“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”  These words of sage commentary from the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York State were overturned half a decade ago when we entered the world of “fake news” and facts became irrelevant to public discourse. Since then American political elites and their respective media outlets on both sides of debate have shamelessly invented the “facts” as suited their latest polemical position. The occasional modifier of what cannot be factually proven is “highly likely.”

Regrettably the latest news coming out of Germany yesterday regarding the Navalny poisoning case indicates a further ratcheting down of the possibilities for civil discourse in the direction of dispute resolution by brute force, that is to say, by war. Our leaders seem to have taken leave of their senses and are putting to us narratives that absolutely defy logic.

Chancellor Merkel announced that German military experts attribute Alexei Navalny’s poisoning to the Russian nerve agent Novichok, the same poison that was allegedly used by the Russian military intelligence forces against the Skripals in Salisbury.  We have heard a great deal about Novichok in that connection, but the single most relevant information to the present case is that it is a tightly controlled substance which only state entities might have access to and that its use would have to be approved at the highest levels. Given this background, given that the Russians were notified of the expertise findings on Navalny by megaphone diplomacy, that is to say without any prior warning via diplomatic channels, and given the insistent demand by Merkel, backed up moments later by the head of NATO, by the head of the European Commission and by a spokesman of the White House that the Russians explain what happened, what we have here is a very lightly disguised accusation that Vladimir Putin ordered the poisoning. All the ducks in the West are now aligned against Russia, with Mme Merkel leading the charge.

Russian counter-demands that the proofs of German toxicity findings be shared with them have gone unanswered, just as they were in the Skripal case.  Thus, a Russian “explanation” of what happened to Navalny in the Tomsk before his flight will almost certainly not satisfy their accusers in the West.

What we may expect next is a new round of Western sanctions against Russia, quite possibly entailing suspension of the highly contested Nord Stream II pipeline project. If that is so, then the Navalny poisoning will have turned around the German state position on relations with Russia – and with the United States, which has tried unsuccessfully to cancel Nord Stream II by bullying Germany – just as the downing of MH 17 in the summer of 2014 brought Europe on board the US-led sanctions campaign against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Ukrainian civil war in the Donbass.

The only problem with this entire scenario is that is makes absolutely no sense from start to finish. Even reputable mainstream newspapers like The Financial Times said in their reporting from the outset of the Navalny case that there were many oligarchs in Russia, including one or two whom they named, who would gladly have organized the murder of Navalny for their own reasons, whereas the Kremlin had every reason not to want this anti-corruption, anti-Putin campaigner to be harmed because the reaction in the West was entirely predictable. The Editorial Board of the FT was busy cooking up a wholly different case for sanctions against Russia which they released one day ago: should Putin order his forces to intervene in Belarus to crush the opposition to President Lukashenko.

Now the identification of Novichok as the poison takes the whole scenario to a level of utter absurdity.  Had the Kremlin wanted to silence Navalny, which is the basic accusation that Merkel delivered yesterday, it had a vast array of means to do so.  Given what we have heard about the tight controls applied to this military grade poison and its identification as specifically Russian in origin, the Russian President might just as well have had Navalny’s throat slit and written his signature on the blogger’s forehead.

But even this illogic passes muster in our media. We are told that Putin wanted to show that he can do whatever he likes, to thumb his finger at the West for its pusillanimity. To cut to the quick, we are being told that Vladimir Putin is a madman. And the message is coming from none other than Angela Merkel, still leader of Europe’s strongest economy, most populous nation, and determining force of policies in Brussels.  In which case, suspension of Nord Stream II would be a mere tap on the wrist. The logic, if any can be salvaged from her story, is that Putin should be physically eliminated, like Saddam Hussein, like Gaddafi….for “violating all of our fundamental values” as she claimed yesterday.

I found it most interesting that the BBC World reportage on the Navalny case yesterday evening explained to listeners that Russian state possession of the agent Novichok would be in violation of the convention on chemical weapons, which is why a domestic Russian crime becomes an international cause celèbre. At the same time they noted that both Germany and the United Kingdom have “small quantities” of Novichok in their military labs for control purposes.  Insofar as it has relevance in our post-logic world, I would suggest that both Germany and the United Kingdom intelligence forces are as likely to have had the means to poison Mr. Navalny as the Kremlin’s forces, and unlike the Kremlin, they had far more reason to do so.  It is scarcely believable that the Kremlin did it. It is scarcely believable that Russian oligarchs did it, since they would then be pointing a finger directly at Putin and would not survive.

One final point is that the Navalny poisoning comes at a moment in international relations that is vastly different from that which prevailed at the time of the Skrypal poisonings two years ago.  Back then there was only one Big Baddy in the world, Russia.  Today, the United States under Donald Trump has shifted the global villain’s label to the People’s Republic of China and in the run-up to the November elections, he has steadily raised the diplomatic, military and commercial pressure on the PRC in areas as diverse as uncoupling the economies to bolstering ties with Taiwan. Trump has been twisting arms in Europe to follow the American lead on China, but resistance on this issue has been surely much greater than resistance over sanctions on Russia.  As we learned during the visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister to Germany two days ago, the PRC is one of Germany’s top three export market, with annual sales topping ninety-six billion euros. Given these facts, Mme Merkel has every reason to redirect Europe and America’s lust for sanctions to her neighbor directly to the East, the Russian Federation. That is to say, she has “every reason” if logic plays any role today in state behavior.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperbfack and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

On the mutual contempt of academics and business people

Having come to business in 1976 from the milieu of professional academics, I quickly became aware of the mutual contempt that characterized relations between the scholarly world and the business world. From the standpoint of the businessmen around me, the academics were not merely impractical hence useless, but pitiful. In my mind’s eye I can still see the expression of impatience on the face of Babcock & Wilcox’s Vice President, International Arthur Tendler when our chat at a business event hosted by IREX was interrupted by Ivo Lederer, a sometimes professor, sometimes administrator who at the time was on the fundraising team of IREX. To Tendler, Lederer was just one more beggar from the academic community.

For their part, when professors recommended to their graduate students to look for employment outside of university teaching given the very poor job market for junior faculty, they thought first about seeking a position in the government, meaning in intelligence, or in think tanks. Banking was acceptable, because it was assumed one would enter their research departments, not become a grubby peddler of banknotes. 

These professors could not believe that someone like me who had received prestigious fellowships would turn his back irrevocably on the university. In this connection I think of my accidental encounter with Fred Starr of the Kennan Institute in September 1979 in a hotel in downtown Tbilisi. I was accompanying my client Castle and Cooke to meetings with the republic’s agriculture ministry for visits to fruit farms. He was accompanying Harrison Salisbury to a writers’ conference. Fred could think of nothing better than to congratulate me on the recent publication of “my” 1,000 page book, a listing of Russian archival materials in U.S. collections to which I was for a brief time in 1975 a minor contributor.   

Or I recall my chat with Marshall Goldman in the cafe of the Hotel National in Moscow on 24 November 1977. He was just completing a stay of several months during which he delivered lectures at Moscow State University.  His only interest in me was to ask whether I would yet publish my dissertation as a book.  That question was related not to the great importance of my scientific discoveries but to the loss of the several thousand dollars investment in me of the Russian Research Center, of which he was associate director. At that point, nothing could have been further from my mind.

Or still more to the point, I think of the puzzled look on the face of Harvard law professor Harold Berman when he ran into me in an elevator of the Intourist Hotel at the very start of the annual gathering of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council in Moscow in early December 1978, an expression which plainly said “and what are you doing here?” as if I were an intruder at their party. 

