Dispatches from Soviet Britain

The year was 1981 and Marina was excitedly filling out her application to join the chemistry faculty of Moscow State University.

For a girl from an industrial city in rural Ukraine, the opportunity to study at the best university in the Soviet Union was a dream,

although her ambitions were met with suspicion by many around her.

But Marina was bright and seemingly destined for the top.

Little did she know that she was seconds away from destroying her chances of a successful application.

What the hell are you doing?

Her brother-in-law asked, peering over her shoulder as she went through the form.

What do you mean?

Middle class, he said, exasperated.

Marina may have been smart academically, but she was young and naive.

Clueless about the social realities of the communist society she lived in,

Marina was proud that her parents had

managed to secure good jobs, despite coming from peasant farmer stock. Her mother was a teacher while

her father worked in a factory. Listen to me very carefully, her brother-in-law implored in an authoritative

tone. Your family is working class, and so are you, he said with the air of someone imparting

wisdom to the next generation. Dutifully, Marina scrubbed out her previous answer and wrote in the

only correct response in the class background field, workers and peasants. If she hadn't, she almost

certainly would have been denied entry into

Moscow State University, never met my father or given birth to me a year later. The Soviet Union was

a society which believed in uplifting the oppressed and tearing down their oppressors,

and he was willing to do as much social engineering as was necessary to achieve these lofty goals.

...