Thursday, May 3, 2012

The importance of Age in "My Perestroika"

One of the most fascinating aspects of My Perestroika for me has to do with the presentation of age. The adults that are interviewed in the film were in about their early teens when the Soviet Union fell. As some of them have discussed, it was strange because they were old enough to begin looking critically and with awareness at the reality of the world around them, but at the same time, they were just coming out of childhood in which they were told so many 'truths' and generally fared well. This must have been a particularly confusing time as they saw one world fade away and another replace it.

The interesting thing for me is that while I think many people in lots of cultures begin to question the reality they have been taught as they enter teenage years, in this case not only were they questioning it, the reality indeed was shifting for everyone, not just in their awareness as they matured. 

Another thing that struck me with respect to age is when the teacher mom said that it is really complicated to teach soviet history to children. I started thinking about how difficult it would be to teach children history of any kind.. it is no wonder that the versions of history we learn as a child are so simplistic and carefully censored... how can a child be expected to understand the nuances of historically contextual situations? At the same time however, maybe this is also just testament to the fact that we as humans tend to complicate things that would be better if we kept them simple, and thought of things more as children do. 

A last reflection on age in the film is that I think it makes you realize that no matter what is going on in the world in the grand scheme of things, people still need to live day to day. Children are still children with the worries of children, just as people continue to love and live and laugh and die. 

My question for people basically is what did you think of the depiction and reflection on age in the movie? How does it help you understand or complicate the demise of the Soviet Union?

7 comments:

  1. It is very interesting that you mention the aspect of education in your post and it actually reminded me of how I was in Czech school. Studying in Czech school and I noticed how these effects of past communist era are especially prevalent in the lives of ordinary people. I learned that with glasnost and perestroika, historical studies began to display sweeping changes. Referring to the Soviet-era schoolbooks, my professor would always say in the class, "I can give you my assurance that there is not a single page without a falsification. It is immoral for young people to take exams on such textbooks.”
    As My Perestroika illustrated was period of euphoria came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is interesting how the documentary shows that from 1992 forward are evident decline of public spirit and a rising tide of confusion, guilt, humiliation, and fear for the economic future. Relatively few citizens cared about the “soviet” in Soviet Union, but most of them did care about the “union”. It showed how people suddenly started discovering that under the new circumstances their national life and memory became obsolete. It felt like people started to wake up from long sleep.

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  2. I think that Lara makes an interesting point of how confusing this big historical event of the fall of the Soviet Union must have been to teenagers. If things were black and white in life, it would generally be pretty easy to make changes as needed. And talking about falsification of history only during certain times or within certain regimes seems to be naive as well. After all, many of you have probably read a great book by famous American historian, political scientist and patriot, Prof. Howard Zinn, titled "A People's History of the United States." Reading that book made me question just about anything I learned studying American history in my American high school from officially approved textbooks. Interpretation of same events by different people is often different, depending on their perceptions and stakes they have or risks they are exposed to at certain times. Official history may appear to lend a rubber stamp of legitimacy to the information provided, but truths may be many, don't you agree?

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    1. I completely agree that truths may be many... not only are truths subjective, they are constructed!

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  3. Lara, your discussion of age, school, and history in My Perestroika reminds me of something (kind of tangential to this class) that I've been thinking about off and on since my US History class in high school. I always wonder how 9/11 and the "War on Terror" will be portrayed in the US history textbooks of the future, what forms of thinking will stand the test of time, and how we'll see fit to pass on our experiences in that historical and political moment to our children.
    I don't want to derail this comment thread with talk of American politics, but I definitely feel the ideas you talk about in your post have relevance beyond a Soviet context.

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    1. I would agree, and also this is an interesting question as we get further and further away from 9/11... it feels like it was so recently but it is coming up on 11 years ago! which is crazy!

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  4. I also thought the focus on children in My Perestroika was especially interesting. I'm interested in family dynamics in general, and while there have always been some familial themes in the novels we've read, children in general are underrepresented. In Anna Karenina we only got vague impressions of the children, enough to know that they were like their parents, and those were really the most developed children we've seen. We was interesting because O wanted a child so badly, but society had "progressed" to the point where children were no longer reared by their parents. I think that it's interesting that in the actual Soviet State families stay boxed into tight spaces for their entire lives. It's ironic that Russian is so big, but the cities are crowded to the point that you live and die in the same apartment.

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  5. The teacher's comment struck a chord in me as well. I thought about my History lessons, and I thought about how I perceived all the different wars and other horrors (which is kind of what history is all about) that went on. I realized that I, and probably most of my peers, never really "cared" that much about any of it. We knew wars were bad, we knew people suffered, but since it didn't affect us, it never really evoke any emotion or real sympathy. It was more like reading a story. So yes, I completely agree with your assessment - it's impossible to explain history to someone who hasn't lived it.

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