in everything critically,
not in the negative sense of the term, but simply in an analytical way. It’s more
capable of evaluating what’s said and done. We were probably less capable of
this.”
In fact, some of the Baby Boomers put a positive gloss on today’s generation.
Vladimir Prudkin enthused, “My son’s generation is marvelous. First of all, I feel
comfortable with them. It’s easier for me to socialize with them, with the young
generation [his son was then twenty-seven] than with people my age, because
when I spoke about my own generation in a certain positive tone, I meant those
closed circles in which I mingled. For the most part, the hopes of today’s gener-
ation are significantly closer to mine than those of people my age, with the
exception of that narrow circle I mentioned. They’re good kids.” Vladimir
Bystrov described his thirty-one-year-old son’s generation as “more dynamic.
They don’t have the moral constraints we had. I think it’s an interesting genera-
tion. It’s a very strong generation.” His son works in a bank as the assistant man-
ager of a large department.
“For the most part I love our young people,” volunteered Igor Litvin, whose
daughter graduated from Moscow University. “But I am astonished that they
relate very negatively to America. They believe that the intellectual and spiritual
potential they have doesn’t exist outside their own student milieu and is alto-
gether absent in America. That is, if you’re going to mingle, do so with young
people from the Sorbonne, or from Oxford, but not with Americans. Their ori-
entation is more toward Europe than in our times.” Litvin also gave an example
of their freedom of movement, so unimaginable before perestroika. His daughter
and her husband had left on vacation when I interviewed him. “She called from
Sheremetyevo Airport. ‘We’re flying to Tunis.’ ‘Why didn’t you say anything
about this before?’ ‘I didn’t know myself.’ Yegor, her husband, ‘surprised me and
told me where we’re going only at the airport.’ For my generation that’s like a
fairy tale.” This generation, mused Litvin, naturally faces “other problems.” One
is their need to chase after money. “On the one hand, perhaps this is an incen-
tive to work, and on the other hand this deprives many of them, because they
spend all of their free time trying to fulfill themselves in business, at work. And
the main thing that results from this is that, instead of friends, they have
necessary acquaintances, and they chose their friends from among them.” Litvin
asked if I understood the dual meaning of the colloquialism he used to convey
the sense of “necessary acquaintances” (nuzhnik). The term also is a slang word
for “toilet.”
As Georgy Godzhello pointed out, all generations differ and each produces
accomplished individuals as well as scoundrels. “That’s how things have always
been, that’s how things are, and unfortunately that’s how they’ll be.” Yet, as an
educator, he believed that “each generation has it harder, purely in an objective
sense if nothing else, because the volume of knowledge changes that’s necessary
to know.” A universal problem, Godzhello noted its impact on Russia. “Regarding
our country, I’d put it like this. We came out of a totalitarian regime, and this,
too, affected generations, and not always in a positive way. How it did so in a
positive way is clear, but what about in a negative sense? How do I see this?”
Godzhello explained that “there are more temptations. If before we really were
happy, now you have to exert a lot of your own energy to be happy.”
Several Finnish scholars developed a typology of generations that challenged
widely held views that negative experiences form or shape generations. The char-
acteristics they identified for Finnish Baby Boomers born between 1945 and 1950
have remarkable similarities to their Soviet counterparts, including the rise of a
youth culture, the breakthrough of Western popular culture, more leisure time, a
carefree attitude, economic growth, rising living standards and a consumerist
culture, and the expansion of education. Concluding that only positive events
can serve as a basis for generational experience, they point out that negative
events, such as the kind of economic dislocation experienced during the 1990s,
do not constitute a generational experience because they are experienced by
everyone and there is no relationship to age.44 If this argument is correct, the col-
lapse of the Soviet economy may have had less of an impact on the children of
perestroika than the socioeconomic, psychological, and political consequences
of the country’s recovery whose pace has stepped up since the late 1990s.
Indeed, some speak of the Putin Generation, those born in the decade bet-
ween 1983 and 1992. They remember the dissolution of the USSR and the mad-
ness that followed, but they completed school and entered adulthood during a
period of stability. Mobile phones, the Internet, social networks, the mass media,
mass culture, and fast food shape their values. The comparative stability and
institutionalization of the rules of the market and political game also shape this
generation that looks to the future with confidence. This generation is positive
and optimistic. This generation demonstrates initiative. This generation is apo-
litical, conformist, pragmatic, and has a tendency to plan for the future.45
In sum, at the start of the new millennium, the majority of those under thirty
voiced appreciation for the introduction of radical market reforms in Russia.
They also were the strongest supporters of privatization and of the strength-
ening of presidential powers. Their parents, the Cold War generation, backed
these measures less, but more so than older age cohorts. The Baby Boomers’
children see equal opportunity as more important than equal income; they
believe Russia was on the right path; and, more so than their parents, they
believe that Russia must live by Western rules. Moreover, when asked to assess
major historical epochs of the twentieth century, those under thirty voiced the
most approval of the reforms of the early twentieth century under Nicholas II,
perestroika (1985–90), and the transition to a market economy, and least support
for the October Revolution of 1917, industrialization of the 1920s and 1930s, col-
lectivization, and the Brezhnev stagnation. The one lesson to which basically all
age groups were in agreement, however, was that Russia can prosper only with a
strong leader (28.9 percent of all Russians).46
“ I WA N T T O B E L I E V E T H AT T H E F U T U R E W I L L B E
BETTER”
Boris Yeltsin’s presidency coincided with the 1990s, a transitional period that
transformed society as Russia searched for a new place for itself in the world.
The country’s efforts at reform and modernization—constrained by circum-
stances and by the country’s long-standing political culture—created a Russian
hybrid system that sharply divided, and continues to divide, public opinion.47
Surviving the 1990s proved a double burden for Russia. Society as a whole suf-
fered from the former superpower’s diminished status on the world stage, while
its citizens faced declining living standards and loss of confidence. Remarkably,
people did not lose their reference points, despite the harsh economic condi-
tions. Channeling their disappointment with social and political institutions
and with those in power, they slammed leaders and institutions but evaluated
their own personal situations less anxiously, with more than half the population
identifying them as more or less satisfactory.48 Importantly, the majority sup-
ported a democratic market system and a readiness to continue the reforms,
despite the cost.49
Undoubtedly, support for reform and for a democratic market system had
emerged already during the Soviet period in the shadows of the second economy
and gradual opening up of the country, and became more fashionable once the
glasnost revelations poked holes in the grand narrative of Soviet history. It has
been said that “you cannot change values like you change your socks,”50 a point
well taken when considering a public opinion in flux during the ordeal of the
1990s. By decade’s end, most people placed material, pragmatic concerns over
concern for human freedom (which they may have taken for granted since they
had more of it). Yet the population’s attitudes regarding Russians’ distinguish-
ing personal qualities merit attention: they now saw themselves as more hospi-
table, patient, and energetic than before, and less impractical than they had
believed.51
Glasnost had leveled the playing field between Moscow and Saratov in terms
of access to information; however, regional differences based on economic real-
ities continued to define local mentalities, because the country’s wealth remained
concentrated in Moscow and Muscovites lived better than those along the Volga.
As a result, throughout the 1990s, Muscovites in general demonstrated greater

appreciation for self-reliance, individualism, and Western ways; they opposed a
strong leader, valuing freedom and a market economy. Attitudes in the central
black earth oblasts were more paternalistic and conformist, with more leveling
tendencies. There, a Western mentality was weakly accepted and freedom meant
the right to be one’s own boss. Most people welcomed a strong leader.52 For in-
stance, a party list for the State Duma at the end of 1995 reveals that, whereas 69
percent of Moscow voters supported reformist candidates, only 31 percent did in
the Volga region, where 64 percent in Saratov supported conservative candi-
dates.53 Yet the well-educated Saratov Baby Boomers remained more likely to
support market reform and political pluralism and, in this regard, their views
did not substantively differ from those of their Moscow counterparts.
In 2004, Russia’s Public Opinion Fund carried out a survey of all sixty-five
regions of the Russian Federation. Remarkably, on average 50 percent of the
respondents were satisfied with their life, while 41 percent were not. More peo-
ple in Moscow expressed satisfaction than in Saratov, but the national range was
not that significant, falling between 55 and 48 percent. Despite sober views
regarding the future, as in the 1990s respondents showed considerably more
optimism when speaking about their own families than about the situation at
large. Their main concerns regarding what is keeping them, and their coun-
trymen, from living better are not surprising: poverty and a depressed standard
of living, low wages, unemployment, small pensions, inflation, expensive or
inferior housing, followed by concern over their health, crime, terrorism, family
problems, alcoholism, and drug abuse.54
Despite these problems, what the Baby Boomers had to say about their off-
spring augurs well for Russia’s future. Many of the Cold War generation’s chil-
dren, like much of society, experienced a decline in living standards and poor
morale. They are not as close to their parents as the Baby Boomers were to
theirs. They do not seem as responsible, as serious, or as reliable. They are more
materialistic, and more receptive to outside influences. Ironically, the genera-
tion raised as atheists see themselves as more spiritual or ethical than their
children who enjoy freedom of conscience. Yet the Cold War generation also
sees their children as “freer” and more goal-oriented. They accept reality, are
more pragmatic, more rational, and have a non-Soviet attitude toward work.
They lack the hang-ups their parents had and are not afraid of change. It bears
repeating that, although many interviewees cast the children of perestroika in
negative light, they saw their own children as exceptions. No friend of the new
order in Russia, Viktor D. expressed appreciation that his four children (the
product of joining two families) appeared to be on the right track. “Children
are the most important thing. Thank God my four children, without help,
without connections, without money, without bribes, are all smart and all
graduated with highest honors. All have a college education. Two of the four
have Ph.D.s.”
The Baby Boomers’ accounts afford a fascinating glimpse at Western economic

and political forms through the words of those experiencing their implementa-
tion, in this case, the college-educated urban intelligentsia who now constitute
Russia’s new middle, consuming, class. As it reconfigures itself, postindustrial
Russia faces daunting problems not only in regard to standard of living but also
in regard to quality of life issues. However, the vast majority of Baby Boomers
remained hopeful. According to Bakhyt Kenzheyev, “it’s still true that in Russia
all political figures are thieves. Yet, from a philosophical point of view, I think
that everything’s normal in Russia now.” Although Natalya Yanichkina articulated
her worries, she concluded, “I hope very much that everything will get better.
I want to believe that the future will be better.” “Russia is so creative and has
endured so much that things have to get better,” insisted Viktor D. “I believe in
Russia, not in the Soviet Union. And I believe that Russia is hope,” concurred
Tatyana Luchnikova.
Lyubov Kovalyova enjoyed a comfortable life under late socialism. “For me
and for many, many others with whom I came into contact, the Soviet period
was not bad,” she recounted. She described herself, almost dismissively, as a
“typical” and “ordinary” inhabitant. “But probably for the majority, or maybe
the minority, it was worse.” She acknowledged that many felt the Brezhnev-era
stagnation. She acknowledged the unsavory mindset and behavior, the passivity,
and the indifference toward work and public property of Homo Sovieticus. She
acknowledged the existence of a dissident movement. “All of that existed, and
we all knew about it. Yet this affected some more than others. Probably in the
same way that, today, some have a comfortable life and others less so. However,”
she concluded, “if this life leads to the further development and prosperity of
our country, if life becomes better, as we like to say, even if not for us, but for our
children, then we can only welcome all of these changes.”
CONCLUSION
“It’s they who have always held Russia
together”
“I don’t regret at all from a political point of view that I was born at that time in
this country. I was inspired by these changes. It’s like a gift of history. My chil-
dren don’t understand that. They’re not even interested,” observed Vladimir
Mikoyan. Living in extraordinary times, he and the rest of the Baby Boomers
chose their fates and their lives both as passive objects shaped by the dominant
social policies and trends of their era, and as active agents with real choices that
were molded by the particular historical situation—late socialism—in which
they found themselves. Looking for the connection between larger historical
forces and individual biographies, this book explores what it meant to grow up
and “live Soviet” in the second half of the twentieth century for an elite and
influential component of the country’s urban professional class. No single Baby
Boomer could have offered this narrative, but each of them should be able to
locate his or her own personal story within it.
Because official histories and state propaganda sought to forget the past, pat-
ently falsify it, or sanitize it while individuals often remembered things that did
not validate official memories, Irina Vizgalova’s father admonished her “don’t
poke your nose in politics, because they’re good at rewriting our history.” But so
are we. This book is not about “how things really were back then” but, more
important, about what the past meant to the Baby Boomers in the new millen-
nium. Just as historians rewrite history to accommodate new evidence or inter-
pretive frameworks or approaches, individuals reshape their memories as current
events and experiences help them make sense of earlier ones.1 The Russian
historian D. Khubova argued that, when perestroika undermined the frame-
work for historical interpretation in the USSR, people found it hard to interpret
their own memories without having a larger public story to relate them to.2
When I listened in on what the Baby Boomers had to say a decade later, most
were two-thirds through their life stories, revising the plots to make room for
the astonishing transformations of the past decade. How they understood their
life stories within their broader comprehension of the fate of the Soviet Union
not only reflected how they saw themselves but also how they behaved.3
In determining what shaped the Baby Boomers’ stories, it is necessary to

return to the original five questions. First, who and what shaped the Baby
Boomers’ worldviews while they were growing up? Their testimonials demon-
strate how attitudes toward authority are shaped mostly by the family, which
imparts its own values and shapes how individuals respond to circumstances.
A large percentage of the Baby Boomers’ parents belonged to the Communist
Party. Others consciously did not join it for ideological reasons. Many parents,
especially but not exclusively the non-Communists, identified with the liberal
wing of public opinion. Although outwardly conformist in their public behavior
toward the system that defined and rewarded their success and conferred status,
they imbibed the spirit of Khrushchev’s Thaw. Apart from their parents, the Baby
Boomers affirmed the often profound role grandparents born before the
Revolution, older siblings, and sometimes village nannies played in their lives.
Because Stalinist repression struck most families, the Baby Boomers’ parents,
remaining fearful, instilled a sixth sense in their children—caution. As Igor
Litvin commented, “Everyone understood everything. All conversations carried
out at home took place behind closed doors. It was like the way you look to the
left and to the right when you cross the street and there’s traffic. It was
automatic.”
Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin and shutting down of the Gulag, how-
ever, increased confidence in the system and reinvigorated it, especially since the
post-Stalin leadership placed a higher priority on improving living standards.
One of the most popular and appreciated manifestation of this was that, during
their childhood, the Baby Boomers’ families moved into private flats, thereby
strengthening the Soviet nuclear family—which, in turn, helped to transform
the Soviet system by promoting private life. Moreover, the measured opening up
of the country created opportunities for a number of parents—almost exclu-
sively from Moscow—to travel outside the country. The Baby Boomers vividly
remembered how items from abroad otherwise unavailable in the Soviet Union
stirred their curiosity. Even today, Marina Bakutina gushed over the View Master
her mother brought her from America in the last 1950s. “It was truly a window
on the West. There was nothing else like it.”
The deprived war generation provided their children with all the Soviet
system had to offer, including sending them to the country’s best schools. These
elite magnet schools attracted the children of the nomenklatura, of Party and
state officials, of career military officers, and of the technical and cultural intel-
ligentsia, in short, well-off people in the Soviet context, where knowledge repre-
sented a form of wealth. The schools prepared the Baby Boomers for college and
taught them English as well as could be expected given the limitations of the
times. As state institutions designed not only to educate but also to bring up the
builders of communism, the school system imparted in the Cold War genera-
tion core values and a sense of duty and responsibility, exposing the Baby
Boomers to state propaganda and to Communist Party youth organizations. But
CONCLUSION | 357
many of the younger teachers identified with the Thaw’s openness, questioning,
optimism, and sense that more was possible, thereby making unforgettable
impressions on their young charges who mostly thought highly of those who
instructed them. Starting school the year the launching of Sputnik astonished
the world, the Baby Boomers’ childhood corresponded with the most confident
period in Soviet history, defined by the Thaw, the country’s opening up, improved
standards of living, Khrushchev’s promise to build communism in their life-
time, and Soviet achievements in space. Casting Yury Gagarin’s flight in space as
a grandiose achievement, Irina Chemodurova recalled her generation’s “faith in
the unlimited possibilities of man through science to transform and perfect
everything. We were raised on this. That hard work and science are capable of
perfecting and transforming not only man, but the world! This was pounded
into our heads through children’s magazines, through books, through films,
through whatever you like, to say nothing of our education.”
The clubs, sports, enrichment lessons, and after-school activities in which the
Baby Boomers participated, as well as what they read, saw, and heard, and the
friends they shared this with, whether at recess, on the street after school, or dur-
ing the summer likewise molded them. This is particularly the case because their
individual stories unfolded within the context not only of a larger Soviet one
but also of a global one. Endorsing internationalism yet leery of its possible
effects, the government found no foolproof way of fostering political orthodoxy
while accommodating these influences, especially insofar as the Party also had
to monitor foreign radio broadcasts, the appearance of samizdat, and a focus on
individualism.
The near universal college attendance record of the magnet schools’ class of
1967 should not obscure the difficulty many Baby Boomers experienced getting
into college and the lessons they drew from this. Good grades were sometimes
simply not enough to guarantee admission. As a result, their parents resorted to
blat, whose many forms included hiring tutors to prepare their offspring for
entrance exams who also sat on the admissions committee. For the Jewish Baby
Boomers, especially in Moscow, this rite of passage sometimes represented their
first encounter with official anti-Semitism. As we saw in chapter 4, even some
Baby Boomers of Russian ethnicity admitted this. Vladimir Sidelnikov, it will be
recalled, said, “I attended school with many Jews, but it was the rare exception
among them that got into MGIMO.”
In college the Baby Boomers ran up against forms of politicization that made
the ideological content of the magnet schools seem innocent in comparison. To
curb the spreading contagion caused by the Thaw, de-Stalinization, and growing
contact with the outside world, the Communist Party increased the contact
hours devoted to political indoctrination at college and monitored Soviet uni-
versities. In stepping up such measures, the government acknowledged that the
message it wished to convey to the builders of communism had stiff competi-
tion. The Party likewise cracked down on dissent both at home and abroad.
These efforts to end the Thaw and contain liberalizing currents resulted in the
Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which divided the Soviet
intelligentsia, including the Baby Boomers’ parents. Although many interviewees
supported the crushing of the Prague Spring, others among them took in the
events with skepticism or even disapproval, creating cracks in the edifice. Some
began “to understand things differently,” particularly since the use of force cor-
responded with the growing availability of samizdat. Tellingly, many link the
beginning of their serious listening to foreign radio broadcasts to the events of
1968. As Mikhail Markovich recounted, “Because of the invasion we began to
understand that we lacked information.” They also began to realize that, despite
Khrushchev’s dismantling of the Gulag, diluted state repression remained a
defining element of late socialism, limiting people’s choices by switching on
their self-censorship and by rewarding external compliance. Few Baby Boomers
had direct run-ins with the KGB, but all felt its presence. Television journalist
Natalya Yolshina, for one, expressed gratitude that “the Lord” spared her. “No
one ever called me in for any conversations, or brought up the subject.” She
admitted that an “internal censor” was at work. In fact, “although today there’s
nothing to hide, it’s still at work.”
Travel represented another hard-to-underestimate influence that shaped the
Baby Boomers’ worldviews. The West remained an imaginary space for all but a
few; however, many of them, through firsthand experience traveling to Eastern
Europe as students and young adults, got access to more information. They
complained about the suffocating “red tape” and nonsense they went through
obtaining permission to go abroad, about the informers who accompanied
them, and about the crushing disappointment they experienced when the
authorities denied them permission to travel. Yet they clearly felt the effort and
risk of rejection were worth it. When Lyubov Raitman and her husband visited
Hungary in 1975, she recalled, “It was a very big shock for us. Hungary was a
Soviet-bloc country, but it was utterly alive and altogether different. The living
standard was closer to that of Europe than to that of the socialist camp.” Some
of the Baby Boomers learned a valuable political lesson as well. For instance,
when Vladimir Kirsanov traveled to Czechoslovakia on the tenth anniversary of
the Soviet invasion, he winced when an angry local demanded, “Why do you
prevent us from living how we want?” Moreover, the continued opening of the
Soviet Union and spread of information via tape recorders, foreign radio broad-
casts, film, television, samizdat, encounters with foreigners visiting the USSR,
and the rise of a genuine human rights movement that evolved organically from
within the system magnified the significance of foreign travel by subjecting the
Soviet Union to invidious comparison.
The Baby Boomers likewise experienced anxiety waiting to learn where the
government assigned them to work upon graduation. The same strategies that
helped get them into college proved useful once again. Moreover, establishing
themselves professionally proved a turning point in regard to how important
CONCLUSION | 359
English would be in determining their careers and life choices. Those who
majored in English in college worked in the field afterward in some professional
capacity. Research scientists and diplomats (all from Moscow) also tended to
draw on their knowledge of the language, while those who went into technical
fields or into medicine appear to have had much less practical need to use
English. Given the substantial number of Baby Boomers who emigrated, it is
clear that knowledge of English increased the likelihood of their leaving
Russia.
Deciding whether to seek out Party membership proved to be another issue
fraught with consequences for the Baby Boomers. Politically mobilized, they
had joined all of the correct political organizations (all of them had enrolled in
the Komsomol), and none of them belonged to nationalist or dissident move-
ments. But they were also the most likely to listen to foreign radio broadcasts,
read samizdat, and worm their way out of participating in Soviet public rituals.
They saw nothing particularly anti-Soviet about this behavior; on the contrary,
it had become Soviet behavior. Whether the Baby Boomers joined the CPSU was
a matter of personal choice and family influence, since Party membership often
ran in families. Their attitudes toward the Party also illustrate that it was in
serious trouble. Some Baby Boomers maintained that their parents became
Party members to advance their careers, while others claimed that their parents
joined because they believed in its ideology. Only one Baby Boomer, however,
stated that he joined the Party for ideological reasons. Because I had never met
a true believer among my age cohort during my many trips to the country
beginning in 1971, I was not surprised when Vladimir Bystrov, who joined the
Party in 1978 to advance his career, asserted, “I personally never met any true
believers. By the time I became a Party member, everything was already obvious
to normal people.” The daughter of Communists, Marina Bakutina joined the
Party the year she graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages and
accepted a job there. According to Bakutina, “we probably believed. Yet it was
never some sort of frenzied belief of the kind my in-laws had. My parents didn’t
even have that. It’s hard to generalize about my generation, but I’d say we had
nothing like that. If we did, it was probably only up to fifth or sixth grade.”
Working within the system was not the same as believing in it.
Most of the Baby Boomers married during college or shortly afterward and
often ascribed considerable, even decisive, influence to their spouses or their
spouses’ families for challenging their core beliefs. Irina Tsurkan, for example,
disclosed that her second husband “brought me down from the clouds by calling
Lenin a tyrant.” Children came early in Soviet marriages, complicating women’s
lives, since, although the Soviet Union had more female scientists and engineers
than any other country and a greater percentage of women in the workforce,
attitudes regarding home life remained traditional. As a result, the female Baby
Boomers experienced a double burden. They worked as professionals, yet bore
primary responsibility for childrearing and housework. They had fewer children
than their parents and had to rely less on babushka to raise their offspring.
Reflecting national averages, about half of them divorced. Several female Baby
Boomers, divorced and single today, considered their married years as awfully
difficult ones. Most of them, however, despite the double burden, voiced a high
degree of job satisfaction. They claimed not to have experienced any gender
discrimination or to have encountered minor discrimination that did not seri-
ously impact their careers. If it were not for the lax work environment in most
Soviet agencies and enterprises, they probably would have found the double
burden even more challenging.
In sum, decades of peaceful, evolutionary change in the Soviet Union follow-
ing World War II had a revolutionary impact on the Cold War generation’s atti-
tudes and expectations. This era was shaped by, and reflected, the Soviet
leadership’s complicated, shifting policies of reform and counterreform, the
opening of the country to the outside world, and the ideas and comparisons this
opening provoked. Despite the Baby Boomers’ stable and comfortable childhood,
many of them as adults realized that this formative period in their lives also
bred cynicism that would develop more fully in the 1970s. “I think our school
years developed a set of values in us that were not necessarily Soviet approved,”
explained Leonid Terlitsky. “Although we took our own roads in life and some-
times went very different ways, that set of values had an influence. It certainly
did on me.” This cynicism also had much to do with the beliefs and attitudes
nurtured by the Baby Boomers’ identification with a larger global youth culture.
A case in point, Aleksandr Trubnikov told me, “I remember how they used to
rail at the Beatles, yet we were all swept away by them. I even understood what
they were singing about. I really liked them and everything else I was able to get
my hands on.” Olga Martynkina concurred: “The Beatles are sacred. They’re
wonderful. We grew up on them!” Moreover, this generation experienced no
revolution, no terror, no World War II, no major social cataclysms, but an ill-
conceived campaign to catch up with and overtake America. In college singing
Beatles songs when they confirmed that the USSR would not surpass the United
States in per capita production in 1970, the Baby Boomers were thirty-year-old
adults in 1980 telling Brezhnev jokes when the government quietly ignored
Khrushchev’s promise that by then communism would have been achieved.
What do the Baby Boomers’ life stories tell us about what constituted the
“Soviet dream,” and ultimately about the relationship between the growing
emphasis on private life after 1945, the undermining of Marxist ideology, and the
fate of the Soviet Union? The evolution of the Soviet system after 1953 and prom-
ises associated with the blueprint for building communism shaped the Soviet
dream for the young Baby Boomers. They wanted a university degree, a satisfying
job, foreign travel, decent housing, an improved standard of living, close friends,
true love, a family, children with a good outlook on life, and perhaps a car. It took
time for them to realize that the Soviet dream had real limits, because they
graduated from college, secured jobs, married, and even traveled. Most of them
CONCLUSION | 361
earned acceptable salaries, lived in decent apartments, owned basic household

