My Soviet childhood memories. Part 1

I think I belong to the luckiest Soviet-born generation. I was born in 1980. I got to witness the final decade of the Soviet Union. The memories are vivid, yet my Soviet experiences don’t dominate my identity. I am able to remember things and even nostalgize a little, without trying to draw profound conclusions and comparisons.

In the year of my birth, Moscow hosted the 1980 Olympics. The Games were boycotted by many Western countries, in protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. My mom says there was a lot of effort to prepare the city for the event. Flower beds had proliferated, alcoholics had been removed from the streets, and the city was sparkling clean.

In the initial years of my life, we lived in a kommunanlka in Khrushchyovka on the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Kommunalkas were apartments shared by several families. Khrushchyovka is the nickname for the mass five-story housing built in the 1960s, under Nikita Khrushchev. Maybe Khrushchyovkas did help improve the housing situation in the country at the time, but they became synonymous with shabbiness and cramped living space. We shared our kommunalka with a single lady. We had our room, she — hers and the rest was shared space. She changed her boyfriends frequently, and some were regular guests at the apartment. So we shared everything — the bathtub, the toilet, the tiny kitchen, the telephone, and the air that we breathed — not only with her but with her visitors. We all had the privilege of seeing, hearing, and smelling her interactions with her boyfriends.