Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Smith and Kaiser served identical tours in Russia from 1971 to 1974 -Smith as Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times, Kaiser as bureau chief for the Washington Post. Both were relegated to Moscow's ghetto for the foreign press. Necessarily, their accounts overlap; they frequently describe the same events-the two were the first foreign newsmen to interview Solzhenitsyn, for example-and even the same routines by Comedian Arkadi Raikin...
Exotic Wines. The Soviet elite enjoys opulent privileges. Writes Smith: "An entire department of the Party Central Committee known by the innocuous title of Upravleniye Delami-the Administration of Affairs-and with a secret budget, operates and equips an extensive stable of choice apartment houses, country dachas, government guest houses, special rest homes, fleets of car pools and squads of security-trained servants for the power-elite." Politburo members and national secretaries of the Communist Party use black Zil limousines, hand-tooled and worth about $75,000 each. A network of unmarked stores caters to the Soviet aristocracy. Its stock...
...works by blat-influence, clout. Military families intermarry-so do scientific families, party families, writers' families. A Soviet old-boy network promotes its children's careers. Teachers can be intimidated to give better grades to sons of the powerful. According to Smith, "Russians themselves comment that the upper-class feeling today increasingly seems like Russia before the Revolution...
...unprivileged get along with what for Americans seems an odd docility. But both Kaiser and Smith point out that for the majority of Soviet citizens, the minimal comforts of housing -however cramped (10 ft. sq. per person, by Lenin's edict)-and a regular diet-however spare (sausage, potatoes, cabbage)-are better than they had before. Especially to those older Russians who lived through the hunger of the war. conditions now seem acceptable. There are even hints of affluence -a few self-service stores, prepackaged goods. Some citizens feel rich enough to afford wigs, pets and facelifts. The wait...
Kaiser and Smith are at their best with the unique character of Russians - their glazed and hostile public faces that dissolve in private in almost alarming conviviality. Their sentimentality and love of children - the obsessive way in which a babushka watches a child in a playground to make sure its rump never touches the snow. Their alcoholism - vodka bottles come with tear-off metal tops, and the bottle, once opened, must be finished. Their chilling fear of strangers and even friends - the result of long experience with informers...