Fiona Hill

You suddenly have the church stepping out as a non-governmental organization and engaging in discussions with people about the future of religion.

So that was something that I wasn't expecting to witness.

Also, I mean, being in Moscow, this is the cultural capital of a vast empire at this point.

I'd never lived in a major city before.

It's the first big city I lived in.

I'd never been to the opera.

The first time I got an opera, it's at the Bolshoi.

I'd never seen a ballet.

I mean, I was not exactly steeped in high classical culture.

Growing up in a mining region,

You know, there's very limited opportunities for this kind of thing.

I'd been in a youth orchestra and a youth choir.

My parents signed me up for absolutely everything, you know, they possibly could education-wise, but it wasn't exactly any exposure to this.

So, you know, I was kind of astounded by the sort of wealth of the cultural experience that one could have in Moscow.

But the main thing was I was really struck by how the Soviet Union was on its last legs.

Because this was Moscow, you know, I got this image about what it would look like.

I was quite, to be honest, terrified at first about what I would see there, you know, the big nuclear superpower.

And as soon as I got there, it was just this, like, as if a huge weight that I'd been carrying around for years in my teenage years just disappeared because it's just ordinary people in an ordinary place, not doing great.

This is the period of, you know, what they call deficitne vremie, you know, so the period of deficits, but there was no food in the shops.

There was very little in terms of commodities because the supply and demand parts of the economic equation were out of whack because this was total central planning.