Berman knew me well enough having four years earlier on campus advised me on whether it paid for me to apply to the Law School now that history had run to ground. In a way, he was justified in his perplexity, because I would have had to wait another 20 years in university life to be of the rank and reputation meriting an invitation to such august company. Had he known that I would be invited two days later to the reception in the Kremlin to mark Leonid Brezhnev’s 73rd birthday, whereas he was not, he would have fainted dead away.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]

Last week at the Democratic Party National Convention, Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris lambasted President Trump for mismanaging governmental efforts to combat the spread of Covid-19. They have spoken of the tragic deaths among the population generally and among minorities and people of color in particular as if this were connected with the President’s lack of empathy and alleged racist inclinations.

They have weighed in against him for giving mixed signals and false advice over what individuals and local authorities should do.  Trump’s critics among politicians and the media have noted each time when he has appeared in public not wearing a face mask and when allowing his entourage to mix without social distancing.

There is much truth to the identified failings of the Trump Administration to stop the spread of Covid-19.  At the same time, however agreeable it may be to Trump’s many detractors foaming at the mouth over this devil incarnate, the fact is that the United States has had no monopoly on stupid and lying leaders trying to tackle Covid-19, including stupid and lying leaders in super-sophisticated Europe and not only in slovenly Latin American states or what is now seen to be Third World USA.

As I have mentioned repeatedly in my commentary on Covid-19, the United States would have to witness 270,000 deaths from the pandemic to reach the level of mortality per population that we have experienced in Belgium.  To be sure, the missing 100,000 coffins in the US may yet be filled if the country continues its blundering, although the likelihood of the U.S. following the Russian example and starting early vaccination before completion of Phase III tests remains high under this impetuous President who is desperate to win the election on November 4 and would use the vaccination program to show his boldness, contrasted to the wimp whom the Democrats have nominated.

And now I turn to the point made in the title to this article: the role of face masks in containing the pandemic from the beginning in March to today.                                                                                                                                                                                              

As we all know, in many countries there was active debate on the merits of face masks from the very moment that the pandemic took hold in March.  Scientists were brought before microphones to declare that the masks had no value.  Instead all countries were induced to put in place full lockdown, though the collateral damage to the economy in each country was unparalleled since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Painful, but good for public health we were told.

Here in Belgium the debate over face masks had a special political dimension:  under the leadership of the current Minister of Health, the Flemish politician and medical doctor Maggie De Block, a couple of years ago the government destroyed its stock of several million face masks purchased in the last virus epidemic scare nearly a decade ago. Presumably this act of destruction was part of the overall cutbacks in the medical establishment going on in Belgium to save money  in times of austerity and most evident to the public in the shutdown of hospitals in the communities and concentration of medical services in mega-hospitals at the city’s periphery.  Whatever the thinking behind the destruction of the masks, the country was left without this key Personal Protective Equipment when it needed it most, and replacement in short order was virtually impossible because the whole world was scrambling to purchase these items and the only source of product in requisite quantities was the People’s Republic of China, which was itself still reeling from the pandemic.

Instead of trusting the public with the truth, that masks were simply unavailable and that we should make our own at home, our national leaders chose to mislead the public about their value.  Was this any different from the smoke and mirrors performance coming out of the White House?  Not a jot.

With time, the world demand for face masks and other PPE has been substantially met. Even here in Belgium we learn that local manufacture of face masks was begun from scratch and is proceeding well. The headline across the front page of the weekend issue of Le Soir informs us that “Belgian Industry Will Produce 600 Million Face Masks this year.” In the meantime, the message coming from the government has shifted 180 degrees.  We are told that face masks are indeed very useful in preventing the spread of virus by retaining most of the small liquid particles of those who are infected.  For that very reason, cities like Brussels and Antwerp, which have seen spikes in infection after the “deconfinement” was phased in, now make it mandatory to wear face masks EVERYWHERE in public space, whether on the streets or in buildings open to the public.

And do the masks work?  Indeed, if you follow the trend of the infection rate here in Belgium, imposition of mandatory wearing of masks has been accompanied by steady reduction in the infection rate, in the hospitalization rate, in the mortality rate these past few weeks.  Similar regulations have been introduced across France in ‘red zone’ regions.

If it is true that democracy functions when there is an informed public, then the only conclusion we can reach, is that we do not have a functioning democracy.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

A Day in the Life of…

Accompanying Baltimore-based global spice manufacturer McCormick & Co. to their first meetings in Russia

Thursday, 15 November 1979

10.00 – 11.30  Ministry of Agriculture     Kotelnikov, Kramskov + experts –  Rakitina (chief agronomist) and Ivanov from the All-Union Association Soyuzsortsemovoshch and  Kulikov, deputy head of administration of agro-industrial integration

Nearly all the discussion is between Dr. Hall and Kramskov

Kramskov explains that main target of his administration in Agriculture has been to raise production and consumption of fruits and vegetables. Says today USSR produces the same total vegetable and melon crops as the USA, leading to 90 kg per capita. Their task, as set by the Institute of Nutrition, is to raise consumption to 126 kg yearly. They at present import 250,000 tons of fruits and vegetables mainly from Eastern Europe.  Just starting now to look into raising production of rarer vegetable matter, namely spices and flavoring matter. Looking to mechanization. Kramskov says have good cooperation with FMC, also with Castle & Cooke. (I wince since we both know that C&C have cancelled their Soviet project)

Hall:  says we use and study local variety of onion and garlic – seed production could be interesting. Garlic and onion are both highly mechanized.

Kramskov – as regards onion equipment, we have run tests on Dutch equipment for onions, also FMC machines and Hungarian equipment. In 1976 I went to the USA and saw on display in NY a different technology.  Our own machines were developed for North-Central areas, where there is strong onion, with high dry matter content. This machinery is no good for the southern regions. Central Asia, some parts of Ukraine, Moldavia have larger, mild ‘salad’ onions. Here soils are higher temperature. These onions spoil faster.  How do you manage these warmer soils?  We do have possibility to exchange varieties. Some of our onion stores very well. We supplied England. It is good for processing. We have a good genetic pool.

As regards garlic, we produce 60,000 tons here annually. We have winter garlic and spring garlic. Winter variety stores badly. We specially need help to develop better spring garlic. Our weak point is that we have no machines for garlic and it is very labor intensive.  Nothing for herbicides, pesticides. We also want processing of garlic, which can be done within Agriculture. Need garlic paste, juice.

Our spices – we do want help with local types: coriander, majoram, basil leaf. We’re only just beginning now. Seek contact with your specialists. Exchange of delegations.

Hall – we have highly mechanized both onion and garlic production and processing.  15 years ago these were largely hand work. No longer.

Kramskov – interesting spices for us: dill, parsley, turnips, basil, horseradish, coriander, Melissa, fennel, caraway

Hall – We seek to start with onion and garlic then proceed to other, lesser crops which have been less mechanized. We suggest first question be genetics – start new test field for varieties

Kramskov – Yes, but development of new varieties is a long process. I suggest we go faster – the largest problems are 1)mechanization 2)application of chemical pesticides and insecticides, fertilizers 3) processing  Genetics comes later

Hall (at my urging)   – 1^st year – set up a model farm to test the varieties and technology.   2^nd year – model drying operation.  Then to further improve breeding and processing

Kramskov – (alarmed we are moving too fast): we need some time to think it over – exchange literature. Let’s arrange exchange of delegations. After this we can draft the program.  We want to bring in the Food Ministry. We need their participation as processors. We are the farmers – they are your counterparts.

Note – here Kramskov says we are talking with Pepsico about potato processing (Frito Lay).

Kramskov – give us literature on industrial flavorings. We see great use for garlic – for canned foods. But do not want to forget other crops – rarer herbs and spices.  We grow a lot of paprika – but it is for use fresh.

Hall – we will get samples and spec sheets to you

Kotelnikov – best next step will be to hold a seminar from beginning to end 1)seed production  2) principles of vertical integration 3) processing. Then we can find ways for cooperation – and then go on to exchange of delegations.  See McCormick visit to Soviet production areas this summer – all via Intourist

Note: at the conclusion Kramskov comes over to me and gives a big and friendly handshake – very satisfied with today’s talks.

