Tzvetlana Borodin — Russian Federation

Interviewer: Yekaterina Tsiolkova, Russian Federation

Interviewee: Tzvetlana Borodin, Russian Federation

Yekaterina: Thank you, Tzvetlana, for agreeing to do this interview. How are you today?

Tzvetlana: I’m very busy but doing well. I’m honored that you asked me and happy to be involved. I like your idea of preserving this moment in history for future generations to read. It will never come again. And how are you?

Yekaterina: I’m also doing well, other than a little jet lagged from the flight.

You, like me, are in what people call Generation T, but I’ll ask you questions as though I wasn’t and didn’t know what that is like.

So how soon were you born after transition?

Tzvetlana: The summer after, in July so it was only a few months.

Yekaterina: Can you tell me a bit about your childhood, the significant moments, the overall flavor of those years, let’s say from your earliest memories to starting high school?

Tzvetlana: I’ll do my best.

I was the first child, so for a while I was an only child. I think my earliest memory is of my mom and dad putting me to bed. Most nights I seem to remember they were both there. My dad would gently toss me up in the air and catch me. I would laugh because it felt good and funny. Then he would do it again. Then they would tell me what they would do tomorrow, and then they would sing me to sleep. Sometimes Mom would sing, sometimes Dad would sing, sometimes they sang together. They were a little off key, but I didn’t know that then.

I also remember when I was about four I think, it snowed so much that winter that we had to dig a tunnel to get out the front door. I thought it was a lot of fun and I felt all grown up when they let me help dig, but they didn’t seem to like it as much as I did. I remember Dad saying something about how can it get this cold after three years that were the hottest ever.

I also remember my mom and dad and me going to the community garden. As soon as I could walk, they would take me with them several times a week to do gardening, usually in the evenings. They let me help them plant and weed and even pick some vegetables when they were ripe. Again, I felt all grown up and important!

Many neighbors and other people would come too, and there were a lot of kids, so I made a lot of friends. Sometimes we would forget to work and play instead. Sometimes we would have races to see who could plant or pick the fastest. I really enjoyed those times.

Mom and Dad also took me to concerts and plays at the Community Cultural Center. Or sometimes they had someone babysit me while they went, if they thought wouldn’t enjoy it. There were also neighborhood activities for children of all ages.

Then when I was five, my brother Igor was born. I was excited and also confused. Suddenly Mom and Dad didn’t spend as much time with me. I thought Igor was cute and I felt a little afraid I might break him, and I liked to spend time with him, but I also resented the attention that he was getting that I wasn’t.

Then two years later, Alexei was born. Suddenly I was the eldest of three. But I was often at friends’ houses and my friends often came over to our place. It felt like we were a much bigger family, since Mom and Dad were friends with most of their parents.

My friend Katrina’s parents had a big blow-up when I was ten, and she stayed in the children’s wing at the neighborhood hostel for a few months until her parents divorced after family counseling didn’t work. I invited her over for dinner most evenings since my mom’s cooking was better than at the hostel. Her mom soon moved to another place that was available and Katrina lived back and forth between them. My mom and dad said she was lucky this happened after transition because before it, there would have been a big fight in court, and there would have been no house for her mom to move into and not enough of anything for both her mom and dad to live.

By then we’d studied in history class about transition and what things were like before that, after we studied the Tzarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras. When Katrina’s parents broke up and decided to separate, she broke down crying in class, and our teacher stopped the lesson and suggested that we focus on supporting her.

A few kids laughed at Katrina at first. The teacher chided them and said it is always wrong to laugh at someone’s pain. What if one day one of them had something happen? How would they feel about being laughed at?

Katrina opened up about how horrible it felt when her mom and dad were fighting, how she felt unsafe, especially when they told her to go to her room and then she heard things being thrown and breaking. That was why she was staying at the hostel. Most of us invited her to stay at our homes until she felt safe to come home.

Andrei Topol asked, “I thought transition meant that these things won’t happen anymore. That everyone would be happy and get along. I don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s not quite that simple,” our teacher explained, “what transition did was take away most of the unfair and unnecessary things that blocked people from having what they needed. Before transition, some people, like we talked about in history class, kept so much of everything for themselves that most people didn’t have enough. This made many people have to fight over not enough of everything. Transition stopped that. Now everyone can have what they need and most of what they want. They are freer to follow their dreams.