appliances, and sometimes even automobiles. They appreciated state ownership
of industry, free education, subsidized day care, after-school programs for chil-
dren, socialized healthcare, generous paid vacations, subsidized housing, job
security (and slack discipline), and an early retirement age (between fifty-five and
sixty). In exchange for compliance, the system offered promotions, safety, sta-
bility, and privileges, including travel abroad. The most successful who con-
formed also might have access to foreign goods, special stores, cash bonuses,
dachas, cars, and membership in elite professional associations.4
But it turned out that what was “Soviet” about this dream was not its content,
with which many readers can identify, but how the Baby Boomers went about
trying to reach it. A sharp rise in world oil and gold prices allowed the Soviet
government to provide its citizens with many material benefits and to spend
more money on agriculture, the development of Siberia, and defense, but not
on industrial expansion. By the early 1970s, economic reform had become a
dead issue and crisis conditions fell into place, resulting in an economic slow-
down that, in the course of the decade, eroded people’s confidence in the com-
mand-administrative system, even among the elite. There was also the problem
of Khrushchev’s unspoken legacy: the Soviet Union had not built communism.
These developments encouraged corruption and the misuse of power throughout
the system—and society. Consumers, not producers, the Baby Boomers survived
by resorting to blat and the black market, and this helped to subvert the system,
as people reacted more strongly to the shortages as they got older. Outwardly
compliant, they challenged the system by learning how it functioned. By the
end of the decade many of them sympathized with the human rights movement,
tested the limits of the permissible, and questioned aspects of the Marxist
economic model. Some of them emigrated. The vast majority of them denounced,
in private to be sure, their country’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan, suggesting
an all-important shift in popular attitudes since the 1968 suppression of the
Prague Spring. Even career soldier Aleksandr Ivanov opposed the invasion:
“Who has the right to send me there? They didn’t threaten us. I didn’t take an
oath to go to Afghanistan. When they invade us, I’m obliged to defend my
country.”
A strict social order such as that of Brezhnev’s USSR limits people and leads
to “general sclerosis,”5 but not necessarily to individual sclerosis. The Baby
Boomers intuitively grasped this, casting the second half of Brezhnev’s tenure as
a turning point in their country’s history and in the evolution of their own con-
sciousness. Life was stable and predictable, but too much so. Many had reached
a glass ceiling at work. Most Soviet myths had become meaningless. Some Baby
Boomers voiced amazement by how quickly their seemingly unified and ideo-
logically sound society “went to pieces” once Gorbachev unleashed perestroika.
Anthropologist Alexei Yurchak argues that if Gorbachev had not opened public
space to alternative voices the system could have gone on for much longer.
However, he does not account for how the system produced a Gorbachev, con-
flating the entire period from 1950 to 1980.6 Society “went to pieces” because the
Baby Boomers had been transforming it all along and had become ready for
perestroika: the strategies they had perfected over the years learning to “live
Soviet” contributed to the system’s demise. Telling jokes about and mocking
Brezhnev shook the foundations of the Soviet order. The Baby Boomers’ mem-
ories reveal a tectonic shift in people’s attitudes from blaming individual Soviet
leaders—first Stalin, then Khrushchev—the Party line, in effect—to blaming not
only Brezhnev while he was still in office but the system itself, as even elements
in the Party understood the need for real change. As the glasnost revelations
questioned the system’s legitimacy, many Baby Boomers temporarily saw them-
selves as victims of Soviet power. Perestroika also facilitated emigration, allow-
ing some Baby Boomers to realize the “Soviet” dream outside the country,
thereby demonstrating how late socialism lost the allegiance of its most edu-
cated and in some ways, privileged, class.
How have the Baby Boomers negotiated the challenging transition to a post-
Soviet Russia following the collapse of communism in 1991? Some negotiated
the transition by emigrating. For the rest, it is essential to consider how they
understood the sources of perestroika. Most Baby Boomers saw it as necessary
and even inevitable. Expressing the sentiments of many, Boris Shtein explained,
“The former system had exhausted itself; Gorbachev could no longer fool peo-
ple and could no longer pretend that we were going somewhere when we were
standing still. Changes were inevitable.” The vast majority backed perestroika,
applauded glasnost, embraced free elections, and understood the need to replace
the command-administrative system with a market-oriented one. According to
Vladimir Sidelnikov, the Soviet Union had made three mistakes: “it had banned
God, banned the private sector, and put up the Iron Curtain.” Yet many of them,
appreciating the peculiarities of Russian political culture and the benefits of the
planned economy, cautioned against blindly imitating the West and criticized
how Gorbachev and later Yeltsin carried out specific reforms.
This is the case because, in the 1990s, they lived through the equivalent of the
Great Depression, during which the survival skills they perfected under Soviet
power proved invaluable. Family and close friends helped people overcome the
challenges, which, for many, necessitated switching jobs and even changing pro-
fessions. In addition, they had to cope with life passages common to that age
cohort such as caring for ill or dying parents, shepherding children through
college, and helping them get established. Some found comfort in religion.
Ingrained Soviet attitudes complicated how some of them adapted to the new
circumstances, to be sure, but their personal stories mostly inspire: crisis com-
prises both danger and opportunity, and many of them found ways to fulfill
themselves in the new circumstances. As one of them, Igor Litvin, put it, “I now
feel totally independent. I’m convinced that these are good times for people in
Russia. Anyone can realize his full potential.”
CONCLUSION | 363
Yevgeny Podolsky believed that by the start of the millennium the majority
of people had already adapted to the new circumstances, “and they know how
to live in this world. A large enough number of people sense this. The same
holds true for peasants.” Indeed, with few exceptions the Baby Boomers looked
favorably upon the market economy. To be sure, they echoed majority senti-
ment in Russia in denigrating Yeltsin when he retired on December 31, 1999;
however, most Baby Boomers saw the silver lining, acknowledging that it would
take time for a new system to replace the old one and transform mentalities.
Most of them held onto their reference points, aiming their anger at institu-
tions, those in power, and the oligarchs, and not at the fledgling Russian
democracy or emerging market system. Support for some sort of democratic
market order had surfaced already during the Soviet period, becoming
entrenched after glasnost stripped away any remaining illusions about the ben-
efits of the Stalinist model.
The Baby Boomers’ attitudes merit attention because they promote liberal-
ization and have become part of Russia’s new middle, consuming, class. Like
Russian society at large, many of them have lost interest in politics at the top
under Putin and Medvedev, but not in the politics of everyday life, ironically
focusing their energies as they did in the Brezhnev era on the economic side of
life, yet admittedly in vastly different circumstances. Olga Kolishchyuk said it
succinctly: “If people are living normally politics doesn’t interest them. What
interests them is what to make for supper tomorrow.” Speaking for many, Anna
Lyovina understood the negative features of Russian reality as “the costs of the
transition period and of the breaking up of old structures.” She voiced confidence,
however, that things would take a turn for the better. “They have to.” Why?
Because “ordinary people set the tone for society, not politicians we see every
day on TV. Those who help one another, say a kind word, or stop belligerent
behavior on public transportation or in stores. This improves the situation, like
the way storms clean the air.”
This is also a story of three generations in which the middle one, the Baby
Boomers who began school the year Sputnik triumphed and graduated the year
the USSR celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, are uniquely privileged because
they constitute the generation that experienced the best the Soviet system had
to offer yet came to reject it. Spared the fears of the Stalin era and the sustained
trauma of World War II, the Baby Boomers believed that their parents’ suffering
imbued them with values to emulate, but they saw themselves as freer and as
more optimistic than their parents. Vladimir Prudkin explained: “The Soviet
Union was a doomed structure mainly because it could exist only with the
strictest adherence to Stalin’s principles. The smallest deviation from these pol-
icies led to the collapse of the USSR. My generation and I represent those peo-
ple who began this small deviation.” Significantly, the Baby Boomers saw their
children as even “freer,” and more goal-oriented than they were. Embracing the
new order, the children of perestroika are more pragmatic and more rational
Moscow’s School No. 20—like the country for that matter—bears a new name and
appearance in the new millennium. Anna Lyovina found modern, well-equipped
classrooms when she attended a celebration of the school’s forty-fifth anniversary in
2003. Courtesy of Vyacheslav Starik
and have a different, non-Soviet, attitude toward work. Lacking their parents’
complexes, they embrace change. The fact that many interviewees cast the young gen-
eration in negative light—what I see as a traditional generational conflict—but
depicted their own children as successful exceptions bodes well for Russia’s recovery.
How do the memories of those who grew up in Moscow differ from those
raised in a provincial city “closed” to foreigners and therefore to many direct
foreign influences? There is no denying Moscow’s privileged position within the
Soviet structure. As Muscovite Viktor Alekseyev emphasized, “Moscow and the
rest of Russia are very different things. Moscow was a special world in the Soviet
Union.” Because Saratov was closed to foreigners, its inhabitants had far less
access to outside influences, a fact of life that confined the magnet school’s curric-
ulum and affected people at an everyday level. Although it was harder to come
across samizdat literature in Saratov, what young students might get away with in
Moscow threatened local authorities far more in Saratov, who sent a clear message
to the student population that behaving too far outside the box would not be tol-
erated. Owing to the political climate in Saratov, more local Baby Boomers bought
into the Party line regarding the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crackdown
on dissent. Yet once glasnost made information available to everyone, these differ-
ences in political views between Saratovites and Muscovites largely evaporated.
CONCLUSION | 365
Muscovites and Saratovites also experienced the economic aspects of late

socialism differently. Saratov Baby Boomers remembered the periodic shopping
sprees, commonly subsidized by the workplace, which they carried out in the
capital, often buying meat and sausage that could have been produced locally.
For the most part, however, the strategies both cohorts perfected bear an uncanny
resemblance: semilegal and illegal economic activities facilitated by blat.
Bringing individuals together on their own initiative in ways that were not con-
trolled by the state and that were usually frowned on, these strategies further
strengthened private life as they potentially weakened people’s faith in the
system. Ironically, Muscovites had more of everything, including cynicism: they
lived better than those along the Volga, but expressed greater dissatisfaction.
Although glasnost gave Saratovites the same access to information as
Muscovites, regional differences based on economic realities continued to define
local mentalities in post-Soviet Russia. The market has made everything avail-
able in Saratov as in Moscow, but the country’s wealth remained concentrated
in the capital and therefore Muscovites articulated greater support for democratic
freedoms and the market economy. Saratov voters backed more conservative
Friends for roughly fifty years, Saratov Baby Boomers Aleksandr Kutin (left) and Aleksandr
Virich share a quiet moment in the kitchen at a reunion of the B Class in 2004. Their lives
changed radically during the 1990s: Kutin switched professions; his daughter married an
American and moved to the United States. After suffering a stroke, Virich lives on a
disability pension. Courtesy of Aleksandr Virich
candidates and welcomed a strong leader; however, the well-educated Baby

Boomers among them, with some exceptions to be sure, remained more likely
to support market reform and political pluralism.
How have the Baby Boomers’ experiences both reproduced and transformed
Russian society during the Cold War and afterward? How do their personal stories
help us comprehend cultural transmission across generations? In answering this
question, it is important to stress that the Soviet propaganda state provided its
citizens with the “correct” understanding of Soviet history and the country’s place
in the world. It gave people facts and frameworks with which to think, an ideo-
logical language rich in boilerplate metaphors, dogmas, and slogans; however, it
ultimately could not dictate what its subjects thought. Understanding freedom as
the range of choices from among which to pick, the Baby Boomers had a great
deal of space for agency and moral choice, especially in the years after Stalin’s
death when the country began to open up and the world became smaller. Lacking
their parents’ fear, these “unconscious agents of change” in Baby Boomer Sergei
Zemskov’s felicitous formulation became far more demanding of the Soviet
system and therefore more open to transforming it.
The Baby Boomers’ stories demonstrate that a distinction needs to be drawn
between their public and their private lives, although both reproduced and
transformed society. After first telling me that Stalin’s terror spared his family,
Vladimir Sidelnikov confided that his maternal grandmother had spent fifteen
years in the Gulag and that his mother had grown up in an orphanage and later
fought to get her mother rehabilitated. His mother, a true believer, understood
the tragedy as a “terrible mistake,” and neither his mother nor his grandmother
ever spoke about it. In fact, “they didn’t even tell me she was my grandmother.
You couldn’t back then, because I might have let the secret out. I called her
Granny Masha,” remembered Sidelnikov. In this case the propaganda state suc-
ceeded in shaping their public behavior—and in encroaching upon private life,
too. The son of Party members, Sidelnikov, it will be recalled, attended MGIMO
and even flirted with the idea of joining the KGB, until he got sent home from
Finland while working there on his senior thesis and suffered a breakdown. We
can imagine that his family dealt with this publicly by not talking about it or by
presenting what happened in sanitized language. Over the years, however,
Sidelnikov came to reject the Soviet system. “Before, I believed in all of those
ideas,” he remembered, “but then I came realize that it’s all a bunch of mean-
ingless rubbish.”
The borders separating Soviet public and private life might have been porous
and ambiguous, as in the case of Sidelnikov’s family, but already by the late
1960s, “privacy began to be seen as the only honorable and uncompromising
response to the system of public compromise.”7 Many of the Baby Boomers
spoke of a certain duality, of what Vladimir Nemchenko called “the world for
everyone, and another where we’d gather in small groups and discuss things with
others.” As a result, there were two truths “one for everyone, and the other that’s
CONCLUSION | 367
inside you.” Andrei Rogatnev, who worked for the KGB, acknowledged the dou-
ble standard that characterized Soviet life: “I lived a two-faced life. At work I was
one person, and at home another, from a political perspective. We told political
jokes. We were indignant over the outrageous things we noticed and saw. But I
was incredibly lucky in regard to the people I met and with whom I associated.
They, too, understood everything perfectly.” Rogatnev’s public behavior repro-
duced structures of Soviet life; however, his private life—which included the
telling of political jokes and discussions of the system’s shortcomings—made
Rogatnev and those with whom he shared his private self open to change.
The Baby Boomers’ outward compliance allowed for an inner freedom that,
when Gorbachev came to power, made them receptive to reform, even if they
had not espoused it earlier. Perestroika may have been launched as a revolution
from above, but unlike earlier attempts by the state to effect sweeping transfor-
mation, people were ready, even some among the older generations. Aleksandr
Virich gave the example of his grandfather who, in his nineties, learned about
the dark chapters of the Soviet past through reading Ogonyok during pere-
stroika. His reaction: “Go suck my c___! I’m a fool. I didn’t know any of that.
They didn’t tell me.” As Virich put it, “Here’s a complete change in one’s
worldview.”
Yet changes of this sort also provide evidence in support of the adage that the
more things change, the more things remain the same. In other words, the
market system and form of democracy that emerged in Russia turned out to be
peculiarly, familiarly, Russian. For example, many Baby Boomers stressed that
Russia’s historical development made it unique and special, not in the way that
each country is different but in the way that Russia has been characterized as
different as captured in Winston Churchill’s dictum that Russia is “a riddle
wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Natalya P. articulated this sentiment:
“I am a patriot of my country. We don’t get to pick where we come from. It’s a
matter of chance who your parents are or which country you were born in. There
are no such things as good countries and bad countries, good nations and bad
nations.” Then Natalya weighed her words for me as an American. “You
Americans are greater realists and pragmatists, while we have our heads in the
clouds. Besides, we have a different history, different roots.”
Indeed, Aleksandr Virich offered an optimistic prognosis of Russia’s market
economy, but volunteered that he would vote to establish a constitutional mon-
archy in Russia today: “Russia became accustomed to living under the tsars over
many centuries. When Europe was freely moving from feudalism into capitalism,
and from capitalism into, excuse me, socialism, we spent three hundred years
under the Tatar yoke. We saved Europe! We have a different path of development.”
And one that many affirmed defied logic. “If you try to explain anything about
this country from a logical point of view you’re bound for failure,” cautioned
Leonid Terlitsky. Similarly, Tatyana Luchnikova dredged up the oft-repeated words
of nineteenth-century Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev: “Russia cannot be under-
stood with the mind alone. No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness: She
stands alone, unique—in Russia, one can only believe.”
And in her people. Whatever their life trajectories, none of the Baby Boomers
cast him- or herself as a victim, perhaps, because, in Aleksandr Kutin’s words,
“we tend to remember the good and to forget the bad.” It certainly is human
nature to adapt willingly to that which is better. Anatoly Shapiro stressed that
“the fear is gone, at least among those with whom I mingle” “What happened is
amazing,” enthused Yevgeniya Ruditskaya. “If you had told me fifteen years ago
that I’d be living on Cyprus and that my friends would come to visit me from
Switzerland, Israel, and America, I would have thought you were crazy. But, it
turned out that all of this is now possible.” Despite the challenges of going, in
Arkady Darchenko’s words, “from Stalinism to normal, developing capitalism,”
they, as a cohort, made the journey remarkably intact. Olga Kolishchyuk cast her
classmates, with rare exceptions, as “successful people. We’re all normal people
who live a normal life and who have found our niche in society.” Olga Martynkina
offered an example: “In terms of everyday life, things have gone all right. I have
a happy family life and a good job. I’ve grown spiritually. Sure there have been
temporary difficulties, some material ones, but that’s all.”
Recognizing these difficulties, past, present, and yet to come, Anna Lyovina
observed that “things get done in the world by people who follow their heart.
I’m certain of that. And there are many people like that, and they’re holding the
country together.” Underscoring the need to live compassionately, she added,
“There are very, very many modest people of this sort. No one writes about them
in the papers. They don’t make noise. They don’t promote themselves. They
don’t show off. But it’s they who have always held Russia together.”
Appendix
The Baby Boomers*
Note: Married names follow maiden names in parentheses.