2.00 – 3.00  Organizing Committee of the 1980 Summer Olympics    Kovalyov, Polnikov +1

Chief negotiator Polnikov is long delayed and while awaiting him we chat with older, less shrews Kovalyov, who tells us about existing agreements with other companies:  1) Brazilian State Coffee company – will donate 3 tons of instant coffee to be used at official receptions  2) Heinekens – beer and monetary contribution – 10,000 cases + $55,000  3) Philip Morris – cigarettes  4)  Seagrams – $100,000  cash + American wine, Scotch, Rye and Canadian whisky.  Asks what we can offer.

Jack:  black pepper, white pepper, salt in 3 – 4 gram packs, plus portioned mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, jams and jellies.

Polnikov enters and looks sternly at Kovalyov for talking too freely.  (Kovalyov had said – ‘we all know Doctorow quite well’)  Asks what we are prepared to put up, stressing cash and saying the Organizing Committee seeks $100,000 – 150,000.   Jack says what is the scope of your need in commodity.  Polnikov is evasive.  I say let’s reckon 30,000 units per day x 20 days = 600,000 portions.  Polnikov acquiesces.

Polnikov asks what products we could put up.  Jack says either small portions or bulk packed – eg., 2 kg containers of mayonnaise. Polnikov: send us catalogues and specs.   Jack: we wish to give some product – to sell more product and will not give any cash.   Polnikov looks irritated but says nothing. 

Caffey says he will have proposal to their representative Kartsev in New York by December 15. Will be back in Moscow in March.

Polnikov is slick, but less unpleasant than formerly. As Caffey says : “He’s no virgin.”  Caffey likes the idea I advanced during the meeting: that we seek two separate deals – to give away some supplies and sell others – since these would be needed by the City Council whatever happens – so why not buy from us.  Polnikov takes exception to my use of the word ‘donate’ – but I remind him that it is merely a translation of the word they use ‘взнос’ i.e., contribution.

“4.30 – 6.00   Dinner with Nesterin at his tiny office in the Nutrition Institute.   Nesterin is cautious with us – especially with me and it’s clear I inhibit him. He wants to show off for Dr.Hall. He treats this as social rather than a business visit.

“7.00  Evening at the Bolshoi seeing my favorite dragon lady Plisetskaya in a program quite familiar to me – Carmen Suite and Death of a Rose. She is unusually good tonight.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]

When business travel with clients could be a pleasure:  visit to Warsaw, July 1979 together with senior management of McCormick & Company

Friday, 20 July

Early morning we part with Hall, who takes a direct flight back to the USA.  Jack and I make a visit to the Meat Institute, where they have already prepared typed memo on our meetings. Agree on schedule for presenting sample blends (late August), reviewing results (October), then to decide on seminar.

Caffey and I take lunch together, then I leave for airport and my flight to Switzerland. At parting, Caffey expresses his gratitude for a ‘superb job.’

Overall this has been one of the more pleasant trips in memory. Personal chemistry was unusually good. Several explanations present themselves:  the fact that both reps from the Company are the same age and rank (VP, International and VP, Science and Technology), absence of junior-level personnel which always feels threatened by outside consultants like me eliminated much of the tension that builds during these trips. Ivy League and Old School Tie also important: Hall is a Harvard man who really enjoys the fact and took pleasure in my connection; while Caffey is non-H, he is Stanford and need feel no shame. Group had more parallelism than hierarchy and authority. Caffey and Hall can good-naturedly joke with one another as equals from different sides of the company and could afford to respect my given expertise without doubts about their position in the eyes of others from the company. 

Curious closeness in the backgrounds of Caffey and Hall – both WWII flyers: Jack, a fighter pilot and Hall, navigator on a bomber stationed in Southern England. Hall left Harvard in ’43 for the forces, then returned after the war to complete his AB and take graduate courses; stayed on in Cambridge as resident tutor of Kirkland (or  Lowell) House until 1953; was unfortunate to come back in 1968 for his 25^th reunion.  Knows William Bullitt – son of the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and ex Master of Quincy.

Both from the West: Dick Hall grew up in a Nebraska town of 180 which his father nearly owned – Scotch-Irish, turned from Catholicism. Jack Caffey is from Mormon Country – Salt Lake City: remembers the strange time he was in Helsinki for sales mission and was invited to join his hosts in a sauna; thought at the time, while he sat stark naked with people whom he was seeing for the first time and seriously talking about opportunities for McCormick: “Caffey, you’ve really gone mad. What would friends back in Salt Lake City think of this!”  

Dick admits that no matter how many years he has been East, whenever he makes a visit to the West, he knows his real home is there.  Their Western figures of speech are also pleasant to hear: for example, a politician was likened to a certain shallow local river which was “6 miles wide and 2 inches deep at the mouth.”

 Dick Hall has proper, natty Harvard dress – Brooks Brothers look; bow-tie would be scarcely out of character. Caffey is less conservative, less careful in dress, more conservative in politics. Caffey knows his worth: has the self-confidence of a top salesman. Their constant repartee as Dick suggests Jack could never have made the grade as a scientist and Jack suggests Dick lacks imagination and daring. Their banter makes for a real pleasure.

Curious that neither of these former fly-boys likes small private planes. Quote Jack: “a friend keeps on inviting me to join him and I find reasons why I can’t make it; one day I’ll put my two hands forward and say ‘look, they don’t match.”  Caffey also a nervous back-seat driver: says after requesting one taxi driver in Warsaw to slow down, “ I don’t want to end up in the hospital in some half-assed city like this!”  Caffey on management: “some managers are afraid of taking good assistants, but a good man can only move his boss upstairs.”

Over-all both are impressed that Poland looks better than they had expected. This size market is worth an effort. Still Jack wants to see some consumer product sales. Both feel slight embarrassment: “if this were a normal market we’d send in the troops, and not just have the two of us with Doctorow here holding the cane.”

Evening at the restaurant Bazylyszek in the Old Town square: heated political discussion as Caffey expresses long held resentment against the week-kneed liberals and especially at university administrators for failing to hold back tide of radicalism in the late 1960s.  Hall more tolerant of administrators’ failings as nonprofessional managers – points to the randomness of the radical explosion, something that would break out in one place or another. I suggest the radicals were lightning rods for genuine dissent and anger of broad student body over conduct of the war and the possibility of serving and dying.

Caffey seems to think we were never in jeopardy. Caffey points to the University of Southern California, which held fast during the tide and kicks..   Dick happened to be at Harvard in ’68 during the worst of the rioting, when he came for the 25^th reunion. He feels the Pusey administration didn’t know what to do – reacted poorly.  According to Hall, you must be fully prepared to deal with radicals and disrupters – gives example of his own conduct during this period as chairman of a food congress. When some radicals stormed the meeting demanding the floor, he said ‘we’re a democratic organization and we’ll put it to a vote whether to interrupt our program and hear you or to have you wait till we are done. The viva voce ‘no’s’ were overwhelming and put an end to this nonsense.”  Anomalies in politics: Jack grudgingly favors ERA while Dick opposes it out of feeling that in practice it will not work.  Both have strong feelings of pride over their roles in WWII.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]

In the past couple of weeks the  mass demonstrations protesting the obviously falsified Belarus presidential elections became featured news reporting in Western media, edging out coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic and of street disorders in the USA following yet another shooting of some unarmed black man by white police. In this context, I was invited twice to give Zoom interviews on both RT’s live 24 hour news broadcast from Moscow and on the Belarus state television whose local crew had interviewed me at home in the past before Covid19 drove us all into virtual reality.

