It was a beautiful summer day in Eastern Siberia in 1992.  Yeltsin had just taken power the year before, ending Communist rule.  There was not a cloud in the sky.   We were pulled over on the grass at a Russian airfield outside the provincial capital of Khabarovsk, sitting in a new gray Volga sedan, the Russian official vehicle.  There were three of us in the car:  A Russian Major General, in his dark green uniform with two stars on the epaulettes, and me, the American a Consul General, in the back seat.  The General’s driver was up front in civilian clothes, smoking a cigarette with the window down, watching above through the front windshield, craning to see the air show.  A MiG 29 was performing vertical rolls, shooting straight up from the deck, then leveling out just as sharply, and zooming away amid a deafening roar.   The General told me they called the plane “the Cobra” due to its ability to do this maneuver.  I knew the Russians doubted the U.S. had a plane that could do the same.  Grinning, he asked if I was impressed by the best fighter in the world.

I showed little interest, changing the subject, using the occasion to pass on the regards of a mutual acquaintance in Vladivostok, the city where our Consulate was located, four hundred miles to the east, on the Pacific rim.  The Russian sending his regards to the General was the director of Vladivostok’s fishing conglomerate.  The General was pleased that the Consulate was friends with his old classmate.  The driver, joining the conversation, said the fishing director had just been in Khabarovsk a few days ago in this very car.  The General told the driver in Russian slang, to keep his mouth shut.  He probably felt I wouldn’t catch the slang.  The driver put out his cigarette and sat up straight in his seat.  The General went on without pause, telling me about the pilots and the G forces on them, but I was wondering why the fishing director from Vladivostok would be traveling around in an official vehicle with the General in another state.

It didn’t really matter, but what I suspected was that the old Communist Party elites still remained connected even though the Party structures were destroyed.  Most likely, the old boy networks still existed and kept things running. Former Komsomol leaders were now Deputy Governors.

Just the week before, in another Siberian provincial capital, the northern city of Magadan, sitting inside a  new tan Volga car, much like this one, I had seen a prominent businessman and former Communist era governor chew out the current Yeltsin-appointed democratic governor on his car phone.  He was barking orders from the back seat, later telling me that the governor was incompetent.  Back in his office,  I noticed he got things done by using a special telephone on the corner of his desk, the gray “vortushka” phones which had connected the Communist Party elites.   I wondered if it connected the old elites, or the new bosses.   What I found interesting was the businessman’s candor, his willingness to talk about old connections that keep things running and his willingness to demean a democratic minded governor in front of an American official.

The MiG 29 was doing rolls now.  Our car was pointed at the runway, and the reviewing stand was nearby, filled with spectators and military brass.  The General asked if I would like to meet with the deputy military commander for the region.  The top military commander had a reputation as a hard liner and was keeping his distance from the. Americans.   I would not give him the satisfaction of meeting the deputy.  “No thanks,”  I said.

The driver, now silent in the front seat, sat still, watching the show.  The General was reading some briefing paper and offered me his flask.  The countryside was flat and corn stalk colored, and stretched to infinity.  The skies were medium blue and the atmosphere was Soviet: the regimentation, well organized to the last detail; the seriousness of the participants and the script they followed, points to make to the visiting American; and the lack of smiles and watchful eyes and deep voices; and the vodka toasts on the side, sprinkled with anti-Chinese and anti-democrats jokes to gauge my reaction.

Yes, it seems I am learning things in cars.  Just this morning, I learned from my taxi driver in Khabarovsk that the high tech “Splav” semi conductor plant in town had been built by the Finns.  My boss in the American Embassy in Moscow had toured the plant that morning, but no one mentioned the Finns or anyone else while praising Russian technology.  So that, I realized in the taxi, is how the Finns had bought their neutrality during the Soviet era, by ignoring the boycott on technology transfers to Russia after its invasion of Afghanistan.  Doesn’t really matter.  Just shows that the average Russians feel more free to talk, even to American diplomats.  A good sign.

The incidental little things we learn in cars: the Finland embargo evasion; the power of old Soviet elites in the Yeltsin era; and the power of factory directors over governors.  Smiling to myself in the back seat of the General’s car, I was reminded of my tour in the old Soviet Union as an Embassy junior officer in 1979, when we used to travel from Moscow to the outlying provinces, coming back and writing trip reports based mainly on conversations we had in cars with taxi drivers, who were the only ones who would talk to us.  We were not trying to get secrets or information.  Just trying to learn all we could about the country.  We are, as it turns out, still trying to read between the lines.  Russia is still a riddle, I told myself.