We considered them bourgeois. We would put dances on trial and punish the Komsomol members who danced or brought their girlfriends flowers. For a while, I even presided over an antidancing tribunal. Because of this “Marxist” conviction of mine, I never did learn how to dance. I later repented. I could never dance with a beautiful woman, I’m like a bear! We’d have Komsomol weddings. No candles, no wreaths. No priests. Instead of icons, portraits of Marx and Lenin. My bride had long hair, so she cut it all off before the wedding. We hated beauty. It wasn’t right, of course. You could say that we
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