Given that these Zoom interviews were put on live news programs that are not reposted on youtube.com, where you, dear Reader are more likely to catch them, and given that my observations are rather different from what the herd of both mainstream and alternative news commentators are saying, I set out here what it is I have to say about Belarus at this crucial moment in the nation’s history, when the outcome of the power struggle is by no means clear.

First, I make reference to the very special characterization of the Belarus protest movement by The Financial Times from the very beginning, namely that unlike the Maidan protesters in Ukraine in 2014, the Belarus protest movement is not pro-EU, pro-NATO and anti-Russian; it is seeking only new elections conducted under transparent and fair conditions, on the assumption that will lead to the removal of President Lukashenko.  This reporting may seem obvious, but it is remarkable in its own right.  I compare it to the latest militant and self-righteous statements coming out of the Polish government in Warsaw to the effect that the Belarus protesters are standing up against Russia.

Be that as it may, all reporting from all sides is missing the other outstanding feature that distinguishes the present day situation in Belarus from Maidan in 2014:  President Lukashenko is a vastly different personality from Ukraine’s President Yanukovich.  Yanukovich had been ousted from power once before and he knew perfectly well that the two-thirds of the country outside his power base in Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine was ready to oust him by force. On 22 February 2014, he rather timidly accepted an EU offer of mediation with the leaders of the rebellion that promised new elections in a year’s time. As we all know, the next day the  Opposition ripped up the agreement and Yanukovich fled the country. His life was saved only by quick and skillful Russian intervention.

The outstanding feature of Mr. Lukashenko over recent days has been his hyper-activity in public and his personal courage in standing up to the protesters. He has gone to the high risk hot spots to take them on.

Lukashenko said plainly that the only way the protesters will get new elections in the days ahead will be over his dead body, and this was not empty rhetoric. He has denounced the offers of mediation coming from grandstanding Western leaders like Emmanuel Macron, deriding the hypocrisy of the man who has directed the vicious police repressions against the Gilets Jaunes protesters in his own country over the past two years.

Having tossed this bouquet to the Belarus President, I add that the problem he is facing is largely of his own making by his actions and inaction over the past 26 years in power.  The situation is so dire precisely because his regime has suppressed all political opposition, has quashed civil society for the purpose of staying in power.  To be sure, he might have justified this truculence by the good he was doing for his nation by the conservative, statist economic policies he pursued, by refusing to go along with the fads of privatization, by staying close to the country’s main export market, Russia. Indeed, over his time in power, Belarus has made impressive achievements in raising GDP and national prosperity.

Thus, when a transition committee formed in the past week claiming to speak for Belarus society and nominating itself to oversee free elections, Lukashenko could say, with justice, that they represented nobody, and he would not negotiate with them.  The calamity is that there is no one to negotiate with to resolve the crisis, which means it will be resolved only by force and/or persistence by one of the sides, and may drag on for months.

In the interviews alluded to above, I was asked to comment on Lukashenko’s calling out the risks of trouble coming from NATO along the country’s Western borders. As we know, the President used his visit to Grodno a few days ago to visit the Belarus troops that are on maneuvers there at his order. 

In my view, Lukashenko’s attention to the Western borders is reasonable, but not because of any invasion threat from Polish or Lithuanian forces.  Rather, the risk is one of infiltration across that border by those carrying cash or arms for the Opposition in general and for paid professional trouble makers in particular.

Belarus television is interested in the question of possible Polish direction of the disturbances in Belarus. Surely in the public domain, Poland has made clear its support for the removal of Lukashenko.  I have no doubt this is the case.  For Polish President Duda, taking a strong stand in defense of human rights in Belarus puts his government in a favorable light within the European Institutions and distracts from Poland’s notoriety as a black sheep that is dismantling its own independent judiciary and putting in jeopardy rule of law.

Then there is the question of what Russia can and may do as the Belarus scenario unfolds one way or another. Again, from the get-go, The Financial Times took a Realist position as opposed to the ideologically colored position that so much of our media disseminate. It noted that Belarus is squarely in the sphere of Russian influence and better not to put its dominance in question.

Many of our media outlets have looked to Belarus for insights into what may be ahead for Mr. Putin’s regime. They have asked whether the kind of resistance to the Kremlin that arose in Khabarovsk after the removal and arrest of its elected leader from the LDPR party Furgal might not be spread further in Russia with encouragement from the mass protests in Belarus.

In my view such contagion is improbable, because there are fundamental differences in the way the Belarus “regime” and the Russian “regime” operate vis-à-vis their electorates and civil society more generally.  This is overlooked by so many of our media because they are willingly blind to the meaning of the Duma parties. In Russia 20% or more of the electorate belongs to the Communist Party.  Fifteen percent or more are supporters of Zhirinovsky’s nationalist LDPR. 

Even Vladimir Putin showed in his answer to a journalist’s question a couple of months ago that he did not quite fathom that the LDPR is a party that exists outside the persona of Mr. Zhirinovsky and will likely continue to exist after he leaves the scene. It is not to be compared with the movements of people like Navalny or Nemtsov, who were, are nothing more than lightning rods for popular frustration, without clearly defined party policies. The Furgal affair has driven this fact home: the entire Far East has high levels of support for the LDPR for reasons which may well have to do with their policy stands, not just personal popularity of individuals.

The net result of the foregoing is that if there were to be serious abuses in elections like those in 2011 in Russia or in Belarus today, the Kremlin would easily find an Opposition to negotiate with, whereas Mr. Lukashenko finds himself at the center of a political desert that he himself created.

These, I believe, are strong reasons for Vladimir Putin to go back to his courting the Opposition parties as he did back in January during his state of the nation address to the legislature.  The ambitions of Speaker of the Duma Volodin to play dirty and to monopolize the political stage for the United Russia party works against a peaceful transfer of power in the future and so is against the national interest.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

Roads not taken:  ITT’s offer of frozen meals for the Soviet school lunch program 14 June 1978, Moscow 2.30-3.45 Meeting at the Ministry of Meat and Dairy with Deputy Minister Kroha presiding, Savchenko from the Meat Institute, the director of the experimental frozen food factory in Moscow (with production of 20,000 meals per shift or one-quarter of the Morton plant in Crozet, Virginia , plus protocol officers Syroezhkin and Bessonov. For ITT: Georges, Herbert, Luigi.  After a word of introduction by Georges, I do the entire presentation: film slides and brief talk. There are a number of technical questions – we discuss plate/tunnel freezers, temperature of storage, freezing time, whether ordinary gas ovens or some special oven like infrared or microwave is necessary.  They show considerable interest in the production speed– see the film twice for this purpose. Are really convinced that given this speed the work is truly highly automated, and are very impressed when I say that direct labor costs in production are only 7%. They ask about the school lunch program – particularly like the idea of feeding 500 persons this way. Kroha sees application for long distance trains, Aeroflot, shops, for major cities like Moscow, Leningrad, etc. Says that they are less interested in chickens, more interested in meatballs, ground meat, combination meat products, hot dogs. I mention that the patties are extended to 25% with soy and they seek more information – is this isolate?  (yes, Purina 500E). Kroha and Savchenko are especially warm to me; Tsygalnitzky generously tosses bouquet, explaining that the food plant was outside their area of activity, at the same time makes it clear that the point of contact for the future is their Country Manager, Luigi. We ask their impressions of the Morton food samples I delivered. Kroha says very good products – that they were especially impressed by the doughnuts, pastries which were so fresh and tasty upon defrosting. We ask about seminar – Kroha agrees to October/November schedule, says they can have 100 present (how many do you wish?). Evidently prefer to use the Trade Council as venue. Says they will take it upon themselves to bring the Food Ministry people to participate. Says to work closely with Syroezhkin ‘who reports directly to me.’ Feeling upon leaving very positive: clear what is to be done now. It is incumbent on the company to bring to the seminar not only a technical presentation but rudimentary commercial proposal which should be twofold: 1) sample project including separate pricing school lunch, dinner and confectionary (donut) lines. This either cut to suit Russians or reproducing exactly what they have in Crozet or Russelville. Show price for equipment and technology – all just for orientation. Not to include building, training, freight, supervision or installation – just price to do it as if in the USA. 2) project sales of product – to test market acceptance, e.g. to supply school or hospital in Moscow for 1 year.  Technical presentations: might focus on product development, considerations underlying the food technology; also nutritional considerations in US school lunch program; some information on school lunch implementation.  Should tell of company’s projects abroad:  Nigeria licensing of bakeries, Egypt, school lunch sales in Mideast and Japan, supply to US Army, etc. Georges seems satisfied with the results. Herbert had hoped for request on proposal. All see great deal of work ahead that Morton staff is ill-prepared to do and that exceeds their usual role. In the evening I join Luigi and Herbert for dinner at George’s apartment, 3^rd floor of the Metropole Hotel. Marvelous museum piece, with 4 plaster/marble columns, large formal dining table at center of the room, television and lounging alcove to the left and sleeping alcove behind curtains to the right. Unretouched mid-19^th century, only concession to our era being a Japanese air conditioner and color television. The occasion of our repast is the transmission of the FRG/Italy soccer match from Argentina, where World Cup match is proceeding. Dinner chat affable, roams.  Georges calls himself insistently French, while probing the background of others. Luigi is an Italian stationed in Austria. Herbert is of Czech descent; though he speaks 5 languages, Czech is not among them. He grew up in Italy, moved to Sweden in childhood. All share lively humor, zest for life, politically acute minds. Take great pleasure in the very international status of the company and personal lives. The game is a marvelous excuse for national jokes, for venting their hyperactive wits. I leave with a feeling of well-being and fraternity that has overcome even the depression of two days ago over the arrest of the International Harvester representative. This good-humored sophistication is a real delight – camaraderie that leaves the feeling it’s very good to be alive; all the while the chain of authority is not forgotten. ©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020 [Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]

