Why was childhood different in the USSR? Folding bed and bookshelves

Today, even the most naive schoolchild will not believe what anniversary ruble you can get a new car, and a kilogram of dried mosquitoes can significantly increase your level of personal well-being. But they believed in the 80s.

1. Blade in chewing gum

The lucky ones who took part in the VI Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 were able to try imported chewing gum for the first time. In the 80s, chewing gum among children became a subject of bargaining and speculation. The owner of the Turbo wrapper, which appeared in the late 80s, automatically rose in the eyes of his peers. What can we say about those who could effectively take a pack of gum out of their pocket and offer it to friends. At this time, there were rumors among schoolchildren that the still active “enemies” were inventing new sabotage measures to harm the Soviet pioneers, for which blades were placed in some chewing gum. Many children were so imbued with these stories that, as adults, they continued to break the stick of chewing gum into two halves before consuming it.

2. Car for a ruble

In 1965, the first anniversary ruble was minted in the Soviet Union with a circulation of 60 million pieces. The sum of one ruble in itself was already wealth for a Soviet child, let alone the unusual commemorative coin. In the 80s, Soviet children enthusiastically told their parents that there was a certain secret government organization that would willingly exchange an anniversary ruble for a real car. The reasons for the unprecedented generosity seemed very transparent: the iron ruble was allegedly made from a miracle metal, which the Japanese and Americans were tirelessly hunting for. The metal was so secret that no one knew its exact name, as well as the name of the organization that exchanged rubles for cars.

3. Red film

There was a myth among teenagers in the 80s that if you loaded a mysterious red film into a camera, the people in the photo would appear without clothes. Naturally, no one had ever seen such a film, but everyone dreamed of getting it. Schoolchildren who were lucky enough to get a camera took pictures of their classmates shouting “Now you are on red film!”, which drove the latter to hysterics. True, of course, no one has ever seen the compromising photographs.

In the 80s, one of the first electronic games appeared in the USSR. Thousands of Soviet schoolchildren watched the wolf black and white screen catches eggs. Apparently, trying to somehow justify their fooling around, while their peers were scouring the city in search of scrap metal and waste paper, the owners of the game said that if they managed to score a certain number of points, a gorgeous Disney cartoon would be shown. The older generation, not advanced in terms of computers, believed that this was possible. The wolf actually made some ridiculous movements when achieving a certain result, but calling them a cartoon was a huge stretch.

5. Dried Bloodsuckers

Even scientists don’t seem to think about how much a mosquito weighs. But Soviet schoolchildren in the 80s often wondered how many blood-sucking insects needed to be killed in order to collect a “herbarium” weighing a kilogram. The reason for the search for a solution to such an unusual problem was a legend according to which something “super” was given for a kilogram of dried mosquitoes. What exactly - no one knew. Sometimes it was a question of a very large sum of money. The main problem, according to the young naturalists, was that less than a kilogram was not accepted, and collecting an entomological collection of a given weight could take a lifetime.

6. “Exercise” for karatekas

The peak of karate's popularity in the Soviet Union also occurred in the 80s, despite numerous bans. The boys eagerly imitated the fighters who defeated a crowd of opponents with almost their bare hands. Shouting “kiya!” and almost every schoolchild knew the traditional karate stance. Sometimes self-taught people “honed their skills” through the “folk training system.” For example, if you rub the edge of your palm with a pencil lead for a long time, you can then easily break bricks. There were two conditions that had to be met. First: the pencil must be Chinese. Second: I had to use up all the lead. Needless to say, it was very difficult to get imported products in the 80s, and not many people had the patience to complete the “exercise.” The most determined ones, however, completed the job and often ended up in the hospital with broken fingers or wrists.

7. Magic numbers

For many Soviet schoolchildren, a brand new “Orlyonok” bicycle was just a dream. Thus was born a myth that promised to make the fairy tale come true. If you collect the mysterious numbers that, for some unknown reason, were placed on one of the cartons of a pack of Cosmos cigarettes, you can become the happy owner of your own means of transportation. There were a huge number of variations of this legend: numbers could be looked for not only in packs of Cosmos, but in other cigarettes, and for a complete combination they gave not a bicycle, but an air gun. Did anyone manage to collect all the numbers from 1 to 15 and where did the miracle exchange take place? History is silent about this, but the fact is that my father’s packs of cigarettes were controlled and mercilessly tortured in search of magic numbers, - fact.

