Tag #155552 - Interview #90041 (Susanna Sirota)

We were horrified about perestroika 30. We couldn’t believe that this avalanche of things published in newspapers and spoken on TV could have been possibly happening in our quiet lives. We felt some uncertainty. We, dedicated communists in the past, felt like criminals, but we didn’t know anything like this and lived a common life like everybody else. Big shots of party officials found their way promptly and became millionaires and the majority of the population became poor in a jiffy. They lost their savings. Our pension is not enough to pay for utility services, not to mention medications. When I see intelligent people searching for food leftovers in the garbage and eating whatever they find, I feel terrible. It was out of the question in the USSR.