My favorite holiday was always November 7*1…A big and bright day…The most vivid impression from my childhood was the military parade on Red Square…
I’d sit on my father’s shoulders with a red balloon tied to my wrist. Up in the sky, over the marching columns, loomed the huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin…Marx…Garlands and bouquets of red, blue, and yellow balloons. Red everywhere. My favorite color in the world. The color of the Revolution and of the blood spilled in its name…The Great October Revolution! Today, they’re calling it a military coup, the Bolshevik conspiracy…the Russian catastrophe…Saying Lenin was a German agent and the Revolution was brought about by deserters and drunken sailors. I cover my ears, I don’t want to hear it! It’s more than I can take…My whole life, I’ve believed that we were the luckiest people on earth, born in the most beautiful and extraordinary country in the world. There’s no other one like it! We have Red Square, the Spasskaya Tower clock, that the whole world sets its time to. That’s what my father told me…and my mother and grandmother…“November 7 is a red-letter day…” The night before, my whole family would stay up late making flowers out of crepe paper, cutting out cardboard hearts. Coloring them in. In the morning, my mother and grandmother would stay home preparing the holiday dinner. We always had guests. They’d bring us wine and cakes in string bags…Back then, we didn’t have plastic bags…My grandmother would bake her famous pirozhki stuffed with cabbage and mushrooms, and my mother would work her magic on Olivier salad and prepare her essential meat in aspic. As for me, I got to be with my father!
There were many people out in the street, and all of them had red ribbons on their coats and jackets. Red flags blazing in the wind, the military brass band playing. Our leaders at the rostrum…and the song:
World capital, our capital
Like the Kremlin’s stars you glow
You’re the pride of the whole cosmos,
Granite beauty, our Moscow…
I wanted to keep shouting “Hurrah!” The loudspeakers cried, “Glory to the workers of the Likhachev factory, twice awarded the orders of Lenin and the Red Banner! Hurrah, comrades!” “Hurrah! Hurrah!” “Glory to our heroic Leninist Komsomol…to the Communist Party…to our glorious veterans…” “Hurrah! Hurrah!” Beauty! Ecstasy! People wept, overwhelmed with joy…The brass band played marches and songs of the Revolution:
He was ordered to move westward,
She was sent the other way,
Komsomol men marched away toward
Battle in the civil war…
I remember all the words to every single song, I haven’t forgotten a thing, I sing them all the time. I sing them to myself. [She begins to quietly sing.]
Vast is my beloved country
Full of forests, fields, and rivers.
I know there’s none other like her
Where a man can breathe so freely…
I recently found our old records in the closet, so I took the record player down from the storage cabinet and spent the whole evening reminiscing. The songs of Dunaevsky and Lebedev-Kumach—we used to adore them! [She is silent.] And there I am, high up in the sky. My father lifts me up…higher and higher…The most important moment comes: Powerful vehicles pulling covered missiles, tanks, and artillery are about to roar down the cobblestones of Red Square. “Remember this moment for the rest of your life!” my father shouts over the noise. And I know that I will! On the way home, we’d stop into the store and I would get my favorite lemon soda, Buratino. That day, I was allowed to have anything I wanted: toy whistles, rooster lollipops…
I loved Moscow at night…the lights…When I was eighteen…Eighteen! I fell in love. The moment I realized that I was in love—guess where I went. That’s right, I went to Red Square. The first thing I wanted to do was spend those moments in Red Square. The Kremlin walls, black spruces dusted with snow, Alexander Gardens shrouded in snowdrifts. As I took it all in, I knew that I would be happy. I would definitely be happy!
