It is 1991, the year of the great change in Russia: Yeltsin atop an armored personnel carrier, four hundred thousand demonstrators in the streets, Gorbachev being evicted from his office, red flags going down over the Kremlin.  The Americans and Russians are allies now, the Cold War over, our countries again open to each other, and we are setting out to get to know Russia better.  American Embassy officers in Moscow, called “circuit riders,” are designated to travel to the outlying provinces.  I am one of those.  I live in Moscow in the Political Section, but spend half my time in Siberia.

“Circuit Riding” brings with it some anxiety.  The provinces are still a bit conservative, sitting on the fence between Yeltsin and the hard liners.  These are ambivalent days for the Russians, suffering economic hardship, the welfare net destroyed, and winter at the doorstep.  These are days of Russians’ uncertainly on how to relate to American  travelers.  Days of empty factories and looks of concern, of skepticism over U.S.  motives in trying to help Russia, of pensioners avoiding our eyes.  Of former communists’ arrogant disdain, of being coldly received by local officials sitting before large photos of Lenin still on the wall, of finding it hard to get anything done, of being hated by some just because we are there, of cold airport tarmacs, and lying sick in hotel rooms in lonely cities, and driving on rivers of ice.  But, there is kindness, too: Russian grandmothers commandeering rides into town for us at deserted airports, at night in freezing weather; citizens in hotel lobbies demanding we be given rooms without reservations, arguing with the manager; train passengers inviting us into their compartments to share food and vodka; people in Siberian cities wanting to protect us in tough neighborhoods, walking us to our destinations.  And, despite being followed, not a single, unpleasant incident or KGB provocation.  And lots of new Russian friends, for life, it will turn out.

Moscow

It is November, 1991.  I am being driven by an Embassy driver through the Moscow streets on the way to the airport for one of my trips.  The late afternoon skies are clear but gray.  The streets are wet and there are patches of old snow in the parks and next to sidewalks.  People are forging home from work, past muddy buildings.  Their manner is serious.  We are beating rush hour traffic, which is just beginning to appear.

We speed through the wide open streets, the driver changing lanes smoothly, accelerating in the process, the engine growling at times, gliding on wet avenues between cars on both sides, quick and smooth, no hitting the brakes, a professional driver’s manner.  He leaves little margin for error.  Pedestrians look as we pass.  You feel a bit self-conscious, in a black Embassy vehicle with CD plates, hurrying somewhere.  The Russians still respect authority, diplomats are part of the elite class.   We are on the inner ring road, five lanes each way.  We take an underpass, dipping beneath Novy Arbat avenue, “watch for a bump” the sign says in Russian, as the tires thump twice.  The old Arbat shopping area is off to our left, the Russian White House passes by on our right.

Here, in this underpass, three months ago, four students were crushed as they tried to block tanks speeding to the Russian White House, sent to stop democratic protests.   That was just four months ago, but an era ago.  There are now markers to the students, four bronze plaques inscribed with their names and likenesses.  Sitting in the speeding car, I know it is important that the monuments are still there, that they haven’t disappeared.  Symbols are important in Russia, where things are not spelled out.  There are those who would take the monuments down.  The students died, but Boris Yeltsin and a lot of grandmothers finally stopped the tanks at the White House.  The tanks would not fire on their own people.  It could have gone either way.  The public wanted democracy.  The Army, crucial to the outcome, knew that.  Defense Minister Grachev knew that, and, after a lot of soul searching and delaying, he sided with Yeltsin against the KGB Border Guard tank units, finally taking Yeltsin’s phone call.   The tanks would stand down.  Yeltsin could climb down, off them.

But, I remember the night before the confrontation.  My apartment was on the edge of Moscow, on the fourteenth floor, overlooking a Border Guard barracks.  These were the fellows who could make trouble.   They were the shock troops, and were under some generals sympathetic to the old communist system.  That night, at midnight, I had heard  truck and armored personnel carrier motors start up, and a lot of other noise like troops assembling in the courtyard.  Lights went on.  I called the Embassy duty officer to report it.   Then, a short while later, I heard  the truck motors shut down, and all was quiet.   The lights went out.  I could never be certain, but I always felt I had witnessed military Intervention being averted.  Later, we heard tales of arguments going on that night within individual army units.  Conflicting orders were coming in by phone, and being questioned by garrison commanders, who stood their ground against higher officers and refused to move against the populace unless it came from the top.   A rough day for Lieutenant Colonels who held firm for the President.

