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Readership

Russia, July 15, 1998

Russians Have Reunions Too

It is time for that high school reunion!

Moscow Times, 15 July, 1998

Ten Years Gone By, Children of Change Reunite

By Julia Solovyova

At the age of 10, Andrei Bodrov was a plump, jovial boy planting tacks on fellow students' seats and giggling in class. At 22, he was struggling through his third year at Perm Technical University and hating it.

That was the last time I saw him. But recently Andrei, now a respectable manager at the Moscow office of the cosmetics giant L'Oreal, called me to say that our class was getting together to celebrate the 10th anniversary of graduation. I was fascinated by the opportunity to see what my old schoolmates had done with their lives during the most unpredictable years of Russia's recent history. Twenty of the 36 people in my class showed up.

The tradition of high school reunions is strong in Russia. Nobody wears nametag, so you have to guess correctly the names of your classmates even if they dyed their hair or gained weight. Needless to say, the first sight was a shock for ill of us, but soon we saw the people we knew as teenagers.

In fact, this lack of dramatic change struck all of us the most.

We went on a boat trip on the Kama River and had the best lime together in the 20 years we've known one another. We chatted, danced, and felt comfortable, even enjoying that dull German disco Modern Talking, the soundtrack of our childhood, which played over and over again.

Russians in their late 20's are perhaps the bridge generation. We still keep a link with older people, sharing the cultural knowledge that all Soviet citizens shared. To those who are only five years younger, references to certain Soviet realities seem straight out of a textbook, and they certainly can't join in the chorus when their parents start a Soviet song at a party.

Our high school years fell toward the end of the communist reign. We wore the red lies of young pioneers and collected hundreds of kilograms of old newspapers and metal trash in competition to become our class' first Komsomol members. We graduated in I988 during perestroika, which for us meant new, less conservative school uniforms and an end to boring Cold War "political information" lessons. Alexander Soizhenitsyn's and Valery Dudintsey's books exposing the terrors of the Stalinist regime were included in the Russian literature program at the time, and recent history was taught front newspapers rather than textbooks that became antiquated with head-spinning speed.

Brought up in the atmosphere of lies and boredom of the Brezhnev era, we were perhaps one of the most apathetic generations. Nobody was particularly interested in politics or social activism. No one dreamed of becoming an astronaut anymore. Teachers talked us out of trying to enter colleges in Moscow and St. Petersburg, saying that even the brightest students from the provinces couldn't compete with the better-prepared graduates from the capital cities. Most of us believed this "wise" advice and didn't bother applying to universities outside Perm.

We graduated from a school that specialized in the French language. But only three people studied languages afterward. Most girls entered the Medical Institute, while boys commonly chose the Technical University - the two colleges easiest to enter and most likely to guarantee jobs afterward. For some, entering college was t practical move. Boys could avoid military service. Others cared about the prestige of a college degree. Our classmates who dropped out after eighth grade to work were outsiders. Some of them did well, however. Sveta Zhikhor, for example, owns a beauty parlor.

The structure of Soviet higher education left too few course choices up to the students. To get around that, seine of us spent days and nights on campus, attending courses on our own time. Others, like Andrei Bodrov, jumped from one faculty to another. After the fourth year, Andrei was lucky to get a one-year stipend to study at a business college in France, which helped his fast promotion at L'Oreal.

In some ways, it was easier for the girls to make it through these years. Many chose to get married, have children, and stay home. Russian women generally get married earlier than their Western counterparts, and the majority of the girls from my class did get married and have children. I am one of just a few who hasn't married, instead concentrating on my journalism career.

Lena Kinyova, who was among the best students in our class, graduated as a physician find married a businessman, They have two children, and she never worked at a clinic. Now,' she's finding life as a housewife less than satisfying. "At a certain moment I realized that I'm nothing else but my husband's wife," she said. "Entrepreneurs' wives are often total nobodies. What did I achieve in my life? I'd like to he able to support myself and my children in case I have to do it without my husband." But now, Lena said, she will never work as a doctor - a job that rarely pays more than $ 100 a month in Russia - while the monthly fee for her daughter's kindergarten is $75. She plans to take a law or management course and open her own business.

Lena Kaznacheyeva, also a doctor, sells clothes at a Perm marketplace because she can make more money doing that t bin treating sick people.

The market economy caught us unaware, and our parents were unable to ad ' just.4uickly enough to advise us. We entered colleges, following the usual pattern, and graduated still unprepared for capitalist realities,

Some have been trying, unsuccessfully, to sell professional skills the Russian economy has rejected, at least for now. Life in the provincial vacuum was especially hard for those of us whose parents lost their jobs themselves and had no means or connections to support their children. Pasha Gvozdik, a heartthrob with raven-black hair and transparent blue eyes, is the saddest story. He worked as a driver after the army, and one night last fall he was found shot dead in his apartment building. There are rumors of mafia connections, and he often played the role of mediator between conflicting gang, b t nobody knows why he was murdered. He is the only one of my classmates who has died.

Andrei Zhulanov is one of the few people from our class who does what he was trained to do. His face tanned to the color of bricks, he supervises workers building the roads. Another Andrei, Andrei Pustoyik, is a chemist at the PNOS oil refinery, a joint venture with oil giant LUKoil, and one of the best employers in town. Igor Ryumin, trained as a plane mechanic, works at a car repair shop in Lithuania.

There are two academics in our class, Vitya Seniyonov, and Nina Petrova. Vitya always has been incredibly smart in sciences but not worldly. A post-graduate ichthyology student, he has never had d job and never applied for a grant to study abroad, where he would have done well. In ailing Russian academia, his future won't be lucrative, but with a pregnant wife, he is reluctant to risk a radical career change.

Nina was the only one to get all As in our class. She graduated from the math faculty at Moscow State University and married a wealthy economist. She is among four of our classmates living in Moscow.

Of those who stayed in Perm, some managed to adjust to the new times. Those who were smart enough to go into business - no matter what education they received - got the best jobs.

The enthusiastic gingerhead and natural leader of our class, Kostya Ketov, graduated as a mechanical engineer and is now a real estate agent in winter and a tour operator in summer. He is not a New Russian (none of us are), making just enough money to get by, but he believes everything worked out right. "I'm a happy man," he says.

"My life depends only on myself."

Julia Solovyova is a staff writer for The Moscow Times

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