Women of Moscow

Moscow 1989

Russian housewives of 1989 stand at the entrance to the Moscow Metro hoping to sell their goods. 

Some have fresh flowers to sell, maybe some have home baked piroshki or beet salad in a glass jar. Peddling is like a second job for them… a way to earn needed rubles.  Maybe their husbands were killed during wartime and they are the backbone of their family. We do know that times were hard. 

Their clothes reminded me of clothes in WWII movies. Women made do in those days. They wore what they had or borrowed their friend’s things and did their best to look fresh and stylish. The Russian women looked as if they, too, were making do. They could see the latest styles in GUM, the state department store, if they had time. But those were for looking only. Nothing was for sale.

Once in Kiev, a woman came up to me and asked me for some make-up. We were in the restroom at the time and she must have been pretty sure there were no KGB around. She wanted my eyeliner. I couldn’t give her that!! I needed it myself. She was rather garishly made up and I figured she was a prostitute and not a very young one. Oh, yes. She needed that eyeliner, alright. But I didn’t give it to her. That would have ruined my vacation.

An excellent book on the life of one woman during communism is Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginsburg.