This story is from Inna Lokshin:
Viva to anecdotes! We depended on these humorous, funny, clever, bittersweet jokes to entertain and provoke laughter, to enjoy the moment and forget the grim reality. Almost never political in our circles, because everyone knew that telling jokes criticizing the regime would get you, and most likely your whole family, severely punished.
But there were, of course, many of those too, and one that I remember stands out as exemplary to the story I want to tell you here. It went something like this:
Question: What would happen if socialism were implemented in the Sahara Desert? Answer: Nothing would change for the first three years, and then there would be a huge shortage of sand.
Socialism, we were taught, was The Road to a Brighter Future. Reality was shortages, or just non-existence, even of basic things. Food. Even basic clothing. Toilet paper. Refrigerators. Medicine and medical supplies. The last one may be the most demoralizing and devastating of all, so I give you an example here.
Often, if someone needed an X-ray, they first needed to find X-ray film on the black market and bring it to the radiology department, because hospitals were almost always out of their government-allocated supply. But you had to bring more than you needed for your exam. You had to gift a lot more to the doctors, and the nurses, and who knows whom else. Otherwise, after having you stand in front of the X-ray machine, they would tell you that your test did not come out well because the film you brought was no good. But the film you got was OK, of course. The film was simply stolen from you, to be sold on the black market, where you would be back in no time to buy new film. Ever tried to square the circle?
You may ask: how did our families deal with this? Well, in our case, Tolia's mama, Baba Asya, was a chemist and had many friends who were chemists, so she was able to find film through her friends. My mama, Babulya, was an ENT doctor and worked for a children's clinic. The clinic radiologist, a Jewish woman named Sabina Grigorievna, loved children and could not refuse any sick child. So she did this: she would position a child in front of the X-ray machine's screen, put on a very thick resin glove that went up past her elbow, turn the tube on, quickly use her hand to manipulate the child's body to view at different angles, and immediately after write a report. Of course, each child spent more time exposed than if a film was used, and maybe the power didn't have to be as high, but kids lived. I myself went through this several times. But Sabina Grigorievna, giving this exam to at least twenty kids a day, died from cancer before she turned fifty.
A somewhat insignificant shortage in the grand view of things needed or desired, but pretty important for one young couple: the shortage of boxer shorts for men.
About a year after Tolia and I were married, all of Tolia's underwear, maybe three pairs, ripped pretty badly. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any men's underwear at any store. We didn't have many pieces of clothing to begin with. We lived in a small room in a communal apartment. The closet was a stand-alone wardrobe that could not possibly be big by any means. The small room served as a bedroom, dining room, and storage for kitchen utensils and food, and we had a refrigerator. We washed our clothes a couple of times a week by hand. No washing machines. I did not know those existed for home use. Ironing everything was a must to kill the germs. Contact heat from the iron, which was not an electrical iron but a heavy cast iron that needed to be heated on a hot plate frequently and handled using a heavy glove, was damaging to all fabrics, and therefore the boxer shorts did not last long.
My prior experience with sewing was making an apron in sixth grade. The appropriate fabric I was able to find at the time was bright orange with white flowers. Even though I had a pattern, overlapping the fabric to close up the fly was a huge challenge. What else can I tell you about this project? Tolia liked his new undergarments, and soon after brought home a used knitting machine. I did not get a chance to learn how to really use it before we immigrated.
Something else about shortages. I remember vividly walking with my Bulen'ka, that's how we called our grandmother, to a food distribution center to get flour, sugar, and probably some other dry supplies in exchange for the tickets that families received based on family size. I was ten or eleven or twelve, so it must have been the early sixties.
My mama, Babulya, loved eggs, but she never ate them. All the eggs my parents were able to get were for me and Grisha. Even after Babulya lived in the US for years, she told me making eggs for herself was not an easy task.
It is mind-boggling to remember today how people lived in the Soviet Union. A union of many republics with so many riches: diverse climates to grow produce year-round, rivers and lakes and seas for fish we almost never ate, fertile black soil, chernozem, cattle pastures from the Asian republics to Siberia.
I think it would be appropriate to conclude this with another anecdote from the USSR era. But before I do that I want to tell you that I love you all with all my heart, and that I am so grateful that God gave me this chance to ensure that my grandchildren live in the greatest country ever, the United States of America.
And here is the joke.
School in Russia, third-grade class. The teacher walks around the classroom telling the children about the great Soviet Union, spelling out all the amazing advantages and praising the luckiest people who have the privilege to live there.
One girl starts crying, first just sobbing and then unable to control loud cries.
The teacher goes to her desk and asks, "What is it, Masha? Why are you crying?"
And the little girl says, "Can I take all my family and go to the Soviet Union?"