Picnic at the Iron Curtain: A Memoir: From the fall of the Berlin Wall to Ukraine's Orange Revolution

by Susan Viets

  “It’s our custom. When a man sees a woman that he likes, he and his friends will kidnap her. If her family does not free her, then she’s his to keep.” I felt so shocked by this custom that I did not know what to say. I understood a little better now why Vakha kept his daughter locked in the kitchen but wondered how she felt about the arrangement. I guessed she was about seventeen. By that age I had already travelled through Europe alone. I did not think my freedom would be impinged upon here. Already an old maid by local standards, who would want to kidnap me?

  Stephen and Vakha chatted more. I wanted to talk to the women in the kitchen but stayed put. Eventually Stephen and I smiled and tapped our watches – time for hotel check-in.

  “I’ll drive you there,” Vakha said. I appreciated his hospitality but felt a bit ashamed as well. I doubted such kindness would be reciprocated at home. Who would pick up two strangers there, chauffer them between cities and then take them home for an impromptu meal? I wondered if Vakha’s wife and daughter kept extra supplies in the fridge, or whether we had just eaten food that was supposed to have been their dinner. The women remained cloistered in the kitchen. We could not thank them directly; we asked Vakha to do so on our behalf.

  As we approached the city centre, we saw men on the streets with guns. The first armed man that I spotted wore high-topped soft leather boots with his trouser bottoms tucked inside. A black leather jacket similar to Stephen’s hung loosely over his torso; a tall astrakhan hat sat tower-like on his head. He slung a rifle over his shoulder. He ambled down the street with his gun through a crowd of women who carried bags of shopping home, clusters of small children, and the occasional straight-backed man in military dress. As we entered the streets adjacent to the central square, the number of men with guns increased and the city acquired the look of one on the brink of conflict. Déjà vu strikes at the most unexpected moment.

  I thought suddenly of one memorable childhood Halloween. I recalled that strange atmosphere of military might in our quiet residential Ottawa neighbourhood, which seemed devoid of threat and need for protection. The politics at home also constituted a fight over independence. French Canadian separatists in the province of Québec wanted to break away from Canada. Too young to understand politics, I just felt excited to receive candy from soldiers with guns who guarded houses on our Halloween route. A tank was parked in a field by our school. Soldiers in fatigues camped in the garden at one friend’s house because her father was a cabinet minister. Sometimes they smiled, but they always refused to play with us. We thought of this military presence as one big, exciting game. I did not fully understand the concept of death but remembered a joke told in the schoolyard about the murder that triggered the War Measures Act and the presence of all the soldiers who guarded government officials and diplomats. Separatists had kidnapped James Cross, a British diplomat, and Pierre Laporte, a Québécois politician. They killed Pierre Laporte but released James Cross.

  “Why did Cross survive?

  “Because he stood behind Laporte [the door].”

  Even then I knew that joke should not be told.

  Mostly, though, we played as close to all the military hardware as we were allowed to. We had no weapons but imitated the soldiers. We turned sticks into rifles. Here in Grozny some did the same. Men without guns armed themselves with planks of wood and canisters of gasoline. They helped blockade the entrance of one government building.

  Our car turned into a side street. Vakha stopped. He pointed down the road. “Your hotel is just a little farther along,” he said. We thanked Vakha for his help and said goodbye. As we approached, we saw that a pair of unmanned machine guns mounted on tripods with bullet magazines hanging down from them flanked the hotel entrance.

  I wished Vakha had invited us to stay the night. This place seemed braced for siege with the possibility of conflict now alarmingly real. As we entered the lobby, I wondered about this hotel, where loaded guns just stood around. I looked for soldiers who might own them but saw only the usual staff – a surly receptionist at the front desk, waiters who scurried past on their way to the restaurant. Were the waiters also combat soldiers? Would they man the machine guns if Russians attacked? I stifled my sense of dread. Stephen took the machine guns in stride; so would I.

  We checked in. The telephone in our room worked, which was a huge relief. Sporadic gunfire echoed through the streets.

