Everything changed in 1991.

I was just a kid in a small town. The only world I knew, the Soviet Union, was falling apart.

Not that I understood what that meant back then.

For me, the Soviet Union wasn’t about politics.

It was the stern face of Lenin watching us from our classroom wall.

Most of all, it was my biggest dream. I wanted to wear that red pioneer’s scarf around my neck. I wanted it just like the bigger kids did.

Then the food started disappearing.

I remember standing in our local store, staring at empty shelves.

Just empty metal racks where cookies, bread, and candy used to be. The sight still haunts me.

The purple coupons came next. Strange little paper tickets that we suddenly needed to buy food. Money became useless overnight. Every evening, my parents would spread these coupons on our kitchen table, counting them again and again.

“Why do we need these stupid papers?” I asked my dad once.

“Because money’s no good anymore,” he said quietly, not looking up.

I watched my parents’ faces grow more worried each day. But I was too young to really understand. To me, it was like a weird new game – trading purple papers for food. Except no one was having any fun.

My dream of the red pioneer scarf faded away. Who cared about a scarf when there was no ice cream in the stores anymore? When mom looked tired all the time? When dad’s voice got heavier and heavier?

I was watching history happen, right in our tiny town. But all I knew was that our simple, safe world had crumbled into something scary and strange.

The red scarf I never got to wear vanished into the past. It became just another thing that disappeared, along with full shelves and easy smiles.