The so-called "perestroika"

Given that Nizhny Novgorod, in its days as Gorky, was simultaneously the world's largest pochtovy yashchik (closed city / mailbox), many Nizhny Novgorod residents during the Soviet era nominally worked at the numerous defense enterprises. Simply because there was virtually nowhere else in the city to find decent money.

When perestroika began, the defense enterprises stopped receiving supplies, which caused great hardship for many Nizhny Novgorod residents and even forced some of them to look for work. The fact that perestroika was triggered by the mundane collapse of oil prices on the world market is something Nizhny Novgorod knows only by hearsay.

As a result, many naïve city residents of the postwar generations blame their various misfortunes on superficial political processes and an even more superficial political brand — "Perestroika" — which manifests itself in replacing that word with the phrase "the so-called 'perestroika.'"