Notes from the Soviet Underground/Glastroika at Work
Beichman, Arnold
NOTES FROM THE SOVIET UNDERGROUND GLASTROIKA AT WORK T he other day I read a news story 1 headlined "Moscow's Toilet Czar Loses Bonus over Mess." The chief manager of Moscow toilets, V. Prasolov,...
...It's part of the restructuring...
...You never can tell when you'll have to use it...
...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1988...
...The well-dressed man at the head of the table is the deputy editor, Ivan Borisovich Stoolyan...
...Mikhail Antonovich manipulates his abacus --`that's one toilet for 35,000 people...
...The chief manager of Moscow toilets, V. Prasolov, was reprimanded and lost his bonus—but not his job—for allowing the city's 343 public lavatories, serving a population of 12 million people, to fall into an "unspeakable" state...
...So I went down to see some of my friends at the Central Committee to find out what it's all about...
...Somebody is going to have to be dumped off the sled and it's going to be Comrade Prasolov who should have been kicked out of his job years ago 1BOGSAT is a Washington acronym for "Bunch of Guys Sitting Around a Table...
...Do they discuss the implications of such an expose...
...Now there you have a human rights violation...
...Our KGB resident has reported that the toilets in Piccadilly became so awful they had to be closed down, but there are still some in Leicester Square and everybody knows what goes on there...
...Let me tell you why...
...Mayor Koch, you've been warned...
...They make our Moscow toilets look like Raisa's dacha...
...Now interposes the paper's pipe-smoking political writer, Yosif Sergeyevich Intestinov, who speaks in a low tone: "Comrades, on the surface an expose of the Moscow toilet situation may sound like a poor idea...
...It may be messy and smelly but it is an assignment just like any other and it has the support of the Central Committee and the Politburo...
...But I cannot believe that the Central Committee and the Politburo are doing something stupid...
...We've been investigating the toilets in New York, London and Paris and we've got the photographs...
...t this point, the office door opens and in comes the paper's editorin-chief, Nikolai Tikhonovich Krapov...
...As Jean-Paul Sartre used to tell the Americans when they attacked our Motherland, 'What right do you Americans have to condemn Russia for slave labor in Siberia when the masses in the South have outhouses and pellagra?' It was a good question then and today we have the New York subway toilets...
...The Central Committee maintains that it is a human right to have a clean public toilet in a large city...
...What right, we're going to say to the imperialists, do you have to condemn us for violations of human rights when your own citizens don't dare use the toilets in your subways and public squares...
...Whatever we do is never good enough...
...In the first place, who in his right mind would ever use those toilets except for drunks and peasants from places like Kazakhstan...
...And so I fell into a reverie in which the dialogue went something like this: C CENE: Editorial offices, Moskovskaya Pravda, late morning...
...Why should we point out the lack of public toilets in Moscow...
...Let's forget it...
...That's the order from Comrade Gorbachev...
...He is reading from a teletype: "Dear Comrades, you are doing fine work for glasnost and perestroika...
...That expose ran in Moskovskaya Pravda...
...Could such a story start a movement among the people...
...How were the toilets under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko...
...Now we have another job for you to do...
...Comrades, have you ever seen the public toilets in London...
...In fact I didn't like it at all...
...In New York, half the time, according to the KGB, the subway toilets are closed because of flooding...
...When I heard their reasoning, I changed my mind...
...Next, we're going to get those toilets cleaned...
...The Moscow toilet expose is on and I want our best reporters and writers to get involved...
...The Moscow toilets must be cleaned up and the conditions exposed...
...The carafe on the table was empty now, and Comrade Krapov rushed to conclude...
...It's like any other BOGSAT 1setting anywhere...
...Who even knows where they are...
...And then we're going to hold up the photographs and show videotapes of the subway toilets in New York and we're going to demand that the millions and millions of workers who pay a dollar instead of a few kopecks for a single ride get clean toilets...
...Comrades, have you ever seen the New York subway toilets...
...He sits down quietly at the head of the table and for a few moments listens to the discussion...
...We are going to expose the cornmissar of Moscow toilets, Prasolov, and tell him how lucky he is that Stalin isn't around...
...And I began to think of what a gutsy thing Gorbachev's glastroika (glasnost plus perestroika) really is...
...How, I began to wonder, how do the editors decide on what to expose on a given day...
...because for years he's been selling the toilet paper in the black market so that there's no paper in the toilets and the masses have to use the Party press...
...We can't have that . . ." "But Comrade Stoolyan," interjects one of the junior editors, Mikhail Antonovich Latrinev, "it seems to me there are more important matters for us to expose than the Moscow toilet situation...
...He begins: "Comrades, I heard about this assignment from the organs and I must tell you frankly that I didn't think much of it at first...
...Arnold Beichman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...True, on the surface it looks dumb but I'm sure the organs like the Politburo and the KGB and the Central Committee have something in mind that we haven't been told about...
...It's really a ridiculous idea...
...Second, what's the big deal-343 public toilets for 12 million people, that's how much...
...Now, comrades, do you understand...
...He pauses to take a drink of water from a carafe which everybody knows is pure vodka...
...We've been letting out one family a week and do we get any credit...
...Who gets the assignment to investigate the Moscow toilet situation...
...Comrades," he begins anew, "what we have to understand is that we have a problem about human rights with the United States...
...by Arnold Beichman "So we're going to make such a case against the United States they'll be sorry they ever started this human rights nonsense...
Vol. 21 • April 1988 • No. 4