Alekseyev, Viktor Aleksandrovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Born into a military family, Alekseyev studied child psychology,
then a new field, at Moscow University. Today he teaches at CUNY’s College
of Staten Island and resides with his family in the New York area.
Artyomova, Tatyana Mikhailovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. A top student, Artyomova became a professor of economics at
Moscow’s Plekhanov Institute. She and her husband live and work in America,
residing in Stamford, Connecticut.
Arzhanova (Koukharskaya), Tatyana Aleksandrovna. Attended Moscow’s
School No. 20. Raised in a communal flat in Moscow, Arzhanova studied at
Moscow’s Food Institute, but her career took a different path when she trav-
eled to the United States as translator for a sports delegation in the 1970s.
Later she accompanied her husband to Indonesia when he worked there for
a Soviet agency. Today she and her family reside in Montreal.
Babushkin, Aleksandr Yevgeniyevich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. Trained as a physician, Babushkin went to work for the local
government at a police-run sobering up center, a job that came with a four-
room apartment. During perestroika Babushkin started a second family.
Bakutina (Braun), Marina Olegovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Bakutina remembered the View Master her mother brought back
with her from America in the late 1950s. While a student at Moscow’s Institute
of Foreign Languages, she traveled to England. Bakutina accepted a position
at the IFL and taught there until she immigrated to the United States.
Barysheva (Lukonina), Irina Mikhailovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
CPSU member. Chapter 1 began with an account of Barysheva’s family his-
tory. She detailed the drama of the end-of-school writing exam in Saratov, of
* Eight of the Baby Boomers requested that I refer to them by pseudonyms or by not
using their surnames.
her first trip abroad, and of her resorting to blat to join the CPSU. An award-
winning teacher, she has spent her career teaching English in Saratov
schools.
Bystrov, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Bystrov held a high-ranking administrative post in the USSR
Ministry of Education. During perestroika, his work took him abroad,
including to the United States. In 2003, he served as first vice-president of the
World Technological University in Moscow.
Chemodurova, Irina Davidovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Daughter
of a Party historian and one of the few Saratov Jews to remember popular
anti-Semitism, Chemodurova completed her graduate work in history in
Moscow before returning to Saratov to teach at the university level.
D., Viktor. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. The American Relief Admin-
istration fed Viktor’s starving grandparents during the Russian Civil War and
his father served a stint in the Gulag, family experiences that shaped his atti-
tudes. A medical doctor, Viktor worked for many years in an emergency room
in Saratov.
Darchenko, Arkady Olegovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Born outside
Magadan, Darchenko moved to Saratov as a young boy. His education as a
physicist involved a research stint at the closed science city near Moscow,
Dubna, where samizdat proved easy to come by. Darchenko has had to change
careers three times in his life and has found his knowledge of English essential
in each transition.
Garzanova, Irina Aleksandrovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Daughter
of a decorated war veteran, Garzanova graduated from the Saratov Medical
Institute, after which she was sent to Ulyanovsk oblast, where she met her
future husband. They lived in his hometown of Lipetsk for twelve years before
she returned to Saratov as a single mother. She works in a subspecialty of psy-
chiatry from the Soviet era that treats alcohol and drug addiction.
Glebkin, Vladimir Dmitriyevich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Born into
a family of academics, Glebkin belonged to the beat-group at School No. 20.
He attended and afterward spent his entire career teaching at his alma mater,
Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow.
Godzhello, Georgy Vladimirovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Raised by his mother and grandparents, Godzhello recalled the
strong influence his grandfather played in his life. Today he is principal of
Moscow’s Sport-Educational College.
Gorelik (Belobrovaya), Olga Yakovlevna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
Daughter of the deputy editor of Saratov’s Party newspaper and of a medical
doctor, Gorelik earned a Ph.D. in physics and teaches at Saratov University.
Her daughter lives in Israel.
Gorokhova, Lyudmila Vladimirovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. One of
the few Baby Boomers to have appreciated Pioneer camps, Gorokhova briefly
APPENDIX | 371
worked as a technical translator after graduating from the Saratov Pedagogical

Institute. She switched jobs, divorced her jealous first husband, and married
her boss. Gorokhova remembers the Soviet period with nostalgia.
Ivanov, Aleksandr Viktorovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. One of the few members of the cohort from a working-class family,
Ivanov left School No. 42 to complete a military academy. Serving in Saratov
oblast, he pursued a professional military career until his retirement.
Ivanov, Gennady Viktorovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU member.
After graduating from Saratov’s Law Institute, Ivanov went to work for the
police to avoid getting drafted. This decision proved life changing: he recently
retired as a police investigator. His work involved a stint in Afghanistan.
Kamayurova, Olga Vladimirovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. One of the
few Baby Boomers who passively believed in the system until glasnost,
Kamayurova spent two years in Romania with her husband, there on work
assignment, during the Brezhnev era. Perestroika strained her marriage to the
breaking point. A pathologist, she enjoys a rich spiritual life today centered
on Eastern traditions.
Kenzheyev, Bakhyt Shkurullayevich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Half
Kazakh, Kenzheyev worked summers as a guide for Intourist while he was a
student of chemistry at Moscow University. After graduating, he stayed on to
remain the department’s “poet in residence” before marrying a Canadian and
emigrating. Writer and poet, he mostly lives with his current wife, also from
Moscow, in New York.
Kirsanov, Vladimir Nikolayevich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. Silver medalist and Komsomol activist, Kirsanov attended the
Saratov Medical Institute, where he remained to teach. His Volga German
ancestry prevented him from applying to MGIMO. Kirsanov links his political
maturation to participation in work brigades in the countryside and to his
travel to Czechoslovakia.
Kolishchyuk (Skvornyuk), Olga Andreyevna. Attended Saratov’s School No.
42. Born in China, Kolishchyuk graduated from the Saratov Pedagogical
Institute. She detailed the shadow economy of blat and of shopping sprees in
Moscow. Kolishchyuk has taught English at Saratov Technical University until
her recent retirement.
Kolosova, Yelena Mikhailovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Scion of an
academic family, Kolosova studied at Moscow University. She recounted the
difficulty she had resolving to immigrate to the United States in 1996, where
she has lived and worked mostly in Ames, Iowa, before moving to Houston,
Texas.
Konstantinov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
“Sasha the Muscovite” grew up in Saratov because his father, who had been
taken prisoner during the war, was exiled from Moscow. After graduating
from the top of the B class at School No. 42 he enrolled at Moscow University,
where he completed graduate studies and remained ever since as a research

scientist.
Kovalyova, Lyubov Fyodorovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Trained as
a chemist, Kovalyova enjoyed a successful career in the textile industry that
involved working in Hungary during the late Brezhnev era. The dissolution
of the USSR drove a wedge between her and her second husband, a native of
Belarus.
Krasilnikov, Pyotor Mikhailovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
Krasilnikov’s classmates remember that he played the guitar well and had a
great voice. But he ran into difficulty getting into college and had to settle for
the evening division of the Polytechnic Institute. Krasilnikov is one of the few
to have served in the army.
Kulikova (Yevseyeva), Irina Vladimirovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
Born into a working-class family, Kulikova studied in the evening division of
the Saratov Economics Institute. Although she experienced job discrimination
as a young mother, she also extolled the virtues of her work collective. She
found the conflicting information bombarding people during perestroika
confusing.
Kutin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Trained as a
mathematician and computer scientist, Kutin has enjoyed a career as a uni-
versity instructor at various Saratov colleges. He taught at the Saratov State
Agrarian University when I interviewed him. His daughter married an
American and lives in the United States.
Kuznetsova (Dumcheva), Tatyana Anatolyevna. Attended Saratov’s School No.
42. The daughter of a high-ranking Saratov Party official, Kuznetsova down-
played her family’s privileges that included sojourns for her at elite Pioneer
camps. Sympathetic to the Soviet system, she decried the destruction of old
idols. She has taught English at the Saratov Technical University since com-
pleting college.
Litvin, Igor Markovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Running up against
anti-Semitism when he applied to college, Litvin graduated from the Moscow
Pedagogical Institute, after which he held various administrative, translating,
and teaching jobs. He is in private business today.
Luchnikova, Tatyana Viktorovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20.
Luchnikova moved to Moscow from Kazan when she was in the ninth grade.
She experienced difficulty getting into college and landing a job after com-
pleting Moscow’s Film Institute. Luchnikova lived for a spell in the United
States, where she worked as a model and published a volume of poetry. Today
she resides in Norway with her second husband.
Lyovina (Maslova), Anna Fyodorovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20.
Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of Lyovina’s family’s pre-Soviet ties with
the United States. A timid child, Lyovina spoke fondly of the atmosphere at
School No. 20 and disparagingly of the politicization at Moscow’s Institute
APPENDIX | 373
of Foreign Languages. She has worked most of her adult life as a part-time
teacher and tutor.
Markovich, Mikhail Aleksandrovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Born into a large family that knew Stalinist repression firsthand,
Markovich graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Placed by the
government in a job in publishing upon graduation, Markovich remained in
that field ever since.
Martynkina (Zaiko), Olga Dmitryevna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Born
into a military family, Martynkina was mostly raised by her grandmother.
Martynkina left School No. 42 to attend a special music school, after which
she graduated from the Saratov Conservatory and has since enjoyed a career
as an accomplished pianist.
Mikoyan, Vladimir Sergeyevich (Sergo). Attended Moscow’s School No. 20.
CPSU member. Grandson of Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, Vladimir
worked as a career diplomat after graduating from MGIMO. He spent much
of the 1970s in the United States. During perestroika, he retooled and has
since held various administrative jobs in the world of business.
Nemchenko, Vladimir Ivanovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. Nemchenko studied physics at Saratov University, but quit graduate
school to work as a mechanic. He made a fortune—and lost it, and his
health—during the 1990s.
P., Natalya Fyodorovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Natalya P. recalled
being exhausted as a child from being involved in too many extracurricular
activities. After graduating from the Saratov Pedagogical Institute, she quit
the job assigned her as a technical translator and struggled to build a career
for herself as a teacher. Perestroika forced her to quit her job at the Pedagogical
Institute to accept a better paying one at the Police Academy.
Petrova, Larisa Nikolayevna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU member.
Born into an elite Party family in Saratov, Petrova remembered the Brezhnev
era as one of considerable professional growth for herself for she directed the
research department of a medical clinic in Saratov and defended her disserta-
tion in Moscow. She relocated there with her husband during perestroika.
Podolsky, Yevgeny Mikhailovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. Podolsky was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, where his father worked
for the KGB before moving to Saratov. After marrying a Muscovite, Podolsky
remained in the capital. During perestroika he became a successful busi-
nessman and applauds Russia’s new order.
Poldyaeva, Galina Yevgeniyevna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. Poldyaeva
spent her toddler years on the Kamchatka peninsula. A silver medalist at
School No. 42, she quit Saratov Medical Institute when she married a fellow
student, who became an army doctor. Afterward, she lived wherever he was
stationed, including East Germany. She is the only Baby Boomer not to have
pursued a professional career.
Pronina (Altukhova), Natalya Valentinovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.

Born in Siberia outside Magadan, Pronina enrolled in School No. 42 in fifth
grade and always felt like an outsider. She was the only Baby Boomer to have
attended the Moscow Youth Festival in 1957. Pronina wanted to join the
CPSU, but was not admitted. An economist, she teaches at a commercial
college in Saratov.
Prudkin, Vladimir Markovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. The son of a
famous stage actor, Prudkin himself enjoyed a career in the theatrical world
both as director and in other capacities. He argued forcefully that the Soviet
system could not survive once it began to reform the Stalinist order.
Raitman (Obraztsova), Lyubov Samsonovna. Attended Moscow’s School No.
20. Raitman’s parents both traveled abroad while she attended school. A
graduate of the Institute of Foreign Languages, Raitman taught at Moscow
University when perestroika forced her to give up her teaching career for
better paying work. Divorced, she lives and works in Moscow today. Her
daughter Anna resides in New York. My thirty-five-year-old friendship with
Raitman, who shared stories of her school years and classmates, served as an
inspiration for this book.
Rogatnev, Andrei Glebovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU member.
Born into a family of KGB operatives, Rogatnev was in Budapest during the
1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. After graduating from the Aviation Institute,
he joined the KGB, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq in the late Soviet period.
After the dissolution of the USSR he went into business.
Ruditskaya (Kreizerova), Yevgeniya Semyonovna. Attended Moscow’s School
No. 20. Ruditskaya experienced anti-Semitism throughout her life. After grad-
uating from Moscow’s Pedagogical Institute, she taught in Moscow schools
until perestroika. Since the 1990s she and her husband, a businessman, live
mostly on Cyprus.
Shapiro, Anatoly Arnoldovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU mem-
ber. Born in Austria, where his father served as part of the postwar Soviet
trade delegation, Shapiro remembered the fear his parents instilled in him
and the anti-Semitism he experienced when he applied to MGIMO. He hated
army service and later regretted joining the Party. He has spent his career in
the field of banking, finance, and commerce.
Shtein, Boris Yakovlevich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Living today in
California, Shtein was born into a family of construction engineers and to a
father who had been raised in Estonia. Shtein’s first wife spent many years
battling to emigrate before receiving permission to do so. Shtein immigrated
to the United States in 1994, acknowledging the help his classmates who had
preceded him extended to him.
Sidelnikov, Vladimir A. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Born into a Party
family, Sidelnikov attended MGIMO, but was expelled from Finland by
Soviet authorities when he failed to return home at night, after which he
APPENDIX | 375
suffered a breakdown. An invalid and recovering alcoholic today, he

