Part 40 (1/2)

So if you make it clear that Intourist service is contemptible by free-world standards, a Russian may want to take a poke at you but he is much more likely to attempt to restore face by meeting those standards. The rest of the picture has to do with socialist ”equality,” another example of Communist semantics, because in the egalitarian paradise there is no equality, nowhere anything like the easy-going equality between an American taxi driver and his fare. In the USSR you are either on top or underneath-never even.

An American does not fit. Some Soviet citizens react by subordinating themselves to the tourist; grandmothers sweeping the streets will scurry out of your way, taxi drivers will rush to open doors, porters and waitresses and such are servile in a fas.h.i.+on we are not used to. But an employee of Intourist is in an indeterminate position vis-a-vis a tourist. Dominant? Or subordinate? It must be one or the other.

Often there is a quick test of wills, then an immediate a.s.sumption of one role or the other depending on how the tourist responds. For example, we were met in Kiev by a guide who gave his name as ”Sasha.” I asked his surname; he told me quite arrogantly that there was no need for me to know it.

We had been in the USSR several weeks and I had had my fill of arrogance; I told him bluntly that I was not interested in his name, that I had asked out of politeness as practiced in all civilized countries-but that if good manners were not customary in his country, forget it!

An American or other free man might have given me a rough answer or icy silence; he did neither, he groveled. When he left us at the hotel he thanked us effusively for having been so kind as to talk with him.

His manner was cringingly servile.

I don't like servility any more than the next American-but if there is going to be any groveling done it won't be by me. Nor, I hope, by you. In dealing with Intourist people you will often run into situations where one of you must knuckle under-and many are much tougher cases than this man. It will be a clash of will and all too often polite stubbornness won't be enough to get them to honor your contract-then you need to model your behavior after the worst temper tantrums you have seen Khrushchev pull on television; this they understand. In the USSR only a boss ever behaves that way; therefore you must be ent.i.tled to Red Carpet service. The Intourist functionary knows you are just an American tourist, to be frustrated and cheated, but his conditioned reflex bypa.s.ses his brain; a lifetime of conditioning tells him to kowtow to any member of the master cla.s.s.. . which you must be, even though his brain tells him you are not.

It usually works. In a bully-boy society often nothing but bullying will work.

The ”Coupon Game”: When you arrive you will be handed a lot of doc.u.ments in exchange for your tour voucher; one will be a book of meal tickets, four coupons for each day. For Luxe cla.s.s their values are twelve rubles for a breakfast coupon, twenty for a lunch, three for tea, thirty for dinner. If you and your spouse have contracted to spend a month in the USSR, your meal tickets have cost you one thousand dollars (3 Dec 79-Kremlin rate $6,080.00-World free-market $12,343.00) (281/2 oz. of gold). The gouging starts here, because Diamond Jim Brady and his twin could not eat a thousand dollars of Intourist food in a month. Intourist eateries range from pa.s.sable to very bad. Hotel Berlin in Moscow is perhaps the best but even it would have trouble making the Duncan Hines list. There are three or four good restaurants in the Soviet Union but their prices are very high and they won't accept coupons.

You can minimize your losses in ways that Intourist does not tell you. You can combine coupons as you wish-a ”lunch” and a ”breakfast” to pay for dinner, for example. The possible combinations in rubles are 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, and all higher numbers-but the hitch is that too many of them take more than one ”tea” coupon. So figure out the best way to work each combination and write it on the back of your coupon book; this will help you to decide whether to overpay for food already horribly overpriced, or to pay the difference in cash. Skill in the coupon game can save you many, many dollars.

There is nothing fair in the coupon system but it isn't meant to be; it is the prime fas.h.i.+on in which the Soviet government squeezes more dollars out of American tourists than they want or need to spend.

There are other ways to reduce your losses. You can swap coupons for liquor, candy, canned caviar, cigarettes, and bottled water. Tap water in Moscow and Leningrad is said to be safe but elsewhere it is wise to buy mineral water-get enough bottles at a time to come out even in coupons. Their cigarettes are corrosive but a brand called ”Trud” is smokable. Candy is extremely expensive but a welcome change in a tedious diet (I lost twelve pounds); caviar is cheap and is the best buy to use up leftover coupons on your last day. Don't expect to find whiskey nor any imported liquor, but local ”kawnyahk” and ”chahmpahnskoyeh” are good. The vodka like ours is ”vawt-kah stelleechnayuh”-the other sorts are very highly spiced. Their wines are good.

My favorite relief from a hard day with Intourist was a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary-”Staw grahm~vawt-kee, p'jalst, ee tawmahtnee sawk.” This is ”nyeh kuhltoornee” as the proper way to drink vodka is with beer (peevaw), or with black bread, sweet b.u.t.ter, and caviar.

