Chapter 20
Successive Changes in Work and Life
With the coming of autumn I began to go to the University of Economics three times a week. It seemed me much harder than anything that far. I could sense the changes in scoring style as I have mentioned before. What you did not tell or did not write was considered by the examiner unfamiliar for you. I take it a highly unfair system.
The first semester was hardest of all, and its reason was that a conceited young girl thought herself to be a new Einstein. She was our lecturer in mathematics. And that mathematics with its imaginary and complex numbers was a science fiction for an engineer with common sense. To survive that first semester was a real struggle. From the next semester, with another lady as lecturer, we could easily understood all.
There were certain negative developments in the upper level of management in our factory. My boss, F., has been under great pressure from the company management for a time. His achievements in making the activity of our shipyard profitable, while the other units of the trust were building and selling at a loss, activated his enemies. The man, the former trade union activist, has also been doing his best at his new place to revenge his firing.
At that time the technical manager of the shipping company – my first employer – was retiring and a replacement has been sought. My boss had had a long past with that company and he accepted the post. It also meant that my background would be weaker after his leave.
There was a general speculation about who would be his successor. His deputy, an old man near to retirement, was no favourite. There was a young man, a so-called "thoroughbred” for his having been placed to every division in the shipyard by the party for training, he was one of the probable winners, or my department head, who had a proper knowledge of the whole process and had his channels, too.
At the same time, the director of the shipyard has been moved one level lower for technical manager, and his predecessor was sent to the "brain store” in the headquarters. At last a complete restructuring took place.
The former production manager became our new director. His place went to his former deputy, a workshop manager. The energetic young "thoroughbred” became deputy chief designer and his predecessor retired. The only newcomer in our construction bureau has been the new chief designer, to replace our boss. All this took almost half a year and during that time the acting deputy system ruled.
To my new director I could thank to become a regular reader of the American monthly "The International Management”. Shortly after he took his new seat, his secretary called me. In her office she gave me an envelope with the instruction to check it and report about it. It was an offer to the director for a free nomination. The return package also contained nomination cards for 3 new members. When I reported, he said to throw it away. I was careful to throw it out in a way, that my nomination card would fall into a mailbox. Until it became a paid magazine of the European Community in 1992, I would receive it regularly. Through the mailing list of that periodical I would be introduced to many international forums.
Around the time when that great shift in our management happened, I met a kind of Waterloo of my own. In the autumn of 1974 there were elections in the party branches. Our office level group of activists, where I was a co-opted member, wanted me to take that place as a regularly elected member. I would not do it very heartily, as at the university I expected a great hurry. At the same time, and I did not know anything about it, party members from my direct surroundings, my fellow-designers, were intriguing against me. They formed a public opinion about my being conceited and acting not for my fellow-workers, only for my career. When I try my memories, I find that I was actually very busy at that time and perhaps not always very attentive. I have to say, they might have been right. But I do not exclude the fact that one of our new designers in the electric department, where the party members were concentrated, was looking for an assignment for himself, and it was he who prepared this coup.
When the election assembly sat together, my nomination has been voted, but the mentioned team achieved to put the name of that other person onto the voting form. At the vote I lost to that man. I told to the assembled members I accepted their decision and, although it hurt me, I offered my help in case I would be needed. Well, in some months the other man would leave the company, and I would be a co-opted activist once more.
Now it is time I wrote about another fiasco that was the result of the big stress on me. Years before, when my son has been a baby, I borrowed a movie camera from the photo club of the factory and made a roll of film, about 4 minutes, of his moves. From that time I was fascinated by movie pictures.
In Yalta one of the families in the group had a small cheap Russian movie camera, and I bought such a one after my return. It could not satisfy me for some very primitive in-correctible technical solutions that resulted in faulty winding. Actually to work with it was very difficult and frustrating. One day in December, walking to the bus from factory I saw a very good camera in the windows at discount. I knew that movie camera from catalogues, but its original price was too high for me. On that lowered price I could buy it.
When I told it to my wife, she was against it. I could not convince her, but I wanted it anyway. I bought it without her consent.
When we placed our presents under the Christmas tree, she placed the camera there, too. We began to debate and at last I destroyed it. It happened in one instant, but I could not drive the bitter memory of it from my mind for years. It was followed by a great silence, the face of my wife red, as if saying: "I would have told it, I would have told it.” The first one to speak was my son of 3, who saw it all. He said:
“Do not be sad, Daddy, I can repair it in a minute.”
It was he, who saved the situation. The statement of my little son was a clear window to show us his love and good intentions. But during all this Christmas time our mood was so low that we had no desire for anything. I have never sensed such a limitless shame in all my life as then.
I had no luck with that type of movie camera. In a year I would take one at lower price as a second-hand device. Although I would shoot many rolls of good films with it, it would let me down in Egypt. Its prism in the viewer would not bear the heat of 110 degrees F and it would go apart. Russian lenses and prisms are glued not by the worldwide used Canada-balm, they use only natural resin. But, anyway, without a viewer it is hard to shoot.
