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

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is “fish day,” not because of a nationwide meat shortage but to “balance people’s diets.”

      Three middle-aged American correspondents are not only denounced as CIA agents and described for good measure as men whose adventures resemble those of “James Bond.” The attempt to construct reality is also extended to Soviet history, which is presented as a series of triumphs with little mention of its darker side.

      Few foreigners realise how much attention is still devoted in the Soviet Union to the last war. It is a favourite subject of newspaper articles, television programmes and films. Posters printed last year to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the victory hang in people’s offices and flats, young men wear commemorative medals and people buy cups with 30th anniversary of the victory insignias.

      There are human reminders of the war too, an entire generation of widows. They are a familiar sight in Moscow checking coats in restaurants, working as attendants in hotels or offices or sweeping the streets with twig brooms near the Kremlin Wall. They can be officious busybodies or sweet and kind-hearted but somehow the sight of them lends a certain credence to the Russians’ oft-repeated desire for peace.

      On the other hand, there is not a word about the millions who died in Stalin’s purges and labour camps. Most of the old Bolsheviks put to death by Stalin remain non-persons in the country they helped found, and no guide is likely to point out “Solzhenitsyn Square,” on busy Leninsky Prospekt, where the now exiled writer worked as a prison labourer on a construction site, or the large grey house opposite the Kremlin where members of the Soviet elite lived a privileged existence until the fury of the purges in the late 1930s.

      Reality is distorted in the Soviet Union. But the task of disentangling Soviet reality from Soviet propaganda, filling in the spaces deliberately left blank, is all the more difficult because the Soviets occasionally succeed, by concentrating enormous effort and talent in a specific area in injecting some truth into their propaganda-coated world.

      The Soviet Union is a poor country with a standard of living far below that of the West. Yet the Soviets successfully launched two cosmonauts into outer space who may set a new endurance record. This achievement impressed people everywhere, but nowhere more than in Moscow itself because while the two cosmonauts were making a perfect link-up at the Salyut 5 space station, Soviets here on earth were getting stuck in lifts and taking months to complete the simplest job.

      Maybe it is all an attempt to convince the world that Soviet society is capable of achieving the ambitious goals it has set itself. But most Soviet citizens react to propaganda by shutting it out or simply distrusting all sources of information. Foreigners have Western sources of information. But even they get affected by a society that tries to create its own reality. Most people speak of going to or coming from a country but foreigners in Moscow always refer to arriving in the Soviet Union as “coming in” and leaving as “going out.”

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

      End of one delay just triggers another,

      and not getting things done is an art

      Soviets’ Long Queue to Nowhere

      Every weekday morning, a crowd of nervous foreigners gathers on the steps of the Moscow Bank for Foreign Trade, waiting for the bank to open.

      They come early because they know that as the morning wears on the atmosphere in the bank will deteriorate as the queues lengthen and angry arguments erupt between foreigners and bank employees.

      The scenes at the bank are repeated at institutions throughout Moscow, and you would be struck by the similarity of the confrontations.

      Everywhere, indifferent Soviet employees process reams of paper and figure sums on wooden abacuses, demanding official letters, receipts, passports and proofs of identity while irate foreigners forced to stand in long queues try to impress on them that they come from societies where time is a valuable commodity.

      Although the Soviet Union to an outsider may seem to be a highly regimented, efficient society, anyone who lives in Moscow knows how maddeningly slowly the wheels of the Soviet bureaucracy turn.

      “My advice is to have patience,” a long time foreign resident told me after I arrived. “You’re not going to change the Soviet Union, and if you try, you’ll only give yourself a headache.”

      A prime example of the Soviet bureaucracy’s ability to waste time is the need to write a letter for the performance of any bureaucratic task, no matter how minor. The letter must be written on office stationery, stamped with an office stamp and delivered by hand. “This is why we never write to each other,” said one woman with extensive experience in such matters. “We’re too busy writing letters to bureaucratic organizations.”

      When I went for my first appointment at a Soviet government ministry, I was surprised to learn that the man I had made an appointment to see was not in his office, I wasn’t allowed past the guard downstairs.

      Several phone calls during the day to the man’s office brought varying theories as to his whereabouts. When I finally contacted him at 4:30 p.m., he cheerfully told me to come back the next day. I had forgotten to write him a letter.

      The need to waste time writing reams of useless letters can make life difficult, but it is not as serious as the months of seemingly endless delay before any request is filled.

      The delivery of a letter to a Soviet bureaucratic organization, far from insuring that the matter will be attended to, only signals the beginning of a long process of negotiations that reaches its climax after exhausting every possibility of delay.

      One of the first things I needed in Moscow was a Telex, which I requested shortly after I arrived. Initial application was made to the press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As summer turned to fall, inquiries about the Telex were answered with, “You must wait a little longer,” or “We’re thinking about it,” “Call back in two weeks,” or “it’s being considered.”

      Finally, demands for action and persistent harassment of the woman responsible brought Foreign Ministry approval—and the news that I had to apply to the Ministry of Communications. There I was told that installation of the Telex presented complicated technical problems. Weeks and months elapsed while the problems were considered in all their complexities.

      At last, installation was ruled technically feasible but legally not permitted because of the layout of the apartment where the Telex was to be placed. Only after several more weeks of negotiations, punctuated by angry arguments, was the Telex finally installed.

      The bureaucratic immobility of Soviet organizations is a part of life in Moscow and holds true for everything, from arranging life’s necessities to getting permission to emigrate.

      In my case, the requirements were routine, but hiring a secretary took three months, getting a new car has taken six months, getting hot water three months, and routine repairs for a relatively small apartment took almost three months.

      The rooted inefficiency seems to reflect bureaucratic indifference, but it has an effect on ordinary workmen when they work under official auspices and at official rates of pay.

      When I was allocated my apartment in a solidly built building on Moscow’s main ring road, I was told that the work would be completed in a few days. And, with six men working, it should have been.

      A Place in the Sun

      During the weeks that followed, however, those six workmen became a familiar sight around the building, taking extended breaks, which in the Soviet Union are often longer than actual worktime, sunning themselves in the courtyard and socializing with friends.

      By the time I began making daily visits to the apartment to encourage them to work faster, they had succeeded in installing a stove and sink, removing them, and installing them again. They were considering

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