Life in the Soviet Baltic
OZOLINS, JURIS
COLONIAL GRUMBLING Life in the Soviet B<lC by juris ozolins Riga Early risers recently were greeted by an unusual sight when they passed the massive statue of Lenin in the center of this...
...becoming a minority in their own country, combined with a drastic decrease in available consumer goods and food, has been stirring nationalist feelings in Latvians—who, like all the non-Slavic Baltic peoples, historically have tended to identify with Western Europe while looking down on their neighbors to the east...
...It makes no sense to damage your documents over minor malters," Martins explains...
...Recently, for example, rumors of an impending sugar shortage triggered a period of intense hoarding that itself caused a scarcity...
...A man known as "the lipstick millionaire of Riga" recently was the talk of the city...
...Once inside the stores, customers find no smiling salesclerks, only sullen workers who have barely enough time to look up from the cash register...
...Instead of growing more potatoes the farmers are growing flowers, which Latvians prize...
...While that is an exaggeration, it is true that the kind of consumer goods he wants are not available—a Japanese-made camera, and a new stereo set...
...Technically, this sort of capitalist enterprise is illegal, but nobody bothers the street merchants or the usually large throng around them...
...Luther-anism, the main belief in Latvia and Estonia, is chided as "demanding too little from the people...
...They have meat and no lines," grumbles a retired farm worker...
...Even meat is available in the private sector—at higher prices than in the state stores, to be sure, but the price doesn't really matter because the state stores are empty...
...The much-resented food shortages are relatively new in the Baltic states, however the chances of a Polish-style upheaval are slim...
...Although Riga is considered the Soviet Union's most prosperous city, Latvia as a whole is paradoxically faring worse economically than Lithuania and Estonia...
...Their seatbelts are always fastened, not a drop of alcohol is consumed before driving, and they never cross against a red light, even when the street is empty, or walk on the grass in the park...
...He had set up an elaborate network of factories employing dozens of workers, and distribution points extending to Leningrad and Kiev...
...The periodic " sweeps" of black market areas by undercover police are becoming less frequent, and those arrested get out quickly if they pay off a few officials...
...Foreigners always remark that we seem to age faster here," ruefully remarks Ingrida Lacis, 37, a medical technician who lives in a two room apartment with her husband and 13-year-old son...
...It goes to feed Leningrad, or to Kampuchea or somewhere in Africa...
...Our lines are just as long, and the stores just as empty...
...But self-interest has foiled the plan...
...We have that...
...The black market is so open that it has become an integral part of theecon-omy...
...I know it will never happen," he realistically admits...
...Families can surmise from a soldier's not having written for a long time that he has been sent to Afghanistan, whence no correspondence is allowed...
...But no w we've been equalized...
...Meanwhile, to alleviate the food shortage that is partly due to the ongoing immigration, the government of Soviet Latvia is encouraging private farming...
...All three formerly independent countries were forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union 40 years ago, a move never officially recognized by the United States...
...Every little encounter with the police goes on an individual's record, as does information about relatives living beyond the Soviet Union's borders and foreign correspondence...
...Two years ago the lines weren't that bad...
...Tulips and roses, selling for as much as two rubles each at private stalls, are therefore the most profitable crop for the small landholders...
...New sidewalks in Riga are a good example of how extensive pilfering is...
...I just hope I don't get sent to Afghanistan or Poland," Ojar frets...
...fashion magazines—a copy of Vogue or Glamour, or a store catalogue that was free in the U.S., sells for about $40...
...Where individual initiative is possible within the law, caution remains critical...
...Somewhere between factory and construction site the cement is heavily diluted and the resulting "excess" winds up in private hands...
...Radio Free Europe, the BBC and Swedish programing are available to anyone who wants to listen...
...Even the people who write the slogans and the newspapers don't believe anymore...
...Only when a story gets out of hand does the government acknowledge a problem...
...The specter of Juris Ozolins is the pseudonym of a freelance writer...
...For the smallest infraction a hole is punched in a little card that goes with your drivers licence, and after three holes for the same offense your license is confiscated for a year...
...After all the years of occupation, most Estonians pretend they do not understand when someone speaks to them in Russian...
...The walkway in front of the new museum of the Revolutionary Riflemen already is in total disrepair...
...Each workplace has a fixed number of cars allotted per year, andof vacationsoutsidetheUSSR...
...In the case of Afghanistan, news similarly travels by word-of-mouth...
...On top of this, the sense that their national identity is in jeopardy has been heightened by the million-odd tourists from all over the Soviet Union annually attracted to the beach resort of Jurma-la, just outside Riga...
...In Riga the same atrocity stories about Afghanistan are heard from different sources...
...In Western society his drive and organizational skills would make him a successful businessman...
