Sibir (10 page)

“Nobody in their right minds would deliberately try to deprive Siberians of their drink,” he said. “The place would explode like an atomic bomb!”

Somehow our party seemed to be exempt from the general deprivation. We usually had a bottle or two, and as a result our popularity soared. One night we had fifteen people in our room, amongst them Lev Amisov and
his nephew, a vivid, cheerful young writer improbably named Valentin Rasputin. During Lev’s temporary absence on a search for more liquid refreshment, Valentin told a yarn about his uncle.

Lev is the proud owner of a summer house – not a dacha, but half of a log-built duplex in a little village near Irkutsk. Each July this house becomes the focus for a family reunion. The previous summer the reunion lasted five days – until the last bottle was consumed. The exhausted participants then slunk away to their own homes; but Lev was not yet in a mood to sober up. He had hidden a small barrel of home brew in the earth-walled cellar under his kitchen floor against just such an emergency as this.

Unfortunately his wife was privy to the secret. When Lev came thirstily into the kitchen after bidding the last guests goodbye, he found his wife standing at the kitchen table which she had placed squarely over the trapdoor leading to the cellar. She was busy with an immense pile of ironing. Not a word passed between them, but Lev knew
she
knew what he had in mind and that she was not going to be cooperative. The only advantage he had was that he retained freedom of movement. After an hour or so he went outside and relieved himself, then came back and sat on the kitchen settee with a ponderous tome of poetry on his knee, grimly prepared to wait until bladder pressure forced his wife to abandon her guard post.

“Ah,” said Valentin, “but as usual he had misjudged my aunt! She had relieved herself before taking up sentry duty!”

They waited, silent, apparently engrossed in their own pursuits; the hours passed and Lev began to get really desperate. Finally he could stand it no longer. Throwing down the book he stamped out of the house.

As he paced miserably up and down amongst the birch trees, inspiration suddenly came to him. He snatched a spade out of his garden, raced to his neighbour’s door and banged on it furiously. When the neighbour’s wife
answered he explained with an urgency which was not at all assumed, that a large and evil-looking snake had just crawled under the duplex and would undoubtedly finish up in somebody’s cellar. Would she let him into
her
cellar so he could search for and destroy the beast?

Would she? She practically thrust him down through the hole and slammed the trapdoor after him.

Lev went to work. It took him only a few minutes to break through from one cellar to the other. Settling himself in the cool darkness, he pulled the bung out of the barrel.

The first inkling his wife had that she was not alone in the house was a terrifying crash under her feet as Lev upset a shelf of pickle jars. The crash was followed by a full-throated roar of fury as he stumbled backward and fell into the cabbage bin. The sound was sufficiently muffled so she did not identify its origin, and she ran screaming out of the house.

In the garden she met the neighbour’s wife, wringing her hands and equally terrified.

“What happened?” the neighbour’s wife cried anxiously. “Did that big snake get into
your
cellar?”

At this moment Lev emerged from his own kitchen door, covered with mud, slathered with pickled mushrooms, and happily bellowing a patriotic song.

“Ulcers on your soul!” his wife shrieked, using a favourite Siberian epithet. “It’s a snake all right! Wait till I get my broom!”

“Which is why,” said Valentin winking broadly, “if you want to make my uncle turn pale … you only have to hiss!”

Lev returned empty-handed and so, as always in moments of dire emergency, we turned to Kola. Kola was a sight to behold. Every evening he would change out of his natty street clothes into a skin-fitting siren suit of chamois-like material in a gentle shade of fawn, that zippered tightly at all orifices. Clad in this remarkable outfit, he would pad energetically around the hotel corridors
looking like a dapper Martian. Whatever he may have looked like, his efficiency was unimpaired. The accomplishment of the impossible was routine for him, and in due course he rejoined us carrying three bottles of champagne and two of cognac.

He told us that a party of Germans had just arrived in the hotel. “Timber experts and pulpwood specialists from the Democratic Republic.
Very
big shots. I’m afraid these bottles may have been intended for their reception.…”

“Thank God the partisan movement remains alive! It’s the Order of The Red Star for you, Kola!” Lev cried.