8. SSD and killer toys

The horror myth about a black tinted bus (or “Volga”) traveling across the expanses of the USSR excited the consciousness of Soviet children. Allegedly, children were lured into it under various pretexts and taken away in an unknown direction. For what purposes - history is silent. It was very easy to recognize the bus that “killed millions”: its license plate contained two “S” and “D”, which stood for nothing less than “Death to Soviet children!” An instructive story once and for all discouraged obedient children from talking to strangers, much less getting into their car. In addition, many parents intimidated their children with stories about killer toys that could be found on the street. At home, toys “intensified” and destroyed not only little owners, but also entire families. Bringing such finds home was strictly prohibited.

I don’t really feel like a mother of two children, much less feel my age. It seems to me that I am stuck somewhere between sixteen and twenty and live like this, pretending that there are no birthdays and that my number of years is always the same.
Looking at my girls, I am surprised at how different everything is for them, and I catch myself often complaining that “in our time!”

Folding bed and bookshelves

My mother is a very hospitable woman, whoever knows her will agree)) So, there were always a lot of guests at home, some holidays, fun and noisy, and also such a chance! You can sleep on the floor or on a cot if guests are staying overnight. For some reason, as a child I liked so much what now seems wildly uncomfortable and generally, wow, stressful! Cot? ugh! And then it seemed so fun.

I asked dad to put the folding bed closer to the bookshelves, with a smart look I took out one of the books and pretended to read. Out loud, of course. I was 3-4 years old then.
As a child, it generally seemed to me that if I did something for show, for example, pretended to play the piano, then everyone would think that I really played it. True, I still don’t play it very well. (Anya P.-Sol-fa-fa!))))
For some reason, when you meet those who knew you before, in childhood, and you start to remember, they remember some unreal stories that you yourself forgot about, but here it is, Yes! Great!

Proper education

My mother, by profession (she is an educational psychologist), has read a lot of pedagogical literature and worked in the garden for 25 years, but I don’t think that she would now approve of any fashionable Druckerman or others like them.
Then somehow they didn’t think about the sacred meaning of raising a child, that it turns out you need to somehow act according to science or something else. Everything was very simple. Didn't sort out the onions in time? Insolent? I cut off the bangs of my grandmother's wig and got hit in the ass with a twig. And no one was offended or wringing their hands that children should not be beaten. Of course, you can’t hit. And a twig for adding water to my mother’s French perfume (which is why it turned dull gray), and trying to sell it at a reasonable price - quite possible.

Dreamers

There was more than enough fantasy in my childhood.
It seemed to me then that I had a terribly boring childhood. Well, what is it? After all, I even lived in a private house, and not in a large courtyard (which was my dream), there were few friends around, only in the summer there were Cossack robbers, catch-ups and other bouncers.
Summer was a lifetime! Every summer new or old acquaintances came. I remember once, gypsies rented housing from us. The gypsies are not the ones who beg for alms or fool people in the market, but the gypsies who are artists. Guitars, dancing in long skirts, ainane and all that stuff.
There was a whole bunch of them, or rather a camp. My sister and I happily joined their harmonious company and also tore our laurels by frantically shrugging our shoulders at the local cultural center. It’s amazing how my mother agreed to such trips? I would never let Masha dance with the gypsies now)))

General

And is there a story about the potty? As a child, I had not just a potty, but a Potty named General. It was a large throne with a pink back, on which the ACTION took place.
The whole family knew that I could sit there for hours, read books, play games and no one would bother me.
One day something happened to the general. I ran headlong toward the sounds of “chaku-chaku” (this is the good night screensaver, kids), tripped over the General and broke it. I broke my front tooth and the general’s back.

