My further fate was decided by something in 1990, and that was
my long-term Moscow assignment starting that year. Two years be-
fore, when I met my new boss the very first time, I asked her about
my chances to get into the staff of one of the representative offices
of the company abroad. She told me frankly that there were more
candidates than jobs, but she promised me her help. She did not
cheat me. Being also a social activist for our employees under the
technical manager she helped to put my name for two offices as
possible nominee, for Munich and for Moscow.
Near the end of 1989 I was called by John from the personnel
manager's staff. He told me:
“I have a piece of good and a piece of bad news.”
“Tell me the bad one first.” I did not know what to think of.
“It is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Good news first: you are selected for an office-head abroad.”
“And what is the bad one?”
“It is Moscow. And besides, you are only one of three candid-
ates.”
It has not been a very fine statement, true. My family has not
been very fond of Russians -- remember Addis Ababa -- and I did
not know how I could serve it to them. After a short pause I told him:
“I can wait a little, if it means another place.”
His smile has vanished and he said:
“It is not so simple. You can wait, but it does not mean another
place. Take it as an offer for fiancées. There is a rich one, a beautiful
one and this third one that can be taken at once.”
I understood. The rich one has been the Middle East, in our
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case Istanbul, Tehran or Baghdad. There were unlimited possibilit-
ies there. They were all promised to other people much nearer to
the fire. It has been the same with pretty ones, London, Paris, Mu-
nich, Hamburg, they all have been on others' plates. It is pretty to
live there compared to the Soviet Union. It was Moscow I could take
or leave. But leaving it might have meant I would stay a bachelor.
“I accept Moscow”, I answered.
“Do not be unreasonable. See Veronica (my boss), she had ne-
ver regretted having accepted it.”He began to count things I would
be able to buy and take home. My mind went in advance of him. I
was sure my family would reject coming with me, unless I could offer
something in compensation, e.g. avoiding military service that was
hanging above my son.
In a month I remained alone in candidacy, my competitors fell
out. The first one rejected it, as he expected a GDR mission. The
other, Louis R., had lost his wife not long before and his children
about 12 to 14 have been too young either to be left home or to be
taken abroad without a mother.
Then John called me again and told me the news.
“I am sorry, I do not see how I could convince my family to accept
this chance”, I answered.
“Good God, do not tell me you are to reject it, too. We would
have to find somebody in the same way as last time.”
He made my picture whole about it. Veronica had taken the
mission in 1981 and her successor had been selected in the person
of a girl from one of the traffic departments. She had been replacing
Veronica once during her one-month summer holiday. But she
found it too long to wait for her turn and she took a job in the Ministry
of Transport. Later I will mention this girl also in connection with
myself. When Veronica's mission had been completed, there was
no successor. From the competitor company a man was bribed to
take the place. He has not been fluent in Russian, he had only the
knowledge from school. It took him more than a year to catch up
with obligations.
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Well, my situation has been delicate. I wanted to have a chance
for a financially advantageous job, promoting at the same time my
career. But I had to accept the probability that my family would not
come with me and they would alienate from me in a long time. To
make my son come with me at 19 has also been risky. Although he
could have learned a foreign language, even he would have the
possibility to get a diploma, the most sensitive years of his youth he
would spend abroad either to marry a foreigner or to postpone his
chances of a well-timed relationship. My attempts to get my family
to come with me to Moscow had been a failure. I had to accept the
situation. The arrangements have been made for a single man and
the company would only gain on it.
Before my move to the place of assignment I had much to do,
especially in order to make life for my family easier at home. After
that I could concentrate on my mission. In June I flew out to Moscow
to survey conditions and to measure the apartment. I have been
allowed to replace the 9-year-old furniture, but later this permission
has been cancelled. It had been purchased and transported there
by Veronica, who acquired the apartment at the beginning of her
term. My predecessor, Joe B., has met me at the airport and taken
me both to our office and to the flat, but helped me nothing other-
wise. The office had been shared with another firm, actually our only
competitor. Each firm had a representative in the office. It has been
situated just outside the inner road-ring, on the avenue leading to
the Foreign Ministry building. That area has been called Dorogo-
milovsky Rayon (district), for this reason the street is Bolshaya
Dorogomilovskaya Ulitsa. It is only a mile long, it connects the inner
road-ring with the Kutuzovsky Prospekt (avenue). Its middle section
gives place for the Kievsky Vokzal (railway station). The office had
been rented to us by the agency of our Ministry of Foreign Trade
having in Moscow an independent status, unlike in other countries,
where commercial units are only departments of the embassies.