  I slipped away to the reception desk and asked questions in private. I wanted assurance that no Russians were approaching Grozny. The receptionist, softened now, seemed ready to chat. I asked her about the gunfire.

  “Don’t worry, it’s a celebration,” she said.

  “Are you sure that’s not fighting?” I asked.

  “No, there’s no one to fight, at least not yet.”

  “So the Russian soldiers have withdrawn?” She nodded yes. Stephen and I had heard this as well and had actually seen some of the buses full of disarmed Russian soldiers leaving, but the state of emergency declared by Yelstin remained in effect and no one knew what would happen next.

  “There are so many people out there with guns. Do you think there could still be conflict?” The receptionist shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know.

  I needed better information. I decided I would cross the square. Someone at the government buildings on the other side must know the current state of affairs.

  I walked out the lobby, past the machine guns and stepped into the street. I could still hear the pop of occasional gunfire but saw no sign of fighting. My father had trained as a pilot during the Second World War. Even though he disliked violence, including hunting, he taught my brother, my sister and me how to shoot his rifle and pistol when we were children. He also taught us respect for weapons. He told us that bullets from guns fired in the air still kill when they fall back to land. In Grozny no one gave this much thought. I did not want to be anywhere nearby when a celebratory bullet came down.

  I crossed the central square. It teemed with armed and unarmed people. A row of about twenty men kneeled on one strip of grass. It was desiccated and yellow, almost a carpet of straw. The men had spread their prayer mats on top and placed their boots in front of the mats, alongside their guns. They covered their heads, placed their hands on their thighs and prayed facing east. A pale blue sky stretched wide overhead. I had not heard a call to prayer, but perhaps I had just missed it. Such public prayer in Grozny must be a new development. Religion had been so furtive under Communism.

  I reached government buildings on the far side of the square. Men stood in a line; most of them wore astrakhan hats. They blocked the main entrances. One held a green flag with a star and crescent. There was no sign of the Russian colours here. The men directed me to the information office upstairs. They parted and allowed me into the building.

  I climbed the stairs and knocked on the information office door.

  “Enter,” I heard a woman say. I opened the door and cheered up immediately. This could be any secretary’s office with two-tone walls, sparse furnishings and an enormous blue typewriter that spanned the width of the desk. This secretary, if that’s what she was, glowed with warmth and excitement. Part of that glow came from carefully applied rouge, lipstick and eyeliner, but most of it came from within. The only splash of colour in her outfit came from her bright headscarf. Otherwise she was all dressed in black. A fringe of light brown hair peeked out from under her scarf. What I noticed most was the Kalashnikov rifle that she cradled in her arms, the green canvas strap slung over her shoulder. I stood there fascinated by this secretary warrior.

  “Susan,” I said by way of introduction. “I work for a British paper. May I ask you some questions?” She said that I could.

  “Aren’t you afraid? Are you really ready to fight the Russians?” She said she was and that most people expected more Russian troops to arrive since Yeltsin’s declaration of emergency was still in place. But she also said that Russian leaders hadn’t sanctioned the use of force. Relieved to hear that last poi
nt, I made my second request. I wanted to interview the man in charge of the Chechen-Ingush Republic, General Dzhokar Dudayev. She gave me his number. Business over, our conversation drifted elsewhere.

  “Is that your gun?” I asked.

  “I borrowed it.”

  “Are you a soldier?”

  “No, but I know how to fight.” I told the secretary that my father had taught me to shoot but that I felt uncomfortable around guns.

  “We’re used to them here. In school, we learned how to assemble a Kalashnikov from parts. Then we had to run up a hill and fire into sand,” she said. I told her that in our non-academic school courses we learned how to do handstands and bake macaroni and cheese. I did not stay long. As I left the secretary’s office, she shouted after me “Are you interviewing the hijackers?”

  I returned and received contact details for one of the men who had recently hijacked an Aeroflot flight from Mineralnye Vody to Turkey. The hijackers had threatened to blow up the plane and all the passengers on board if Russia did not pull its troops back from Chechnya. The hijackers were back home in Grozny now. All the passengers had been set free.