What was it like to get along with an older sister who bit off everyone’s noses, I hated her for it! My beloved Bichunya got her nose chewed off!!! And she was always “First”, and I was “Second” and this “Second” depressed me terribly, but she knew and screamed even louder and more often - “I am first, I am first!!! (This is what Masha and Dasha are doing now, now it’s called trolling)))

There was nothing strange in the fact that from a very young age, at the age of 6-7, I was already playing poker with everyone else. With money, of course. What kind of fool plays for fun?
I can’t say that I often broke the bank, but to be part of a family that didn’t make me sleep because I was little, but made me feel like an adult, for that I am grateful.

TV without remote control

My Masha doesn’t understand what a TV is without a remote control or how it is when cartoons are on once a week on Saturdays for half an hour (DuckTales and Chip and Dale), and if you are punished “cutting the phono” in another room, exactly at this time, then wait a whole week for the next cartoons, well, not counting all the pop “Chunga Changs” in the mornings before school.

Even in my childhood, there were a lot of grandparents and there was no thought that they might have some kind of personal life or they needed to leave space, but they queued up to babysit their grandchildren!

Granny

Grandma Lida. Wonderful, beloved, the one whom I will never be able to ask about what I want. And I’m such a fool, I didn’t have time to learn anything from her.
She came in the morning from the other end of the city to gather me, sleepy, and take me to the garden.
She said - Katyusha! Stick your leg out! Leopold the cat has arrived! And Katyusha kicked her legs in response, saying, “Leave me alone, grandma, I want to sleep!”

She taught me a lot, told me a lot of stories on the way to the garden, and she also had a cat named “Potya Varan”, she drew me drawings, which she later threw away, thinking that I didn’t really love her.

Children are stupid. Only when you get older, when you become a mother, do you understand how important it is to know about yourself, about your family, about your roots, everything you can know.
Because there you are, hidden, your cells and essence, which cannot be understood until you find out where you are from and what your family is about.

Grandpa

Dedushka Zhenya called me “my little robber” and loved me like crazy. Mom loves to tell a story about how she comes back from work, and I’m sitting there, my mouth is purple (I’ve eaten too much fabric dye), covered in some kind of threads, in general - atlas! And my grandfather sleeps next to me.

Kriska and the houses

In my childhood, Kriska and I loved to sit on the roof on warm summer nights and chat about this and that. climb the rest of the roofs (later my mother heard from Aunt Fenya that we had broken all the slate), pick all sorts of apricots and cherries there.
Almost every Saturday she got on her bike, covered with dolls on all sides and rode to me to “play house”, we had very little time, literally an hour and a half, and then she again loaded her belongings onto the bike and was itching to go home, go she was at least an hour old. Who will now ride a bike for 2 hours to play for an hour?

Books

There were a lot of books in my childhood. Ooh! Books! This is my passion, love, literally everything. I don’t know what this position of getting and distributing books at work is called, but in general it somehow happened that my mother was often brought books from some publishing house and we had the right to be the first to choose the ones we wanted. Of course we wanted EVERYTHING! (there were mostly, as they would say now, bestsellers), but the money, of course, was not rubber, so it was not possible to take everything, but all the same, our library was very extensive, enviable.

When Masha now tells me that Gogol is a very strange author (a freak in short), he’s all some kind of devils and other evil spirits, I feel sad.
My unconditional passion for reading a lot, reading everything, was not transferred to her. So I push, push, watch in general.
And yesterday, she comes from a walk with Dasha and brings a new book. I bought it in a store with “my own” money. And when she reads this book in one sitting, I realize that I am in it. That it was not in vain that I pushed and told. It was not in vain that I read it. The main thing, given today's abundance, is that the child finds what he wants, and not what the program requires. Breaking through all these Bianchi and Turgenevs with the Nekrasovs is not easy for me, let alone for a modern child.

Nostalgia

Tomato ice cream for 15 kopecks, books on records, Vysotsky and Boyarsky, this is my childhood. Mom and Dad went crazy when, instead of “So we broke up,” in Boyarsky’s song I sang along, “Place your butts!” , simply because I heard so.
I had heaps of cats, trips to the mountains for dogwood, a neighbor named “Gitzel” (Grandma’s interpretation of Hitler), an attic and treasures.
Every May 9th, we walked around the square with a bunch of paper flowers, I was wearing white bows, warmth, people, fun!
It seems to me that we were such children, horror! Our children live a completely different life. In different conditions, but I hope with similar values.

