Moscow Streetwatch/Hard Times

...Still, the shortages are increasing...

...The ranCathy Young, our regular Soviet Press-watch columnist, is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...

...on a Saturday, there were enough of them to form lines...

...Part of Volodya's skepticism stemmed from a failed attempt (as recently as October, well after the alleged final collapse of Communism) to become a private farmer...

...The way I see it, it's just something for loafers who've got nothing better to do with themselves...

...Even for those who decry this panic-mongering, it is difficult not to succumb to an apocalyptic mood...

...One of my hostesses, a music professor, moaned over two eggs dropped on the kitchen floor and did her best to scoop up the remains into a plastic bag...

...Nowadays, though, even Stalinists are confused...

...Some souvenir sellers on the Arbat pedestrian mall are still furtive about taking dollars, with plainclothesmen \ presumably lurking about...

...W bile headlines in some local papers are trumpeting nothing short of hunger in Moscow, even many of my Russian acquaintances, not at all optimism-prone, chafe at such sensationalism...

...Vending stalls offer such things as Chinese tea at 20 rubles for a pack of twenty teabags (the exchange rate went from 70 to 90 rubles per dollar in the eighteen days I was there...

...Not that the Gorby cutout should be seen as a sign of popularity: a photo with him, explained Boris Pinker, a radical Moscow economist, is of some interest as a curio...

...after months of botched shock therapy, most people will gladly buy whatever they can afford...

...These maiden hymns to Russian capitalism are distinguished by an amateurish quality and a preternaturally majestic tone: against grainy footage of waves crashing against a rock, a voice sounding like that of it Commendatore in the final scene of Don Giovanni thunders, "In these turbulent times, find stability with XYZ Brokerage Compa- n!" y Meanwhile, many state-run stores no longer bother to open, which is at least honest...

...Such things are normal enough in America, but in Moscow, though Batkin was unflappable, they immediately take on an ominous significance...

...I realized I had been among the last to see it alive...

...It is true, as one Moscow radical pointed out to me, that in a time of flux and upheaval, even numerically insignificant groups could have a strong impact on the political process...

...I also spoke to one real live Stalinist (the father, alas, of a former classmate of mine), who reminisced about Gorbachev's overthrow as he sat at a fairly opulent dinner table provided by his better-employed wife (who radiated a bouncy energy and wished the reforms had been launched twenty years earlier so she could have become a businesswoman...

...A drained-looking woman shopper said to no one in particular, "No, it's time to throw these new guys out, too...

...While I stood fingering the rubles in my purse and inwardly debating whether or not it was awkward to offer charity., to a total stranger, she drifted off, looking lost...

...socks, underwear, and pantyhose at 40 to 60 rubles...

...The city that serves as a stage for this theater of the absurd bears traces of the hasty, patchy post-coup drive to rip away the symbols of its Communist past...

...If I am going to work the land, I want real rights as an owner, not hokey rights...

...Afterwards, I asked one of the chief proponents of the Constituent Assembly, St...

...I just wish they'd get better while I'm still alive...

...Other Muscovites still like to trade their coup stories at dinner parties or when talking to someone new ("We heard a rumble and my husband says, `It must be the tanks coming.' I said,`You're crazy...

...At the end of the evening, as he was seeing me off, he said, rather apologetically, "Look, if things are really going to get better, I've got nothing against that...

...Of course, renaming streets would mean changing many more signs...

...When I was interviewing political commentator and activist Leonid Batkin, a wise man of sharp, sardonic wit, the lights suddenly went out in his apartment and in half the building...

...When I mentioned that George Bush had been criticized for not returning from Kennebunkport when news of the coup broke, he responded with unexpected excitement: "Hey, you know—I've got something in common with Bush...

...With private enterprise springing up in the wasteland that was the Soviet economy, Russia is now a textbook case of a society sharply divided into the very rich (often former nomenklatura men and their offspring) and the very poor (about 90 percent of the population, by the latest official estimates...

...In a foodstore a ten-minute metro ride away from the Kremlin, the shelves were quite bare except in the "commercial section," which has unregulated prices...

...when train conductors announce, in their customary cheerful voice, "Next station, Lubyanka," the connotations are chilling...

...A couple of hours later on the plane, I opened the International Herald Tribune and read about the Minsk accord, the official death certificate of the USSR...

...I came to work and I started congratulating everyone," he said, "and they thought I was talking about some church holiday that was on the same day—and I said, No, no, they put an end to all this perestroika nonsense, that's my holiday...

...To top it all off, he has to share a phone line with his next-door neighbors...

