Tag #147749 - Interview #78105 (Jacob Mikhailov)

At the end of the 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev [50], General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee announced perestroika. I didn't take him seriously, thought him to be a prattler, who couldn't even answer questions properly. Of course, we felt certain fruits of perestroika. Liberty was obtained. We were able to get previously banned literature. Libel in the press was over. Any person could go abroad without an approval from the regional party committee, and we could also invite foreigners. We were bereft of those rights during Soviet times. Now we had the opportunity to profess any religion we wanted. Synagogues and churches opened up. During Soviet times there was only the constitution and that was it. After the first year perestroika began to decline to a certain extent. I understand that the former party nomenclature tried to clutch at the past and put a spoke in the wheel. Preposterous things were going on - elite vineyards were exterminated in the Crimea under the pretext of struggle for teetotalism. Certain campaigns commenced and then were done away with very rapidly. Then it happened so that in Moscow products started vanishing from the stores like during the war times. Food cards were introduced. Then there was an outbreak of unemployment. People of retirement age were fired. All those things brought the breakup of the great and powerful state of the USSR [1991].