In Moscow and Leningrad very few Russian waiters speak English and almost none elsewhere, but you will usually be handed a huge four-language menu on which you can pick out what you want in English and point to it in Russian. But only the few items with prices written in are offered and maybe half of those will be available-when the waiter says ”Nyeh-taw” he means it's all gone. Allow at least two hours for dinner; I've never heard of any way to speed up the service. But, once you are served, the waiter may try to rush you out, claiming that the table is reserved ten minutes hence for a delegation or such. He may simply want to sell food to someone else-he gets a commission. Ignore him-you've waited a long time, paid a high price in advance, and are ent.i.tled to eat in peace.

Pick a table as far from the orchestra as possible. Some orchestras are good but most are very loud and sound like a fully automated boiler factory.

Tipping is never necessary but waiters, chambermaids, and porters are paid very little. Tips can be coupons or cash.

The dining room is often locked-for a political delegation from Asia or Africa, for a traveling theatrical troupe, or anything. Any service may be chopped off without warning in any Intourist hotel.

Complain... but be prepared to fall back on the buffet (p.r.o.nounced ”boof-yet”). There are usually three or four on the upper floors of large hotels, open from seven a.m. to eleven at night and serving omelets, snacks, beer, wine, juice, coffee, tea, cakes, etc. The guides and clerks in Intourist often do not know about them because they have never been upstairs, so watch for the sign (BVDET) or wander the corridors saying inquiringly to maids and floor clerks: ”Boof-yet?”

Buffets are cozy, friendly, little places run by cheerful, helpful, dreadfully overworked women. They won't know English and the menu will be in Russian- here a memorandum in English & Russian of your favorite foods is most useful. But even the buffet doesn't serve breakfast before seven and Russian transportation often leaves at such an hour that you must leave the hotel before then. Russian hotels have room service but not at such hours. If you have your own thermos bottle, room service can fetch you hot coffee and a cold breakfast the night before. (They've heard of thermos bottles-the word is the same-but the hotel won't have one.) Keep iron rations in your room and carry food and drink on long flights and train trips. Both trains and planes often stop for meals but you can't count on it and usually can't find out in advance.

Minor Ways to Improve Your Score: Go for walks without your guide; you will usually be picked up by someone who knows English-but you will never be picked up while a guide is with you. This is your chance to get acquainted and to get answers which are not the official answers. Don't talk politics-but these venturesome souls may ask you political questions and you can learn almost as much by the questions they ask as by raising such issues yourself.

Your guide may not be a hardsh.e.l.l Communist; he, or she, may open up once he thinks he can trust you. If so, be careful not to mention anything even faintly political when others are in earshot, especially the driver. The driver may be a political chaperone who knows English but pretends not to. More than one guide has told me this and all guides talk more freely when no one can overhear.

In this country children are brought to Moscow and decorated for having informed on their parents.

Never forget this.

When you are shown a party headquarters, a palace of culture, a stadium, an auditorium, or such, ask when it was built. We discovered that, in the areas not occupied by n.a.z.is, many of the biggest and fanciest were built right at the time Americans were dying to keep the Murmansk lend-lease route open.

There is new brick construction all over the Soviet Union. We asked repeatedly to be shown a brick yard, were never quite refused, but the request was never granted. We have since heard a rumor that this is prison labor and that is why a tourist can't see something as unsecret as a brick yard. So try it yourself- you may merely prove to yourself that Intourist exists to keep tourists from seeing what they want to see, rather than vice versa.

Offer your pa.s.sport to casual acquaintances; they will usually offer theirs in return-internal pa.s.sports.

Intourist people have been coached to deny that such a thing exists but everybody in the USSR carries one and the owner must get a visa to go from one Russian city to another. It is a brown book with ”HAC11OPT” (pa.s.sport) on the cover. Try it when your guide is not around.

The USSR is the only country in which we were never able to get into a private home. Other tourists report the same but one couple from Los Angeles almost cracked this; they said to their guide, ”Why can't we see the inside of one of those apartment houses? Are you people ashamed of them?” The next day they were shown through a not-yet-occupied one.

This could be varied endlessly, as it works on that Russian basic, their inferiority complex. The key word is ”ashamed”-simply asking ”Why?” gets you nowhere. I think it could be used to get into farms, schools, courts, factories, anything not a military secret. It tops my list of things I wish I had thought of first.