Actually our office has been an apartment in a building for foreign-
ers, on the ground floor there had been a shop in the hands of a
Hungarian retailer. Our office had two telephone lines -- both inter-
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national in the Soviet sense, i.e. western countries could not have
been available -- and a telex connection with a rented telex ma-
chine, a truly international line.
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A small Moscow guide
It is worth to make some explanation about the character of
settlement of Moscow and about roads in the town. It is an inter-
esting mixture of instinctive and planned city development, instinct-
ive its growth has been during the middle ages, for its wooden struc-
tures it has been completely wiped out sometimes in big fires, then a
little differently rebuilt. Stone has been used for building only more
recently, first at the walls of fortresses like the Kremlin. That has
also been the fortified permanent living place of the monarchs, for
this reason it has been changed to stone centuries ago. This is also
the explanation, why its look has not been altered significantly. The
Kremlin takes the form of an irregular pentagon, one of its sides is
parallel to the riverside. The river Moskva enters the city at its west-
ern limits, it makes big turns, then leaves the town in a south-
eastern direction to bring its water into the river Oka. In the centre of
the city the river flows from south-west to north-east, with the Krem-
lin lying at its north-western bank on top of a small hill. Outside the
north-eastern wall of the fortress you find Red Square, originally
"Beautiful Square", as the meaning of the word krasnaya has gone through a little modification in the recent centuries. The square is
made up by four buildings, one of them is the Kremlin at the longer
side, as I mentioned, with the Mausoleum of Lenin near the wall,
and in the wall itself there is the burial place of important statesmen
with their urns walled up. On the opposite side of the square you find
the department store GUM, but recently it has become more of a
commercial centre with a lot of independent shops. On the south-
eastern end of the long square the Vasily Blazhenny Cathedral has
been built, that is a very important building, but doesn't look like one.
It is not bigger than a small village church. And its walls that look
very fine on colour slides, are only covered with colourful plaster,
resembling mostly to coloured dry mud. The fourth side of the
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A small Moscow guide
square is made by a really Russian style building of unified red
colour. At that time it has been used commonly by the Museum of
History and Lenin Museum. The latter has recently given its place to
a fashion institution.
The geometrical centre of the town is Red Square, or rather
some old houses near the square left intact at the construction of
the hotel "Rossiya". One of them is the House of Envoys. Here Ivan
the Terrible made envoys from foreign countries wait, until they be-
came so soft that they were ready to accept any conditions, even if
they were quite different from those included in their letters of mis-
sion. At that time when Mongols were still at large and there were
fears of attacks, the enlargement and development of the town hap-
pened always behind closed walls, in a limited space. Outside the
walls any settlement would be impossible to defend from attacks,
there were only fortified complexes out-of-town, as monasteries for
monks and convents for nuns. Such a convent is Novodyevichi,
today functioning only to a certain extent, but it can be visited as a
tourist attraction. It was out-of-town, and had to suffer some sieges.
The fortified wall around the town has made an almost perfect circle
with a length of seven miles. After the disappearance of the wall it
became a circle of road, today it is known as the Inner Circle, an
endless highway of twice six lanes. In Russian it is called Sadovoye
Koltso, i.e. Garden Ring. Its name comes from the time of Peter the
Great, the town became an open one at that time, people dared to
settle outside the wall. On the outer side of today's Inner Ring large
mansions have been built by nobles having money and the consent
of the Czar for it. But the monarch was very strict in forbidding con-
struction at the street front, the owners had to create large gardens
in front of their mansions. This way, garden beside garden has been
created and the road got its name. Some of these estates that were
lucky enough after the Revolution to get into the ownership of a
public institution, can be seen today and they are really fine 18th
century treasures.
History repeated itself once more, when the town grew out the
outer highway ring. That time the length of the perimeter was a-
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round seventy miles. From this you can estimate the size of the city,
its diameter is nearly 20 miles. The outer circle is a little oval, its
north-south axis is longer. Inside this circle the nearly eight million
inhabitants of Moscow ( Moskvichi in Russian), and, of course, the
many million employees and visitors try to get their places. About
ten years ago the city grew out this circle too, the highway ring is not
equal to the city limit any more, there are protrusions outside, like
bubbles. Until these places were called zagorod (out-of-town) there
were mainly recreation sites here, as there were so many brooks
dammed in order to get water and fishing ponds, that people could
find places to swim, to boat or simply to make a picnic. Nowadays
you must drive a lot of miles out-of-town to find a place really far
from civilisation. About Moscow I am going to give more inform-
ation, but let's now return to my trip of reconnaissance.