...and the 48 The American Spectator February 1992 like...

...The chairman of the selsoviet, or village council, would only let him lease a piece of land—with half of the produce to be turned over to the local government—until such time as the political situation stabilized...

...Of that, there are few if any signs...

...I was out in the country, too, and I didn't bother to come back...

...A middle-aged woman in a worn coat stood for a while eyeing the kielbasa, then sighed wistfully, "Forty-five a kilo...

...And that's to say nothing of people who, by working for foreign companies or in other ways, have hard currency...

...To my surprise, the two fellows taking Polaroids here had a very nice Gorby as well as Mickey Mouse and Goofy—but no Yeltsin...

...I. Lenin...

...How do you want him, live and wrapped up...

...Sallier, a gray-haired lady whose grandmotherly smile masks a keen mind and a spine of steel, acknowledged that it might be difficult...

...Being in his sixties and having survived two heart attacks, he cannot walk to the metro...

...and the sentimental recall weeping at the televised funeral of the three young men who were killed...

...Petersburg politician Marina Sallier, if the weary public could really be mobilized for yet another massive voting campaign...

...Yeltsin's prestige, though in decline, is still relatively high, although my marvelous driver Volodya, a cheerful, middle-aged man of the people, was beginning to sour on the Russian president: "I voted for him,and what has he done for me so far...

...For several hours, there were earnest discussions and debates about the representation of delegates and parties, voting eligibility, and other procedural matters...

...What am I, crazy...

...Yet numerous ads for goods and services such as the rental and sale of apartments, whether in the classified columns or in metro stations, matter-of-factly state, "for SKV," the Russian abbreviation for "freely convertible currency...

...In between is a tiny—though, one must hope, growing—middle class, with ties to the burgeoning private sector or a network of personal connections or one of the few remaining state-sector jobs that provide a decent livelihood...

...With the post-coup euphoria long gone, the only rallies likely to be seen in Moscow these days are those of marginal groups, such as gays and hardline Communists...

...Lord, it looks good...

...the gays, who carried such signs as "The Condom Is the Key to Our Future," taunted the Communists by handing them inflated red condoms...

...When I asked why not, one of the fellows grinned: "Yeltsin...

...but aboveground, the avenue itself still bears the name of Marx, whose monument, too, is still in place...

...By now, that's below average...

...On November 30, the anchor on the Television News Service concluded the late-night 'newscast by noting, "Tomorrow is December I—the first day of what is sure to be a tough, cold, hungry winter...

...An open dairy store on the Arbat, in the heart of Moscow, was so crowded I decided against making my way to the counter to see what was available...

...and so forth...

...One should not forget the stockpiles of food in people's apartments and the food packages distributed at work (some of the budding private employers advertising for help list food, along with medical care, among the fringe benefits...

...Lenin Avenue is there, and so is Komsomol Avenue, though there is no more Komsomol...

...cid smell did not bode any good...

...Turn on the TV in Moscow, and in little time you will see a commercial, either for a Western product (such as Colgate toothpaste, though the purpose of such advertising is beyond me) or, more commonly, for a Russian financial' firm...

...these parties as diverting at best...

...I remembered my Polaroid shot with a Gorby cutout from last year and wanted one with Yeltsin...

...I was shown the spot where they died in the nighttime skirmish with the troops, and given a souvenir to put next to my chunk of the Berlin Wall: a piece of broken glass from one of the trolley-buses used to build the barricades...

...Even the memories of the August coup left him cold ("I don't really care what the guys in charge are called—democrats, or the junta, or whatever, as long as people can have a normal life and no one stops you from making a living...

...This is a very Russian story...

...Among the hottest items now sold on the Arbat are Communist memorabilia: large banners with such logos as THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION...

...Metro station Marx Avenue (Prospekt Marksa) has been changed to the avenue's old name, Hunters' Row (Okhotny Ryad...

...When I mentioned, as we drove across the Kuznetsky Bridge, that I had marched in a massive demonstration on that very route over a year ago, he chortled, "You know something—I never go to any of those demonstrations...

...more tellingly yet, other ads specify, "for rubles...

...Minutes later, she inquired solicitously, "Why aren't you taking any butter...

...The Irish House, a new hard-currency supermarket in central Moscow, generally overpriced but decently stocked, was filled with mostly quite unglamorous Russians...

...Yet she hoped that a chance to make a really clean break with the Communist past and really dismantle the Soviet system—the abolition of the CPSU, she believed, had merely scratched the surface—could be a sufficient incentive...

