The year is 1986. Alexei Volkov wanders slowly down Arbat Street. Flurries of snow swirl gently around his form; some come to rest upon his frame and melt quickly, darkening the fabric of his coat. Under his arms he clutches bags of food. Nothing delicious, no treats, but enough to eat -- for the next several days, that is. The waxy light of streetlamps illuminates the drab concrete stretching forever in all directions. Though his eyes are open, Alexei does not see. His mind is elsewhere. There is much for Alexei to think about tonight.

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Alexei reaches his apartment building shortly after eleven fifteen. His frozen fingers, barely grasping the doorknob, twist and push, allowing snowflakes to rush eagerly into the entryway. As he climbs the stairs to his third floor living space, Alexei sighs. If you had asked him last year, Alexei would have told you that he was merely thankful to have someplace to live. This year, he feels differently. The grey, prefabricated complex makes Alexei feel claustrophobic now.

  

 

Alexei enters his apartment. It would not be entirely accurate to call it his, as he shares the three bedroom space with two families besides his own. The Antonovs and the Lebedevs occupy the other two bedrooms. Alexei, his wife, and his young son share the third. Alexei’s wife greets him with a peck on the cheek as he sets down the bags of food.

 

“Thank you for waiting in line this time,” she says. “I hope it didn’t take too long.”

“Only three hours today,” Alexei mutters.

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Though he does not allow himself to say it, Alexei wonders why he must wait in line for hours on end to be rewarded with only two pounds of potatoes, a loaf of bread, a half pound of flour, a quarter pound of sugar, and a half pound of beef.

    

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Alexei remembers a time when this would have made sense. He knows that his son will never understand how such a transaction could be justified. Ever since Gorbachev put glasnost and democracy front and center, Soviet citizens are privy to more information than ever before. Most of the time, knowledge is power. For Alexei, knowledge only confirmed his powerlessness. Before Gorbachev, before glasnost, Alexei Volkov was an unhappy man, but he knew no better.. Everyone was unhappy; it was just the way things were. How could they feel otherwise? The government provided all that was needed to live, but did so at the cost of a blanketing oppressive presence. Everyone had food, had shelter, had work, but no one was happy. Ignorant despondence and inaction turned to resentment as soon as Gorbachev’s reforms began. Soviet media flourished in a way that it never had before, revealing the reality that had been hidden from the people for so long. The economy opened up, but only for those at the top. For men like Alexei, watching the top dogs prosper through the thick glass ceiling planted seeds of hatred in their hearts.

 

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Alexei hears his son begin to cry. He picks up the boy, cradling him against his chest. Gentle rocking and whispers of paternal comfort soon turn the shrieking to cooing, and Alexei smiles wearily. Though he does not know what life for his son will be like when he is grown, he knows that it will be nothing like it is now. Change is coming; that much is certain.

Exhausted from his twelve hour shift at work, Alexei places his now docile son back into the cradle. He turns to his wife, embraces her, and moves to the kitchen for a meal. The food is simple and plain; herbs and spices are luxuries that no one except party officials can find. Alexei and his wife quietly consume their stew. There is not much to talk about. As soon as they are finished, man and wife head to bed. Alexei has an early morning ahead of him.

 

 

Five fifteen comes quickly. Alexei rolls out of bed, careful not to disturb his wife’s motionless rest. She’ll be awake soon enough, and off to work shortly thereafter. Everybody will be. Alexei glides silently to the kitchen, looking for butter to slather onto a slice of bread. He opens the refrigerator only to be disappointed. Alexei sighs heavily as he shakes his head. Only a year ago this would not have bothered him quite as much, but now he knows better. Bracing himself against the cold, Alexei leaves the cramped apartment.

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Walking briskly, he reaches the bus stop in only twelve minutes. The bus arrives, overcrowded as always, a little after six. Alexei packs himself into the bus with the other sardines, and soon they are on their way. Only a year ago, the crowded bus would have been perfectly acceptable. Today Alexei feels differently. He scans his fellow passengers, attempting to discern what sets them apart, but they all look the same to him -- a homogenous mass of human life crammed into a tin can. Their clothing all looks the same; there is no color, no style, and the stitches are flimsy. Surely, clothes are cheap, but nothing looks nice or lasts very long.

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Alexei closes his eyes to try and scrub the amorphous grey mass of life from his mind. He thinks of his wife, who will be on her way to work by now. She will spend the day stitching together the shirts and trousers that Alexei finds so smothering. It is not her fault they are dull and poorly made; the only emphasis is on production. Textile management demands a certain quota of shirts and trousers each day, and so the women work as quickly as they can, wasting not a second on fashionable aspirations.