My husband and I recently visited Moscow. And for the first time…For the first time, we didn’t go to Red Square. We didn’t pay our respects. For the first time…[She has tears in her eyes.] My husband is Armenian, we got married when we were in college. He had a blanket, I had a cot, and that’s how we began our life together. After graduating from the Moscow Medical Academy, we were assigned to work in Minsk. All of my friends went off to different places: One went to Moldavia, another to Ukraine, a third to Irkutsk. We called the people who were sent to Irkutsk Decembrists.*2 It’s all the same country, go wherever you please! There were no borders back then, no visas or customs. My husband wanted to return to his homeland, Armenia. “We’ll go to Lake Sevan, you’ll see Ararat. Try real Armenian lavash,” he promised me. But we were offered jobs in Minsk. So we decided: “Let’s go to Belarus!” “Okay!” We were young, we had our whole lives ahead of us, we thought that we’d have enough time to do everything. We came to Minsk and ended up liking it here. There’s nothing but lakes and forests all around. They are the forests, swamps, and backwoods of the partisans; fields are rare among all these trees. Our children grew up out here, their favorite foods are draniki and mochanka. “They fry the taters, they boil the taters…” Their second favorite dish is Armenian khash…Still, every year, we’d go on a family trip to Moscow. How could we not? I couldn’t live without it, I had to walk around Moscow. Breathe the air. I waited…I couldn’t wait for those first moments when our train would pull into Belorussky Station and the march would play over the loudspeaker; my heart would jump at the words: “Comrade passengers, our train has arrived in the capital of our Motherland, the Hero-City Moscow!” “Roiling, mighty, undefeatable / My Moscow, my country, I love you most of all…” That’s the music you disembark to.
But then…Where are we? We were greeted by a strange, unfamiliar city…The wind blew dirty wrappers and scraps of newspaper down the sidewalks, beer cans rattled underfoot. At the train station…and by the Metro…everywhere you went, you saw gray rows of people peddling lingerie and sheets, old shoes and toys, loose cigarettes. Like in war movies. I’d never seen anything like it except in those movies. On beds of torn paper, in cardboard laid directly on the ground, you’d find salami, meat, and fish. In some places, it’d be covered in tattered cellophane; in others, it lay bare. And Muscovites were buying it all. Bargaining. Knitted socks, napkins. Nails and food and clothes, all side by side. People speaking Ukrainian, Belarusian, Moldavian…“We came from Vinnytsia…” “We’re from Brest…” So many poor people…Where had they all come from? Invalids…Like in the movies…That’s all I have to compare it to, old Soviet films. It felt like I was watching a movie…
On the Old Arbat, my beloved Arbat, I found peddlers selling matryoshka dolls, samovars, icons, and portraits of the Tsar and the royal family. Portraits of White Guard generals—Kolchak and Denikin,*3 next to busts of Lenin…There were all sorts of matryoshkas: Gorbachev matryoshkas, Yeltsin matryoshkas. I didn’t recognize my Moscow. What city was this? Right there on the asphalt, on top of some bricks, an old man sat playing the accordion. He was wearing his medals, singing war songs, with a hat full of change at his feet. Our favorite songs: “The fire burns bright in the little stove, / Sap drips down the logs, like tears…” I wanted to go up to him…but he was already surrounded by foreigners…They started snapping pictures of each other in front of him. Shouting things at him in Italian, French, and German. Clapping him on the shoulder: “Davai! Davai!” They were in high spirits, clearly having a lot of fun. Why wouldn’t they be? People used to be so scared of us…and now…Here you go! Nothing but piles of junk, an empire gone up in smoke! Next to all the matryoshkas and samovars, there was a mountain of red flags and pennants, Party and Komsomol membership cards. And Soviet war medals! Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner. Medals! “For Valor” and “For Military Service.” I touched them…caressed them…I couldn’t believe my eyes! I simply couldn’t! “For defending Sebastopol,” and “For Defending the Caucasus.” All of them were real. Precious. Soviet army uniforms, jackets, and greatcoats…peaked caps with red stars…being sold for dollars…“How much?” my husband asked, pointing at the “For Valor” medal. “Twenty dollars. Or, for you, I’ll do a grand—one thousand rubles.” “And the Order of Lenin?” “One hundred dollars.” “And your conscience?” My husband was prepared to fight him. “Are you nuts? What rock have you been living under? These are relics from the era of totalitarianism.” Those were his words…Like these were just refuse, but the foreigners liked them, Soviet symbols are in style over there, so now they were hot commodities. I screamed…called a policeman over…I was yelling, “Look! Look…Ahh!” The policeman confirmed it, “These are relics of the totalitarian era…We only arrest people for drugs or pornography…” But isn’t a Party membership card for ten dollars pornography? The Order of Glory…or this: a red flag with a portrait of Lenin being sold for dollars. It felt like we were on some kind of film set. Like we were being pranked. We’d come to the wrong place. I stood there and wept. Next to us, Italians tried on military greatcoats and caps with red stars. “Horoshow! Horoshow!” À la Russe…
The first time I went to the Lenin Mausoleum was with my mother. I remember it was raining, a cold autumn rain. We had to stand in line for six hours. The steps…the twilight…the wreaths…A whisper: “Step in. Don’t dally.” I couldn’t see anything through my tears. But Lenin…he seemed to be glowing…I was little, and I told my mother, “Mama, I’m never going to die.” “Why do you say that?” my mother asked. “Everyone dies. Even Lenin died.” Even Lenin…I don’t know how to talk about any of this, but I have to. I want to. I’d like to talk, but I don’t know who to talk to. What do I want to talk about? About how incredibly lucky we were! Now I am fully convinced of it. We grew up poor and naïve, but we never knew it and didn’t envy anyone. We went to school with cheap pencil cases and forty-kopeck pens. In the summer, you put on some canvas shoes, spiff them up with tooth powder, and they’re pretty! In the winter, it’d be rubber boots, the cold would burn the soles of your feet—it was fun! We believed that tomorrow would be better than today and the day after tomorrow better than yesterday. We had a future. And a past. We had it all!
