Finding My Roots in Rostov
THORNE, LUDMILLA
BITTERSWEET MEMORIES Finding My Roots in Rostov BY LUDMILLA THORNE "Odessa is the mother and Rostov is the father, hold on to your pockets!" warns a popular Russian saying. Actually the...
...His fending includes selling agricultural equipment, and between the two jobs in the private sector he earns 50,000 rubles a month, well over twice the average worker's salary...
...As I sat at a small table reserved for observers, an old babushka who looked totally perplexed shoved her marked-up ballots into my face and asked: "I want to get rid of those freeloaders in the Congress, did I vote the right way...
...But the tobacco factory is still there, proudly flying a Russian flag instead of the hammer and sickle, and the dairy plant is still busy making sour cream...
...Such terms as "marketing" and "managers" have easily slipped into the Russian language...
...In particular, they are worried about their uncertain futures...
...Normal, decent people don't go to such places," he said...
...While we talked, the waitresses were busy passing notes between the young women and their potential customers...
...the rest of my father's family was subsequently exiled to Siberia...
...the pimping duties earn them extra tips...
...Our Cossack genes were pushing Igor in the right direction...
...After signing the registration book the young men received four separate ballots...
...Prior to our leaving the country at the end of the War, he received only one postcard from his sister saying that they were living in a small hut in the forest, surrounded by howling wolves...
...He died shortly afterward while sitting in a rocking chair, whispering: "Christ is coming for me...
...The 10 women and one man serving as the election commissioners were all workers of local construction companies and a sausage factory...
...It turned out that the KGB had intercepted our letters...
...Patches of raven-haired, swarthy men dressed in black leather jackets occupied many of the tables in the cavernous room...
...Was he a janitor, an intellectual, or a member of the new nomenklatura that is engaged not in privatizatsiya (privatization) but in prikhvatizatsiya (taken from the word prikhvatit, "to grab...
...By 9 a.m...
...We don't want to change this," people told me...
...Ludmilla," he virtually screamed, "I saw you on Ostankino television a few months ago....You're here in Rostov...
...The tallying was done by hand...
...the one situated on the Black Sea, the second on the magnificent river made famous by Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don...
...The recruits do not share that feeling...
...as we were "washing down" the marathon day with eightounce glasses of vodka and an endless exchange of toasts, made by two exhausted Americans and a baker's dozen of equally weary and tipsy Russians...
...By 6 a.m...
...It was an ornate turn-ofthe-century structure that belonged to a wealthy merchant before the Revolution...
...At 4 a.m...
...Others didn't bother going into the booths...
...Mikhaylovich said that technically such practices were illegal, but they were acceptable...
...The other unexpected event occurred when a tall man entered the room and announced in a deep voice: "I know that campaigning on election day is strictly forbidden, but it's always permissible to campaign for God...
...I invited him to dinner at the hotel's rooftop restaurant...
...And now," said the tired but beaming Dmitry Mikhaylovich, "let's wash everything down...
...the results were known...
...The young lawyer from Democratic Russia was obviously enjoying the revelry...
...I was impressed by Igor's pioneering spirit...
...So we took the elevator to the top floor...
...Struck by how few officers were voting, 1 asked a colonel who was a member of the Election Commission why this was so...
...Our polling station was particularly interesting to observe because it was near a military base...
...My paternal grandfather was arrested in 1937 and sent to the Gulag...
...I was filled with excitement and apprehension as I waited for Igor in the lobby of the Intourist Hotel where I was staying...
...the coupling was pretty much completed...
...He returned home a year and a half later, with all of his fingernails pulled out...
...Twenty years later Igor and I were sitting together drinking champagne, along with Rostov's ladies of the night...
...From Moscow the group fanned out across the wide expanse of the Russian Federation, covering its heartland, the Urals and Siberia...
...Following retirement at an early age, career officers complain that they feel discarded...
...The important thing," he argued, "is that those who want privacy should have it...
...Before long a slightly built man in his mid-40s, holding a small bouquet of flowers, entered the lobby...
...We rushed to the school kitchen, where the firewater appeared on a long table together with sausage, black bread and pickles...
