The Soviet Dream/American nightmare

The lone balcony plant. The lone underwear drying. The lone 40 year old smoking. Soviet Buildings, although they may look like bleak, weather-withered and grey lego blocks, are a thriving place of life in Eastern Europe. I grew up living in these microcosms of life, where interactions are removed from the outside world. The inhabitants of these little blocks form a community, a community of the survivors of the USSR, a community of colour and individuality beneath the peeling and popping lead paint. Systems that organize the daily outings of 50 year old could have beens, with Lycra jumpsuits and weathered faces; the weekly letters to relatives living in far away corners of the West, way past the iron curtain; the forthnightly rodenticide scattering/rat dropping collecting in the basements; the monthly meeting of sweet chipped neighbourhood kids. People always have such a negative view towards communism, the reds under the beds, yet it was an era of a stronger and more cloistered community, where desperation lead to a desperate need for spirit and hope.
 There is just something so mythical and mystical about these buildings- the shells of a long gone lone era, the skeletons of a infamous time, the leftovers of a system that ate away the 'Eastern Dream'.