Tag #155120 - Interview #103673 (Ladislav Roth Biography)

When perestroika began in the USSR, I didn’t care like I didn’t about many other things happening in the USSR. There were promises about bright future and life in communism. We were told once that people lived a better and happier life in the USSR than elsewhere in the world. Of course, many who were born during the Soviet rule never saw anything different. There was a reason why residents of the USSR were not allowed to travel abroad: Soviet officials didn’t want them to see life abroad with their own eyes and could compare things afterward and they fenced the USSR for many decades with iron curtain 19. To make this long story short, I didn’t believe one word Gorbachev 20 said, but later I made sure that those were not sheer promises.  There is more freedom. 
 
People could speak their minds not being afraid of KGB or informers. Mass media published many materials describing the situation in the USSR through all these years. It became possible to travel abroad or invite relatives from abroad. Anti-Semitism began to reduce at that time. It became easier for Jews to enter a college or get a job. Jewish life began to restore. It became possible to openly go to the synagogue or celebrate Jewish holidays, but people didn’t need it any longer. They lost their habits. When there was a Jewish funeral they couldn’t even gather 10 people for a minyan. Almost 50 years of the soviet rule broke the habit of religion. People felt subconsciously rather than in their minds that it wasn’t safe to be religious.