The Generation Gap

It is hardly surprising that the generation gap is very wide in Russia. In all those countries which were part of the Soviet Union it is wider than anywhere else. The rapid change in the social system could not but produce an entire generation that has never known the calamities its forefathers went through. It is only in films that the young see war, concentration camps and long bread lines. They can say what they like and nobody will bother to report them to the secret police. They can leave the country without difficulty and then come back. They can marry a foreigner and do even worse things like listening and dancing to Western music. For their grandparents, who have the chance to do all this only at the sunset of their lives, such things are incredible and not always desirable. Youngsters smile when the old ones start their usual “When I was your age…”, for the ages are so different that no comparison seems possible.

The last generation to live under Communist rule now divides into 2 groups: those who welcome the changes and those who are nostalgic about times past. The latter have forgotten the hard times and remember the days when their future was bleak but assured when they did not have to compete for a job or a career. They would do anything to bring back the days when, as a Russian comedian told it, you got your modest wage of 120 roubles if you made numerous bicycles at your factory, 120 roubles if you made few bicycles at your factory, and the same sum if you made no bicycles at all. Nobody needed those blasted bicycles, anyway, they were made of rotten stuff but you got your wages all the same.

Medical services were totally inadequate but free; education was of poor quality but you never paid a kopeck, even for university. The army ate up most of the country’s budget but it was the most powerful army in the world and everyone was afraid of Russia. Those who remember find it strange that today’s young are indifferent to all those splendours of life under socialism, when you could bang your shoe on the UN rostrum or explode a couple of experimental A-bombs in the Far North, just to show the world who was who.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 931