A story about stamps and the Russian post office at the time of the fall.
It was just a year or so after the collapse and I was mailing a postcard in Moscow. An old woman in front of me was having a pitched argument with the clerk over the price of a stamp. /1
It was just a year or so after the collapse and I was mailing a postcard in Moscow. An old woman in front of me was having a pitched argument with the clerk over the price of a stamp. /1
The old lady was trying to mail a letter to her son in Kazakhstan. She didn't have enough money. The clerk kept saying: "That's INTERNATIONAL postage now.
The old lady was now in tears. "But he's my son, he lives in our country!"
Clerk: That's a FOREIGN country
/2
The old lady was now in tears. "But he's my son, he lives in our country!"
Clerk: That's a FOREIGN country
/2
I waited for a while and then just leaned in and offered to mail the letter along with my own, to the clerk's relief. Because I did it in Russian, the old lady assumed I was a Russian, I guess. She turned to me, in tears. "I don't understand. Isn't this our country anymore?" /3
And no matter how much I love that the Soviet Union collapsed and Communism was defeated, none of that mattered very much at that moment. I wasn't going to tell her. I didn't know what to say. So I relied on the tried and true. "Bureacracy," I said. "They changed some things." /4
She just shook her head. "I don't understand. My son lives in our country. This is our country." And she kind of shuffled out of the post office wiping a tear. The clerk shrugged and thanked me. I'm glad the West won the Cold War, but at that moment, I didn't feel triumphal. /5x