...Having visited Rostov's immense open-air market with Igor the previous day, I understood why...
...For instance, husbands and wives, lovers, or simply friends often piled into the voting booths together, chatting and consulting each other on how to vote...
...turning Communist mid-level apparatchiks and ordinary Russian citizens into capitalist "menedzhers...
...the room was packed with 18-year-old privates with peach fuzz on their youthful faces...
...Igor, however, works hard and his family eats well...
...Their main activity is job retraining—i.e...
...Fifteen minutes before the 10 p.m...
...On Saturday afternoon Igor helped me find the house where my parents and I had lived...
...Since my monitoring duties began on Sunday, I set about searching for my Rostov roots...
...Both he and his sister, a defense worker at a plant near Moscow, were summoned by the secret police for a friendly chat...
...These nocturnal butterflies can be seen in practically all Russian hotels, flaunting wads of money...
...Along with another American monitor, Neil Alioto of the Seafarers Union, I was at polling station 191, in a local school, watching the preparations being made for the 7 o'clock opening...
...A distant cousin by the name of Igor had sent us a few cautious letters in the mid-'70s, then the correspondence stopped...
...I didn't have any trouble holding on to my pockets...
...Great...
...I arrived in Rostov on a sunny Friday afternoon in late April, having come to Russia the previous week with 42 other Americans who were to monitor the four-question referendum that would test the support for President Boris N. Yeltsin and his social and economic programs...
...Friday evening I was able to get him on the telephone with surprising ease...
...I heard the same thing from Rostov's students, who had formed a Coalition of Youth to help get out the vote, as well as from young entrepreneurs, investors and private merchants...
...they marked their ballots on window sills, or on the ballot boxes, and dropped them into the slots...
...How things had changed...
...The scene was fairly typical...
...Igor was ordered to stop all contacts with his foreign relatives, especially with someone like me, who was engaged in "anti-Soviet" activities...
...In 1934 my maternal grandfather, a militant Baptist preacher, was arrested in the middle of the night by the Rostov secret police...
...They were backing the Russian President primarily because he had spoken out for greater Cossack autonomy, while the hard-line Parliament protested...
...Around noon a middle-aged voter noticed that the two signatures appearing on the back of his ballots all looked different...
...there were no computers or even calculators...
...The new owners do not have 500 students and must therefore rent out office space to other organizations to help cover expenses...
...After all these years, they're probably gone," I told her...
...I saw hundreds of rickety tables laden with hugh fresh salmon, sturgeon and buckets of caviar, thanks to the mighty Don River and the Azov Sea into which it flows...
...He was aghast...
...Most of the officers are apathetic," he responded, "and to a large degree the military is against Yeltsin...
...Sixty-three per cent of the district's eligible voters had come to the polls...
...So why do their signatures look different...
...Many officers find the changes occurring in the country difficult to accept...
...As Neil and I drove back to our hotel, a molten red sun was rising over the shimmering Don River...
...But flying home to America, I was filled with bittersweet memories of the three remarkable days I had spent in the city of my birth...
...We're for Yeltsin," several of the young men milling around in the school's hallways told me...
...As customers haggled over prices, burly Georgian merchants added to the circus atmosphere with their colorful array of spices and vegetables...
...When it was put up for sale two years ago, he and 41 other teachers decided to go into business...
...They kept pouring in like ocean herring...
...At separate tables beautiful, outlandishly dressed young women sat sipping champagne...
...the following morning, my attention was focused on the referendum...
...The only nonCommunist Russian observer, a young lawyer from the mainstream Democratic Russia movement, looked at me apologetically and winced...
...Some of them strutted around the polling station in their karakul hats and traditional tunics...
...the man yelled...
...closing of the polls there was a rush of last-minute voters...
...Mikhaylovich calmed down the agitated voter and assured him that from now on two commission members would sign the ballots in the presence of each voter...
...Are you trying to powder our brains just like in the old days...
...They included the steel-faced chairman of the Rostov Union of Communists, an equally crustaceous woman representing the local veterans organization, and a lanky, bird-faced People's Deputy who kept sighing all day: "We have lost the Soviet Union, a wonderful country...
