For two hundred years, Russian history has been made in such a way that not a generation has been able to escape the ordeal of the “change of era”. Barely assimilated – and this somehow – by the people, the previous doctrine was thrown into the dustbins of history; the old laws were no longer valid, and others, written as they went along, came to replace them.
Over the past hundred years, every generation of Russians has also been confronted with the resetting of its assets: the financial securities of the past – even those which seemed to be the most guaranteed –, at one time or another, were reduced to dust. As for the former owners of factories, newspapers or steamships [référence à un poème satirique soviétique] in the 1920s, in the best of cases, they became Parisian taxi drivers; in the worst case, they found an anonymous place in the mass grave of the gulag.
Accept the new rules of the game to get up
The homes of the nobility were destroyed at the beginning of the last century – burnt down or converted into palaces of culture and other institutions to meet the needs of the new authorities. And subsequent generations have lived by these hastily defined rules. They were happy, in their own way. Anyone can find, if not happiness, at least a form of appeasement, by understanding the new rules of the game and, above all, by accepting them, assuming that they are part of the meaning of life. ‘story.
There was also the Soviet Loans saga, all of which turned out to be scams. But each generation has risen. Without the cumbersome family legacies that prevail in the West, she continued to live, to work, to have children and projects. “As strong as steel”, some said. “A slave mentality!” cried the others contemptuously from their cozy lives.
perestroika [libéralisation du régime soviétique à partir de 1985] and the ensuing collapse of the Soviet system [en 1991] once again turned the Russian way of life upside down. And their savings with it, as tradition dictated. Researchers, teachers, doctors have joined cooperatives or the ranks of “shuttle traders” [qui faisaient de l’import-export à dos d’homme], or even became commercial directors. Conversely, many members of previous generations have not found their place in this new life and have passed from the dream