There is a newspaper called “Evening Kyiv.” Once, during the USSR era, it was a sort of social and Soviet evening paper featuring editorials, articles of interest to the locals, weather forecasts, and, of course, a TV guide. People mainly subscribed to it for the TV listings, to be honest.
The Perestroika era arrived, winds of change began to blow, and Evening Kiev became more “market-oriented.” For instance, a section for paid advertisements was introduced. In this section, one could print obituaries. It was a trendy thing. During the Soviet era, obituaries in newspapers were only published for very important people, but now, for a fee, anyone could have an obituary published.
Of course, obituaries continued to be published, but not for everyone—only for those whose relatives had either money or the necessary vanity based on the deceased’s life achievements. Almost all obituaries were written in a formulaic manner: born on such-and-such date, served/worked, a member of the Communist Party since such-and-such year…—membership in the Communist Party still meant something as a measure of success in life back then.
And so, spring is here, the sun is shining, and soon the chestnuts will bloom. My classmate Dima Kozyonov is sitting with us, the other students, on the granite steps at the entrance to the faculty. Dima is intently studying the “Evening Kyiv” newspaper. A fresh breeze is ruffling his hair, trying to flip the pages of the newspaper. Dima resists this, straightening the pages back with a characteristic swift motion, and then quietly remarks, “Hmm, would you look at that, the communists are dying off like flies…”