Death throes of détente, June-July 1978

First seizure, Tuesday, 13 June 1978, Moscow

I visit the U.S. Commercial Office, pick up telexes. Office Director Farrand calls me and one other aside to tell about yesterday’s worrisome incident: the unexplained arrest of an International Harvester representative, who was taken from his car in downtown Moscow and has been held incommunicado despite embassy protests. Clearly retaliation for the arrest of Soviet commercial agents in New Jersey two weeks ago. Very significant, they are turning the screws. The alarm I read on Anatoly Yarilov’s face at our last luncheon in New York was quite correct: their people really were shaken by detention of persons not protected by diplomatic immunity and now we are going to feel the heat.

How well justified was my visceral foreboding; indeed, Chris’s [Purina] question about how Mr. Brzezinski’s behavior was affecting business was well placed. The impossible has finally occurred: they are touching businessmen; and the fact that they have started with IH, which has been here so long and was one of the pioneers of the Nixon policy was carefully considered. They have stepped on the tail of a firm which they hope will yell loudly at Washington to proceed more cautiously.

In the midst of this horror, our unknowing tourists complain at the Rossiya Hotel about poor service, that just the caviar they seek is not available, that the soup is cold!  And communications personnel bitch that the export control board drags its feet on their high technology orders! 

How did the Cold War begin?  As witnesses to its re-emergence we cannot doubt its ways. The wild language, uncompromising stance of Mr. Brzezinski has helped immeasurably. The other side has done its part in overt adventurism. And we are hissing at one another all over again. 

Dear Henry, now all that you built from the China Sea to Central Europe is coming undone and the culpability of shallow personalities and dilettantes in foreign policy is clear enough. The repugnant behavior of the other side is obvious, but that was always there. Adventurism in Africa! Well, since when has fishing in muddy waters been excluded? Were the meetings in Moscow when we bombed Hanoi not proof enough that peace can endure if there is a deep enough commitment to that cause?  There is a point where recriminations so spoil the atmosphere that the exchange of charges becomes self-generating, sustaining a vicious cycle of deteriorating relations and frustration.

Feeling rather defeated, I go to the ITT office for lunch – pass along the ill-tidings to Georges, who tries to show no emotion, but appears to know, admits that he too has known paranoia.  We are served a very elegant lunch, but the mood is subdued. 

A word about the new office within Brown&Root : about three other companies share this half-floor which Brown & Root has leased – each with one room office, each will have own telex, dining room for entertaining guests. The fact is that ITT has never officially applied for accreditation, because the process would take several years just for the company to resolve to take that step.

The New York Times, 14 July 1978

“President Deplores the Russian Trials as Blow to Liberty. House also condemns them. White House Reported Reviewing Exchange Plans With View to Cutting Some Off,” by Martin Tolchin. 13 July 1978

President Carter condemned the trials of Anatoly B. Shcharansky and other Soviet dissidents today as ‘an attack on every human being who lives in the world who believes in basic human freedom and is willing to speak for these freedoms or fight for them.’

A senior White House aide said that the Administration was reviewing all trade, technological and scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union, with a view toward ending those most beneficial to Moscow.

There is a growing debate within the Administration over whether the United States should cancel export deals with Moscow in retaliation for the trials, and an aide to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the President’s national security adviser, sought to advance the idea by urging Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, to raise the matter publicly.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com]

Diary entry, visit to Leningrad on invitation visa from Vladimir Illarionovich Zalesov, July 1987

17 July – Helsinki to Leningrad by train

The Soviet train is waiting. Alongside are Finnish trains bearing on their sides some warning about AIDS. The Soviet train has 7cars, 300 passengers –mostly American teenagers taking part in a People to People exchange program. Alone in the compartment, we are joined at last minute by two quiet Norwegians. As the train pulls out of the station, we sit down in the dining car. A very Soviet menu of sturgeon fish soup, then отбивное мясо or fried sturgeon for the main course (tiny, greasy), with nondescript Georgian wine by the glass and Nescafe in an expresso cup. Service is friendly and efficient – and the only irritant is that the foreigners ignore the non-smoking signs and light up, nearly every one. 

Finnish landscape – the alternating bright yellow alfalfa and green pastures with pine and birch forests – is pretty if one and the same. After three and a half hours, we reach the Soviet frontier. We stop for 20 minutes at the Finnish border town, then enter no man’s land, where Soviet customs officials board and start their detailed search. Our neighbors have, as it turns out, a religious bent and the officer finds 15 Russian language bibles in one of their bags. Then the hunt begins. Our compartment is thoroughly investigated. However, the inspection is perfunctory with us after going through my suitcase. He asks if we have gifts and I point out the cassette recorder we have for Vladimir. If that is all, he says, it’s all right. His expression is to say: ‘that’s the least you can bring your father on an invitation visa.’

The train crawls along, windows are sealed and despite the low air temperature, it quickly becomes unbearably stuffy in the train. Time starts to go very slowly as well. The landscape becomes still more monotonous and dizzying low of pine and birch trees, many of which appear to be dying from some pollution or another.

Finally we reach Vyborg, where the train stops from 18.40 to 19.00. Larisa and I leave the train and pass through the station to the street and then to the lake. The town looks neat, cared for, with well-trimmed trees adorning the shore. However, the people in the street waiting for the bus are so poorly dressed – look like the 1950s. And the buses themselves, those pitiful local buses made in L’vov, look like they were hand riveted in someone’s back yard. Here is where Larisa’s uncle Misha lives. We may look him up on the way out.

From Vyborg to Leningrad we pass through very poor and miserable region till we reach the near suburbs of the city at Repino and things improve with dacha territory. The coastal road, which I remember from excursions to the Zelenogorsk country house of the U.S. consul  in 1972, is in good shape. As we approach Leningrad’s Finland Station,  it all looks so pitiful, depressing.

