We women would have to go to work. Our children, even our infants and newborns, dropped off every morning at some massive brick or concrete government institution. Our aging parents and grandparents sent off as well to desolate warehouses— no sweet Babkas squeezed in among your loving family, your daily life—all so that we would be free to take up our duties in office buildings or factories or construction sites. (We’d seen the photographs of stout and solemn-faced Soviet women in babushkas sweeping Moscow streets.)