...In the New Arbat supermarket, salami at 87 rubles a kilo drew an impressive line (in a city where 250 rubles a week is considered a pretty good salary), and a friend told me of seeing about 300 people queued up for butter at 50 a kilo...

...What tanks?' I ran out right in my housecoat and slippers, and there they were...

...Distinguished Collective of Communist Labor pennants (I bought one of those, with a Lenin profile and the inscription Communist labor will triumph—V...

...the dimly lit, dingy, empty premises visible through the shop-windows are an eerie sight...

...According to one of my Russian friends, the reason the underground (continued on page 52) 50 The American Spectator February 1992 (continued from page 50) transit system was so far ahead of the street-level city was that the metro administration had supported the coup in August and was overanxious to demonstrate its anti-Communist zeal afterwards...

...On the second day of my stay, I attended a gathering of political parties meeting to discuss the idea of convening a Constituent Assembly so that the entire Soviet political system could be decisively scrapped for a fresh start...

...That, mind you, is the residence of a man of the stature of, say, a William Safire...

...52 The American Spectator February 1992...

...On the morning of December 9, as Volodya took me to Sheremetyevo airport, we drove past a brass stella with the state seal of the Soviet Union and the words, SSSR—OPLOT MIRA, which, given the double meaning of mir, could be read as THE USSR IS THE BULWARK OF PEACE or THE USSR IS THE MAINSTAY OF THE WORLD...

...One question that puzzled me was just how seriously one could take the political parties now dotting the Russian landscape...

...condoms, Russian-made with an Austrian license, at 20 rubles a twelve-pack...

...And one occasionally sees (though I'm sure most Muscovites never see them) tawdry, drab murals urging the education of Soviet youth in a Communist spirit or proclaiming WE ARE BUILDING COMMUNISM...

...cigarettes at 25 rubles for a pack of Winstons and 50 for Marlboros...

...Dzerzhinsky Square, the location of KGB headquarters—and of the sinister slab of black stone where the Dzerzhinsky monument towered until August—has regained its old name of Lubyanka, long a euphemism for the Soviet secret police...

...Volodya spat out...

...My entry visa, which said "USSR," had been issued by a non-existent state for travel to a country with no name...

...Here, it is difficult not to translate a power outage into the beginning of the end...

...Unable to afford a cab, he is virtually housebound with his wife in a one-bedroom apartment unless someone with a car picks him up...

...Some educated Russians like to snort that Americans talk about nothing but money, but snippets of conversations caught in the streets of Moscow these days are likely to be about prices or rationing coupons...

...A woman living in midtown Moscow told me of a handwritten sign she saw in a dry-cleaning establishment: PLEASE DO NOT STUFF DOLLARS IN THE VENT—apparently a hiding place favored by Arbat peddlers, which had already provoked several fights...

...On the other hand, the public, as far as I could tell, sees most of The American Spectator February 1992 For politics as such, this capitalist-minded man—who had no objection at all to some people getting very rich as long as he and his children could live in dignity—felt nothing but scorn...

...On Pushkin Square, too, there was Gorby but no Boris in sight, making me wonder if this signaled a fading of Yeltsin's heroic post-August aura...

...One Sunday, reported the Moscow daily Kuranty, the two above-mentioned groups of marchers ran into each other near Red Square, leading to an exchange of uncomplimentary remarks...

...However, the name of THE V. I. LENIN MOSCOW METRO TRANSIT SYSTEM still graces the metro maps posted in the stations and on the trains...

...Around the city, many buildings still sport plaques marking the residences of various Communist heroes...

...This is not psychological resistance to market prices...

...The brass looked dull and grimy...

...On a morning radio show that discussed the forthcoming privatization drive in a humorous vein, the hostess quipped that those without the funds to be in the game had a number of options, such as "sitting at the kitchen table and cursing the government" and "joining a political party...

...one moment, the fellow was swearing eternal allegiance to "the ideal of socialism and Communism" and Comrade Stalin himself, and in the next breath affirming, with obvious admiration, that the Americans really knew how to make a societywork—and how to make themselves respected...

...For people with money, there seems to be more to buy than there was a year ago...

...And in the kind of area where Batkin lived—the ugly housing projects with barely lit muddy streets that become the face of Moscow past a five-mile radius of the Kremlin, with the look of a desolate, middle-of-nowhere, post-nuclear, landscape—apocalyptic thoughts suggest themselves with particular ease...

...A leading journalist from the Literary Gazette commented as she served the butter, "Well, this is probably all the butter we'll have until next spring...

...Most of my contacts outside the circle of radical political activists thought it highly doubtful...