Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era

By Alex Shishin

Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era is a poignant sketch of the Soviet Union prior to its disastrous invasion of Afghanistan. It is also a bittersweet tale of an American coming to terms with his Russian roots.

One summer in the late 1970s, author Alex Shishin travels through the USSR on the Rossiya, the Trans-Siberian train that runs between Vladivostok and Moscow and that twice carries him across the vastness of Siberia. Fluent in Russian, the young Russian American converses with countless citizens from every strata of Soviet society. An extended side trip to Poland brings him in contact with a simmering revolution. Everywhere he goes, Shishin meets ordinary people imbued with a generosity that transcends all political systems and times.

"Alex's readiness to accept people without judging them enables his fellow travelers to open up to him and talk about things that affect their lives: politics, economics, their harsh memories of war, and their deep desires for peace. His vivid portraits of the people he meets make you feel as if you are sitting together with him, hearing the voices, enjoying the food and drinks, and feeling the motion of the train traveling over the tracks . This is a moving account of the writer's pilgrimage to know himself through human encounters."
-Peter Sano, author of 1,000 Days in Siberia: The Odyssey of a Japanese-American POW

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 9, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595829088

Alex Shishin

Alex Shishin has published fiction, non-fiction and photography in Japan, North America, and Europe in print and online. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Shishin is a permanent resident of Japan. Shishin is the author “Nippon 2357:A Utopian Ecological Tale,” and five other ebooks published exclusively by Smashwords and available for free. He is co-author with Stephan F. Politzer of “Four Parallel Lives of Eight Notable Individuals,” also published by Smashwords. Shishin's short story "Mr. Eggplant Goes Home," first published in “Prairie Schooner” received an O. Henry Award Honorable Mention and was anthologized in “Student Body: Stories About Students and Professors” (University of Wisconsin Press). His short story "Shades," originally published in “Sunday Afternoon” (Kobe) was anthologized in The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press) and reprinted by invitation in “The East” (Tokyo).  Shishin’s book “Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era” (a Russian-American memoir of a train odyssey through the Soviet Union and Poland) was published by iUniverse. It is available as a print-on-demand book and an ebook. Shishin has also published a collection of photographs entitled “Ordinary Strangeness” with Viovio in conjunction with his joint exhibition at the Twenty-first Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan. It is available from the publisher online. Alex Shishin holds degrees in English from the University of California, Berkeley (BA, Phi Beta Kappa) the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MFA) and the Union Institute and University (PhD).

Book preview

1

Yokohama

At noon the crew cast off lines. My ship, the Soviet liner Baikal, was leaving Yokohama for Nakhodka. On the pier, the Japanese brass band, dressed in purple Russian peasant costumes, sweated in the July heat as they belted out Moscow Nights.

Among the predominantly Japanese crowd of well-wishers on shore, waving and throwing colored streamers at us on board, was a tight little group of dour Caucasians: men in baggy, rumpled suits and women in shapeless flowered dresses. Russians, I thought. Only Russians know how to dress that badly. My father believed himself able to spot a fellow countryman out of a crowd by the dowdiness peculiar to Russians. He took pride in dressing with seeming unconcern like a Russian. To him, as to me, it signified sincerity. My own dowdiness, as well as my Russianness, let me identify with the unsmiling white faces and wide bodies moving in seeming mimicry of enthusiasm as they waved and tossed bright streamers in the air.

Streamers hit the deck, festooned themselves over the white steel railings, and fell into the widening space between ship and shore. I waved and threw streamers back to the people on the dock, though they were all strangers. Doing otherwise would’ve been unfriendly—a bad beginning for what I wished to be the friendliest of all my journeys, the search for my Russian roots.

I was practically ignorant of my Russian genealogy. I knew no one in the USSR. My roots were those elusive, mysterious affinities that connected me to a country I did not know through a language I had learned before English in my American childhood.

"Do svedaniya"—farewell—I called out to the Russians. Faces, half-suspicious, half-friendly, briefly looked in my direction. I made eye contact with a stout man with silver hair brushed severely back. A faint smile passed over an old woman’s pink, freckled face. An auspicious beginning?

Sweat ran into my eyes. I dabbed at it with my already soggy handkerchief, perhaps making me, the solitary traveler, appear melodramatically sentimental to those Russians, if they were paying attention to me out of the corners of their eyes. Extended residence in Japan had not acclimated my California skin to that country’s humid summers. I had heard that the summer heat in Siberia, though fly-and dust-ridden, was dry.

In two days the Baikal would dock in Nakhodka. The rest of my journey would be by train, taking me from Nakhodka to Khabarovsk, then across Siberia to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Poland, Leningrad, and back across Siberia to Irkutsk, again to Khabarovsk and Nakhodka, and back, by ship, to the same dock in Yokohama. My itinerary had been arranged through a Tokyo agent in conjunction with Intourist, the official Soviet travel bureau. I had prepaid for transportation, hotels, and food. Once an itinerary was established, deviation was forbidden.

And how I wanted to deviate! But only to talk. And listen. Wandering freely over Russia’s vastness was closed to me, but I would wander in search of conversations in the self-propelled containers in which I had chosen to travel.