found sobriety, God, and his wife, Lyuba, whose positive effect on him
he acknowledged.
Starik, Vyacheslav Davidovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU
member. Starik remembered spending summers in his grandmother’s village
in Orel oblast. Although he claimed anti-Semitism did not affect him, he
described how it impacted his career on several occasions. During perestroika
he actively campaigned for a local deputy. Since then he has worked in var-
ious capacities, but has found it hard to “work for money.”
Terlitsky, Leonid Natanovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Terlitsky
recounted the impact his parents’ travel abroad had on him already as a
schoolchild. He encountered anti-Semitism getting into the Moscow
Architectural Institute. Turned down when he sought to emigrate, his brother
became a refusenik. Terlitsky emigrated, worked as an architect in America,
and returned to Russia to direct the Hebrew Immigration Aid Service.
Trubnikov, Aleksandr Vladimirovich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. The
gold medalist of School No. 42’s A class, Trubnikov studied physics and
remained working at Saratov University in that field until immigrating to
Israel in the late 1990s. He is the only Baby Boomer I interviewed who lives
in Israel.
Tsurkan (Yegorova), Irina Semyonovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
Tsurkan credits her Moldavian father and Volga German grandmother with
shaping her personality, and her second husband with raising her political
consciousness by slamming Lenin. A graduate of the Saratov Medical Institute,
she works as a pediatrician in Saratov.
Ulyakhin, Valentin Nikolayevich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Ulyakhin
studied at MGIMO, completed graduate school, and held a position at the
Institute of Oriental Studies. But perestroika enabled him to fulfill his
father’s—and his own—dream of becoming a priest. Today Father Valentin is
a parish priest in Moscow.
Vinogradova, Sofiya Semyonovna. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. Raised
in a military family in Moscow, Vinogradova took a circuitous path to med-
ical school. She lives in Moscow and works as a family practitioner in a neigh-
borhood clinic. Vinogradova applauded perestroika for ending shortages in
Russia.
Virich, Aleksandr Grigoryevich. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU
member. Virich described how he and his classmates clandestinely played
Western music at a school dance in Saratov. Virich worked as an engineer,
joining the Party in 1987 when Gorbachev was in power “because I had to.” A
smoker since tenth grade, he suffered a stroke after which he retired.
Vizgalova (Vasilyeva), Irina Valentinovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42.
Vizgalova’s deaf grandmother moved to Saratov to help raise her. Vizgalova
did not believe Khrushchev’s promise to build communism, owing to bread
shortages in Saratov. The design institute at which she worked all but shut
down during the 1990s, forcing her to find employment elsewhere.
Volodarsky, Leonid Venyaminovich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20.
Volodarsky graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages where his
father taught. Finding graduate school not to his liking, he became highly
skilled at translating English-language films. He is a bitter opponent of
how Yeltsin carried out reform. Today Volodarsky has his own radio
program in Moscow.
Yanichkina (Belovolova), Natalya Aleksandrovna. Attended Saratov’s School
No. 42. Accused of cosmopolitanism, Yanichkina’s mother and grandmother
served stints in the Gulag in the early 1950s. Yanichkina and her husband—
whom she met while vacationing—spent many years in Magadan to earn
enough money to establish themselves in Saratov.
Yolshina, Natalya Pavlovna. Attended Saratov’s School No. 42. CPSU member.
Yolshina went to a special music school before enrolling in School No. 42 in
seventh grade after hearing so much about it from a friend. A familiar face in
Saratov because she has her own television show, Party member Yolshina
welcomed perestroika.
Zemskov, Sergei Yuryevich. Attended Moscow’s School No. 20. CPSU member.
Zemskov was born into a family of revolutionaries who knew repression
firsthand: his own grandfather “sat” for five years. Zemskov had vivid mem-
ories of Gulag survivors and old Bolsheviks he met at the family dacha as a
child, who, he remembered, harbored no animosity toward communism. He
is in private business today.
Zharovova (Proskuryakova), Yelena Vadimovna. Attended Moscow’s School
No. 20. Silver medalist Zharovova graduated from the Physics Department of
Moscow University, completed graduate study, and worked at a research
institute of the Academy of Sciences. She and her family reside in Moscow
today.
Notes
Introdution
1. Khrushchev’s outline for the communist utopia stressed that “the set program can be
fulfilled with success under conditions of peace,” a point lost on frightened Americans.
Harrison E. Salisbury, Khrushchev’s “Mein Kampf” (New York: Belmont Books, 1961), 132.
The very title of the Western publication grossly distorts the document’s purpose and
message.
2. Here I tweak a term coined by historian Stephen Kotkin, “to speak Soviet.” See his
Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1995).
3. Luisa Passerini, “Introduction,” International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories,
Vol. I, Memory and Totalitarianism, ed. Luisa Passerini (New York: Oxford University Press,
1992), 8.
4. Daria Khubova, Andrei Ivankiev, and Tonia Sharova, “After Glasnost: Oral History in the
Soviet Union,” International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories, Vol. I, Memory and
Totalitarianism, ed. Luisa Passerini (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 96.
5. Alen Blium (Alain Blum) and Sergei Zakharov, “Demograficheskaia istoriia SSSR i Rossii v
zerkale pokolenii,” Naselenie i Obshchestvo, no. 17 (February, 1997).http://www.infran.ru/
vovenko/60years_ww2/demogr1.htm.
6. Today the oblast occupies second place in Russia (after Krasnodar) in the volume of grain
production, and the city, with a population just over 900,000, ranks fifteenth in
population.
7. This information is drawn from <http://www.saratov.ru>; <http://www.
russianamericanchamber.org/regions/Saratov>; and G. A. Malinin, Saratov: Kratkii
ocherk-putevoditel’ (Saratov: Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1974).
8. Cited in Jan-Erik Ruth and Gary Kenyon, “Biography in Adult Development and Aging,”
in James E. Birren, et al., eds., Aging and Biography: Explorations in Adult Development (New
York: Springer Publishing Co., 1996), 4.
9. Here I use a scale on complexity that considers the themes, meanings, plots, characters,
relationships, and ways of life found in the oral narratives. See Brian de Vries and Allen J.
Lehman, “The Complexity of Personal Narratives,” in Birren, et al., eds., Aging and
Biography, 153.
10. Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral
History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 51.
11. Birren, et al., eds., Aging and Biography, 2. Other works that have shaped my thinking on
memory include: Harold Rosen, Speaking from Memory: Guide to Autobiographical Acts and
Practices (Stoke on Trent (UK): Trentham Books, 1998); Micaela Di Leonardo, “Oral
History as Ethnographic Encounter,” Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 1–20; Jaclyn
Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall, eds., Memory and History: Essays on Remembering and
Interpreting Human Experience (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992); David
Dunaway, “The Oral Biography,” Biography 14, no. 3 (1991): 256–66; and Rhonda Y.
Williams, “‘I’m a keeper of information’: History-telling and Voice,” Oral History Review
28, no. 1 (2001): 41–63.
378 | NOTES TO PAGES 12–45
12. Initially interrogating the texts for underlying belief systems, elusive patterns, missing
meanings, gaps, and emotional overtones, I soon realized that literary forms of analysis
presented the danger of my getting lost in language and that this could obstruct the
interpretive value of what my interviewees had to say.
13. Kenneth L. Kann, Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a California Jewish
Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 12–13.
14. In an oral history of East Germans born in 1949, Dorothee Wierling offers no explicit
argument, but underscores the importance of family in understanding life in the GDR.
See Geboren im Jahr Eins: Der Jahrgang 1949 in der DDR—Versuch einer Kollektivbiographie
(Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2002).
15. Yurchak focuses on postwar transformations at the level of discourse, ideology, language,
and ritual not to illuminate the causes for the Soviet Union’s collapse but “the conditions
that made the collapse possible without making it anticipated.” Rejecting the notion that
the single function of language is to reflect or express, Yurchak looks to the generative
properties of language, to how the effects of language can enable the performance of an
ideology that by no means subscribes to its “constative” statements, ones that present
facts or describe reality. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The
Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1, 4.
16. James V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2002), 172–73.
Chapter 1
1. Luisa Passerini, “Italian Working Class Culture between the Wars: Consensus to Fascism
and Work Ideology,” International Journal of Oral History 1 (February 1980): 10.
2. N. N. Maslov, “Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party
(Bolshevik): An Encyclopedia of Stalin’s Personality Cult,” Soviet Studies in History 28, no.
3 (1989–90): 42.
3. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), xvii. See also Galina
Mikhailovna Ivanova, Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System, ed.
Donald J. Raleigh and trans. Carol Flath (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 188.
4. Feiga Blekher, The Soviet Woman in the Family and Society: A Sociological Study (New York:
John Wiley, 1979), 49–50.
5. Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, trans.
and ed. by Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 102.
6. Ekaterina Foteeva, “Coping with Revolution: The Experiences of Well-to-Do Russian
Families,” in Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds., Living Through the
Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 68–92.
7. B. A. Grushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii v zerkale obshchestvennogo mneniia: Ocherki massovogo
soznaniia rossiian vremen Khrushcheva, Brezhneva, Gorbacheva i El’tsina v 4-kh knigakh. Zhizn’
1-ia: Epokha Khrushcheva (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 2001), 298–300.
8. The percentage of infants in state nurseries rose to over 30 percent before the end of the
1970s, but this expansion affected the Baby Boomers only as parents. Blekher, The Soviet
Woman, 163, 166.
9. Between 1960 and 1964, the government shut down 5,457 churches, leaving only 7,873
open as of January 1, 1965. See Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia:
Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years, trans. and ed. by Edward E.
Roslof (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 187.
10. Petr Vail’ and Aleksandr Genis, 60-e: Mir Sovetskogo cheloveka (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe
obozrenie, 2001), 262–63.
11. Ibid., 262.
12. Victoria Semenova, “Equality in Poverty: The Symbolic Meaning of kommunalki in the
1930s–50s,” in Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds., Living Through
the Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 64.
13. The cultural consequences of throwing together families from different social
backgrounds into such situations may have complicated the transmission of family values
NOTES TO PAGES 45–69 | 379
between generations but, based on the Baby Boomers’ memories, did not “bleach out”
old class identities as has been argued. Some “formers” managed to minimize the
obvious downside of living in congested quarters by taking in extended family members.
Doing so would only contribute to a strengthening of their identity as being “other.” See
Semenova, “Equality,” 59, also 64.
14. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 382.
15. Irene A. Boutenko and Kirill E. Razlogov, eds., Recent Social Trends in Russia, 1960–1995
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 7.
16. Viktoriia Semenova, Ekaterina Foteeva, and Daniel Bertaux, eds., Sud’by liudei: Rossiia XX
vek. Biografii semei kak ob”ekt sotsiologicheskogo issledovaniia (Moscow: Institut Sotsiologii
RAN, 1996), 352.
17. Kent H. Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1968), 207.
18. Grushin, Chetyre zhizni, 1: 125, 128, 138–54, and Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private
Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989), 68.
19. A. V. Baranov, Sotsial’no-demograficheskoe razvitie krupnogo goroda (Moscow: Finansy i
statistika, 1981), 158–59, and Shlapentokh, Public and Private, 68.
20. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (London: Verso, 2005), 386.
21. Nanci Adler, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Publishers, 2002), 122, 177, 183, and Idem., “The Returned of the Repressed:
Survival after the Gulag,” in Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds.,
Living Through the Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 214–15.
22. Alex Inkeles and Raymond A. Bauer, The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 96–98, 185, 251, 337, 377–93.
23. Zubkova, Russia after the War, 160.
24. Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), 159.
26. Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2009), 111.
27. Eric Shiraev and Vladislav Zubok, Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Stalin to Putin
(Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave, 2000), 13.
28. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 185–210. Quotation found on 201.
29. Cited in ibid., 210.
30. Susan E. Reid, “Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer
Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev,” Slavic Review 61, no. 2 (2002): 211–52.
31. Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1951), vii, 324.
Chapter 2
1. Cited in Matthew J. Von Bencke, The Politics of Space: A History of U.S.-Soviet/Russian
Competition and Cooperation in Space (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 18–19.
2. Cited in <http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/SPACEFLIGHT/Sputnik/SP16.htm>.
3. Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker and Co., 2001).
4. This “achievement” did receive mixed reviews. Its detractors nicknamed Sputnik II “Muttnik”
because Laika became the first casualty to space exploration when the satellite overheated.
5. A. A. Demezer, compiler, Domovodstvo, 4th ed. (Moscow: Kolos, 1965), 85.
6. Mervyn Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union: Politics and Institutions since Stalin
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 19–20, 27.
7. National Education Association of the United States. Division of Travel Service, Soviet
Schools: A Firsthand Report Based on a Trip through the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by a
Group of Sixty-Four American Educators (Washington, D.C.: Division of Travel Service,
National Education Association, 1960), 5–16, 32.
8. Susan Jacoby, Inside Soviet Schools (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 10–11, 15, 19–20.
9. Urie Bronfenbrenner, Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. (New York: Pocket Books,
1970), xii.
10. See Vsesoiuznaia pionerskaia organizatsiia imeni V.I. Lenina. Vsesoiuznyi leninskii
kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhi. Tsentral’nyi komitet, Tovarishch: Zapisnaia knizhka
pionera na 1961/62 uchebnyi god (Moscow: [s.n.], 1961), 11–12.
11. The career patterns of three-quarters of the graduates involved use of English. John
Dunstan, Paths to Excellence and the Soviet School (Rochester [UK]: NFER Publishing, 1977),
93–101.
12. Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union, 28.
13. Jacoby, Inside Soviet Schools, 109.
14. Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds., “Introduction,” in idem., Living
Through the Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 4.
15. Jacoby, Inside Soviet Schools, 198.
16. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 25.
17. See Vsesoiuznaia pionerskaia organizatsiia, Tovarishch, 170.
18. Ibid., 74–75.
19. Ibid., 240–41.
20. Ibid., 42–47.
21. See, for instance, Ia. A. Ioffe, My i planeta: Tsifry i fakty (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi
Literatury, 1967), 7.
22. Vsesoiuznaia pionerskaia organizatsiia, Tovarishch, 10.
23. Vladimir A. Kozlov argues that people protested under Khrushchev because they believed
in the system and that they might improve it. See his Mass Uprisings in the USSR: Protest
and Rebellion in the Post-Stalin Years, trans. and ed. by Elaine McClarnand MacKinnon
(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002).
24. Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 192.
25. See Legend No. 22 on the website http://www.s2067.narod.ru/ .
26. Vail’ and Genis, 60-e, 13, 16.
27. Iurii Aksiutin has recently argued that many elements in Soviet society were unprepared
for the attack on Stalin and thus on their belief system. See his Khrushchevskaia “ottepel’ ” i
obshchestvennye nastroeniia v SSSR v 1953–1964 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2004).
28. Catriona Kelly, “‘The School Waltz’: The Everyday Life of the Post-Stalinist Soviet
Classroom,” Forum for Anthropology and Culture, no. 1 (2004), 152.
Chapter 3
1. Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 99–100.
2. See I. S. Kon, Druzhba: Etiko-psikhologicheskii ocherk (Moscow: Politizdat, 1980), 9–11, 25,
29, 133–34.
3. Vladimir Shlaptentokh, Love, Marriage, and Friendship in the Soviet Union: Ideals and
Practices (New York: Praeger, 1984), 213–45.
4. Vail’ and Genis, 60-e, 64.
5. Vsesoiuznaia pionerskaia organizatsiia, Tovarishch, 195. This was true elsewhere as well. See
N. B. Lebina and A. N. Chistikov, Obyvatel’ i reformy: Kartiny povsednevnoi zhizni gorozhan v
gody nepa i Khrushchevskogo desiatiletiia (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003), 297.
6. Grushin, Chetyre, 1: 460, 488.
7. <http://www.kinoexpert.ru/index.asp?comm=4&num=3452>.
8. Grushin, Chetyre, 1: 406.
9. Shlapentokh, Public and Private, 147.
10. Ibid., 195–217.
11. Reid, “Cold War in the Kitchen,” 232–33.
13. Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to
Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 360.
14. Poleznye sovety (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1959), 491.
NOTES TO PAGES 143–168 | 381
15. Anna Rotkirch, “‘What kind of sex can you talk about?’: Acquiring Sexual Knowledge in
Three Soviet Generations,” in Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds.,
Living Through the Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 106.
16. Igor S. Kon, The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Czars to Today, trans. by
James Riordan (New York: Free Press, 1995), 86, 88.
17. Ibid., 89.
18. Rotkirch, “‘What kind,’” 106.
19. Kon, Sexual Revolution, 187.
20. Alex Inkeles, Social Change in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1968), 344, and Liudmila Alekseeva, U.S. Broadcasting to the Soviet Union (New York: U.S.
Helsinki Watch Committee, 1986), 9.
21. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 33, 38–40, 42–54, 63–64, 115–16, 153–56. For the Soviet
depiction of VOA, see Inkeles, Social Change, 344–45.
22. Georgie Anne Geyer, The Young Russians (Homewood, Ill.: ETC Publications, 1975), 157;
Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the
Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), 181–82; and Alekseeva
[Alexeyeva], U.S. Broadcasting, 9.
23. Alekseeva, U.S. Broadcasting, 1–3.
25. Alan M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 19, 39, 62, 179, 183.
26. Shiraev and Zubok, Anti-Americanism, 13–15.
27. A. Adzhubei et al., Litsom k litsu s Amerikoi: Rasskaz o poezdke N. S. Khrushcheva v SShA,
15–17 sentiabria 1959 goda (Moscow: Gos. Izdatel’stvo, 1959), 25, 149, 269, 508–13.
28. Ibid., 5, 7, 19.
29. This demonstrates that “the high measure of people’s dependence on texts of an official
political nature and on propaganda.” Grushin, Chetyre, 1: 69–70, 89–99. Quote on 99.
30. At the time, 16,000 foreigners were studying at Soviet universities and another 12,000
were involved in on-the-job training. See Geyer, Young Russians, 64.
31. Ibid., 60, 62.
32. Writings on generations tend to emphasize the role they play in presenting alternatives to
the status quo. But what determines a generation? Sociologist Karl Mannheim argued that
generations become an actuality only when there is a bond created by instability (such as
the Great Depression or World War II). See Bryan Turner and June Edmunds, eds.,
Generational Consciousness, Narrative and Politics (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 4.
However, in emphasizing the impact of the Baby Boomers’ generation worldwide, two
Finnish scholars point out that instability affects people of all ages similarly and argue
instead that change experienced as something positive becomes a “generational
experience.” Tommi Hoikkala, Semi Purhonen and J. P. Roos, “The Baby Boomers: Life’s
Turning Points and Generational Consciousness,” in Turner and Edmunds, eds.,
Generational Consciousness, 145–46, 159–62, quote on 162.
33. James R. Millar, ed., Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet
Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 61, 64, 94–95.
34. Ibid., 27.
35. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xvi, 58.
37. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Public Opinion and Ideology: Mythology and Pragmatism in
Interaction (New York: Praeger, 1986), 137–40.
Chapter 4
1. See, e.g., Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation, expanded
edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
2. Millar, ed., Politics, x–xii.
3. Shlapentokh, Public and Private, 13, 63, 153, 170.
4. Inkeles, Social Change, 60.
382 | N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 6 8 – 21 8
5. Geyer, Young Russians, 49.

6. Matthews, Education, 101, and V. T. Lisovskii and A. V. Dmitriev, Lichnost’ studenta
(Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1974), 9.
7. Ioffe, My i planeta, 168–69.
8. Lisovskii and Dmitriev, Lichnost’ studenta, 10–11.
9. Ibid., 42.
10. This was the case, not only owing to a growth of interest in the latter but also to an
expansion of polytechnic institutes and related technical colleges. See Matthews,
Education, 130–31, and Lisovskii and Dmitriev, Lichnost’ studenta, 43–44.
11. Katerina Katz, Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination (New
York: Palgrave, 2001), 76.
13. Georgie Geyer observed that, although patriotic, loyal, and proud of the USSR’s
achievements, “the study of Marxism bores them to death . . . and so does ideology.” Geyer,
Young Russians, 47.
14. Matthews, Education, 124–25.
15. Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals, 171.
16. Vail’ and Genis, 60-e, 310–11, 314–17.
17. Lisovskii and Dmitriev, Lichnost’ studenta, 116, 125–29.
18. In 1970, the average monthly wage in Saratov oblast was 115.9 rubles ($150), slightly below
that of Moscow. N. I. Ivanov, Narodnoe khoziaistvo Saratovskoi oblasti (k 50-letiiu so dnia
obrazovaniia oblasti): Statisticheskii sbornik (Saratov: Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo,
1984), 50.
19. Alastair McAuley, Women’s Work and Wages in the Soviet Union (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1981), 29.
20. Blekher, Soviet Woman, 83, 110–11, 115–20, 217–23; and Geyer, Young Russians, 189.
21. See Bakhyt Kenzheev [Kenzheyev], Zoloto goblinov: Romany (Moscow: Izd-vo Nezavisimaia
gazeta, 2000).
22. Vail’ and Genis, 60-e, 298–302.
23. David L. Ruffley, Children of Victory: Young Specialists and the Evolution of Soviet Society
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), 7–9.
24. Matthews, Education, 113.
25. Millar, ed., Politics, 207. See Wesley A. Fisher, The Soviet Marriage Market: Mate Selection in
Russia and the USSR (New York: Praeger, 1980), 149, and Vladimir Shlapentokh, Love,
Marriage, and Friendship in the Soviet Union: Ideals and Practices (New York: Praeger, 1984),
68–69, 77.
26. Peter H. Juviler, “The Soviet Family in Post-Stalin Perspective,” in Stephen F. Cohen,
Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet, eds., The Soviet Union since Stalin
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 231–33, 243.
27. Shlapentokh, Love, 41, 46, 65, 129, and Fisher, Soviet Marriage Market, 22, 26.
28. Fisher, Soviet Marriage Market, 175, 192, 205, 211, 229, 239, 245; Shlapentokh, Love, 173, 176.
29. The government had rescinded its ban on marriage to foreigners in 1953 but greatly
discouraged this conduct. In 1976, only 8,000 Soviet women married foreigners and left to
live abroad in 110 countries. Few foreign women married Soviet men. Fisher, Soviet
Marriage Market, 255.
30. Ibid., 2–11, 20–26, 33–37, 41–42, 103.
31. Shlapentokh, Love, 123.
32. Kelly, Refining Russia, 339.
33. Lebina and Chistikov, Obyvatel’ i reformy, 289.
34. John Bushnell, “The ‘New Soviet Man’ Turns Pessimist,” in Stephen F. Cohen, Alexander
Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet, eds., The Soviet Union since Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1980), 179–80, 190–93.
35. Shiraev and Zubok, Anti-Americanism, 21.
36. Bushnell, “‘New Soviet Man’,” 192–93.
37. See, for instance, V. M. Matveev and A. N. Panov, V mire vezhlivosti (Moscow: Molodaia
gvardiia, 1983), especially pp. 10, 29–30, 33 (citation), 40–72.
38. Geyer, Young Russians, ii.
N O T E S T O P A G E S 21 9 – 2 5 0 | 383
39. Millar, ed., Politics, 28. In contrast, Soviet bureaucrats, state employees, the peasantry, and
blue-collar workers remained impervious to Western culture, indifferent to foreign radio
broadcasts, and hostile to Soviet dissidents, associating peace and stability with a
strapping state. See Shiraev and Zubok, Anti-Americanism, 24.
40. Ruffley, Children of Victory, 175–76.
Chapter 5
1. George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 4–5, 7.
2. See George Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), and Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, eds.,
Brezhnev Reconsidered (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
3. Although some of capitalism’s most vocal critics have acknowledged that it remains
adaptive and able to survive systemic crises, they point to signs of the system’s social
decay worldwide. Still others insist that the capitalist industrial system has already given
way to a modern information society. Supporters of the term “late capitalism” have
isolated its features such as accelerated technological innovation and globalization of
financial capital, but mostly its negative ones such as states’ efforts to exert more social
controls, intensified competition, a permanent arms economy, the ever-growing gap
between rich and poor (both within and among countries), neocolonialism, and the
market’s breakdown of traditional social institutions. See, among others, Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1991); David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago, Press,
1982); and Timothy Bewes, Reification; or, The Anxiety of Late Capitalism (London and New
York: Verso, 2002).
4. Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals, 172–202.
5. L. A. Gordon and E. V. Klopov, Poteri i obreteniia v Rossii devianostykh: Istoriko-
sotsiologicheskie ocherki ekonomicheskogo polozheniia narodnogo bol’shinstva. Vol. 1,
Meniaiushchaisia strana v meniaiushchemsia mire: Predposylki peremen v usloviiakh truda i
urovne zhizni (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2000), 125–26.
6. Blekher, Soviet Woman, 136.
7. Vladimir Shalpentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society: How the Soviet Union Functioned and
How It Collapsed (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 123.
8. Millar, ed., Politics, 33–49.
9. Ibid., 95, 111, 113, 132.
11. Ibid., 142. As Susan Reid argued, “management of consumption was as significant for the
Soviet system’s long survival as for its ultimate collapse.” See “Cold War in the Kitchen,” 212.
12. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (London: Verso, 2005), 355.
13. James Millar, “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism,” in Terry
L. Thompson and Robert Sheldon, eds., Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of Vera
S. Dunham (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988) 7–8.
14. Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2–3.
15. Ibid., 6–7.
16. “The Soviet government, Soviet society, cannot rid itself of corruption as long as it
remains Soviet. It is as simple as that,” argued Konstantin M. Simis. See his USSR: The
Corrupt Society. The Secret World of Soviet Capitalism, trans. by Jacqueline Edwards and
Mitchell Schneider (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 205–96, quotation on 300.
17. Cited in Shlapentokh, Public and Private, 62.
18. Millar, ed., Politics, 132–33.
19. Shlapentokh, Public and Private, 157, 154, 157,
20. L. G. Ionin, Svoboda v SSSR: Stat’i i esse (St. Petersburg: Fond “Universitetskaia kniga,”
1997), 35.
21. A. A. Dorokhov, Eto ne melochi (Moscow: Politizdat, 1961), 11.
384 | N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 5 0 – 31 3
23. Boutenko and Razlogov, Recent Social Trends, 21.

24. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in
Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 132.
25. Catherine Merridale’s book on the common Soviet soldier at war confirms this point. See
Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
26. See Christopher Ward, Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
27. In this regard they served as the state’s agents “in reforming the material culture of
everyday life.” See Reid, “Cold War in the Kitchen,” 220–21.
28. Millar, ed., Politics, 51.
29. Shlapentokh, Love, 210–11.
30. Dorokhov, Eto ne melochi, 17.
31. Anna Temkina and Anna Rotkirch, “Soviet Gender Contracts and their Shifts in
Contemporary Russia,” Idantutkimus: Finnish Journal of Russian and East European Studies 2
(1997): 7, and Boutenko and Razlogov, Recent Social Trends, 54, 60.
32. Shlapentokh, Love, 4–5.
33. Bertaux, Thompson, and Rotkirch, eds., “Introduction,” 4.
Chapter 6
1. M. K. Gorshkov, Rossiiskoe obshchestvo v usloviiakh transformatsii. Mify i real’nost’:
Sotsiologicheskii analiz, 1992–2002 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2003), 418–19.
2. Alexander Dallin, “Causes of the Collapse of the USSR,” in Alexander Dallin and Gail W.
Lapidus, eds., The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
1995), 549–64.
3. Ibid., 550–60.
4. Ferenc Feher and Andrew Arato, eds., Gorbachev: The Debate (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989), 5–6.
5. Shlapentokh, Normal Totalitarian Society, 186.
7. Nancy Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1997), 167–68.
8. Wertsch, Voices, 172–73.
9. Ibid.
10. See Marianne Hirsch’s Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
11. Dallin, “Causes,” 561.
12. B. Z. Doktorov, A. A. Oslon, and E. S. Petrenko, Epokha El’tsina: Mneniia Rossiian.
Sotsiologicheskie ocherki (Moscow: Institut fonda “Obshchestvennoe mnenie,” 2002), 54.
13. Shlapentokh, Soviet Public Opinion, xii–xiii, 31–36, 45, 100, 106.
14. See ch. 2, p. 97.
15. Bertaux, Thompson, and Rotkirch, “Introduction,” 5.
16. As a result, by the 1990s Russia was, according to some Russian scholars, “a hundred times
behind the most developed countries of the West in almost all of the main directions of
informatization.” Gordon and Klopov, Poteri, 1: 29.
Chapter 7
1. Yuri Levada et al., “Russia: Anxiously Surviving,” in Vladimir Shlapentokh and Eric
Shiraev, eds., Fears in Post-Communist Societies: A Comparative Perspective (New York:
Palgrave, 2002), 18–22, 27–28, and Anne White, Small-Town Russia: Postcommunist
Livelihoods and Identities. A Portrait of the Intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and
Zubtsov, 1999–2000 (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 18, 41.
2. Doktorov et al., Epokha, 276. As a result of an economic crisis in 1998, however, when the
devaluated ruble collapsed, resulting in another short but alarming economic downspin,
50 percent of the population now had positive things to say about the Soviet planned
N O T E S T O P A G E S 31 3 – 3 3 4 | 385
economy and state distribution of goods. Many Russians held that law and order, stability,
social security, a strong state, and a dignified life would (re)unite society. See Iu. A.
Levada, Ot mnenii k ponimaniiu: Sotsiologicheskie ocherki, 1993–2000 (Moscow: Shkola
politicheskikh issledovanii, 2000), 437; Doktorov et al., Epokha, 87–88, 90.
3. Doktorov et al., Epokha, 87–88, 90.
4. White, Small-Town Russia, 23. See also p. 30.
5. Gorshkov, Rossiiskoe obshchestvo, 306.
6. Levada et al., “Russia: Anxiously Surviving,” 28.
7. This rise of anti-Americanism notwithstanding, historians Shiraev and Zubok noted that
no Weimar Russia emerged, no backlash, because Moscow, Russia’s “Klondike,” the
political hub of the nation with 7 percent of the country’s population, lived better than
the rest of Russia, paying 20 percent of its taxes, and remained far more pro-Western than
elsewhere. Shiraev and Zubok, Anti-Americanism, 59–61. As a corollary, Anne White’s study
of small-town Russia at the end of the decade confirms a resiliency in communities
despite the economic collapse. She found that neighbors trusted one another, that family
members supported each other, and that reported crime was remarkably low. She also
corroborated that, after 1994, socioeconomic indicators improved until the devaluation of
the ruble in 1998. By 2000, however, the economy again showed signs of growth as infant
mortality and unemployment dropped, even though male life expectancy and the divorce
rate further deteriorated. See White, Small-Town Russia, 1, 19–20, 41.
8. Gordon and Klopov, Poteri, 1: 2, 208–12, 244, 257, 282–92, 479–80.
9. Alena Ledeneva, Unwritten Rules: How Russia Really Works (London: Centre for European
Reform, 2001), 1, 7, 9, 37.
10. Boutenko and Razlogov, eds., Recent Social Trends, 29–32.
11. Dana Vannoy et al., eds., Marriages in Russia: Couples during the Economic Transition
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 138, 178–79, 184.
12. O. S. Libova, “Otechestvennaia literatura XX veka v fondakh bibliotek i v chtenii rossiian,”
in Chtenie v bibliotekakh Rossii: Informatsionnoe izdanie. No. 3, Otechestvennaia literatura v
chtenii rossiian (St. Petersburg: Russian National Library, 2002), 9–14.
13. Ionin, Svoboda v SSSR, 29.
15. Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 8–9.
16. Shiraev and Zubok, Anti-Americanism, 36–38, 41–43, 45–47.
17. Gorshkov, Rossiiskoe obshchestvo, 49–52, 55.
18. Ibid., 75.
21. Ibid., 118.
22. Ibid., 212, 226.
23. Ibid., 249, 255, 271.
24. Doktorov et al., Epokha, 224.
26. Ibid., 80–84, 109–23.
27. That year, 44 percent of the population saw the United States as Russia’s number one
nuclear threat (as opposed to 10 percent who saw China in this regard), although
Muscovites remained more pro-Western than others. Levada et al., “Russia: Anxiously
Surviving,” 23–25.
28. Doktorov et al., Epokha, 88; Levada, Ot mnenii, 179–80.
29. During the elections in 2000, the young and those in favor of “law and order” tended to
support Putin. People voting against him voiced concern over his close ties to Yeltsin, the
fact that he was a relatively unknown dark horse, and his lack of a program. Only 4.5
percent of those polled saw his KGB background as something negative. Gorshkov,
Rossiiskoe obshchestvo, 394.
30. Ibid., 332, and 414.
31. Ibid., 422–24, 431, 443, 455, 458, 474–75.
32. Daniel Bertaux in collaboration with Marina Malysheva, “The Cultural Model of the
Russian Popular Classes and the Transition to a Market Economy,” in Daniel Bertaux,
Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds., Living Through the Soviet System (New York:
Routledge, 2004), 48–51.
34. These developments draw on Russian neoconservatism—and on the country’s political
tradition based on what analyst Lilia Shevtsova has called “power personified.” See her
Russia Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies, trans. by Arch Tait (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007).
35. Levada et al., “Russia: Anxiously Surviving,” 26.
36. Boutenko and Razlogov, eds., Recent Social Trends, 266–67, 270, 318, 322.
37. Fran Markowitz, Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2000), 33, 4.
38. Ibid., 17, 19, 57, 70, 123.
39. Ibid., 126.
40. Ibid., 171, 175, 177, 195, 196, 203, 207.
41. Ibid., 214, 225. Interestingly, she found them more willing to talk about smoking, alcohol,
and drugs than about sex. Russian sociologist Igor Kon’s sex survey of Moscow teenagers
between the ages of sixteen and nineteen found that 54.8 percent of girls and 77.5 percent
of boys claimed to be sexually active. Unfortunately, no comparable data are available
from the Soviet period. See ibid., 137, 135.
42 Victoria Semenova and Paul Thompson, “Family Models and Transgenerational
Influences: Grandparents, Parents, and Children in Moscow and Leningrad from the
Soviet to the Market Era,” in Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, and Anna Rotkirch, eds.,
Living Through the Soviet System (New York: Routledge, 2004), 121–22.
43. E-mail letter from Anna Obraztsova to Donald J. Raleigh, June 6, 2008.
44. Tommi Hoikkala, Semi Purhonen and J. P. Roos, “The Baby Boomers: Life’s Turning Points
and Generational Consciousness,” in Bryan Turner and June Edmunds, eds., Generational
Consciousness, Narrative and Politics (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 145–46, 162.
45. “Generation Pu,” Russkii Newsweek, no. 19, May 25, 2008, 38–45.
46. Gorshkov, Rossiiskoe obshchestvo, 393, 494.
47. Doktorov et al., Epokha, 7–16.
48. Levada, Ot mnenii, 493–94.
49. Gorshkov, Rossiiskoe obshchestvo, 487–93.
50. Bertaux, “Cultural Model,” 51.
51. Levada, Ot mnenii, 405, 448.
53. Levada, Ot mnenii, 71–72.
54. Johnson List, no. 1, January 8, 2004, Who lives well in Russia?
Conculsion
1. Donald A. Ritchie, “Foreword,” in Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall, eds., Memory and
History: Essays on Remembering and Interpreting Human Experience (Lanham, Md.: University
Press of America, 1992), vi.
2. Khubova connected these remarks to two polls taken in the city of Vladimir revealing that
people incorporated into their own personal stories things they had heard on television,
clutching at stories to make sense of their own. Khubova, et al., “After Glasnost,” 96.
3. Psychologists have shown how people draw on these personal stories in making
important decisions in life. See Benedict Carey, “This is Your Life (and How You Tell It),”
New York Times, May 22, 2007.
4. Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals, 172–202.
5. Semenova, Sud’by liudei, 4.
6. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, 295.
7. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1994), 94.
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Index
Abortion, 20, 144, 312 on Soviet policies, 114, 179, 239

