RE: 'From the East' Review: A cinematic, emotional look into the collapse of the USSR
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
I remember 1993, when I entered the university and came to a big city. My parents' salaries were $20-30 dollars and a bottle of Amoretto liqueur cost $20, I remember it vividly. I sold Soviet books in a second-hand bookstore to buy something for a girl's birthday and I remember how for $20 I bought a game console (analogous to Dendy) made in Brest(electronics industry was still operating). Some of my friends transported vodka and cigarettes from Brest to Poland and earned good money. Because we were young, we were optimistic and thought that these were temporary difficulties.
When one guy from our dorm brought an IBM 386 computer for several hundred dollars, we thought he was a millionaire :) I built my first Pentium-90 MHz computer in 1998 and surfing the Internet was almost unknown to my friends at that time.
It's utterly insane how much struggle people had to go through, and how so many in this region are still feeling that struggle. So many towns that relied so heavily on the industry are now stuck in rotting apartments in the middle of nowhere with no way out. I see it here in Armenia and I saw it in Georgia too.
It must take so much strength to deal with this and make it through such hardships. I really can't imagine it. Especially when trying to support a family.
We had 2 plots of 10 acres. We planted potatoes and other vegetables. I remember we got a good harvest from 1 plot - 3 tons of potatoes. And we sold 3 tons of potatoes wholesale for 300 dollars, that was a lot of money. Vegetables were inexpensive and dairy products and bread were available. But meat and sausages were very expensive.
Some things never really change :^)
In Armenia $300 is still considered a lot. The wages here are around that much per month for regular jobs, it's crazy. Definitely much lower for those outside of Yerevan too.