 

 

The bus grinds to a halt just outside the gate which surrounds one of Moscow’s many factories. The sardines unpack themselves, peeling away from one another eagerly, and mob towards the the employee entrance. Alexei follows the grumbling crowd, clocking in on his way through the door. He quickly finds his place on the assembly line, and sets about his work. He deftly assembles the pieces required to construct vehicles, though he doesn’t quite understand where those vehicles go. No one but party officials can afford cars. Alexei had wanted to purchase one several years ago, but quickly came to learn that that would not be practical. He would have had to put his name at the end of a waiting list five years long before he would be eligible to buy a car. Alexei gave up the idea of saving for a car as soon as his son was born; he knew he would not have the money.

 

 

Lunch comes quickly. Alexei sits in the break room with his eyes cast downward. Everyone does. The men chew mechanically, as though emulating the work they must return to. The foreman, Viktor Yanukovych, enters the room, and suddenly all eyes are on him. His legs are clad in bright blue Levi’s; it’s clear that he’s proud of them. He walks among the others in their shapeless, colorless garments with a certain swagger.

 

“Viktor, those pants!” exclaims a worker. “Where did you get them? How did you pay for them?”

Viktor smiles slyly. “I have the right acquaintances,” he says smugly. “Even then, I had to save for three months for these.”

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The mood in the break room sours. Only a year ago, they may not have been bothered so much, but now they know better.

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Everyone has been watching the news. Since glasnost, they’ve been learning, becoming bitter with resentment. In papers, on the radio, and on television are displays of Western life. Kitchens are shown stocked full. Everyone drives their own car. Blue jeans are ubiquitous. Neighborhoods are bright, vivid, and full of spacious houses. The decadence seems almost a work of fiction to the Soviets, who live often three families to an apartment, eat only the essentials, and wear clothes of the lowest quality. The Soviet citizens can see the disparity between life at home and life in the West; the difference is clear, but no one knows why. Mandatory employment and government-provided housing do not fill the gaping hole of desire which exists in every Soviet citizen. They want to live, not merely to exist beneath the thumb of the state.

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Alexei returns to his station after lunch with a scowl plastered firmly on his face. He works absentmindedly to pass the time. Why should he work any harder than required? There are no benefits, no bonuses for going the extra mile. Salary is guaranteed, just as work is. Alexei thinks back a few years, a faint smile tugging on the heavy corners of his lips. He remembers the day he was hired under the Union’s employment program. His new boss had informed the novice crew that no matter how hard they worked, they would be paid the same amount. Since the government had mandated full employment with standardized pay, there was no reward for exceptionalism. From that day forward the crew took on a lackadaisical attitude, working hard only when the eyes of the foremen were sweeping the floor.

 

 

Alexei turns his attention elsewhere. He remembers the days before Gorbachev. The government seemed strict then; much more manufactured information than reality reached the Soviet people. But then again, their reality was whatever they knew, or thought they knew, at least. Gorbachev had burst onto the scene promising change and prosperity which never touched the common man. With each failed reform, the people grow more discontent.

 

 

Alexei wonders what sort of effect this will have. He knows that the Communist Party officials are no friends of Gorbachev, especially not since glasnost. Gorbachev had promised democracy too, but Alexei felt no such effect. The Party holds control of all aspects of Soviet life with an unrelenting vice grip; the people have no voice. Alexei thinks to himself that these things don’t concern him; he has a son now. The only thing Alexei can do is continue to provide for his family. Fretting over political conflict is a luxury reserved for those who know they’ll have food in their bellies by tomorrow. He lowers his head, moving like an automaton, and the hours melt from the clock.

 

 

The hands of the clock slip into position, unfastening the bolts of obligation that Alexei in his place on the line. He shuffles out with the rest of the crew, packing tightly into the bus waiting for them at the corner. During the ride home, he overhears anxious whispers.

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“My wife’s brother came back with shrapnel in his leg…”

“What? That’s impossible. How could that have happened?”

“He says they’re conducting operations in --”

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The whisper is cut short by the jolting stop of the bus. The men dislodge themselves, bodies fanning out onto the dimly lit street. Alexei walks home, his mind swirling. What could those men have been talking about? he wonders. He reaches the door to his apartment complex before he reaches any conclusions. Trudging upstairs, Alexei grimaces. Each day of work drains him, but it is what he must do. Everyone has to.

