The first generation of children who grew up after the collapse of the USSR

• The first generation of children who grew up after the collapse of the Soviet Union

December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union was no more. This day was not only the beginning of an era of freedom, choice and new opportunities, but also the time of deep turmoil, besproglyadnoy poverty and rampant organized crime.

Journalist Natalya Vasilyeva, who grew up among many other children at the time and went into the first generation after the Soviet collapse, recalls the days of his childhood. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Natalia was 7 years old. She describes what life was like for her generation - a generation of children born in the USSR, but grew up after its collapse.

In August 1991, the tanks went to the central streets of Moscow. First my mother's reaction was anxiety and fear, she immediately remembered the accounts of the Bolshevik Revolution, which she had once read. "This is terrible!" - she said to me, 7-year-old girl who just started to learn in elementary school. But the coup failed, it was announced a few days later.

Family Natalia Vasilyeva listen to the speech of the resignation of Gorbachev, 1991.

For my parents' world of the Cold War ideology and widespread government control soon dissolved into social upheaval, poverty and violence. But also new political freedom and, ultimately, new opportunities. This was the post-Soviet Russia, which increased my generation.

In the early years of Yeltsin's rule crime wave captured Moscow. Those scenes from the film "Once in America," which my brother and I watched a pirated videocassette, differed little from what was happening at the time in the street. Angle is literally a block away from our house has become a favorite place for gatherings of all sorts of gangs and chap. All night heard a loud bang - sometimes it was an old car muffler, but more shots from a pistol.

Natalya with my brother a few months after the Soviet collapse.

Natalia with her grandmother, 1992.

Two men selling clothes and shoes in the stall.

Moscow schoolchildren sell Pepsi-Cola in bottles for motorcyclists, in May 1992.

The market in Moscow, 1992.

Parents like me could safeguard the economic situation in the country, but I well remember the queues in the shops, cheap plastic dolls for birthdays, I remember how my mother was delighted when she presented the package of sugar cubes.

Four years after the collapse of the USSR - Natalia and her father are voting in parliamentary elections in December 1995.

Hundreds of young people are waiting for the store to open its doors Levi Strauss and Co, in February 1993.

Natalia with her grandfather and brother in Pushkino, 1995.

Arena "Luzhniki", 1996.

1997.

Natalya with a friend at the window of the children's store in the center of Moscow in 1997.

In the following post-Soviet years, shopping centers began to appear in Moscow.

June 1997.