Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 20 – Aleksandr Ginzburg, the sone of prominent Soviet-era dissidents Aleksandr and Arina Ginzburg, says that unlike his parents he did not immediately recognize the meaning of the demise of the Soviet system but that like them it sparked hopes that have been dashed by Vladimir Putin.
He tells Radio France International’s Russian Service that when the USSR collapsed, he was only 19 and did not immediately recognize just how significant a development that was (rfi.fr/ru/франция/20211221-я-не-сразу-осознал-масштаб-произошедшего-александр-гинзбург-о-распаде-ссср-и-диссидентском-наследии).
His parents, however, immediately recognized that this was “a very important event” and sat “for days listening to the radio. They were born in the years of Stalinist repressions, passed through tests and persecutions and for them this was the end of an incredble era,” he says. “They were happy and became hopeful.”
Aleksandr’s parent soon returned to Russia, but Aleksandr went back only once for a visit in 1999. He does keep track of what has happened. “For a few years there was freedom, but the shaky achievements of the 1990s were lost and everything returned to the way it had been: murders, persecutions, and poisonings.”
“I think,” Aleksandr says, that “the coming of Putin to power marked the beginning of the movement backward.”
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