Natalia spent the first few years of her life in the early 80s in a religious community in the USSR where the “Old Believers” — a form of Christianity — preferred to live a somewhat separate existence from the rest of local society.

When she reached school age, she experienced a major shift in her world view. In the USSR at that time, Communist ideology was very much a part of state schools, so each school level — from elementary on — was tied not just to academic but political education.

Being exposed to these powerful ideas was life-changing for Natalia. She became deeply patriotic.

“Well, everything was about politics, I’d say. So we all studied, like, the history of the Communist Party… It was more about building a community. So, and that was good because everyone was supporting each other… It was this kind of thing that the opinion of the collective is more important than that of the individuals… And we were all patriotic and we all thought our country was the greatest in the world and, well, that we strongly believed in that.”

Not only did she develop a heartfelt devotion to her country, rooted in part in her beliefs about the primary importance of the collective versus the individual, but she also “didn’t want to see any more religion in my life.”

“I kind of became sure that, well, God doesn’t exist, and… I should just rely on myself and rely on the Party… I think I just kind of, like, denied [religion] totally… because I liked the ideology of this Communist society more.”

For several years Natalia’s spirit was sustained by this belief in country and collectivism. It was tangible to her. “I couldn’t see God anywhere. I couldn’t see its magic. But I could see how our party worked.”

And her identity was rooted in these beliefs: what seemed at the time to be an ideologically noble — and viable — system. This era in her life was the most secure in her childhood. She had enough food to eat and clothes to wear, and a sense of community with her peers and her culture. She was living a life that was true to her deepest ethics and hopes.

All this changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. She never could have foreseen what lay ahead. First, her sense of national  pride — of belonging to something great — cracked open.

“I was so disappointed when I learned about it, and I still have these strong feelings… When I learned that our country is not as great as I was told, and we have basically — we don’t have this great country any more at all. So it’s just Russia.”

For Natalia and other Russians, the trouble lay not only in the dissolution of a world view that was so deep and apparently solid, but in the vacuum created in its wake.

“We were told that all [these] Communist values, they didn’t matter any more. But we were not suggested anything instead. So basically we were the country with no values at all. Well, uh, some people came back to religion again. Well, yeah. Some  people. Well, I didn’t want to go back to religion. And… I could see that all those Communist principles didn’t work. And I was so completely lost.”

It wasn’t long before the crisis transcended the ideological into the realm of survival.

“And then when our country had to face all those issues, like hunger and crimes and … socially inequality and stuff — huge social inequality — we had very rich people who managed to start their business very quickly, and those…. well, like my family… who… basically lost everything… I remember we experienced hunger…”

As is often the case where poor and wealthy children cross paths, there was also cruelty. In school, the “haves” ridiculed the “have-nots.”

“I wasn’t treated equally by my peers, uh, because I didn’t have nice clothes to wear… I was just wearing my sister’s old clothes all the time, and I was crying… Well, I was blaming my parents, because, you know, I was growing up. And all girls — well, almost everyone — were dressing up around me, so… I was ‘Why can’t our family afford that?’”

This sequence of events precipitated profound and critical changes in Natalia’s identity: from an innocent spirituality to an encompassing political identity to a “vacuum” in which Natalia was left to rebuild her cultural self. As she moves forward — with the additional challenge of living in the US away from her family for a year — she reflects on the difficulty of her youth.

“I think my school years… I think they were basically the worse years of my life. It was my childhood, but I think I would never want to go back and live this life again. No.”