I looked
more out of place than any other person in Texas as I stood in
line to board the plane from Lubbock to Houston. And that is
not because I cannot look like a Texan-I can if I want to. But
from my Winnipeg days I owned a parka good for arctic weather
that I wanted to bring to Russia; if packed it would take up
a small suitcase. Carrying it seemed the easiest thing to do,
but when also carrying a laptop computer and two briefcases of
teaching notes that I did not trust to the airline's baggage
destroyers, wearing the parka seemed the only reasonable way
to get it on the plane. Thus on a lovely day with temperatures
poking into the high 70s, a sweaty American/Canadian wearing
a heavy, hooded coat waited in line with a bunch of students
wearing t-shirts and left Lubbock, Texas. I would often look
just as much out of place during the next six months.
Changing planes in Houston and
Amsterdam brought more of the same strange stares: probably only
the laptop prevented offers of spare change from kind strangers
who thought I was down on my luck. But the wisdom of my decision
became apparent when our pilot announced as we approached Moscow
that we would be landing in a blizzard. I had been to Moscow's
Sheremetyevo airport once before as a tourist in 1993 and had
been forced to wait over one hour in line to go through immigration
and then another hour to get my luggage. No one had been friendly
and no one had been kind and everyone had shouted bewildering
commands in Russian that I had no chance of obeying. By all accounts
that I had heard since, the situation had deteriorated even more.
The Fulbright office in Washington warns all travelers to expect
the worst-so I did. Nothing came close to the worst. I sailed
through passport control and customs in 15 minutes and my luggage
was waiting for me on the other side.
So also was a young guy named Alexey
who I had been told would pick me up. Alexey stood holding a
sign saying "Fulbright" and I was pretty sure
that meant me so I introduced myself. Alexey grabbed a couple
of bags, I grabbed a couple and away we went into what the newspapers
would say two days later was Moscow's worst blizzard in four
centuries of recorded weather history. In reality, it was not
that bad: winds of 30 Kilometers, temperature of minus 17 Celsius,
and perhaps (when all was over) 16 inches of snow. Just an average
spring day in Winnipeg. The fabled brutal Russian winter
that everyone everywhere seems to think is the worst cold weather
in the world is simply not that fierce. If you are Napoleon and
are trying to move a hundred thousand troops from Poland to Moscow
or if you are a German soldier at Stalingrad being resisted by
a few million Russian patriots, I am sure that the cold and snow
might wear on you a bit. But I lived through what Muscovites
say was the worst winter in years and it was roughly comparable
to Boston and much better than Northern New England, the Northern
Great Plains, and all of Canada except British Columbia. It is
indeed, I believe, the fabled failed winter military campaigns
that have made the west so erroneously think of Russia as frozen
tundra.
My first four or five days in Moscow
was the only time in my trip that I asked myself a few times
if I had made a mistake taking my new job. After this short settling-in
process, however, every other week was glorious. I kept telling
myself during the first few days, that I should not be upset
by a few early difficulties. But I was. And more than being disheartening,
much of what I saw puzzled me. Moscow did not make sense at first
and seemed awash in contradiction and paradox. The lesson to
be learned from my early thoughts, of course, is that one should
never trust first impressions of a new place and people. A combination
of natural anxieties, jet lag, and cultural differences made
me cranky and clouded my vision.
Back to Alexey and my introduction to Moscow. It took nearly
two hours to get to my apartment because of rush-hour traffic
and the blizzard conditions, which despite my above winter comments,
did make driving difficult especially when we got inside the
city, which has a poor snow-removal capacity. I certainly had
a strong positive first impression about Alexey. He was close
to finishing his Ph.D. on the crisis in NATO during the 1960s;
he gave me a wonderfully articulate tour of all we passed en
route; and he was solicitous of any concerns I had. When I asked
Alexey if he would make a career in government or as a professor
after finishing his Ph.D., he replied, "I will be a scholar"
with such solemnity that I had to make him repeat it to make
sure I had heard correctly. When I asked him if he had traveled
abroad, he told me he had just arrived back from London two days
earlier and had been to New York and Washington in previous years.
I was also grateful for Alexey's welcome because all tourist
brochures and all western governments and businesses warn visitors
not to take a cab from the Moscow airport. Gypsy cab drivers
may rob you and legally licensed ones may extort you for huge
sums. So the Fulbright office always hires a driver to pick up
anyone coming to Moscow under its auspices. This was the grungiest
rented car that I had ever seen but I was mighty pleased to be
in it and not out on some highway emptying my wallet.