Here I am,  three months after all this, sitting in the back of the speeding car on the way to the airport, an American diplomat with experience in Russia in both the old and new eras.  We pass the Foreign Ministry on our left, a huge Stalinist Gothic building with spires pointing to the skies, the red stars removed from the tops.  Soon we are in Lenin Hills, state dachas hidden behind high fences, and the Olympic ski run down below on the sloping hillside.  Up on the crest, our boulevard runs past another gothic tower, Moscow State University on our right.  In the bad old days, 1979, as a young officer, I used to drive around this area at night, racing my borrowed Embassy vehicle through the empty streets, followed by black Volgas, the KGB car of choice.  I would pull back in the drive at my apartment, and the Volga would park outside the gate, the glow of a cigarette in the front windshield.

My driver lights a cigarette, holding it first up to the mirror to ask if its okay.  He exits the inner ring road, swinging off to the right, onto Leninsky Prospect, the main artery leading south out of town, to Domodedovo Airport, six lanes each direction, with a closed “Chaika lane” running down the middle, marked off by double white lines.  Under Brezhnev, large black limousines, “Zils,”  carried Politburo members down this special lane from their dachas outside town to the Kremlin.  Black police cars led the way, lights flashing, with traffic police on every block stopping traffic, the people standing by on sidewalks and watching reverently.   The Zils would roar past, windows blackened, racing through the Kremlin gates at 60 miles per hour, up the ramp, only a couple of feet to spare from the massive walls on each side.  The Soviets understood power.

It is coming back to me, the bad old days.  Russian men, in their thirties, looking haggard, worn out, with five o clock shadows, lined faces, shocks of straw colored hair.  They had lost their way, their eyes showed it, a bit desperate.   Women were pedantic, lecturing.  They had to be strong.  “This is how you stand in an elevator, children !”  Harsh feminine voices barked over loudspeakers on train platforms.  The dark evenings, empty streets, minus 40 degree winters, winds that cut through your coat   Russian families silent on the subway, children bundled in mittens and felt booties.  Parents with no illusions.  People sitting in streetcars, looking straight ahead.  The Russian tolerance for the cold.  Eating ice cream cones from winter stands, waiting in long lines.  As American diplomats, you assumed you were always being watched, taxi drivers not really taxi drivers.

You wandered weekend streets to the historical sites, the Kremlin churches, Red Square, Gorky Park, the Tretyakov gallery, the Bolshoi, and Czarist palaces and Soviet museums.   Mainly you just explored your neighborhood, bought bread, and strolled.  You did what the Russians did, taking in free entertainment, walking around, seeing the tourist sites.  You couldn’t make Russian friends for fear of hurting them.  You knew what you were doing was important, but you also felt the personal sacrifice, the years being lost when you could be elsewhere, enjoying life.   My wife and I would push our son’s stroller in the park.  Our marriage, like so many others in the Embassy, would not survive the stress of the tour.

I find myself making mental comparisons between the past and present.  Now, in the new era, 1991, there is still poverty, more than ever, but people seem to accept it.  They seem to know the future will somehow be better for their children and their life will improve, as is happening in Poland and Latvia.  The changes we see now, only a few months into the new era, are a lot psychological, mainly a better spirit.  People have expressions and are individualistic, act normal.  They no longer seem faceless.  Shops are relatively full, there is more color, even in the clothing.  There is more openness.  Perhaps more openness than restructuring.  More Glasnost than Perestroika.

But, there is also pathos.  Families selling their mittens at the street market to get money to buy food.  They have lost everything, their life savings, their pensions, all evaporated overnight with inflation.  Families are stockpiling potatoes in their bathrooms.  Parents are taking a son into the new McDonalds on Tverskaya Street for his birthday, just for an order of French Fries, unable to afford a hamburger.  You can see the exchange of looks, the hamburger is too much to ask for.  The parents are proud.  The kid relishes the fries as the parents, who wouldn’t appreciate this type of  food, sit quietly and watch him enjoy them.  There is a real humanity here, warm eyes, and family bonds, a spiritual side that we have misplaced.