A class (School No. 20), 10, 76, 96, 104 wives of, 204–05, 300, 305, 308
A class (School No. 42), 9, 70–71, 73, 78, Alekseyeva, Lyudmila, 147
91, 139, 144–45, 303 Altshuller, Igor, 109, 127, 296, 300
Affirmative action, 17, 27, 32, 34, 117–18 America. See United States
Afghanistan, 76, 194, 216, 221, 239, 243, American exhibition, 59–61, 156
261–67, 269, 275, 279, 293, 331, Americans
343, 361 attitudes toward, 113, 157–58, 160, 253,
Africa, 61, 63, 89, 110–11, 150–51, 191, 224, 255, 304, 317, 324, 332, 367
288–89, 298, 301 depictions of, 156–58
Aksyonov, Vasily, 182 interaction with, 19, 61–62, 99–100,
Alcohol 134, 160–61, 209–10, 215, 248,
campaign against, 273–74, 277, 319 260, 304, 308, 310, 349–50, 365
consumption of, 85, 126–27, 138–39, 144, Andropov, Yury, 242–43, 268–69
216, 297, 319, 327, 329, 333, 339, Anti-Americanism, 332, 385 n.7
342–43 Anti-cosmopolitan campaign, 7, 32, 51
Alcoholism, 9, 26, 55, 70, 83, 126, 138, Anti-Semitism, 7, 10, 18, 32–34, 103, 169,
201, 205, 217, 319, 321, 343, 353 173–75, 195–97, 217, 256–57, 298,
Alekseyev, Viktor 306, 357
adulthood of, 127, 229, 236, 239, 296, Apartments. See housing
300, 305, 308, 364 Armenia and Armenians, 73, 273,
brother of, 26, 46, 80 291, 293
career of, 26, 238, 296, 300, 305, 308 Artyomova, Tatyana
childhood of, 46, 103, 121, 127, 130, 143 career of, 198, 200, 235, 300, 305
children of, 305, 347 childhood of, 39, 48, 121, 148, 152
family of, 29, 36, 44, 46, 103, 112 children of, 300, 345
on foreign countries and leaders, 153, college years of, 192
161, 212, 305 on Communist Party, 198, 200
on gender, 258 family of, 24, 27, 39, 56–57, 152
on generations, 347 on foreign countries and leaders,
on Party and state leaders, 109, 151–52, 155, 159, 161, 212, 217, 300,
240–42, 273, 338 305, 308
photos of, 105 on generations, 345
school experiences of, 80, 94, 103, husband of, 202, 217,
131, 146 300, 305
396 | INDEX
Artyomova (continued ) on foreign countries and leaders, 155,

on Party and state leaders, 179, 158, 212
329, 338 on generations, 164, 342
school experiences of, 79, 89, 103–04, on Party leaders, 270, 278
144, 148 school experiences of, 70, 82, 98,
on Soviet policies, 179, 286 100, 155
on Soviet system, 235 on Soviet policies, 180, 263, 270,
Arzhanova, Tatyana 278, 286
adulthood of, 236, 301, 307 wives of, 186, 202–03, 205
career of, 194–95, 215, 301 Baikal-Amur Magistral Railway (BAM),
childhood of, 41, 47, 63, 129–31, 139 185, 237, 254–55
children of, 41, 301 Bakutina, Marina
college years of, 172 adulthood of, 225, 240, 306, 308,
on foreign countries and leaders, 314, 368
215–16, 307 career of, 199, 306
on generations, 163, 278 childhood of, 63, 123, 125, 160–61, 356
grandparents of, 25, 39, 47, 51–52, children of, 306, 308, 314
57, 79 college years of, 199, 209, 215
husband of, 194–95, 301, 308, 339 on communism and Communist
parents of, 24–26, 39, 41, 47, 57, 61, 68, Party, 198–199, 359
79–80, 124, 161, 163, 172, 194, 301, family of, 63, 103, 123, 149, 160, 163,
338–39 199, 306, 356, 359
on Party and state leaders, 57, on foreign countries and leaders,
241–42, 338 215, 308
photos of, 68, 308, 339 husbands of, 306, 308, 314
school experiences of, 68, 76, 79–80, on Party leaders, 272
88, 104, 123–24, 127–28, 145–46 photos of, 307
on Soviet policies, 278, 285–86 school experiences of, 89–90, 96–97,
Astrology, 322 100, 103, 134
Atheism, 4, 41–45, 68–69, 322, 353 on Soviet policies, 281–83
Atomic bomb, 6, 22, 66, 153, 158 Ball, Alan, 156
August coup (1991), 270, 282, 291–92, Baltic states, 7, 29, 208, 233, 289,
325–26, 330 293, 330, 332
Australia, 73, 99, 209 See also Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
Austria, 61, 63, 301 Baptism, 41, 43–44, 321–22
Authors, influential, 99, 129–32, 160, 167, Bari, Aleksandr, 17
180–82, 206, 245–46, 256, 280, Barysheva, Irina
284–85, 322 adulthood of, 228, 231, 233, 295–96, 320
career of, 230, 295
Babushkin, Aleksandr childhood of, 48–49, 58
adulthood of, 228, 233, 237, 252 children of, 345
career of, 186, 202 on Communist Party, 200, 230, 296
childhood of, 56, 131, 148, 233 family of, 18–19, 21, 27, 48–49, 58, 78,
children of, 202, 205, 342 81, 93–94, 115–16, 170, 200,
college years of, 181, 202 229–31, 279, 291, 328
family of, 16, 24, 36, 100, 164 husband of, 92, 230, 295–96
INDEX | 397
on Party and state leaders, 271, 279, 328 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 130–31
school experiences of, 71, 73, 78, Bulgaria and Bulgarians, 76, 210–13, 215,
81–82, 92–94, 115–16, 229, 266 248, 295
on Soviet system, 266, 279, 310 Bushnell, John, 210
BBC, 141, 146–50, 208–09 Bystrov, Vladimir
B class (School No. 20), 10, 75–77, 80, adulthood of, 155, 202, 227, 229, 256
89, 96, 104–05, 146 career of, 198
B class (School No. 42), 9, 70–71, 73, childhood of, 130, 134
91–92, 107, 115–16, 128, 139, 145, children of, 202, 350
318, 320, 365 college years of, 185
Beatles, 85, 122, 137, 139–42, 148, 159, 167, on Communist Party, 198, 286, 359
218, 244, 360 family of, 164, 240–41
Belgium, 297 on foreign countries and leaders, 155,
Belorussia, 24, 28–29, 270, 284, 317, 330 160, 297
and Belorussians, 19, 73 on generations, 350
Birth control, 144 on Party leaders, 108, 113, 240–41,
Birthrate, 7, 65, 201, 206, 312 243, 272
Black market, 97, 126–27, 140, 181, 228, school experiences of, 89, 94, 96, 112,
230–31, 236, 352, 361 116
Blat, 49, 71, 79–80, 118, 169, 171, 174, on Soviet policies, 154, 179, 286
185–86, 200, 222, 225, 228–30, on Soviet system, 279
239, 266, 345, 357, 361, 265
Bolsheviks, 19–20, 51, 83, 175, 230, Camp
279, 286 Adler, 101
See also October Revolution Artek, 101, 176, 216
Books, influential, 87, 129–32, 157, 167, English-language, 103–06
180–82, 252, 283–84, 319, 322 international youth, 198, 213, 266
Boym, Svetlana, 166 Labor and Rest, 101–02
Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich military, 188
attitudes toward, 179, 220, 237–38, Pioneer, 100–01, 103, 118, 210, 301
240–42, 262, 266, 275, 279, sports, 100, 183
294, 362 summer, 100–106, 118, 127, 137, 142–43
death of, 237, 242, 269 Campaign to overtake America, 3, 12,
era, 163, 220–23, 232–33, 236–41, 255, 60, 67, 110–12, 114, 118, 166, 250,
266, 274, 309, 327, 361 269, 336, 360
jokes about, 220, 242, 360, 362 Canada, 137, 276
policies of, 113, 150, 178, 185, 220–21, and Canadians, 206
228, 236, 245, 252–54, 259, emigration to, 4, 13, 160, 194, 291, 301,
262, 269 308, 339
See also specific policy initiatives life in, 236, 276, 304, 310
Bribery, 58, 170, 172, 174, 185, 230, 237, travel to, 324
317, 330, 353 visitors from, 99, 247
Brigades, work, 23, 154, 179, 182–85, Capitalism, 3, 20, 60, 150, 155–58, 222,
202, 255 232, 249–50, 333, 383 n. 3
Bronfenbrenner, Urie, 69 transition to, 14, 166, 237, 272, 323,
Buddhism, 322 331, 336, 346, 367–68
398 | INDEX
Careers Class. See individual social classes

of Baby Boomers, 185–87, 189–95, 238, Closed society, 64, 87, 323
257–61, 266, 288–90, 304, 314–16, Clubs, school, 124–25, 210, 357
349, 359, 362 Cold War, 3–6, 9, 11–13, 42, 53, 60,
and children, 206–08 66–67, 77, 118, 141, 152, 156,
of children of perestroika, 345–46, 158–59, 167, 274, 332, 366
348–49 Collective farm (kolkhoz), 19, 38, 40, 53,
and Communist Party membership, 102, 182–84, 202, 337
54–55, 197–200, 219 Collectivization, 7, 21, 45, 51, 91, 147, 164,
influence of, 256–57 175, 352
Castro, Fidel, 150–52 College. See higher education
C class (School No. 20), 10, 76, 84, 97, Colonialism, 150, 167
117, 128 Colton, Timothy, 325
Censorship, 53, 65, 206, 238, 289 Commonwealth of Independent States
self-, 178, 249, 265, 358 (CIS), 270, 310
Chechnya, war in, 330–31, 333–35, 337, Communism, 5, 6, 42, 106, 17, 176, 289,
341, 343 294, 323, 337
Chemodurova, Irina achievement of, 3, 13, 20, 75, 110–11,
adulthood of, 225, 227, 250, 287 114, 119, 157, 166–67, 221, 232, 294,
childhood of, 129, 131, 142, 251–52 325, 360
college years of, 184, 223 belief in, 50, 55, 58, 109–10, 157, 179,
on Communist Party, 198 232, 250–51
on gender, 261 builders of, 67, 75, 184, 356–57
on generations, 165, 357 building of, 10, 67, 110–12, 117–19, 151,
parents of, 28, 198, 287 159, 166, 250, 357, 360–61
on Party leaders, 251–52 collapse of, 5, 39, 166, 321, 331, 362
on Soviet policies, 178, 245 true believers in, 15, 55, 81, 176,
school experiences of, 71–72, 78, 198–99, 208, 219, 250, 328,
91–93, 98, 101, 136–37, 158 359, 366
on Soviet system, 250, 277–78 Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Chernenko, Konstantin, 243 (CPSU)
Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 269, 273 attitudes toward, 165, 197–200, 219,
Childhood, happy, 120–21, 166, 206, 343 262, 267, 287, 289, 359
Children, of perestroika, 338–53, Central Committee of, 7, 28, 175, 216,
363–64, 386 n.41 268–69, 272, 275, 278, 329
China, 6, 22, 29, 63, 241 after collapse, 327–28
and Chinese, 59, 154 fall from power, 272, 282, 313
Soviet relations with, 152–55, 189 and housing, 45, 48
travel to, 155, 192, 297 meetings of, 54, 57, 180, 200, 211, 257,
Christianity, 67, 196, 214, 321–22 290, 292
Chubais, Anatoly, 326–27, 333 membership in, 197–200, 219, 269,
Churchill, Winston, 96, 367 286, 359
Cinema. See films neighborhood committees of, 55,
Civil defense, 90, 159 230, 199, 211, 215, 230, 290
Civil War, 16–18, 20, 28, 37, 39, 51, 84, oblast committees of, 70, 101, 186,
134, 253, 256, 262, 269 284, 287, 325
INDEX | 399
parents’ membership in, 9–10, 22, 44, Czechoslovakia, 99, 133, 155, 210, 222
54–55, 70–71, 74, 91, 101, 117–18, invasion of, 146, 148, 150, 178–80,
149, 197–99, 356, 359 209, 213, 218, 221, 239, 244, 263,
policies of, 42, 49, 54, 64–65, 67, 275, 358, 364
109–10, 119, 155, 178, 187, 235, travel to, 212–13, 217, 244, 295, 358
244–45, 262, 267, 269–70, 285, 357 visitors from, 210, 223
resignation from, 290, 292, 326
slogans of, 184, 251, 262, 267, 366 Dancing, 59, 81, 122, 124, 138–39, 153,
Twentieth Congress of (1956), 53, 167, 183, 301
56–58, 91, 95, 113 Darchenko, Arkady
Twenty-second Party Congress of adulthood of, 226, 238, 245–47, 318–19
(1961), 67, 75, 108 career of, 187, 191–92, 257–58, 315, 345
Confidence in tomorrow, 164, 236–37, childhood of, 30–31, 47–48, 121, 133,
244, 312, 340, 345 141, 147–48
Congress of People’s Deputies, 245, 269, children of, 207, 238, 342, 346
285, 292, 326 college years of, 171, 180, 183, 186–87
Connections. See blat on communism and Communist
Consumer goods, 7, 60, 81, 137, 153, 210, Party, 111, 199
221–24, 235, 266, 313–14 family of, 30, 43, 58, 165, 199
Consumerism, 5, 11, 13, 110, 118, 162, 221, on foreign countries, 151, 153, 155–56,
259, 316–17, 351, 361 297, 324
Cooperative stores, 230–32 on gender, 258
Corn campaign, 106, 111–12, 114 on generations, 148, 165, 342, 346, 350
Corruption, 32, 45, 221, 230, 274–75, on Party leaders, 240, 271, 278, 310
282, 284, 287, 326–27, 329, 334, photos of, 31, 108, 207, 318
338, 340, 361, 383 n.16 school experiences of, 71, 73, 87, 91,
Courtyard (dvor), 125–26 98–99, 101, 135–36, 139, 142
Crime, 143, 156, 255, 274, 312, 323, on Soviet policies, 178–80, 245,
326–28, 329, 340, 353 278–79, 287
Cuba on Soviet system, 14, 310–11
attitudes toward, 150–52, 158, 158 on transition period, 324, 368
and Cubans, 101, 223 wife of, 187, 203
revolution in, 130, 150–52, 167, 255 Day care, 3, 35, 37, 39, 88, 101, 206–08,
travel to, 151, 297 222, 361
Cuban Missile Crisis, 4, 114, 152, 162 D (Diplomat) coupons, 194–95
Cult of personality. See Stalin, cult of Democracy, Russian, 289–90, 302,
Cultural Revolution, Chinese, 153–54 312–13, 326–30, 334–35, 352, 363,
Culture 365, 367
American, 106, 147, 218 Democratization, 269, 278
political, 242, 335, 352, 362 Détente, 221–23, 275, 299
Russian, 155, 319 Discipline, school, 68, 72, 77, 81–83, 85,
Soviet, 135, 167–68 97, 103, 105
Western, 11, 142, 158, 160, 162, 218, 332, Dissent, 12, 218, 223, 242, 244–45, 357, 364
351, 383 n.39 Dissidents, 13, 90, 94, 148, 150, 176–77,
youth, 11, 59, 121, 139, 167, 176, 351, 360 179, 181–82, 219, 237, 244–47, 249,
Cyprus, 11, 302, 307, 368 275, 278, 284, 354, 359
400 | INDEX
Divorce, 51, 65, 205–06, 295, 306, 314 Emigration, 10, 13, 160, 201, 223, 244,
rates, 201, 205, 265, 312, 360 294, 298–310, 320, 349–50,
state policy toward, 20, 31, 65, 93, 201 361–62
Double burden, 21, 190, 259–60, 352, state policy toward, 246, 294,
359–60 298–99, 310
Dress code, school, 9, 86, 90, 137 See also Jews, and emigration;
See also uniforms individual countries
Drugs, 126, 265, 274, 339–40, 342, England, 21, 106, 273, 283–84
344, 353 travel to, 61, 98, 215–17, 285, 296,
Duma, 324, 337, 353 301, 306
visitors from, 98–100, 117, 142, 161,
East Germany, 51, 172, 229, 281, 290, 333 191, 195
travel to, 211–14, 297 English language
Eastern Europe, 133, 210, 221, 232 importance of, 77, 79, 190–95, 218,
settlement in, 214 303–04, 315, 358–59
Soviet control of, 21–22, 219 instruction in, 4, 10, 74, 79
travel to, 62, 210–17, 219, 274, 295, reading in, 130, 160,
305, 358 190–92, 194
See also individual countries singing in, 94, 139, 194
Echberger, Vera, 9, 81–83, 85, 118, 136–37 speaking in, 78, 80, 87–89, 91, 99,
Economy 103–05, 149, 190–94, 215
decline of, 112, 221, 232–36, 265, 270, study of, 17, 78–80, 87, 95, 112, 141,
273–77, 279, 288, 292, 334, 337, 361 158, 162, 172, 175, 193, 303, 359
growth of, 11, 67, 337, 351 teaching of, 4, 10, 74, 77, 79–80, 86–91,
market, 12, 14, 228, 237, 269–70, 288, 94, 96–98, 118, 155, 161, 191, 224,
290, 312–14, 324–25, 326–27, 329, 230, 315, 356
339–40, 345, 352–53, 363, 365, 367 Environment, 254, 318–19, 321
planned, 164, 288, 362 Estonia, 23, 208–09, 291
Russian, 228, 298, 336–37 Ethnicity. See nationality
Soviet, 21, 112, 170, 184, 224, 228, Exams
233–36, 266, 351 college entrance, 19, 34, 127, 169–74,
Education 340, 357
American, 4, 17, 69, 143, 156, 169, 217, exit (graduation), 94, 115–16
300, 344 secondary school entrance, 78–80
costs of, 1, 15, 53, 157, 185, 217, 222,
237, 250, 288, 299, 305, 340, Family
344, 361 history, 20, 23, 49, 64, 274, 282
expansion of, 11, 65, 162, 167, 169, influence of, 13, 20, 16, 49, 56, 64–65,
223, 351 73, 155, 181–82, 198, 204, 219, 256,
reforms, 67–70 259, 314, 356, 359, 362
Russian, 314 nuclear, 49, 65, 265, 274, 356
Soviet, 11, 54, 89–90, 94–95, 169–70, 185 See also grandparents; parents;
See also higher education; individual siblings
institutions Family Code of 1918, 20–21
Elections, 269, 282, 285, 290, 292, Famine, 5, 7, 21, 27, 160
326–28, 333, 335–36, 338, 353, 362 Farmers’ markets, 225, 230–32
INDEX | 4 01
Fashion, 63, 81, 135–37, 147, 153,159–60, Games, childhood, 103, 121, 125–26
204, 207, 231, 238, 344 Gangs, 114–16
See also jeans Garzanova, Irina
Fathers and Children (novel), 10–11 adulthood of, 232
Fear career of, 186, 208, 261
absence of, 163, 167, 230, 237, 242, childhood of, 37, 56, 139
246, 348, 366, 368 children of, 202–03, 208
of China, 153–55 family of, 24, 37, 42, 52, 55, 163
of crime, 312, 323, 327–28 on foreign countries and leaders,
of future, 313, 328 152, 157
of repression, 32, 38, 49, 52–53, 58, on gender, 261
149, 163, 165, 206, 243, 247, 356 husband of, 202–03
of Soviet Union, 4–5, 7, 22, 66–67 on Party and state leaders, 271,
of Stalinism, 150, 163, 176, 363 328, 336
of war, 4, 21, 152, 158 school experiences of, 72, 82–83,
of West, 159 92–93
Federal Republic of Germany. See on Soviet policies, 280
Germany Gender
Federal Security Service (FSB), 333 discrimination, 258–61, 360
Fifth Point, 33, 173, 196, 217 and education, 169, 171–72, 174–75,
See also anti-Semitism 181, 187–88
Films, influential, 59, 76, 133–35, 159, imbalance, 21, 24, 35, 127, 201
167, 191, 210 and leisure activities, 60, 122, 138
Finland, 194, 216, 247, 295–96, 319, 366 and marriage, 201, 203–04
Foreigners, contact with, 98–100, 157, and Party membership, 54, 198
161, 175, 190, 194–96, 202, 209, roles, 21, 128, 203–04, 206–07,
219, 223–24, 248, 265, 304, 257–59, 282
306, 358 and work, 20–21, 35, 39, 65, 187, 190,
France 201, 257–61, 359
and French, 182, 209, 248 Generation
travel to, 62, 160, 194, 216, 248, 296, 349 cynical, 166–67
Freedoms lost, 329
in post-Soviet Russia, 313–14, 320, postwar, 25
326, 328, 333–34, 340–41, 346–48, Putin, 351
350, 352–53, 363, 365 sixties. See Shestidesyatniki
in Soviet Union 112, 114, 158, 163–65, war, 22–23, 123, 252–53, 356
244–45, 249, 270, 273–74, 277, Generational differences, 10–11, 14, 44,
279, 283, 288, 290–91, 293–94, 324, 381 n.32
299, 366–67 between Baby Boomers and children,
Free time. See Leisure 206, 311, 338–53, 363–64
Friendship, 71, 87, 101, 126–28, 146, 218, between Baby Boomers and parents,
228, 236, 244, 260, 303, 305, 320, 5, 31, 50, 143, 148, 162–67, 218,
350–51, 362 223, 250, 253, 266, 275, 331,
359–60, 363
Gagarin, Yury, 8, 66–67, 79, 121, 239, 357 Genis, Aleksandr, 42, 45, 119
Gaidar, Yegor, 326–27 Georgia, 273, 291, 330
402 | INDEX
German Democratic Republic (GDR). on Soviet policies, 179, 254

