Word: sovietizers
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...book begins by openly challenging the model for daily life in the Soviet Union in a series of stories that emphasize the various shortcomings and irrationalities of the Soviet regime. “Paris Lost” by Wladimir Kaminer is the account of a counterfeit Paris, built by the Soviet government as part of a program to supposedly send some of the nation’s most productive workers on a free vacation to the European center of culture. Of course, they couldn’t possibly do this in reality—after all, capitalist temptations were lying...
...entire immense country in which [he] lived was made up of lots and lots of these lousy little closets where there was a smell of garbage and people had just been drinking cheap port,” an acknowledgment of the tedium and squalidness of quotidian life in the Soviet Union. Other stories critique the endless, labyrinthine bureaucracy and the culture of mistrust, where civilians spy on their fellow citizens...
...contrary, several of the stories and essays seem to almost pine for its simplicity and order. One of the finest essays in the collection, “Farewell to the Queue,” by Vladimir Sorokin, uses queues as a metaphor for the togetherness and order of Soviet society—a “quasi-surrogate for church,” which taught obedience while giving people time to ponder the advantages of socialism. In his view, the market economy replaced order with chaos, collectiveness with competition, simplicity with complexity; it replaced the queue with the crowd...
...Life and Times of a Soviet Capitalist,” a gangster friend of the titular character joins his family for dinner. He too, finds something lacking in the new, disorderly capitalist system. “In all of its history, Georgia never did so well as it did during Communist times,” he declares. “Everyone had their piece of bread... I hated the communists. But look at what people have to go through now. You think what they have in Georgia is freedom? Being able to eat, that’s freedom...
...journalist Gleb Pavlovsky, the collection provides an answer to the question “Where from?” Without this answer, he believes, the people of Eastern Europe will be unable to answer another question: “Where to?” For citizens of post-Soviet states, “The Wall in My Head” provides a new avenue for understanding their past...