We drove through a main square,
Smolenskaya, near the apartment I had rented via e-mail on the
recommendation of an American who was leaving Moscow. We drove
down a dingy street behind the square, a dingier side-street,
and then a dark alley to a ratty door. This was it. It looked
pretty bad but I know that looks can be deceiving-I am a worldly
guy-so I withheld judgment. The driver rang a bell and we were
buzzed in to a hallway that made the alley look charming. I withheld
judgment no more. A dark staircase that looked like it belonged
in an 1890s Brooklyn tenement, cardboard and cigarette butts
on the floor, a row of mailboxes several of which hung open,
trash discarded everywhere, peeling paint, chunks of materials
missing from stairs-it did not look like the entranceway to an
$800 a month apartment.
The building did have an elevator
and we took it to my third floor apartment where my new landlord,
Anatoly, was waiting. Anatoly spoke no English but appeared anxious
to please and with Alexey interpreting we got down to brass tacks.
I paid him two months rent in American currency which he insisted
upon; he filled out all sorts of complicated papers for my visa
registration which as my landlord he was required to do if he
rented to a non-Russian; he showed me the various tricks of the
place-how to lock and unlock the two massive locks on the door,
how to light the stove, where to put the trash, how to work the
washing machine without a permit from the antique bureau, etc.
He was earnest and I was grateful for what appeared to be real
kindness.
Here is what one gets in central
Moscow-and central is the key word here, since location jacks
up all prices massively-for $800 American dollars a month: one
room for sleeping, entertaining, eating, and so forth that measures
19 by 11 feet, a commode in a claustrophobic crevice, a bathroom
with tub and basin in which the tub takes up almost all the space,
and a kitchen with what appears to be vintage 1930s fridge, stove,
and washing machine. For furnishings, four dinner plates, five
unmatched glasses, three formerly-Teflon-coated pans, one wine
glass, a bed with a thin mattress, a large round table with four
wooden chairs, a bureau, two lamps, and a free-standing wooden
closet. I will confess to being horrified, but here is where
first impressions were wrong.
First, I left out two wonderful
features which I did not appreciate that first night. I had a
direct view overlooking the Moscow River and illuminating a lovely
urban skyline. Under the large windows that spanned the entire
room was an inside wooden ledge about two feet wide on which
I often sat and sipped wine out of my one glass, and contemplated
the river and city. It was beautiful and almost assuredly added
much to the location variable to boost the rent substantially.
The view proved to be a source of great relaxation and poetry
for my soul throughout my stay. And, second, the bathtub was
so large that I could stretch out completely and still would
have had room for a fleet of toy boats in an endless supply of
hot water. Who needs three big rooms or modern appliances when
he is lucky enough to have a view and a bathtub like that? Forget
the horror of opening night; I quickly came to love the apartment
and for a person living alone, it was perfect.
Moreover, as much as I had tried not to bring my North American
norms with me, I did not really understand Russian norms at first.
Before leaving Texas, I had imagined Russian flats would be like
those of England and France that I had seen-smaller than American
ones but well-appointed and charming, perhaps even cute. Most
of the apartments that I have since seen in Moscow-even those
of distinguished professors and professionals-are astonishingly
small and spare by American and by English or French standards.
Russians live in small places because most people have not had
enough money to afford larger places. I bought some dishes and
a radio/CD player for my flat and I was as happy as a clam there.
I also believe that my place was safe despite the dingy entrance.
I met a third person my first night,
Professor Yuri Rogulev, my designated contact person at the university,
who entered the apartment with a bag of groceries for me about
ten minutes after I arrived. Yuri proved to be as nice as Alexey
and Anatoly, both of whom were deferential to him; I could tell
that he was regarded as a person of consequence. I knew that
he was the author of at least two books on American labor history
and had once been a Fulbright senior scholar in the other direction
and had taught labor history in the United States. After unpacking
the groceries, all four of us went out into the night-Alexey
and Anatoly back to their own homes while Yuri walked me to Smolenskaya,
a large square surrounded by retail businesses, to show me several
stores where I could shop for food. The square seemed nearly
deserted at about 7:30 P.M.-I learned later that this was only
because of the storm-but both stores we went in were full of
shoppers.
Yuri walked me back home, wished
me well, and at 8:00 P.M., having not slept in over 24 hours,
I was on my own in Moscow.
TR 59 Daniels, Bruce C. [TR 59 ISBN
978-1-878508-27-0 150 pages, $19.95 paper]
Living With Stalin's Ghost A
Fulbright Memoir of Moscow and the New Russia.
Transactions Volume 59 150 pages,
(2008)