Soviet identity is gone forever, but Putin doesn't get it
The New Voice of Ukraine
In the summer of 2003, I was working at a paper mill in Kyiv, trying to save up for a trip to Odesa – something my student allowance from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was quite insufficient for.
Strange things were afoot around my workplace. A car brings in a whole stack of works by Soviet ideologues, to be mulched and made into napkins and toilet paper. Next thing you know – the same car delivers Aristotle’s Politics, in a bright orange cover, in mint condition.
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Some of my coworkers were veterans of the Soviet military operation in Angola of the 1970s and 1980s. Their lockers are plastered with Polish erotica. They smoke unfiltered cigarettes. There’s no end to them telling me about Angola, as if they think it’s absolutely essential to educate me on the subject.
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It’s challenging to fight, saddled with the artificial identity as prescribed by your Soviet passport, be it in Angola, Afghanistan, or Korea. When people in the streets ask who you are, “a Soviet citizen” is not a satisfactory answer. They treat you as a Russian, while you were conscripted by an enlistment office in Kyiv’s Leningrad district, in 1979.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/soviet-identity-gone-forever-putin-163600884.html