An excerpt from my essay on sociological concept (bit autobiographical)

This is second part of my essay, that was assigned last week in my school. The subject is “sociological imagination”, concept or method described by mid 20th century sociologist C. Wright Mills. The prompt suggested to apply Mills’ method to one’s own story. So, in second part I tried to. Here is some of reflection on events that happened in my country in late decades of last century. Just brief story, because in first part of essay I wrote pretty much about my perspective on the Mill’s approach. Mostly critically analysing it from the point of view of Marxist outlook. Can also share later if someone is interested. Here is second part for your judgement:

Part 2:

Following the prompt of this essay, I want to try to apply the Mills method, the method of "sociological imagination" to my personal experience and the experience of my family. Of course, in hindsight, from the perspective of today, having full knowledge of the results of the

events, and some details of the historical process into which my family and millions of our compatriots fell.

I would like to use Mills' method of sociological imagination describing my own story and the story of my family, which in the 1990’s shared the fate of millions of families in my former socialist homeland. It is quite simple to apply sociological imagination to what happened in those years now that we know the results of those events and their causes. But in the 1980’s, few Soviet citizens understood what was happening and the scale of the catastrophe that would befall the country and its citizens in the near future.

I was a schoolboy and a pioneer then (the All-Union organization of young Leninists), and I was preparing to become a Soviet worker and make my contribution to building a bright communist future. My parents, their friends, and hundreds of millions of citizens of the Soviet country did not have the imagination to imagine that their peaceful and stable life, all their plans and hopes, would soon come to an end. It is likely that even many of those who were in power in our country at that time could not have imagined this and had every opportunity to prevent a catastrophe.

This is not the place to analyze what exactly caused the tragedy, stupidity or betrayal. I'm inclined to believe that both took place to varying degrees. Research on this topic is underway, and the number of books written on this topic is growing year by year. This is done by caring for people with professional skills and access to archives and other resources. I can offer my own vision of events, from the point of view of a layman who has immersed himself a little in the science of Marxism and studied the history of those years.

To describe the tragedy that happened to the citizens of the USSR in 1991 and subsequent years, one essay or an entire book is not enough. As I said, this work is underway, and more and more books on this topic are being published, and not only in Russian. I will just list a few important points.

The destruction of the once integral national economy led to unemployment, a phenomenon that the socialist state had not known since the early 1930s. Education, which once trained personnel for the industry of the USSR, has fallen into disrepair, as no one needed specialists who trained for the industries of the destroyed state. The only majors of the country's universities that boys and girls aspired to were law and economics. I personally tried to enroll in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State University at the Faculty of Sociology, which had just been established and had not had a graduating class. However, I'm grateful that I didn't go to university this time.

Of course, I am also grateful that I did not become a drug addict or a member of an organized criminal group. In the 1990’s, many of my peers followed this path. I unexpectedly became a musician, which I had no prerequisites since I had never been involved in music before. This is the case when the power of personal choice prevailed, but circumstances could not prevent it. It was a very good outcome in my case, considering the tragedies I witnessed.

As for my family, like many colleagues, my father, a former Soviet officer, was unsettled by the unexpected changes in our country's social system. My mother, who lost her job at a chemical plant where she had worked for many years, unexpectedly got a job at a commercial bank thanks to a relative. This circumstance saved my family from starvation and degradation. It was thanks to this circumstance that, as a young man, I got the opportunity to fulfill my dream and become a professional musician. It was thanks to my mother that, after enrolling in a music college, I was able to buy a rare and quite expensive instrument at that time, a trumpet made in the USA, which I parted with just before my departure to America in 2008.

Thus, my family, despite all the difficulties of that time, did not experience truly serious tragedies related to the monstrous changes that befell our country. However, there were countless tragedies. Drug addiction, alcoholism, rampant crime, lawlessness, the forced flight of Russians from the national republics of the former union, where pogroms and murders of Russian speakers by local nationalists were carried out, the war in Chechnya, and other military conflicts in the former USSR. These are just a few of the examples. In my opinion, my people are still paying the price for the betrayal of the late Soviet leadership. We can see this now in Ukraine. This is still a continuation of the same tragedy that happened to my people.

Could I, my family, anyone from our environment at that time have imagined ( with the help of " sociological imagination " ) that someone in the depths of the Communist Party of Soviet Union is preparing a coup to restore capitalism, that despite the inevitable sacrifices of millions of Soviet people, someone is striving to become private owners of the wealth created by the efforts of generations of honest Soviet workers? To comprehend the depth of this tragedy requires a " sociological imagination " of unprecedented power. Personally, my experience helps me in my sociological imagination and reflection on different events.

However, each of us has their own experience and their own way of looking at things, and each of us has a different sociological imagination. As a result, each of us can have different conclusions about the same things, regarding own background and experience. Can my story awaken sociological imagination or some sort of empathy of someone who has different experiences? I have to wonder.