46 Toombs County Magazine
Russian fleet at one time. His ship, the
Ristna, carried the first equipment in
the world capable of communicating
with satellites. After serving as the
Ristna’s Captain and other Soviet
vessels for over thirty years, Inna’s
father was sent to Angola to represent
Russia’s fishing fleet and work out terms
of agreements. “Angola has a big port
in Luanda.” Inna’s father retired from
service in the late 80s after Mikhail
Gorbachev came into power.
One of Gorbachev’s reforms was
restricting the sale of vodka, wine, and
beer. “You have to understand vodka is
a tradition in Russia. It is a part of our
culture and its rituals. Imagine,” she
said, “It would be like Italy restricting
the sale of wine. I was living in Moscow
at the time, and I saw people standing
in line for miles and miles with their
vouchers. Often violence would break
out in those lines.”
The vouchers became liquid money
for everything. “If you wanted work
done, people didn’t want money,” said
Inna. “They would work in exchange for
vodka vouchers.”
Gorbachev’s message of
“perestroika” (restructuring) and
“glasnost” (openness) brought praise
from the West, but for many in Russia,
the way change was executed wasn’t
always just. “My father’s bank accounts
were blocked, and my parents lost
everything,” said Inna. Inna’s father
not only suffered financially but
psychologically as he watched the great
Russian Naval fleet he had given his life
to build slowly begin to dissipate. In
1997, Inna’s father died suddenly of a
stroke. He was only sixty-seven at the
time. “He was always so healthy and
strong. It made no sense.”
Two years later, her mother,
Lyudmila, died suddenly of a heart
attack without warning. In the midst
of economic crisis, Inna had to bear
the loss of both parents, an aunt, and
a cousin. (The cousin was murdered.)
In addition, after eighteen years in a
“very bad marriage,” Inna was in the
process of a divorce. “I was young when
we married, but I should have been
smarter. I should have walked away
when he said he would kill himself if I
did not marry him.”
With no food or money, Inna
took a voucher for a trip to Egypt she
had received from the travel agency.
“People had stopped traveling to Egypt
because a German tourist group had
been captured and killed in a terrorist
attack there recently.” The voucher
ne
Inna says she had a "beautiful childhood in St. Petersburg Russia." Her father
“You know, there
were so many lies
about our countries
between us in
the Cold War and
even after. I was
growing up thinking
I was so lucky I
am in the Soviet
Union and not in
America. The only
pictures I saw of
America as a child
were of homeless
people sleeping
on the streets. I
thought, ‘We have
nice apartments in
Russia, and people
in America are all
homeless.’”