In meeting anyone, including guides, try to use ”democracies” as an antonym for ”Communist countries” as soon as possible-drag it in by the heels, i.e., ”I think all of us from the democracies earnestly hope for peace with the Communist countries,” etc. The much abused word ”democratic” means ”Communist”

in Russia and it always introduces a propaganda pitch. If you deny him his definition by preempting the word, you leave him with his mouth hanging open, unable to proceed.

We got tripped on this several times before we caught on.

The official list of things you must not photograph is short but the unofficial list is long and ranges from old, broken-down buildings to old, broken-down women sweeping the streets. You can photograph such by having them appear ”accidentally” in a background but if you are suspected of this, they have a silent counter to it. At some later time you will find that your film has been exposed to light, then respooled. You could keep all your film with you at all times and hope to get it across the border. . . but such behavior might cause you to be arrested on suspicion of espionage, as one American tourist was this summer. At best, sneaking a picture of one pa.s.sed-out drunk risks losing all your pictures-too high a price even if you aren't accused of being a spy.

The most-used plane, the Ilyus.h.i.+n-14, flies very low; you can see a lot and compare it with elsewhere. Are railroads single or double track? How much traffic on the roads? On the rivers? How about factory smokestacks and other signs of industry? How busy are the airfields? Or a dozen other things. I think you will conclude that no Russian claim should be accepted as true until fully verified. A ”great industrial center” often turns out to be a jerkwater town.

But don't make written notes about such things! Don't!!!

Will your mail be opened? You must a.s.sume so. Will your rooms be bugged? It seems impossible to monitor every room of every Intourist hotel-but if the police get interested in you it takes just three minutes in these days of miniaturization to bug a room. I do know, from several incidents, that Soviet citizens believe that all hotel rooms are bugged.

I wish that a million of us would visit the USSR; the dollars the Kremlin would reap would be more than offset by the profit to us in having so many free men see with their own eyes what Communism is.

But go there with your eyes open-Intourist is as fully an agency of the Kremlin as is Gromyko or Mikoyan. Its functions are (1) to get your money in advance, (2) to deliver as little as possible by downgrading accomodations, by forced overcharges on food, and by clipping you on auto and guide service, (3) to waste your time so that you wiil see as little as possible, and (4) to see that what little time you have left is spent only on those things the Kremlin does not mind your seeing-”new construction”

(from the outside), parks of ”rest & culture” (filled with loudspeakers blaring propaganda), ballets, museums, stadiums, and the outsides of public buildings.

The first point you must accept; the game is crooked but it is the only game in town. Points two and three you can struggle against-I hope the tactics suggested in here will help. Point four is the toughest.

After tr.i.m.m.i.n.g you down to about three hours a day of useful time, Intourist can and will use up what is left in ”stadium sightseeing” unless you fight it constantly. Even then, Intourist is adept in parrying with: ”It's closed today-too bad you're not staying another day,” and ”That must be arranged in advance through the Ministry of Culture, etc.” and ”You should have requested that in Moscow.”

The essence of Intourist tactics is: ”Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.” The way to answer it is: ”No! I will not look at the stadium, I do not want to see another subway station, I will not visit a museum to see another five hundred pictures of Lenin. I want to see thus-and-so and I want to see it now. Stop the car, get on the phone, and arrange it- or tell the Director that, as far as I am concerned, you're fired! I am keeping the car and the driver and will go on without you- I've got hours more of car service due me today and I won't be cheated out of it.”

You will find whether your guide is truly a guide... or a guard placed with you to make sure you see only the facade of this regime. Whether or not you see ”thus-and-so” you are sure to learn a surprising amount about how a police state is run. . . and thereby get your full money's worth in education.

AFTERWORD.

After twenty years it would seem logical for me to return to the USSR to see what improvements, if any, they have made in handling tourism. I could plead age and health but I shan't-one trip to USSR is educational; twice is masochism.

If you have been to the USSR recently and if you know enough Russian that you could and did slip the leash occasionally and poke around and get acquainted without permission of Intourist, please write to me and tell me about it-what you saw with your own eyes, what you touched, what you counted, how you were treated. I am not interested in second-hand reports, not even from other Americans you trust, and I most emphatically am not interested in anything your guides told you.

If you know no Russian and took one of the standard Intourist trips-around the Black Sea, or the Len ingradMoskva-Sochi trip-don't waste your time writing. I hope you had fun.

If you took the long railway trip, Vladivostok to Leningrad or Moskva-or vice versa-do please write to me. If you knew no Russian at first, I'm betting high odds that you spoke fluent (if ungrammatical) Russian long before you completed the trip. You will know many things I don't know as I have never been across Siberia. Alma Ata, KSSR, north of the Himalayas and just short of Sinkiang, is as far as I got.