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.”

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.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the provincial capital of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, sits in a bowl surrounded by low mountains.  A ski jump prepared for the 1980 Olympics is visible in the heights, overlooking the city and dominating the skyline.  When I first arrived in the region in 1991, the first of five visits, the city was sitting on the fence in the power struggle taking place in Moscow between Yeltsin and the hard-liners.  Sakhalin had a split personality.  Sometimes the democrats, including the reform-minded Governor Fyodorov, were ascendant, and the local government was friendly.  Sometimes the Mayor, a communist with a large photo of Lenin above his desk, was ascendant, and we got a chilly welcome.  During those bad times, the local democrats and friends of the U.S., mainly younger, kept their heads down, even though Yeltsin was in power.  Statues of Lenin were still standing downtown, and state food stores predominated over private markets.  But, at the same time, the city did have a new international business center housing U.S. and Japanese oil companies. And, there were a couple of new Korean restaurants and hotels catering to businessmen from Seoul.

On my next to last trip to Sakhalin, in 1993, my colleague, David, and I were sent out from the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok to represent the United States at a memorial service on the tenth anniversary of the shooting down of Korean Air Lines flight 007.  Sakhalin happened to be in a negative cycle when we landed.  The new Governor was anti-reform and surrounded by old Communist Party functionaries, the Deputy Governors.  The Western oil companies were having trouble getting off the ground.  The Yeltsin government was using the occasion to atone for the past, and offer relief to the families, who would lay wreaths on the waters where the plane went down. But, there were still accusations floating around that the U.S. had caused the tragedy by shadowing the Korean airliner with C-141 spy planes.  There were other “Cold War-ish” explanations by Russian hard liners, that the Korean Boeing 747 had actually been a spy plane with NSA employees behind radar screens on board.

The local Sakhalin officials didn’t mind the Korean Embassy in Moscow sending out an official delegation to help the families and pay tribute at the memorial ceremony, but they didn’t like the U.S. government sending us out, feeling the U.S. only wanted to politicize the event.  It was the usual Russian split, Yeltsin saying one thing in Moscow, and the local KGB and Defense types and hard-line Governors in the provinces not exactly going along with their own president’s desires.

David and I were allowed to come to the ceremony, to help the American families, but we would receive no recognition, not be on the program, nor be given time to make any speeches.  We were basically ignored, and given the cold shoulder at the ceremony by Sakhalin officials.  We didn’t know this would happen until we arrived.  We horned in on the activities anyway, stood around a lot, and went to the shoreline with the American families, where we examined the personal effects of the victims which had washed ashore.  These were put on tables for the family members to identify.  The Governor and Korean diplomats made speeches in the open, at a memorial being dedicated.

Towards the end, I found myself standing in a small group with a Deputy Governor, Deputy Mayor, and a Major General, conversing in Russian, discussing the families’ needs.  The General, at one point, said that “many still feel that the Boeing plane was a spy plane.”  I was a bit surprised by this, seeing the personal effects spread out nearby.  The others in the circle shared the General’s view.  They were the typical Party bigwigs: old communists and nationalists, vodka drinkers, rude jokers, veins showing on their cheeks, portly, gruff, former power wielders. I knew the type well from the Soviet era.

As I was talking with this group, which now included the Governor, who tried to ignore me, an elderly Russian World War II pensioner, wearing a beret and war ribbons on his suit jacket, came pedaling his bicycle up to us, coming to a stop in our center.  We had to step back.  The Governor looked at the others like “who is this.”

The pensioner, still straddling his bike, looked at the Governor and at me, asked in Russian if I was the American Consul General.  I nodded.  He said to me: “There were women and children on that plane, right?”  I said quietly and seriously, “yes.”  He looked at the Governor and Generals and said, “ I thought so.”  And, putting his foot carefully back on the raised pedal, slowly pedaled off.  None of the Russians said anything.

No one tried to interfere with the old man.  It was a sobering moment, with a Russian citizen who was tired of being lied to by his government.  The General cleared his throat. They all looked sheepish.

The Governor spoke to me for the first time, saying defensively about the airliner tragedy, “no one wants to hurt civilians.”

I said, “I know that. It was a sad day for us all.”   The Governor reached out and shook my hand.  I shook his hand, but passed on his offer for a drink, saying I had to get back to Vladivostok.

The next time I returned to Sakhalin, I was no longer the enemy, and was offered VIP treatment, although I declined and never met with the governor again.  It was my policy to avoid giving acceptance to hard liners.  Many of my colleagues felt this was unwise, that we had to work with everyone in the new Russia.  I only hoped that the real hero, the old man on the bicycle, was doing okay.  I think he was.

