A Ringside Seat at the Collapse

A RINGSIDE SEAT AT THE COLLAPSE

By Barney Quick

This appeared in the Spring 1991 issue of SIGMA, an obscure quarterly journal of political and cultural opinion. It's about a trip I took to Russia (then part of the USSR) under the auspices of the American Center for International Leadership.

NOVGOROD - Upon our early-morning arrival, we were greeted by two stock types we were to see many times during our sojourn: the snappily attractive young lady translator and the bright young bureaucrat man with the ill-fitting suit made of some cheesy fabric. These two particular players represented the local Komsomol chapter, which was our host for this three-day stint. They worked out some preliminary logistics with Katya, the translator who had come with us on the train from Moscow and would accompany our commission for the entire two weeks, and Dmitri, my economist friend whom I had known for some time and who had been to my home in Indiana.

After settling into our Komsomol-owned hotel, a place resembling a half-finished college dorm and sporting no carpet or wall art and consequently having cavernous acoustics, we went up the street to a characteristically creepy little restaurant called Volhov for a breakfast of yogurt, eggs, sausage, cucumbers and tomatoes. The rest of the dining room's clientele didn't look particularly foreign; I wondered how they rated fancy meat and veggies.

About a block away was Komsomol headquarters, where we had our first "meeting." After ascending five flights of stairs and seating ourselves in a drab little conference room, notebooks and pens at the ready, Yuri, the slender young man conducting the proceedings, said "Perhaps you are tired from your train ride. Perhaps you should rest a few minutes before we begin." He then turned to confer with some of his associates about who knows what.

Among the Yanks, squirming soon dissolved into throat-clearing and pen-tapping. Finally, the U.S. commission organizer told Dimitri that the Novgorodians would simply have to put some kind of agenda together for us, or three days of thumb-twiddling might turn into some kind of revolutionary activity.

So it was decided that this assemblage of up-and-coming heavy hitters from America's business world would go - sightseeing! Actually, there is a lot of history to be savored in the Novgorod region. I particularly found the bescarved little old babushkas in the cathedrals to be cute as a bug's ear when they would give flash-camera wielders a sound finger wagging.

That night, dinner was the treat of our Komsomol friends. It was another typical state-run restaurant, located in the back of a puzzlingly nondescript building in a hodgepodge neighborhood along the river, decked out in cheap wood paneling. The food, however was exquisite: Chicken Kiev, more fresh veggies, and an endless flow of cognac and vodka. Toast after toast continued even through a cab ride across town to a cooperatively run cafe and a sunlit 1 AM stroll back to the hotel.

The next day found me on a tour of a VCR factory. The plant's products sported a brand name Specter. To my knowledge this Specter wasn't haunting Europe; I never saw one outside the environs where they were being made. The enterprise's director, a beefy, smiley, slap-on-the-back kinda guy named Alexi, showed me a long row of work stations and beamingly explained that it was set up for people he intended to hire the next year.

I found Alexi's description of how the product is marketed and distributed intriguing. Prices are set by the State Committee on Prices, and Specter's controlling body is the Ministry of Electronics. (Alexi would like to see demand determine prices eventually; I think he'd better consider how that compares with the deal he's got now.) The price currently is 1200 rubles. The cost is 980 rubles. So there's a profit, right? Not so fast; don't forget taxes. The Ministry of Electronics buys the VCRs and in turn sends them to stores which are also owned by this ministry.

After the tour we took a company car way out past some little farm villages to a company dacha in the middle of a birch-and-pine forest. There we had a roast pork dinner and a Russian steam bath. I'll not soon forget the experience of being slapped with a bundle of birch twigs by naked Soviet electronics executives.

On our last day in Novgorod, the local Komsomol chapter put on a press conference for us at the offices of the local Party newspaper. The ragtag assemblage of journalists, such as they were, didn't know what to make of us. The questions were mostly along the lines of "Have you signed a lot of joint-venture agreements during your stay in our city?"

SOCHI - This resort on the Black Sea oozes Western decadence. Wealthy Arabs come here to chase girls. Gambling and glitzy discos abound. Intourist, the state travel bureaucracy, owns most of the hotels, which are indeed classy.

It is here that we had our six days of dialogue sessions with our Soviet counterparts. They were an interesting lot; I think most of them were the products of privileged backgrounds. However, they were using their status to pursue interesting projects. Two delightfully roguish young men ran a tomato-paste cooperative that involved paying a premium to state farm managers to harvest surplus crop, to canning factory managers to set up a second shift, and to port authorities in Odessa to get their product shipped to Greece, Italy and Spain. These guys were getting paid in hard currency, most of which they were stashing in Western banks, tax-free.

For the most part, though, the Soviet-side delegates hadn't a clue as to the basic concepts of capitalism, such a the relationship between price and cost, marketing of a product, insurance, etc.

I really savored my opportunity for late-night sessions with Dimitri and other like-minded academics. It was quite clear to me that Party membership was no longer the career enhancer it had been in more stable times. Look for thousands of Dimitri-types to bolt the CPSU at the first sign of a viable alternative.

It was in Sochi that American-side consensus started to build that sweet little Katya was the KGB plant on our commission. We had been told during our briefing in Washington that each commission would have at least one.

MOSCOW - In the Frown Capital of the Universe, we were ensconced in another Komsomol fleabag, the Orlenok ("Eaglet"). The window of my room offered a fine view of the Moscow skyline. However, the autofocus on my camera concentrated on the filmy residue of crud on the glass, precluding any photographic record of this panorama.

We went inside the Kremlin to hear an address by Anatoly Lukyanov, the head of the Supreme Soviet. Lukyanov is an old law-school buddy of Gorbachev's. He basically gave us standard politician's boilerplate; it was rife with stock phrases of the "bridges-of-understanding-between-the-people-of-our-nations" variety. It was clear that this man was a bit behind the curve.

And what of old Splotch-Top himself? Ask anyone, from taxi drivers to economists. Gorbachev is, at best, a transition figure. The midwife of a market economy he is not.

A visit with an official from Inpred, the state import-licensing agency, at the World Trade Center, and executives, both U.S. and Soviet, at a software-licensing joint venture, only served to further drive home the fact that in the final analysis there is no such critter as a Soviet organization truly independent of the government.

One evening, I met Gary Hart at the side door of Spasso House, the U.S. ambassador's residence. I was leaving a reception and he was chatting up some young ladies.

The most poignant symbol of the depth of the crisis gripping this panicked nation can be seen on the hour, every hour, in Red Square. However, it is best taken in at a late hour such as ten, eleven or midnight. I'm speaking of the changing of the guard at Lenin's tomb. On the particular night I witnessed this totalitarian sacrament, the June air was heavy and deathly still. The bells in the nearby tower rang out into the silent void of Red Square. The young soldiers goose-stepped through their paces with chilling precision.

It occurred to me that the statues of V.I. Lenin that are coming down in the outlying republics are only symbols of the U.S.S. R.'s prolonged agony. Until this foul ritual which takes place hourly in the seat of Leninist tyranny occurs no more, all the hoped-for manifestations of liberty and progress that are on the lips of this land's cowed populace will remain tragically out of reach.

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