From Russia....with Ambivalence

PETYA and I were walking near St. Isaac's Cathedral, through the dark, the drizzle and the streaked neon glare of Leningrad, discussing my girlfriend. We were interrupted by a policeman. My down jacket had betrayed me--I was a foreigner, an alien. Petya was implicated for associating with me, and all three of us knew it. Petya, a Russian, had left his papers at home. The policeman's eyes narrowed when he heard it. He searched Petya's pockets and found a Finnish coin about the size of a dime, but not quite as valuable. It surprised me that Petya would have had it on his person. He claimed not to have known of its existence, or whence it came. Asked about me Petya dissembled and mumbled something about a "droog"--friend.

I answered the policeman's questions as incorrectly as possible; only spies speak Russian well. I was careful, however, to hide any trace of an English accent so as not to be classed as an American and, hence, dangerous alien. I showed him my expired Nebraska driver's license, Omaha Public Library card, Harvard I.D., and my Cool Cash 24-hour teller card to prove my identity. He grunted knowingly upon receiving each one, convinced by the power of the color pictures and strange language that I was a Finn and in Leningrad only to drink. ("Drunk Finns" make the pilgrimage to escape Finnish liquor taxes and dry laws.)

"You're free to go," he said to me with a snappy half salute. I hesitated for a moment, glanced at Petya. He was obviously supposed to go with the officer. "I said you may go," he repeated, this time motioning down the street. I stood for a moment, then followed along, relishing the obvious discomfort that this caused the goon.

After ten minutes of waiting for them to determine if Petya had permission to live in Leningrad, I left him to his fate. The officer demanded a bribe to prevent the police from notifying University officials of his suspicious involvement with an alien, but Petya got off without paying. He left the station about three hours later. I went straight home.

DORMITORY NUMBER six, where we lived during our four-month stay in Leningrad, stands on the right bank of the River Neva almost directly opposite the Winter Palace of the Tsars. In pre-revolutionary times "6" served as a "public house" where public women offered their services to the Tsar's officers. We used to joke that the plumbing probably hadn't been fixed since that time and that when the women left they probably took the toilet seats and hot water with them.

Our group lived on the third floor along with Russian roommates majoring in Philology. They were fairly interested in us--some more than others. Fear of Soviet spying caused us to discuss private matters at a whisper in the hall or on the sidewalk, to make telephone calls from payphones a distance from the dorm, and never to leave the addresses of our local Russian friends in the usual places for such things. Although most became good friends with their roomies, we were careful not to say more than was necessary; every inhabitant of "6" was special. Just to enter this dorm, one had to leave one's papers at a desk where the name and purpose of the visit were recorded.

Soviet students are in class six hours a day, six days a week. Because no typewriters are available, research papers are almost unheard of except for the "diploma work"--something akin to a senior thesis. Books are in very short supply. As a result, Soviet students do very little studying, and most learning occurs in the classroom. Cheating is widespread. Most professors look the other way, preferring not to fail students likely to have powerful parents and aware that their own records will look better if all of their students pass.

Soviet education seems to have advanced little during the last few decades. There are still no copying machines or advanced audio-visual equipment. While Leningrad State University is the second largest and most prestigious university in the country, there is no course catalogue. Students must look on bulletin boards in each department to find the offerings.

Educational emphasis is focused on the sciences. Despite the lack of good lab facilities and modern research tools, the Soviet science student is often more competent than his Western counterpart because he specializes in only one area. The rigidity of this educational program partially compensates for the inferior technology and materials available. The cost is creativity. A college education is five years in duration, but highly structured. Electives are almost unknown, as is the Western idea of liberal arts.

Upon graduation most students are placed in jobs in regions where it is hard for the government to maintain a skilled labor force. Jobs in the major cities--Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Minsk--are sought after because of these cities' vastly superior material situation and cultural life.

Student life in the Soviet Union bears little resemblance to that in America. Because the students receive a stipend that pays for food and school materials and little more, the Soviet student spends more time walking in the parks, visiting friends, and sipping tea than going to bars, restaurants, concerts or the theater. On weekends, partying gets serious with straight vodka the most popular beverage. Sexually, the Soviet student is surprisingly puritan. Because birth control is not available--abortion is the most common kind of contraception--most Soviet students taking part in higher education refrain entirely from sexual activity. Although the Great October Revolution took place more than 63 years ago, the Western sexual revolution has yet to arrive.

Members of the working class not only engage in sex at earlier ages, but also marry four to six years earlier than those with a higher education. For both intellectual and worker, marital life follows traditional patterns. While the revolution was supposed to liberate women, traditional family roles remain unchanged. The wife must still cook, clean, and care for the children; only today, she must also hold down a full-time job. This puts considerable pressure on the marital relationship. Divorce rates are as high as those in the United States, and extramarital affairs seem to be far more common. Often both husband and wife are aware of, and have even met, their spouse's lover.

