The Moscow Spectator/Horsing Around
Bernstein, Jonas
Moscow, December 23 T he mosaic on the side of a build- ing across from Dobrinskaya metro station—where I catch a train each day to my job at Moscow News—proclaims "We Are Building Communism" to...
...After a few minutes, Mao snatches his Leader's chapter and they shuffle out...
...Okay," I say immediately—South Korean businessmen with contracts written in English...
...It is instead the three Koreans—or rather three Koreans: Mao has returned, but with two different comrades rounding out the threesome...
...Acrooked doctor is exposed, Mike Wallace–style, on camera...
...A lone militiaman finally shows up, and as the train pulls away a discussion of who did what to whom begins...
...But it's on your own time...
...and the atmosphere takes on all the friendliness of Panmunjom on a bad day...
...The door of the car opens to reveal a man covered in blood lying on the floor...
...Whoops—wrong Korea...
...The car, half-full, is completely silent, and no one appears the least bit interested in what's happening...
...Our Leader...
...pro-gay, yet, in the view of some Moscow News staffers, racist (it recently published stories explaining away several racially motivated murders of African students here...
...In the chaos that is today's Moscow, just who's building what—if anything—is difficult to ascertain...
...Over dinner at Pizza Hut on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, he shrugs off such seemingly negative indicators as the replacement of Yegor Gaidar with Viktor Chernomyrdin, the former energy sector chief, and an old-line nomenklaturist, as prime minister...
...The train remains motionless except for its doors, which are mindlessly opening and closing...
...Evidently, these two, who seem to be drunk (a very common sight) as well as injured (an increasingly common sight), started a fight with three young guys (two long-hairs and one short-) and lost...
...These days it's a Russian hybrid of Spy magazine and the National Enquirer, ideologically all over the map...
...Merry Christmas," I call after them, not knowing what else to say...
...Thirty-three pages long, it is a boymeets-horse story, a Communist My Friend Flicka...
...some of the riders are reading newspapers...
...Moments later, the three appear before us, led by Natasha, another editor...
...It opens, and for a split second it looks as if the Three Kings from the Orient have descended on Moscow News to convey season's greetings...
...Mao is no longer smiling, and terse Korean sentences are flying back and forth...
...After dinner at the apartment of one of my expat friends, an American metals trader, the TV is giving a different atmospheric reading: a live television talk show, with an audience asking questions of a panel of experts, is focusing on the question of land privatization, a problem that has yet to be tackled in earnest...
...I am later told that the lives of North Koreans in Moscow are indeed organized into "troikas": there must be no fewer than three together at all times...
...There will be 700 pages in all, due by the end of February, 400 rubles a page...
...Lucy and I weigh the pros and cons of her accepting the job (i.e., extra money vs...
...Lucy talks to the trio and says maybe, and they leave a chapter with her...
...His smile reminds me of Chairman Mao's...
...I think they're Chinese," Irina whispers...
...Repeatedly, questioners state their fear that "the Americans are going to buy up all our land...
...The short-hair is alternately kneading his hand, clearly damaged in battle, and ringing the emergency intercom...
...At the Moscow News, we are preparing a small party to celebrate Western Christmas—at the request of the Russian staffers at the English edition, who look for any excuse to party...
...Another is sitting on the bench clutching his head...
...Realizing that such work doesn't exactly conform to the guidelines of either the National Forum Foundation (from which I am receiving a grant to help build democratic institutions in Russia) or the National Endowment for Democracy, one of its main contributors—nor of the Registration of Foreign Agents Act, for that matter—I improvise: "Thanks very much, but I'm really too busy to take on such a big project...
...The rats were driven off, according to the paper, after an hour-long battle...
...What is it...
...they appear to be of Oriental extraction...
...It's the memoirs of Kim Il-Sung, by the way," I feel obliged to add...
...An hour later, on a "60 Minutes"–like program called "Black Box," the subject is black-market sales of vital organs to Western buyers: Russia, it seems, is joining Brazil and other Third World countries as a major exporter...
...My personal favorite: When he was a member of the Children's Vanguard, 0 Paek Ryong had crossed the Onsong in the homeland with a matchlock pistol he himself had made, and shot a policeman at the custom house and snatched a rifle from him...
