In 1992, when I was 21, I lived in St Petersburg. It was just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it was hard. Food was in shortage because workers had walked away from the communal farms and all the crop was rotting in the fields. It was spring and cold and ice fisherman were drowning and floating ashore after fishing when the ice was thin. We lived with Russian flatmates who were disillusioned. We were millionaires compared to our friends but there was nothing to buy. We had to search to find food in the empty supermarkets, just … Continue reading Buy the Matches