We talked about Germans and Germany for a while and I was surprised by the intensity of feeling which still remained a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War. There was no overt hatred, but there was an adamantine determination that never again would Germany be allowed to become a threat to Russia.

“While the Soviet Union exists, Germany will remain divided,” one elderly man said flatly. “Unless, of course, West Germany takes the socialist course, which is about as likely as the Angara River reversing herself.”

“Why worry?” I asked. “Between us we beat them the last time, didn’t we?”

“You westerners delude yourselves that the Germanic will for conquest has been destroyed. That is your business, although if you look at the historic record it is hard to understand how you could be so innocent. As for us, we will never trust the old Germany to behave in a civilized manner, and the old Germany of the sword and the flame is still alive. The United States knows this. That is why they have helped West Germany become an armoured camp sitting on the frontier of the Socialist lands. How do you suppose Americans would feel if they had an enemy like that on
their
doorstep – in Mexico perhaps?”

“But surely,” I said, “there is a time to forgive the sins of the past. Even some Jews have forgiven Germany. Look at Israel.”

A young man who had not said much until then drained his glass and angrily replied. “
I
am a Jew.
I
have not forgiven Germany. The Israelis may appear to have done so but only so they can make use of German money and German weapons against the Arabs. Even if the Jew within me could forgive, the Russian in me never could. Do you know the Fascists killed more than fifteen million Soviet people? Do you think all the black smoke from the crematoria was only from Jewish bodies? Maybe we will forgive them some day … but trust them? Never!”

“It is true,” said the elderly man. “Here in this room I am sure you will not find one person who did not lose a close relative to the Fascists. You will hardly find a family in all the Soviet Union who did not suffer death or destruction at their hands. I can tell you the Fascists destroyed over one thousand of our towns and cities – shelled, bombed, or just burned them to the ground. It will mean little to you. It means much to
our
people. In 1940 we were just beginning to master our economic problems, and the destruction brought by the German invasion set everything back a full ten years. For you it was different. The war
saved
you from your economic problems. North America became rich out of the war. You kiss and forgive, and take them to your bosom, but it is out of self-interest you have forgiven them!”

At this point Mark intervened to change the subject and let emotions cool.

“Well, anyway, things aren’t so bad now. At least we have the Germans to thank that this isn’t a dry evening. Fill up and I’ll make a toast to Peace and Women – it’s rare enough those two go together!”

Early one brilliant November afternoon Mark Sergeiv drove us to the airport to catch our flight to Yakutsk. However, the local weather proved delusive. Irkutsk was placidly sitting under its usual clear skylight (it has more hours of sunshine than any other city in the
U.S.S.R.
)
while western and northern Siberia were suffering under howling blizzards. Our flight was “indefinitely delayed” so Mark led us up a broad stairway to the Intourist lounge.

Because Irkutsk is the aerial crossroads of Siberia (the terminus or transfer point for flights from Mongolia, China, the Pacific Coast, European Russia and the far north), Intourist has done itself proud in the facilities provided at the airport. These include a private bar, a luxurious lounge and an array of magazines, books and newspapers in a score of languages. Foreign tourists in transit under Intourist’s omnipotent wing make use of these facilities; but so, happily, do a good many Russians who, through some magical process which I never did succeed in fathoming, somehow achieve special “tourist” status.

The lounge was almost empty when our party, which now included Nadia who had elected to fly home to Yakutsk with us, arrived. Flights continued to come in from the south and east and since none was able to depart, more and more odd bods drifted into the lounge. They included two Czechoslovak journalists returning from North Vietnam; a Rumanian psychiatrist going home after a month’s holiday trip through China; a young Russian engineer on leave from a dam-building project in Outer Mongolia; a bevy of Japanese businessmen bound for Moscow, and some exuberant Army officers.

The bar was opened and in no time at all a general party was underway. Only the Japanese behaved as if they were in a North American airport and kept soberly to themselves. That was their loss. The rest of us were soon dancing to the record-player or drinking and talking with one another as if we had been friends for years.