The driver hit the brakes momentarily, bringing me back to the present.  We are  speeding down Leninsky Avenue on a straight line, past uniform neoclassical stores and apartments, catching glimpses through arched entryways into empty playgrounds and courtyards, grimy apartment entrances behind them.  We speed on, past barren trees and swarms of blackbirds ascending from rooftops in unison, then flying in circles and swirling back to the same rooftops.   We have been driving for half an hour.  It is only 5:30, but the sky is turning pink in the distance, shadows are lengthening.  Evening is bringing on a Russian gentleness, settling softly in lavender.  It is quieting things, enclosing the city.  Traffic is getting heavy.  Dogs and cats are heading home, walking briskly, their fur ruffled by gusts of wind.  Crowds of people are appearing, streaming off buses and from heavy oak subway station doors, stopping to pull their scarves tighter, but not lingering.  Evening brings clearer sounds, the ring of a streetcar bell, birds’ wings flapping, taking to air, the drone of traffic, tires humming on asphalt.  Men emerging from the subway are carrying bulging leather briefcases.  Buildings are turning from gray to pink.

We are getting closer to the airport, emerging from the city and its traffic, entering the forested ring surrounding Moscow, traveling the airport highway, passing high pine and birch trees.  At the traffic checkpoint, police in bluish-gray woolen greatcoats, with matching caps, the ear flaps up, and with white diagonal belts across their chests, are slowing traffic, standing at the side of the highway, stepping out to pull cars over at random, pointing at them with white batons.  We didn’t get pulled over, just eyed.  Officers in an elevated glass booth set back from the highway write down our license number.  I can see them standing up and craning to get a closer look at our plate as we passed.

It was here that the German troops were stopped in 1941.  There were tank traps, steel and angular like giant “x” s.   Brigades of women wearing white scarves and quilted jackets were digging trenches.  Siberian troops were rushed straight from the November 7 parade into battle here, in the brutal winter of 1941.  Somehow, the war is still present, even though it was fifty years ago.  The area, itself, is a war monument.  This is where such and such battle took place.  The losses were horrific.

We are going faster now, on the open stretch to the airport.  There are fewer cars.  The setting sun peeks between the pines,  flashes of gold between trees.  White birch trees are barely visible.   We pass airport busses crowded with passengers.  There are road signs to small villages, in kilometers, names out of Tolstoy, Napoleon’s campaigns.   A church cupola can be seen far away in the rolling hills. The Moscow river makes a large bend out there somewhere.

The driver turns up the heat.  He is quiet and takes his driving seriously.  He is fast, not quite crossing the line where you have to ask him to slow down.  Official vehicles always speed.  It is part of the culture, going back to troikas running down pedestrians in Czarist days.  The driver says it will be minus ten degrees Celsius tonight.  It is matter of fact, not to engender conversation.  It is the first he has spoken, no doubt feeling he should make some token conversation during the ride.  It would be proper.   The Russian word is “pariadochny.”   He asks, speaking Russian and using my surname, with “Mister” attached, if I am going to the international terminal.  The “Mister” was a nice touch.  It usually means you are liked, one who is seen as friendly towards Russians, not a Cold Warrior.

We pass out of the forest into open fields, tan, rolling gently to the horizon.  I am conscious of my love for the expansive Russian countryside.  The northern climate is beautiful in winter, nostalgic.  One is more aware of being alive.  The cold breezes awaken nerve endings, igniting the senses.  The crisp weather is invigorating.  The light is softer, diffused.   There is the quiet; sounds are muffled.  The air carries the winter smells of baking and chimney smoke.

I am thinking of the upcoming flight  to Vladivostok.  “Flight One,” non-stop, nine hours through seven time zones, like flying from New York to Paris, except over snowy steppes all the way.   I have made this flight several times.   David, my Embassy colleague, and I cover the Russian Far East together:  Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and Magadan.  Plus, Yakutsk, above the Arctic Circle; Nahodka, near North Korea; and Blagoveshchensk, on the Chinese border.  Dave is a bear of a man, with heavy but short cropped beard.  The Russians love him.  He is fluent in the language and culture.  He wears heavy Harris Tweed coats and has a U.S. Navy background, useful in Vladivostok, the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet.  He is from Washington state, a plus to Siberians who feel an affinity to the American Pacific Northwest.  He has flown ahead and will be waiting for me at the other end.

Arriving at the Moscow airport, the driver opens the trunk, and I reach in and take out my bag, myself.  It is a “nastayashe,” or stand up thing to do.  Circuit Riders pride themselves on being “field” officers: living on the road, in “hardship” areas, speaking the language, making friends, rubbing elbows– the rubbing elbows part is as important as relaying U.S.positions and reporting.   We suffer the cold, risking Aeroflot flights, and probing into areas which have been officially “closed” to foreigners, but are now supposedly “open.”