See East Germany on transition period, 331
German Wave (Deutsche Welle), Gorbachev, Mikhail
146–47, 150 attitudes toward, 127, 252, 270–74,
Germany 276–81, 285, 287–88, 291, 310,
attitude toward, 156, 179, 324, 331 328–29, 336, 362
emigration to, 9, 19, 127, 318, 349 era, 99, 167, 190, 218, 233, 245, 266,
and Germans, 210 289, 292, 362
travel to, 296 fall from power, 270, 282, 291, 325–26
See also East Germany policies of, 14, 168, 200, 235, 262,
Geyer, Georgie Anne, 218 268–82, 285, 288, 319, 325, 361–62
Ginzburg, Yevgeniya, 284 revolution of, 241, 292, 294, 301, 310
Glasnost, 14, 28, 266, 269–70, 273, rise to power, 5, 219, 268–69, 275, 279,
278–79, 282–88, 290, 293, 295, 289, 292, 361, 367
300, 310, 346, 352, 362–65 See also specific policy initiatives
Glebkin, Vladimir Gorelik, Olga
career of, 171, 193, 288–89 adulthood of, 225, 227–29, 251,
childhood of, 120, 122, 131, 296–97, 318
141–42, 150 on anti-Semitism, 196–97
college years of, 171, 185, 189, 193 career of, 27–28, 191, 260
on Communist Party, 198 childhood of, 41, 48, 55, 122–23, 125,
family of, 24, 27, 36, 43, 52, 55, 61, 79, 133, 137, 181
120, 154, 171, 189 children of, 242, 296, 345–46, 349–50
on foreign countries and leaders, college years of, 137
153–54, 159 family of, 44, 70, 120, 181
on generations, 165 on foreign countries and leaders,
military service of, 189 296–97
on Party and state leaders, 272, 276, on gender, 260
329–30 on generations, 165, 345
photos of, 105, 141 husband of, 203–04
school experiences of, 79, 86, 89, 97, parents of, 27–28, 41, 44, 48, 55, 58,
99, 132, 142 70, 77, 120, 123, 125, 149, 204,
on Soviet policies, 165, 289 210, 297
wife of, 202 on Party leaders, 108, 111, 241–42, 271
Glebuchev Ravine, 48, 115, 144 school experiences of, 70, 101, 106
Godzhello, Georgy on Soviet policies, 279–80, 284, 288
adulthood of, 227, 256, 296, 320 Gorokhova, Lyudmila
career of, 194, 256, 296 adulthood of, 210, 227, 232–33, 336
childhood of, 48, 121, 130, 155 career of, 187, 190–91
on Communist Party, 200 childhood of, 39, 124–25, 134
family of, 26, 29, 39, 48, 55 children of, 205–06
on foreign countries and leaders, 155 family of, 23, 39, 205
on generations, 351 husbands of, 187, 191, 205–06
on Party leaders, 108, 241 on Party and state leaders, 271, 329, 336
school experiences of, 83, 90–91, school experiences of, 71, 101
94, 146 Graduation
INDEX | 403
from college, 11, 189–90 Homo Sovieticus, 13, 45, 53, 354
from secondary school, 4, 9, 77, 82, See also New Soviet man and woman
87, 108, 115, 136–37, 139, 168–69, Housing 31, 35–36, 45–49, 62, 65, 190,
170, 229 201–02, 222, 231–33, 236–37, 274,
Grandparents 356
attitudes toward Party leaders, 55, 57, See also Khrushcheby
113, 240–42, 367 Human rights, 223, 244–46, 265, 274,
influence of, 16, 35–36, 39, 52, 358, 361
206, 356 Hungary, 133, 332
lived experiences of, 16–19, 22, 24–29, invasion of, 64, 244, 263
32–33, 35–44, 46–48, 50–53, 64, travel to, 61, 358
75, 79–80, 100, 102–03, 122, 129, work in, 192–93, 213, 217, 317
138, 164, 206, 208–09, 231, 239,
298, 339, Identity, 12, 16, 23, 32, 49, 64, 256–58,
349, 366 283, 332
Great Britain. See England Illness, 124, 138, 247, 253, 299, 312,
Great-grandparents, 16–17, 37, 43, 50–51 317–20, 365
Great Patriotic War. See World War II Income
Guitar poetry, 142–43, 167 after 1991, 203, 233, 302, 304, 312,
Gulag, 5, 7, 18, 21, 24, 26, 30, 49–53, 58, 77, 314–16, 324, 326–27, 329, 353, 361
108, 131, 147, 150, 178, 203–04, 274, of Baby Boomers, 168, 185, 190–92,
284, 286–87, 325, 356, 358, 366 195, 198, 222, 228, 232–33, 237,
275, 340, 382 n.18
Hairstyles, 9, 81–82, 93, 135–37, 259, 344 of children, 345–47, 349, 351
Harvard Project, 53 of parents, 31, 48–49, 81, 121, 234
Helsinki Accords, 223, 275 of spouses, 225, 234
Higher education Indoctrination, 68, 87, 90–91, 106,
and Communist Party membership, 118–19, 175–76, 211, 218, 249, 357
54, 107, 118 Industrialization, 21, 45, 164, 352
curriculum at, 175–78, 218, 357 Inkeles, Alex, 168
enrollment in, 11, 17, 169–75, 217, 357 Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), 63,
See also exams, college entrance; 80, 89, 170–75, 180, 191, 199, 209,
individual institutions 215, 359
History Instruction, methods of, 67–70, 86–91,
official, 20, 64, 68, 119, 274, 352, 355, 175–78
366 Intelligentsia, 7–8, 10–11, 27, 54, 130–31,
oral, 5, 11–12 147, 178, 195–96, 199, 201, 210–11,
teaching of, 28, 68, 86–87, 90, 93, 97, 219, 222, 236, 244, 249, 252, 274,
109, 119, 175–77, 245, 287 281–82, 288, 304, 327–29, 358
views of, 15–16, 164, 255, 284, 367 cultural, 9–10, 71, 113, 117, 176, 205, 356
Hobbies, 121–23 parents as members of, 9–10, 22, 34,
Holidays, 46, 49, 139, 145, 198, 214, 224, 70–71, 73–74, 77, 100–01, 117,
234, 302 169, 356
religious, 40–44, 49 and religion, 42
state, 57, 68, 122, 135, 138–39, 202, 252 technical, 9–10, 74, 117, 356
Holland. See Netherlands urban, 182, 282, 323, 354
404 | INDEX
Interviews, school entrance, 78–80 Job assignments, 30, 62, 70, 185–88, 190,
Intourist, 94, 99, 195, 209, 306 194, 199, 201–02, 317, 358
Ionin, L. G., 249 Jokes, 49, 53–54, 99, 112, 220, 241–44,
Iraq, 264, 279, 291, 332 246, 270, 282, 292, 312, 327, 360,
Iron Curtain, 69, 157, 215, 271–72, 362 362, 367
Islam, 10, 293
Israel, 173–74, 196, 368 Kamayurova, Olga
emigration to, 33, 246, 257, 298–99, adulthood of, 128, 186, 210, 232–33,
302–05 245, 260–61, 314, 320, 322
travel to, 296 career of, 186, 261, 320
Italy, 61, 194, 216–17, 296 childhood of, 41, 43, 48, 100, 122–24,
Ivanov, Aleksandr 127, 149
adulthood of, 189, 200, 237 children of, 202, 260, 347
childhood of, 48, 126, 133 on communism and Communist
children of, 342 Party, 199, 251
on Communist Party, 200 family of, 41, 43, 48, 50, 100, 179, 284
family of, 28, 43, 48, 73, 153 on foreign countries and leaders,
on generations, 342 212, 214
military service of, 189, 200, 361 on gender, 260–61
on Party and state leaders, 270, 329 on generations, 347
school experiences of, 73, 82, husband of, 186, 199, 201–02, 204,
125, 189 214, 232, 260, 314
wife of, 189, 342 on Party leaders, 108, 277
Ivanov, Gennady school experiences of, 70–71, 87, 92,
adulthood of, 226, 233, 323, 332, 339 108, 128
career of, 186, 194, 255, 264, 298 on Soviet policies, 152, 179, 264, 277, 284
childhood of, 115, 122, 124, 133 on Soviet system, 251, 284
children of, 338–39 Kann, Kenneth, 13
college years of, 177, 185 Kaplan, Roman, 95–96, 134, 302
family of, 35, 37 Kazakhstan, 10, 35, 66
on foreign countries and leaders, 332 and Kazakhs, 25, 52, 79
on Party and state leaders, 281, 336–37 Kelly, Catriona, 119
school experiences of, 115,144 Kennedy, John F., 90, 112, 158, 161–62, 222
on Soviet policies, 114, 255, 264–65, Kenzheyev, Bakhyt
270, 280–01 adulthood of, 194, 206, 247, 255, 291,
wife of, 186 303–05, 307–08
career of, 186, 195, 247, 303–04
Jacoby, Susan, 69, 89 childhood of, 47, 99, 131, 148
Jazz, 26, 59, 135, 147–48, 156 college years of, 109, 182
Jeans, 136–37, 147, 176, 210, 215, 231 on communism, 109, 179
Jews, 10–11, 28, 34, 47, 62, 73, 76, 118, family of, 25, 47, 52,79, 148, 247, 255, 324
186, 188, 195–97, 201, 217, 248–49, on foreign countries and leaders, 160,
257, 357 255, 303–04
and emigration, 247, 257, 298–305, 310 on generations, 347
and religion, 44 on Party and state leaders, 108–09,
See also anti-Semitism 272, 276, 291, 329, 338
INDEX | 405
photos of, 308 Kitchen debate, 60

school experiences of, 79, 106–07 Kolishchyuk, Olga
on Soviet policies, 3, 179, 276–77 adulthood of, 190, 225, 228, 363, 368
on transition period, 324, 354 childhood of, 29, 46, 53, 57, 63, 73,
wife of, 206, 247, 303, 308 122, 137
KGB, 97, 99–100 162, 176–77, 195, 216, children of, 208, 228
218, 242–44, 246, 284, 328, 333–37 college years of, 88
career in, 244, 262–63, 291, 333, 366–67 family of, 28–29, 46, 53, 63, 137, 163,
encounters with, 63, 244, 246–49, 265, 229
295, 358 on foreign countries and leaders, 151,
parents’ career in, 28–29, 48, 53, 64, 153–54, 158
74, 152, 159, 182, 244, 278 on generations, 163, 345
Khamidulina, Natalya, 107, 116, 318 husband of, 202, 225
Khasbulatov, Ruslan, 326 on Party leaders, 57, 108, 111, 114
Khrushcheby (Khrushchev’s slums), photos of, 82
45, 48 school experiences of, 72, 82, 86–87,
Khrushchev, Nikita 92, 125
attitudes toward, 52–53, 56–57, 111–14, on Soviet policies, 3, 114, 287–88
163, 239, 362 Kolosova, Yelena
and denunciation of Stalin, 53–54, adulthood of, 134, 234, 239–40,
56–58, 67–68, 91, 108–09, 113, 119, 300–01, 308–09
163, 178, 252, 274, 356 on anti-Semitism, 186
legacy of, 221, 361 career of, 207, 258, 305
ouster of, 113, 119, 220, 236, 249 childhood of, 36, 41–42, 123, 129–30,
policies of, 3, 19, 42, 45, 50, 53–54, 134–35, 138, 144–45, 149–50
58–61, 67–70, 98, 106, 110–14, 119, children of, 206–07, 239, 301
146, 269, 274, 356, 358 college years of, 171, 181, 202, 300
and relations with West, 58, 60, 113, family of, 23, 36, 41, 50, 55, 75, 80,
156, 161 103, 138, 144, 149–50, 171, 234, 258
See also specific policy initiatives on foreign countries and leaders, 152,
Khubova, Darya, 5–6, 355 160–62, 212, 255, 305
Kirsanov, Vladimir on gender, 258
adulthood of, 193, 237, 283–84, 293, on generations, 165
344–45 husband of, 196, 202, 234, 239, 300–01
childhood of, 138, 140, on Party and state leaders, 112, 240,
college years of, 175, 184, 193, 232 243, 329, 338
on communism and Communist school experiences of, 80, 89–90,
Party, 184, 198 96–98, 105
family of, 35, 43, 51, 53, 140, 175, 293 on Soviet policies, 278, 283, 285
on foreign countries and leaders, 158, Kommunalki (communal apartments).
213, 358 See housing
on generations, 163, 344–35 Komsomol (Communist Youth
on Party leaders, 243, 271 League), 117, 140, 213, 214–15,
photos of, 193 244, 254, 268, 285
school experiences of, 73, 158 badges, 90–91
on Soviet policies, 179, 181, 264 lack of, 340, 344
406 | INDEX
Komsomol (continued ) grandparents of, 36, 52, 209

membership in, 90, 107, 118, 169, 181, husbands of, 70, 259, 317
196, 197–98, 200, 211, 214–15, 219, parents of, 27, 42, 62, 79, 112, 155, 180,
259, 359 259, 317
parent’s membership in, 18–19, 28, 42, on Party leaders, 240, 272
81, 204 school experiences of, 74–75, 79, 88,
Kon, Igor S., 143 99, 104, 341
Konstantinov, Aleksandr on Soviet policies, 254, 283
adulthood of, 127, 216, 223–24, 245, on Soviet system, 323, 354
252–53 on transition period, 293, 317, 341, 354
career of, 191, 209, 224, 315 Krasilnikov, Pyotor
childhood of, 32, 40–41, 57, 60, 132, adulthood of, 231–33, 237, 246, 321
136, 139, 144, 224, 256 childhood of, 121–22, 127, 136, 141, 149
children of, 349 college years of, 172–73, 180, 183–84
college years of, 148, 170, 176–77, 209, family of, 53, 113, 121–22, 136
213, 294 on foreign countries and leaders, 158
on communism and Communist on generations, 253
Party, 197 military service of, 189, 202
family of, 24, 26–27, 40–41, 60, 78, on Party leaders, 114, 273–74, 276
113, 256, 315 photos of, 107, 321
on foreign countries and leaders, school experiences of, 86–88, 102,
151–52, 154, 157, 213–14 107, 145
on generations, 163, 349 on Soviet policies, 154, 276, 284
on Party leaders, 57, 108–09 wives of, 189, 202, 205, 231–32
photos of, 72 Kulikova, Irina
school experiences of, 71–72, 78, 87, adulthood of, 231–32
91–93, 102, 114–15, 139 career of, 260
on Soviet policies, 179–80, 223, 245, childhood of, 46, 49, 55, 124, 137–38
253–54, 263 children of, 260, 340–41
on Soviet system, 280–81 family of, 28, 46, 49–50, 56, 138, 231
on transition period, 315 on foreign countries and leaders, 297
wife of, 349 on gender, 260
Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya, 97, 285 on generations, 340–41
Kosovo, 332 on Party leaders, 242, 277
Kosygin, Aleksei, 220–21, 279 photos of, 107
Kovalyova, Lyubov school experiences of, 71, 137, 172
career of, 192–93, 217, 259–60, 317 on Soviet policies, 277, 287
childhood of, 42, 120, 131, 148, 209, Kutin, Aleksandr
259, 323 adulthood of, 225, 227, 232
children of, 207, 317, 341, 344 career of, 315–16, 365
college years of, 175, 181, 184, 207, 259 childhood of, 121, 149
on Communist Party, 200 children of, 349, 365
155, 217, 317 family of, 27, 43, 50
on gender, 259–60 on foreign countries and leaders,
on generations, 164, 341 162, 213
INDEX | 4 07
on generations, 163, 344, 349 career of, 191, 257

photos of, 365 childhood of, 47, 120, 125–27, 129,
school experiences of, 71, 87, 91–92, 98 134, 137, 148
on Soviet policies, 110, 178, 279 children of, 350
Kuznetsova, Tatyana college years of, 95, 170, 173, 175, 181,
adulthood of, 187, 224–25 188, 196, 257
career of, 187, 190, 207, 224 family of, 34, 36, 47, 54, 125–27, 148,
childhood of, 101, 121, 129, 133, 138, 210 170, 253
children of, 207 on foreign countries and leaders, 152,
family of, 43, 70, 77, 101, 163, 210 159, 295–96
on gender, 207, 260 on generations, 164, 350–51, 356
on generations, 163, 253 on Party leaders, 107–08, 241
husband of, 187 school experiences of, 74, 94, 100, 107
on Party leaders, 108–09 on Soviet policies, 263, 278
school experiences of, 70, 81, 83, wives of, 203
86–87, 128 Living permit, 187, 201, 291, 294
on Soviet policies, 158, 224, 264, 286 Living standards
Eastern European, 208, 210–12, 214,
Labor camps. See Gulag 232, 347, 358
Latvia, 34, 146, 208, 291 improvements in, 11, 38, 46, 53, 65, 67,
Ledeneva, Alena, 228, 230, 314 112, 118, 162–63, 167, 221–23, 236,
Leisure, 11, 119, 120–27, 138, 162, 314, 266, 342, 351, 356–57, 360
319, 351 in provinces, 226, 294
See also hobbies problems with, 35, 120, 147, 186, 275,
Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 30, 57, 106–10, 313, 319, 347, 352–54
130, 204, 216, 227, 251–52, 281, 359 Western, 61, 157–60, 306–07, 343
Leningrad, 224, 234, 333 Luchnikova, Tatyana
blockade of, 24, 38, 92, 253 adulthood of, 148, 215, 239, 248,
study in, 29, 170, 333 301–02, 320–22, 367–68
travel to, 95, 208, 210, 225 career of, 95, 302
work in, 22, 29, 55 childhood of, 29, 348
Lewin, Moshe, 49 children of, 205, 301–02, 321, 348
Liberman reforms, 279 college years of, 172, 176
Life expectancy, 38, 312, 319 family of, 24, 29, 76, 148
Ligachev, Yegor, 271, 273–74, 325 on foreign countries and leaders, 153,
Literature 159, 212
English, 87–89, 95, 98, 129–30, 158, on generations, 164, 348
160, 319 husbands of, 205, 301–02
Russian, 91, 96, 115, 130–31, 181–82, on Party leaders, 272, 294
209, 283–84, 319 school experiences of, 68–69, 76, 95,
See also authors, influential; books, 110, 117
influential; samizdat on Soviet system, 235, 250, 294, 354
Lithuania, 29, 161, 208, 273, 291 Lumumba, Patrice, 150
Litvin, Igor Lyovina, Anna
adulthood of, 245–46, 253 adulthood of, 207, 368
on anti-Semitism, 173, 257, 362 career of, 185, 191, 207
408 | INDEX
Lyovina (continued ) on gender, 260

childhood of, 41, 46–47 on generations, 163–64, 343–44
children of, 191 207, 290, 345, 348 husband of, 50, 203–04
college years of, 171, 175 on Party leaders, 109–12
family of, 16–18, 20, 30, 46–47, 52, 88, photos of, 37, 123, 204
112–13, 148, 170, 191, 204, 207, school experiences of, 88, 91, 98,
209, 291 123–24
on generations, 345, 348, 362 on Soviet policies, 263, 277, 293
husband of, 70, 191, 204–05, 290 Marxism, 5, 68, 177–78, 223, 278–79,
photos of, 364 360–61
school experiences of, 88–90, 97, Maternity leave, 3, 35, 41, 206–08
103–04, 170–71 Medals, school, 89, 92–93, 115, 137,
on Soviet system, 279, 290–91, 316–17 169–71, 175, 303
on transition period, 290–91, 363 Medical care
access to, 156, 217, 317, 328
Malenkov, Georgy, 18 cost of, 3, 15, 53, 157, 185, 222, 237, 244,
Markovich, Mikhail 250, 305, 340, 361
adulthood of, 217, 239, 248 Medvedev, Dmitry, 335–36, 363
career of, 185–86, 200, 289 Memory, 5–6, 12, 16
childhood of, 121, 125, 129, 137, 139, archived, 23
143, 145 changes in, 113, 166, 219, 355
children of, 345–46 collective, 14–15, 23, 252, 283
college years of, 148 family, 14, 64, 285
on Communist Party, 200, 292 effect of regional differences on, 5,
family of, 43–44, 50, 103, 137 14, 364
school experiences of, 34, 74, 76, official, 355
83–85, 88, 94–96, 116, 141 post-, 285
on Soviet leaders, 289, 292 selective, 115, 166, 286
on Soviet policies, 148, 179, 263, 358 Middle class, 304, 354, 363
Markowitz, Fran, 339–40 Mkoyan, Anastas, 22, 38, 74
Marriage Mikoyan, Vladimir
to foreigners, 39, 116, 201, 205–06, adulthood of, 203, 211–12, 240,
296, 301, 303, 308, 310, 318, 34, 248–49, 355
365, 382 n.29 career of, 38, 193
influence of, 203–04, 359 childhood of, 48, 132
state policy toward, 20, 27, 204 children of, 345, 355
statistics on, 201, 259, 265 college years of, 173
Martynkina, Olga family of, 22, 38, 76, 278
adulthood of, 226, 238, 253–54, 320, 368 on generations, 163, 278, 345, 355
career of, 123, 194, 224, 260 on Party leaders, 278
childhood of, 48, 56, 360 school experiences of, 74, 76, 86, 117
children of, 208, 320 on Soviet policies, 278
college years of, 88, 123, 177, 180 wife of, 203
family of, 28, 36–37, 48, 50, 52, 55, 208 Milgotin, Mark, 76, 128, 138
on foreign countries and leaders, 153, Military. See Red Army
158–59 Millar, James, 228
INDEX | 409
Missile, intercontinental, 66 Nationality, 9–10, 32–34, 59, 73, 76, 147,