What is this story about? nothing, it just came to mind. We are getting older, we already have children of our own, and it’s so crazy – I can’t wrap my head around it!
I’m starting to understand a little about my mother, who was worried, didn’t sleep at night, glued dolls as assigned by school and made crossword puzzles there too.
Everything is cyclical and over and over again, we change places with our parents in order to go through the path that we ourselves went through quite recently, but in a completely different role.

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Childhood… So fleeting and so carefree. Doctors believe that at this time immunity is laid for the rest of life. Of course, they are right, but it's not just about immunity. In childhood, such concepts as honesty, decency, justice are also laid down. The first betrayal happens, and for the first time you have to make a choice, deciding what is good and what is bad. And what kind of childhood it was like largely determines how a person will grow up and how his future life will turn out.

We, who grew up in the USSR, are so different from modern youth. This is neither bad nor good. We are just different, and our childhood was different.

We were not afraid to be funny and absurd and easily went for walks in stretched pants and old sneakers. We also laughed and joked if someone stumbled or fell, but only then, and first we were in a hurry to give a hand. In our childhood there were no tablets, cell phones and game consoles. When we were bored, we talked with friends. We knew all the episodes of “Well, just you wait!” by heart. and looked forward to “Visiting a Fairy Tale” on Fridays.

Our toys were simple and understandable; they did not have complex electronic components or radio control. But we constantly exchanged them and, without hesitation, lent them to friends. The entrances did not have steel doors with combination locks. When we went out for a walk in the evening, we came in one after another and, going around the house, recruited boys for two football teams.

Walking on the street, we fell, got bumps, lost teeth, and broke our elbows and knees until they bled. Gritting our teeth, we smeared the abrasions with brilliant green in the evenings, we are men, and men don’t cry! If we fought, we did not ask for mercy and, having earned bruises, did not admit from whom we received them. And it never occurred to our parents to sue over a black eye under their son.

We didn’t know that we couldn’t drink raw water, catch frogs, or dig for worms with our hands. There were no locked cabinets at home and we opened the front door without looking through the peephole. We didn’t have safety helmets, but if someone had a bicycle, the whole yard would take turns riding it. We knew how to saw and hammer nails, and if we found some strong boards and a couple of wheels in a junkyard, we could make an excellent gurney.

We spent whole days on the street, returning home only for dinner. Our parents believed us, because there were no cell phones then, and no one controlled us. At the same time, we studied well, distinguished sines from cosines, the Big Dipper from the Little Dipper, managed to learn a bunch of poems, understand Dostoevsky and fall in love with Chekhov. We wrote essays by hand and went to the library to get information about them. We still write without mistakes and help our grandchildren with math.

We didn’t know about healthy eating; we loved fried potatoes, lard and bread and butter. There were almost no fat people among us, because we rarely sat still. If they didn’t play football or play Cossack robbers, it meant that a team was being recruited to build a pirate ship or a detachment of partisans. We drank from the same bottle, took turns taking a bite of the sandwich, and a true friend always let us finish chewing the gum. Green plums and apples were our favorite foods, and if they made our stomachs hurt, we never told our parents.

And how we knew how to be friends! We had a need for communication, we could just chat with friends, organize an “expedition” to the nearest construction site or to the forest. We often burned fires, and this was not considered an emergency or a violation of the law. We could steal a couple of pieces of bread from the house and fry them over the fire, skewering them on twigs.

We made fireworks from match heads, bungee dived into the river, certainly climbed trees and built huts in the summer. It didn’t occur to us to ask our mother’s permission for all this, the police didn’t grab us by the hand, and the teachers didn’t demand from our parents detailed report about what their children do after school.

If we did something, we did it for real, without hypocrisy and “a stone in our bosom.” They fought to the bitter end, fell desperately in love, and became friends for life. It was a shame to hide behind parents’ backs, brag about “cool” relatives, give bribes and “get rid of” the army.