To get to the international terminal, I take a short cut across the tarmac, hitching a ride with a baggage truck, jumping up on the empty seat on the small tractor pulling trailers piled high with suitcases.  The handler drops me off, and I give him a pack of American cigarettes.  He nods without comment.  I have done this before.  It is a fast way to get to the outlying gate, jumping off outside where planes are parked rather than squeezing through crowded airport corridors.  Things are loose in the new Russia.  I avoid the suit and wool overcoat for Levis, a silver-green surplus U.S. Air Force parka, and San Francisco Giants baseball hat.  It is part of our openness.  Here is your American diplomat.  No formality, the common man.   David got me the parka, feeling I wasn’t taking the Russian winter seriously enough.

Sitting in the airport international departure area, waiting for the flight announcement, I lean back in one of the plastic chairs lining the walls.  A Chinese businessman takes a seat next to me.   We speak in Russian.  Am I going only to Vladivostok?  Yes.  Have I been there before? Yes, I cover it for the American Embassy.   How interesting.  He does business there, trading Chinese consumer for Russian manufactured goods.  Where do I stay.  He stays at a local hotel.  The questions become a bit more direct.  What is the American embassy doing in the Russian Far East.  Establishing a consulate?  What American businessmen are there?  How are our relations with the local officials?  He wants to have dinner with me, here is his card.  Yes, I would call after I learned my schedule.   Maybe he could show me China sometime.  It was like a fraternity rush, a bit too quick.  Chinese intelligence, perhaps.  China has five thousand  miles of border with Russia.  Therefore, they naturally have an interest in Russian-American cooperation in the area.  Perhaps I am just paranoid, an occupational hazard.  Nonetheless, i manage to get a seat away from him on the plane and avoid his eyes.  He is looking for another chance to talk more.

We have the usual Aeroflot flight.  With a perfunctory safety briefing ignored by the Russian passengers, we roar down the runway, pulling nose up into the air, no leveling off on the ascent.   After a few seconds we pass through low cloud banks, but I can see Moscow, below, clustered amber dots in the evening representing massive apartment complexes surrounding the city, with occasional wide black spaces, the main highway arteries leading into town.  We pass through another cloud barrier, blocking out any view of the landscape below, as the night takes over.  We bank right, towards the East, and the flight attendant pushes a tray cart down the narrow aisle, passing out brown plastic cups of sweetened hot tea.  Shortly after that, dinner is served, smelling up the plane.  Served on small plastic trays, it consists of a piece of boiled chicken, a leg and thigh, with the skin on, a portion of sticky white rice, and a hard roll.  Outside it has gotten dark fast, the red light on the end of the wing blinking steadily, no lights below indicating villages, just dark, probably clouds.  The passengers are soon asleep.  A few are reading paperbacks with their reading lights on.   People are stretched out as best they can, legs in the aisle, slumping on passengers next to them.

Flying east, the night is not long.  We are racing towards morning.  We have flown four hours.  Leaving Moscow at nine o’clock in the evening.  It is now one in the morning Moscow time, but we have picked up four time zones, so it is now five a.m. and the thin line of the horizon is coming up to the east, the sun peeking through, spread out horizontal and pink, then orange, as the atmosphere gradually gets a bit brighter.  The plane is cold, and the heaters are on.  Sitting there awake, looking out the window, I can see low, rounded mountains below in the gray pre-dawn.  We seem to have lost altitude.  I can see ridges and valleys clearly in the mountain range.  The engines power up a bit as if  by computer, and we gradually and smoothly gain altitude, effortlessly, being lifted by air.  Everyone is still asleep, as the pilot, sleepy eyed and rumpled, comes walking down the cabin to the rear of the plane, probably to get a cup of coffee from the stewardess at the back.  He smiles a conspiratorial smile, seeing me awake looking down out the window.  His smile seems to be saying,  yes we were a bit low, on autopilot, and we in the cockpit did just wake up, but no matter, we are correcting.  My imagination.  I hope.  I find myself day dreaming of my eleven year old son living back in New Mexico with my ex-wife.  I will call him from the dacha in Vladivostok.

My mind returns to the current flight.  The rolling Siberian mountains stretch below for a while and we pass over wide, north-south running rivers.   An hour later, we are over plains, paralleling the Amur river bordering China, south of Lake Baikal.  Breakfast is served, a tray again with two hard boiled eggs, a slice of thick dark bread, some jelly, plus tea or coffee poured into your empty plastic cup by the attendant.  An hour later, now light out, we bank south, to the right, down towards Vladivostok.  Thirty minutes after that we land.  It is eleven in the morning. The sight of the Pacific Ocean off to the right has revived me.  I am happy to be back in the Russian Far East.  It is nice to be off on my own, independent, away from the Embassy.   Dave is at the airport.

