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What Post-Soviet Trauma Looks Like Without Big Words or Diagnoses?
What Post-Soviet Trauma Looks Like Without Big Words or Diagnoses
It rarely looks like trauma in the usual sense of the word. More often, it sits in the kitchen as a three-liter jar filled with sugar, lies in a cupboard as a stack of new towels that, for some reason, are not meant to be used yet, or hides in a box of buttons, scraps of fabric and old ribbon, in a bag stuffed with other bags, in a sack of flour bought not because it is needed today but because “it’s better to have it.” That phrase followed me through childhood, and at the time I heard nothing unusual in it. Keep some oil. Save that piece of fabric. Don’t throw away the jar. Don’t use the new dinner set. It’s a good one, we’ll need it later. Somehow, the best things were always being saved for later, as if real life had not quite begun yet and some other, more suitable time was still ahead of us, a time when it would finally make sense to use the beautiful dishes, wear the good dress, or open whatever had been carefully kept untouched for years.
For a long time I thought this was simply the temperament of the older generation. My grandmother was economical, my grandfather distrustful, someone else was overly cautious, someone could not bear to part with old things, someone always bought more food than the family actually needed. Only much…