...Some of them wear the old coat of arms of independent Latvia on their shirts, others have T-shirts with the slogan "Latvian Power...
...in fact, each continues to maintain an accredited embassy in Washington...
...The immigration has had a snowball effect, with whole villages relocating here, as the early arrivals summon their relatives...
...Still, Riga continues to attract more and more immigrants from the other republics...
...The conclusion frequently drawn from conversations here is that Afghanistan can never be effectively subjugated, and that the war is a no-win situation for the Soviet military...
...Rebellious incidents have been more sporadic and unorganized in Latvia...
...Maybe someone at the very top believes, but I doubt it...
...Their apartment is small and cramped, yet they have a car, a television and a record player...
...currency that goes for five times the official exchange rate of $1.34 to the ruble, to cigarettes, chewing gum, T-shirts bearing American logos, and plastic shopping bags with "Disco Fever" inscribed on them...
...Accounts of Russian prisoners meeting their deaths by being lied up and thrown to hungry rats also have considerable circulation...
...To bring order to the situation, the government finally had to officially admit what the difficulty was...
...common courtesies are nonexistent...
...On a good day he can make some2,000 rubles, more than the annual income of many Soviet citizens...
...In general, young people in Riga are quite well informed about world politics...
...Two recent American films shown in Riga were Fun With DickandJane, acomedyspoofing American unemployment, and The Centurions, about police work in Los Angeles...
...They usually involve some version of a Soviet soldier waking up in the morning to find that those sleeping next to him have been hacked to pieces during the night...
...Moviegoers know that such films present a skewed picture of the United States, yet they leave a mark...
...Latvia, alas, has been too accommodating to the Russians in the past...
...The most overt form of rebellion for these youths is desecrating some Soviet monuments, or roughing up individual Russians at random...
...Latvian-language radio from Sweden is praised as the best, because its coverage includes reports of natural disasters and train and plane crashes in the Baltic states, something never mentioned in local news...
...Across the pedestal, painted in stark whiteletters, werethe words "No-kapunejmaja...
...So much of the merchandise reaching the stores moves out "under the table" as well that those without their own "hustle" are often left nothing...
...Should any protest against the Soviet Union ever arise in the Baltic states, it will probably be set off by Moscow trying to stifle the fierce cultural nationalism in Estonia and Lithuania...
...Martins Baltkalns, 31, is breaking up with his fiancee because "she wants to show off our money too much...
...They all have eyes and can see...
...That just isn't smart...
...Most valuable are items brought in from the West, with the $268 price for Levi's jeans amounting to a doctor's salary for amonth...
...Sitting in the Leningrad Bar in central Riga and sipping cognac, he talks of serving on troop maneuvers near Poland earlier in the year...
...COLONIAL GRUMBLING Life in the Soviet B<lC by juris ozolins Riga Early risers recently were greeted by an unusual sight when they passed the massive statue of Lenin in the center of this Baltic seaport of 850,000 citizens, capital of Soviet Latvia...
...But this activity has created labor shortages, leading to immigration from other parts of the Soviet Union...
...Ojar and his peers display their nationalism almost tauntingly...
...Such details come into play when a person wants to travel, gel a new apartment or buy a car...
...Even when I go to the theater my mind is thinking of who 1 should see, or what I should trade to get something...
...Thus city dwellers now have their own plots in large fields outside the city...
...Often, 20-year-old Ojar Bersins told me, new records sent by post are opened before delivery and transcribed a few times by customs officials eager to supplement their incomes...
...Not many Soviet citizens are permitted to venture there either...
...Outside travel" does not mean West-ernEurope...
...According to him, there is a 50 kilometer "restricted zone" from the Polish border where no civilian travel is allowed without special permission...
...Nobody I know believes Communism will improve the situation...
...Climb Down and Go Home...
...Radio Free Europe is criticized as too biased at times in its news programs...
...Some of the farming entrepreneurs are doing so well that the government has consented to let them increase their lots in a further effort to meet basic needs...
...To be told that a housewife might spend a total of an hour or two per week in a supermarket is astonishing to a Riga woman who has to stand in line some three hours a day for her produce alone...
...Many " freelance capitalists" in Riga —from longhaired young men hawking amber necklaces to old ladies holding up hand-made knitted caps—sell their wares openly on street corners...
...Now we have to stand in line for everything and most of the stores are empty...
...The lines form before the stores open, and the streets are jammed with thousands of disgruntled shoppers all day...
...Even in the medical system, which is supposedly free for everyone, doctors expect bribes for anything more than a perfunctory examination...
...Most of the men in my battalion were hoping for rear guard duty...
...On the other hand, the Latvians are keenly aware that their birth rate is the lowest in the Soviet Union, and that Riga is not only filled with Armenians, Georgians, Uzbeks, and thousands of Russians, but the lingua franca is Russian...
