My senses sharpened when we finally arrived in Leningrad. Nearing the center of the city, we saw few cars on the streets. The cars were mostly small, and some veered around in odd ways. Buses were numerous, mostly unwashed, and often with multiple dents.
Our tour included rooms in what had been described as one of the city’s best tourist hotels. Its large front windows were grimy. Its lobby had little charm. Martti and I shared a double room. Assuming it came with listening devices, we made little comments to our supposed KGB listeners.
We had dinner in the hotel’s spacious restaurant that night. A large staff of waiters scurried about taking orders and delivering dinners. But other doings were afoot. Waiters would stop at a table, lift a plate to retrieve something underneath, hustle away, and return moments later to place something else under the same plate. Western currency was being traded for black market rubles openly. Bribes likely had been made to keep the authorities at bay.
After some hesitation, after all this was Russia, Martti nervously placed some markkas under his plate and nodded to a passing waiter. His markkas promptly were replaced with rubles at something like three times the official exchange rate.
Leningrad became a blur of elaborate buildings, pedestrian-filled streets, very few restaurants (we ate only one dinner outside the hotel), the majesty and enormity of the Hermitage Museum, pure awe while standing near the remains of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky, and Sunday evening subway rides to and from a fabulous ballet performance (our tickets amazingly inexpensive).
On Monday morning Martti and I boarded our return bus and watched our fellow passengers, bedraggled to a man, come in. Their morning greetings, Hyvää huomenta, were typically lyrical, but grunted painfully and with scratched voices. As our bus left the city, conversations commenced, softly at first but growing louder as details of the days, or rather the nights, came to light. Martti translated some of the more salacious details for me. A good time had been had by all!
We again stopped in a number of towns to be checked by military types and have the slanted mirror rolled around our bus to make sure no citizen was slipping about unlawfully. Then we stopped at the border for the now familiar routine. The same sturdy guard I’d dealt with earlier was on duty. He again hand checked my pockets and found a ruble bill I had missed. “A souvenir, huh?” he said, giving it to me and patting my shoulder. We crossed the Finnish side in a breeze and returned to Kuopio.
In 1948, E.B. White wrote in The New Yorker, “Socialism holds itself responsible to the people for the use and management of resources, and in so doing is likely to end up (as it has in Russia) by managing everything, including the citizen’s private life, his thoughts, his arts, and his science.” Decades later I saw firsthand the accuracy of his words.
A letter in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (30 Oct 2020) describes Hungary in the 1950s. “The Communist government claimed 100% employment. Everyone had a job, regardless of qualification, received a paycheck, and survived. Ultimately the government ran out of money, the system collapsed, the unemployment rate soared, and we all know the rest of the story.”