My apartment has been in an ordinary apartment house, i.e. all
my neighbours have been locals. It has been situated next to the
French embassy, behind the Ministry of Interior and the National
Bank of the S.U. A typical Soviet apartment house, it has been com-
fortable in the local sense -- 62 degrees F during heating season in
the flat, as I would learn in my first winter -- with 3 rooms, a kitchen --
no store for food reserve --, a bathroom and a tiny toilet. The L-shap-
ed corridor led from the biggest room to the kitchen, all the other
rooms had their doors on it, except the balcony-room being over the
biggest one. I checked all and found that all the furniture were ripe
for replacement, except one cupboard of GDR make, bought two
years before. I took the approximate measurements and drank tea
offered by the hostess. As I understood they have been up to their
ears with Russians.
My boss has not been happy with my report. Freshly returning
from his second 4-year mission from Tehran -- one of the rich fianc-
ées -- he has been named head of the group managing domestic
and abroad offices. I did not want to ask him how old furniture in his
Tehran flat had been when he changed it and to whom the old one
had been sold out. He would not let me buy a complete set of furnit-
ure. He instructed me to move in and, in case of complete failure
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A small Moscow guide
with single items, I would be allowed to change them. He has also
been negative in the question of wallpapers -- I have been informed
that there was a shortage of it in Moscow -- to take it with me for
maintenance, as well as a TV-set.
My last weeks home have been spent on various departments
all over the company to get enough experience. It has been useful
as, after my arrival in the Moscow office, those people would be my
partners. I had to take all my money from the bank for a TV-set and a
VCR. Together with their original packing I gave it into our duty-free
transit store. Also a couple of wooden chests with my belongings
have been given there, all to be sent out by truck to Moscow.
On August 1 1990 I collected my baggage -- about 150 pounds, I
had a ticket for excess weight -- and hired the former husband of
Margaret, our neighbour, a private taxi driver, to transport me to the
airport with his ancient Polish FIAT 125.
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At the land of shortages and
privileges
My flight has not been bad, but the arrival was hard. First I had to
queue up -- earlier there was nothing like that -- before passport
check, then wait for my baggage to come out of the tunnel. When I
left Budapest, it was hot, I have been dressed accordingly. In Mos-
cow there was a weather not cool, but my suit has been too thin. At
last all my baggage was together. Looking for a carriage I discover-
ed that to get one you had to pay 1 rouble. I had no Soviet currency
with me, I was to get my money from Joe B., my predecessor. With
my seven pieces of baggage I crept through customs first and then
through the exit gate. There Joe met me and took half my load. He
took my case easily, he had very little empathy, it was just a funny
story to recount later to his friends, how it happened when I arrived.
We had an overlapping time of two weeks, he would leave on
August 15. His family had already flew home, he was left to arrange
his moving home alone. This was one of the reasons why so little of
the planned practical training about office issues has realszed, he
has spent all his time managing his own matters.
I was to sleep in the office, one of the rooms was a bureau with
two desks, a telex table, a file locker and a kitchen table with a
typewriter. The other room was for night guests. An out-of-order
sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table, a conference table with chairs
and a set of wardrobes along the wall. All have been old, but still
working, except the sofa.
The office had another guest, Louis R., my would-be successor,
who had been one of my competitors, only he stepped back for fam-
ily troubles. He has been there to have a practice in Russian lang-
uage after his course and to help Joe in managing the business for
both companies, as the representative of the other one has been on
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holiday, and the one having been sent to do all for the other com-
pany has been doing his own business. During daytime he was sup-
posed to be in the office, he was the former representative of the co-
tenant company, but, as I mentioned already, he was more absent
than present, doing his own business. The man on holiday had
been serving for one year, he has generally been perfect in Russian
issues, as he had been studying in Moscow, he has had a lot of
acquaintances all over the empire. From my arrival the sofa would
be mine, Louis would sleep on a foldable bed.
Following my arrival that was a kind of Odyssey, my first visit has
not been to the office, but the agency building to take our lunch. I
have not been in a big need of that, as our airlines gave us a hot
meal for lunch, but Joe left the office early to meet me and he had to
eat something. I utilised this time to visit the husband of my niece in
his office. I also met by chance one of my former companions on my
trips, the import executive from the commercial division of ship-
yards. He was on a replacement trip for their representative. Our
country is not a large one, circles of a certain language and field of
business can make a group of acquaintances very little indeed.
Almost all of the people I met on business all over the world had
come from the same team and had been familiar to me. It was the
same here in Moscow.
Arriving in the office from the agency I wanted to change my suit
and shoes. In my suitcases I only carried as much as I considered
necessary for the couple of weeks, until my chests would arrive. I
found the suit, but my shoes and necktie have been stolen. Plunder-
ing on Soviet airports had been a concern for a time. On domestic
flights suitcases have even been packed in wrapping paper. My
colleagues standing around me were laughing at me heartily. They
advised me to go at once to the Kutuzov Avenue -- behind the office
building -- and buy a pair of shoes, if I found any. Fortunately I found
one pair suitable and bought it. It was an over-light pair of mocca-
sins made in Azerbaijan. A tie I would buy only the next day.
