und when Mikhail Gorbachev died, who in the eyes of some had ended the Cold War and in which others had destroyed the Soviet paradise, and when Queen Elizabeth II died immediately afterwards, who with her life marked the huge epoch of the end of World War II up to perhaps the eve of the Third, and when Vladimir Putin was in his seventh month attacking Ukraine, threatening the world with nuclear war ever louder, suddenly the Queen of the long-gone Soviet Union returned to Moscow and went along with it a post on Instagram made the hearts of millions explode. This is how a chapter in the history books of the future could begin, if this story continued to ring and if the great story finally decided to show us its bright side.
There is not a person who was born in the late Soviet Union who does not know who Alla Pugacheva is. When I was a child, it resounded from everything that was playing at the time: television and tape recorders. That was the music of our parents, with which one inevitably comes into conflict when growing up. But as time goes by from childhood, it begins to touch you again, for its melodies have imprinted themselves on the fragments of your childhood. When this music plays, you see yourself small, barefoot, carefree, the parents young and happy, and the sky clear and sunny. This is how memory works. That same brain chemistry is also likely translating something to those millions of Russians today who want the USSR back. A chemical paradise of nostalgia that never really existed will shine on you. And it shines particularly clearly when the music of childhood sounds, the brightest star of which is undoubtedly Pugacheva.
