From Communist Breadlines to Capitalist Clarity: Why I’ll Never Take Freedom for Granted
I didn’t always know I cared so deeply about liberty. In fact, my first encounter with the concept came not from books or political manifestos, but from standing in a Soviet breadline as a child, wondering why the grown-ups around me accepted scarcity like it was the natural order of things.
I was born in Bălți, Moldova, during the last wheezing breaths of the USSR. We emigrated to Israel in 1990, part of the massive Jewish exodus from a crumbling empire. But before I left, I had my first taste of capitalism—in the form of a pair of jeans.
Summer, 1989. My grandmother returned from Israel and brought me something no child in my neighbourhood had ever seen: denim.
Imagine a Soviet courtyard, faded and cracked, framed by beige apartment blocks.Time seems to slow down as the moment unfolds. I step into the yard, my seven-year-old frame swallowed slightly by oversized jeans—the kind no one there had ever seen before. Around me, silence ripples through the children. Heads turn. Conversations stop mid-sentence. My green elastic belt glints in the sunlight, the red plastic buckle bold and unapologetic.
A little girl in a world of grey suddenly bursts with colour. My sneakers crunch on gravel with cinematic clarity. A boy drops his ball. A girl clutches her gum wrappers, eyes locked on me. For the first time in my life, I’m not invisible. I’m radiant. I’m a symbol. I’m a walking revolution, stitched in blue and belted in defiance. The air shifts. The camera pans to their awed faces, then back to mine—eyes steady, chin high.
No one says a word. But I know. I know I matter.
That moment didn’t just plant a seed—it cracked open a whole worldview. In a society where everyone was supposed to be equal, difference was both coveted and punished. And the only place to trade value, to express personality, was the underground economy of gum wrappers and whispered black-market deals. That was my first market, my first lesson in free exchange.
It’s easy to romanticise childhood, even in the bleakest settings. Our memories soften with time. But I don’t need nostalgia to remind me what communism was. I remember.
I remember the queues. I remember wiping with a newspaper. I remember collective toilets and the shame of asking questions you weren’t supposed to ask. I remember fearing my curiosity. I remember the cold. The hunger. The sense that life was a grey hallway you were meant to march through without questioning who built it or why.
When we left, we passed through Romania. Thieves stole our luggage. Everything I had—my Turbo wrappers, my green sunglasses, my precious cat-shaped purse—gone. I arrived in Israel with nothing but a weird accent and an oversized hunger to have. To choose. To be.
Israel wasn’t America, but it was free enough. And even freedom-lite was enough to overwhelm me. The sight of a full grocery store induced a panic attack. I wanted everything. My seven-year-old brain couldn’t process abundance. It needed a slap to snap out of it.
In this new world, being different didn’t always make you special. My jeans no longer made me a queen. Barbie dolls weren’t rare. Turbo wrappers meant nothing. I had to find a new way to belong.
But here, at least, the difference wasn’t punished. You could choose your path. You could stumble, fall, try again. And that—the choice—was everything.
What many in the free world take for granted, I encountered with the wide-eyed wonder of someone stepping into Oz. The first time I saw a shelf full of bread, I cried. Because in Moldova, there was never a choice—only what was given. In our store, people lined up for the privilege of entering. In Israel, stores lined up to serve you. That inversion, that flipping of the script, was as political as it was personal.
May 1st, for me, isn’t International Workers’ Day. It’s the day I left the lie. The day I boarded a train and a plane and crossed from a regime of forced equality into a world of earned distinction. It is the day I left slogans behind and started learning the truth.
That truth hasn’t always been easy. I’ve experienced racism, economic hardship, and the disorientation of starting over. My mother, an educated woman with two degrees, was ironing shirts for five shekels an hour. I was ridiculed, humiliated, and physically hurt by kids who thought my broken Hebrew made me stupid. All of that happened. But even as a child, I knew: this was better. Because here, I could fight. I could speak. I could learn.
I’ve forgotten most of my Russian. I actively distanced myself from Soviet culture and now recoil at modern Putinism. I can’t even bear the sound of the language in my ears. And yet, I carry parts of that system within me. The discipline. The directness. The refusal to flatter or waste time. These things don’t vanish with emigration.
I am, in every sense, a hybrid: tough but warm, assertive but not aggressive, passionate yet pragmatic. I don’t coddle, and I don’t embellish. I say what I mean. I don’t wrap things in silk gloves, but I don’t push for the sake of dominance either. I’m both fire and steel—and I know where that comes from.
To live without freedom is to have your value defined by conformity, not by uniqueness. That is why I’ll never take liberty for granted. And that’s why, to this day, I believe capitalism—flawed, messy, and often unfair—is still the most moral system we’ve managed to create. Because it allows for differences. It permits dissent. It doesn’t always reward the best, but it gives you a chance to try.
When people romanticise socialism or sneer at markets, I hear the ghost of my childhood. I see the breadlines, the grey walls, the sacred statues of dead men. I see the loss of dignity. The loss of voice. The loss of self.
I feel the urge to jolt them out of their daze. To tell them that freedom isn’t just a slogan you print on posters. It’s the air you breathe, the choices you make, the identity you craft without permission.
This isn’t just my story. It’s a warning. It’s a love letter. And it’s a call to remember.
Freedom isn’t something we inherit. It’s something we must protect.
Every. Single. Day.