Soviets generally have much lower expectations than the average American. Americans believe that in order to be happy they must be rich, attractive, and in love. The young Soviet is not as optimistic about his future. During the past three years, material conditions have worsened. Increasing one's web of connections in order to gain access to scarce goods is a major proccupation of all Soviets. The best most can hope for is a primitive type of job security.

The most influential positions are those which bring one into contact with the West. This kind of job not only ensures access to western jeans, records, toiletries, and other consumer goods, it affords the Soviet a chance to expand his mental and philosophical horizons. In a society where the intellectual finds himself disagreeing with most of what he reads, just meeting a Westerner can provide the intellectual support that maintains his sanity. Thus, most Soviets would give anything to travel abroad and almost all are willing to risk the arbitrary caprices of the system just to be able to meet with a foreigner.

Leningrad is a city dominated by its namesake. The sign which appears on buildings that "Lenin is more alive than the living" is not an exaggeration. Lenin is very much the Soviet national icon. One can buy literally hundreds of different lapel pins or "znatchki" with Lenin's profile. Buildings, theaters, factories, ships, trains and squares are named after him. His name is invoked to justify all political actions and his ideas and actions are acknowledged for all positive achievements of the Soviet State. Even people who dream of emigrating consider him to have been a great man. They often lament the fact that he died so early and that his death paved the way for Stalin's rise to power.

While the inclusion of Lenin in everyday life in a sense politicizes everything, in fact, the Soviet people are very apolitical. They feel that they cannot influence political decisions in their own country and they assume that people abroad find their governments similarly unresponsive to their political wishes. While they realize that life elsewhere is generally "freer" than in the Soviet Union, they are highly influenced by propaganda which tells them that in the West crime is so rampant that merely being on the street is an invitation to murder. To a Russian the very term "freedom" implies a perjorative loss of control.

The Soviets' lack of political interest extends to the situation in Afghanistan. Most Soviets have no idea how many Soviet troops are presently there. The conflict in Afghanistan has not exercised a major impact on Soviet life, although most Soviets agree that the food situation is worse now than during any time in the recent past. Soviets do not understand the West's "preoccupation" with Afghanistan. Those members of the intelligentsia who already have entered into opposition to the state would joke about the intervention: Q: Why have Soviet troops stayed in Afghanistan so long? A: Because they haven't been able to find the person who invited them. But most Soviets see it as a non-issue. Some argue that Afghanistan lies on their Southern boundary and therefore they have to right to support a government friendly to them against counter-revolutionaries and foreign mercenaries. Even people who do not accept the official Soviet line were critical of the American grain embargo and the Olympic boycott. The grain embargo just hurts the average person, they would say, and the Olympic boycott reduced contact between people.

The Soviet people always try to impress their desire for peace on Americans. The two of us were in a "pirozhkovaya,"--a fast-food establishment where meat pastries are sold, one Saturday morning. The waitress, a tiny old woman in her sixties, asked us where we were from. "U.S.A.," said one of us. She didn't understand. "U.S.A.," we repeated. Still no connection. "America," we added. "Oh, Good Lord!" The woman exploded into a torrent of questions, assurances, promises, and encouragements. "We're just ordinary people. We're all just people. We want peace. Everyone wants peace. You want peace, too, don't you? Sure you do. We're good Soviet people, just like you."

This small, wrinkled old lady is a living monument to the legacy of World War II. It is difficult for an American to understand the war's impact on the Soviet Union. The "Great Patriotic War" cost the Soviet people twenty million lives and probably twice that number in wounded. During the Nazi blockade, 770,000 people starved to death in Leningrad alone--a figure greater than the total battle casualty count of the United States and Great Britain combined. Because roughly three times more men died in the conflict than women, there currently exists nearly an entire generation of elderly women who never married and whose presence is felt throughout Soviet society. The ever-present babushka is always telling complete strangers to wear a scarf or hat, to stand up straighter, or not to shuffle your feet when you walk.

These women will never forget the war, and it is the war that provides the Soviet regime with its greatest claim to legitimacy. While no one ever elected the Bolsheviks, they can at least claim that they successfully defended the "Mother Homeland" from the German fascists. The government has a great stake in perpetuating the war's memory. War memorials are ubiquitous. In every major city, scouts guard tombs of unknown soldiers with Kalashnikov assault rifles. At each change of the guard four more 14-year-olds goose-step out to symbolically protect the "Mother Homeland" from another invasion.

The war has even become the chief excuse for the backwardness and shortcomings of the Soviet economy. "The Great Patriotic War was only 35 years ago and we have had to rebuild Eastern Europe and provide for our defense first," is the common rebuttal to any attack on the Soviets' ailing economy. But in choosing this method to justify their regime, the Politburo is forced to continue the paranoia and xenophobia of a war atmosphere. The enemy is NATO, China and the CIA. TASS depicts the United States as obsessed with disrupting the Soviet way of life. The Soviets are told that we spend twice what they do on armaments, and most believe it.

Ethan Burger '81 and Frederick Schneider '82 are Slavic Studies concentrators who returned in January from a semester at Leningrad State University.