...At least it was no longer possible for the head of a household to vote for his entire family, as in the old Soviet days, when the main object of each election was to make sure that 99.9 per cent of the people "voted...
...He is not equipped to wheel and deal in the new, market-oriented, permissive society...
...For many years he taught economics at a government institute...
...The problem is finding good textbooks and Western specialists who are willing to come and explain these concepts, particularly because of Rostov's distance from Moscow...
...Their makeup made Tammy Faye Bakker look demure...
...It was 5 a.m...
...The earliest voters were mostly elderly people...
...Although Neil and I were impressed by how well the voting procedure had been organized, some of the things we saw seemed odd to our American eyes...
...Throughout the entire day there were only two noisy disturbances...
...I was intent on being assigned to Rostov because it is my birthplace...
...What can a demobilized colonel do...
...as did all voters—one for each question being asked in the referendum...
...I knew exactly what he meant, but it was already late in the evening and I was tired...
...Once they were accommodated, the 11 civilian members of the Election Commission started to count the ballots...
...The other Russian observers, the old Communist stalwarts, had gone home to lick their wounds...
...Now I have to fend for myself, but life is more interesting...
...By 1 a.m...
...Was he a warmed-over Communist or a democrat...
...As a result, the large institute building—with conference rooms, a cafeteria, and enough dormitory space to house 500 students—is theirs...
...Obviously my newfound cousin was not—to use Yeltsin's favorite expression?a petrified remnant of the past...
...I told him not to worry...
...he exclaimed, adding: "The economics institute that my fellow teachers and 1 recently bought out sent three of our people as volunteers to work in Yeltsin's referendum campaign...
...It was strange to stand on the very steps where I had probably scrambled about as a young child...
...Before I left New York my mother told me that there was a tobacco factory across from our house, and a milk processing plant in back of it...
...To prevent falsification, every ballot was supposed to be signed by the same two commissioners...
...My parents fled from the Soviet Union when I was very young, and until now I had never been back to the city where the whole family suffered greatly...
...Rostov's legendary Cossacks, who comprise 28 per cent of the population, also supported Yeltsin...
...now all fences came crashing down...
...They spent the next six hours methodically counting and recounting the byulleteni, while the rest of us watched...
...But making this privatization venture into a viable enterprise has proved difficult...
...They gave a resounding "yes" to Boris Yeltsin...
...Ludmilla Thorne, a previous NL contributor, is Director of Studies for the Russian Federation at Freedom House...
...The average Russian worker strongly resents their wealth and can be heard complaining, "Those who work don't eat, those who don't work do...
...Then he quickly gave a copy of the Lord's Prayer to everyone in the room and darted to the next polling station...
...Igor apologized for abruptly ending the correspondence in the '70s...
...How sad, 1 thought, that my father could not see the Rostov he loved as the prosperous and peaceful city it is today...
...Actually the two southern port cities, where small-time hoodlums and petty thieves have thrived for centuries, might best be described as fraternal twins...
...Certainly I didn't want our Russian fellow-monitors to accuse me of trying to influence the vote...
...I'm an international monitor and can't possibly advise you," I explained, pointing her toward the district Election Commission Chairman, Dmitry Mikhaylovich...
...I'll be right over...
...Working for a government institute gave me lots of security," he said...
...During the voting procedure the election commissioners and the monitors had kept their distance...
...They each invested 250,000 rubles, a very significant sum at the time...
...I had his address with me...
...Hello, cousin," he said in a brisk, happy voice...
...When our Russian hosts found out that I was born in Rostov, they started howling, "You're one of us...
...I really had no idea what he was like...
...I told him I would be monitoring the referendum...
...But in Soviet times my parents, like other proletarians, were allowed just one room in the once luxurious mansion...
...Various kinds of dried and smoked fish and fresh chicken were available too...
...The dark-skinned, darkeyed men were mostly from the Caucasus—Georgians, Chechens, etc.—and are involved in all kinds of shady dealings as well as organized crime...
...In Russia that means only one thing—vodka...
Vol. 76 • June 1993 • No. 8
