The Moscow Spectator/Gloom City
Novak, Robert D.
THE MOSCOW SPECTATOR GLOOM CITY by Robert D. Novak I n the dreary winter of 1991, talk of the comeback of hard-line Communism abounded. And in the prototypical modern police state there seemed...
...THE MOSCOW SPECTATOR GLOOM CITY by Robert D. Novak I n the dreary winter of 1991, talk of the comeback of hard-line Communism abounded...
...Compared to what I saw in Moscow and Leningrad, Tbilisi seemedlike Palm Beach...
...The central government's writ in the ancient kingdom of Georgia runs thin...
...Nobody knows what will come of this clash between the first tender buds of democracy and the massive apparatus of repression Gorbachev has at his disposal...
...Whereas until 1989 most everyone was afraid to accept the dollar here, now it is all that anyone wants...
...Censorship on state television has been reimposed...
...Petersburg...
...A democratic opposition exists, with elected legislators denouncing the system, the Bolshevik legacy, and Mikhail Gorbachev...
...The main hope for averting calamity is Gorbachev's chronic indecision...
...In Leningrad, the most Westernized of Russian cities, where I spent three days, citizens are heartsick over the physical deterioration of the place they were hoping would soon again be called St...
...He flinched after the January bloodshed in Vilnius, declining to proceed with the planned military overthrow of the Landsbergis government...
...And in the prototypical modern police state there seemed 'more policemen around than ever...
...Even members of the Soviet parliament complained the militia had become more obstreperous in clearing guests through security...
...The Communist apparatus has spread the word to Western diplomats and news correspondents that the people yearn for the good old days of Brezhnev Khrushchev, and even Stalin...
...Visiting Western journalists are ignored by the omnipresent state security system...
...When we returned to Moscow and did indeed get two hours with Yeltsin, he flatly said yes, there will be civil war if the army tries to enforce Gorbachev's will...
...Drivers and translators I hired wanted cash in dollars, on which they would not pay the 70 percent-plus tax...
...Taxis are hard to hail in Moscow, but private cars will pick you up and take you to your destination for a few dollars in hard cash...
...On the few occasions they've had so far to cast free ballots, the Soviet people have invariably voted down the Communists...
...Policemen stop autos for alleged traffic violations and haggle, in full public view, over the fine, which they try to collect on the spot...
...The non-Communist government of the Georgian republic runs its own show...
...I came here to interview him for a Reader's Digest article and (incidentally) a CNN Evans-Novak broadcast...
...But the Kremlin had not dared to send soldiers to patrol Tbilisi...
...Stores are empty, lines endless, shabbiness and disrepair ubiquitous...
...Nothing is easy in the Soviet Union, and I had to extend my visit five days before I got to see Yeltsin...
...Vitaly Kliuchnikov, owner of one of Moscow's first private restaurants, reflects the unhappy mood here...
...The dollar is the currency of choice in the gray-to-black markets, the only thriving sectors of the Soviet economy...
...The troops he is assigning to patrol the cities are greeted with outrage by the elected soviets (legislatures) in the republics...
...Civil war...
...The result is gloom...
...In Moscow, I spotted only one team of young conscripts accompanied by hardened policemen, but it was a frightening omen...
...The Kremlin has responded by tightening the screws on food and energy...
...The apparatchiks are determined not to join their German, Polish, and Hungarian imitators in oblivion, while the generals fear for their country's superpower status, now that German reunification and the loss of Eastern Europe have been followed by the humiliation of their clients and arms in Baghdad...
...It is demanded by the privately owned restaurants ("cooperatives") and by the Finnairowned Savoy, the one Western-style hotel in Moscow...
...The hotel was so cold that diners wore their overcoats to partake of the limited menu (cabbage soup and meat of an undesignated source—fried...
...Yet a, Westerner who had last visited Moscow three or four years ago would be impressed...
...When the Red Army comes, it will have to be in force...
...1:1 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 41...
...This is manifestly preposterous...
...Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist a television commentator, and the publisher of the Evans and Novak Political Report...
...On retrieving my coat and hat after I'd seen Yeltsin, the checkroom attendant—a typical late-middle-aged babushka—noticed I was carrying his autobiography bearing the Russian president's picture on the dust jacket...
...T his gave me time to spend a week- 1 end in Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia...
...Nonetheless, democratic leaders—mainly intellectuals among whom physicists are preponderant—fret about the "Russian in the street...
...These establishments charge $100 for dinner, $350 for a room—out of sight for Ivan Ivanovich...
...He has expanded his prosperous operation and is about to enter into a joint venture with a German firm...
...Outside Communist ranks, I heard few kind words for the Nobel Peace laureate...
...The solution—universally agreed upon by all proponents of reform—is Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic...
...Gorbachev is moving to save socialism...
...Russians in the street talk freely to foreigners...
...That's our darling," she said...
...The coldest Russian winter in years, with temperatures falling regularly to twenty below, provides an ironic backdrop to the grimness of everyday life...
...He had stiffed us six months ago, simply not showing up at the TV studio for a scheduled interview, but friends said he was sorry and wanted to make amends...
...The Soviet flag is nowhere to be seen, statues of Lenin (not to mention of favorite son Joseph Stalin) have been torn down...
...The hopelessly devalued ruble is both a cause and a symptom of this malaise...
...The night before we spoke, Communist hard-liners hadousted him as chairman of the Kalinin District Soviet, a position he had used to promote more than fifty private businesses in the district...
...Remembering April 9, 1989—when troops mowed down civilians in the Georgian capital—the populace has armed itself to the teeth...
...Yeltsin is their link to the masses, who recognize and admire his rejection of the high life of the high nomenklatura...
...The KGB enlists more and more young men...
...Scarce sausages and a worthless ruble are behind the KGB's crackdown on private enterprises, which are accused of "economic sabotage"—an ominous term recalling the Stalinist terror...
...They declare their desire to make this a "civilized country" after seventy years of "criminal rule...
...I did hear disbelief that the Bush Administration fails to understand that Gorbachev is the problem not the solution...
Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