We loved our Motherland, our love for her was boundless, she was everything to us! The first Soviet car—hurrah! An illiterate worker unlocked the secret to making our own Soviet stainless steel—victory! The fact that everyone in the world had already known this secret for a long time is something we only found out later. Back then: We’re going to be the first to fly over the North Pole, we’re going to learn how to control the Northern Lights! We’ll change the course of the mightiest rivers…We’ll irrigate the endless deserts…Faith! Faith! Faith! Something higher than reason. I would wake up to the sound of the national anthem instead of an alarm clock: “Unbreakable Union of free republics, / For ages, united by Mighty Rus…” We sang a lot in school. I remember our songs…[She sings.]
Our fathers dreamt of joy and freedom.
For this, they battled more than once.
Braving war, Lenin and Stalin,
Built our Fatherland for us…
At home, we remembered how…When the anthem played on the radio the day after I was accepted into the Young Pioneers, I leapt up and stood on my bed at attention. The Pioneer oath: “I hereby am joining the ranks…in the presence of my comrades…I solemnly swear to passionately love my Motherland…” At home, we celebrated. The smell of the pies baked in my honor filled the air. I always wore my red Pioneers’ kerchief, I would wash it and iron it every morning so that it never had a single wrinkle. Even when I was already in college, I continued tying my scarves in a Pioneers’ knot. My Komsomol membership card…I still have it…I pretended to be a year older so that they would let me join sooner. I loved walking through the streets, you could always hear the radio…The radio was our life, it was everything. You’d open the window and music would pour in, the kind of music that made you want to get up and march around your apartment. Like a soldier…It might have been a prison, but I was warmer in that prison. That’s what we were used to…Even today, when we stand in line, we huddle close to one another and try to be together. Have you noticed that? [Again, she starts to quietly sing.]
Stalin is our warrior glory,
Stalin is the joy of youth,
Singing, battling, victorious
Our nation follows Stalin’s path…
And yes! Yes! Yes! My greatest dream was to die! To sacrifice myself. Give myself away. The Komsomol oath: “I am prepared to give up my life if my nation should need it.” These weren’t just words, that’s what we were really taught. If we saw a column of soldiers marching down the street, everyone would stop…After the Victory, the soldier became an extraordinary figure…When I was entering the Party, in my application, I wrote, “I know and accept the Party Program and Regulations. I am prepared to devote all of my energy, and, if necessary, to give my life to my Motherland.” [She examines me carefully.] And what do you think of me? That I’m an idiot? That I’m infantile…? Some of the people I know…they have outright laughed at me: emotional socialism, the ideals on paper…That’s what I look like to them. Stupid! Down syndrome! You’re “an engineer of human souls.” *4 You want to comfort me? Our writers are more than just writers. You’re teachers. Spiritual leaders. That’s how it used to be; it’s not like that anymore. Many people go to church these days. There are very few believers among them, the majority are just sufferers. Like me…traumatized…I’m not a believer in the canonical sense, but I do believe with my heart. I don’t know the prayers, but I pray…Our priest is a former officer, his sermons are always about the army, the atom bomb. The enemies of Russia and Masonic conspiracies. But I want to hear about something else, something totally different…Not that. But that’s all there is, everywhere you turn…So much hatred…There’s nowhere for the soul to hide from it. I turn on the TV, and it’s the same thing, nothing but denunciations. Everyone rejecting the past. Cursing it. My favorite director, Mark Zakharov, whom I don’t love and trust liked I used to…He burned his Party membership card and they showed it on TV…He did it in public. This isn’t theater! This is life! My life. How can you treat it like that? My life…I don’t need these spectacles…[She weeps.]