Volodya is waiting for us on the platform. We are only 15 minutes late but he is in horror that we have been so delayed. The man evidently has been in an anxious state for more than a month awaiting this visit.

On the way to the house, we learn that our arrival in mid-July has certain liabilities – many of Larisa’s friends have already left town or are about to leave for vacation. All the theaters are closed, including the ballet.

Volodya pulls our heavy bags, pushes us to the head of the taxi queue over shouts of those waiting and we fear he will have his stroke here and now. The trunk of the car, already half filled by liquefied gas tank, accommodates only part of our luggage. Volodya sits in front, sharing his seat with Alexa’s suitcase. We carry hand luggage on our knees. The rattle-trap Volga jumps and bumps along the streets, reaching Vasilevsky Ostrov at last. Chetvertaya liniya, dom 59 – we stop before the garbage barrels, the local landmark. Enter the courtyard, which looks like an excavation site as a crew have dug up little water pipes to insulate them. We walk along planks, over trenches to Volodya’s entrance, then up 4 flights of stairs. Paint is peeling off the walls. By U.S. standards, it’s a regular slum tenement. Apartment 30. 

Double doors. Into the corridor. Living room is first to the left, followed by bedroom and kitchen on the left, WC and bath at the end. It’s about as I remember it, perhaps larger and better decorated. Wallpaper may be fresher. Stuffed penguin sits atop a bookcase in the corridor, a tortoise shell on the wall of the living room, where there is also a wall-mounted display case of corals and two Indonesian paintings on wood, two dark wood sculptured faces on the wall. In the living room and bedroom, there are well hung carpets and the impression generally is of layer upon layer of coverings on the walls and floors.

His apartment is like a ship’s cabin – every inch has been put to use. The kitchen also has been ‘built in’ in the Russian manner – with boards or planks. The stove is grimy. The fridge is an ancient monster. The only new item is the Nova Miniwash we gave him last November. Plates and silver are all mismatched, remnants. Larisa and I take a brief walk outside, in the twilight of White Nights; it is still unseasonably cold.

Saturday, 19 July 1987  Leningrad

We all rise very late. After an enormous breakfast consisting of sausage and cheese, rich leftovers from last night’s supper and boiled coffee, we go into town. It is a bright but cool day, with temperature in the 16 – 18 degree C range.  Together with Volodya we go in search of police for registration (local OVIR is closed today). Then we go looking for the валютный гастроном, which was situated at the start of Nevsky Prospekt, near Herzen street but now is closed, with references to other non-existent addresses. We are finally sent to the Beryozka department store near Hotel Pribaltiiskaya, where the food section, consisting mainly of liquor, tea, chocolate, coffee is closed for inventory. So we have to settle for the Hotel’s Beryozka where he unloads $120 to stock up on liquor and I get cigarettes for taxi drivers. In a word, there is nothing to buy for cash. No fresh food at all, only Danish canned ham and sodas. There are video cassette recorders, color televisions and hair dryers in the electrical goods section of the department store. But refrigerators or miniwash machines, such as we saw with Volodya in the Vneshposyltorg shop near the house this morning on the Makarova Embankment are open only for sales in ruble certificates that are available to Soviets who have worked abroad. A Soviet with dollars might as well have play money, for all it is worth to him. The only new thing in the system is that the bulldogs are at rest – there is no apparent effort to keep ordinary Soviets away from the certificate stores. And the closed shops generally are being cut back. The валютный гастроном in Moscow at the Mezhdunarodnaya complex was closed for alleged corruption and the same happened here in Leningrad – when they will reopen no one can say.

 Sunday, 26 July 1987   Leningrad

Start the day with a jog around the stadium. Larisa joins in. Then the usual heavy breakfast of oatmeal and boiled coffee.

Alexa has been spending the past several nights at Valya’s recovering from bug bites. Her first words in Russian now are :  клопы и комары. I pick her up from Valya and walk her and Vlad down to the Neva embankment so they can watch the official part of today’s Navy Day exercises. Per Alexa’s request, Vlad wears his uniform, heavily bedecked in medals. I photograph them both by the Sphinx. They return some 40 minutes later having watched the brass in a cutter salute the ships parked in the river. At noon the 4 of us take a taxi to the Metro stop Gorkovskaya to meet Valya. It is here, she says, that on weekends for the past few months young professional artists have gathered to sell paintings directly to the public. Nothing today, though (we later learn that the market has moved to another location). We next take the metro out to the apartment of the Zotovs for a name-day party.  Besides us four, there are the old architecture friends of the Zotovs. We start up a conversation with this couple straight away. The wife, with henna-dyed hair, has a very ‘Soviet’ Russian face, matronly build. He has sleepy Jewish face. Their marriage came evidently in mid-life as each has their own grown children – all, it seems, living abroad. He came from Riga, where he was a top architect. She has a daughter living in Slovenia, in a small town near Maribor, married to a local party boss. They both have visited there several times, say they were tempted to cross over into Austria to have a look, or to Italy. I say they must go to Venice by boat from Istria next time. His sons are living in the States. One is a very successful artist who gets commissions to travel around the world; the other is a furniture restorer in Boston, whom by weird coincidence, we may have met at the store of Lanska when we were in Back Bay last September. I take the Polaroid and all are stunned and delighted to have photos. 

We have brought Spanish white wine which Larisa imported from Poland and this is greatly appreciated.  On both points, we had resisted Vlad and it is a good thing. Only pity is we didn’t take some whisky, because Zotov would love to try it –never has. This get-together has a pall of sadness. Though Larisa flares up into heated dispute with Katya over Reagan, this subsides quickly as it starts. In the kitchen, Larisa tells Katya of the details of [her mother] Lydia’s death and burial, then at the table Katya offers a toast to her memory, which even Vlad reluctantly drinks to. 

All these crows are dying off. Katya tells Larisa most of their circle of architects has gone. Zotov himself looks a weak and old man – doubtful we will ever meet again. But he is lively today – puts favorite records on the record player. He recites his own seditious poems from 1937. He is enjoying having lived long enough to witness the unmasking of Stalin. Our gift digital watches and alarm clocks were received with gratitude – I put them in running order.

None wants to believe that the unmasking should go further than Stalin. It’s unthinkable anyone would attack Lenin, take the crimes back to his door. They have read Solzhenitsyn but this aspect of his work has not registered. They have read Дети Арбата about Stalin’s murder of Kirov and all are overjoyed. All have seen Покаяние. All read the papers, Огонек, Комсомольская Правда. The real action is going on in Moscow.

The meal itself is classic Russian: start with red caviar sandwiches. Table is set with cold perch, sliced roast beef, radish salad, potato salad, cabbage filled pies. There is Armenian cognac and a carafe of grape juice. No main course, instead straight to splendid dessert of a rich torte and tea with lemon. The party turns best with the tea – when everyone is relaxed, sated, and eager to talk. We talk about religion, about how the Church is making a come-back. Larisa went this morning to a service at the church where she had gone once upon a time with Lydia Danilovna. The choir was excellent, a tenor from the Mariinsky Theater. There is talk of restoring some churches to religious use. Even Katya, the Bolshevik warms up to the religious talk – says how church weddings now are shown on television, in films.

The couple of architects remain interesting for us. They let slights roll off their back. They have seen it all and survived it all.

