Consider the Soviet Union: enormous and empty by European standards, stretching from icy north to arid south, across the continent from one sea to another; encompassing old cities, raw frontier towns, and assertive minority groups. Its people admire Ronald Reagan.
Still, it’s hard for her to withhold all judgments. “The ice cream in Moscow was the best I’ve ever had. But the meat there was mostly pork, which I don’t eat, and mostly fat. A typical breakfast was bread, butter, and a little salami. Lunch would be soup with meat–and when you asked what it was, they would say, just some kind of meat.”
But she couldn’t help noticing the burden that was placed on women–and not just that they did most of the housework, took care of the children, and stood in lines for hours in addition to their paid jobs. “Certainly in the Moscow city council, I don’t recall seeing any women. They had 480 people, all trying to talk, on a very hot day, with no air-conditioning. I will say that our City Council seemed quite civil by comparison.
“At one meeting everyone went around and introduced themselves. When I said that I was from Chicago, Yuri, an architect, said, “Chicago–Blackhawks, Bulls, Bears, White Sox, Cubs, Al Capone, bang bang.’ And that I went to the University of Chicago–‘atomic bomb.’ That’s what they know about Chicago.”
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“When I visited my great-aunt in the Ukraine in 1975, under Brezhnev, we spoke only in dark rooms, because she was convinced that the light bulb in the ceiling was a recording device,” recalls corporate attorney Jaroslawa Johnson of Hinshaw & Culbertson. Johnson was raised bilingual in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Baltimore, but only took a special interest in her ancestral homeland two-and-a-half years ago, when clients began asking her if Gorbachev’s reforms were for real.
“I was followed wherever I went, and no Soviet citizens were allowed to enter the hotel where we Westerners stayed. There were guards at the door.
“One of the lasting benefits of communism–perhaps the only one that will be long remembered–is universal literacy. Now Eastern Europe is attractive because its labor is both relatively cheap and literate. Under communism, you had to be able to read the dogma. This appeals to business: economically it’s third world like India, Thailand, or Ethiopia–but because the workers are literate, you can insist on Western standards. The drawback is that businessmen are often not sure who to deal with in the bureaucracies.”
