I’m interested in hearing about the personal experiences of living in the USSR without making it a political conversation. Rather, just what life was like, the good and the bad, from a nonjudgmental human perspective.
I’m interested in hearing about the personal experiences of living in the USSR without making it a political conversation. Rather, just what life was like, the good and the bad, from a nonjudgmental human perspective.
Never lived in the USSR but travelled through the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway with my dad years ago when just a kid. He spoke fluent Russian and struck up conversations with locals wherever we stopped. At one point, they broke out into gales of laughter before we reboarded the train. I asked him what that was all about.
He said he had asked if anyone practiced religion in the USSR? At first, they were reluctant to answer. Who wants to know? Why do you ask? And he said well, I notice there are signs all over the train station that it is forbidden to walk over the tracks. Yet I see people going so far as to crawl under one train to reach another. After a moment of awkward silence, that’s when the laughter broke out. “Ah shit man, you got us. Religion is alive and well here!”
I don’t get it :/
You have to understand that religion was banned by the communist regime of the day. Admitting to it could get you locked up.
But my dad, as a tourist making this casual observation about flagrant rule-breaking going on in plain sight even as he spoke, broke the tension completely and made the locals admit there is a lot of rule-breaking going on everywhere.
Ahh, okay. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing and explaining it :)