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FROM A POLICE STATE A Moscow Cold War Memoir |
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GOING TO MOSCOW |
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This is an excerpt from a book-length work in progress by Michael Johnson, presented in this form exclusively by TheColumnists.com through the courtesy of the author, who reserves all rights. |
for TheColumnists.com
The wind in the canyons of New York City on that February morning in 1967 came howling down like a swarm of tiny needles right in the face, in the eyes. It was painful and there was no protection from it. The snow was drifting waist deep and my wife Jacqueline was seven months pregnant.
We were down to $450 in the bank but I was too young and optimistic to know how close to the edge this was.
I was in the middle of
my graduate fellowship program in Russian Studies at Columbia
University when word came on that miserable morning that Ben
Bassett of The Associated Press wanted to see me urgently. I
jumped on the subway and rode down to midtown, feeling pretty
high. There I boarded the beautiful art deco elevator at 50 Rockefeller
Plaza and punched 4 for the AP newsroom. I had worked there for
two exciting years before taking a leave of absence to go to
Columbia, and I felt at home in this chaos. It was right out
of the classic movie The Front Page. I shook hands with
Ben, the crusty old foreign editor, who looked up at me, clad
in his usual baggy brown pants, bow tie and suspenders, loose
shoes and rumpled shirt. Having no patience with small talk,
Ben gave it to me straight:
“Mike, how soon can you get over to Moscow for us?”
Words cannot convey the excitement I felt. I don’t remember saying anything in response for a few seconds. I just grinned. Finally I managed: “As soon as I finish my last exam.” Going abroad as a journalist--becoming a foreign correspondent--had been my career goal since I was 19. I was newly married and we were expecting our first, who turned out to be Stephanie.
We were also expecting to be sent to Paris. but that wasn’t going to happen quite yet.
The AP wanted me in Moscow fast because I claimed to be a Russian speaker and the bureau was about to lose one of its key men. Only one other member in the four-man bureau had Russian, a Princeton grad who later went on to CNN, then mysteriously disappeared to Ypsilanti, Michigan. I have spent my life making sure that won’t be my fate.
As my cash reserves dwindled, The AP miraculously gave me a blank check to get myself fitted out with foul weather gear for the Moscow assignment. They recommended the very posh Abercrombie & Fitch on Park Avenue, a place I normally would not have dared enter. But I did, and before we left we had spent about 1,000 dollars of their cash on an Arctic parka, fur-lined boots (that I still have), huge gloves, and a similar line of stylish stuff for Jacqueline.
Jacqueline, Stephanie and I boarded a plane the day after my final exam at Columbia, and we flew first class by Pan American to London, then changed to BOAC first class to Moscow. There were no direct flights from New York in 1967. Stephanie was about a foot long and weighed about 8 pounds. She was seven weeks old and could have fit into a grocery bag, easy. She screamed all the way.
We were met at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport by Henry Bradsher, the tall, ascetic, flinty-eyed American AP bureau chief famous for his finely honed journalistic instincts. (Ask him if he has heard about something that happened in his territory and he would tell you, “I filed that three hours ago.”) Henry enjoyed his reputation as a hard-nosed reporter and a ruthless, heartless manager, but he was a real softie when it came to small children. We were very warmly welcomed.
Even old Ben warned me about Henry’s hard style. I said that if he appreciated productivity I would have no problem with him, and I didn’t.
Henry eventually went to work for the CIA on the analysis side, not the covert operations side. As he used to put it, he became an “analyst for the U.S. government.” I had always thought he was good Langley material when I worked for him. He kept a scorched coffee can in his kitchen for burning papers he didn’t want anyone to see. It was his own private little “eyes only” furnace.
Our new apartment was not ready for us yet, so we spent a few days in the Leningradskaya Hotel, a truly dismal place, then began a “musical chairs” rotation among the three available AP apartments as each family left on vacation. This meant living out of suitcases for the entire summer. Stephanie was not amused, nor was Jacqueline. By the time we got settled we had moved six times in 18 months of marriage.
Moscow had its good points. It was the first time we (eventually) had a three-bedroom apartment. It was the first time we had several months of imported canned food on hand in a well-stocked pantry, and it was the first time we had a full-time maid. Over our four years in Moscow, we had a succession of these Russian women working for us, most of whom were poor dears, and we came to rely on them heavily for all sorts of things. But we never got used to their habit of stealing whatever they thought they could get away with--from oranges to silverware. When we fired one for sticky fingers, we were quickly offered another, because the Russians wanted a person in the household to keep an eye on us.
In this case, though, we declined to accept the first replacement offered because we had learned from other foreigners that she was a KGB colonel. They flattered us. Surely we didn’t merit that level of surveillance. Her name was Klava, a woman reminiscent of Rosa Kleb in the James Bond film From Russia with Love. Rosa was the tough gal who had a spring-loaded knife blade with a poisoned tip in the toe of her boot.
A maid named Lala, about 35 but looking 50, probably 250 pounds, showed us around our new apartment, proudly pointing out the central heating and the hot and cold running water. In the kitchen, she leaned against the sink as she chattered on about this huge flat, an extravagance compared to typical multi-family apartments the average Muscovites squeeze into. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a pale, grey cockroach, antennae erect, shooting across the counter. Without interrupting her flow, Lala whacked the bug, gathered up the wriggling remains in her fat little hand and crushed it to death. We could hear the carapace crackle. With a flick of her wrist and squirt of cold water, the remains went down the drain. She never stopped talking.
Russians are of two minds about cockroaches. While recognized as disgusting little beasts, cockroaches are also a sign of wealth, a fact noted as far back as Dostoevsky. There are two kinds, the greys and the browns. The greys are the upper class variety that creep into your house to get your food. The browns are less picky. They come in just looking for filth. The big apartment bloc reserved for foreigners (we called it Kutuzovsky Compound) where we lived was infested with greys, I’m proud to say. We tended to tolerate them because there was no point trying to get the upper hand. Even the exterminators were not welcome because the other tenants would complain that we were merely chasing the bugs into their quarters.
Our neighbor had such a bad infestation that her kitchen floor was alive with them within minutes of shutting out the lights at night. Yet if she surprised them by returning unannounced, they didn’t flee back into the woodwork, they charged her. Finally one night she sprinkled gasoline on the entire herd and burned them out. It didn’t solve anything but it helped keep the population down.
Foreigners were privileged in many ways. Except for the bugs, we had such a dramatically better lifestyle than the locals that we felt guilty about it. Besides our princely lodgings, we were always given precedence over the Russians if we wanted a restaurant reservation or a theater ticket or virtually anything else. It was done so openly and aggressively that we felt we were trampling on their dignity.
This kind of living was the beginning of a tremendous adventure, one that shaped our attitudes and the rest of our lives.
You can comment on this column or contact Michael Johnson with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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