Vladivostok

We stay at the Governor’s guest house, a modern hotel located in a large gated park on the Pacific coast, formerly for the Communist Party elite.  The next morning, we ride by commuter train to the city center, getting off at Vladivostok’s central train station, and walking a few blocks to the Governor’s office, a modern white marble, twenty-three story, building.  We are on time for the Governor’s appointment with a visiting American business executive from Seattle, the owner of a seafood plant in Kamchatka.  She wants one in Vladivostok as well.  The American is accompanied by her translator, a young Russian university graduate who speaks British accented English, working for a local business services company.   I make the introductions.

The governor makes a few inappropriate comments about the executive’s attractive looks,  then offers her tea, asking her Russian assistant to pour it.  The American executive and I exchange looks.  She would let this pass.  The Governor follows with his usual interrogating style, asking about her background, and suggesting, looking at me, that American diplomats are really spies.  I had warned her to expect  this.  As a young man, he did his military service as a communicator with military intelligence.  He thinks most Americans are spies.  He is aggressive and full of himself, and very powerful politically.  I tolerate his behavior since he is a close friend of our previous Ambassador.

The next day, Dave and I have dinner with a local American international relief organization director, one of the few American residents in Vladivostok.   On the way to her apartment, we walk down brick streets, inlaid with tram rails, past run-down warehouses and communal apartments built in the 1950s, under Khrushchev.  We go up a hill, past a modernistic theater called Palace of Culture, factories and cranes in the distance next to the bay.  Some apartment buildings still have metal signs bolted to the roof, slogans mentioning workers and solidarity and glory.  This is an area of fishing industry union housing.  The atmosphere is still proletarian.  Vladivostok is not yet changing as quickly as Moscow.

The people on the street still dress and look Soviet.  Young girls wear braids and have the Soviet collective manner, everything done in groups, but without the pinafore uniforms and pioneer scarves.  It could almost be 1979, and they could be going to a ballet class, carrying slippers which their mothers sewed for them in the night, the fathers out drinking.  The girls could be talking about the latest dress patterns at the state-run department store, GUM, or of their grandmother’s bossiness in the house.  But, there is an undefinable difference from the old era.  They have a curiosity about foreigners that didn’t exist before.  They make eye contact.  They seem a bit freer, not on guard.  Their behavior is not so correct, a bit more carefree, although not to the extent of the new Moscow youth.  They are not under constant vigilance by their elders, or by Komsomol leaders in their midst.

Our host, is respected by the Russians and Americans alike.  She is unassuming, never taking credit for anything, operating with her Russian staff as a team, never saying anything negative, reserved, idealistic, but not naive.   Her international relief organization sent her on a mission to deliver food assistance to Russia, hearing reports of threatened starvation and families planting potatoes in the countryside on weekends.  At first, the proud Russians had said no, we can take care of our people, we are not a Third World nation needing foreign aid.  We have gone through much tougher times, and we Russians are survivors.  Gradually, the American prevailed, arguing that she knew Russia didn’t really need the food, but that CRS wanted to do something to be helpful, and that certainly Russia could allow us something.  By letting her organization feed the hospitals and indigent, Vladivostok could free up its scarce budgetary resources for other areas like education.  Well, yes, they said, that might be possible.  Of course, there wouldn’t be publicity.  It would be mainly symbolic, a symbol of friendship.  If the American people needed to feel good, then okay.

Ironically, her biggest supporter was the hard line deputy governor in charge of social services, Olga Vinnikova, who was at the dinner.  Matronly, in her 60s, unreconstructed, a dedicated socialist, Vinnikova nonetheless knew the true food situation and appreciated the Americans’ help.  Dave and I let the American maintain some distance from us, the U.S. government, thereby maintaining neutrality.  Sitting in the kitchen around a table eating hors d’oeuvres, Vinnikova was the center of attention, not saying a lot, but being fawned over by the American’s Russian staff, who were helping with the cooking and serving.  Vinnikova deliberately didn’t pay any attention to me or David.  Although she didn’t know it, we greatly respected Vinnikova for her almost sisterly loyalty to the American relief worker, fighting her own bosses; for her honesty; and for her work for the poor.  She was a socialist, but not fighting all aspects of democracy, focusing on egalitarian welfare.  Not all aspects of the old regime were negative.  I managed to give her a smile across the room.