Mobility 169, 173–75, 195–96, 201, 217, 257,
career, 221, 266 324, 330
social, 26–27, 53, 65, 275 See also Jews; fifth point
Morozov, Pavel, 251, 285 NATO, 6, 332
Moscow Nazi Germany, war with, 18, 21–24, 26,
attitudes toward, 224–28, 294–95, 33–34, 50, 97, 156, 253, 268,
309, 364 283–85
travel to, 224–28, 231 Near Abroad, 294, 312, 330
Moscow Aviation Institute, 170, 174, 179, Nekrasov, Nikolai, 115, 258
185, 196, 200, 209, 244 Nemchenko, Vladimir
Moscow Conservatory, 224 adulthood of, 238, 366–67
Moscow Film Institute, 248 career of, 198, 316
Moscow Finance Institute, 173, 185 childhood of, 37, 121, 127, 129, 131, 138,
Moscow Food Institute, 172 143, 147, 153
Moscow Institute of Architecture, 172, college years of, 171, 177, 198
174, 188 on Communist Party, 198
Moscow Institute of Cinematography family of, 27, 37, 44, 124, 129
(IC), 172, 176 military service of, 189
Moscow Institute of International on Party leaders, 238
Relations (MGIMO), 170–77, 182, school experiences of, 70, 92, 124
193, 216–17, 247, 357, 366 on Soviet policies, 264, 281
Moscow Pedagogical Institute, 95, 170, wives of, 205
173, 175, 181, 188, 191 Netherlands, 9, 127, 194, 296,
Moscow Physics Institute, 171 298–99, 318
Moscow State University (MGU) New Party Program (1961), 3, 67, 75,
attendance at, 148, 170–71, 174–75, 179, 110, 118
182, 84, 196, 202, 209, 213, 224, New Soviet man and woman, 13, 20,
268, 294, 303, 350 45, 53
career at, 18, 186, 191–92, 195, 315 New thinking (novoe myshlenie), 269
Dubna branch of, 180, 187, 192, 226 Novocherkassk riots, 111
parent’s attendance at, 18, 26–27, 33 Nursery. See day care
Moscow Youth Festival, 59, 154 NKVD (People’s Commissariat of
Music Internal Affairs), 28
pop, Nomenklatura, 22, 70, 73, 79, 117, 126,
rock, 147, 210, 218, 340 325, 356
study of, 15, 79, 123–25 Nostalgia, 29, 114, 128, 166, 184, 233, 282,
Western, 59, 138–42, 146, 159, 167, 218 320, 323–24, 327, 348
See also Beatles; guitar poetry; jazz Nuclear war, 4, 114, 150, 152, 158
Myths, Soviet, 13, 23, 108, 152, 160,
249–55, 265–66, 285, 361 October Revolution (1917), 8, 252,
281, 352
Nannies, 34, 39–42, 47, 152, 175, 206, family experiences in, 16, 18–20, 28,
208, 256, 356 39, 51, 164
Nationalism, 219, 273, 293–94, 313, 327, impact of, 11, 20, 28, 44, 164
332, 334, 359 Ogonyok, 129, 135, 283, 286, 367
410 | INDEX
Oil, 221, 233, 235, 273, 276–77, 279, 327, influence of, 52, 64–65, 146, 155, 160,
334, 337–38, 361 164–66, 170, 253, 256, 346, 356
Okudzhava, Bulat, 142 and travel abroad, 61–64, 160–61, 356
Oligarchs, 327, 330, 334–36, 338, 363 Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship
Olympics, 61, 122, 167, 221, 261, 296 University, 171, 189, 193
Optimism Patriotism, 54, 67, 81, 154, 182, 210, 244,
in post-Soviet period, 324, 326, 332, 249, 254, 256, 285, 289, 335,
334, 351, 353 343–44, 367
in Soviet period, 9, 49, 110, 113, 118–19, Peaceful coexistence, 65, 114, 156–57, 167
163, 166, 357, 363 Penkovsky, Oleg, 97, 301
Organizations, youth. See Komsomol; Pensions, 36, 207, 255, 287, 291, 297, 314,
Pioneers; Young Octobrists 353, 365
Orthodoxy, Russian, 42–43, 282, 320–23, People’s Republic of China. See China
327, 332 Perestroika, 269–70
Osho, 246, 322 attitudes toward, 200, 232–33, 251,
268, 270–71, 273, 276–83, 288–91,
P., Natalya 293, 309–11, 324 352, 361–62, 367
adulthood of, 211–12, 205, 211, 216, and impact on Baby Boomers, 164,
226, 256, 317, 367 191–92, 205, 238, 244, 283–84,
career of, 187, 190, 315–16 288–91, 295–98, 310, 314–15,
childhood of, 52, 102, 122, 124, 229 317–19, 322, 340–41, 343, 346,
children of, 206, 226, 317 349–51, 355, 361–62
college years of, 181, 183, 190, 226 reasons for, 274–81, 309–10, 324,
family of, 25, 43, 52, 102, 124, 167, 190, 361–62
205, 226, 317 Petrova, Larisa
on foreign countries and leaders, 162, adulthood of, 231, 238, 295, 324
212, 214, 250 career of, 186, 198, 259, 295, 297, 324
on gender, 258, 260, 264, 331 childhood of, 29, 44–45, 121–22,
on generations, 165, 344 139–40, 142, 198, 210, 213
husband of, 205, 226, 331 children of, 346
on Party and state leaders, 240, 280, college years of, 238, 295
photos of, 316 family of, 28–29, 77, 101, 186, 198, 231,
school experiences of, 73, 81, 86–88, 272, 287, 296
91, 102, 115 on foreign countries and leaders, 213,
on Soviet policies, 264, 288 296–98
on transition period, 324, 331 on gender, 203, 259
Parents on generations, 346
and attitudes toward Soviet system, husband of, 203, 295
53, 56–58, 65, 112–13, 180, 217, on Party and state leaders, 241, 243,
223, 226, 356, 358 273, 329, 335
and children’s education, 70–80, photos of, 107
117–18, 170, 357 school experiences of, 71, 77, 83,
formative experiences of, 17–19, 101, 103
22–35, 44, 51–52, 160, 178, on Soviet policies, 231, 287
252–53 Physics
INDEX | 4 11
career in, 25, 187, 193, 202, 204, 258, college years of, 172
260, 288, 304, 306 family of, 29, 31, 36–37, 39, 43, 48, 52,
interest in, 73, 76, 121–22, 124, 133, 165, 172, 229–31
169, 187 on foreign countries and leaders,
study of, 87, 92, 97, 171, 173, 187, 191 156–57, 214
Pioneers, Young, 19, 87, 90, 106–07, husband of, 172, 204, 214, 225
112, 251 on generations, 165, 340–41
demise of, 340–41, 346–47 on Party and state leaders, 109, 241, 336
leaders in, 116–17, 125 school experiences of, 71, 88, 101, 137,
manual of, 69, 106, 110, 130, 145, 229
newspaper of, 81–82 on Soviet policies, 264, 277, 287
palaces of, 124, 139 on Soviet system, 250, 309
uniform of, 85–86, 106–07 on transition period, 336
See also Camp, Pioneer Polishchyuk, Alik, 246
Podolsky, Yevgeny Politburo, 200, 243
adulthood of, 226, 294 under Brezhnev, 221, 223, 240–42, 261,
on anti-Semitism, 33, 197 263, 268–69
career of, 187, 191, 254, 290, 294–95, 333 under Gorbachev, 269, 271–72, 274,
childhood of, 44, 56, 120–21, 127, 129, 276, 278–79, 325
131, 140, 149, 226 under Stalin, 22, 38, 48, 74, 76
college years of, 131, 154, 177, 180, 183, Political parties, Russian, 327–28, 334
187, 255 Politics
on Communist Party, 199–200, 290 discussion of, 52–53, 58, 132, 148, 282
on foreign countries and leaders, 154, interest in, 55, 204, 181, 200, 218, 258,
219, 295, 333 260, 313, 335, 363
on generations, 163, 331 involvement in, 285–86
grandparents of, 29, 44, 100–01 Pollution. See environment
parents of, 29, 33, 54, 56, 113, 121, 163, Potekhin, Anton, 83–86, 90, 117–18, 171
180, 199, 226, 331, 333 Prague Spring, 178, 180, 221, 358, 361
on Party and state leaders, 56, 109, 111, Prisoner of war (POW), 18, 26, 50, 73,
240, 252, 270, 331 Private life, 5, 44–45, 181, 218, 250,
photos of, 255 265–66, 274, 356, 360, 365–67
school experiences of, 78, 87, Privatization, 222, 270, 275, 312, 316,
92–93, 100 326–27, 332, 351
on Soviet policies, 254, 270 Profession. See career
on Soviet system, 14–15, 310 Professional class, 5, 11, 14, 22, 355
on transition period, 363 Pronatalism, 21, 64
wives of, 294 Pronina, Natalya
Poet bards, 142–43, 165, 167, 218 adulthood of, 225, 227–28
See also individual artists career of, 315, 344
Poland, 133, 160, 210, 221, 275, 332 childhood of, 29–30, 59, 121–22, 124,
travel to, 212–14, 297 131, 139–40, 143, 233
Poldyaeva, Galina children of, 154, 205
adulthood of, 172, 225, 231–32 college years of, 205
childhood of, 29, 36, 48, 137, 139–40, 153 on communism and Communist
children of, 341 Party, 198, 232, 250, 323
412 | INDEX
Pronina (continued ) Public opinion

family of, 15, 28, 30, 43, 55, 58–59, 122, under Brezhnev, 218, 242
124, 149, 198 under Gorbachev, 283, 292
on foreign countries and leaders, 154, under Khrushchev, 54, 64–65, 119, 135,
158, 161–62, 213, 217 157, 356
on gender, 261 Russian, 331–32, 334–35, 352–53
on generations, 344 Purges, 7, 21, 32, 52
husband of, 205, 261 See also Gulag, terror
on Party and state leaders, 110, 240, Putin, Vladimir, 328–30, 333–38, 344,
271, 328 363, 383 n.29
photos of, 57
school experiences of, 57, 78, 87, 125, Radio broadcasts
128, 137, 145, 315 Chinese, 154
on Soviet policies, 165, 281, 286 foreign, 49, 87, 109, 140–41, 146–50,
on Soviet system, 15 167, 179, 210, 214, 219, 245–46,
on transition period, 315, 323 265, 274, 357–59
Propaganda See also individual radio stations
Antireligious, 42 Radio Israel, 150
anti-Western, 7, 157–59, 215, 221–22, Radio Liberty (RL), 146–47
155–59, 215, 221–22 Radio Luxembourg, 148
attitudes toward, 53, 64, 109–10, Raitman, Lyubov
149–50, 155, 157–59, 164, 185, 215, adulthood of, 10, 216, 234, 298
264, 287 on anti-Semitism, 34, 174, 196
counter-, 146–47, 150, 244 career of, 186, 191–92, 235, 315
Soviet, 7, 21, 32, 60, 67, 73, 109–10, childhood of, 34, 63, 131–32, 141, 148
119–20, 166, 169, 182, 249, 256, children of, 349
317, 355–56, 366 college years of, 174, 177, 182
Western, 60, 147 family of, 33–34, 54, 62–63, 79, 131–32,
Property, private, 45, 249–50, 275, 313 148, 160, 174, 180, 182, 209, 248, 349
Prudkin, Vladimir on foreign countries and leaders, 151,
adulthood of, 89, 194, 217, 256 153, 160, 358
childhood of, 130–31, 146 on generations, 165
children of, 350 husband of, 298, 358
family of, 65, 75, 79, 125, 131 on Party leaders, 241, 243
on foreign countries and leaders, 155, photos of, 192
159–60, 217, 332–33 school experiences of, 76, 79, 85–86, 89,
on generations, 163, 252–53, 350 94–95, 97, 100, 103–06, 160, 248
photos of, 105 on Soviet policies, 177, 235, 283
school experiences of, 79, 89, 95, on Soviet system, 252, 292–93
104–05, 125, 160, 194 Rationing, 7, 22, 198, 231, 273, 313
on Soviet policies, 179 See also shortages, food
on Soviet system, 255–56, 332, 363 Reconstruction, postwar, 6–7, 21, 163, 253
on transition period, 330–31 Records, music, 139–41
wife of, 203 Red Army
Public life, 5, 44–45, 54, 58, 163, 218, 236, children’s service in, 301, 341
282, 285, 366 grandparents’ service in, 16, 51
INDEX | 41 3
parent’s service in, 22, 24–25, 28–30, school experiences of, 83–84, 88, 94,
34, 36–37, 61, 63, 76, 164 96, 99, 105, 112, 142, 348
service in, 154, 172, 174, 187–89, 200, on Soviet policies, 152, 262, 291–92, 330
262, 290, 301, 341 on Soviet system, 367
Refuseniks, 246, 298–99 wife of, 202, 244, 348
Rehabilitation, 49–51, 55, 58, 366 Romance, 93, 101, 139, 143–46, 179, 181,
Religion, 40–45, 64, 76, 281, 320–23, 328, 201, 206, 348
353, 362 Romania, 214
freedom of, 313, 320–21, 328, 338 Romanov affair, 177
state policy toward, 42–44, 147, 204, Ruble, default on, 302–03, 327, 332, 384
239, 287 n.2, 385 n.7
See also atheism; individual religions Ruditskaya, Yevgeniya
Repression adulthood of, 229, 235, 307, 368
in family, 23, 28, 49–53, 56–58, 64, on anti-Semitism, 34, 103, 173, 196
163, 287, 356 career of, 185, 199, 251
in family of Party leaders, 268–69, 325 childhood of, 47, 124, 348
fear of, 38, 49, 52–53, 58, 163, 356 children of, 348
information on, 109, 205, 282, 284, college years of, 173, 196
286–87 on Communist Party, 199
state policy of, 21, 42, 176, 180, 265, family of, 25–26, 36, 47, 61, 100, 104, 196
285–86, 293, 320, 358 on foreign countries, 212
See also Gulag, terror on generations, 348
Reunions, 71, 96, 128–29, 320, 307–08, husband of, 199
318, 365 on Party and state leaders, 109, 272,
Revolution 281, 329
Bolshevik. See October Revolution photos of, 25, 104, 251
Chinese. See Cultural Revolution, school experiences of, 100, 103–04
Chinese on Soviet policies, 179, 281
Cuban. See Cuba, revolution in Ruffley, David L., 219
Ries, Nancy, 282 Rukavishnikov, Sasha, 75
Rogatnev, Andrei Russian Orthodox Church. See Ortho-
career of, 209, 244, 291, 367 doxy, Russian
childhood of, 42, 48, 52, 64, Russia, statistics on, 312–13
141–42, 159 Rutskoi, Aleksandr, 326
children of, 348
college years of, 179, 182, 209, 244 Sacrifice
on foreign countries and leaders, as result of war, 21, 23, 81, 285
212, 244 self-, 22, 53, 119, 265–66, 341
on generations, 348 Sakharov, Andrei, 245–46, 263, 285, 287
grandparents of, 28, 39, 51 Salary. See income
military service of, 262 Samizdat, 109, 131–32, 177, 180–82, 219,
parents of, 28, 53, 64, 142, 152, 244, 265, 274, 287, 357–59, 364
182, 244 Saratov
photos of, 141, 262 as closed city, 5, 8, 61, 87, 98–99, 141,
on Party and state leaders, 53, 112, 155, 157, 212–13, 223–24, 364
242, 330 description of, 8, 34–35, 98, 224
414 | INDEX
Saratov (continued ) photos of, 9, 72, 82, 108, 116, 136

as different from Moscow, 8, 14, visitors to, 98–99
33–34, 41, 61, 76, 90, 98–99, See also A class (School No. 42); B
130–31, 141–42, 155, 175, 178, 186, class (school No. 42)
196, 209–10, 218, 223–28, 230, Scientology, 322, 342–43
234, 245–47, 266, 269, 279, Second economy. See black market
294–95, 310, 313, 352–53, 364–66 September 11 (2001), 302, 309, 335
and sister cities, 98–99, 210, 213, 223 Seven-Year Plan (1959), 106, 130
Saratov Conservatory, 8, 37, 88, 123, 177, Sex education, 143–44
180, 246 Sexual activity, 143–44, 46, 348
Saratov Economics Institute, 19, 33, 171 Shapiro, Anatoly
Saratov Law Institute, 171, 177, 246 adulthood of, 194, 211, 229, 235–36,
Saratov Medical Institute, 8, 26, 171–72, 239, 246, 296, 298
175, 186, 193, 344, 349 on anti-Semitism, 173, 196
Saratov Pedagogical Institute, 88, 91, career of, 185, 199–200, 262–63
171–72, 175, 187, 190, 205, 316 childhood of, 52–53, 63, 121, 126, 134,
Saratov Polytechnic Institute, 8, 24, 30, 149, 154
171–72, 187, 189–90 children of, 342
Saratov State University, 8, 19, 24, 28, 33, college years of, 109, 173, 181
91, 171, 177–78, 180–81, 246 on Communist Party, 199–200, 219, 292
See also Romanov affair family of, 52, 61–62, 149, 152, 213, 298
Saratov Theater of Ballet and Opera, 123 on foreign countries and leaders, 154,
Sausage trains, 224–27, 230, 365 211, 213
Schiller, Friedrich, 280 on generations, 164, 342, 348
Schools military service of, 188–89, 196, 200
ballet, 124 on Party leaders, 109, 276
magnet, 4, 8–10, 54, 68, 74, 79, 95, 175, school experiences of, 75, 86, 90, 94, 125
177, 206, 341, 356–57, 364 on Soviet policies, 152, 235, 262–63,
music, 73, 78, 123–24 (see also music, 276, 292
study of) on transition period, 337, 368
neighborhood, 10, 71, 74–75, 80, 86, 185 wife of, 200, 296, 298
School No. 20 (Moscow) Shcharansky, Anatoly (Natan), 246
admission to, 79–80 Shadow economy, 314
and college admissions, 89, 169–70 Shestidesyatniki, 95, 165, 178
composition of, 10, 74–76, 117, Shevardnadze, Eduard, 271
instruction at, 4, 10, 88–91, 94–98, 118, 131 Shlapentokh, Vladimir, 95, 126, 259
photos of, 75, 364 Shock therapy, 326, 331
visitors to, 89, 99–100, 105, 117, 133, 142 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 91, 115–16
See also A class (School No. 20); B Shortages
class (school No. 20); C class bread, 3, 111–14, 226
School No. 42 (Saratov) food, 111–12, 119, 211, 222, 224–30,
admission to, 77–78 232–36, 238–39, 266, 273
and college admissions, 169–71 goods, 5, 13, 140, 164, 207, 214,
composition of, 9, 70–73, 117 224–25, 228–29, 231–32, 235–36,
instruction at, 4, 77, 86–88, 91–94, 98, 240, 266, 279, 295, 313, 361
118, 149 See also sausage trains
INDEX | 41 5
Shtein, Boris Sobchak, Anatoly, 333, 335