...It was in the spring of 1933 that a horse came into my hands," it begins: One day officials of the people's revolutionary government in Shiliping and some guerrillas came to see me, driving a horse to me...
...The apparent spokesman of the troop smiles at me beatifically and holds up a package...
...Lucy has brilliantly improvised a Christmas cake, and I've bought some Spanish wine and Stolichnaya at my neighborhood kiosk...
...I ask him, pointing to the package...
...Maybe Kazakh," I reply, wanting to appear knowledgeable...
...At midnight, I leave my friend's place for home...
...Gregory Kazankov, a young businessman and political consultant who also teaches chemistry at Moscow State University, is an anomaly in a sea of Russian pessimism...
...Kazankov believes the disintegration of the state sector and the concurrent march to the market are accelerating "at the micro level"—that is, in daily life—and are irreversible, with the government more a spectator than a player...
...Finally, Mao speaks: "We expected more from you," he says, clearly astonished that we did not jump at the chance to help convey the thoughts of the Great Leader to an anxiously awaiting English-speaking world...
...They're from Korea...
...He was such an audacious boy...
...Koreans forgotten, we get on with our usual mix of editing and sitting in the bar...
...Lucy has decided to blow off the Koreans—for the obvious reasons, as well as the fact that, according to various Russian colleagues, 400 rubles a page for editing is a rip-off...
...In the afternoon, Lucy and I are chatting in our office with Sveta, a former Soviet junior and world figure-skating champion who now helps out in the BBC's Moscow bureau...
...Our excuse about being busy is not bolstered by the cake and booze sitting on the table (though Sveta later swears that the little security guy was staring covetously at the goodies...
...MK reports that earlier in the week several metro drivers were sleeping in an office in one of the city's stations when suddenly one awoke, screaming: "Somebody is crawling on me...
...The chapter is also sprinkled with reminiscences about revolutionary comrades...
...None of the metro employees or the police are particularly interested, either, so after a few minutes one of the long-hairs simply picks up the beaten-up drunk and deposits him, like a Hefty bag filled with garbage, on the platform...
...We then move on to the sample chapter, entitled "The Memory of a White Horse...
...Moscow, December 23 T he mosaic on the side of a build- ing across from Dobrinskaya metro station—where I catch a train each day to my job at Moscow News—proclaims "We Are Building Communism" to the oblivious multitudes doing holiday shopping at the kiosks below...
...December 24 t's 10 a.m., and I'm chatting with I Irina, -one of the editors at the Moscow News English edition, before I begin my daily routine of editing and hanging out in the magazine's bar...
...Presently, Lucy clears her throat and says, "I'm sorry, but I have to say no...
...December 25 • T he day begins with a look at Moskovsky Komsomolets, the wildly popular daily that was formerly the organ of the local Young Communist League...
...One appears old enough to be Kim Il-Sung's father, while the other is about four feet tall—probably the security chief...
...It is a chapter from the memoirs of our Leader," he says in English...
...Russian nationalist, yet it saw its offices attacked by members of the ultra-right Pamyat group (some say as a publicity stunt...
...Jonas, these men are interested in hiring your services to edit some English translations," she says...
...This rather astonishing statement passes without commentary...
...Suddenly there's a knock on the door...
...We will return tomorrow at three," says the smiling English-speaker, who, I later learn, is press secretary at the North Korean embassy here...
...Please accept this," one of the officials spoke for his company...
...prolonged unwanted proximity to North Korean intelligence...
...Being thoughtful, I add: "Maybe my colleague is interested...
...Moments later, a Russian medical specialist opines that the Americans are buying human tissue here in order to study its makeup and to design anti-Russian genetic weapons...
...Three gentlemen walk through the door and into the neighboring office...
...I run down the hall and quickly tell Lucy, a young British woman right out of journalism school and in search of other media experience and extra money, about this chance for some free-lance editing—nearly 700 bucks at the current exchange rate, I note...
...she's also a native English speaker...
...Commander Kim, we wish to present a horse respectfully to you who have to travel many rugged miles...
...It seemsa pack of large rats, having consumed the drivers' food, had moved on to their clothes...
...When Kim later has to part with his horse, he cries into its nape...
...At Leninsky Prospekt metro station, a train pulls in...
Vol. 26 • March 1993 • No. 3
