‘Samovar’ earrings
I was born and brought up in the Soviet Union. I remember the night we went to bed in one country and woke up the next morning in a different one. That was the night my family stayed up late watching the TV news. I remember the look of shock and confusion on my parents’ faces
When the Soviet Union collapsed no-one knew what to do with our sovereignty, our borders, our economy or our lives. Chaos and despair reigned in the newly independent states. Apparently, we were now free, but freedom wasn’t the main thing that concerned us. Inflation, lost jobs, food shortages and our political leaders’ shortcomings were the issues at the forefront of our minds. Lots of people started to leave their poorly paid factory jobs to go into private enterprise – buying, selling and reselling. My father was no exception. He left his dental practice at a state-run clinic and launched himself on to the free market along with other lost people who lacked even the most basic understanding of economics and possessed no business skills whatsoever.
Our flat was used to store the goods my father tried to sell on at a profit. One time he filled our living room with car tyres, another time it was piles of leather and boxes of pharmaceutical products. Then there was the day he brought home so many crates of Coca Cola that they filled the room completely and we had to eat our meals off the crates. Not one of my father’s business ventures was successful. He squandered all our savings and sank into depression. A whole generation of intelligent young people lost their jobs, their homes and even their families.
My father was a highly skilled dentist. He was like a magician, the way he used his big stubby fingers to create dentures and false teeth that were like tiny sculptures. People brought him gold and silver jewellery to melt down to make crowns. Silver and gold teeth were very popular in those days. Famous singers came to my father for a ‘Hollywood smile’. Sometimes he would keep an especially pretty piece of jewellery for my mother and offer his patients high-quality scrap precious metal in return. My mother kept these items like trophies in a beautiful lacquered wooden box. I loved the smell of that box. I didn’t realise then that one day that smell would become a happy memory and that we would lose so many things as we moved from one apartment to another. I didn’t know then that the box would later be replaced and my mother’s small jewellery collection would be kept wrapped in a Soviet cotton handkerchief.
The 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, are remembered as a turbulent, wild-west period ruled by the mafia and criminals of all kinds. I recall the time some shady characters turned up at our home. They tore a rug down from the wall, rolled it up and left, grabbing the TV as well as they went. That was back when Walt Disney cartoons had just started to be shown on TV. For children at the time, not to be able to watch those cartoons was nothing short of a disaster. Imagine our absolute delight when, a few days later, a new TV set appeared! Although my mother didn’t tell us, I knew that she sold her gold rings to buy that TV. Selling jewellery to buy food, to celebrate birthdays or to pay bills became the norm in our family. The last thing my mother sold was her favourite pair of gold earings shaped like samovars which she used to wear on special occasions.
Recently, I was browsing online and found an identical pair of earrings. I bought them for my mother as a reminder that somehow we managed to get through those times together.
Aida Sulova is an artist, curator, and cultural worker who is living in Kyrgyzstan and the United States. Most of Aida’s artwork relates to current social issues and is based on transformative power of art (www.aidasulova.com).