“Just don’t talk about it here”

About our Lera - Yuri Skubko, member of the Democratic Union party

Starting work in the "Democratic Union", we were, like the majority of the Moscow intelligentsia, critical of the existing communist totalitarian regime and quite pro-Western. There was also an “iron curtain” in place, information came only from Soviet propaganda, and we categorically did not accept it. Having traveled to the West and lived for three years in France, I returned with a serious disappointment in Western values ​​- I perceived the society there as a whole as very unfree. But when I tried to tell Valeria about it, she said: “Just don’t talk about it here.” She had a crystal-clear belief in "their" values ​​and in "their" choices. And she remained true to this choice, although she herself, with her temperament and maximalism, would not fit into Western society.