In early 1992, I flew from Vladivostok  to Komsomolsk-na-Amur, an eastern Siberian industrial city of 500,000 inhabitants which had been closed to foreigners during the Cold War due to the large number of defense plants located there.  When I arrived, Yeltsin had been in power for six months, but the provinces remained conservative.  My job, as the new American Consul General for the region, was to get acquainted with the region and expand Russian-American contacts in the new era.

I arrived on a small Aeroflot YAK 40 passenger jet, accompanied by my American colleague, David, and our Russian assistant, Dmitry.   Dmitry worked for the Russian governor for the province, and was on loan to us to make sure our travels in Russia went smoothly.

Komsomolsk was what I expected, drab and industrial, a concrete city of drab five-story Soviet-style apartment buildings lining broad avenues, mixed in with a scattering of large defense plants, and some large government buildings spread around a central square in the city center.  The town still looked and felt like the old Soviet Union. Red buntings with workers slogans hung from factory buildings, and the streets were still named after Marx, Lenin, and the October Revolution. A huge polished marble bust of Lenin sparkled in the sunlight in the central square.  But, there were some changes.  Private kiosks had appeared on the occasional street corner, offering Western and Korean canned goods and Cokes and imported Chinese parkas.  The people on the street seemed a bit more natural and open, more Western, or perhaps it was my imagination.  And, there were more private cars on the streets.  It was mid-March and chimneys were pumping white steam into a cloudless light blue sky.  People in fur coats and fur hats crowded bus queues, but they were lively and talkative, acting like Spring had arrived even though the temperature was in the 30s.  The days were longer and the sun higher and brighter, and blackbirds were landing on building cornices.  Everyone was out.

We checked into our hotel, then went to our first appointment, lunch with the Mayor.  He had arranged a table in the local Intourist Hotel’s private hall. It was the standard arrangement, white tablecloths and hors d’oeuvres of herring, black and red caviar, cucumber salad, and cooked mushrooms.  Water beakers and vodka bottles lined the table.  The Russian side included the Mayor, his “Deputy,” whom we assumed represented the security services, a district administrator, and the local aluminum plant director.  We passed out business cards as vodka was being poured into water glasses for toasts.  There was a bit of the expected old system atmosphere: suits with lapel pins, a bit formal, a few smiles, correct, but not unfriendly.

The Mayor led off with a toast, welcoming us and noting that “all peoples are alike,” a cliché that elicited nods and smiles.  I recognized it as a holdover of “old speak,” or Soviet-era language meaning friendship of peoples if not their governments.  David, also a “Russia Hand” with experience in the Brezhnev era, glanced at me knowingly, then down at his plate.  I raised my glass with a smile, and we all downed the contents.  The glasses were refilled.  Maybe I was being too Cold-Warish.

“As my personal guests in Komsomolsk,” the Mayor continued, “I welcome you to our city.  We will do all possible to ensure your visit is a successful one.”  Smiles and raised glasses.  The “personal guests” phrase sounded a bit ominous.  We had arranged our visit ourselves, deliberately calling the Mayor’s office only the day ahead, to make the point that in the new Russia, diplomats no longer need an invitation or official host in order to visit.  We could come and go as we please.  Before, Russian officials had to approve our visits, and they took charge of our program.

We got through more toasts.  The Russian side clearly hoped we would bring over American businessmen.  There was no mention of Yeltsin or the less tangible benefits of democracy.

When it was my turn, I toasted  cooperation between our nations, making the point that the Cold War was over.  David chimed in: “lets not go back and try it again. We barely survived the first time.”  This went over surprisingly well.  David was fluent in Russian and knew how to banter with Russians.  I added the point that Americans are transparent, and the Russian side need not fear our new consulate and our traveling freely around.  This elicited concerned looks, but I closed with my usual phrase that Americans and Russians are quite alike, and that Komsomolsk, geographically, is as close to Seattle as to Moscow.  They nodded affirmatively, appreciating the Pacific Northwest and Alaska kinship.

After the toasts, the main course arrived.  I could see the Mayor was concerned with our “traveling freely” mention.  After some small talk, the Mayor leaned over to talk to the aluminum plant director, who represented the numerous local defense factories.  They had been trained to see all Americans as spies.  I felt something was coming.

The Mayor turned to me across the table, selecting his words carefully: “Mr. Consul, we are glad you are here. That is good.  But, it is necessary to clarify one detail.”  He was being serious but friendly, waving his hand like he was brushing aside something unpleasant that he had to dispense with, getting to the point:  “we regret that we did not have sufficient advance notice of your visit, so we could have organized all the things you wanted to see.”  He paused, “on future visits, it would be convenient for your secretary to contact my office in advance with your itinerary.  You can understand that we need to make necessary arrangements and prepare your safety.”  A friendly smile on his part.  It was all just bureaucratic necessity.  His colleagues were eating with deadpan expressions, quietly, intent on their plates.  I could hear forks softly touching china.  There was a certain tenseness.  Perhaps, I was thinking, word had not filtered down from Moscow about the new “open lands” policy.  Or, more likely, he was trying to bend the rules a bit, requesting at least advance notification of any visits.

