Reddit reviews A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

"Parades were the gold standard of the Soviet Union. Workers’ parades, women’s parades, Revolution parades, the Great Patriotic War parades, we had them all. We had perfected parades; we had the best parades in the whole damn world. St. Patrick’s Day? Thanksgiving? Please. Macy’s has balloons. We had intercontinental ballistic missiles rolling through Red Square. Parades were of paramount importance and attendance was mandatory, rain or otherwise. On April 26, 1986, the year before I entered first grade, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (located less than three hundred miles from Kharkov) exploded, spewing a radioactive cloud over the Ukraine. Other, weaker countries would’ve had their citizens hunkering indoors and popping iodine tablets. But May 1 was International Workers’ Day, canceling the parade was unthinkable, and so on we marched, blissfully unaware, soaking in the sunshine and the radiation. The reviewing stand was mostly vacant, of course, since local Party leaders had been alerted beforehand and had long evacuated the area, but the parade went off without a hitch. That’s commitment."

Lev Golinkin "A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka." 2014