Also at the dinner was an American businessman trying to open a store on the edge of town.  He had quickly run into opposition from the state legislature, mainly communist still, rallying behind the Russian state stores.  They resented the competition, and convinced the governor that the American venture would cause a rise in prices for the poor Russian masses.  There was no margin for error in these times, they said.   As a result, the American’s progress was slow.   But he kept at it, jumping over road blocks, one by one.

Another American at the American dinner was an American priest who had achieved an amazing victory, obtaining the return of Catholic church which had been turned into a museum in the 1930s.  Apparently, communist ideas against religion had been overcome.   One of the Russian guests at the party was telling the story of the recent August events overthrowing communism, as they played out in Vladivostok.  While the public waited to see who came out on top in Moscow, the local Navy commander took the Russian Pacific Fleet out of port, and was reportedly ready to take action against Yeltsin and the democrats.  But, some brave souls stood up for Yeltsin, including a female dissident who had been persecuted during the Soviet era.  The dissident drove her pickup truck up to a major statue of Lenin in a local park, took a chain out of the back, hooked one end to the bumper and looped the other around Lenin’s neck, and drove off, dragging the statue behind her.  Can you imagine the courage, the Russian telling the story said, his eyes wide with disbelief.  I was reminded of another example,   In nearby Sakhalin, where reformer governor had declared independence from the Soviet Union when Gorbachev was arrested in the Crimea.  The governor said okay, if this is the end of perestroika and a return to the old system, then Sakhalin will go its own way.

I was sitting on a couch in the living room, next to David.  From the kitchen, I heard the falling of ice cubes against glass as punch was prepared.  I found myself staring out the window, past the flowery wallpaper, looking out at electric tram wires, and old brick chimneys across the street.  I could hear the whine of a streetcar accelerating.   Another American expatriate living in Vladivostok was talking.  He had been the first American to settle in Vladivostok, two years ago, and was bringing in American businesses to Russia, advising Russians on how to do business U.S. style.  He was describing the current business climate in Russia, saying that even he could not tell who was in charge locally at any given moment.  The landscape was “like shifting tectonic plates.”  Different groups ran different areas at different times, and control changed frequently.  Once, I had heard him describe it as an Asian trait, an Indonesian puppet show behind a screen.  You can only see the shadows, he said.  His theme was that you had to be very tough, that Russians mistrust lofty talk about U.S.-Russian ties and a better world.

David and I were a good team.  We knew what was important, or felt we did.  We were iconoclasts who had both spent years in Russia, and liked Russia and the Russians.  We shared a 1960s style irreverence.  But, we were tough on the Russians.  We had numerous run ins with “old think” mayors and governors, and made it a point of going where we weren’t wanted, in formerly closed or sensitive areas, to test the new “Open Lands Policy.”   Once, at the airport in Sakhalin, waiting for a flight to Kamchatka, we received a page from the Kamchatka Governor, saying it was “not convenient”  for us to fly there at this time.   We were about to board.  We looked at each other, and went anyway.  It was time they learned we no longer needed approval to travel, as in the old days.  We were greeted in Kamchatka at the airport by a lot of followers and slamming car doors and angry stares, but no one interfered with us.

A few days after our dinner with the American community, David and I spent an evening with Dimitry, our Russian liaison in the Vladivostok Governor’s office who had become our friend.  He picked us up at the State Dacha and drove us into town, to his apartment.  We were greeted by his wife, Marina, and his two daughters.  Dimitry was about our age, but seemed older.  He was short, but strong without being stocky, blond, with blond mustache, sardonic, and very intelligent.  He spoke a British accented English fluently, which was crucial in his job of interacting with visiting foreign businessmen and diplomats.

Dimitry spoke slowly and deliberately and was very serious all the time.  He was strict and formal with us, initially, eventually loosening up.  Over dinner, Marina reminded us all of our last time at their table, during our previous trip to Vladivostok three months before, when Victor had received an emergency phone call saying the local munitions arsenal was on fire.  We recalled about how Victor’s face blanched, how we broke up the dinner, and he drove us home.  On the way, traffic had been blocked by Navy Police at the Second River intersection, near the arsenal fire.   We sat there for ten minutes, watching Russian Navy recruits, in t-shirts and blue trousers, run past, in the direction of the fire.  They were in formation, but running fast, not in step.

