Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union - David Satter

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itself could be taken to symbolise foreign acquiescence in a Soviet action such as the invasion of Afghanistan.

      By his presence in Moscow, Herr Schmidt almost certainly diminished in Soviet eyes the credibility of Western objections to the invasion of Afghanistan. The impression of irresolution could only have been strengthened by West German readiness to sign a 25 year economic co-operation agreement with the Soviet Union during Herr Schmidt’s stay.

      An indication of the Soviet Union’s attitude towards summit meetings can be gained from the experience of the first years in office of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet President, repeatedly refused to meet Mr. Carter after the latter began his human rights crusade. The Russians didn’t want to be put in the position of seeming to endorse the campaign, in the same way that they appear to have manoeuvred both President Giscard d’Estaing and Herr Schmidt in apparently endorsing Soviet policy through their respective summits with Mr. Brezhnev.

      The Soviet agreement to negotiate on limiting medium range missiles in Europe may be taken to justify Herr Schmidt’s trip. But Western military observers have long been sceptical of the ostensible Soviet refusal to negotiate while a NATO decision to place U.S. missiles in Western Europe was in force.

      The Soviet Union has between 150 and 200 highly accurate medium range SS-20 missiles with multiple warheads targeted on Western Europe. It is introducing one new SS-20 every five days. The NATO decision to deploy 572 Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles, which prompted the Soviet refusal to negotiate, was intended to counter an existing Soviet force.

      Radio Moscow, in its English language world service, praised Herr Schmidt for helping to break the deadlock caused by the Soviet refusal to negotiate over the Euromissiles. The Soviet decision, however, could equally have been taken without Herr Schmidt’s presence. It was almost inevitable given NATO’s own determination to press with a matching medium range missile deployment.

      The greater likelihood is that the Soviet authorities prepared a “concession” for Herr Schmidt which, like the limited Soviet withdrawal of men and equipment from Afghanistan, was heralded as an achievement.

      The general East-West situation has not been fundamentally altered. Herr Schmidt, far from achieving genuine progress over Afghanistan may have only stiffened Soviet resistance by assuring the Soviets that despite their refusal to talk about Afghanistan, as evidenced by the way his remarks were censored and corrected in Pravda, the Soviet Union can still count on West German technology and goods.

      Part of the difficulty in trips like those of Herr Schmidt to Moscow and M. Giscard’s to Warsaw is that they are based on the assumption that the tension over the invasion of Afghanistan exists because the Soviets do not understand the West’s position and consultation will help them understand it better. In fact, the Soviet authorities show every sign of understanding the Western position and the tenuous commitment to it at least as well as most Western leaders.

      ERZEUGT DURCH JUTOH - BITTE REGISTRIEREN SIE SICH, UM DIESE ZEILE ZU ENTFERNEN

      An Olympian view of the Moscow games starting today

      Russia Through the Looking Glass

      In a macabre footnote to the pre-Olympic preparations, Soviet television viewers were surprised one night last month by the unscheduled appearance of Father Dmitri Dudko, a Russian Orthodox priest, who had been arrested six months earlier on charges of anti-Soviet agitation.

      In a clear, confident voice, Father Dudko began reading a confession in which he renounced his previous dissident activities, praised the Soviet authorities for their humanity and said that he now recognised that his struggle against atheism had been a struggle against Soviet power.

      When Father Dudko finished people began calling each other in Moscow’s dissident and intellectual community. Father Dudko was the religious counsellor and friend to most of Moscow’s liberal intelligentsia, and one historian later described his recantation as an “inexpressible blow.”

      The confession of Father Dudko, however, did not signal the start of a new campaign against religion but, on the contrary, was followed by intensification of the preparations of religious facilities for the 1980 Olympics. Long neglected Russian Orthodox churches were being restored, crosses erected and icons lit to demonstrate Soviet respect for religious faith.

      The irreconcilability between Father Dudko renouncing his beliefs on nationwide television and the final touches being put on the restored cupolas of Russian Orthodox churches is symbolic of the problems foreigners will experience in understanding a society which invests enormous energy in creating a false facade to conceal the ideology which guides it.

      More than 30,000 western tourists have come to Moscow for the 1980 Olympics and the overwhelming likelihood is that the impression they will take away with them will be based on the false front, not the ideological reality.

      The buildings on main Olympic routes have been repainted, drunks, hooligans and others likely to make public scenes have been exiled, attractive Soviet guides who have been carefully screened will aid foreign visitors and a full cultural programme has been arranged. Meanwhile the ubiquitous police—both uniformed and plain-clothed varieties—will discourage chance encounters in the street.

      The Soviet authorities believe that Western visitors to the Soviet Union generally have no interest in probing deeply into Soviet life and will draw their conclusions on the basis of what is visible. The Soviets therefore set out to organise what the visitors will see.

      The Olympic Games will be a net gain for the Soviet authorities in the political sense if the vast majority of foreign visitors never give any thought to the ideological essence of Soviet society and assume that in the Soviet Union too, appearances reflect reality.

      The foreign visitor—who buys expensive Olympic souvenirs in Soviet dollar shops, travels in an Intourist car, attends the Bolshoi ballet and the Olympic events and admires the golden cupolaed churches which have been carefully restored—may easily return home to tell friends that the Soviet Union is little different from countries in the West.

      The western visitor to Moscow may notice that older people are better dressed than he had imagined. But this will be less important than the fact that some of those strolling past him on Kallinin Prospekt are former labour camp prisoners who adopted, as a result of their experiences, the fundamental assumptions of the Soviet “new man.”

      The experience of having been arrested, serving 15 years in a Siberian labour camp and then being freed, rehabilitated and restored to one’s previous position as if nothing had happened teaches a man one of totalitarianism’s basic rules—that his actions do not always influence his fate.

      The Soviets have tried to create an environment for western visitors in which they will feel comfortable and which they will compare to their own. Having arrived at a gleaming airport built by the West Germans, the western visitors will be quickly taken to luxury hotels and offered the opportunity to participate in familiar activities such as group excursions, buying parties and theatre tours.

      The visitor, however, will learn more about Soviet society far away from the tourist facilities. Although it is off the beaten path, the visitor may gain a feel for the way in which totalitarianism made people interchangeable in the Soviet Union by taking a walk in the dimly lit heart of 19th century Moscow.

      Watching the reflection of the street lamps on the motionless surface of Patriarch’s Pond, it is easier to understand that the Soviet Union is a country where a figure stepping out of the shadows for a solitary midnight stroll could, with equal ease, have spent his life as a high Soviet official or as an “enemy of the people and saboteur.”

      The Soviet Union was not always so diffident about its ideology or so anxious to make bourgeois westerners feel at home. But ideological fervour has slowly drained away to be replaced by ordinary careerism which must nonetheless realise its goals within the established ideological structure. The result is a surrealistic situation which helps explain

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