Maureen Orth asked the first woman she met in a market if her life had changed in the last two years and the woman burst into tears. She was 58 years old, had worked forty years in a potato factory and now could not afford most of the foods in the market: “It’s not life, it’s just existence,” she said (Vanity Fair, 9/94). Orth interviewed the chief of a hospital department in Moscow who said: “Life was different two years ago—I was a human being.” Now he had to chauffeur people around for extra income. What about the new freedoms? “Freedom for what?” he responded. “Freedom to buy a
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