Soviet Specimens

...It was the bus that underwent a thorough search, including all its innards, by a team of four soldiers with flashlights and no-nonsense expressions...

...They were entrepreneurs, dropouts from the system in somewhat the same way that the underclass teenagers of America's big cities have dropped out of a system that holds out so little to them...

...They seemed to have plenty of time, though, and several hung on just to chat even after their offers were turned down...

...Their English, while not elegant, was adequate to their interests...

...Part of thai was courtesy, part caution...

...As we took the road to Helsinki, I remembered being on a train leaving Czechoslovakia that was searched with the same thoroughness...

...After all, if you're going to be cooped up with a bunch of strangers for 10 days, there's no point in picking fights...

...I had assumed that of the 30 of us, at least 10 would be victims of nostalgia for the Socialist Motherland, subscribers to the Nation perhaps, determined to find glories in the Soviet Union and truths about the United States that were not being reported by the capitalist press...

...He made no effort to keep his voice low, despite the fact that several other waiters were in easy listening distance, and practically hugged us...

...They had visited lots of other countries and decided it was time to do the Soviet Union, in much the same spirit they had previously done the Grand Canyon...

...It sort of dampened one'senthusiasm, shesaid rather sweetly, but with a feeling of relief that those bad things were behind her...

...I expected him to follow up by asking to change money as other waiters had, or perhaps cadging cigarettes or trying to prevail upon Elaine to quit me for a younger, taller fellow...

...One of our number had observed, without intent to provoke, how nice it would be if Soviet citizens were permitted to visit other countries even as we were visiting their country...

...They were offering about five times the official and entirely artificial exchange rates for rubles (Moscow's way of exploiting capitalists...

...He retorted that if Moscow allowed 50,000 Russians to visit the United States, the Reagan Administration would not let them in...

...Bean and rock stars...

...At any rate, I did, and I was wrong...

...Intourist Inhibitions Those benefits of the Soviet system comprised a main theme of the Intourist guides who accompanied us throughout our journey...

...Only at the end of the journey did politics flare...

...He was working as a waiter, he said, because it paid well and he might meet an available American woman who would take him home with her...

...His logic brought to mind the good old Moscow Subway joke: American visitor: "Why don't the trains run on time...

...In addition to courses on how to talk in foreign languages, the guides receive periodical refreshers on how to talk to foreigners...

...How widespread their attitudes are the visitor has no way of telling, but they seemed to see themselves as part of an international youth culture that cannot give pleasure to any commissar...

...He remains a mystery...

...They did not go in for a hard sell, yet never let us forget the sufferings their countrymen had endured in World War II or the advantages of a Socialist system...

...Why, he wanted to know, can't the United States guarantee a decent existence to the poor...

...He looked as though he might tear off his dinner jacket at any moment...

...It's an old and basic argument of defenders of the Soviet way, who offer a trade-off, as economists like to say: You take away some comfort, mobility and freedom to express opinions in exchange for guarantees of medical care, pensions, vacations, education, and cheap housing...

...She was as pleasant as an Intourist Guide and as good as her word...

...That mild comment brought a fellow traveler charging out of his closet...

...they were plainly not eager to attract the attention of the police...

...Being an Intourist guide is a good job, and independence of spirit is not a requirement...

...At the Peter and Paul fortress in Leningrad, our guide reminded us that the Tsars had used the place as a prison for such revolutionaries as Lenin's older brother...

...Unlike the intellectuals whose defiance of the Soviet regime takes a high road, these young men were plainly delinquents...

...A young woman popped in, welcomed us cheerily, collected our passports and told us we wouldn't be detained long...

...they knew all about L.L...

...As a few of us arrived for a nighttime drink and dance, he approached and with not the slightest encouragement delivered a soliloquy on how his soul was being suffocated by Communism...

...Although the Soviet customs officials did not seem capable of smiling, not a bag was opened, not a currency form contested...

...Glasnost had not yet infiltrated the border guards...

...Among the symptoms of glasnost are more rock concerts, very popular among the young and definitely, even defiantly American...

...They had been drawn to the cheesier aspects of American culture— sharp dress, rock music, an ability to get along by hustling one's way through life...

...Anyway, for the first week of our 10 days together, nobody seemed eager to bring up political matters, either among ourselves or with our Intourist hosts...

...Our visit coincided with preparations for the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, and Lenin was much on screen...

...Was he a provocateur...

...The defender of Moscow's travel policies, a banquet manager for a New York hotel whose view of the capitalist class had apparently been curdled by watching them eat chicken, preferred to contrast the plight of New York's homeless with the social services provided to all Soviet citizens as a matter of right...

...Incidentally, the Moscow and Leningrad subways do run on time...

...politics did not seem to be very high on most minds...

...Now we read that even Trotsky the Traitor is being refurbished, along with the victims of the purges...

...let's hope he finds his American bride...

...1 asked out of the hearing of the rest of the group whether Leon Trotsky had not been imprisoned there as well...

...You knew, however, that they had never uttered a squeak of displeasure about the closedness that preceded the new policy, and that should Party chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev be done in tomorrow, they would pursue the new line with the same earnestness they were bringing to the current one...

...The soul stuf f was downright Dostoyevskyan...

...She said, "We aren't taught about him," and went on to tell how difficult it was for young people like herself to come to terms with the revelations about Stalin—all those writers killed off, and so forth...

...You know, the sort of people who sign their names on petitions featuring the word "Peace" and are sure that Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were framed...

...If they were to put to socially productive endeavors the considerable energies they expend each day prowling major thoroughfares trying to get their hands on hard currency or soft jeans, they could probably fulfill the latest Five-Year Plan...

...All expressed pleasure at the Gorbachevian policy of openness...

...For Russians, it must be like living with an Intourist guide...

...As we were leaving Leningrad, heading toward the Finnish border, a commotion erupted in the rear of the bus, voices and emotions were raised...

...Body Search You could feel the tension in our bus as we reached the Soviet-Finnish border, where we were ordered off with our belongings...

...If thecompetition between East and West were to be decided on the efficiency, cleanliness and safely of their respective subway systems, the whole world would already be Communist...

...But what was he provoking...

...Our most bizarre encounter with disaffection came in the form of a young waiter in a big hotel...

...The Intourist gals have their work cut out...

...There were three of them, at various stages, pleasant young women possessing a fair acquaintance with English...

...After nightly exposure to this stuff, even the most determinedly despairing critic of American television might well find himself longing for some dopey commercial...

...Beyond this they were not authorized to venture...

...The youths were not at all threatening and very easily dismissed, with a curt Nyet...

...These traders stressed the beauty of lacquered boxes, which they were willing to exchange for stonewashed jeans, new or used...

...part good sense...

...But, no...

...They were looking for human beings trying to get out of the Motherland...

...No doubt the advertisements for glasnost were an inducement to see Russia now...

...But he asked for nothing other than a chance to make his declaration of love for liberty...

...We both knew the answer, of course...

...These travelers were mainly fairly well-off people close to or post retirement...

...Soviet guide: "And what about the lynchings in the South...

...Also mine workers mining and farmers farming and planners planning...

...But, then, that's part of the trade-off...

...After about a half hour, we were permitted to reboard and soon stopped again on the Finnish side...

...Change Money, Sir?' A different attitude toward their country's system came from the street capitalists who could be counted on to sidle up around main tourist spots, like Nevsky Prospekt in Leningrad, with offers to change dollars or "trade...

...You didn't have to speak Russian to catch the drift of the messages that came relentlessly across on Soviet television...