The measure of actions was conscience, not money. Our parents knew our grades and our friends, they went to meetings at school, but they rarely interfered. We dreamed and made plans. They wanted to be pilots, astronauts, ship captains and firefighters.

From childhood we learned to fight, to be honest and responsible. They strived to win, were not afraid of defeat and did not give in to failure. The current generation sometimes doesn’t like us and calls us “scoops.” They forgot that it was thanks to us that a powerful state was formed and it is the “scoops” who are still ready to do anything for the well-being of the Motherland!

Perhaps we do not know how to “make big fortunes,” but we know what conscience and self-esteem are and believe that the main thing in life is love and kindness.

Whole generations lost their childhood and youth along with their homeland, the USSR. It is not surprising that now, with the passage of time, these concepts - the Soviet Union and childhood - have merged into one whole.

It is a medical fact that human memory weeds out negative memories and tries to leave only positive ones. Moreover, they are associated with childhood and adolescence - for most people - the happiest time in life. Therefore, it is not surprising that for many times Soviet Union are now perceived as the best thing that happened in their lives.

This nostalgic “test”, mixed with photographs of Soviet children from the 60s to the mid-80s, will allow you to remember, if not everything, then a lot. And once again experience the painful and at the same time bright feeling - nostalgia.

You were born in the USSR in the 70-80s if:

Remember Oleg Popov's checkered cap and the number with the capture of a ray of sunshine. But adults explained to you who Pencil is.

In your class, the short kids were teased as “Passepartout,” and the teacher’s intrigues were called “Mr. Fix’s tricks.”

Until now, you shudder and remember whether you packed your briefcase if someone nearby says: “Pioneer dawn is on the air!”

The girls in your class constantly chanted “Mari-i-i-i-i-Mirabe-e-e-l-a-a-a-a...”.

Do you remember the name of the editor of subtitles for films that were constantly shown on the quadruple TV curriculum - Eero

You associate the word “Alarm Clock” with Nadezhda Rumyantseva.

You have seen portraits of Gorbachev without a birthmark.

You don’t need to explain who Avdotya Nikitishna and Veronica Mavrikievna are.

The TV remote is like pliers!

It’s strange that the second one in “Modern Talking” is also a man, with such and such hair and voice.

Sometimes you want to pick up a braided handle, hang a devil made of wire or an angelfish made of braided wires from a chandelier.

Your parents strictly forbade you to drink soda from the vending machine because sharing glasses transmitted syphilis!

“Blue Puppy” is not at all what everyone would think now.

With the acronym LTO, you are overcome with such complex sensations that you become self-absorbed for a minute.

Are you still wondering why this Code of Criminal Procedure was necessary?

Are you sure that the best group in Europe is ABBA, and in America - BoneyM?

Japanese cartoon "The Little Mermaid" - the hall is filled with first-graders, everyone is crying!!!

The coolest store in the city is a thrift store, because it sells an imported two-cassette tape recorder.

From the first bars of the song “Soar with bonfires,” your hand is trying to give a pioneer salute.

At the song review, you sang “The Buchenwald Alarm”: “... it was the fiery blood that was tempered and strengthened in our hearts... and they rebelled, and rebelled, and rose again!”

You understand who we are talking about when you hear the names: Farid Seiful-Mulyukov, Genrikh Borovik, Valentin Tsvetov, Vsevolod Ovchinnikov, Alexander Bovin, Valentin Zorin.

You have long calculated how old you will be in the year 2000 - and did not expect to live to this advanced age.

A blanket on the window, a red lantern, counting slowly: one-two-three... click! “Bromportrait”, “unibrom”, fixer, bath full of photographs, glosser. What?! A? That's the same...

You chewed tar.

You remember that changing the channel is a hassle, because you have to get out from under the warm blanket.

My parents' friends had such interesting things - printouts! Such long sheets of paper, and on them were the Strugatskys, Bulgakov and the erotic treatise “peach branches” printed on the ATsPU in the CC in capital letters. With holes on the sides.