The Boeing 747 appears in the night sky as a white dot, coming from the north—from Alaska.  As the plane descends onto the large airport at  Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, its landing lights beam ahead through the snow and the dark.

The American diplomat stands in the cold, waiting on the tarmac.  It is the middle of the night and the buildings are closed.  The snow crunches under his feet.  The terminal  is dark and a big neon sign announcing the city’s name is turned off.  He is there to make sure there are no problems with this flight which contains “special cargo.”  This is a refueling stop.

The airport manager,wearing a dark blue Aeroflot overcoat with gold stripes on the epaulets, stands next to him, smoking.  He and the American are friends, veterans of numerous battles in the new Russia.  It is 1991, and Yeltsin has just taken power.  Yuri has satisfied many unusual last minute requests from visiting American delegations that went against Russian security regulations.  The U.S. Foreign Service Officer has also fended off hard liners on his side.

Yuri acknowledges the aircraft and says one word, “Kissinger.”  The FSO nods.

The giant blue and white plane descends smoothly, rain contrails streaming off the tail and wings.  It settles gently on the far runway, paired sets of wheels touching down at once, then engines reverse and blow snow from the runway as it slows.  At the other end of the runway, it comes to a stop, pivots around, and taxis back, led by a follow me truck and two military jeeps.  The plane turns off the runway near the terminal its large blue nose, bump on the roof, and lettered “United States of America” along the side dominate the scene.  The rivets on the aluminum fuselage throw shadows from the ground lights as the plane brakes to a final stop.  The huge engines wind down to silence.

A tanker truck comes out and hoses connect under the imposing wings.  The pilots’ faces are visible in the windows high above, as they take off their headsets.  A truck bearing an Aeroflot logo and attached ramp drive up to the plane.

The watching airport manager says matter of factly, “Na Kitai” (“to China.”)

The FSO confirms.  “Da” (“Yes.”)

“Bolshoe Delo?” (“Big things?”) Yuri asks.

“Navierna”  (“Probably,”) the American replies, without elaboration.  The silence is a bit awkward, but the Russian would be disappointed in his friend if he had received more of an answer.  He values professionalism.  Anyway Moscow probably knows what’s going on.

“Thanks for coming out in person,” the American says.

“Rabbota y’est Rabbota” (“Work is work,”) the director smiles.  He didn’t really have to come. They were both part of a fraternity of public servants.  They had been opponents in the old days, but “professional” opponents.  The Cold War had never gotten out of hand.

“Want to go with me?” The director shrugs at the ramp.

“No, I’ll let him sleep.”  The American was cold and thinking he could have sent one of his subordinates from the Consulate in Vladivostok.  But, he preferred leaving nothing to chance.  That was his style.  The  Russians would note this.

The big plane taxied out an hour later and was off into the night, red lights blinking then fading into the distance.  The diplomat thought of the sole passenger on board, Henry Kissinger.  He recalled his one previous experience with Kissinger. It had been indirect. On his first tour in Israel, as duty officer during a crisis situation, Kissinger had relayed messages through him.  Being liberal, the diplomat didn’t value Kissinger’s realpolitik.

The manager came over to him.  “Ver’nyotsa utra?”  (Flying back in the morning?)  The American diplomat had made the two-hour flight from Vladivostok, just for this, and faced a return flight.

“Da, rabbotay’est rabbota,” joked the FSO.

The Russian  looked toward the hangar. “Piloti sdes (The pilots are here,”) and paused, “Gatovi.”—(Ready if you wish.)  He peered at a YAK 40, a twenty passenger jet, parked near the hangar with tarps off the engines.

“Thanks Yuri”

Yuri patted him on the back and went to the hangar to rouse the pilots.

Alone in the small YAK cabin flying east to Vlad, in the sunrise beyond a thin pink line on the horizon ahead,, the FSO thought of Yuri’s friendship and the warm Russian nature.  In two years of running a new American consulate and lone travel around Siberia he’d not had a single unpleasant experience.

He looked wearily out the window at the winding Amur river, frozen below along the Russia-China border, and it came to him.  It was Kissinger, the special cargo disrupting his night, who had started the whole thing.  Kissinger brought Nixon to Moscow twenty years ago and starting “détente,” and leading to this night, to Russians and Americans working together as friends.  Without Kissinger’s vision, there would have been no need for a new consulate or for an American diplomat to be living out here.

Looking down at the Russian tundra, the diplomat felt less tired, happy as an unseen servant for a sleepy passenger on a snowy night, far from home.

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.