But that doesn’t mean everyone will get along or that everyone will be happy. I’m thinking of you two, Sasha and Mikhail. And you, Tatyana and Tzvetlana. It just means there is less in the world around you standing in your way. But it’s up to each of you to make the most of your life, find your happiness, and make your dreams come true. And get along!

Some people just don’t get along or like each other. That’s the same before and after transition. And the same is true for groups of people. Ukrainians and Gruzians don’t like Russians even though all three countries have had transition, because we invaded them and our army did some very bad things there. That’s why there’s still some fighting between tribes, and between black people and white people in South Africa even after their transition. There is still violence between Muslims, Christians, and Hindus in India and Pakistan.

As far as marriages are concerned, before transition, about half of all married and domestic partnerships lasted until one partner’s death and half ended in divorce or breakup. Since transition, the statistics have improved: 73.2 percent last and 26.8 percent divorce or break up. That implies that the various stresses of the old system were responsible for about half of failed relationships. But not all.

Transition fixed a lot that was wrong with the world before, but there’s no one thing that can solve all problems or guarantee things will be perfect. But we can keep finding ways to make things better for ourselves.”

Early on, when I was about twelve, I got fascinated with woodworking. My Life Skills teacher took extra time teaching me basic carpentry and woodcarving, but soon took me to meet several carpenters and woodcarvers in the local syndicate. I enrolled in the youth apprenticeship program where I would go most days after school except on days when I played basketball.

By the time I graduated high school, I was a journeyman carpenter and got to work on the crews for several big remodeling and construction projects, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Mom and Dad said that before transition, most people felt like work was something unpleasant that they had to do to get money for living, and play was something you liked to do but only if you had time after work was done. Only a lucky few could get money for doing something they liked doing. I’m so glad I missed that! It sounds awful! It’s not like that now, of course!

I also never lost my love for gardening, and the same was true for the other kids I’d always met there. That was mostly on weekends. We were kind of like a bunch of sisters and brothers. Once we were banned from the garden for a season for planting something medicinal but not exactly legal.

Igor was five years younger than me, and Alexei was seven years younger, so we didn’t hang out together a lot, but at home we mostly got along. When I was in my teens, I had to babysit a lot. I wasn’t thrilled but I tried to make it fun for the three of us, which wasn’t always easy. Of course, now they’re in high school so they’re into their own things.

Igor is really athletic and if there’s a sport to play, he’s on the team. Alexei is into VuKu music, always following the latest songs. He’s in a band that rehearses in off hours at the cultural center, much to our relief. I don’t like VuKu, it makes me feel like my teeth are going to fall out.

I had a problem with Tatyana Markova and two of her friends. For some reason, she decided she didn’t like me and wanted to make my life difficult, and her friends Pesya an Oksana followed her like a couple of lost puppies. I think at first it was because of my red hair. Tatyana would call me Tomato Head and I hated it. They would make an extra effort to find me and hassle me.

After several teachers noticed the situation, they did a kind of social intervention, which helped some but then Tatyana and her friends would wait for me after school. Finally I found out that they were also picking on Olga Fyodorovna. The two of us decided we had enough. We waited for the bullies after school and sure enough they showed up. Word had gotten around that there would be a fight, we made sure of that. When they confronted us, we were quickly surrounded by other students. I spoke first, “OK, Tatty, let’s see how brave you are one on one, or even three on two!”

Pesya and Oksana weren’t so brave, so it was me against Tatyana, punching and slapping and rolling on the ground until a couple of teachers broke us up and marched us off to the office. The teachers were all there and the school psychologists. Our parents were called. It’s hard to say who won the fight, but after that I didn’t have any more problems with those three.

My first week of high school, we had to move, all five of us, into the family wing of the neighborhood hostel while our home was fumigated for those little white moths that were everywhere, after bug bombs didn’t work. We turned it into a kind of adventure. We pretended that we were on vacation in an exotic place. Mom and Dad said that before transition, there was no hostel. I wondered what people did in those days. Mom said the fumigation would have meant they had to pay a lot of money, and they would also have had to pay more money to have a place to stay and for food. Many people would have to just live with the bugs if they didn’t have enough money.

