by Maria Genova
We couldn’t imagine that not that long ago just drawing a dollar sing would be enough reason to send someone to a re-education camp, where forced labour and brainwashing would force him to see reason. In the first years of communism even the smallest things were seen as an offence. We only talked about these things in the form of jokes. A dissident was given a ten-year jail sentence. ‘What did you do?’ his fellow inmates asked.
‘Nothing,’ he replied.
‘That can’t be right. They give you five years for doing nothing.’
The communists had even set up a curfew and if my mother was walking along the streets in a miniskirt, she would get black stamps on her knees. Women in miniskirts were an embarrassment to the socialist society where according to the teaching the morals were higher than in the West. The tight trousers that my father an all other men wore at that time were unceremoniously cut in the crotch. Often not even by police officers, but by controlling citizens who wore red bands on their arms as a distinguishing sign. You certainly headed home quickly with a slit in your crotch. The crotches were only cut if a ping pong ball couldn’t slide down the trouser leg. Not all of the officers had ping pong balls. Most of them used their eyes to judge.
‘We were discouraged form wearing black tights,’ my mother said. ‘The party thought they looked whorish. They were seen as coming from the West and everything that came from the West was by definition bad. Brown tights were allowed. Jazz music, however, wasn’t, because that was seen as the devil’s music. If you played it nonetheless then that was reason enough to send you to a re-education camp.’
‘We imported only what we really needed and preferably nothing from capitalist countries,’ my father added to her tales about this strange past. ‘When the Americans set up an embargo because of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, we got around this by importing computer technology and machines through third world countries. The Americans weren’t allowed to know this, so newly-imported machines were covered in huge stickers with ‘high voltage’ and ‘beware, dangerous’. If an American delegation came to visit they would quickly walk past the unrecognizable production tools.
Society had changed a generation later. We felt free and happy in our spacious cage. Everyone had a job, the schools and health care were free, most people earned enough to live a good life and to save for vacations. Pregnancy women were given one year paid maternity leave and two years unpaid. When they came back after three years, they were certain that their job had been kept open for them. The streets in the large cities were sprayed clean by tank-cars every night and swept clean during the day by the gypsies. All plantations were kept neat and tidy.
Russia
I could hardly believe it when my parents told me one nice, sunny day that we were travelling to the most powerful country in the world. Just me and my younger sister by two years, who had just turned 15! My father had studied in Moscow and we would stay with his best study friends. Mother Russia was waiting for us.
When we arrived at Sofia airport, we felt like we were in an exciting film. Our parents were not allowed to escort us any further than the departure hall. We wanted to take a picture, but an armed police officer rushed to us and snapped: ‘No photo’s’.
All airports were deemed military objects, where there was no place for family sentiments. It was also forbidden to take pictures of bridges and railways, as well as stations, transmission towers, harbours and factories. This was the same in Russia, so we had asked ourselves if there was anything we could take pictures of.
My sister and I passed the metal detectors and walked through to passport control.
‘Look at me,’ a grumpy man said and carefully compared the photograph to my face. He returned my passport without saying anything. Perhaps it was naïve, but I secretly hoped he would wish me a pleasant journey. I found it to be so terribly exciting to be travelling by airplane without my parents for the first time and to such an exciting destination. The era of ‘glasnost’ (openness) had already begun in Russia. You could only dream about that in Bulgaria, but in Russia people wore t-shirts with ‘perestroika’ (rebuilding) and ‘sex’ without being arrested.
The Red Square looked familiar to me, even though I had never seen it before. After all it had been the background for most of the news on Bulgarian television as well as the endless reruns of Russian films. We were amazed: we thought everything in Moscow was gigantic. The metro, the central department store, the hotels, the university buildings.…we even found the traffic to be an attraction. The cars were crisscrossing each other. The drivers would change lanes every few minutes, loudly tooting their horns to avoid collisions and to vent their frustrations. We have never seen such chaos in Bulgaria. Perhaps we hadn’t yet imported enough Russian cars.
Our hosts asked if we wanted to visit the mausoleum to see Lenin’s embalmed body. I didn’t want to leave this vibrant life to look at a dead person. Besides, we also had a mausoleum in Bulgaria where comrade Dimitrov, the first of the legion of heroic party leaders, had been put on display for eternity.
No, I didn’t want to look at Lenin. I had already seen so many photos of him and learned so many stories about him at school, that I felt like I knew him well enough. I wanted to see things that were truly new. Like the mass drunkenness of the Russians. On nearly every street corner you could see people unsteady on their feet. Gorbachev had not started an anti-alcohol campaign for nothing. The new leader knew how to tackle things, but this time he had misjudged, because vodka was the only comfort for the poor. I noticed straight away how much it meant to most people. We also knew how to drink in Bulgaria, but the way the Russians drunk vodka, was extreme. Young and old, low-skilled to career maker, they drunk more than was good for them. People who didn’t know each other would scrounge change at the front of the liquor stores to buy a bottle of vodka which they would share together on the street.