I knew from past experience I would have to address this.  Our silence would be interpreted as accepting his point.  Everything had to be nailed down with the Russians.

“Thank you for having us, Mr. Mayor,” I responded, smiling too, but looking at Dmitry, the governor’s representative who might have to back me.  “We look forward to bringing our businessmen together, leading hopefully to joint ventures and exchanges which are mutually beneficial.”  They loved he mutually beneficial part, being treated as equal partners with something to offer as well, and no fuzzy altruism.  I paused to let the next part stand out: “In the past, as you know, we could not visit Komsomolsk or other closed cities without special permission, just as Russian diplomats could not visit U.S. closed areas in the U.S., like Los Alamos, without prior formal approval.  It is good sign that things have changed, and neither side has to apply any more in advance for permission to visit or even make prior notification.  That is good for your diplomats as well.  This reflects a new trust and openness between former adversaries, now friends.”   Seeing the Mayor’s demeanor stiffen, I softened the message by adding that “of course, we look forward to working closely with your office when we are in town.”  We smiled, but the smiles were only ours.

The Mayor looked at Dmitry, as if he could do something, find a compromise, explain that Komsomolsk is a special case, a city really under control of the Defense Ministry, only technically under control of the Governor.  Dmitry was passive.  His expression was “what can I do, the agreement was bilateral, signed by Moscow.”  He knew the Mayor was caught between Yeltsin and local hard-liners who still ran things in Komsomolsk.  The Mayor would have to answer to the real power in town, the director of the mighty Lenin Shipyards, which builds the nuclear submarines, possibly an unreconstructed communist against our presence in town, refusing to attend the lunch.  Finding no help, the Mayor turned to his “deputy,” who responded that he was not sure if the agreement applied to Komsomolsk, and he would have to clarify the matter with Moscow.  That conservatism in the face of reform irritated me.

Dmitry glanced over at me.  We were friends and had spent a lot of time together on the road.  He knew I was not always a very diplomatic diplomat.  He looked down at his napkin, knowing what was coming.

I said : “You may not have been informed, Mr. Mayor, but your city is already open.”  As soon as I had said it, I knew I had been a bit too abrupt.  That was my weakness, trying to be nice, holding it in, then over-reacting.  I was also re-fighting the Cold War, conditioned by my experience in the Soviet Union.  No more smiles, I told myself.  We, too, know how not to smile.  No more letting things pass, hoping all will work out.  The Russians respect firmness.

There was an awkward silence at the table.  The Mayor could not conceal his anger, mad at being embarrassed as only the Russians can get mad, icy cold and personally insulted.  His controlled anger was followed by disregard, washing his hands of the American.  After a few minutes, he announced that he had another appointment and excused himself.  Without a handshake, he and his deputy left.  The others followed shortly, nodding and formal handshakes, going for their overcoats. The lunch was over.

As we got up to leave the empty table, I turned to Dmitry and whispered with a grin, “did I over react?”  He gave me his wry Dmitry smile, chuckling and shaking his head back and forth in disbelief at my most recent display.  “Sometimes,” he said, laughing, “it takes time for people to change,” looking at me directly, “in both countries.”   I laughed too.  He added with Russian dispassion: “it was perhaps tough words for the Mayor, but perhaps correct approach.  It will help clarify the situation.”  He felt we could find a practical solution, however, maybe a personal call to the Mayor from me telling him not to worry, while we stand on principle, in practice we will not let him be blindsided by our visits.  We gathered our coats from the check stand, and walked to our next appointment, at the local museum.

When we got to the museum, the curator acted as our tour guide.  I wasn’t paying much attention to Komsomolsk’s geologic formation and history, except to notice there wasn’t any mention of Komsomolsk’s Gulag connection or that forced labor built the city.  But, the director was a reformer and expressed his approval of the new system.  That was good to see.  We got to the top floor and he said he had something interesting to show us.  There, standing around a glass case in the center of the room, were a group of middle school children and scattered museum visitors.  They stepped aside to let us have a front row look.  Inside the case, there was a white snake, coiled up in sleep in a circle with its head in the middle, lying in white sand, almost invisible.  It was not large and only about two feet long.  The director said this was an indigenous snake and poisonous, and was the first exhibit in what they hoped to create, a sort of indoor zoo.   Then I noticed movement at the opposite end of the case, where a small white mouse started sniffing around, unaware of the sleeping snake.  “Look,” the Director said, as the mouse began to wander, sniffing the sand, getting closer to the snake’s end of the box.  Then it discovered the snake.

