While the inclusion of Lenin in everyday life in a sense politicizes everything, in fact, the Soviet people are very apolitical. They feel that they cannot influence political decisions in their own country and they assume that people abroad find their governments similarly unresponsive to their political wishes. While they realize that life elsewhere is generally "freer" than in the Soviet Union, they are highly influenced by propaganda which tells them that in the West crime is so rampant that merely being on the street is an invitation to murder. To a Russian the very term "freedom" implies a perjorative loss of control.

The Soviets' lack of political interest extends to the situation in Afghanistan. Most Soviets have no idea how many Soviet troops are presently there. The conflict in Afghanistan has not exercised a major impact on Soviet life, although most Soviets agree that the food situation is worse now than during any time in the recent past. Soviets do not understand the West's "preoccupation" with Afghanistan. Those members of the intelligentsia who already have entered into opposition to the state would joke about the intervention: Q: Why have Soviet troops stayed in Afghanistan so long? A: Because they haven't been able to find the person who invited them. But most Soviets see it as a non-issue. Some argue that Afghanistan lies on their Southern boundary and therefore they have to right to support a government friendly to them against counter-revolutionaries and foreign mercenaries. Even people who do not accept the official Soviet line were critical of the American grain embargo and the Olympic boycott. The grain embargo just hurts the average person, they would say, and the Olympic boycott reduced contact between people.

The Soviet people always try to impress their desire for peace on Americans. The two of us were in a "pirozhkovaya,"--a fast-food establishment where meat pastries are sold, one Saturday morning. The waitress, a tiny old woman in her sixties, asked us where we were from. "U.S.A.," said one of us. She didn't understand. "U.S.A.," we repeated. Still no connection. "America," we added. "Oh, Good Lord!" The woman exploded into a torrent of questions, assurances, promises, and encouragements. "We're just ordinary people. We're all just people. We want peace. Everyone wants peace. You want peace, too, don't you? Sure you do. We're good Soviet people, just like you."

This small, wrinkled old lady is a living monument to the legacy of World War II. It is difficult for an American to understand the war's impact on the Soviet Union. The "Great Patriotic War" cost the Soviet people twenty million lives and probably twice that number in wounded. During the Nazi blockade, 770,000 people starved to death in Leningrad alone--a figure greater than the total battle casualty count of the United States and Great Britain combined. Because roughly three times more men died in the conflict than women, there currently exists nearly an entire generation of elderly women who never married and whose presence is felt throughout Soviet society. The ever-present babushka is always telling complete strangers to wear a scarf or hat, to stand up straighter, or not to shuffle your feet when you walk.

These women will never forget the war, and it is the war that provides the Soviet regime with its greatest claim to legitimacy. While no one ever elected the Bolsheviks, they can at least claim that they successfully defended the "Mother Homeland" from the German fascists. The government has a great stake in perpetuating the war's memory. War memorials are ubiquitous. In every major city, scouts guard tombs of unknown soldiers with Kalashnikov assault rifles. At each change of the guard four more 14-year-olds goose-step out to symbolically protect the "Mother Homeland" from another invasion.

The war has even become the chief excuse for the backwardness and shortcomings of the Soviet economy. "The Great Patriotic War was only 35 years ago and we have had to rebuild Eastern Europe and provide for our defense first," is the common rebuttal to any attack on the Soviets' ailing economy. But in choosing this method to justify their regime, the Politburo is forced to continue the paranoia and xenophobia of a war atmosphere. The enemy is NATO, China and the CIA. TASS depicts the United States as obsessed with disrupting the Soviet way of life. The Soviets are told that we spend twice what they do on armaments, and most believe it.

Ethan Burger '81 and Frederick Schneider '82 are Slavic Studies concentrators who returned in January from a semester at Leningrad State University.