By Oleg Vereshyagin
Hans, 11 years old, German: I don’t want to be “the German!”
If anyone remembers, there was a TV program in soviet times called They Chose USSR. It was about people from capitalist countries who for whatever reason moved to “the correct” side of the Iron Curtain. The program was most certainly buried with the beginning of perestroika [perestroika means restructure, rebuild in Russian – RV], for it became fashionable to talk about the Kramorovs and Nurievs, who went West in hopes of high praises of their enormous talents and were happily creative there. This was hard to grasp for the rest of us, miserable soviet red necks. Actually, the flow of people was mutual; more than that – after a while the “from there to here” flow was GREATER. This thought will seem strange and unusual for our counterparts, poisoned with Ogoneks [liberal, anti-patriotic periodicals – RV] and such, even those more patriotic.