Reds

When we were growing up during the Cold War years, we were taught to fear the Soviet Union. It was pretty much a standard belief that that part of the world was a scary and forbidding place to be. A cold and grey place where unlike America, people were not "free", and lived bleak and fearful lives in the shadow of the enormous and powerful Communist government. As a child I was told that it was far better to be dead than red, and in my child's mind the people who occupied that world were either evil or very very unfortunate to have been placed there by fate. Strange by their very nature, and speaking an alien language with a weird backward alphabet in an alien culture, these poor people whom we were told waited in long lines in the bitter cold for a mere crust of bread, or a pickle, or some porridge, must have been cursed by a very powerful force to be where they were. These hapless souls, we were led to believe, worshipped not God, but a symbol called the "Hammer and Sickle".

Like the dreaded Swastika, or the Pentagram, the Hammer and Sickle was an avatar of a special kind of evil. In a place and time where all information was strictly controlled and disseminated in the form of communist propaganda, I can only imagine that these folks over here had a similarly misinformed  impression of us and our world too. Since Ukraine was an integral and important part of the Soviet Union, these symbols exist wherever you look today.

The Soviets, much like the Egyptian pharaohs, left behind them grandiose monuments to the power of their state. Even after many of the Lenin statues have been torn down, the number of solemn oversized monuments in Ukraine is impressive. They are especially noticeable in small towns here in the east where nothing seems to be happening. These imposing cement and metal monuments were and still are a constant reminder of the grandeur of the Soviet empire and the littleness of its citizens.

Although some things about the Soviet Union were oppressive and unpleasant to think about, at the same time the Soviet Union was a land of opportunity for many. It was a great place to be a scientist, for example. It was possible to travel all over the USSR (half of Asia and Europe!) for free to attend conferences, seminars, and participate in research and expeditions. Travel was inexpensive and very many ordinary people crisscrossed Eurasia on ordinary business and travel. Today's taxi driver in Sevastopol used to drive trucks through the Siberian tundra in the wintertime. Today's housewife in Kyiv grew up on Sakhalin Island next to Japan. The fine arts were well-developed and well-funded. Living in the Soviet Union gave you the chance to be a part of something big. As a well-known Soviet-era song goes:

My address is not a house nor a street,
My address is "the Soviet Union"