In the evening we go out to see Lena, another old friend of Larisa’s from the geology days. She has just moved into an apartment in the harbor on Vasilevsky. It’s raining as we arrive in this dim and desolate part of town. I wonder how in hell we will get out. We climb to the 4^th floor – past pails of smelly garbage. A thin blond man in his early 30s opens the door and beckons us inside. There are boxes and disorder. We go straight to the little kitchen, where Seryozha prepares tea and instant coffee. He is Lena’s son by her first marriage – has returned after marrying a Bulgarian and spending several years in Sofia. Left wife and child for reasons we don’t know and now works at the Mining Institute as a professor while living with mom and half-sister. He is attractive – a very Russian guy, classic интеллигент. He is related to Tolya in Moscow , who came up recently to join a celebration for passing the кандидат degree. About life in Bulgaria Seryozha is not a great enthusiast – saw Sofia as a provincial hole. Agrees with me that the only solidly built building in Varna is the Roman ruins. Says the place to see is Veliki Trnovo. Says Bulgarian feelings about Russia are ambivalent; one shouldn’t take their apparent love and loyalty at face value: see the rubbish they ship to Russia in two-way trade. A level-headed, attractive guy. Slim, athletic.

The apartment is a complete slum. I pretend not to notice the bedbug like insects climbing the walls. The pride of their possessions is the library – 100 packing boxes containing perhaps several thousand volumes. The furniture is dark, heavy and 19^th century Russian.

Lena walks in. Heavy set, with a broad face. Thin, stringy dyed black hair, grandmotherly look. She has changed so much that Larisa at first scarcely recognizes her.

I try to be controversial, to draw them out. I say how there are no standards here any more. In Poland the artisan, craft goods can be beautiful even if industrial goods are ugly. Here, too, all which comes from factories is shoddy, ugly to behold. The only models of refinement and taste are from tsarist times. Why do they at once revile and at the same time lovingly preserve this. Our hosts are speechless. I give them my anti-museum talk: how museums are cemeteries for art, removing fine arts from the milieu in applied arts, decoration, furniture, fashion, amidst which they were created and placing them in a sterile void. I explain what is being done these days at Versailles to break up groups, to create spectacles outdoors for their amusement and so to spare the place unnecessary traffic of bored and ignorant visitors. Only when I get to say how we were amazed to see how the Hermitage has so few guards and how every fool can approach paintings and lean all over Empire furniture – only then do they begin to react.

Lena works as a guide and knows very well the level of these visitors: are the statues of angels her life? The talk become lively on the subject of Gorbachev and perestroika. It’s amazing to read the paper these days. Talk of Stolypin has disappeared, but there is nearly complete rehabilitation of Bukharin.  Lena and Seryozha have flattering words for Deti Arbata, for Pokayanie, for Moi Drug Ivan Lapshin. See the revival of the Church. Church hierarchs are shown on televised events.  Lena: Perestroika because the economy is at a critical point. The idea is to revive NEP. The pressure of the intelligentsia for democratization is at last being heeded. Seryozha: dissidents and intelligentsia have nothing to do with de-Stalinization. It is Gorbachev’s policy in order to put his team firmly in power, nothing more. Leningrad is a very conservative backwater even after the departure of Romanov. The local party boss continues to be obstructionist. Local press is drab compared to Moscow papers and journals.  The multi-candidate elections confused people.  The old-timers refused to ballot secretly: won’t the loser be offended? Though dissidents have been freed, the amnesty has not benefited nationalists and religious internees. Now the hot issue is the Tatars. Regarding farms: all talk now is on re-creating the peasant farm, i.e. the хутор, turning over cattle to private hands. The bureaucrats are in dismay. When the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Food Industry were merged to form the Ministry of Food Complexes, there was a wholesale review of the bureaucrats’ credentials and removal of persons who do not hold diplomas. Reportedly the whole Leningrad KGB was fired, half of Moscow’s. One shouldn’t worry about the chaps, though, because all found new nests in local administrations and industry. Bribery and corruption had reached gigantic proportions: all 3 cotton republics were completely rotten, withhundreds of millions of rubles of product diverted. The scoff-laws get around the ‘dry law’ today by stealing industrial spirit – see the weak liquor. Glasnost means all of society’s ills are now coming into the open: drugs, prostitution.

Lena:  our industry in Leningrad brings only pollution and financial losses. The town should be turned over to tourism. Architects are at a loss over what to do with the big 12 room apartments in old buildings. By law families can receive no more than 1 room per person even if they buy in a cooperative building. How to get around this?  Meanwhile restoration work on Old Petersburg proceeds at a snail’s pace, falling behind the decay. No money for investment, no sense of what to do with the old buildings now that communal flats are no longer acceptable to the population. How can the policy of real incentives for economic performance be put into effect when such an important area as lodgings is in the hands of levelers? 

We talk about Alcoholics Anonymous, which was greeted for the first time with interest here, about other questions, about everything except AIDS.  It’s the only discussion we’ve had in this city which didn’t in one way or another touch that problem.

We talk about nuclear power and Chernobyl. Seryozha mentions the much worse calamity in the 1950s in the Urals when a nuclear dump entered a chain reaction. Chernobyl itself is an example of wanton disregard for the safety of people by the authorities. Fire brigades were sent to the scene wearing no protection. Volunteers were sent to a certain death. The capping with sandbags was entirely unnecessary. Now the ‘clean-up’ is coming at vast cost – and is more for the sake of Public Relations than anything else. It would be preferable to simply declare a dead zone for 30 years and wait. I mention what our Poles found in Kiev: the contaminated furniture, the need to bring in food from Kishinev. This is news to them.

On museums:  there were so few guards not because the administration is easy going but because there is no allocation.

On Afghanistan:  mothers are terribly afraid for their sons. However, the boys themselves seek adventure there and fast track military careers for officers. Move to head of the queue for cars and apartments when they return. Veterans of Afghanistan get the same privileges as WWII veterans.

Lena opens a tin of sprats, puts out Edam cheese and Roquefort. We refill the tea and coffee cups. Talk goes on till 3.30 am.  Daughter, half-sister to Seryozha by Lena’s second husband, the poet, who died 5 years ago, joins us. She is a student at the philology faculty at the university, but her real passion is horse riding. She holds a master of sport title as an equestrienne, won first prize at a jumping competition in Sestroretsk. She spends at least two hours a day in the stables; she trained the horse from the start as a colt. Saddles are the weak point in equipment – only one factory exists in Moscow. Her group takes 90 minute promenades starting at 7.30 am, but do the beach only off season.

Seryozha himself has put in walls, reorganized the inner space of this rather large apartment to give greater privacy. Has been working since December. He moved  books and furniture with friends using a rented truck without laborers in order to avoid pilferage.

At 3.30 am we walk out into the drizzle. To our surprise we easily catch a taxi several blocks away. Crawl into bed at 4am dazed and exhausted.

Monday, 27 July 1987, Leningrad

Heavy rain and cold, perhaps 8 degrees C. No taxis to be found, of course, especially when you follow Vladimir’s idea of catching one at an official taxi stand.

We rise late, leave the house at half past 10.

I join Larisa at [university professor] Yekaterina Belokon’s communal flat, which is situated just around the corner from Zhelyabova and the Evropeiskaya. She has lived in this bel-etage apartment for the past 40 years. A wreck of a building, but there is a hint of past pre-revolutionary glory in the half-coffered ceilings. Her room is about 25 square meters – there are several large wardrobes and a table. The typewriter stands on a pedestal. Belokon lets me in by the back entry which I mistakenly take. We pass through the kitchen and down the corridor to her nest. She is agile and sexless – has strong, masculine face, walks energetically. Has a small but firm body. She is nearly 90, somewhat hard of hearing and with vision impaired by cataracts. As I sit down next to Larisa, she gives a very warm, carefully composed greeting. At our departure she urges us to cherish one another, to keep clear consciences. Surprising spirituality and lively mind. She still walks several miles a day and until last year took grueling bus trips across Russia for vacation. She now has stopped, because she fears being a burden to others. Says very confidentially to us, on pledge that we will not repeat it to others – so as not to endanger those who are close to her: there will be a буря, a storm, here if the reforms don’t go through. The shortcomings of the system have reached a critical point. Then she swings into a monologue on 1907-08, how she lost her father to the terrorist movement – he died of TB in prison transfer, a kind of self-willed death to save his wife and family from further persecution. Father had entered the conspiratorial SR’s, because he had witnessed solders’ reprisals against the peasants. He was imprisoned, released, then re-imprisoned after running some revolutionaries to freedom.