  The next day passed fairly uneventfully. Yeltsin’s declaration of emergency remained in force. Stephen and I wandered the streets. Men in the square brewed tea on the eternal flame. Officials in government offices still waited with their guns, ready to defend the Chechen-Ingush Republic. A man brandishing a sword burst into our hotel room. He said a Russian spy had been arrested and wanted us to interview him.

  The following morning I felt uneasy when I saw a Jeep filled with leather-clad men pull up in front of the hotel. They had come to pick me up for my interview with General Dudayev. I climbed on board. We careened around corners, raced down roads and pulled up in front of the building where General Dudayev worked. We entered the building and passed a contingent of guards in the lobby. We walked down a hallway lined with machine guns on stands and finally reached a door. One of the security men knocked and then opened the door. I looked into a large, even palatial, room.

  General Dudayev sat inside. He rose to greet us. I had expected a towering giant but shook hands with someone only marginally taller than me. I sat down. General Dudayev returned to his swivel chair, positioned in front of a simple wooden desk. The general was in military dress and wore shoes so well shined that I thought I might see my reflection if I bent to inspect them more closely. His jet black hair lay neatly pomaded and parted at the side. I wondered if it was by coincidence or design that his groomed mustache resembled the wings of an airplane. I knew that he had only recently resigned from his position as a general in the Soviet air force. I suspected he still wore his old uniform. A broad-brimmed air force hat lay by the phone on his otherwise empty desk.

  In his new position, General Dudayev tried to unite everyone in the Caucasus in a holy war against Russia. I thought he might be mercurial, so I had prepared easy questions designed to build trust before I asked difficult ones. In no mood for small talk, the general interrupted with an attack against Yeltsin.

  “If Yeltsin continues his high-handed tactics, we’ll launch a terror campaign in Moscow. There will be bombs in the Moscow metro system and a nuclear plant near Moscow will be blown up.”

  Although this could be dismissed as a blustery threat, he seemed quite serious in intent. I asked questions in a neutral tone, received more information and then understood the interview would end. Before it did, I asked the general if I could take his picture. He seemed pleased.

  Later that day, I walked through the square. There seemed to be even more men with guns packed into it than the day before. I returned to the secretary’s office, but no one was there. I wandered the corridors in search of information. The crack of gunshot echoed outside. Cheers just meant more shots fired in the air. I saw a man in a fur hat and an old woman, a babushka, who wore a black dress and matching black headscarf, in one room. I went in. A Kalashnikov lay across a bare wooden desk. A man poked his head in the door and said the Russian Parliament had rejected the state of emergency imposed by President Yeltsin. Then he ran off down the hall. I turned to the man in the hat and asked, “When did this happen?”

  “This is the first we’ve heard of it,” the hatted man whooped.

  “Cowards, infidels, they’ve run away with their tails between their legs,” I think the babushka shouted. The old woman, a black mass, lunged for the Kalashnikov. My heart raced. I dove under the table. Safe there, I peered up to see the babushka raise the Kalashnikov straight up in the air, toward the ceiling.

  “Wait, wait,” the man in the fur hat said. I expected him to grab the gun, but he grabbed the babushka’s elbow instead. He gently guided her, gun still upright, her finger still on the trigger, toward the window and pointed the barrel straight out.

  “Go ahead now, go ahead,” he said.

  The babushka pulled the trigger. Several shots rang out. She pulled herself away from the window and laughed. Then she roared “we won” and something about a wet chicken, which I took to mean, “Those Russians are made of jelly.”

  That was how my knees felt. I slid out from under the table and stood up. I said goodbye and left. I still heard gunshot from the streets, so I lurked in the corridors for some time until I heard (near) silence again. On my way back to the hotel, I checked the sidewalk for traces of blood. As far as I could see, no one had been hit.