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For the next four and a half years, the days are indistinguishable from one another to Alexei. Rise, work, sleep, repeat. Only the companionship of his wife and love for his son sustain him. His son grows; Alexei and his wife begin to feel the weight of age on their shoulders, and the Soviets learn. Month after month they are treated to astonishing revelations. Without their knowledge, the Union had been projecting influence around the globe. There are campaigns in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Oh, god, the horror in Afghanistan. Since 1979, Afghanistan has been a gaping, festering, bleeding wound on the Soviet army. To staunch the constant flow of blood and pus, the communist leaders have been pouring staggering amounts of money and men into the gash, but none of it is working. Now Alexei knows where the parts for the jeeps he builds are going.

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The people are so, so angry.

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How could they let us starve while spending billions to prop up these regimes? The Party told me my son died in a training accident; was that even the truth? Gorbachev promised change, and yet they’ve been lying to us? My wife couldn’t afford the treatment she needed. She passed away a year ago. Those at the top get richer by walking on our backs. But above all: There was no need for shortage. Those words rattle around unchallenged in every single Soviet mind. Yet for all the anger, they did nothing. A people starved and repressed cannot well rebel. But they did not have to, not at first.

    

 

It is the nineteenth of August in 1991. Gorbachev is held against his will in his Crimean villa. The hardline communist officials declare a state of emergency, dissolving the freedom of the press. Soviet tanks roar and billow great black clouds of smoke as they crawl towards the Kremlin and Parliament. This spark lights a fire in the angry hearts of the people. They rush to the Kremlin and to Parliament, building and using their bodies as barriers in front of the tanks. They know Yeltsin is inside, and they consider him their savior from oppressive communist rule. Alexei is one of them. As soon as he heard news of the gathering, he placed his growing son in the arms of his mother, promising to help secure a better future for the family. With a quick kiss on the forehead, he had dashed out the door.

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It is the twentieth of August in 1991. Tens of thousands of people are gathered around the Parliament to block the tanks from crushing down the doors. Alexei is one of them. The military is diverting units towards Leningrad, where more than one hundred thousand people just like Alexei are protesting the communist rule. By the mid afternoon, the army has issued a curfew. The people are not to be out past dark. They do not care. Alexei does not care. Tens of thousands stay gathered through the night to protect the Parliament.

 

 

It is the twenty first of August, 1991. The tanks have not decided to simply crush the human barrier in front of them, though they could easily do so. Under the hazy light of the early morning, a skirmish breaks out between the protestors and the foot soldiers of the armed forces. Three people are shot. Alexei is one of them. A bullet grazes his left shoulder, tearing a hot and painful hole through his flesh. Alexei stares in shock as the crimson ichor wells from within the wound to spill out. Two other men help him wrap the wound, tearing the sleeves from their flimsy shirts to act as bandages. Alexei will let nothing stop him from seeing the end of this struggle. He must do so for his son.

 

 

By the late afternoon, Gorbachev is released from house arrest and proclaimed president once again. The leaders of the coup flee. Several commit suicide. The tension dies as they do. Gorbachev is in control once again, but he can tell the Communist Party is in the midst of its death rattle. They all can. Over the next several months, state after state will amputate itself from the rotting corpse of the Soviet Union. Alexei returns home in the early morning hours of the twenty second day of August 1991. His wife and son rush to him. They have been worried sick. His son leaps against Alexei’s chest, expecting a hug. Alexei winces, holding his son with one arm while trying to keep from bleeding on him with the other.

 

 

Months pass; life changes for Alexei and his family. Yeltsin has taken control of the government. He is overseeing the transition from planned economic structure to free market society. One after another, real economic reforms are passed. Food lines shorten, pockets become gradually fatter, and the people are thankful for the change. At least they know what’s going on. Alexei still works long hours, but he no longer feels the gloom of the past. He knows he is helping to build a brighter future for his son. Things are far from perfect. The economy is slow, and Russia is struggling to gain recognition on the international stage. But the absence of the command economy and the disappearance of the totalitarians have lifted a significant burden from the shoulders of the Soviets. No matter how meticulous and heavily enforced the Soviet plan was, it could never have hoped to combat the innate human desire for freedom of choice. Alexei thinks of this sometimes, allowing the corners of his lips to turn upward into an unabashed smile. He looks forward to raising his son in the Russia he is helping to build.