00:00You probably loved comics as a kid. I know I did.
00:03But in the USSR, where I was born, we had only one kind of comic, caricatures of America.
00:10Every day after school, I'd pull the newspaper from the mailbox and flip straight to the cartoons,
00:17hoping to find greedy capitalists, evil Uncle Sam, or white-robed clan members plotting to take over the world.
00:25Hi, I'm Elvira Berry, a writer, and today I'll share what it was like growing up in the dying Soviet
00:32Empire.
00:34Back in the 1980s, we kids had no idea the Soviet Union was doomed.
00:39We thought it was America that was on the brink of collapse.
00:43Our world seemed so stable.
00:46We were convinced that the USSR was simply the best at everything,
00:50from figure skating to having the tastiest milk produced by our most glorious Soviet house.
00:57We'd gone to space first.
00:59We read more books than any other nation.
01:02And we'd suffered the biggest losses during World War II.
01:06The huge neon sign across the street even promised that communism was right around the corner.
01:12Never mind that one letter in the sign had burned out.
01:16It was the adults who were worried about politics.
01:19When we visited relatives, the grown-ups would gather in the kitchen to discuss the Afghan war,
01:26Chernobyl, or the government's anti-alcohol campaign.
01:30Alcoholism was a huge issue in the USSR.
01:34I could do a whole video on why drinking was so common among Soviet men.
01:39If anyone's interested in a deep dive into Soviet drinking culture,
01:44let me know in the comments.
01:45I'll spill all the secrets.
01:47Right across from my house was a famous beer kiosk,
01:52where factory workers lined up for a pint after work.
01:56It was practically a men's club,
01:59complete with boxing matches and all the gentlemanly entertainment you could imagine.
02:04In 1985, the government launched a massive anti-alcohol campaign.
02:08Prices shot up by 45%, but all it did was empty the sugar shelves.
02:14People stockpiled it for making homemade booze.
02:18They shut down our beer kiosk, but then very next day,
02:22little old ladies in colorful headscarves were selling vodka at the factory gates,
02:27bottles hidden under their coats.
02:31This was my first encounter with business.
02:36Until then, I couldn't even imagine anyone selling things just to make money.
02:42My dad didn't drink, but even he bought a few bottles of vodka
02:46and stashed them into the hollow of my piano.
02:49This is our strategic reserve, he told me.
02:53In the USSR, vodka was like currency.
02:56You could pay off the plumber with it,
02:59trade it for a sack of potatoes,
03:01or bribe a train conductor for a spot in the sleeping car
03:04if you couldn't get tickets.
03:07The economy kept getting worse,
03:09and soon we had ration coupons for everything.
03:13This led to Perestroika, which allowed for some private enterprise.
03:18For us kids, it was a blast.
03:21Suddenly, you could buy little pocket calendars with photos of cities.
03:26We treasured them.
03:28Visiting those places wasn't likely,
03:30but having a collection of colorful city photos made you seem sophisticated.
03:35New things started appearing in markets too.
03:38Posters with Michael Jackson,
03:41purple hairspray,
03:42and t-shirts with foreign words.
03:46We had no idea what these t-shirts said.
03:49They just looked cool.
03:51In Moscow and St. Petersburg,
03:53intellectuals started reading Solzhenitsyn,
03:55Bulgakov, and other authors who were once banned.
04:00But I was more interested in horoscopes.
04:04Until then, I'd never even heard of them.
04:07But now, they were in almost every newspaper.
04:10This was a total revelation.
04:14Ordinary little Elvira suddenly learned she was a Scorpio.
04:19Persistence, willpower, magnetism.
04:21I didn't know what half of it meant, but I memorized those fancy words for when I wanted to sound
04:28smart.
04:30Then, we found out we had Chinese Zodioxides as well.
04:34Chinese influence crept into our lives in other ways too.
04:37At the Gorky car factory, where my parents worked, salaries were delayed.
04:43So, the management started raffling off Chinese blankets and thermoses.
04:49One day, my mom even wore an enormous, incredibly heavy coat made of dog fur that looked like an Eskimo
04:58outfit.
04:59The moths in our closet were frilled.
05:02They had it all to themselves since it was impossible to wear.
05:06However, we were also introduced to crime and sex.
05:13Once, at my aunt's house, I saw a newspaper with photos of half-naked women with black rectangles on the
05:20most interesting parts.
05:23I took it into the bathroom, locked the door, and, trembling at every sound, read an article about prostitutes.
05:33I got away with it, but I was emotionally scarred for a long time.
05:38Not just by what I read, but by the fact that I've been interested in reading it.
05:45On TV, they kept saying communism was just around the corner, but, in reality, our stores were nearly empty.
05:54The shelves only held bird juice, bay leaves, and canned seaweed.
05:59By the way, do you know what bird juice is?
06:03If not, ask me in the comments.
06:06Meanwhile, the Baltic republics were breaking away from the USSR, but I barely noticed.
06:13I discovered the Angelique Novels, a French historical adventure series that was taking the Soviet Union by storm.
06:23When I got a new volume, I dive headfirst into the 17th century.
06:28A world of glamorous outfits, duels, and passionate kisses.
06:33Sometimes there was even sex.
06:36By then, I'd read enough newspaper articles that I could easily pick up on the French offer's subtle hints.
06:43The adventures of the beautiful Angelique were way more exciting than the collapse of the Soviet Union.
06:49I still remember when I found out that my country no longer existed.
06:54My mom and I had just left a store, but she casually said,
06:58Did you hear the USSR broke up?
07:00I think something's happening in Moscow.
07:03Will it happen here too?
07:05I asked, hopeful.
07:07After all those books, I was ready to fight on the barricades or at least wave a flag.
07:14But my mom just said that nothing had happened in our city since the Mongol invasion.
07:20So we just went home.
07:22Have fun.aver
07:25Rindsay Have
07:27a special Anne 주� Destination in Mexico. Get
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