Grandparents, parents and books told us about post-war, about having nothing to put in their mouths except those who were lucky enough to be from the village and be able to plant potatoes, steal ears of corn or chase a cat to throw it into the pot. A life that fortunately the vast majority of us have not known. Long after these stories, in our present, the boiler only gives us trouble if it breaks down, because the gas tap, like the water tap, is generally an absolute truth.
But it is time to learn about the lives of those who have returned to the other side of the iron curtain, the familiarity with the famine of those who were born not having to tighten their belts, but with their belts tightened. And in that they have an advantage.
In Moscow, not too many years ago, the authorities cut gas for a long month to everyone to carry out “repairs”. That was an absolute truth. Day after day, during that long month, the shower water that emerged from dark pipes was an icy stream that woke you up yes or yes. What to say about the garbage service, a mysterious gutter infested with cockroaches that crossed all the homes and into which you threw the waste trying not to stop looking at the waste of others that traveled underground. Or of the products of necessity, a kind of lottery that could only win the grandmothers who queued for long hours, and not always.
Life in Russia has been hard, very hard, and the Russians have been accustomed to the fact that the gas paradise closed off their supply by neighborhood or that they lacked bread. And if it occurred to you to ask how they endured that, they immediately reminded you that their elders resisted the siege of Leningrad eating the wallpaper that someone must have considered food while the Germans surrounded them to strangle their will.
For Russia, Germany is synonymous with an invading country, Hitler almost ate them. And France a little earlier, with Napoleon arriving at the gates of Moscow, to a place still marked for memory, as are scenarios like Borodino, where a crucial battle against the French was fought.
So for Russia, watching powerful Europe feel weakened by having to turn the air conditioning to 25 degrees or the heating to 19 must be a cause of enormous national pride. And laughter. That the punishment of the sanctions appears as a tickle to their economy while they watch the European continent tremble while they play with the gas tap must be the best series of the season on their television. We better not give them the spectacle of our division.
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