...They offer a more sinister scenario...
...We all know the words, even though it is forbidden...
...On weekends many Latvians take a two-hour drive south of the border to Siau-liai in Lithuania to buy sausages...
...Nowhere along the way was there any noticeable public outcry...
...Here we are producing more food than ever, bui we never see it...
...Eventually he will get what he wants, because "everything is available in Riga—but not in the stores...
...These are jobs that the Latvians, with their emphasis on higher education, do not want...
...Young people from the Baltic states have trekked from Vladivostock to the Black Sea on their vacations...
...Theadventof tape cassettes has been a boon to smuggling in music and picking up extra cash...
...Indeed, some Latvians are not persuaded that the new arrivals have come merely to make a better life for themselves...
...So why make it here in Latvia...
...At concerts where Latvian rock groups are play-ing, they dancein the aisles and shout?in contrast to the Russians, who sit back and politely applaud...
...Damaging your documents" is something that everyone who takes advantage of the system seeks to avoid...
...On the corner of Padomju Boulevard and Lenin Street, a regular meeting place for young people, one is struck by the availability of Western goods...
...Miervaldis and other young Latvians seemed genuinely envious of the Poles and what they have been able to accomplish in the last year...
...The resort has special facilities set aside for workers from Siberia, who spend a month there at government expense...
...There is no alternative to two years of compulsory service...
...The names used in this article have also been changed...
...If the official local news in Latvia focuses on increased production and new hydroelectric projects, the foreign coverage is a litany of violent strikes and rampant crime...
...in Latvia he has to be very careful his success does not set him too much apart from the rest...
...When you're constantly thinking where to run for meat, or where you could grab some milk, you cannot relax...
...Finding something to buy is the problem—the stores are empty...
...American jeans, which sell for 200 rubles ($268), are worn by every other young man...
...And if a trip to Bulgaria, say, is granted, to discourage defection it is restricted to one member of a family...
...Its nationalism, reawakened by the shortages and immigration, is as watered-down as its milk...
...Another profiteering operation, well-known in Riga, secured jeans labels overseas and sewed them onto locally made pants that were sold on the black market as "American jeans...
...We were on par with Denmark or Holland...
...A typical instance was the campaign in Latvia this summer to educate the public to the dangers of drinking milk...
...But the people in the Baltic States probably know more about that war than most Americans, since the stories they hear come directly from returning soldiers...
...The couple have learned to live under the Soviet system, and to use it for their own advantage...
...The fresh flowers that customarily adorn the base of the statue had been replaced by a pair of ragged old boots...
...Over the past several years Monopoly has become a craze in Ojar's circle...
...They have a summer cottage on the seashore, too...
...Itreferstothe Eastern bloc...
...Records mailed by relatives or brought over by sailors are copied and sold for 10 rubles per transcription...
...Consequently—unlike the underemployed Lithuanians and Estonians—they are reasonably hospitable...
...In fact, Riga used to be the envy of all Russia...
...Today outsiders makeup45 per cent of Latvia's 2.5 million population...
...The lack of any negative local news on Latvian radio or television is responsible for the speed of much information by word-of-mouth...
...he is scheduled to enter the Army next month...
...Music fans can purchase an entire collection of Beatles albums for about $550...
...Most important, the port is one of the Soviet's busiest, the entry point for much of the freight destined for the Russian heartland...
...Anything having to do with the United States is traded for big money—from U.S...
...She wanted to buy the biggest diamond ring in Riga...
...Just look at the new clothing factory in Ogre, on the outskirts of Riga," observes Ingrida Lacis...
...American cosmetics are also prized, as are U.S...
...They live on cucumbers and cabbage and get meat once a year...
...Dressed in corduroy Levis and Adidas shoes, hair trimmed in the newest style, he speaks contemptuously of the Soviet system...
...At times Martins and his relatives stay up the whole night cooking their specially designed sweets...
...emblazoned in English...
...After a few hard rains they practically wash away—there is too much sand in the mixture...
...They say they are improving a product, then change it or package it differently, and only after careful calculations do consumers realize they are getting less for more money...
...He has relatives in the United States, and his father spent eight years in a Siberian labor camp for fighting on the German side in World Warll...
...I see it simply as a way to colonize us, to make sure Latvia can never again be a viable independent state...
...Now most of the dockhands and construction workers in Riga are newcomers...
...Inside the USSR travel is as free as time and money allow...
...Theonly American newspaper available is the Daily World, organ of the American Communist Party, bought by those who want to "practice their English...
...These can be sold legally at fairs and folk festivals as examples of Latvian folk art, and Martins has been spreading the culture on a grand scale by hiring others to do the hawking...
