Week 8: Reading Response To Access By Mark Kramer

I found this story confusing. At first, I did not know exactly what the main focus of the story was going to be. Kramer talks about Russia and everything possible he cam mention about access.

He said something about the access of bread, "Access to bread was universal, but access to Chernichenko's sort of perspective on any state enterprise was still discomfiting heresy."

He also talked about soldiers or anyone that served the state. They would get some type of privilege. They would cut in front of lines by flashing their passbooks. He called them perks and said, "A Soviet perk was always access to something necessary, a nice rib roast, a thousand tons of steel to keep factory running, train seats to where you had to go. But it was often access to something the lowliest American burger flipper or warehouse clerk could obtain back home, as needed."

What I understand from this is, what we Americans get as an everyday basis, the Soviet Union gets it as a privilege.

Another thing I found interesting is the scene where a lady came up to Kramer and Mark asking if they wanted tea. She came back with lumps of sugar, the size of a finger. Kramer was surprised, because sugar is hard to find. He even added a childhood memory of how his grandmother had once said that her family was so poor, they would hang their lump of sugar over the table on a string. Then they would look at it as they sipped, and somehow it made the tea taste sweet, and the sugar lasted all winter.