The Fall of Communism

 Nikogos Kaladzhyan, now 75, lives in his sons house caring for his grand children. He lives in Montrose, California, but was born in the town of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. When he was 14, he moved to Yerevan, Armenia. There he grew up and ended up facing the reality of the Soviet Union’s suppressive government and leader Stalin. At the age of twenty-four he was working in a leather factory as the electrician to support his family. After twenty-five more years of working in the leather factory he quit his job to come to America to escape the harsh reality of the Soviet Union and to find a better life for his children and grandchildren. Now, he enjoys watching game shows, listening to music, reading news papers and traveling with his friends. He says that it was all worth the effort just to see her children and grandchildren growing up in a good country and having opportunities that he never had.

I was born in 1932 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, yet my parents came from Turkey in 1915 because of the Genocide. In Plovdiv I went to an Armenian school and stayed there until the 7^th grade which after I came to Armenia with my mother and my three brothers. There because of our living conditions were bad and we did not have money for food I had to leave school so I could work, of course there was little pay, but we lived somehow.

Because Armenia was in the communist Soviet Union the government had control of everything and there was no freedom. In Armenia there was food but everything was hard to get because there were lines for everything. Lines would take about two or three hours and we would stand because we needed to buy something. Coming from Bulgaria this looked very weird because in Bulgaria there was more freedom and the government was Capitalist so we had a lot more freedoms.

Because of a communist government the freedom we didn’t have any of was freedom of speech. In those times if you said anything bad about Stalin or the government, or about Communism you were immediately banished to Siberia, and those people had to work in extremely harsh conditions and most died. This is why many people did not say more than they needed to because they did not want to be sent to Siberia.

All of the work in the Soviet Union was government operated. All of the factories were owned by the government. I worked as an air conditioner repairman for a factory. I worked in 2 different factories to support my family, even though it was illegal. The first factory which I worked at was a leather factory. My pay was only 200 rubles a month and it was not enough to support my family. The second factory was a tile factory. There I only received 100 rubles a month. The boss of the factory was extremely harsh and greedy. I remember when he would take out money from our paycheck and keep it for him.

During that time Stalin was the leader, he was very strict. If you said anything bad about Stalin or something bad about the government he would immediately banish you. Stalin was very fierce; I remember one of my neighbors was drunk and said that he hated Stalin, someone overheard him and the next day he was sent to Siberia. After Stalin died our lived improved dramatically because after Stalin we had freedom, the food was more and there was more work, the overall living conditions improved and the people who had been banished were brought back with their awful memories.

There were many advantages to having a communist government and some disadvantages. The Soviet had a very high education system. All students went to a good school and almost all went to a institute after. Also another good thing was that everyone had a job, even though the salary was low and some people secretly worked in 2 or more jobs there was enough work. Another advantage was that it was possible to travel the 16 republics in the Soviet Union for very cheap. And could travel anywhere within the Soviet Union without permission from the government. There were many disadvantages to the Soviet Union as well, like that we did not know what went on outside of the Soviet Union, and there were many secrets. Also the 16 republics in the Soviet only relied on the resources they had and because of that the system soon was a failure.

After the collapse Armenian culture was brought out. More art and literature was expressed and artists and writers had a lot more freedoms on what they drew or wrote about. But many people were not happy with the collapse as they slowly saw it coming. The nation faced many economic difficulties, because of the collapse many of the roads were closed that were used for trading, because of that the factories stopped working and people didn’t have jobs. When Karabakh went to war with Azerbaijan Armenia aided Karabakh and it caused the country many difficulties. There was no light, no food no water. Soon after an earthquake in 1988 destroyed Lenakan and a lot of people died. This even worsened the economy.

Most of the people in the Soviet Union only knew the ideas of communism because that what they were taught. Because of this when they Soviet broke apart the governments did not do very well and there was a lot of corruption. By 1985 many people in the Soviet could travel out of the Soviet boundary for reasons of their own and did not need government permission.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism brought hardship on the people of socialist countries. Many people not being able to survive with the economy and the political difficulties of their country immigrated to other parts of the world like the United States and Europe.