In a week Veronica would come to arrange the office take-over
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from my predecessor. A check of inventory would also happen. I
have known Moscow by foot well, Louis has been amazed by my
talent. As he had to step back from this mission, he had been
promised he would be my successor and was also promised a
month of stay in the office for his language skills every summer. As I
would write about it later, this gentlemen's agreement has been
forgot quickly -- sure, where have been gentlemen? At last the two
weeks passed, Joe B. went to the airport, the car has been handed
over to me and it was my first trip with it to take it back to town. Soon I
would have another trip, not very pleasant. Louis went with Joe and
Veronica home.
In the office it was my first evening alone, as after working time
Joe S., who has come back in the meantime from holiday, also went
home. I remained alone. At late afternoon an early dusk came. It
was a great thunderstorm with hailstones. I have seen vast rains in
Africa, once there remained about two tons of hails under the gutter
of our house on the ground, that melted away in two days, but that
day it was different. Flood was flowing on the street, people were
pushing there cars as they went out-of-order for the flood. In half an
hour it all has passed, but in the TV evening news -- I have not seen,
but Joe said the next morning -- and the next day's newspapers all
have been reported. About 300 feet from us there was the Kiev
Railway Station, with a junction of 3 METRO lines. The flood has
gone into the uppermost line, stopping trains and flowed further
downward, until all the three lines have been lamed.
My second trip with the service car happened some days after
that big storm. Until that day I didn't have any desire to use it, as I
was alone for all the issues to learn them profoundly. I was glad to
be able to go out shopping in the evening. On those walks I bought
food for my dinner and next lunch. After that I chew myself through
the daily paper "Izvestiya". But let's come back to the car, there was another big rain expected again, when Misha Bezsmertny arrived in
our office with a friend. I had to take them to Misha's home in the
very down-town of the city after my working time. Actually he has not
been my acquaintance, but that of Veronica, but Russian friends
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Shortages and privileges
connect their relationship to official position, this was the reason,
why he wanted me to become the same middleman for his as Vero-
nica had been during her term. I had met him in Budapest, even we
had made friends. He was a painter, his surname meant immortal,
very good for an artist. Vera called him simply Misha. For his look he
could have been a character from any novel of Tolstoy.
They moved to Hungary in 1989. Main cause of this has been
that his wife became too famous at home, she couldn't practise in
her field as an oculist. She had made a revolution with her ideas with
short-sightedness some years before, her colleagues hadn't hinder
her, only sat back and watched. As soon as it had become clear that
her method is all but healing, they had begun to air their criticisms.
What she had actually done had been the following in essence: if
the patient had needed a spectacle of minus four, she prescribed
him plus four, as she had said, "to let nature overcome itself". The poor eyes had had to get accustomed to that twice as foreign surroundings as before. Virtually there had been results, but, as soon
as the patient had been declared healed, his eyes went back to their
original condition, only the finance of the former patient had become
worse by the not very small sum of treatment. The woman had a
very good sense for business, it didn't matter that everybody could
be cheated only once, there were fresh birds more than enough.
She only decided to go abroad when the whole trade turned against
her. She carried on the same practice in Hungary, and a pair of
years later she would go on to Germany. Her success must prove
that everyone can only learn on his or her own loss (I mean the
patients). In Hungary Misha was doing his own art, painted his can-
vases, and Valentina did her own business.
That evening, when Misha visited me, it has been no unselfish
call, he needed to send something to Hungary, and it was me who
had to make it transported to Veronica, using the opportunities of
our company. When we finished business, I was to take them to the
apartment of Misha and Valentina in the inner city of Moscow.
Rain has started to fall, soon it became another cloudburst. I
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could find the way only by their guidance. The place was some-
where behind Kirov Street in a narrow alley on the 2nd or 3rd floor.
Being in an old-time house, their flat has been divided by a ceiling
into two stories, both with a height of ten feet. Upstairs they had their
traditional Russian sauna. I would not take part in their enjoyment,
but they both went into the hot bath to sweat. Afterwards they were
walking up and down in the flat covered only in bathing-wraps, when
the woman, the oculist arrived.
As long as they enjoyed their sauna they left me with the TV
switched on, but the program didn't attract me, I looked around in
the room. I have been amazed to see all their properties from real
works of art to electronic wonders from abroad. They have not been
ordinary poor Soviets living on 100 to 120 roubles in a month. As