Your friends had an acquaintance who knew a person whose cousin won 1000 rubles in Sportloto! A thousand!

Three hundred varieties of sausage and one hundred and eight cheeses is simply incomprehensible.

Major classmates had real Japanese pencil cases with big-eyed girls, brought from abroad. From there came fragrant, delicious erasers that were even delicious to chew.

You know for sure that fashionable clothes are not bought, but sewn.

You rewrote the lyrics of the song “Winged Swing” and were sure that Ressie was a breed of dog.

IN primary school you kept a “Diary of Nature Observations”.

Sometimes you bought an amazing delicacy in the store: “corn flakes”. With sugar - 10 kopecks a pack and without sugar - 7.

The best films are “Pirates of the 20th Century” and “Disco Dancer”.

In the elevator of your building there was an inscription KISS and ASDS in a foreign language.

Construction cartridges are a thing!

You still admire Dean Reed's civic stance and Angela Davis' hairstyle.

You drank juice at the grocery store. The most delicious was tomato, and the spoons for salt were in a glass of water.

You fought until first blood. Behind the gym or in the locker room.

The most banned film is Emmanuelle. There it is!..

You had a piggy bank in the form of a champagne bottle for 10 kopeck coins

You set fire to a child's plastic spatula, and then, with bated breath, watched the fiery drops flowing from it.

Karate was very cool. You knew a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who had secret knowledge, broke bricks with his bare hands and could kill six people. Then he was imprisoned.

There is no need to explain to you what “film sketches” are – small stories on TV between programs between programs accompanied by smooth music.

You were addicted to the series “Lassie” and everyone in the class dreamed of a collie dog.

When you hear the song “A Dog Named Buddy Is Missing,” your eyes become moist.

You know what a bicycle spoke, bent at a right angle, is for; the head is screwed on, and sulfur from matches is tightly packed into it.

Despite the jammers, you listened to obscene ditties on the Voice of America and waited for the call signs “Seva, Seva Novgorodtsev - city of London, BBC!!!”

Until now, the best kvass for you is the one from a barrel on wheels, small - 3 kopecks, large - 6 kopecks.

The word “Decree” has a negative connotation for you, as it is associated with one single decree - “On measures to combat drunkenness and alcoholism.”

The words “beer can broke” do not put you in a dead end.

Our hockey team always won!

You can definitely list all the figures when playing rubber band (if you are a girl). And how can you play this??? (if you are a boy)

Do you remember that an indispensable attribute of every home was an opener in the form of a wolf “Well, wait a minute”, who was holding a nickel-plated guitar in his hands. It was not used, it stood behind glass in the sideboards.

The words “Maurice Druon” and “waste paper” are connected in an incomprehensible way for you.

You bought Vietnamese ping-pong balls, mercilessly cut them, and, wrapping their scraps in foil, made “smoke machines”.

You know that tape reels come in lengths of 270, 375, and 525 meters. 525 is best because you can record one entire disc on one side.

We climbed the Construction site, and always in company. There were terrible legends that there were bad people at the Construction site. In the underground passages dug under the pipes there was abundant rock art that explains the structure of this labyrinth. They took torches there. In especially inconspicuous places of the Construction site, “halabuds” were built from plywood found there.

You understand that a criminal is not a criminal, but a wealthy businessman or a relative of the authorities.

You know that in the country there is a magazine for very little ones: “Funny Pictures”, a magazine for little ones “Murzilka” and two magazines for almost big ones “Pioneer” and “Koster”.

The word “deficit” is close and understandable to you—and not only in relation to money.

In the hierarchy of prestigious professions, academicians and cosmonauts came after butcher and car mechanic.

The asphalt in the yard is lined with arrows and hopscotches.

There was a construction site in your yard. Your parents and older children in the yard say that the Construction site was there even before you were born. She remained there even when you, having matured, left.

Have you known a man to whom speculators sold one leg of his jeans?

In the pioneer camp, you were somehow assigned to a ward with the Elders and all day you listened to their (as you realized much later, exclusively empirical) conversations about E..LYU and P...U. It was something from a parallel world.

