Excellent Questions, and Answers! I love the one asking about contemporary events -- LFS hit hard for me as well, though when it came out I was thinking about the Arab Spring and, much earlier, the fall of the USSR -- I still have distinct memories of my parents participating in the protests, when I was just a child
Yes! My grandma and I were actually in Crimea at the time, with the little bit of extended family we have. I remember her putting on the TV, and I remember later finding out that my mom and dad, back in (still) Leningrad, went out to one of the big protests, and that my grandma was worried.
When we came back to Leningrad, I remember the TV not working. Some of the people in our building had rigged a satellite dish on the roof, so instead of Russian TV, we got CNN! And it was through CNN that we found out that the regime had fallen. Very wild.
What did that feel like to you at the time, as a kid? Did the... momentousness of the change get across? I'm starting to see the younger kids hereabouts demonstrate political awareness, but it's hard to get a sense from talking to them quite /what/ they think they're encountering... Though maybe this is a better conversation to have in person, over drinks...
It felt really surreal. I definitely don't think the momentousness of the change got across to me at the time -- I had very little understanding of what was happening from a political, cultural, etc. sense. And what I did experience more than anything was a feeling of profound unsettlement at a very personal / family level. For example: suddenly I was going to a different school, because I essentially moved from living with my parents to living with my grandma (both in, now, St. Petersburg). This happened because my mom went to the US to find work, and that was only possible because of the fall of the Iron Curtain... but all those abstractions did not register with me at all. It was like, ugh, I hate going to a new school, I don't know anyone there!
Excellent Questions, and Answers! I love the one asking about contemporary events -- LFS hit hard for me as well, though when it came out I was thinking about the Arab Spring and, much earlier, the fall of the USSR -- I still have distinct memories of my parents participating in the protests, when I was just a child
Those must be wild memories to have.
Yes! My grandma and I were actually in Crimea at the time, with the little bit of extended family we have. I remember her putting on the TV, and I remember later finding out that my mom and dad, back in (still) Leningrad, went out to one of the big protests, and that my grandma was worried.
When we came back to Leningrad, I remember the TV not working. Some of the people in our building had rigged a satellite dish on the roof, so instead of Russian TV, we got CNN! And it was through CNN that we found out that the regime had fallen. Very wild.
What did that feel like to you at the time, as a kid? Did the... momentousness of the change get across? I'm starting to see the younger kids hereabouts demonstrate political awareness, but it's hard to get a sense from talking to them quite /what/ they think they're encountering... Though maybe this is a better conversation to have in person, over drinks...
It felt really surreal. I definitely don't think the momentousness of the change got across to me at the time -- I had very little understanding of what was happening from a political, cultural, etc. sense. And what I did experience more than anything was a feeling of profound unsettlement at a very personal / family level. For example: suddenly I was going to a different school, because I essentially moved from living with my parents to living with my grandma (both in, now, St. Petersburg). This happened because my mom went to the US to find work, and that was only possible because of the fall of the Iron Curtain... but all those abstractions did not register with me at all. It was like, ugh, I hate going to a new school, I don't know anyone there!
Yes, let's continue in person for sure :)