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It always seemed to me that since we were born
a moan reached to our ears.
This moan was of the huge Soviet Union
that was covering the one-sixth part of the world.
We were spending our childhood
observing the death of that giant.
A great empire
was dying in front of our eyes.
The empire that killed our grandfathers
and took care of our fathers instead.
We were the last generation of this empire.
and I was one of them.
I was born
as one of the last Soviet children.
Surprisingly, I was completely heartfelt
when I took an oath of October Children
and with great pleasure I pinned the star with
Volodya Ulyanov's curl-haired childhood image.
I deemed Stalin and Lenin as my father and grandfather.
They were native to me
and the life expected to be in front of me was
a life of a dignified citizen of a huge country
A citizen that mostly needed
reading books and studying science.
But suddenly everything collapsed.
All the penetrated values
became insulted within a year.
The pages praising communism, party
and Lenin were torn off our schoolbooks.
The portraits of a persons we respected
were taken away from the classrooms,
the busts got broken.
The values generated and evolved by that time
became just unnecessary and forgettable.
And we were face to face with such
an awful emptiness.
We had to survive the bitterness of this emptiness.
But that was not the whole story.
After a couple of years we faced with another
horrible emptiness.
Refugee youth know it better than
the transition youth of those times.
Now, we were leaving the lands we grew.
You know, motherland is not just a piece of land.
Happenings there and history make it motherland.
It is the house where we grew up. The smells we still remember.
The people we share love and hate.
A tree growing up together with us.
Any construction that is coeval with us
Graves of blood people.
We lost them all.
The fact was that
we did not have luxury to think of our moral losses.
We were in so much misery that
the food was the major problem.
The major problem was how to warm up the camp classrooms
where we were trying to recover our sense of learning.
The major problem was to see our beds
in the morning covered by snow and water.
We were still not understanding
the horror of emptiness that will pursue us
for many upcoming years
We were too young to understand it
and we were busy with our daily problems.
It took us 14 years to live this life.
During these 14 years some of us -
who shared a camp life with me
became pilferers
some of them got involved in unceccessful commerce
despite they have abilities in other various fields,
some girls got married earlier.
So, the youth just got lost.
Perhaps I am the luckiest one
among those generation.
I mean I leaved the life of luxury in compare with those
who survived all the horrors.
I came to the capital city and got higher education
I became a writer.
There are some other guys succeeded as well
who could overcome the life with horror
There are film directors, idea geterators
leftist, revolutionist among them.
And perhaps we can become really advanced people
and seriously contribute new progressive ideas
to the world.
Maybe we can contribute masterworks to the world.
We can do a lot.
But we are deprived of very important thing.
We don't have history.
It is really awful thing.
You may probably all
You are all
greeting your neighbor
who lives next to your door about 20 years,
there is a 20 year tree growing in front of your eyes,
a school that embraced you 10 years.
I've changed 6 schools.
I don't remember any of my schoolmates
I could get accustomed to non of them.
Cause I had to change my school every single year
Cause we had refugee life.
When organizers talked to me they asked for
my childhood photos.
I don't have any photo of mine before 18 years old.
I've left them all in my motherland.
There is no any thing to prove
our life in our motherland.
We have lost our past even in photos.
It took us 14-15 years to recover
and to get over it
and today we're 30.
Our youth - the best years of us disappeared
in poverty, misery and distress.
I've taken this picture in the camp city
where I lived and grew up.
The camp city was demolished a couple of years ago.
They disabled that area and let people move to new houses.
I was there as an journalist to note the happenings there.
I went there and witnessed how the camp city
become liquidated during an hour
and it took them a single piece of match
to burn everything down.
They burned the city where I spent 4 years of my life -
my past with a single match.
I did not live any joyous life ther
however I was distressed with what happened
cause it was a part of my past and it easily disappeared.
I watched a film some time ago
it was about 50 years old man
and one day he comes in and notices a little boy in his house
and this boy was his past, his childhood that he disliked
and was always trying to forget
and he was striving to throw the child out of his house
he wanted to to get out of child but
this child was not letting the man go
and in the end the man hugs the child
the child who was his childhood.
Everyone thinks that how come
a 30 years old judicious woman
would miss the empire that shed the blood of millions
miss the Soviet Union.
I don't miss the Soviet Union.
I don't miss the Empire.
I miss my childhood.
I just want to hug my childhood
but I don't have it.
I don't have a childhood to embrace.
This is the last child born in the camp city.
His name is Nuri.
I wish happiness to him.
Let him live better life.
Thanks!