I’ve fallen behind…I’m one of the people who’s fallen behind…Everyone else transferred from the train that was hurtling toward socialism onto the train racing to capitalism. I’m late…People laugh at the sovok: He’s trash, he’s a dope. They laugh at me…Now the Reds are the monsters and the Whites are knights. My heart and mind rebel, I can’t accept it on a physiological level. I won’t allow the thought in. I can’t, I’m incapable…I embraced Gorbachev, even though I criticized him…He was…Now it’s clear to me that, like the rest of us, he was a dreamer. An ideas man. You could call him that. But I wasn’t prepared for Yeltsin…for Gaidar’s reforms. All our money disappeared at the snap of his fingers. Our money and our lives along with it…In the blink of an eye, everything became worthless. Instead of the bright future, they started telling us to get rich, love money…Bow down to this beast! The people were not prepared. No one had even dreamed of capitalism, I can tell you that about myself, I definitely had not…I liked socialism. The Brezhnev years…Vegetarian times…I wasn’t around for the cannibalism. Pakhmutova had a song: “Under the wing of the airplane, the green sea of the taiga sings…” I was prepared to make close friends with and build “blue cities.”*5 To dream! “I know, there’ll be a city…” “There’ll be a garden city here…” I loved Mayakovsky. Patriotic poems and songs. They were so important back then. They meant so much to us. No one can convince me that we were given life just to eat and sleep to our hearts’ content. That a hero is someone who buys something one place and sells it down the road for three kopecks more. That’s what they want us to believe now…It turns out that everyone who had given up their lives for others had been a fool. Everyone who’d died for lofty ideals. No! No! Yesterday, I was standing in line at the store…An old woman in front of me kept counting the change in her wallet. She ended up buying one hundred grams of the cheapest salami…“Dog salami”…and two eggs. I know her, too…Her whole life, she’d worked as a teacher.
I can’t get excited about this new life! I’m not going to do well, I’m never going to be happy on my own. Alone. And life keeps pulling and pulling me into this muck. Down to the earth. My children already live according to these new laws. They don’t need me anymore, I seem ridiculous. My whole life…I was going through papers and came across my teenage diary: my first love, my first kiss, and pages and pages about how much I loved Stalin, how I was prepared to die just to see him. Notes of a madwoman…I wanted to throw it away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. I hid it. I’m scared, I hope no one finds it. They’d mock me and laugh at me. I didn’t show it to anyone…[She is silent.] I remember many things that can’t be explained rationally. I’m a rare specimen! A therapist’s dream…isn’t that right? You’re very lucky to have found me…[She laughs and cries at the same time.]
Ask me…You have to ask how these things coexisted: our happiness and the fact that they came for some people at night and took them away. Some people disappeared, while others cried behind the door. For some reason, I don’t remember any of that. I don’t! I remember how the lilacs blossomed in the spring, and everyone outside, strolling; the wooden walkways warmed by the sun. The smell of the sun. The blinding mass demonstrations: athletes, the names of Lenin and Stalin woven from human bodies and flowers on Red Square. I would ask my mother this question, too…
What do we remember about Beria? About the Lubyanka? My mother was silent on this…She once told me the story of how one summer, after a vacation to Crimea with Papa, they were returning to Moscow through Ukraine. It was the 1930s, during collectivization…There was a huge famine in Ukraine, they call it Holodomor. Millions of people died…Entire villages…No one was left to bury anyone. Ukrainians were killed because they didn’t want to join collective farms. They were starved to death. Now I know about it…They used to have the Zaporozhian Sich,*6 the people remembered freedom…The soil there is so fertile you can stick a stake in and it’ll grow into a tree. And yet they were dying…dropping dead like cattle. They had everything taken away from them, down to the last poppy pod. They were surrounded by troops like in a concentration camp. Now I know…One of my friends at work is Ukrainian, she heard about it from her grandmother…How in their village, a mother killed one of her children with an axe, cooked him and fed him to the others. Her own child…All of this really happened. Parents were afraid to let their kids out of their yards because people hunted them like cats and dogs. They’d dig up earthworms in their gardens and eat them. Those who had the strength would crawl into town to the train tracks. Waiting for passengers to toss them bread crusts from passing trains…Soldiers would kick them, beat them with their gun butts…The trains rushed by at full speed. Conductors would shut the windows, batten down the blinds. No one asked anyone about anything. They’d go straight back to Moscow. Bearing wine and fruit, showing off their tans, talking about the sea. [Silence.] I loved Stalin…I loved him for a long time. I kept loving him even when they started writing that he was short, red-headed, and had a lame hand. That he shot his wife. After he was dethroned. Thrown out of the Mausoleum. I kept loving him all the same.
