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

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      The techniques being used to create an atmosphere of normality for Olympic tourists are aimed at misleading journalists, businessmen and Heads of State. Soviet political culture was shaped by Marx and Lenin’s unflattering view of the western bourgeoisie. If the West feels baffled by the Soviet Union this is partially because the Soviet authorities have more confidence in their ability to maintain a misleading facade than in their capacity to defend themselves as an ideological movement.

      According to Marxist-Leninist ideology, the elimination of private ownership did away with the basis for social differences which are always class-based. The Soviet Union therefore should, according to doctrine, demonstrate total unanimity and this unanimity should be completely voluntary. In fact, unanimity does not exist in the Soviet Union but the political structure of the country is organised on the assumption that it does.

      One of the rituals through which the supposed unanimity of Soviet society manifests itself are the periodic elections to the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Parliament, in which 99.99 per cent of the population votes in favour of the Communist Party candidate. What really happens during these elections, however, is that people vote because they fear bureaucratic revenge at the hands of the State apparatus which affects every part of their life, if they refuse.

      The ritualism in the society is also manifested in “Socialist competitions” which take place at every work place and involve pledges by the workers to increase production or reduce tardiness and so-called “Leninist inventories” among young adults who make promises such as to improve their “moral and cultural level” and report on fulfilment at meetings of the Komsomol, the communist youth organisation a year later.

      None of these rituals has any real meaning but they are intended to express the unity and “enthusiasm” of the society and although it is a rare Soviet official who will show any eagerness to discuss these practices, none can afford—in a conversation with a foreigner or even an unknown Soviet citizen—to belittle their significance. The ritual reflects the ideology which is the ultimate justification for Soviet power.

      In a situation of ritual adherence to an ideology which has been deprived of substance a special role is created for the use of “hints.” Mr. Naum Meiman, the acting head of the dissident Helsinki Monitoring Group, was puzzled one morning last September, to be called to his neighbourhood party organisation to discuss his longstanding application to emigrate.

      Emigration matters would normally have been handled by the Soviet Visa Office. But Mr. Meiman went to the local party headquarters nonetheless where the chairman of the party committee spoke to him about his dissident activities and said, “as a resident of our area, we strongly and persistently advise you to change your behaviour.”

      To a Soviet citizen, the message was clear. If Mr. Meiman did not cease his dissident activities, he might soon cease to be a resident of the local chairman’s area, which would mean that he could be exiled from Moscow. If a foreigner were to inquire about the conversation, however, a Soviet official would describe the talk as a friendly conversation with no implicit threat.

      The Soviet penchant for advertising what is meaningless and concealing what is important can deepen the psychological distance between westerners and Soviet citizens by depriving words of their meaning. This is reflected in a wide variety of situations from Soviet claims to have been “invited” into Afghanistan to the behaviour of the women who manage the cafe next door to my office. They shut the doors when they feel like gossiping and hang up a sign reading “closed for technical reasons.”

      The successful creation of a false facade for foreigners and the irresponsibility with words in the Soviet Union both stem from the basic Soviet attempt to convince people that the truth is what they are shown or told and never what they learn independently.

      The emphasis is on manipulating what they can see because it is assumed that foreigners have no access to independent impressions. With Soviet citizens, the goal is to get them to ignore what they see and believe what they are told.

      One night a friend of mine named Volodya came home after an alcoholic binge to find his wife and mother waiting up for him and, in his words “ready to strangle me.” He had been out with his friend, Petya. In a distinctly Soviet attempt to save himself, he told his wife, “Petya is Dead.”

      Volodya’s wife, who was fond of Petya, burst into tears, helped her husband into bed, and brought him a cup of tea. When she left, Volodya picked up the phone and called Petya. He told Petya to stay out of sight for a few days because he had told his wife that he was dead. Petya, who had also been drinking, agreed, and went back to sleep.

      The next day, Petya having forgotten the incident, saw Volodya’s wife on the down escalator at the local Metro station as he was riding up. He waved at her and then, realizing his mistake when he saw her look of absolute horror, began shouting, “no, no, I’m dead, I’m dead.”

      Only in the Soviet Union would a man in Petya’s position have felt there was a chance to convince her.

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

      Light and shade in Shadrinsk

      View from Middle Russia

      The morning sunlight in Shadrinsk revealed an old Russian merchant town where leaning log houses, warped from centuries of rain and snow, lurched over dusty streets and five-storey housing blocks stood in the background with iron balconies and laundry hanging out to dry.

      It had taken 39 hours to reach the Ural mountains town of Shadrinsk, in the Trans-Siberian Express and on the way, we passed timeless wooden villages where peasant women bent over dirt plots in the heat of the sun.

      As we approached the outskirts of the town, trucks loaded with chopped wood waited at a crossing and the grassy Russian plain was broken by a pine grove which gave way to a scene of peaceful decrepitude where unused railway sidings were dotted with marigolds and grain elevators rusted in the sun.

      We had been prompted to make the trip by the massive Soviet propaganda campaign following the invasion of Afghanistan. In Moscow, educated people are sceptical of their Government but I thought this was probably less true in the towns and villages flung out over thousands of miles of provincial Russia, the “deaf places” where most Soviet citizens live.

      During the train journey to Shadrinsk, a factory town of 80,000 in the centre of the USSR, which was picked at random, a colleague and I got some idea of what lay ahead. There were many soldiers on the train, en route to new postings, as well as a reasonable cross section of the travellers one would meet in any second-class compartment on the busy Trans-Siberian Express.

      Almost to a man, people we spoke to condemned the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics and said that they supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

      “We gave the Afghans help, just as the Americans gave us help in the Second World War,” said a retired schoolteacher from Kurgan. “They published the appeal for help in our newspapers.” I asked him if he ever considered the possibility that what he read in the Soviet newspapers might not be true. “How could it not be true?” he replied.

      In Shadrinsk, I unpacked my things at the Hotel Ural and walked through the shadeless central square, stopping to talk to some young girls who were sitting on a bench near the war memorial. Across the road at the Motherland Cinema a new film was playing called, “From Your Loved One, Don’t Be Parted.”

      In the next three days, I spoke to people in cafes, in the barren farmers’ market, in the restaurant of our hotel, and in the lush, mosquito-ridden city gardens. The overwhelming impression I took away was that there was little realism in the idea of President Jimmy Carter that an Olympic boycott would inform the Soviet people about Western anger over Afghanistan, In remote cities like Shadrinsk which are cut off from outside information, the conditions for informing people do not exist. Soviet propaganda is the reality.

      One

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