Mohacsy's Safe Portfolio Member Forum

[Elroy Jetson]

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

My Grandfather's step-sister Natalie (Herzen) Petrovna lived in Moscow. Athough only a mere Doctor she lived in a three room flat, two blocks from Red Square - with a telephone she used to summon her driver for her Zil limousine. After she retired she went shopping in Paris twice a year. Some are especially more equal!

When our family offered her a home in Paris, she turned them down because she was too comfortable where she was.

I didn't live in the East, but I'd been there during the Breshnev era - sort of like living in an open air prison - especially in East Germany. Yugoslavia was better and worse. Better economically, but severe politcal oppression trying to keep the lid on simmering ethnic tensions in nut-town.

My Great-Grandmother disliked Moscow before the Bolsheviks - hot and dusty in the Summmer, and freezing and dark in the Winter. She couldn't believe her husband wanted to move there from Lausanne when they got married. But ambition can enslave - and the Czar was offering him a choice position.

You may have even lived in a street or studied in a college named after my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Alexander Herzen, or Gertsen in Russian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Herzen