beautiful new world!
We are worrying about having too
much freedom
and the old ladies are fighting
to survive on the monthly pension
that can't buy one diner in a
restaurant!
Where are we headed?
More sanctions they are imposing
on us!
A month ago, they permitted
selling at the Rizhsky Market,
and now they're forbidding it
again!
What are people supposed to do
with all the goods they
manufactured to sell there?
How's anyone going to make any
money this way?
That's a weak government for
you.
Those helpless liberals don't know
whether they're coming or going.
If it were up to me, I'd shut that
Rizhsky Market down once and for all.
It's a joke! A fur hat costs
three times my pension!
Who's going to buy it? Only
another speculator, like themselves!
So! In a government store you'd
never even see a hat!
So, who needs hats anyway!
First it was the party bigwigs
who went around in fur hats, now
it's the speculators.
It's never the plain folk.
I don't care if I'm being
exploited by Brezhnev or a
speculator - it's all the same!
We need justice, equality.
Everyone should be the same.
There! The true voice of Russia!
Wait a minute! If you don't let
anyone make the hats, you'll all
be going around bareheaded!
Better without hats than without
justice!
Where did you get that?
We'll spare no expense when it
comes to our own flesh and blood!
You bought it at a private
market. You can't get piglets at
a government store.
So let them grow pigs!
But not at these prices!
What prices?!
They start from nothing!
If they don't survive, you'll
never see any piglets at all!
During Stalin you could get
piglets in the stores!
During Stalin twenty million
were slaving away in labor camps!
And if you were ten minutes late
for work they'd put you away too!
At least there was order.
You see! I rest my case!
Chaos! Disaster! We're headed
for civil war!
I must say, I don't envy Gorbachev.
Trying to get this country to budge.
You've budged it enough.
Fortunately it won't be much longer.
What's that supposed to mean?
We're going to set things
straight.
And who died and left you boss?
We don't need your blessing. As
soon as these liberals bring the
country to complete collapse,
it will fall into our hands,
like a ripe fruit.
May I have this dance?
I can't dance to this.
Oh, it's simple. Come, come,
I'll show you. Come.
What is the reason for all this
gloom?
It's all so boring. All these
stupid arguments and now this
ridiculous tango.
You can leave if you're bored.
No one's keeping you from being
with kids your own age.
Kids my own age! What a joke!
Professor, you're a wise man.
Tell me, why is it all so awful?
Why is everybody so mean?
Whenever I tell someone I want
to go to America, they tell
"it's no better over there"!
Like they want to leave you
nothing to hope for.
In Chekhov's play, the three sisters
want to get away from the boonies,
they keep saying "we want to go
to Moscow",
and in the whole play there's no
villain mean enough to tell them
"it sucks there too".
Happiness is not found in Moscow
or New York. It's here.
You just need time to find it.
Have you?
I have.
Want to go see the old church?
What's the matter?
My mother's interest in
architecture is amazing!
She has just invited Greenberg
to see an old church!
A church! What church?
Where is it?
That's right! There's a famous
old church near here.
Let's all go see it together!
SASHA (VOICE-OVER):
Many years past since this
glorious morning in Moscow,
but I still remember it as it
happened only yesterday.
You seem troubled, my man. What
have you to be troubled about?
Master, life has somehow lost
much of its luster.
It's called a mid-life crisis.
It's much similar to adolescence.
It's a troubled time. Difficult.
But It will pass. You'll get
over it. Everyone does.
I feel like my mid-life crisis
is also happening to Russia,
to America, to the whole human
race.