Claire was being ardently pursued by the Rumanian doctor. I attempted to corner Nadia, but she was as mercurial as a nymph and kept bouncing away to share a joke with someone or to snatch a gulp out of Yura’s glass as that worthy dozed in an easy-chair. I joined Kola who
was talking to the Czechs at the bar. The journalists had spent a month touring northern Vietnam and they confirmed that the country had been heavily damaged by the bombings and civilian casualties had been very high. What impressed them most was the steadfast quality of Vietnamese morale.

“After fighting for their independence for more than twenty-six years,” one of them told us, “it has become a way of life. You can’t reason with them about it. You can’t make them see that the United States might some day, out of sheer frustration, try to wipe them off the face of the earth. They say they don’t care. They say they will not give up even if they are atom bombed – and they are actually preparing for this to happen.”

In distillation, the many conversations I had with Russians about Vietnam indicated a curious state of schizophrenia. On the one hand, there was an awe-struck admiration at the way the Vietnamese were holding the American military colossus at bay, coupled with a tremendous feeling of solidarity for a fellow socialist state in agony. On the other hand almost everyone I met wanted an end to the war – an immediate end, even if this meant that the Vietnamese would have to back down a little. There was a strong undercurrent of fear that this local war might spread and get out of hand, eventually triggering the Big One (a fear which appears to find justification in events in southwest Asia during the winter of 1972). Most Russians found it impossible to understand how the United States dared run such risks. They seemed almost more baffled by the American attitude than angered by it.

There are hawks in the
U.S.S.R.
, of course, but most of the Russians I met, from all walks of life, were possessed of a deep-rooted and violent aversion to the very idea of war. The reasons are obvious. They know what war is all about. Furthermore they realize that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose if their country should become involved in war again. The difference between
ordinary Russians and ourselves seems to be that they live with this aversion uppermost in their minds, whereas we have mastered the art of putting it quietly away in the back of ours. I had expected the Russians to be a bellicose people – for this is the way they are usually portrayed to us – and it was a shock to realize that they are far more intensely concerned with preserving peace than we are.

I do not think their almost fanatical devotion to the cause of peace is something which has been impressed upon them by their leaders. If anything, the process probably works the other way. The hawkish urges of certain Soviet leaders have undoubtedly been dampened by an awareness that the masses are stubbornly opposed to war.

It can hardly be accidental that during the twenty-five years which have elapsed since the end of the Second World War, the
U.S.S.R.
has not, despite several tempting opportunities, gone to war with anyone. I exclude such actions as the repression of the Hungarian and Czechoslovak revolts, since these can be almost exactly equated with similar “police” actions taken by the United States against Cuba or the Dominican Republic.

This is a rather remarkable record when compared with that of the western powers. There has hardly been a year since 1945 when one or other of these powers (and sometimes several of them together) has not been directly engaged in warfare. The record of the United States in this regard is particularly depressing.

To suggest, as some do, that the
U.S.S.R.
has been restrained from military excursions by the retaliatory threat posed by the United States is to embrace a dangerous illusion. If there is one thing Russians are
quite
confident about, it is their ability to hold their own if they are ever forced to fight again. The simple truth seems to be – in the words of a popular Russian song – “The Russian people don’t want war!”

They are so fervently anxious to avoid it that propaganda
designed to make them tolerate the idea would probably have little effect unless, of course, the Soviet Union itself was threatened with invasion.

This brings up another point. Our belief (it is almost a tenet of faith) that the Russians are mindlessly manipulated by their propaganda agencies like a bunch of automata is one of our more glaring misconceptions. In my experience most Russians are so immunized to the propaganda downpour that it runs off them like water off a duck. Furthermore, most Russian internal propaganda is so unpalatable, and is prepared by such unimaginative dullards, that nobody but a born fool would pay much attention to it. There are undoubtedly born fools in Russia but most Russians do not fall into this category. The real nature of the situation is summed up in the words of a Soviet correspondent who spent five years in the United States and with whom I once had a discussion about the relative effectiveness of propaganda in our mutual countries.