I asked to see N.I. Stupnikova and was taken to see her and her laboratory. She is a chemist of some international reputation. She turned out to be pleasant, nice-looking middle-aged lady. Her laboratory was nothing special, except she had a 6 ft high philodendron growing right next to her fume hood! I'm sure I had never seen a plant in a chemistry laboratory before, especially one that was supposed to be a clean laboratory..
We went to Leningrad where I did a repeat of my talk. I'm not sure how much people understood it, but it eventually appeared in Russian so if they were interested they could read the paper in all its glory. At any rate they were very polite. I asked to visit the retired head of a famous geochronology laboratory staffed completely with women. We went to lunch and had a soup of little meat balls and cabbage. Frankly the cabbage was like cardboard, but I figured if the Soviets could eat it, so could I. When I looked up from finishing my soup, I noticed that the director and my translator had pushed the cabbage aside on their soup plates. I said something like you haven't eaten your cabbage? They replied that it was bad for their stomach. Gulp! But I was all right. I visited the isotope laboratory and was surprised to see some male electrical engineers in this all-women institute. They replied that women didn't go into engineering. This was not what we were told in the West, but this is what they said.
There were also many cultural experiences. I did see a performance of Giselle, not by the Bolshoi Ballet, but they were very good and saw a circus that was impressive. They took me to a number of art museums, including the famous Hermitage, with the famous gold room, in Leningrad. I was surprised that I was allowed to take my camera into art museums with just the promise that I wouldn't use the flash. In fact I was allowed to take pictures wherever I wished although I was told beforehand I wouldn't be.
My stereotype of the Soviet person was a contrast between accepting some innocent mistake with humor and being upset by others. At the Hermitage, we had a museum translator in addition to my scientific translator. After getting a lecture on some items in a display case, I asked the museum translator whose likeness that was on an enameled box. Haughtily she replied "Sir, if I knew who that is, I would have told you who that is. I do not know who that is. No one knows who that is." Bong! But then later when I misidentified the painter of a modern painting, she sympathetically corrected me. You never knew what kind of response you would get. Recall in Part I the billboards urging people to be nice to each other.
We did have our gum incident. Soviets could not buy gum, and my translator asked me to buy his son some gum. I did this but I had heard stories of Westerners being jailed for giving Russian citizens gum. So after I bought the gum, I went into his room and surreptitiously gave him the gum.
In spite of what I was told would be the situation, I was able to photograph anything I wanted to. In fact I saw everything I wanted to see on the trip and more except for two things. One was the Kremlin diamond museum, which I was told was reserved at the time for the national congress which was meeting at the time, and the instrument that could measure changes in helium isotope composition, of which they were very proud. At the time they were ahead of us in this endeavor. They said they were thinking of commercially selling the machine. When I was denied seeing the equipment, I said that we would not buy one if we couldn't see it. They were disturbed by this, but said the instrument was classified and beyond their power.
A few words on eating. Typically for breakfast in the Academy of Sciences hotel, I had a small individual frying pan with two egg, sunny side up, and a couple of hot dogs. I can't find the word for this but phonetically it was something like "yayushniku." We also had a feast at what my scientific translator called the best restaurant in Russia. The Russians start this with zakuska or hors d'oeuvres which are excellent and in this case included black caviar in the mix. I'm afraid that by the time the main course arrived, I was pretty filled and couldn't do it justice. It certainly was one of the best meals I ever had.
Some final comments. Women in the Soviet Union seemed wild about women's shoes in the West. It wasn't that the shoes they could get weren't serviceable, more so than women's shoes in the West, it was just that they weren't stylish. We were in a taxi in Leningrad when it started to snow. The driver turned on the windshield wipers, but there were no blades so every once in a while we would stop and the driver would wipe off the windshield. I said to my translator, "In my country, this would be illegal." He replied, "I think it is illegal in my country too." When we returned from Leningrad, we could not find our limousine so the translator suggested we get a taxi. We had to get in line, a line with maybe a dozen people ahead of us. After waiting for about 10 min. with no taxi arriving, I suggested we go to the subway station about a block or so away. It was cold. My translator said he would look again for our driver and did find him, but my impression of the taxi service in Moscow was not good.
My impression also was that alcoholism was rampant. For example, when we would go down into a subway station (which were exquisite), you might see soldiers lying drunk on the floor of the station, which I am sure embarrassed those accompanying me. Lastly was the time we were looking for a restaurant to have lunch. We found one, but there was a sign on the door. I asked my translator what the sign said, and he replied, "Closed for lunch."
When I went to leave, I was given what was left of my prize money, which was not a lot, maybe 70 or so rubles. You were not allowed to take money out of the Soviet Union so I just handed it to the guard at the gate, but he wouldn't take it and pointed to a kiosk and said get wood carvings so I did which I still have today. I still had some coins left which again I handed to the guard but he shook his head and said, "Souvenir."
Above have been some of my reminiscences of my trip to the Soviet Union in 1976. My flight out of Moscow was delayed by fog, but when we finally got going, this time on a regular passenger plane, I felt great relief. I wondered why because I had been there under some of the best conditions imaginable. I got to see everything I wanted to see and then some. I was ferried around in limousines. I was wined and dined wonderfully. The entertainment was first rate. Yet, there was always a tension, I guess. Like the time we were walking in the Kremlin in a group and were crossing over a street and then turning right crossing again. I heard a whistle blowing but thought nothing of it. A hand came out and pulled me into the group and the whistling stopped. I was cutting the corner too wide.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment