When Olya took her entrance exams for the Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages she experienced the reality of this legendary wartime past in a quite specific way. The friend with whom she had come to Moscow said to her with ill-concealed jealousy: "You're bound to pass, of course. They'll take you just because of your civil status. It's a foregone conclusion. You're the daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union…"
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During the summer of 1980 Moscow was unrecognizable. People who lived in the rest of the country were not allowed into the capital. Most of the children were sent off to Pioneer camps. Long before the summer a serious «purge had been carried out, in which all "antisocial elements" had been expelled. There was no sign now of lines in the shops, nor of jostling on the buses, nor of the glum throng of people from the provinces coming in with their big bags to do their shopping.
The cupolas of ancient churches had been hastily whitewashed, and members of the militia had been taught to smile and say a few words in English.
And the Moscow Olympic Games began. Everywhere buses could be seen coming and going, carrying the athletes to the events, while foreign tourists idly called out to one another in the deserted streets, busying themselves with guides and interpreters.
From this summer, from these games, from this influx of foreigners, everyone expected something extraordinary, a breath of fresh air, some kind of upheaval, almost a revolution. For the space of a few weeks Brezhnev's Moscow, like a vast, spongy slab of floating ice at the time of the spring floods, nestled up to this colorful Western life, grinding its gray sides against it, and then drifted off bombastically on its way. The revolution did not take place.