He was betrayed by Azov, the police informer while a member of the SR executive committee and so had unwittingly given away colleagues. Then she skips to her other passion – the Siege of Leningrad. Relates with burning pride how even in the depths of misery Leningraders had not cut down the trees in the Summer Garden. How she had offered warmth to a frozen visitor by setting afire her copy of Pushkin. Talks about the defense at…about Zhdanov’s stupid and criminal leadership, which cost so many lives needlessly. How all the food stores had been concentrated so that German precision bombing in one raid left the defenders completely without food stocks. Tells how in the good old days they were so terrorized that only slept peacefully in their beds on May 1, November 7 and New Year’s, when no arrests would be made. About the limits of Glasnost: officially today the regime plays down the siege of Leningrad because of the huge losses and wanton waste of human life.

I interrupt her extended monologue to say that people are different everywhere and we do have different mores and concerns, that while we try to be open-minded, we do have to make judgments also. Each generation has to fight for justice and truth and one generation cannot do this for all time or ensure its successors from evil, for evil comes from within us. I say the crimes of the siege are not the end of it, that there have been many, as recently as Chernobyl, and that any of these gross crimes could have been sufficient grounds to overturn the government in a normal state. It’s unclear how much of my speech reaches her, but she seems a bit hurt.  We change the subject. She presents recent signed photos for Larisa. Says she hopes to hold on for another couple of years. We exchange presents , give her a folding umbrella which pleases her especially and a digital watch.

Belokon’s gravely voice is even, steady. Her words are gentle, coming from another age. There is kindness and a certain elegance here. Only her revelations are rather empty. Despite herself, she is still terrorized by the shadow of Stalin.

At the door Belokon assures us that she will take care of herself and when she feels she no longer can do so, she will just die, she will not linger. We are deeply affected as we step out into the bright street.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]

Diary entry, June 1984 – Poznan Fair

Steady drizzle. My shoes are drying in a corner of my cell at the Hotel Mercury. Luigi promised a bordello and instead a prison was what I got. A dusty carpet on the floor. A miserable view of a busy, noisy traffic intersection below my window. Girls – none, save the one semiprofessional with whom I struck up a conversation this afternoon out of deathly boredom. When have I slept so much? Hard to remember. If I had a slight weakness for drink, I would be dead drunk here all the time.

My appetite has been voracious. The sight of the niggardly portions at all restaurants alone makes me vulpine. There is that hidden fear that if I do not stuff myself to satiety, I may go hungry next meal. The luxury category guest is not spared that gnawing worry here.

The city is ugly. All right, I concede that the Old Market square is a pretty sight, but the thought that it is all a make believe reconstruction of a past destroyed utterly during the war spoils my enjoyment.

The goods in the stores are ugly. The people look mostly ugly. Men are boorish, women are unadorned, plain. The pushing and shoving of the crowds is hideous. I can think of no greater mundane misery than to be stuck here in Poznan for any length of time above one day. Of course, there are always exceptional miseries which are outside the competition.

Warsaw, June 17, 1984 – Election Day

Posters in many shop windows with electoral lists. Newspapers full of news of electoral preparations. Yesterday in Kielce I was unable to buy wine in the Kielce Pewex because all liquor sales have been suspended in anticipation of election day. Last night at the Victoria the night club was closed and the restaurant could offer no liquor for the same reason.

And what of the people? Despair, complete despair. They had hopes that government would make available foodstuffs or consumer goods to brighten the mood, but nothing was delivered. In Kielce Lydia Danilovna’s friend Pani Danusja and her husband, who are well to do, spent six and a half hours in line at a meat store to get their meat quota against coupons. From 4.30 in the morning, the line formed. The couple took turns. But as pani Chrystina said in disgust: ‘it is macabre.’ Christina has returned two days ago from the F.R.G. where she spent a month with relatives near Braunschweig hoping to pick up something in inheritance from an aunt who recently passed away. She got only four suitcases full of old rubbish; the house and property went to nearer kin. Pani Christina is chastened, a bit like a beaten dog. The poor are not much loved. And even she came back with the proper appreciation of the way things stand: ‘There (in Germany) people live and grow; here we vegetate. How are we supposed to raise healthy children in these conditions?’ Deep feeling of disgust, that things are not getting better, perhaps are getting worse.

But Lydia Danilovna looks well. She has some optimism….She reads me her latest poem……In general I should pick up something, anything for her each time at that bookstore [in Warsaw]. The woman desperately needs some distraction, entertainment. The whole country is bored out of its mind.  The slightest entertainment is enjoyed for all it is worth. No wonder one becomes a voracious reader…

The feeling of doom and gloom is heightened by the weather, which has been as miserable as in Brussels. Overcast, rainy day after rainy day.

The only striking thing about Poznan is the monument to the uprisings. Two immense monolith crosses, about 30 meters high, bound together by a large symbolic iron chain, like the crown of thorns. On the first pillar is marked only 1956, the revolution that brought Gomulka to power. On the second is a column of dates from 1960 to 1980. The monument has pride of place on a major intersection at the start of the park that runs parallel to the railway line. Nearby is a massive official monument to Mickiewicz. There are beacons to illumine the monument at night. Before it lies a bed of fresh cut flowers. The traces of Solidarity which even this regime does not dare to stamp out.

The American tourists are arriving in force. At Hotel Victoria in Warsaw, a large group has a bus outside the hotel with the sign “Happy Louie – Poland tours.”  All seem to be Polish speaking. At the cashier’s desk a couple in their late 50s, early 60s change $100 bills into zloty. (don’t they know about the black market?).  At the Forum during lunch Friday two tables away are three Polish-American teenage girls with the Polish boyfriend of one. Kids straight out of suburbia. …They don’t look like university exchanges. ..

The Happy Louie group at the Forum are all wearing bright yellow pins (3 inch diameter) with the legend in English and Polish “Have a nice day”. Grotesque! Who in hell has a nice day in Poland?

On the way out to the airport Wojciech tells me he may be too busy today to go to the polls. ‘It’s not a very important election, just for the local administration. Just a test.’  He enjoys his irony.

The Poznan Fair itself was unexpectedly boring, low-key. ..

We have only one semi-interesting business meeting with rep of UNITRA/DIORA factory who need modern style foil-type keyboard switches for front panels of stereo component systems, of which they make 40k sets a year.

On the Polish side, the only interesting exhibition is by Coopexim, with traditional Christmas tree decorations, wicker baskets and furniture, rocking horses, children’s carnival costumes and leather saddles.

The Poles’ problem is that they understand exactly what they have and what they don’t have.  And that embitters them, so that whereas Russians can have less, they are content. Poles have more and they are wretched. Their frame of reference is the West and their past freedom. They have traveled, they have relatives in the West. They are not brain-washed like the Russians. They know how to interpret life in the West when they are there. True, Soviets do not travel under normal conditions: they are shepherded by chaperones who police them and frustrate ‘erroneous’ conclusions about what is seen. ….

It is consciousness of his state which makes the Poles so miserable. Russians are blissful in their ignorance and not wanting to know.

Even in Kielce the foreigners are felt. When I checked into the Hotel Centralny Lysa Gora, opposite the train station, I came without a reservation, trudging with my two suitcases. The receptionist looked at me, as upon a camel, I thought. The first white man in decades. But no..[I was wrong]

The only place in Poland where you can feel some sense of human dignity is in concert halls…and the churches, which are open to all without queuing. No wonder the churches are full. They alone work as in the good old days. Theater, diversion in a country that is bored out of its mind.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up in now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble, and http://www.bol.com.]