The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

The quality of the construction and the comfort level of apartments varied from building to building: members of the Politburo were granted more square meters per family member but also larger windows, higher ceilings, and flooring made of harder wood. Academics got less, "creatives" less than that, engineers less still. Menial laborers often lived in dormitory rooms with linoleum flooring and shared bathroom facilities.

Those at the very top, whether out of a sense of shame or a residual longing for the security of a fortress, shielded their lives behind tall solid fences. Alexander Galich, the dissident singer- songwriter, had a song called "Beyond Seven Fences." Its narrator, an ordinary Soviet citizen, encounters the fences that surround the Communist leaders' estates and begins to fantasize about what the fences conceal: fresh, untrampled grass, clean air, hard-to-find chocolate-mint candy, birds of different kinds, shish kebab consumed in the security of knowing the fence is guarded, and at night, to top it all off, "they show films about whores." The narrator cannot take it anymore, heads back to the city, and the whole way back, he is subjected to a lecture extolling Soviet egalitarianism, broadcast over the train's radio system. He thinks of the leaders again: "Back there, beyond the seven fences, / Behind the seven locks, / they don't have to listen to this lecture, / they can just eat their shish kebab." The imagination painted a picture of the ultimate Soviet privilege: living in material comfort—and watching Hollywood films instead of listening to the leaders' own propaganda.¹³

Much of Seryozha's life passed behind the fences. On weekends, a black government Volga—the top model among Soviet-made cars— equipped with flashing lights that entitled it to ignore traffic regulations carried Seryozha's family out of the city. They took Rublyovskoye Shosse, a smooth and narrow road effectively reserved for use by the Soviet elites. The Volga turned off at Kalchuga, a village of solid fences. An automatic gate would open in one of them, and the car would drive onto the grounds of a government dacha reserved for the use of Alexander Nikolaevich. On weekdays, a similar Volga carried Seryozha to a different fence along the same road. This was a preschool for the offspring of the very top of the Soviet elite—a cut above the Central Committee preschool to which Masha's mother had bought access. In the city, the building in which Alexander Nikolaevich lived served as its own fence: it was a city block in which all entrances faced a large courtyard. Uniformed men guarded the gates between the building and the outside world. Seryozha found the men interesting and tried to charm them by talking to them. He knew he was charming—everyone said so, everyone agreed that he was wonderfully cute and fat and blond. But he could never get so much as a smile out of the men.

LYOSHA

lyosha grew up not quite at the opposite end of the Soviet class spectrum from Seryozha but at a great, unbridgeable remove. His family, too, had privilege, and Lyosha was aware of this growing up. His grandfather, a collective farmer, had had a local Party career. This would have meant several years of added pay for serving a term in the regional Soviet, a putative legislative body, and, later, some informal privileges of access. When he died in 1978, at the age of sixty or so, he had a bit more than others in the village: he left his family a cow. His widow, Lyosha's grandmother, sold the cow a couple of years later so that one of her five children could go to university in Perm, the nearest big city. Higher education in the Soviet Union was free, and students who had consistently high grades received a monthly stipend, yet with the food shortages, and the shortages of most other things one needed for living, no young person could reasonably expect to survive without help from home.

Lyosha's mother, Galina, the fourth-born and the smartest of her siblings, was lucky to get the help. Her older brother had gone to a military college after his compulsory service, but their mother had not had the money to send any of the rest to university or even so much as to help them leave the village. Two sisters married out, though both would soon be widowed. Then there was the cow, and the sale of the cow, and Galina went to Perm. After university she became a history teacher. She did not have to move back to the village: she was assigned to work in the town of Solikamsk, where, as a teacher, she qualified for a room and later even a small apartment of her own.