RUSSIAN ELDERS

Elder people are the real victims in modern Russia. It breaks my heart to see so many of them walking like strangers, but I should say ghosts, in the streets of the city. They were educated and grown in the socialist culture: everything was planned for them. All they had to do was working and follow the rules. What was important was the social equilibrium. They liked culture, reading a lot, art, social venues. Then suddenly found themselves in a strange, out of a new world new era. Some clever guys stole the economy from them (the modern “oligarchs” in fact sustained by the political elite), and the young generations jumped into the new life system. Money and personal success, a complete new concept, are central to it.
And here they are: hopelessly trying to cope with the new world, trying to survive it for the few remaining years of their life. And this is exactly what the government is hoping for: for the old generation to disappear leaving room to the new capitalistic oriented new one.
It’s a change, ok, but a too sharp for most of them. I see them climbing on the crowded tube, shying into a seat, discomforted with their cheap clothes, their eyes lowered to the floor all the time. This was their land, their country. They fought and worked for it. And now all they asked for is to die as soon as possible. All is given them is indifference, a big nothing.