You were shocked to learn that your parents are doing about the same thing as naked uncles and aunts in faded photographs taken 50 times. This shock has not yet passed.

You were really afraid of nuclear war.

If in a conversation or text someone uses the phrase “do with us, do like us, do better than us,” you will smile and remember the GDR.

The word "condom" is terribly indecent.

You wince when you hear “All radio stations in the Soviet Union are working.”

You danced in a pioneer camp to “The Bird of Tomorrow’s Happiness, Arrived and Flew with Jingling Wings...” (but you personally liked “Ottavan” better)

Nostalgia begins to torment you when you read: “Chairman of the MPLA-Party of Labor, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos.”

The elastic band from the panties, as you remember, perfectly holds both panties and tights, and mittens, and, of course, a child’s winter hat.

You have heard a lot about the game “Zarnitsa”, you have seen reports and even a film about children playing too hard. And then they themselves took part in it.

You never guessed which side the jam would flow out of the jam pie.

During breaks, you doused each other with water from old reusable syringes.

It is ALWAYS midnight in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

When leaving, my grandmother always said the same phrase: “Just return the cans!”

You didn’t start thinking badly about her when your mom said, “I’m buying it for you now, but it’s for your birthday.”

The name Samantha Smith brings back both fond and embarrassing memories.

Your tape recorder was chewing cassette tapes.

The word “governor” makes you feel like you are reading a historical novel, and the word “senator” makes you feel even more historical.

The holiday is strongly associated with the word “order”.

You didn’t even envy Senkevich - realizing that only one person in the whole country could travel THIS way.

You could easily continue the lines “Oh, how many wonderful discoveries we have…”.

You are overcome with spiritual trepidation when the words are cheerfully pronounced: “The nut of knowledge is hard, but still we are not used to retreating! The newsreel “I want!” will help us split it. All! Know!"

At least one of your classmates was a metalhead, and the other was a breaker.

You remember that parents signed up for a queue on some kind of “wall”.

In the Fundamentals of State and Law lessons, for some reason all the guys were interested in Articles of the Criminal Code No. 117 and 121, while they laughed like idiots.

There are only two bicycles: Kama and Salyut. The Eaglet is no good, and the Schoolboy is not serious.

Your father brought you to Luna Park and you would like to stay there forever.

You know who Marat Kazei, Zina Portnova and, of course, Pavlik Morozov are.

IN New Year's Eve you bravely fought against sleep in order to watch “foreign variety” at 3 o’clock: GDR television, Marylya Rodovich, Karel Gott and the Italians.

Do you remember three types of hairstyles: zero - 10 kopecks, Canadian - 40 kopecks, model - 1 rub. 20 kopecks.

For you, the best cigarettes are Rodopi and BT, and the best Belomor is from Uritsky’s factories.

Do you remember keyword era for philatelists - “Mongol Shuudan”.

Smoked sausage needs to be cut thinly, until transparent, in a layer - the next time you will see it in six months.

Soviet chewing gum - orange, such thin plates, to be honest, could not be compared with foreign ones.

The absolutely inexplicable small window from the kitchen to the bathroom did not raise any questions in your mind.

You know that tooth powder is for cleaning plaques and silverware.

The fact that completely different people, even in different cities, had the same peeing boy on the toilet door did not cause mystical fear in you.

You know that burning doesn't hurt.

You logged in early in the morning to buy the weekly “Football=Hockey”, and articles from “Arguments and Facts” were retold to you on political information.

Women's magazines are subscribed to only for the patterns. Why else are they needed?

You understood that if only bad things are said throughout the country from morning to night, and at the same time jeans and chewing gum are sold in stores there, and some go there to live, then there is something in this America.

“Hands off Nicaragua!” is not an empty phrase for you.

Oh, what wonderful cartoons there were in the fraternal countries of the socialist camp. Rex, Mole and, of course, Lelek and Bolek.

You know that “Pravda” is: “Separate Camp David deal”, “Pharisees from the White House”, “Ian Smith is the executioner of Rhodesia”, “Your sanctions are finished, Mr. Reagan!”, “Israeli military”, “hawks” Pentagon saber rattling."