The sleeping snake must have sensed the mouse’s presence at the same time. It raised its head slowly, focusing intently on the mouse, which retreated quickly to a corner at his end of the glass case, standing now on his back legs, then scampering to the other corner to find an escape.  At one point, it looked up at us in panic, then raced away to the other corner.  The snake moved its head slowly, following the mouse’s movement.  As it began to slowly uncoil, moving its head in the direction of the mouse, the mouse stopped moving, standing in profile to the snake, now just a foot away.  The mouse froze in mid step.  It was as if the mouse had resigned itself to its fate and couldn’t bear to look at the snake head on.  It seemed to want to get it over with.  Motionless, its eyes frozen, it seemed almost human, almost sad, at the end.  Without warning, the snake struck, and the mouse fell over on its side, not moving, no twitching, just still.  The snake was uncoiling, ready for his dinner, as the museum director, unconcerned, led us away.  The students lingered at the case, silent, some looking to see our response, how Americans react.  David was wondering aloud why they had such an exhibit in the first place.  It seemed out-of-place in a museum.  It was so incongruous.  To me, it was typical of the former system’s insensitive nature.  It was best to move on.

That afternoon, we visited a Polytechnic Institute, the local university, discussing exchanges with the rector, a retired physicist with one foot in each door, a state official and academic.  He was older and didn’t have the new jargon down, and lapsed into old Marxist phrases like “political economy,” but he was trying and was open to the west, leading us to his office, where we had tea and wafers, served by the female staff, some of whom were assistant directors with PhDs.

We flew out that evening.  I knew what to expect.  There would be no city representative at the airport to help us, or goodbye toasts in the waiting room.   But, we knew things were changing anyway.  There were foreign businessmen traveling through, and talk of trade and joint ventures.  An American University, Texas Tech, was talking to the Polytechnic Institute about exchange programs. I could help with that.  I could rebuild relations with the Mayor.

In the terminal, as we were getting up to answer our flight, we bumped into my South Korean counterpart from Vladivostok, the Consul General, just arriving, being met by the Mayor’s representative and driver.  The Korean saw us and came over, shaking hands, saying it was a “pleasant surprise” to see us here.

“We’re out visiting the district,” I said.

He was nervous and smiling, hoping I would not ask the nature of his visit.  He was happy to bump into us.  “Small country,” he joked.  We all laughed.  When I saw him the previous day in Vladivostok, he had not mentioned he was coming here.  The Koreans were business competitors and tight-lipped.  “You have a good visit?,” he asked.

“Very interesting,” I said.

“You see Mayor?,” he asked.

“Yes, nice fellow,” I replied.

“Yes,” he said, “I have to go to Mayor, myself, now.  I will see you back in Vladivostok.”  It sounded like “Wadi-wostok.” David, who had a Korean wife, said something to him in Korean.  I thought a second about letting the Korean off the hook.

“Mr. Kim,” I asked quickly, “is there anything you can share with us about your visit?  Any commercial progress, or joint ventures?”

“Oh, no. No.”  He puffed out the words in his guttural accent, looking serious and shaking his head no.  “Like to see some cooperation, but too early to tell.”

“No aircraft parts deal between KAL and the Gagarin Aircraft factory?” I asked, smiling knowingly.

“Oh, no. No,” he said, laughing too much, then being suddenly serious and at the same time a bit embarrassed, waiving his finger back and forth no, and nodding no, too.  “Talk only.”  He smiled, “we can review when I return,” nodding yes vehemently.  “Best of luck,” he said, quickly shaking hands with me, and following the Mayor’s driver out, walking fast.  I knew there would be no review.  Dmitry gave me that wry smile again, shaking his head.

We joined the crowded Russians in the bus to the plane.  You could hear the high shrill of the TU-154 jet engines starting up as we took our seats.  But, I had already forgotten about Komsomolsk.  I was thinking of the sad mouse at the end.

