I’ve also lived under communism
My first 33 years I’ve lived under the communists. My childhood, adolescence and youth – all spilled over that era. If I were to describe these memories in three words, I’d say without question: hunger, cold and dark. Yet, beyond doctrines, systems and principles there are people and their day-to-day existence. This everyday life is the key element for the images from these images. Mundane life during this dictatorship (from this perspective) didn’t lose its dreadfulness, it isn’t less sad but it gets easier to grasp.
My endeavor is neither ideological nor political here. This isn’t about prisons, repression systems or extraordinary events, but about the most prosaic life, the one about worries and daily events: our meals, our clothes, our social gatherings, our resting moments, love, birth, work, health issues. The humdrum and the trivial are the most visible and obvious things in communism. After all, any personal history is being weaved with all these little uninteresting events and it goes beyond the great gaps that distinguish the epochs. Life existed, even in communist time. Better or worse, people have lived their lives even in that regime. They also loved even during that time. Those little personal experiences – the first love, the last disappointment – they all existed even then. That was our life.
I’ve also lived under communism
My first 33 years I’ve lived under the communists. My childhood, adolescence and youth – all spilled over that era. If I were to describe these memories in three words, I’d say without question: hunger, cold and dark. Yet, beyond doctrines, systems and principles there are people and their day-to-day existence. This everyday life is the key element for the images from these images. Mundane life during this dictatorship (from this perspective) didn’t lose its dreadfulness, it isn’t less sad but it gets easier to grasp.
My endeavor is neither ideological nor political here. This isn’t about prisons, repression systems or extraordinary events, but about the most prosaic life, the one about worries and daily events: our meals, our clothes, our social gatherings, our resting moments, love, birth, work, health issues. The humdrum and the trivial are the most visible and obvious things in communism. After all, any personal history is being weaved with all these little uninteresting events and it goes beyond the great gaps that distinguish the epochs. Life existed, even in communist time. Better or worse, people have lived their lives even in that regime. They also loved even during that time. Those little personal experiences – the first love, the last disappointment – they all existed even then. That was our life.