  A huge crowd descended on the airport. So many passengers were desperate to leave after spending days trapped in Grozny. Stephen and I got lucky and obtained tickets for the first flight out. Safely in my seat, I buckled up and reclined. I shut my eyes and thought about guns. They felt almost as unreal now as they had in Ottawa when I was a child.

  I remembered a story that my father told me about his early days of military training during the Second World War. Instructors took my father and other recruits to a rocky beach for a combat exercise. The instructors played the part of the enemy and told the recruits they would shoot at them from cliffs above the beach. When my father and his friends ran toward a designated safe spot, bullets ricocheted off rocks near their feet. “I was madder than blazes,” my father said. “We expected them to fire blanks, not live ammunition.” He never took a gun for granted again. Maybe someone needed to fire at me before I could feel that too.

  7

  VADYM

  When I arrived back in Kiev, Toronto Marta called.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  “The Russian troops pulled back, and I don’t think anyone was hurt.”

  “Chechnya’s one place I’d never want to go,” she said. I understood. I thought the same before but now that I had been to a conflict zone and seen guns, I almost felt proud.

  Marta switched topics. “The parliamentary committee investigating the coup has apparently discovered interesting information,” she said. It took me a minute to forget Chechnya and focus on Ukrainian politics.

  “Is Vadym on that committee?” I asked.

  “He is,” Marta replied.

  “I heard he’s making a documentary about who supported the coup. I wonder if it’ll be censored.”

  “Not if Vadym’s good at his job,” Marta joked. “He’s also heading up a press freedom committee.” I made a mental note to ask Lesyia what she knew. She and Vadym remained close friends. Even though he was a Member of Parliament, he worked on TV documentaries, was still a journalist, one of us, and generous with information. Coup talk reminded me of the referendum on Ukrainian independence.

  “I can’t believe the referendum’s in less than two weeks,” I said. “Do you think there’s any chance of a vote against independence?”

  “No way,” Marta insisted. I agreed.

  When the votes were counted, Ukrainians overwhelmingly confirmed Parliament’s vote for independence and elected Leonid Kravchuk the first president of Ukraine. Marta and I celebrated with friends at a local hotel. Our tables sagged under the weight of so many bottles of vodka and cognac, platters of caviar, kovbas
a, cheese, pickles, varenyky, Chicken Kiev and every other celebratory dish. Rukh politicians, our waiters, journalists and various passersby linked arms in a huge circle under blue and yellow banners and balloons and sang the national anthem, “Ukraine Has Still Not Died.”

  A few days later, I boarded a flight for Minsk. When we landed, I stood on the tarmac at the airport in Minsk with other journalists. We waited to find out whether the Soviet Union would survive. Yeltsin, Kravchuk and the Belarussian leader Stanislav Shushkevitch were conferring at a Belarussian lodge in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, near the Polish border. I gossiped with my colleagues, but really my head spun. We all believed rumours that they would dissolve the Soviet Union. Everything I had studied about a seamless Soviet state, one where no ethnic group had nationalist aspirations, and one common language was spoken by all, seemed a sham. When the leaders arrived back in Minsk, they confirmed what we suspected. They declared the Soviet Union dead, which meant Mikhail Gorbachev would be politically irrelevant. A new order would begin, a Commonwealth of Independent States.

  I watched an interview with Gorbachev that night on TV. His expression revealed more than his words. He looked so betrayed. I wondered if Gorbachev still believed that version of Soviet history I had been taught and once believed too.

  I had already had time to adjust to changes. Since the August declaration of independence I had thought of Ukraine as a separate country, though one undergoing a complex transition. Ukraine needed to build many independent institutions of its own, free from Moscow’s control. Banking was so rudimentary here. Most business seemed transacted through cash, barter and bribes. Still, I felt a sense of history in the making on Christmas Day when I watched Gorbachev formally resign. By the end of the year, the Soviet Union no longer existed. I wondered what would happen next.

  In early January 1992, I sat at the desk in my small study and looked out the window over the treetops. Snowflakes swirled in the sky. I hoped this wind would chase the grey clouds away. I could not remember the last time we had seen sunshine in Kiev.