Many Bulgarians had unique ways of obtaining alcohol. A friend of my parents was the manager in a liquor store and always opened the bottles by breaking the bottle necks. He would then pour the alcohol through a sieve. The first time we saw him do this we looked at him curiously until he explained: ‘with every delivery I note how much percent so-called transport loss there is and then I send the broken bottle necks as evidence.’
Despite such inspiring examples, the Bulgarians were greatly behind the Russians when it came to drinking alcohol. Our Slavic brothers not only drank during the day, in the middle of the street, but even went to work drunk. Was this the country of communist ideals, of the impressive military parades, of the 3.7 million soldiers and 25.000 nuclear weapons? De people looked more depressed than proud. What also surprised me was that there was hardly any Western music for sale, while in Bulgaria you could buy a wide variety of records and music tapes.
Compared to the good life in Bulgaria, the economic situation in Russia was distressing. Perhaps that was why they drunk so much. I gasped at how they put all their food on the table and tried to share it as fairly as possible. My parents never needed to count the potatoes and we could always afford enough meat. That wasn’t even at the expense of alcohol, because there was always a bottle of red wine on the dinner table.
Only the caviar was extremely cheap in Russia. The Kremlin had a state monopoly on the sturgeon fisheries and the Soviet Union accounted for ninety percent of the world production of caviar. The government boasted this was the only country where the labourers could also enjoy the ‘black gold’. During the break at the Bolshoi theatre I ordered some crackers with caviar, licked the shiny grains off and threw the crackers away. I also did the same after the show and the memory of the melting caviar in my mouth stayed with me longer than the art of the prima ballerina’s.
No one could have predicted that the caviar production would be in the hands of poachers years later and that there would even be an international embargo on the import of Russian caviar.
During my stay in Russia there was caviar in abundance, but something simple like sugar
was scarce.
‘It’s all Gorbachev’s fault,’ our hosts complained. ‘He reduced the number of liquor stores and cut back on the opening times. No one can be bothered standing in long queues, not even for vodka. So people start to brew their own and all the sugar vanishes out of the stores.’
The people who did queue for vodka tried to keep their spirits up by telling anti-Gorbachev jokes. For example, the salesperson who has been ordered by Gorbachev to close his store. He walks outside and tell the long queue of people waiting: ‘I’m going to kill that idiot in the Kremlin.’ He comes back sad a few hours later. ‘What did you do?’ the people asked. ‘Nothing,’ he sighs. ‘If only you knew how long the queue for the Kremlin was.’
Gorbachev’s new rules reached very far, so I completely understood my hosts’ complaints. If you were caught brewing illegal liquor twice in the same year, then you could get two years’ hard labour. I doubted such strict measures helped by something so deeply enrooted in the Russian people. Even teenagers drank litres of vodka. I discovered this when I arrived by train in bustling Leningrad. The boys I met first had bought me a glass of vodka the very same day. I already had some experience with whisky and cognac, but the Russian vodka hit me with the first sip. The boys couldn’t bear me nipping.
‘That’s a waste of vodka,’ Mischa said, the prettiest of them all. ‘You’re supposed to drink vodka in one go. Look.’
Mischa drunk a second glass in one go after he had toasted with his friends. I wasn’t sure I could do the same. I still felt the first sip burning in my stomach, never mind a whole glad. Mischa saw me hesitate.
‘Come on, little girl, have some respect for Russian traditions. You’re our guest and you should respect your hosts. Cheers, here’s to good health.’
To good health. I hoped it would be okay. I raised my glass and drank it in one go. I felt my stomach burn and spontaneously got tears in my eyes.
‘How much alcohol is in this?’ I asked with a voice I didn’t recognize.
‘A lot. That way you know it’s good vodka.’
‘It feels more like methylated spirits. I feel everything burning inside.’
‘Ach, you get used to that. That happened to me the first time also,’ Mischa reassured me.
‘How long will it last? Give me a match and you’ll see me spit fire.’
Mischa laughed: ‘Calm down, there’s nothing wrong with your body.’
He was right, there was nothing wrong with my body, because the stuff immediately went to my head. I really had to concentrate to focus on the Russians. It looked like they had multiplied. After reaching the low of my alcohol career, I walked with my hips swinging in a zigzag line to the guest home.
The boys turned out to be excellent hosts over the next few days. They were all sweet, caring and considerate. From day one I had fallen for Mischa. Not because he has initiated me in the secrets of Russian vodka. On the contrary, I still blamed him. But Mischa had irresistibly gorgeous features, beautiful blond hair and deep blue eyes. The other boys acknowledged their disadvantage, but tried everything to make me change my mind. They arrived every day with gifts, souvenirs and bottles of vodka. I drank obediently, even though it was a strange experience. I still had the feeling an aggressive chemical cleaner was dissolving my insides.