I was a Stalin girl for a long time, a very long time. Yes…that’s how it was! With me…with us…With that life gone, I’m left empty-handed. I have nothing…a pauper! I was proud of our neighbor Vanya, he was a real hero! He returned from the war without any legs. He pushed himself around in a homemade wooden wheelchair. Called me “my Margaritka” and fixed everyone’s boots and felt boots. When he was drunk, he’d sing, “My dearest brothers and sisters / I heroically did battle…” A few days after Stalin died, I saw him, and he went, “What do you know, Margaritka, that you-know-what finally croaked…” That’s what he said—about my Stalin! I tore my felt boots out of his hands: “How dare you? You’re a hero! With a medal.” For two days, I deliberated: I’m a Young Pioneer, so it’s my duty to go to the NKVD and tell them about what Vanya said. I have to file a report. This was a very serious matter—it really was! Like Pavlik Morozov,*7 I was capable of informing on my own father…my mother…I could have done it. Really, I was ready! Then, coming home from school, I found Vanya lying on the ground, drunk in the building entrance. He’d tumbled off his wheelchair and couldn’t get up. I took pity on him.
That’s how I am…I would sit there with my ear pressed to the radio listening to the hourly updates on Comrade Stalin’s health. Crying. With my whole heart. That happened! That’s how it was! These were Stalin’s times…and we were Stalin’s people…My mother is from the gentry. A few months before the Revolution, she’d married an officer who ended up fighting in the White Guard. They parted ways in Odessa: He emigrated with the remains of Denikin’s shattered troops, but she couldn’t leave her paralyzed mother behind, so she stayed. The Cheka*8 arrested her as the wife of a White Guard soldier. The investigator in charge of her case fell in love with her. Somehow he managed to save her, but in return, he forced her to marry him. He’d come home drunk after work and beat her over the head with a pistol. Eventually, he disappeared somewhere. That’s my mother…She was a true beauty, she adored music, spoke several languages, and was crazy for Stalin. Whenever he was unsatisfied with anything, she would threaten my father: “I’ll go to the district Party committee and tell them what kind of communist you really are.” And my father…my father took part in the Revolution…In 1937, he was repressed*9…But they soon let him out because a prominent Bolshevik who knew him personally intervened on his behalf. Vouched for him. But they wouldn’t let him back into the Party. It was a blow he would never recover from. In jail, they’d knocked his teeth out and crushed his skull. Still, my father didn’t change his stripes, he remained a communist to the end of his life. Explain that to me…Do you think that these people are idiots? Simpletons? They’re not—they were smart, educated people. My mother read Shakespeare and Goethe in the originals, my father graduated from the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. And what about Blok…Mayakovsky…Inessa Armand?*10 My idols…My heroes…the ones I grew up with…[She falls into thought.]
At a certain point, I learned how to fly a plane. The plane we learned to fly would shock you: How did we manage to stay alive? Instead of wings, it had these handmade wooden planks wrapped in burlap. You flew it with a gear stick and a pedal. But it was so amazing to fly—seeing the birds, the earth from above. It makes you feel like you have wings! The sky changes you…the heights transform you…Do you understand what I’m getting at? I’m talking about our old life. I don’t feel sorry for myself, I feel bad for everything we used to love…
I’ve recounted everything honestly…and I don’t even know why it’s shameful to talk about all this now…
When Gagarin went into space…People went out into the streets laughing, embracing, and crying. Strangers. Workers came out of their factories, still in their jumpsuits; medics in white caps, throwing them up into the sky: “We’re the first! Our man is in space!” It was an unforgettable moment! It took your breath away, the awe. To this day, I get excited when I hear the song:
We don’t dream of cosmodromes
It’s not all that azure ice
But the grass around our homes
We dream of green, green grass…
The Cuban revolution…Young Castro…I shouted, “Mama! Papa! They won! Viva Cuba!” [She sings.]
