Eastern Approaches...

This week I find myself in the cosy confines of the local Conservative club in Thetford town centre. Like most such places, it is not really political in any sense that most would understand as political, and certainly the clientèle are a very mixed bunch indeed, seemingly of all affiliations and persuasions. What is very pleasant is that the place is cosy and rather warm. Outside it is the last day of April and the temperature is 4C with a wind chill factor that makes it feel more like zero. Also, they do a decent cup of coffee for a very generous £1.05.
As it has been a few weeks since my last flaneurial blog I felt it was time that I actually sat in front of the oddly intimidating keyboard once more and created something of a counterbalance to my observations of life in the US. Many, many moons ago now, when I was a relatively young and carefree flaneur, I also had the good fortune to visit several countries behind what used to be known as the Iron Curtain. The first taste of life on the other side was Bulgaria; it proved pleasant enough but the realisation that although myself and my travelling companion readily acquired large amounts of the local currency, those Lev were incredible difficult to actually get rid of. Beyond a few random leather goods there was literally nothing of any value or interest to purchase. The best that could be said of the shops was that they were functional...just. In the city of Varna on the Black Sea there seemed to be little or nothing occurring whatsoever.
Before we left for Bulgaria we were assured by the Bulgarian tourist agency that we could enjoy a rate of exchange 1.5 times the norm. This we naturally took advantage of, only to find on arrival

in the country that locals were prepared to give 4 or even 6 times the rate on the street. Interestingly, the most active of those engaged in such unofficial bureau de change activities wore the blue of the local police force. That was an early lesson in the joys of Socialist societies.

A couple of years later I actually found myself on a tour of the Soviet Union itself. I believe Cernenko was in power at the time, one of a series of leaders so old that no sooner had they assumed the reigns of the Supreme Soviet than they promptly dropped dead. In some ways it was symbolic of the system itself; even to my inexperienced eye it was clear that it was dying on its feet.

The first city we visited was Moscow. By this stage of my life I already had a fair amount of travelling experience and had been to about 25 capital cities previously. Moscow was far and away the most boring, lifeless and oppressive place I had ever been to in my life. Dour, cowered people, shortages almost everywhere and a general feeling of alienation, a society ill at ease with itself.

I had been told to visit GUM, Moscow's equivalent to Harrods according to our guide. On arriving there I found a dingy three storey building just off of Red Square. The goods were incredibly shoddy, but when a shipment of shoes arrived at one of the departments people were almost fighting each other to get in first. Looking at said shoes I found them to be of poor quality and style, little more than utilitarian at best.

Red Square proved a little challenging in its own right. Down the centre there were lines marked on the road that indicated where the official cars could drive into the Kremlin. It had a small zebra crossing about 80 metres from the gate. As there were no cars in sight, just tourists milling around, I started to cross over the painted lines only to be greeted with the sound of a shrill whistle. I looked around and saw a policeman in a rather impressive fur hat blowing furiously in my direction. I gestured to him indicating that there was nothing to be concerned about, not a vehicle anywhere to be seen, but his response was to put his hand upon his gun holster and indicate that I was only to cross at the designated crossing. As the days went by in Russia, I was to discover this strict adherence to such petty rules was all part of the apparatus in the Soviet Union of the time.

A few days later we flew down to Tbilisi in Georgia in an ancient Tupolev tu-154. From a height of 35,000 feet we looked down on an endless expanse of wheat as far as the eye could see on both sides of the aircraft. Oddly though, very few roads were visible. I had read before heading out on the trip that yet again that year the USSR had been forced to buy huge amounts of wheat from the US because of a shortage at home. I could not help but wonder exactly what kind of economic system could so badly mismanage its obvious and plentiful resources.

After about an hour I felt the call of nature. Looking back down the aircraft I noticed that the toilets at the rear were already occupied so I headed towards the front of the plane. About three quarters of the way along the cabin was split by a red velvet curtain. Pulling this back I was quite surprised to see several rows of very large and cosy seats, a well-stuffed magazine rack, tinkling drinks trolley and four or five flunkies. Quickly, our courier jumped up and snatched the curtain from my hand. Surprised, I asked her the obvious question:

“I thought there was no first class on Russia planes?”

She responded:

“It's not first class, it's for party members!”

Kinda said it all really...

The city of Tbilisi in Georgia was, at the time, part of an early experiment that the Soviet government were running in allowing the local farmers and manufacturers to simply sell their produce and goods without government interference. The experiment had been going for about a year but the effect was like chalk and cheese in comparison to Moscow. Fresh and healthy produce in abundance everywhere and a wonderfully vibrant atmosphere to the city in complete contrast to the utter deadness of Moscow.

Up to that stage of my life I had been very much a man of the left. As a child I had admired the likes of Che Guevera and Fidel Castro, and loved all things to do with the old USSR. My father had been a strong union man and that attitude had very much affected me as a boy. Now though, seeing the reality of life in the Soviet Union, the cold hand of centralised control, the repressive regime, the general dowdiness of everything from the flats to the clothes, the poorly designed cars and austere metro sans advertising except for the glories of the Communist Party, it was slowly beginning to dawn on me just how awful applied Socialism actually was in practice.

I went from the joys of Tbilisi, with its limited market reforms, back into Russia at Sochi. The location was pleasant enough but it became very noticeable that those of us who dared to venture out on our own had company whether we liked it or not. Often that company was 50 yards or so away but you couldn't help but notice the same faces kept turning up again and again. My courier was almost pleading with me at one stage to stay with the group. At a guess, she herself was probably under some pressure for losing control of her Western charges.

The trip ended in Leningrad (renamed St Petersburg once again now). Although a much more beautiful city than Moscow, with some gorgeous architecture, it still suffered from the same paranoia. I had spent a few weeks learning some basic Russian before I left but found that people were very unwilling to be seen spending any time at all with any of the group. Eventually, in a café cum bar in central Leningrad, I did manage a short conversation with a somewhat drunk middle aged man. He confirmed what had been my suspicion. Just being seen with the likes of a Western tourist could mean trouble for you or your family, so the wise thing was to look the other way and pretend that you had heard and seen nothing.

Hmm, this piece seems to be running on a lot longer than intended, yet it feels as if I have left so much of these experiences out. Suffice it to say that within those few weeks in the old Soviet Union the first seeds of doubt were sown. I had started the trip really quite naive about the nature of such collective systems. When I set out it had seemed clear to a young and idealistic traveller where the political future should lie. In that sense it was something of a coming of age, of the realisation that all was not right in the Socialist garden. At the time I had no idea why; the answer to that was to take another two decades, but the first inklings of the underlying reality were beginning to be realised.

Back in the Conservative club life goes on much as it ever did, that comfortable continuity that seems so complacent yet is the very glue that holds a society together. We all imagine as youngsters, much as I did, that what is needed is the bold, the new, the iconoclastic, but the reality is that much of what makes a tolerable society is in the institutions, habits and attitudes of a people. Those deep cultural roots that make Europe and its culture such a beacon to the World. The historian Michael Woods put it beautifully when he spoke of 'The habit of civilisation'.