The Russians assured me this would pass, but I didn’t get used to it that quickly. I could clearly see I was years behind. Yet I continued to drink vodka, because Russia was lovely and after every sip it became even lovelier. It slowly occurred to me why Russians drank so much. The most perfect communist society could be bought for a bottle of vodka.
In Leningrad it was the period of the northern lights. The fabled ‘white nights’ in June gave the heavens not a white, but a mysterious pearl-grey colour. I secretly wished that I lived in this city and that my parents had warned me: ‘ Make sure you’re home before dark,’ because it never got dark here. The northern lights meant it was still light in the evenings until late and even at midnight it was not completely dark. Luckily my friends’ parents were not that strict and my sister and I were allowed to stay out much longer than normal.
Our most memorable day in Leningrad was a day trip to the beach. Finland was on the other side of the bay. The West was so close and so far away at the same time. We wanted to see this glamorous world with our own eyes, but the borders were shut tight. Luckily, we were still allowed to travel to other communist countries. Otherwise I would never had known what it was like to tear through the streets in a Russian ambulance.
We had only been on the beach for fifteen minutes when my sister cut her foot on a piece of glass. The situation got worse by the minute. The white towel I had wrapped around her foot, soon turned red. We had to cross a large park to get to the road. My sister could hardly walk and the Russian boys carried her the whole time.
We finally reached a telephone cell and called an ambulance. It came quickly and we were all allowed to come along, if we got in quickly. The ambulance drove away immediately with the siren on. The stretcher had not been fastened and swished dangerously to and fro. All kinds of tools for car repairs rolled over the floor and we had to lift our feet to avoid injury ourselves.
Only my sister was allowed into the hospital. Rules are rules. I stood outside waiting in exasperation while she was being operated. The nerves coursed through my throat and I felt very guilty that I had arranged a day at the beach with two of our admirers. My parents had sent us to Russia to learn some culture and history and my stupid flirting had landed my younger sister in the hospital. I hoped it was not as bad as it looked.
The hours of uncertainty outside the building seems like days. What would I tell our parents? They were thousands of kilometres away and the truth wouldn’t help: they would only worry without being able to do anything. They might even think they were bad parents for sending their teenage daughters abroad on their own.
I didn’t mind telling my parents what had happened, but I didn’t want them to feel guilty. My sister and I were thrilled that they had so much faith in us and that they gave us the chance to be independent. That is what every parent hopes to achieve: that their children stand on their own two feet. This was not the case of my sister for the time being, because her foot had been cut open. I could walk, but I wasn’t sure which way to go. I walked in circles on the square in front of the hospital, like I was caged in an asylum.
Luckily it was not for much longer. The surgeons had done a good job and my sister was allowed home the same day. A few days later she was as fit as a fiddle again.
When we returned to Bulgaria we told everyone the uncensored version, except to our parents, who were only told a vague tale about a cut. Besides all the good memories of Russia we had also brought home some t-shirts with ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’. Our friends were all jealous, because you couldn’t get these modern items in our country.
Gorbachev
When Gorbachev came to power many young people in Bulgaria were relieved. Not because of his views, but because of his age. Because he still looked quite young and energetic, compared to his predecessors, this meant we would probably not have to mourn a dead Russian for days on end for the foreseeable future. The Soviet Union had lost three leaders in short succession and three state funerals in twenty-eight months was more than we could bear.
It started with Brezhnev with his unmistakable mafia ways. He had put friends on all posts up and down the ladder and under his inspiring leadership Russia had become a swamp of corruption. But we had to ignore this and act like we had suffered a personal loss. But with twenty-six hours’ delay, because he had been dead for more than a day when it was officially announced on television. The party leadership had needed that time to arrange his replacement behind the scenes.
‘I don’t think that’s an easy job seeing as the new secretary-general has to clean up Brezhnev’s mess,’ my father said. Of course, he couldn’t say that outside the safe walls of our home. Everyone in our classless society accepted
that the higher communist faction had access to items which were unattainable for the masses. Luxury goods, advanced medical treatments, fantastic holiday resorts, better cars and larger houses, which has been previously appropriated from so-called rich owners. This system, according to the Russian model, had been established in all communist countries, but in Russia it had been expanded with special department stores which were only accessible to privileged party members and holiday homes according to the rank of their owners. All Russian leaders had these huge country houses, tucked away out of sight by high fences and patrolling cars. The masses didn’t even get a chance to stare at this luxury from a distance, because the senior party members wanted to maintain the illusion of a classless society.
The party members and their families had a good life, but even they had to watch their backs in a country where favouritism and betrayal seamlessly flowed into each other. Gorbachev’s mother hid icons behind portraits of Lenin and Stalin so she didn’t get into trouble with the godless leaders.
The new party leader Andropov wanted to bring back discipline and patriotism to the people after Brezhnev’s death. Post offices stocked forms you could use to snitch on your fellow citizens who had an income but no job. People were no longer allowed to leave work early to go shopping. The police patrolled different stores, especially those that sold alcohol.