Cuba my love!
Island of the crimson dawn,
The song is heard around the world,
Cuba, my true love!
Veterans from the Spanish Civil War would come to our school. We sang “Grenada” with them: “I left my home, I went to fight, / To win Grenada for the peasants…” I had a photo of Dolores Ibárruri*11 hanging over my desk. Yes…we dreamed of Grenada…and then of Cuba…Some decades later, a new generation of boys spoke in those same fervent tones, only now it was about Afghanistan. We were easy to fool. But still, still…I won’t forget it! I’ll never forget how the whole tenth grade*12 left to volunteer to work on the Virgin Lands. They marched off in a column, in backpacks, with banners flying. Some of them carried guitars. “There go true heroes,” I thought. Many of them later returned sick. They never made it to the Virgin Lands, they were sent to the taiga somewhere to build a railway, dragging rails on their backs, waist-deep in ice water. There wasn’t enough machinery…All they had to eat were rotten potatoes, so all of them came down with scurvy. But they did it! There was a girl, too, seeing them off, brimming with admiration. That girl was me. My memories…I refuse to give them up for anyone: not the communists, not the democrats, not the brokers. They’re mine! All mine! I can go without many things: I don’t need a lot of money, expensive food, or fancy clothes…a nice car…In our Zhigulis, we drove across the whole Union: I saw Karelia, Lake Sevan, the Pamir mountains. All of it was our Motherland. My Motherland, the USSR. I can do without a lot of things, the only thing I can’t do without is the past. [She is silent for a long time. Such a long time that I have to call her back.]
Don’t worry…I’m fine…I’m fine now…For the time being, I’ve been staying home…petting the cat, knitting mittens. Simple things like knitting help most of all…What kept me from going all the way? I never hit bottom…No…As a doctor, I could clearly picture how it would all turn out…in graphic detail…Death is hideous, it’s not pretty. I’ve seen people who’ve hanged themselves…In their final moments, they have orgasms, or they get covered in urine or feces. Gas turns people blue, purple…Just the thought of it is awful to a woman. I couldn’t harbor any illusions about a beautiful death. But something throws you for a loop, triggers you, sends you flying…You’re in a fit of despair. There’s a pulse and a rhythm…and then a sudden burst of energy…It’s hard to restrain yourself. Pull the emergency brake! Stop! I somehow managed to stop myself in time. I chucked out the clothesline. Ran into the street. Got soaked in the rain, which was so beautiful after all that—it was so good getting soaked! [Silence.] For a long time, I didn’t say a word to anyone…I spent eight months in bed, terribly depressed. I forgot how to walk. Then, finally, I got up. Learned to walk again. I am…I am once again on solid footing…But I was really sick…deflated like a balloon…What am I talking about? Enough! That’s enough…[She sits and weeps.] Enough…
1990…Fifteen people were living in our three-bedroom apartment in Minsk, plus a newborn. First, my husband’s relatives arrived from Baku, his sister with her family and his cousins. They weren’t visiting, they came with the word “war” on their lips. They entered the house shouting, their eyes dulled…It was autumn or maybe winter…I remember that it was already cold out. Yes, they came in the autumn, because that winter, there were even more of us. That winter, my sister…My sister, her family, and her husband’s parents came from Dushanbe, Tajikistan. That’s how it happened…like that…People slept everywhere—in summer, even out on the balcony. And…They didn’t talk, they screamed…about how they’d fled their homes with war at their heels. Burning the soles of their feet. And they…All of them were like me, they were Soviets…completely Soviet people. One hundred percent! And proud of it. Then suddenly, it had all been taken out from underneath them. Gone! They woke up one morning, looked out the window, and there was a new flag. Suddenly finding themselves in another country. They became foreigners overnight.
I listened. And listened. They talked…
“…It was such an amazing time! Gorbachev came to power…Then, all of a sudden, there was shooting outside. Dear Lord! Right in the capital! In Dushanbe…Everyone sat in front of their TVs, anxious not to miss the latest updates. We had a women’s collective in our factory, it was predominantly Russian. I asked them, ‘Girls, what’s going to happen?’ ‘A war is starting, Russians are already getting killed.’ A few days later, a store was robbed in the middle of the day…And then another…”
“…In the first months, I cried, but then I stopped. The tears dry up quickly. Most of all, I was afraid of men, the ones I knew as much as the ones I didn’t know. That they could drag me into a building, into a car…‘Pretty lady! Hey lady, let’s fuck…’ A neighbor girl had been raped by her classmates. Tajik boys we knew. Her mother went to see one of their families. ‘What did you want, coming here?’ they shouted back at her. ‘Go back to your Russia. Pretty soon there won’t be any of you Russians left here. You’ll be running away in your underwear.’ ”
“…Why did we move out there? We were on a Komsomol trip, building the Nurek Dam and an aluminum plant…I studied Tajik: chaikhana, piala, aryk, archa, chinara…They called us ‘Shuvari.’ Russian brothers.”
