When I started blogging on AR, I did not think I would ever write about my life in the Soviet Union, or about what is happening in Russia.
It is so remote from American daily lives, that I did not expect anyone to read it. Instead I received encouragement and support from many prolific bloggers. The comments were complimentary… and to some extent they were making me what I was not…
The truth of the matter is that I was never a hero, and never a dissident in the high meaning of the word. I did not cross that line which separated the freedom fighters from kitchen critics. In heart I was the biggest communist one could imagine. I truly believed that we needed a little effort to reach that greatness promised by Marx-Lenin. I was upset that we were moving slower than I wanted and I was ready to give all my energy and talent to move ahead.
The thorns of disappointment started bothering me early in life, and I was torn between my communist and kitchen dissident egos, a phantasmagorical symbiosis. We were the material from which the executioners and the victims were made. 
The gap between them was minimal. Often times the executioners of today were the victims of tomorrow but in my time it was already not a matter of survival, but a matter of choice. You could still become a victim, but you could avoid becoming an executioner.
Now, when I am writing about the events of my past, and you look at it with “American” eyes, it adds that drama element to it. You look at it the way you would if it were happening here and now. But it was not here, and it is not now.
I was a product of liberal times. I was 2 when Stalin died, and my angels (hmm... do Jews believe in angels? Such a neat concept...Like a personal assistant from G-d) switched a ticket to die for a ticket to live. The idea of exterminating Jews, preoccupying Stalin in the last months of his life, was replaced with modest control over Jews, which was just a sweet candy.
You can’t compare Brezhnev’s era with Stalin’s, not even close. But even in Stalin’s era people in the camps did not see the reality in the dramatic terms we see it today. Yes, people were dying right and left, but that was the way it was… individual life was worth hardly a penny. Today he dies, next day you… When Americans look at it, they see atrocities or genocide. But those people did not see it with “American” eyes.
I was not a hero. My experience is my experience, and other people may not feel that way and may not remember their life experiences in the Soviet Union this way. These stories are true stories, and at the same time they are fictional in the sense that I am retelling them with the perspective and knowledge that I have now, but I did not have then.
The word "communism" was a beautiful word to us. That was what we wanted. The word "capitalism" was a very bad word, as that was what we did not want. It was the opposite of the beautiful word "Communism" and embodied all the evil in the world.
We did not live under communism, that was still in the works. We 
lived under socialism, which is more like a Communism on a shoestring budget (socialism was like a beta version of Communism. You know how it is with beta versions... Nothing works, but the idea is great. ;-)
The dreaded KGB for us were legendary men sacrificing their lives to stop you from destroying the world. They were heroes of “invisible front” as the media touted them. Boys with toy guns played “chekist” (member of ChK – Extraordinary Commission, later KGB). Freedom and democracy, of better say “real Democracy” was our way of life, as opposed to yours, where everything was for benefit of the rich. And we were ready to die fighting yours handful of rich to free millions of oppressed in the US and bring them real democracy and freedom… We had an exclusive on Freedom and Democracy, but not enough nukes to bring it to the World...
Did I suffer through my life? Heck no. I was a normal kid, and then a normal man and I do not look at my life back as a string of suffering, or fight against the system.
I was that damn system. I am lucky I no longer am. I am lucky I found the system I wanted and for which I was willing to work the hardest. I thought it was called Communism, but my American friends say it is not.
They know better, but it offers exactly what was promised to me so long ago:
Go to work and be proud of what you are doing
Go home and enjoy the time with your family and friends
Achieve what you want to achieve in life
Become who you want to become in life
Be equal to others
Be the Citizen, take care of and take pride in your community and your Country
The difference many of us, immigrants from the USSR, noticed here is that one promised it, and the other delivered…
I still do not understand how doing everything wrong (in the eyes of the Soviet media) you managed to get it right, and how doing everything right never made it back in the USSR.
I guess in the Soviet Union it was a Beta version of a better life
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