I’ve never really understood about money. I know what we learned in school, and I’ve seen some old video and adver… adver…

Yekaterina: Advertising.

Tzvetlana: Yes. Advertising. It must have been very confusing to live in those times! How did you know what was real or true?

Maybe you can help me understand? You’re a historian and a journalist, right?

Yekaterina: That’s right. I wasn’t old enough to remember those times but I’ll do my best.

Tzvetlana: Let me tell you what I think I understand, and you let me know if I’m on the right track.

So there was this thing called money that could be pieces of paper with artwork printed on it, or round pieces of metal, or little pieces of plastic, or bits on a computer somewhere, and some places it was other things like ceramic disks or sea shells. Somehow these all were the same. And you needed to have a bunch of it to give other people or else they wouldn’t let you eat or drink or sleep or study or anything.

And there were so many people you had to give it to, and some of those people weren’t even real people but kind of like countries but different. Corpo… Corpa…?

Yekaterina: Corporations.

Tzvetlana: Yes, corporations. So, you had to give a bunch of this money all the time to one person to let you live someplace, and to another person to let you get food, and to another person to let you have clothes and shoes and tools and I guess everything but air. Is that right? Or did you have to give someone money for air too?

Yekaterina: No. That was the one thing you didn’t need money for.

Tzvetlana: So, you had to find a way to get a lot of this money all the time or you could die. But money was hard to get unless you already had a ginormous amount of it, in which case it multiplied on its own like plutonium at critical mass?

But only a very few people had that much money and they could block you from everything if you didn’t keep giving them more, kind of like the Tzars before the Soviets, so everyone had to keep finding money. But those few people made sure there wasn’t enough money for everyone, and you had to do work for them and they would give you a little money and then they would tell you how much you had to give them back to get different things.

Yekaterina: It was more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea of how it worked. Many of the corporations were too big to deal with everyone individually so some people would give money to someone to let them use a place, then they would give money to a corporation to get things to put in this place, so you would go to this place and give them money for them to give you things. You would have to give them more money than they gave to the corporation, because they needed money too. Those places were called stores, kind of like distribution centers but different.

If you were a carpenter and I wanted you to build me something, you would have to make me give you money. You would have to decide how much to ask for, based on how much you needed each month to give others.

There were no syndicates, so as a writer I would have to find a corporation who would give me money for my writing, or as a historian I would need to find a university who would give me money to teach and write and do research. If I couldn’t find either, I’d have to do whatever work someone would give me money to do, even if I hated it and wasn’t good at it, in which case they would probably give me less money than I needed to give others. If that happened, I would have to borrow money from someone who had a lot of it, and then give them back later a lot more than I had borrowed.

Tzvetlana: What would have happened if I walked into a distribution center and got what I needed but didn’t give them money, or if I moved into a vacant apartment without giving anyone any money?

Yekaterina: Police would have put you in a big cage for a long time.

Tzvetlana: So, I guess I sort of get how it worked, but I still don’t get why. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like saying you can’t walk a kilometer in a straight line, but instead you have to walk around the block every twenty meters or get put in a cage. How did people get anything done?

Yekaterina: A lot of times they didn’t. There was everything needed to do something but not enough money, so it wouldn’t get done.

Tzvetlana: So why did they keep doing it that way for so long? And why do a few countries still do it?

Yekaterina: That’s a great question that psychologists and sociologists are still trying to answer. I think it’s the same reason why we had Tzars for so long and the Soviet system for so long. That’s also why it’s hard for people to change things in their lives, even when they aren’t working for them, because it’s all they know.

Most people don’t question or think much about the way their societies do things. They look at it as just a fact of life like gravity or the weather.

Change isn’t easy; it’s always hard and many people resist it, especially when it’s a change into something completely new.

Every culture likes to think it’s the best, most natural way to be and do things. So, when the idea comes up to change something from the way it’s always been done, it’s hard for people to look at it objectively.