adulthood of, 208, 245, 249, 306–07 Socialism
career of, 192, 306 achievement of, 3, 150, 221
childhood of, 113, 249 attitude toward, 13, 58, 110, 222–23, 233,
children of, 306 235, 153, 277, 279, 310, 346, 362
family of, 23, 32, 50, 113, 159, ideals of, 14, 94, 282
208–09, 249 developed, 221–22
on foreign countries and leaders, 159, late, 11, 222–23, 243, 256, 265, 298,
306–07 304, 310, 354–55, 358, 362, 365
on generations, 167 reform of, 14, 168, 269, 272, 288, 367
on Party leaders, 240, 274, 362 Solidarity, 221, 275
photos of, 307 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 96, 108, 131–32,
school experiences of, 84, 98–99, 150, 180–81, 239, 245, 284
159, 171 Soviet dream
on Soviet policies, 179, 250 components of, 5, 53, 190, 219, 266,
on Soviet system, 309, 362 305, 360
wives of, 245, 306 realization of, 13, 168, 221, 223, 244,
Siberia 265–66, 309–10, 360, 362
development of, 221, 253–54, 361 Soviet system
exile to, 10, 29, 35, 51–52, 108, 175, 258 attitudes toward, 56, 210, 219, 226,
move to, 17, 29–30, 131 229, 236, 242, 347, 361, 366
travel to, 29, 154, 185, 255 belief in, 23, 51, 54, 81, 111, 168, 179,
Siblings, influence of, 26, 62, 356 222–23, 250, 251–52, 254, 266,
Sidelnikov, Vladimir 284, 359, 365
adulthood of, 216–17, 227, 236, 247, benefits of, 26, 119, 163, 168, 221–22,
253, 319, 321 316, 323, 345, 356, 361
on anti-Semitism, 173, 357 collapse of, 5, 20, 59, 70, 165–66, 168,
career of, 216, 247 219, 222, 242, 251, 349–50
childhood of, 59, 63, 126, 138, 366 reasons for, 12–14, 255–56,
college years of, 173, 176, 182, 216–17, 266–67, 277, 29, 309, 361–62
247, 319 critical views of, 13–14, 50, 52, 65, 117,
family of, 50, 53, 55, 108, 182, 247, 119, 127, 210, 218–19, 235, 237, 245,
319, 366 252, 300, 362–63, 366
on Party and state leaders, 108, 114, evolution of, 5, 14, 20, 31, 221, 265,
240, 329, 336 269, 275, 292, 356, 360
photos of, 176 features of, 53–54, 69, 107, 228–30, 249
school experiences of, 105 viability of, 118–19, 165, 221–23, 236,
on Soviet policies, 114, 262 266, 274, 309, 361–62
on Soviet system, 114, 362 legitimacy of, 21–22, 210, 221, 259,
wife of, 319–21 275, 292, 309, 362
Sino-Soviet split, 153–55 subversion of, 13, 49, 226, 228, 230,
Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, 150, 176–77, 245 275, 361
Six Day War, 173–74, 196 superiority of, 3, 58, 60, 166, 226,
Slovakia, 210, 213, 223 155–56, 250
Smoking, 85, 95, 114, 117, 126–27, 138–39, working within, 115, 126, 217, 219, 223,
142, 297, 339, 342–43 244, 255, 278, 304, 309, 356, 359
416 | INDEX
Soviet Union, breakup of, 274, 280–81, Starshova, Klara, 81–82, 91–92, 99
292–94, 310, 313, 351 Stilyagi, 135
Space exploration, 8, 54, 66–67, 112, 114, Superpower
121, 237–39, 297, 357 competition, 4, 60, 66–67, 69, 149,
Space race, 3, 5, 60, 66–67, 110 275
Spirituality, 44–45, 217, 227, 278, 322, relations, 6, 59, 61, 147, 150, 161
333, 347, 350, 353, 368 Russia as, 310, 326, 332, 334, 352
Spock, Dr. Benjamin, 206 Soviet Union as, 5, 22, 269, 274
Sports, 104–05, 122–25, 183, 194, 215, 296 Supreme Soviet, 58, 73, 285–86, 326
Sputnik, 5, 42, 66–69, 167–68, 239, 357, 363 Suslov, Mikhail, 268–69
Stability Suvorov, Viktor, 283–84
in post-Soviet period, 288, 326, 323,
331, 333–35, 338–40 Tape recorders
in Soviet period, 11, 15, 121, 163, appearance of, 63, 74, 83, 132, 137, 140,
165–66, 221–22, 236–38, 243, 267, 142, 165, 218
351, 360–61 use of, 87, 89, 122, 139–40, 142, 149,
Stagnation, 217, 220–21, 236–40, 261, 265, 358
266, 270, 275, 277–78, 280, 292, Tatars, 10, 73, 115
309, 352, 354 Teachers
Stalin, Josef at School No. 20, 84–86, 90, 94–98,
attitudes toward, 51, 56–58, 81, 103–06, 117–18, 121, 125, 131,
108–09, 113, 163–64, 252–53, 362 170–71, 174
cult of, 7, 50, 53, 57–58, 109, 119, 252 at School No. 42, 87, 91–94, 98–99,
death of, 8, 20–21, 31, 33, 49, 51, 53, 101, 115–16, 118, 139
55–56, 79, 178 See also Starshova, Klara; Roman,
rule of, 5, 7, 10, 13, 17–18, 31–32, 35, 38, Kaplan
45, 50, 53, 143, 163, 221, 238, 253 Terlitsky, Leonid
See also specific policy initiatives adulthood of, 203, 252, 299, 367
Starik, Vyacheslav brother of, 26, 34, 62, 299
adulthood of, 211, 234, 234–35, career of, 26, 194, 299
284–87, 296 childhood of, 23, 34, 44, 47, 56–58,
on anti-Semitism, 173–74, 196 60–62, 65, 67, 121, 130, 132, 138,
career of, 165, 196, 234, 287, 290, 316 141, 148, 162
childhood of, 37–38, 42, 122, 128, 150 college years of, 148, 170, 174, 177, 188
children of, 211, 234, 296 family of, 23, 34, 44, 47, 54, 57–58,
college years of, 173–74, 184, 196 60–62, 65 80, 140, 162, 299
on Communist Party, 200, 290 on generations, 165–67, 350
family of, 24, 37–38, 42, 161, 174, 287 on Party leaders, 57, 112, 242
on foreign countries and leaders, photos of, 62, 105, 145, 188
161, 212 school experiences of, 74, 76, 80, 94–95,
on gender, 54, 128 99, 103–04, 117, 132, 146, 360
on generations, 165 on Soviet system, 64, 242, 252
photos of, 128 wife of, 203, 299
school experiences of, 74, 76, 79, Terror, 5, 17, 21, 49, 51–54, 65, 163, 166,
83–85, 90, 95–96, 99, 117 181, 252–53, 283–84, 360, 366
wife of, 211, 296 Terrorism, 4, 302, 330–31, 333–35, 353
INDEX | 41 7
Thaw, 58, 65, 79, 95, 153, 356–57 adulthood of, 128–29, 194, 225
impact of, 53–54, 112, 114, 118, 143, 165, childhood of, 43, 46, 122, 158
Third World, 67, 158, 171 family of, 29, 35, 43, 46, 52, 101, 149,
Transition, post-Soviet, 14, 237, 312–14, 164–65
319, 339–40, 352, 362 husbands of, 204, 225, 359
attitudes toward, 5, 166, 237, 277, 290, on Party leaders, 113–14, 220
312, 323–25, 340, 352, 362–63 school experiences of, 70–71, 91–92,
Travel abroad, 101–02, 144
by Baby Boomers, 63–64, 190, 193–94, Turovskaya, Maya, 59
210–17, 219, 223–24, 244, 294–98, Tutors, private, 78–80, 118, 169–70, 172,
300–01, 310, 313–14, 358, 361 174, 357
by parents, 61–63, 137, 149, 160–61, Tyutchev, Fyoder, 367–68
356
restrictions on, 99, 147, 158, 160, 177, Ukraine, 111, 270, 284
196, 211, 214–16, 248, 289–90 family ties to, 24, 27, 35–36, 202,
by teachers, 87, 98 235, 317
See also Intourist and individual Ukrainians, 10, 27, 35, 73
countries Ulyakhin, Father Valentin
Trubnikov, Aleksandr adulthood of, 227, 239, 320
adulthood of, 208, 223, 225–26, 233, career of, 44, 193–94, 320
237, 257, 302, 309 childhood of, 44
on anti-Semitism, 33, 197, 302 college years of, 171
career of, 195, 242, 257, 302–04 family of, 24, 44, 55, 161, 239, 320
childhood of, 39, 60–61, 111, 126–27, on generations, 166
129, 138, 140, 149, 360 on Party and state leaders, 287–88, 328
children of, 302, 305, 349 on Soviet policies, 281
college years of, 149, 176, 181 Unemployment, 156–57, 222, 237, 244,
on communism and Communist 312, 314, 317, 328, 344–45, 353,
Party, 3, 33, 110–01, 150, 197–98, 385 n.7
250 Uniforms, school, 68, 78, 81, 85, 136,
family of, 29, 33, 39, 55, 78, 100, 149, 235, 340
155, 164, 256–57, 302 United States,
on foreign countries and leaders, 151, attitudes toward, 61, 106, 114, 156–61,
155, 157–58, 304–05 193, 211, 217, 222, 253, 271–72,
on generations, 164, 349 279–81, 297–98, 305–07, 313,
on Party leaders, 3, 109–10, 237, 242 331–32, 336, 344, 350, 385 n.27
photos of, 303 in comparison to Soviet Union, 4, 6,
school experiences of, 71–72, 78, 86, 45–46, 69, 169, 190, 201, 206,
92, 100–03, 144–45 222, 314
on Soviet policies, 151, 155, 164, 179, emigration to, 9, 13, 16–17, 19, 26, 58,
223, 244–45, 249–50, 256–57, 263 63, 94, 109, 127, 160, 162, 195, 199,
on Soviet system, 111, 223, 267, 277, 302 203, 299–302, 305–06, 308, 310,
on transition period, 164, 302 314, 349, 365
wife of, 303 relations with, 3–4, 7, 21, 59–61, 114,
Tsurkan, Irina 156–57, 161, 221–22, 261, 331–32
418 | INDEX
United States (continued ) on Soviet policies, 55, 254, 280

travel to, 17, 61–63, 89, 159, 194, 215–17, on transition period, 293–94, 330,
296–98, 300–02, 305–06, 347 337, 354
work in, 16–17, 38, 62, 193–95, 300, Vinogradova, Sofiya
302, 305–08 adulthood of, 235, 299–300, 324
United States Information Agency on anti-Semitism, 33, 196
(USIA), 60–61, 147 career of, 196
University. See higher education childhood of, 125, 324
Urbanization, 46, 168 children of, 235, 341–42
USSR. See Soviet Union college years of, 172, 196
Ussuri River crisis, 153–54 family of, 29, 33, 36, 299, 324
Ustinov, Dmitry, 243 on foreign countries and leaders,
Uzbekistan, 29, 34, 188, 284 212–13
on generations, 341–42
Vail’, Pyotr, 42, 45, 119 school experiences of, 83, 96
Values on Soviet policies, 281, 324
of Baby Boomers, 305, 341 Virich, Aleksandr
family, 21, 64 adulthood of, 194, 224, 227, 230,
family’s influence on, 64, 356 232–34, 238, 246, 365
parents’ influence on, 54–55, 163, career of, 194, 200, 230
204, 363 childhood of, 29, 120, 122, 125, 127,
private, 13, 250, 266 133, 138, 140, 147–48
school’s influence on, 86–87, 106, 118, children of, 267, 345
167, 356, 360 college years of, 183, 189, 200
sexual values, 143 on communism and Communist
shifts in, 12, 143, 250, 275, 341–42, 351–52 Party, 157, 200, 208, 250
Soviet, 13, 32, 64, 67, 94, 168, 210 family of, 27, 29, 31, 51, 55, 120, 138,
universal, 55, 157 140, 367
VEF radio, 146–48 on foreign countries and leaders, 151,
Vietnam War, 206, 222, 256, 261, 157, 219
263–64, 347 on generations, 345
Viktor D. military service of, 189, 203
adulthood of, 237–38, 320 on Party and state leaders, 238, 271,
career of, 237, 320 274, 279, 337
childhood of, 4, 42, 61, 133–34, 140, photos of, 365
142–43, 148 school experiences of, 70–72, 94, 122,
children of, 330, 353 136, 139, 145
college years of, 55, 172 on Soviet policies, 179, 267, 274, 286,
family of, 38, 42, 51–52, 55, 148, 160 291
on foreign countries and leaders, 151, on Soviet system, 267
158, 160 on transition period, 318, 324,
military service of, 189 336–37, 367
on Party and state leaders, 237, 274, wife of, 203, 208
329, 337 Vizgalova, Irina
school experiences of, 55, 83, 92–93, adulthood of, 226–27, 233
100, 122, 125, 142 career of, 207, 254, 261, 288
INDEX | 41 9
childhood of, 37, 42, 73, 102, 123, 125, 130 West
children of, 207–08, 288, 342 attitudes toward, 140, 155–61, 282,
college years of, 180–81, 184 285, 298–99, 303–05, 332–33,
on communism, 3, 111 352–53
on foreign countries and leaders, 152, criticism of, 155–60, 211, 217, 226,
158, 208 244–45, 249, 250, 253–54, 281, 313
on gender, 261 influence of, 7, 59, 114, 271, 273, 281,
on generations, 164, 342 344, 362
grandparents of, 37, 102, 164, 242 interest in, 14, 58, 63, 161, 356, 358
parents of, 24, 55, 123, 164, 208, 355 See also United States
on Party leaders, 109, 111, 242, 270 White House (Moscow), 292, 325–26, 330
school experiences of, 82, 92, 102 Women. See gender
on Soviet policies, 254, 263–64, 277, Working class families, 9–10, 22, 28–29,
286, 288 58, 72–74, 117
on transition period, 312, 324–25 World War II
Voice of America (VOA), 146–49, cult of, 252–54
208, 214 heroes of, 38, 97, 285
Voice of Israel, 148 impact of, 6–7, 21–26, 38, 42, 45,
Voinovich, Vladimir, 181, 246 53–54, 156, 163–64, 238, 256, 266,
Volga Germans, 10, 32, 34–35, 43, 53, 285, 321
81, 175 lived experiences during, 18–19,
Volga River, 8, 31, 101, 127, 142, 210, 22–29, 34–36, 39, 41, 44, 50–51,
318–19, 321 53, 73, 81, 163–64, 208
Volgin, Igor, 182 Soviet actions in, 34–35, 160, 208–09,
Volobuev affair, 245 283–85
Volodarsky, Leonid veterans, treatment of, 18, 34, 231,
adulthood of, 229, 245, 253, 256, 252–53, 337, 347
300, 320 victory in, 56, 109, 113, 252–53, 285
career of, 191
childhood of, 137, 148 Yakovlev, Aleksandr, 276, 289
college years of, 180–82, 191 Yanichkina, Natalya
family of, 32–34, 38, 113, 148, 173, adulthood of, 194, 203, 214–15,
181–82 223–25, 229–30, 268
on foreign countries and leaders, career of, 203, 224, 268
154, 159 childhood of, 49, 52, 59, 61, 67,
on generations, 15, 164, 323 122–23, 149
on Party and state leaders, 109, 113, children of, 165, 203
241, 252–53, 271, 329, 335 college years of, 171–72
school experiences of, 91, 97, 105 on communism and Communist
on Soviet policies, 180, 253–54, 263, 281 Party, 61, 199
on Soviet system, 15, 323 family of, 24–25, 51–52, 59, 77–78,
on transition period, 281, 335 172, 203
Vysotsky, Vladimir, 142–43, 145 on foreign countries, 154, 272
on gender, 258
Wages. See income on generations, 165, 348
Wertsch, James, 14 husband of, 199, 203, 268, 317
420 | INDEX
Yanichkina (continued ) Zemskov, Sergei

on Party and state leaders, 220, 243, adulthood of, 239
271–72, 276, 328, 336 career of, 114, 239
school experiences of, 72–73, 77–78, childhood of, 36, 51, 122, 131
81, 87, 93, 98 on communism and Communist
on Soviet policies, 268, 276 Party, 200, 250
on transition period, 317, 330, 354 family of, 23, 29, 36, 51, 80, 122, 131,
Yefros, Aleksei, 75, 85 161, 171
Yeltsin, Boris on foreign countries and leaders, 159,
attitudes toward, 271, 313, 324, 327–31, 161, 332
333–36, 338, 362–63 on generations, 167, 266, 366
policies of, 237, 313–14, 326–31, 333 on Party leaders, 114, 239, 266
resignation of, 313, 328, 330, photos of, 105
333–34, 363 school experiences of, 74, 76, 80,
rise to power of, 270, 292, 325–26 84–85, 97, 116–17, 171
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 117 on Soviet system, 266, 366
Yolshina, Natalya Zharovova, Yelena
adulthood of, 231, 358 adulthood of, 209, 211, 219, 234–35,
career of, 289–90 238, 253, 265
childhood of, 55, 125, 140–41, 153–54 career of, 260
on communism, 289 childhood of, 42, 132
family of, 25, 55, 78, 285 children of, 202, 343
153, 157 family of, 30, 55
on gender, 258 on gender, 260
on generations, 350 on generations, 164, 343
on Party leaders, 242 husband of, 202, 211, 242–43, 296
school experiences of, 70–71, 78, on Party leaders, 141, 241–43, 271, 281
86–87, 151, 153 photos of, 202
on Soviet policies, 67, 179–80, school experiences of, 80, 88–89
284–86, 289–90 on Soviet policies, 112, 235, 281, 293
Yom Kippur War, 188 Zhvanetsky, Mikhail, 239
Young Octobrists, 106 Zinoviyev, Aleksandr, 181–82
Yugoslavia, 61, 212–13, 284, 318 Zubok, Vladislav, 113
Yurchak, Alexei, 13, 361 Zyuganov, Gennady, 327–28
THE OXFORD ORAL HISTORY SERIES
J . TO DD M OY E (University of North Texas), KAT HR YN N ASST RO M (University of San
Francisco), and ROB E RT P ER KS (The British Library Sound Archive), Series Editors
DO NA LD A . RI TC H I E , Senior Advisor
Doing Oral History, Second Edition Donald A. Ritchie

Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and Its
Transformations Edited by Jürgen Matthäus
A Guide to Oral History and the Law John A. Neuenschwander
Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals
David K. Dunaway and Molly Beer
Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II J. Todd Moye

Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History, Second Edition
Michael L. Gillette
The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi Gary Bruce

The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David
Boder Alan Rosen
They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History Alessandro Portelli
Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns Carole Garibaldi Rogers
Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War
Generation Donald J. Raleigh

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Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

1 THE REAL NUCLEAR THREAT: Soviet Families in Transition 16

2 OVERTAKING AMERICA IN SCHOOL:

3 “UNCONSCIOUS AGENTS OF CHANGE”:

4 THE BABY BOOMERS COME OF AGE 168

5 LIVING SOVIET DURING THE BREZHNEV-ERA STAGNATION 220

6 “BUT THEN EVERYTHING FELL APART”:

7 SURVIVING RUSSIA’S GREAT DEPRESSION 312

Appendix: The Baby Boomers 369

Kolosova, Yelena Proskuryakova (Zharovova), Yevgeniya Kreizerova (Ruditskaya),

anything else,” concluded Saratov’s Viktor D., “reality shaped my worldview.

left 27 million dead, including 17 million civilians; cities, villages, transporta-

counterparts that ultimately resulted in this book. Because Moscow enjoyed a

from one to three hours. Although I employed open-ended interview techniques

connection between biography and history. My goal is to provide insight into

beyond the ideals they instilled in me during childhood to get to where I am

“She remembered the Revolution and the postrevolutionary period. I there-

Trained in Zurich, Anna Lyovina’s

Rejected everywhere she turned, she accepted a position as a civilian worker in a

Yevgeniya Ruditskaya with her

Those disenfranchised by Soviet power also survived by marrying people

Born in 1919, Aleksandr Konstantinov’s mother,

Yelena Zharovova’s father, Vadim

Arkady Darchenko had vivid memories

* Marking the culmination of postwar state-sponsored anti-Semitism, the Doctors’ Plot

According to Moscow’s Mikhail Markovich, “half of our class were Jews or

In recounting the revolutionary pedigree of her maternal grandparents, Tatyana

“SHE HAD AN ENORMOUS INFLUENCE ON ME”

Some families hired nannies in cases in which grandmothers still worked,

Communist Party launched an antireligious campaign at the end of the 1920s

apartment. Igor Litvin’s family dwelled in an apartment located in an old

things began to show up in the stores.” Olga Kamayurova’s family lived in a

“IF I DIE, CONSIDER ME A COMMUNIST”

specializing in international trade, frequently began traveling abroad and

Living abroad left an indelible mark on seven-year-old Andrei Rogatnev, how-

The launching of Sputnik inspired fear in the West, but confidence in

Tatyana Arzhanova’s mother

* The Soviet Union’s ofﬁcial news agency.

transformed into an English-language school. A teacher of English, her mother

Although it might not seem

yourself.” Olga Kolishchyuk underscored “respect for others, intelligence, love

“THE SCHOOL HAD VERY TOUGH REQUIREMENTS”

Because history was the most patently politicized discipline, a personal

* As mentioned on p. 53, Khrushchev’s inconsistent liberalization of cultural policy is loosely

Now co-owner with ballet superstar

A young teacher at School No. 42 at the time, Klara Eduardovna Starshova

campﬁres burning. It meant doing some fun work on nearby kolkhozes. I

Aleksandr Trubnikov. “To be honest,” conﬁrmed Larisa Petrova, “I always loved

The school administration looked upon the opportunity as something to be

“there was a mythologization of Lenin.” Vladimir Bystrov acknowledged that he

“IT WILL BE THE BEST . . . SOCIETY ON EARTH”

“WE LIVED FOR RECESS AND FOR LIFE AFTER

In this regard a friendship could threaten a family’s hold over someone