Member-only story
100 Years Ago Today the Soviet Union Was Born
Putin epitomizes all that was bad with the Soviet system and why we should be glad it passed
When I told my wife today about the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union, she made a face. She is from Russia.
“Not a moment any of us should be proud of,” she said.
She seldom comments on the politics of her country other than to express disgust and embarrassment for Putin. We rarely talk about her childhood.
I do know that she grew up in a communal apartment in the center of Leningrad. I know that her father’s family used to be high-up in the military of czarist Russia and so his grandparents lived for the first two decades of the Soviet era in a large apartment right next to the Winter Palace.
Her mother’s people were Finns who joined the Soviet Union after the winter war between Soviet Russia and Finland in 1939-40. Her grandmother was 20 when her home became part of the Soviet Union and so she never learned Russian.
“Nothing good came out of the Soviet system. Nothing. If someone tells it was good, they are just dumb.”