That’s my perspective as a historian. I’ve seen this kind of thing play out over and over in different places and times.

But the old ways were becoming unsustainable and increasingly destructive to human life and the environment. It became inescapably clear that a major paradigm shift was absolutely necessary, and soon. And it had to be something that hadn’t been done on that scale before. Transition was a change whose time had come.

Mr. Svoboda’s book lit the fire, but the world was and is full of the dry tinder awaiting that spark. I think if Mr. Svoboda hadn’t written it, someone else would have.

Tzvetlana: It’s funny. You’re only a few years older than me, yet you just sounded almost like you were there! You are so wise!

Yekaterina: No, just fascinated with history since I was eight or so. It’s my biggest passion. Like you with woodworking. I bet you could teach me a lot!

Tzvetlana: You’re probably right about that.

Yekaterina: So now, Tzvetlana, what are you doing now, and what are your plans for the future?

Tzvetlana: Right now, I’m in my third year at Petrograd State University, triple majoring in materials science, fine arts with a focus on sculpture, and agricultural sciences.

I’d like to travel and see more of Russia, Asia, and Europe, so this summer I’m planning to finish my training as a long-haul truck driver so when I feel the wanderlust I can list myself as available on the Truckers’ Syndicate on NoviMir. My boyfriend, Pavel, and I want to do it together and list ourselves as a long-haul team.

We met in the physics lab in our first year, and things happened pretty quickly. It’s my first long-term relationship. He’s also an artist, a painter. Some people who see both of our work think we’re the same artist in a different medium.

My woodcarving grew into sculpture in stone and ceramic as well. I’ve had some very popular exhibits at galleries around the city and one in Vladivostok. I was honored as Oblast Artist of the Month two years ago in August. My story was on NoviMir of course, but also on television, a live interview and everything! It was so exciting!

Once I’ve satisfied my travel goals, I want to study architecture. That combines carpentry with the idea of buildings as sculptures that you can live and work in.

I’d love to be able to visit one of the moon research stations some day. I don’t know if I will qualify or be accepted, but I want to try. I think the landscapes there must be inspiring, and I’d like the challenge of designing and building for that environment and making it more aesthetic than the kinds of things they usually build there…

Pavel and I will probably get married in a couple of years or so, and we’ve both been talking about having a couple of kids, but not right away.

Mom and Dad and other older people tell me it used to be very hard to have kids because you needed a lot of money to take care of them, so there was a lot of stress. Parents had to spend most of their time doing things to get money, so they didn’t have much time to be with their kids. It sounds like it was almost impossible to do much of anything.

Yekaterina: In a lot of ways that was true, but back then it was all they knew. They thought it was the best we could do.

Tzvetlana: So maybe one day there’ll be some other kind of transition and afterwards people will feel like our way was sadly harsh and unworkable.

Yekaterina: If it ever becomes necessary, let us hope that our descendants will make it happen.

Tzvetlana: Is there anything else you want me to talk about?

Yekaterina: Do you have anything you’d like to say to future readers?

Tzvetlana: I feel like this is a great time to be alive, and I hope it will keep on like that. I feel like anything we can imagine is possible, like there’s promise in the air of great things. From what I hear, it wasn’t like that before transition.

If you’re reading this in the future, I hope it’s still like this in your time. If it isn’t, then please do something about it. Don’t just leave it broken if it’s broken.

If it is still like it is now, then make the most of it! Grab life like a dance partner and dance with all your might! Never stop! I think that’s how we can keep the gains and growth we’ve made! Don’t be sleepwalkers! Question everything and turn every stone! I hope your world is even more awesome than ours is now!

Yekaterina: Thank you, Tzvetlana, for your vivid and inspiring sharing! Would you be willing to have a follow up interview in a few years or so? We hope to paint a four-dimensional picture of the times we live in.

Tzvetlana: Yes, of course! This has been great! And it’s kind of awe-inspiring to think that someone may be reading my words a hundred or two hundred years from now!

Yekaterina: Yes, it is! Thank you again and see you in a few years. I can’t wait to hear all about what you do in the meantime. Take good care of yourself and have success.

Tzvetlana: You too!