Focus: Komsomol girls 1971 When I was a student in Kiev, in 1984-5, my girlfriend was an Intourist guide and a member of the Komsomol. She was 19 and I was 20 something. She was amazing. She had blond hair and blue eyes and she was a Zolotayka. A gold medal winner from school. She was concerned that I didn't have any manners. So she proceeded to teach me some. How to behave on a bus. How to behave at a restaurant. How to walk in the street (hands clasped in a special way) and how to have fun decently. Now I was a son of third world revolutionaries and exiles, so I was trying to see all the good there was to see in the what was then the Soviet Union and Olga, that was her name, seemed like a pretty wonderful achievement of a new society to me. So I was surprised by how unenthusiastic everyone seemed at a festival of international solidarity, There were the Africans and the Latin Americans and the Afghanis and Iraquis and Vietnamese. But noone seemd
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head