City 40 Page #3

to state secrets.

They had no choice.

We got used to the fact that, like pawns,

we were moved from one place to another.

We accepted it as a natural process...

of socialist construction.

Though, of course,

the situation here was,

I would say, like a prison camp.

When did they allow people

to go outside the city?

I don't remember exactly,

but, I think, after eight years.

My mom told me

people who were relocated to Ozersk

were considered missing by relatives.

EMPLOYMENT RECORD BOOK

Of course, there was a terrible secrecy.

They weren't allowed to leave town,

weren't allowed to write letters.

It was as if they disappeared

into oblivion.

People tortured by the war, famine,

prison camps

were brought to a place

that felt like paradise.

Suddenly there's food,

social life and entertainment.

Their silence was payment to the state

for a better life.

They created their own ideology,

"We're the saviors of the world,

creators of the nuclear shield."

This ideology is what keeps them

running to this day.

We lived like well-fed animals in a zoo.

We were provided everything.

I never wondered...

why it was like that

and nobody explained to me

why we were so lucky to live

such happy lives.

We had plenty of kielbasa, food,

sports clubs for kids, everything.

Beautiful!

My father made

enough money to give

the family everything.

He could afford to give me

a ruble each day for food.

We had stacks of chocolate stored at home.

You bet.

That is why they called us

"Chocolate Kids."

I didn't tell my family...

where I was working, or what I was doing.

I always told my daughter that

I was working at a chocolate factory.

So I always had to buy good chocolates...

to bring her.

Let me tell you about

the resentment outsiders have,

calling us the "Chocolate People."

How privileged we are and so on.

I can say that in our ranks,

they were getting good money and still do.

We are used to it and this is how

we want to live.

The majority of people want it this way,

and I want it too.

Ozersk is a big city.

The friends of my parents

who lived in the city of Ozersk

told us that their life was different.

And I can think of one episode

when I was seven,

I was a first-grader at school.

They came to visit us,

our friends from Ozersk,

and they brought me a present.

It was a bunch of bananas.

For someone who grew up as a kid,

in the Soviet times,

in the city of Chelyabinsk,

a bunch of bananas was like...

a part of a fairy tale.

It was absolutely out of this world.

When I traveled outside our town,

I was shocked they had nothing

in their shops.

They had no bread,

no sausage, no milk.

They had empty shelves.

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