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Not our karoaper. 
All power to the capitalists!
by Karen Karslyan
“Pizdets!”
That’s most politely translated as “Oh, xxxx!” It’s the first post-Soviet sentence I heard.
It burst out of my dad’s mouth a second after the official announcement of the collapse of the USSR, broadcast throughout the collapsing state during the “Vremya”newscast. The complete package of my family – dad, mom, sister, and me – was staring in one direction, at the massive red birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead (which in his first years in office was carefully retouched in his photos).
You may ask, “And what was the first thing you saw in the post-Soviet era?” It was the instantaneous replacement of Gorbachev’s birthmark, hiding behind the screen of our junk Soviet “Chayka” TV set with one of my dad’s slippers.
The third second: My mom, who always rebuked my dad for using bad words in the children’s presence, didn’t breathe a single word this time. Instead, she unnoticeably snatched the other slipper from under my dad’s foot so he didn’t destroy our frail TV altogether.
The fourth second: His eyes still glued to the screen, my dad’s hand reached for the other slipper. Guessing why it’s not there, he cast an outraged look at my mom and tried to swiftly snatch the slipper from her hand.
The fifth second: Mom ducked and deftly moved her hand. In my direction. I snatched the slipper and threw it at the “Chayka” after my sister’s unsuccessful attempt to collar it. I missed the screen, but the slipper pressed one of the channel buttons and fell. The channel changed, yet the image remained the same. “Vremya” was broadcast in Russian on all of the TV channels of all 15 republics simultaneously. For the last time.
In fact, by the time of the official announcement of the dissolution of the USSR, all fifteen republics had already gained full independense within a month of each other, thus squeezing the borders of the largest country ever to the outline of a single desolate human being. Gorbachev was all that was left of the USSR (not counting a handful of confused parliamentarians representing nonexistent republics). History is full of accounts of headless chickens – countries without kings, emperors, presidents. However, there are rare examples of the opposite, and Gorbachev is the brightest one – the chickenless head. He was the walking, talking, Nobel Prize–winning USSR, glorified in the West and disgraced at home. Nevertheless, Gorbachev’s belated official announcement of dissolution had an unexpected effect of an emotional knockdown for my dad. After all, it was an important historic moment.
By the time my dad’s slipper retouched the birthmark of Gorbachev, the latter had managed to reconstruct the Soviet economic-political system and unchain the mass media at such a mind-blowing speed that, as a result, he became the last head of the 7-headed USSR.
By the time my dad’s other slipper changed the channel, the food migrated from stores into the Red Book of Endangered Species, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, several Soviet brother nations began sucking each other’s blood, the Berlin Wall fell, my mom fell and broke her right leg, and, finally, the Iron Curtain followed in the footsteps of my mom’s right leg.
It has been almost 15 years now, but the echo of the dull rumble of the falling curtain is still in my ears. Terrific speed is always fraught with dangerous outcomes not only when igniting events such as those, but also when enumerating them. So, I need to take my time. Otherwise my memoir will also follow the example of the Iron Curtain.
If I rush to skip to the narration of the horrendous and lasting aftermath of the collapse in the tiniest of the former Soviet republics, I will have thrown my baby book out with the bathwater like I was thrown out with sediments of communism right down into the throats of giggling capitalists. Not to mention that my memory is running out like the sand in the hourglass (thanks for the metaphor, hourglass-shaped girl walking on the podium on Fashion TV as I write). I should turn off the TV and get going.
And should I forget to revisit the times and spaces when and where, as my mom believed, my memory disorder spread its roots, my life will collapse like a twenty-five-story house without the underlying twenty-four floors. Thus, in every third issue of the Armenian Reporter, I’ll try to reconstruct specifically those of my stories that cracked between the last days of the USSR and the early days of independent Armenia.
All power to the capitalists!
by Karen Karslyan
“Pizdets!”
That’s most politely translated as “Oh, xxxx!” It’s the first post-Soviet sentence I heard.
It burst out of my dad’s mouth a second after the official announcement of the collapse of the USSR, broadcast throughout the collapsing state during the “Vremya”newscast. The complete package of my family – dad, mom, sister, and me – was staring in one direction, at the massive red birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead (which in his first years in office was carefully retouched in his photos).
You may ask, “And what was the first thing you saw in the post-Soviet era?” It was the instantaneous replacement of Gorbachev’s birthmark, hiding behind the screen of our junk Soviet “Chayka” TV set with one of my dad’s slippers.
The third second: My mom, who always rebuked my dad for using bad words in the children’s presence, didn’t breathe a single word this time. Instead, she unnoticeably snatched the other slipper from under my dad’s foot so he didn’t destroy our frail TV altogether.
The fourth second: His eyes still glued to the screen, my dad’s hand reached for the other slipper. Guessing why it’s not there, he cast an outraged look at my mom and tried to swiftly snatch the slipper from her hand.
The fifth second: Mom ducked and deftly moved her hand. In my direction. I snatched the slipper and threw it at the “Chayka” after my sister’s unsuccessful attempt to collar it. I missed the screen, but the slipper pressed one of the channel buttons and fell. The channel changed, yet the image remained the same. “Vremya” was broadcast in Russian on all of the TV channels of all 15 republics simultaneously. For the last time.
In fact, by the time of the official announcement of the dissolution of the USSR, all fifteen republics had already gained full independense within a month of each other, thus squeezing the borders of the largest country ever to the outline of a single desolate human being. Gorbachev was all that was left of the USSR (not counting a handful of confused parliamentarians representing nonexistent republics). History is full of accounts of headless chickens – countries without kings, emperors, presidents. However, there are rare examples of the opposite, and Gorbachev is the brightest one – the chickenless head. He was the walking, talking, Nobel Prize–winning USSR, glorified in the West and disgraced at home. Nevertheless, Gorbachev’s belated official announcement of dissolution had an unexpected effect of an emotional knockdown for my dad. After all, it was an important historic moment.
By the time my dad’s slipper retouched the birthmark of Gorbachev, the latter had managed to reconstruct the Soviet economic-political system and unchain the mass media at such a mind-blowing speed that, as a result, he became the last head of the 7-headed USSR.
By the time my dad’s other slipper changed the channel, the food migrated from stores into the Red Book of Endangered Species, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, several Soviet brother nations began sucking each other’s blood, the Berlin Wall fell, my mom fell and broke her right leg, and, finally, the Iron Curtain followed in the footsteps of my mom’s right leg.
It has been almost 15 years now, but the echo of the dull rumble of the falling curtain is still in my ears. Terrific speed is always fraught with dangerous outcomes not only when igniting events such as those, but also when enumerating them. So, I need to take my time. Otherwise my memoir will also follow the example of the Iron Curtain.
If I rush to skip to the narration of the horrendous and lasting aftermath of the collapse in the tiniest of the former Soviet republics, I will have thrown my baby book out with the bathwater like I was thrown out with sediments of communism right down into the throats of giggling capitalists. Not to mention that my memory is running out like the sand in the hourglass (thanks for the metaphor, hourglass-shaped girl walking on the podium on Fashion TV as I write). I should turn off the TV and get going.
And should I forget to revisit the times and spaces when and where, as my mom believed, my memory disorder spread its roots, my life will collapse like a twenty-five-story house without the underlying twenty-four floors. Thus, in every third issue of the Armenian Reporter, I’ll try to reconstruct specifically those of my stories that cracked between the last days of the USSR and the early days of independent Armenia.