...I've seen life in the Russian countryside," recalls Viktors Lacis, who did his military service in the Urals...
...They know I would never come back, and they are right," he says...
...Many Latvians, he notes, stretch the big rules to survive and prosper, but are very careful to strictly obey the small ones...
...One month later the government announced that to improve public health it was lowering the butterfat content of all state produced milk...
...Money is not the problem," Viktors declares...
...Store clerks save all the best merchandise for their friends, who in turn give them some other scarce item...
...We were told to expect partisan resistance if we went in," he muses...
...Sometimes my friends and I get together and sing the old national anthem...
...Small wonder, then, that the survival instinct has replaced morality...
...Miervaldis Vilhelms, 23, has just finished his tour in the Soviet military...
...In independent Latvia we were exporting food," he declares, registering a complaint heard throughout the republic...
...Estonia has lately experienced boycotts and demonstrations organized by university students opposed to increased Russian language requirements in the schools...
...Moreover, the freight from the West inevitably includes ideas, music and modes of dress, not to mention a considerable amount of contraband merchandise...
...As in Poland, the Church has remained a strong force in Lithuanian everyday life...
...It produces the bulk of the Soviet Union's telephones, radios, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners, plus a large share of the motorcycles and locomotives...
...The games are intricate hand copies of originals that relatives in exile have sent...
...His job as a surveyor earns him 200 rubles a month, above average by Soviet standards, but his real source of wealth is his family business—making cookies...
...Vilnius, the capital, has a small but active group of dissidents, and even an underground newspaper that comes out once a week...
...At the end of the day men and women can be seen on the street, or in buses, carrying flowers home...
...It is widely said that some-50 bodies are shipped home each day in special sealed planes, and that coffins are never opened prior to burial...
...With so many individuals chasing a limited amount of consumer goods, there is a lot of pushing and shoving...
...Young people in Riga know the latest popular New Wave groups in the West, and by listening to Radio Luxemburg they keep themselves informed of the "Top Thirty" popsongs...
...Ojar Bersins has just finished school...
...The factory could have been built anywhere in the Soviet Union...
...Unlike their Polish counterparts, the Soviet authorities in the Baltic are too clever to baldly announce any price rises...
...Riga is also known as the women's fashion center...
...The strongest anti-Soviet sentiments are exhibited by those in their late teens and early 20s to whom the term " Bourgeois Latvia"—used in history texts for the years of independence (1918-1940) —connotes a rich, romanticized past...
...Work is on a flexible schedule, and many simply take time off to go shopping...
...The material used in his women's cosmetics had been carefully siphoned from state factories for years before the shortages were discovered, and he was arrested...
...One reason is that as the most industrially developed Baltic state, its economy is intimately meshed with the rest of the USSR...
...Nobody wants to fight the Poles...
...Why should I feel bad about taking a cup of chocolate syrup home each day," demands a worker in a candy collective, "when I know the director of the plant is taking a bucket home each day...
...Yet for all their air of ram-bunctiousness, when the call from the Army comes, the young men go...
...Nationalism is strongest in Lithuania, the only Catholic state in the Soviet Union...
...No one is told where he will serve, prior to induction...
...All the material is imported from Russia...
...The incident was a reminder of the anti-Russian nationalism that lies beneath the surface in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania...
...No wonder we look older here" "Things are getting worse, not better," observes Viktors Lacis, 38, an electronic engineer...
...All the workers are Russians, and everything they make is sent to be sold in Russia...
...Martins, who loves to work on cars and has himself rebuilt his Moskvich 433, dreams of visiting America and seeing the Indianapolis 500...
...One of the questions most often asked of visitors from America is, "How many guns do you own...
...So I can understand why Riga seems like paradise to them...
...Much bigger free-enterprise operations also exist...
...The resulting produce can be sold competitively in the central market, and the private plots currently supply up to 30 per cent of the foodstuff sold in Latvia...
...In short, the Latvian economy is virtually a barter system...
...Viktors and Inorida are part of a generation of Latvians who are cautious about their nationalism...
...The hardest thing for Soviet citizens to comprehend about the United States is the absence of food lines...
...Those with the money and the "cleanest" documents receive the benefits...
...Interestingly, they invariably cite the Catholic Church as the Poles' source of strength...
...Citizens may have up to a half acre of land and work it in their spare time...
...Not long ago, a number of Ojar's friends were in a group of 20 Latvians arrested for late night "hooliganism" against Russians...
...he and his friends stay up all night trading such strange places as "Connecticut Avenue" and "Boardwalk...
...Most of the soldiers serving in Riga seem to be from Central Asia...
...The siphoned chocolate is used to make sweets that are sold privately...
...The Lithuanians have more backbone—they produce less, and keep it for themselves...
Vol. 64 • October 1981 • No. 16