“…I still have dreams about the pink hills, the almond trees in bloom. I wake up in tears…”
“…In Baku…We lived in a nine-story building. One morning, they took all the Armenian families out into the courtyard…Everyone gathered around them, and every single person there went up to us and hit us with something. A little boy—five years old—came up to me and hit me with a toy shovel. An old Azerbaijani woman patted him on the head…”
“…Our Azerbaijani friends hid us in their basement. They covered us in junk and boxes. At night, they’d bring us food…”
“…I was running to work one morning, and I saw dead bodies lying there on the street. Just lying there or leaning against the wall—sitting there, propped up as though they were alive. Some had been covered in tablecloths, others hadn’t. There hadn’t been time. The majority of them were naked…both the men and the women…The ones who were sitting up hadn’t been undressed—it must have been too hard to move them…”
“…I used to think that Tajiks were like little kids, totally harmless. In a matter of just six months, maybe even less than that, Dushanbe became unrecognizable, and so did the people. The morgues were filled to capacity. In the mornings, before they were absorbed into the asphalt, there’d be puddles of coagulated blood…like gelatin…”
“…For days, people walked by our house carrying posters that read, ‘Death to the Armenians! Death!’ Men and women. A furious mob, not a single human face among them. The newspapers were filled with ads: ‘Trading a three-bedroom apartment in Baku for any apartment in any Russian city…’ We sold our apartment for three hundred dollars. Like it was a refrigerator. And if we hadn’t sold it that cheap, they could have killed us…”
“…With the money we got for our apartment, we bought a Chinese down jacket for me and a pair of warm boots for my husband. Furniture, dishes, rugs…We left all of that behind…”
“…We lived without gas or electricity…without running water…The prices at the market were awful. They opened a new kiosk next to our building. All they sold were flowers and funeral wreaths…”
“…One night, someone painted the words, ‘Be afraid, you Russian bastards! Your tanks won’t help you!’ on the wall of the building across from ours. Russians were being removed from administrative positions…They’d shoot you from around the corner…The city quickly grew as filthy as a kishlak.*13 It became a foreign city. No longer Soviet…”
“…They could kill you for anything…If you hadn’t been born in the right place, if you didn’t speak the right language. If someone with a machine gun simply didn’t like the looks of you…How had we lived before then? On holidays, our first toast had always been, ‘To friendship,’ and ‘es kes sirum em’ (‘I love you’ in Armenian). Or ‘Man sani seviram’ (‘I love you’ in Azerbaijani). We’d lived happily side by side…”
“…Regular people…Our Tajik friends would lock their sons up, they wouldn’t let them out of the house, so no one could teach them or force them to kill.”
“…We decided to leave…We were already on the train, the steam was billowing out from under the wheels. The final moments before departure. Someone starting shooting at the wheels with a machine gun. Soldiers had to make a corridor to protect us. If it weren’t for the soldiers, we wouldn’t have even made it onto the train alive. Today, when I see war on TV, I can immediately smell that smell…the smell of fried human flesh…a sickening, sweet candy smell…”
Six months later, my husband had his first heart attack. And another six months later, his second. His sister had a stroke. All of it was making me lose my mind…Have you heard of how hair goes crazy? It becomes coarse, like fishing line. The hair is the first to go…Who can bear it? Little Karina…By day, she was a normal kid, but when it would start getting dark outside, she’d begin trembling. She screamed, “Mama, don’t go! If I fall asleep, they’ll kill you and Papa!” I would run to work in the morning and pray to be hit by a car. I’d never gone to church before, but after that, I started spending hours on my knees: “O Holy Mother of God! Can you hear me?” I stopped sleeping, couldn’t eat anymore. I’m no politician, I don’t know anything about politics. I’m simply a person who lives in fear. What else did you want to ask me? I’ve told you everything…That’s all!!