Through Dark Days and White Nights: Four Decades Observing a Changing Russia. Naomi F. Collins

the last plane from Paris, we were dismayed to be prevented by immigration officials from entering easily. Only after questioning us individually and together did they allow us temporary entrance, with the provision that we check in shortly with the police and immigration authorities. Which we did. If in Moscow we had learned to feel like foreigners, that night we learned how it feels to be an alien, without money, luggage, or even a convincing story. The true story of how we came to be standing there at that time of night began sounding a little suspicious even to me.

      None of the mystery or drama surrounding our escape shows in the two Western Union telegrams we sent my parents, that they saved from 1966 until their deaths.

      In the first, from Moscow, on April 21, 1966, we said: “LEAVING MOSCOW FOR WESTERN EUROPE ON ADVICE OF AMERICAN DOCTOR…. DO NOT WORRY. WILL WRITE WHEN WE ARRIVE IN EUROPE.” Now, with my own children, I’d know better than to exhort parents not to worry, since that is the sure trigger to set off the worry alarm. But for grounds to leave unexpectedly, illness provided a good, as well as true, rationale. For months I had been suffering a sore throat and fevers, which—it turned out—signified strep throat. Now I had a name and treatment for that, too.

      Then from London on April 23: “ARRIVED LONDON THURSDAY WILL WRITE.” The bold finality of the telegram seemed comforting, with its block letters appliqued across the yellowed paper.

      Big relief, being in London. Although the world we had escaped seemed partly the “Wonderland” into which Alice had fallen, another fictional model completely at home in this world would have been Joseph K. Alice had been upset by inexplicable behaviors (“curioser and curioser”) and taxing confusion over words and meanings (“I can’t quite follow it as you say it”), but it was Joseph K, in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, who found himself thrown into an arbitrary and secretive universe in which uncertainty and fear were cultivated and exploited. Subject to inexplicable forces, accused of being guilty (but of what?), he begged in desperation for an explanation, and feared execution. Not a benign setting, this, in fiction or in real life. On our long, last night in Russia I dreaded our end might be the same as his, imprisoned and unfree. I was desperate to leave Russia immediately.

      Suddenly it was springtime in London. How much lighter I felt. I had been sprung from a sea of surveillance and could breathe on land. The range of colors, the variety and aesthetics of public places, beyond strict utilitarianism; the tidiness and good repair; people’s courtesy, cheerful service, and healthy appearance buoyed us.

      As I reflected on our time in Russia, I realized that daily life had not been easy, making our departure something of a relief. The hypocrisy of the official voice on radio, TV, and newspapers, mouthing untruths, boasting successes that belied reality, while avoiding mention of catastrophes people actually witnessed, increasingly grated. As foreigners, we had the additional discomfort of being a curiosity, aliens on display, as well as observed, monitored, and surveilled, without exemption even by night. Surveillance was possible 24/7, before the term 24/7 was invented.

      Although we had not been accustomed to great comfort or privilege at home, we were still vexed by the day-to-day inefficiencies and frustrating “Catch-22” logic of the place, as well as a litany of rules (enforced or disregarded—who knew?); and controls (all side roads off the main roads guarded by police and entry gates). All this was capped by the natural diminution of the human spirit sealed in the isolated, gray monotony of the land.

      Some of my reaction might today be ascribed to “culture shock,” a term that emerged into popular use only after that time. Nor had I, twenty-three years old, thought systematically about cultural contexts and codes, covert and overt; or about the impact on a person encountering another culture, crossing social and psychological borders.

      From what I heard from Russians, it appeared that many also suffered some degree of helplessness in the face of unchecked power; hopelessness in the face of a future over which they exercised little control; tedium and boredom from limited variety and choice; and frustration and irritation at hypocrisy, arbitrary government, and unnecessary obstacles. Cynicism-for-survival was, as always, rampant. The popular Russian joke is still shared today:

      A man in an ambulance asks the attendant, “Where are we going?”

      The attendant replies, “To the morgue.”

      The patient responds quickly, “But I’m not dead yet.”

      To which the attendant retorts, “And we’re not there yet, either.”

      Yet that trying academic year taught me more than I realized at the time. (“Stay real, Naomi, a little voice warns me: You’re no Pollyanna!”) Living far from familiarity and predictability, far from the givens, offered insight not only into a them and their culture, but also into an us and our culture, setting under scrutiny the habits we took for granted as universal. (Don’t women everywhere sit with crossed legs?)

      And it taught me things about myself that I may not have wanted to know. I was discouraged to realize that I was not perennially cheerful in the face of obstacles (though somehow managed to behave appropriately); sometimes not as much “a good sport” as I thought I should have been; and not as fearless or bold an adventurer as I had hoped I might be. I felt old and tired at twenty-four.

      I wrote my parents on April 5, 1966, “With Jim in the Russian field, we should be back here at some point in our lives.” But I did not then savor the possibility. Nor did I guess how many times over how many decades I would return to live and visit the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia through the turn of the next century, through dimmer and brighter times, each time assuming it would be my last.

      Long after other remembrances of living in Moscow faded, the distinctive smells of the city, of the corridors, kitchens, streets, and Metros, remained. On each return, the smells triggered recollections and a sense of place far more quickly than the sight of the Cyrillic alphabet and sounds of the Russian language. These were hardly the aromas of Proust’s Remembrances of his childhood, the sweet little cakes and mother’s perfume. The kitchen had reeked of foods cleaned in the sink, boiled on the stove, left on the table, trashed. Onions, cabbage, sometimes beef; fish skins, scales, and guts left in the sink. Foods in the kitchen, as in food shops, sitting at room temperature, became pungent in their distinctive types, exaggerated reminders of milks, cheeses, meats, fish, vegetables.

      The dormitory corridors had their own smells, especially of a sticky, light brown viscous glop used to clean the wooden floors. Its distinctive beeswax smell permeated the halls, blending with the scents of steam heat, damp woolens, cooking smells from the common kitchen, and sweet tobacco, reminiscent of pipe tobacco at home. People smells, untreated with deodorant, mouthwash, detergent, daily showers, fresh clothing, or air fresheners, merged into the mix, creating the unique and memorable blend.

      Outdoors, most odors disappeared into the cold. Fresh air arrived with the winds and snow from the Arctic. Only on temperate or still days did the air carry the fumes of diesel and low octane fuel exhaust, chimney and factory smoke, and burning coal and oil. It was many years later that trucks and cars filled the air with visible exhaust; and years before the summer smells became familiar to me, since our stay during the ’60s began in fall and ended in spring.

Figure 1. Snow scene at MGU (with Naomi). Xmas 1965.

      Figure 2. Long dark corridor at Moscow State University dorms.

      Figure 3. Neighbor’s little girl in foreground of the central tower of MGU.

      Figure 4. Bus station/depot at Rostov, March 1966.

      Figure