All we could see of the fire was a red glow over the low hills which served as ammo dumps.  Dimitry dropped us off at the Dacha, and with stern face, raced off to his office.  The ladies who ran the dacha were nervous, but kept up a brave face.  The explosions lasted two days, until the fire was finally brought under control, exploding munitions hurling shrapnel for blocks.  From our dacha outside town, it had been like a constant fourth of July, but more serious and thundering.  Dimitry keep us informed on developments, but other Russian friends confided to us that the situation was more dangerous than we were told.  Later, we learned that the fire had burned through four levels of underground munitions, setting off all types of shells.  Had it got to the fifth level, it would have reached the nuclear torpedoes, releasing radiation into the air.  It would have been catastrophic.

While the fire was being fought, there had been talk of evacuating all foreigners.  The Japanese Consulate left during the first night on a charter.  Russian families got in their cars and drove to Nahodka, fifty miles away.  David and I stayed on, taking the commuter trains into town to check on the ten Americans living in Vladivostok.  We were followed by our Russian watchers, concerned about our safety, since two of the ten Americans lived in the arsenal vicinity.  What I remembered most about that time was the calm of the Americans amid the almost constant explosions, with occasional pauses lasting a half hour.  It was rough on the nervous system, and you could not put it out of your mind.  Your system waited for the muffled explosions.   Several Russian sailors and fire fighters died fighting the fire.

Talk of the arsenal explosion was putting a damper on our current dinner.  Dimitry said to Marina, “lets try to forget the arsenal fire.  That was in August.”  We had pirogi, or Russian dumplings, and Dimitry and Marina led us in some Russian songs, which David knew.  We handed over presents to the kids, American music cassettes, and one for our hosts, Rod Stewart, their favorite.  I slipped an American college catalog to the high school age daughter.  “Who knows,”  I said.  I could see that the daughter thought the idea a great one.  The hugs were a bit warmer as we said goodbye and Dimitry’s driver drove us home this time.  The sky was clear and the moon full.  It seemed larger than the moon in the west, closer, a huge white presence, like you could almost reach up and grab it.   Dimitry wished us a safe trip to Moscow.   He teased David about something that I didn’t catch.  He and Marina felt especially close to David.

Departure

The next morning, David and I walked to the port, hemmed in by seven hills, a water passage to the sea, gray destroyers and cruisers lining the banks near the naval base.  Smoke from ships’ stacks clouded the harbor.  After doing some shopping downtown, we hailed a taxi to the airport, and awaited Flight Two, direct to Moscow,   It would be an evening flight, against the clock.  The flights would be strange, leaving in dusk, entering darkened night for an hour or so, then returning into the evening again for the last three hours of the trip and landing in Moscow almost the same hour we started.

While awaiting our flight, the Airport Director, a friend of ours, took us up to his conference room where he had prepared some hors d’oeuvres, a bon voyage.  His entire staff was there, also friends.  We had a round of vodka toasts, bottoms up, from water glasses.  I said a few words about our being neighbors, Seattle being as close to Vladivostok as Moscow.

The Airport director toasted Russian and American aviators.  David, who always knew what to say, in colloquial Russian, toasted “the end of the Cold War, which we barely survived,” saying “lets not go back and try it again.”  This brought an enthusiastic round of applause.  It was the turn of the Deputy Airport Director, a small wiry Russian with dark mustache, something that always looked out of place, more Caucasian than Russian.  He was prickly, sometimes difficult, and a bit unreformed.  i didn’t know what to expect.   He gave the usual Aeroflot toast  to “soft landings.”   I added in Russian, the usual expression, “slava bogo,” “with the help of God.”   He countered with a more Soviet perspective: “thank engineering.”   I said I could picture him calling upon “engineering” if his plane was spiraling down.  Everyone laughed, even him.  Even he was coming around.   A normal sense of humor was a good sign.  We were all in good spirits, shaking hands.

He became solemn and raised his glass again, waiting for silence.  He said quietly, self-consciously, considering whether to mention it, that he wanted to toast me and David as individuals.  He paused.  We had stayed, he continued, through the arsenal explosion earlier in the year, when a lot of other foreign diplomats, well, lets say it, he said, the Japanese and Vietnamese, had taken off.   The American diplomats, David and I,  he continued, had stayed through the explosions, doing our duty to protect our countrymen, and refused, yes, he knew, refused, to be put on a plane out.   Dimitry, I was thinking, must have told him.  He continued on.  While everyone in the city was scared and doing something in their pants, slight laughter, David and I had stayed.  Real guys.  We, the airport staff, he said, had noticed.