Twice a year when the ends of semesters came, I got some extra days of holiday to sit for the examinations. It could make the difficulties a little more bearable. But in that university there were subjects – abolished since – that could not be understood, only memorized. It was, e.g. the catechism of political economy of the socialism. For capitalism this subject is clear and logical. I consider Karl Marx right so far, until he only described existing phenomena. The problems came, when he tried to project these principles onto other phenomena. And, of course, when those false theories were extended by another man, who moreover has not been economist. Socialism, I take no more than capitalism on a state level (with some feudal characteristics). The players have no risk, when they lose, they do it with other people’s property. And no incentives mean no profits, no development, etc., etc.
In the first semester we were studying the political economy of capitalism, and it was all right. But there were topics, for which no local lecturers could have been found, even by a lasso. It was scientific socialism. The lecturer was a Greek – he spoke our language excellently – that is today the economic advisor of the President of the Republic of Cyprus – the Greek side.
There were two subjects that needed only common sense. One was accounting. Our old teacher – a typical chief accountant of a small company – said at the return of our exam-papers:
"Only one man used his brain.” It was me, I have got maximum score.
The other was statistics. I realized that it could only be learned, if I become also one of the numbers. I tried to see them from the inside. Actually the statistical tables were very similar to my propeller-screw design tables. I was again the only person to get maximum score on my paper.
Early that year – 1975 – we became acquainted with our new boss in the office. He had actually been working in the shipyard, even in the office, but shipbuilding had not been attractive to him and he left the company for the Technical University. About my former colleague, Steve, with the "wheat theft case” I got my gossips mainly from him. His name was Julius.
With him proper skills and clean hands came to an end. For the latter I have to correct my words: I do not mean hard corruption, but he brought there his wife as his secretary, and to get a good reward meant to stress yourself with courting him for a time. All in all, he did not have the character to be a good manager in that office.
During spring my department head and me have been joined again as technical experts to the usual import executive, and she took us to the GDR to SKL again. We had even less time than two years before, and I hardly managed to find my friends.
Time had passed. Not only on me, Hans and Elfie were also looking older, and their daughters were almost adult women. They insisted, we with my wife and our son were overdue in their home. I promised to convince my wife to visit them.
From TESCO I have got news about refusal to my mission to Libya.
Spring has passed and I began to sit for my exams. Although on study holiday, once I had to go into the office, when the secretary-wife of my boss asked me to come in. My boss said, I would get an assignment. It was the project manager post for a new object, a raft-towing tug. Customers, of course, the Soviets. It has come to our office from the other side of the river. Originally the other shipyard wanted it for themselves, but they realized that they forgot how to build ships, they would build only cranes.
What was risky, my boss wanted me to take part in talks in Leningrad that month (June). It meant I would not be able to finish my exams. We argued a lot, and at last he agreed to postpone the talks by a week, and I promised to finish my exams to that time.
Actually, after my exams I had only three days left to study the object. I did not like that business at all. Our team (delegation as it was called that time) to take part consisted of eight persons. And almost all of them far from experts. My boss was in the team, too.
Actually we had little time for leisure programs. Our official work could hardly be done in the conditions our hosts provided. The endless munching on unimportant details left us at last only one way out: with the original data we would design a brand new object. Our goal, to get missing information from the original designer, the institute, our host here, would not be achieved. If we wanted the contract from the Moscow-based foreign trade company, we had to create something saleable. The talks ended in a minutes signed by them and us with a content that "if we had wanted to take their advice in the design of the ship we would do as we wanted”.
This trip abroad has not been different from others in one thing: I had to rack my brain about what kind of souvenirs to buy for different members of my greater family. At last I bought the same for everyone – I hoped they would not show it to each other –, the same Matryoshka toy. My wife and my son was another matter, they got the best things possible. To our movie projector I took home from Yalta the previous year, I took a lot of cartoons for my son of the series "You just wait”. My wife got an amber necklace, one of numerous taken from the S.U.
In Leningrad my nights have been disturbed not only because of White Nights, but for the snoring of my boss, with whom I shared my room. A Diesel engine would have been more convenient.
He has been first time in that big empire and his impressions always generated strange thoughts in his mind. He had finished his studies, before ideological subjects became oppressing in the university, and as a graduate he concentrated on his work. In his mind now the obvious fought with information from the press.
He had a funny little adventure in the town. As he liked wine he was pleasantly surprised to see a subterranean shop with the signboard "Vino” (wine). He descended and saw a pub similar to those we would call in our country an "upright pub”, as there were no seats, everyone took his drinks upright. He has been accustomed to 300 grams of wine – measured and called 3 decilitres or decis – so, he walked to the cashier and showed his three fingers. He has got three pieces of paper, which he gave over the counter. He has got 3 glasses, each of them filled with 200 grams of wine. People queued up behind him, as he occupied 3 of all the 4 glasses in the pub. In the relatively cool basement he emptied them one by one. Up on the sunshine and heat, he became completely drunken of the more than one pint of not very bad wine. As he at last came home we laughed a lot, but he begged me not to say anything to his wife at home.
In the protocol from our part mainly my ideas have been incorporated. This, and similarly my activities in the coming months on the raft-towing tug, resulted in a high estimate about me in my boss.