One friend might arrive from a shift as a stoker in a boiler room, another from work as a janitor in a communal apartment on proletariat street-bottom-rung jobs that satisfied the state’s requirement for citizens to be employed, and little else. The clothing worn by this gathering would be especially lacklustre frumpy dresses, crummy shoes and in winter, the ubiquitous felt cap and shapeless overcoat. On a shelf: a three-litre jar of birch juice, pickled cucumbers and a gray salami procured for a special occasion. The décor would display only muffled colors-the mediocre browns and grays of the Soviet everyday. The radio would be turned to full volume, drowning out loose talk that might otherwise escape through pre-fabricated walls. During the drained-out years of the 1960s and ’70s, when there was no public outlet for a frank conversation, Homo sovieticus would gather with friends in a Moscow kitchen, identical in shape and size to those in concrete apartment blocks all over the USSR.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |