The Remembrance

At age seventy-two, Manushak lives in Glendale, California.  She waits patiently in my cozy family room to be interviewed about the Soviet Union in Armenia.  She was born in the city of Yerevan and lived in the region of Zeytun.  She is the eldest child out of her seven other siblings. She was a helpful daughter to her parents; she helped them with their finances and with the children. Nowadays, she spends most of her time enjoying her family.  She has two other grandchildren who she always takes care of, and loves very much. She says even though she has seen her family through good and bad times during Soviet Union at the end it was all worth it because the struggles made her the person she is today, which is a strong woman.

I had just finished high school during 1950’s and I was eager to start working. Stalin was the president at that time, which meant I could’ve gotten a job. My house contained eight children including me, so I had to help my mother and father. We lived a middle class life, so the amount of money I earned I gave it to my parents. Comparing life to Soviet Union, for me, life was better during Soviet Union because everything was in order.

During the Soviet Union there were couple of presidents; Angers, Marcus, Lenin, Stalin, Volodov, Stalenkov, Vrezhniv, Andropov, Xruschov, and Brezhniv. You had to be sixteen years old to have an ID, and you could’ve voted for our president when you were eighteen years old.

If a person talked bad about the president they would take that person and take him or her to prison. If they said something very dangerous about the president that would make people think that he [president] might be in danger, then it is possible that the person who said that would end up being killed.

If they arrested a person and they didn’t have enough proof that that person was guilty they would listen to his lawyer to see what they had to say. If they still didn’t have enough proof they would let the person go, but if they thought that the person was guilty, they would be arrested and taken to court, uhh I mean jail. By law they [policemen] were prohibited to take such actions, but some policemen didn’t obey the law and they came in a certain house and violently took a person and afterwards you couldn’t find that person anywhere in this world. Usually they took them to Siberia to make them work; everyone would be doing a certain job by torture. They would make them [people] work without paying them.

Some [people] did work, whoever had a certain career worked, some worked at farms, and some didn’t have jobs. People worked at fabrics, factories, there were black markets, they would sell items there, old and new items and they would provide money like that so they could support their families. Only the government could own businesses, for the people it was prohibited. Back then if you were in any type of accident you were treated by the doctors without paying them and your boss did send you your money so you could support your family.

They [people] would sell their own personal items, when they didn’t have a job and they didn’t have money. They would gather their personal items, clothes and take it to the black market and sell it there. They did it so they could pay rent, provide food for their children. I remember when I was small my own father went there once to sell his suit so he could buy me these shoes that I wanted so much. They [people] couldn’t [steal] because during that time the law was very strict, people were scared that the police would catch them and take them to jail, and because of that no one dared to steal items, that’s why there was the black market so they would sell their items and not steal.

Many women back then didn’t work because they didn’t want to, they wanted to be housewives so they could take care of their children and husbands, but whoever worked, worked at any place they desired there weren’t any laws that prohibited women to not do a certain job. They could work wherever they wanted like men.

People could believe in whoever they wanted to but they couldn’t talk about it in general. People couldn’t talk about what they believed in [religion]; sometimes it was possible that they would have been made fun of if they did talk about religion or who they believed in. No…they could talk about it wherever they pleased but sometimes they had to face the fact that they were going to be made fun of, so no one really talked about it unless they knew the person whom they were talking to very well.

Nobody forced people to believe in certain religion, there wasn’t theocracy. People were free to believe in whomever they wanted to believe in, but if they were communist they didn’t believe in anything, they didn’t have a religion. If a person was a communist they couldn’t believe in anything but regular people could believe in a religion, Christians could go to church but the communist couldn’t, they were unbelievers.

Children were treated fairly and they were taught everything, the only things they couldn’t learn about were about communism because people weren’t even allowed to talk about them outside or anywhere else. They could learn how to read and write, they were taught everything. The only thing they couldn’t say was “I’m Christian or I believe in some God,” especially at school it was prohibited to talk about those things like religion.

During the Soviet Union I learned a lot about life. I miss those days; I wish I could go back and relive them all over again.

Interviewed by Suzy Yeremyan