I am thinking back about Russia in 1994, of flying west from Vladivostok to Moscow, over the golden steppes lit by the distant sun, then passing over a solid blanket of clouds stretching all the way to Novosibirsk, on the western edge of Siberia.  There have been, along the way, occasional breaks in the clouds, exposing wide, shiny gray rivers running north and south, north to the low Arctic horizon and south to the Amur River bordering China.  We have been flying for five hours; there are four to go.  The clouds have finally disappeared.  Below me, as we enter European Russia, lie vast stretches of forest and some low mountains, the southern Urals.   We are passing over Tomsk, between Yekaterinburg and Kazan, Russian cities of half a million inhabitants, cities which were once first strike ICBM targets, military industrial cities which I was forbidden to visit during the Cold War.  Yekaterinburg was “Sverdlovsk” then, where Czar Nicholas and his family were murdered in 1918, and where Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 in 1960.  Kazan, on the Volga, was the home of Lenin.  Now, we are establishing an American consulate in Yekaterinburg, Boris Yeltsin’s hometown.  From the air, there are no visible highways, cultivated fields, or major cities the rest of the way to Moscow.  Who would have thought that I would know this country like my own.  The overall impression is one of light blue, almost white, skies, vast grasslands, scattered villages, dirt roads, and winding rivers below.

Finally, we are descending into Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, on the southern outskirts.  The clouds are opaque outside the window as we bump down.  Occasionally there is a visible patch of green countryside below, then we are lost in the clouds again, banking, with the pilots really flying the plane, as Russian pilots do.  Descending for some time, I am wondering how much lower we can go.  We should be near the ground by now.  Still, there is nothing but fog outside the window, and the sound of the engines winding down, then revving up, and more bumps as we encounter a bit of turbulence.  The flight attendants are strapped in their bulkhead seats, facing us.  We bank again, and a section of highway and fields below emerges for a second, but the cars below are just dots.  We make several more turns while descending, the engines alternating power, and finally there is the sound of the landing gear dropping and locking into place with a thump.  We level off and drift down as the engines power up for landing.  Suddenly, we are over the runway, with its white lines leading us. We have broken through the fog.  Misty shapes of trees and airport buildings race by, their tops obscured by low clouds.  The tires skid as they touch down, and the engines reverse.  As we de-accelerate, yellow runway marker signs appear, and the attendants are unbuckling.  Outside is the large terminal, and planes of all sizes with cyrillic lettering, and lush forests visible beyond the runways.

We have arrived, and I feel a sigh of relief, and also some pride of the prodigal, a colleague returning to an Embassy I have been part of for years, now serving in an outlying consulate amid some hardship.   I feel excitement at being back in civilization, in Moscow, in Europe.  I will become part of the Embassy again for a few days, consulting.  I will be part of the large American community, enjoying the cafeteria, American food, and local sights– Novodevidevchy Monastery and dinners at the nearby “Aragvi”  restaurant, ballets at the Bolshoi, concerts at Tchaikovsky Conservatory, shopping on Novy Arbat and Tverskaya Boulevards.  But, part of me is still back in the Russian Far East, in Vladivostok, with its taiga and hills and bays, downtown ports, and commuter trains running down the Pacific coast to the wooded state dacha, where I live.  I miss my Russian friends and the staff at the consulate, the birch forests, the boat rides and picnics on the bay, and the frequent trips to Khabarovsk and other cities in the region.  And yet, I am ready to go back to the States, even though I feel what I am doing is worthwhile, building friendship between former enemies.

It has been a stressful three years in Siberia, fighting for democratic Russians against the old Soviet elites, the KGB, hard-line Governors, local mafias, and angry Russian communists.  We are alone out there in the struggle, and disliked by many just because we are there.  The older Russians are skeptical of change.  We are fighting for democracy, against the revival of the former Soviet Union and communist party under new names, a real threat despite the denials.  We have allies in the younger generation, but Yeltsin and democracy are losing credibility amid widespread poverty and mafia rule.  We are losing battles, but gaining friends, getting our message out gradually through our presence, rubbing elbows, breaking down stereotypes.  Eventually change will come.  The time has come.

There is the emotional stress of being far away from family, and the fatigue of living in the bleak, still somewhat Soviet landscape, and missing the comforts and culture of the West.  How many years can you dedicate to Monrovia, Moscow, and Vladivostok.  Perhaps it is time for the humanities, for archeological digs in Greece, galleries at DuPont Circle, and evening courses at Georgetown.

Walking out of the airport terminal, pushing though the swinging heavy oak doors, I see a yellow bus, packed with overflowing Russians, leaving the terminal parking lot, black smoke pouring from the exhaust.  “Gypsy cab” drivers are soliciting fares.  Grandmothers are running with old suitcases to other busses.  The Embassy driver is waiting for me out front, standing beside the open rear door of the black Chevrolet with CD plates.  I get in, and he shuts the door for me with a “click.”  I think to myself, “yes, “click,” I am closing the door too, on this part of my life.  Sitting in the back seat, I realize I am biding my time, living for retirement and the humanities.  It is ten a.m., Moscow time.  The Embassy has an apartment for me.

The Embassy driver asks politely, “Embassy or home, Meester Le Kok?”

“Home, Sasha.”