Page 266 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

“beautiful dreams”, because the reality is so ugly—a typical small-minded philosophy.

But the sleepers should know that at the moment when a person is freezing, he begins to
feel warmth, he has wonderful dreams, but these wonderful dreams are the dreams of
approaching death. So the “sleepers” should remember that their “sweet dreams” can
turn into the dream of the “frozen” very quickly. So, would not it be better to wake up,
even risk being “frost-bitten”, and to start acting with the understanding of the fact that
it is possible to change a lot, maybe everything!

Nevertheless, many people prefer that someone else would do all the unskilled and
unappreciated and some times risky jobs and, if anything works out there, they will be
ready to join the winner. Our enemies tried to foster exactly this consumerist, small-
minded attitude. To my joy, there were people, however few, who were not indifferent,
who were not afraid to come forward for the right cause, without thinking about, whether
it would bring them personal benefit or large problems. While the rest of the people were

only beginning to wake up, I continued the war alone. How-ever, a new turn of my fate
and the appearance of a faithful comrade-in-arms were already waiting for me…

30. Moscow “holiday”

I returned from Archangelsk to Moscow. Nothing interesting had happened there
during my absence. The life of the city and its inhabitants continued to flow along its
natural course, although, there were some changes. In 1991 it became possible to see
something that was very common in the rest of Russia, but quite untypical for Moscow.
The shelves in shops emptied by leaps and bounds. Before, people stood in line to buy

the scarcer goods and mainly, there were people from the nearest regions, who came to
Moscow to buy food and other commodities.

But in the summer of 1991 more Muscovites could be observed in these lines, which
appeared not only in the centre, but in the outer districts of Moscow, where guests in the
capital had never made their purchases before. In order to buy anything, be it a piece of
soap or a loaf of bread, people had to stand in lines for several hours. When someone
wanted to buy something without spending a lot of time in lines, the city markets were
the place to go, but the prices were a bit higher and therefore one overpaid. So, Moscow
met me with lines almost everywhere.

When I came back to the capital, I continued to lead my usual life—I worked with

people directly and by phone, met interesting people and spoke with those who searched
for answers to their questions. I returned to my usual routine, which most people would
consider unbelievable even by Moscow’s standards.

Soon after my returning from Archangelsk, Svetlana returned from Lithuania. She
brought some presents, mainly Lithuanian meat foods, which were incredibly delicious.
I was very surprised to see so many different sorts of smoked meats. Nothing of the kind
could be found in Russian shops and there were few places at local markets where one
could buy something similar. Svetlana explained to me that in Lithuania every small
town had its own recipes for smoking. Every master smoker had his own secrets and
Lithuania produced a lot of such meat products, most of which were exported.

Soviet people (except for the Lithuanians) had to eat “sausages” which contained
“meat” in name only. But stacks of meat products of the highest quality went abroad.

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