The staff was nodding, silent now, looking us in the eyes.   Strange.  No one had ever said anything about it to us before.   We weren’t even sure they knew we had stayed.   We downed our vodka quietly, and broke up, warm bear hugs all around.   David and I flew back, silly smiles on our faces.

The silver Aeroflot jet taking off in front of us slides down the runway, right to left and back, zig zagging, trying to gain speed for takeoff on an icy runway in the middle of a blizzard, then giving up, cutting power and taxiing back to the terminal.   A de-icing truck, a Russian flat bed truck with a jet engine mounted on the back, its silver pipes and tubes exposed and its exhaust chamber pointed down, has been sent out, and is driving up and down the length of the runway, burning off ice, one strip after another, like mowing a lawn, the jet engine screaming.   This is typical Russian innovation.  Dave nods in the direction of the truck, “American ingenuity. What we used to have.”   It is 1991, the first winter of the Yeltsin era.  Dave and I are American diplomats traveling in Magadan, a frozen Siberian mining city of 300,000 located across the Bearing Straight from Alaska.  We are on our way back to Vladivostok, to our new U.S. consulate in the region.  We have a four hour flight ahead of us.

Finally, it is time for another try.  It is our plane’s turn.  The runway has been de-iced as much as possible.  As usual, there is no apprehension on the part of the Russian passengers.  Dave and I are looking at each other, wondering.   We are turning onto the runway.  No safety briefing.  The pilot revs up the engines to full power, releases the brakes, and we gain speed, sliding a bit to the left and right as we go, but gaining speed and moving forward, although not as fast as usual due to the slippery surface.  Hopefully, the pilot can break off before the point of no return.  No, we are going for it.   The engines are screaming.  It is deafening.  We have never taken off like this before, not even on Aeroflot.  The Russian passengers are still chatting over the noise, and the flight attendant in her jump seat seems unconcerned.  I am looking out the window at the passing airport landscape, lights, and runways, and snowy fields. The plane is shaking and rattling, and then there is the quick lift off, the plane sucked upward suddenly as in an air pocket.  The shuddering subsides, and the ground at the end of the runway falls away.  I can see the rivets on the aluminum wing and the flaps moving up.  The landing gear has already retracted with a “whirr. “  I repeat a quiet prayer.  The Russians, most with little religion, only Russian fatalism, always seem to be less afraid of death.

It is now smooth and we are ascending rapidly, the terminal and highway far below, small, and now the frozen sea below us, white.  There are thin streams of clouds which we pass through.  The horizon is pink and the sun weak.  The plane banks steeply to right, south, towards Vladivostok.  Just as suddenly, the wings level again, and the sun comes back into play.  I sigh.  Dave looks over at me and smiles.  There seems to be more chatter in the cabin, some relief.  The couple across the aisle continues conversing through the entire takeoff.   I hear one conversation behind me, two men talking about the high price of tires in Vladivostok compared to Magadan.

Directly in front of me, I can see the flowery scarfed head of a Russian grandmother.  She is lecturing someone with that grating “babushka” voice, emphasizing her words.  Somehow the banality and assuredness of the babushka in her scarf tied under the chin, a natural survivor, gives me comfort.  Nothing would happen to her.   The plane, I notice, begins to smell like vinegar.  They are preparing lunch in the back.

We are now cruising above a solid layer of clouds, no land or sea visible, the sun shining level with us, straight out my window,  through a haze.  The heaters are blowing, making a rushing sound in the cabin.  They serve the usual rolls, greasy chicken thighs, and sticky rice on a plastic tray, with tea following.  The flight is routine.

I am feeling good about Russia, about the people, nature, the culture.  We land later that afternoon in Vladivostok, and Inna, my Russian assistant, is waiting for us at the airport with sandwiches which she and her mother made.  The Consulate driver, Volodya, my pal, gives me a bear hug and shakes Dave’s hand.  Its like being with family again.  Inna sees an old high school girlfriend, and runs over to hug her.  They kiss three times, on each cheek, and we are off in our Consulate SUV, passing small Russian cars jammed with families, also off the flight, sandwiches being unwrapped in their cars as we pass.  Kids are riding on mother’s laps.  Suitcases and bundles are tied to the roofs.  Outside it is getting darker.  Brightly painted wooden “dachas” with carved shutters and lace curtains stream by.  The lavender sea is on the right side of the highway, appearing occasionally as we pass through pine forests.  The amber lights of cottages are coming on, dotting the countryside.  You can imagine the smell the tea from their samovars.  You can smell smoky wood from their chimneys.  We pass one car with tires tied to the roof.  Magadan tires are cheaper after all.