The rumble of the ship’s engines overwhelmed the loudest voices on the dock. Passengers began going below. I remained on deck, holding a crepe streamer I had caught. With the sea wind blowing in my face, I felt as if I were breathing for the first time that day.

The Baikal’s gentle pitch and roll calmed my nerves, on edge for weeks because of worries that my official papers from Intourist, crammed into two blue plastic passport-sized cases, would not be in order and that I would not be allowed to sail. In nightmares I saw myself standing on the dock as the Baikal sailed into the distance.

I suffered no political worries, having dismissed my friends’ warnings to expect trouble because of my Russian background. Yet, knowing that my family in America would worry, I had not told them how I would be spending this summer in the late 1970s.

Russia at last! At last I would be surrounded by the Russian language, which all my life had been like a private code, used only with family and scattered acquaintances.

I released the crepe streamer. The wind sent it twisting and weaving into the ocean. Then I went below to my stateroom.

My second-class stateroom, while small, was not cramped, and it had a bathroom with a shower. The doorknobs, towel bars, and bunk rails were polished brass. The massive oak desk made me feel like Tolstoy when I sat behind it to scribble in my diary. I wrote a few disconnected sentences. My stomach felt unsettled from the ship’s roll and pitch. Even when I sat, my legs felt as if they weren’t entirely mine. I knew that the best way to get used to a ship was to walk about. Vowing to have my sea legs before dinner, I closed my diary and went out into the corridor.

Walking aft, I lingered to read the propaganda posters along the walls. Many of them featured Premier Brezhnev’s smiling countenance. All, whether in Russian, English, or Japanese, screamed Progress! in a style that was both crude and quaint. The Russian gave me a little difficulty, as I read Cyrillic slowly.

On the aft recreation deck, I bought a beer from the Sapporo machine, which had a big red star on its side—the company emblem. Still unsteady, I tottered into an empty, white-wooden deck chair.

The sensation of entering a time warp passed through me. The wooden deck, the white funnels and smokestacks, like the massive oak desk and brass fittings in my stateroom, recalled a previous age, or seemed to belong to a world where time moved on a slower track than the one I had left behind in Yokohama.

Beer in hand, I wandered toward the foredeck. It was outfitted with a large portable swimming pool. Nearby, a Rubenesque young woman in a pale orange bikini was sleeping face-up on a white beach towel. Her arms were outstretched, and her wet reddish-blonde hair fanned out like a halo around her round, pretty face. The bridge and end of her elegant small nose was painted with white lotion. The rest of her massive rolling bareness was turning bright pink under the intense sunlight. Should I warn this sunbathing nymph to get out of the sun? But in what language? And would she scream if I woke her? Aware that I was staring, I moved on.

Attention, attention please, cracked the intercom, first in English then in Japanese. Scratching sounds followed, and then recorded voices spoke: first a man in English, and then a woman in Japanese. They announced that wonderful souvenirs, purchasable in dollars and yen, were available in the little shop across from the purser’s office. The woman’s Japanese was well spoken, but with a trace of Russian accent. The man’s English was heavily laced with a Brooklyn accent. Oh yeah, he said in place of by the way. Had the speaker learned his English in the dingy offices of the Daily Worker?

The announcement over, my thoughts returned (oh yeah) to the young woman roasting on the foredeck. I had to wake her! She could get skin cancer! And if she were Russian, this could be the beginning of not an affair—I had my commitments—but of a meaningful conversation. I hurried to the foredeck.

She had vanished—though not entirely. The evaporating imprint of globular buttocks lingered on the varnished deck.

The only Russians I had thus far encountered were the ship’s officers, politely chilly blond men in stiff white uniforms, and my stewardess, a plump (Russians would say full) redhead. She was artificially effervescent, giggled, and spoke in evasive maternal baby talk whenever I tried to engage her in conversation.

Hours later, I had not conversed with a single Russian. Though I had paced the decks, eavesdropping, I had heard only Japanese and English. Were the Russians kept segregated somewhere?

At 4:00 PM the intercom announced that the bar in the music salon, forward on the main deck, was open. I rushed over, anticipating crowds of Russians. The only person I found was the plump, young female bartender. She looked forlorn, stashed in a corner of this large hall with its empty tables and cheerful murals of Siberian landscapes. Her voice echoed when she spoke to me in carefully modulated English: Whvat you vant?

Where do they stash your countrymen? I nearly asked. Beer please, I answered in Russian.

I thought you were American or Australian, she said flatly in Russian and filled my glass with Sapporo beer.

"I am an American! I exclaimed, thrilled to be saying anything—anything at all—in my stumbling, out-of-practice Russian. How did you guess?"

Oh, your clothes, the way you walk. Her tone was noncommittal. Her eyes, however, were fixed on me. How is it that you speak Russian? she asked.

I learned it at home, I said.

Then your people were czarists, I suppose, she replied.

Embarrassed, I said nothing.

You have a slight accent, but your Russian is not bad, she said.

Thank you, I said. May I have another beer?

Why not? Her voice, still flat, was friendly.

She told me that she was from around Moscow and a university student working on the Baikal for the summer. She declined to say what her major was.

I told her I was from San Francisco and that I taught English in Japan.

That’s interesting, she said. Her eyes focused on the ceiling.

Back in my cabin, I wrote across a page of my diary: SUCCESS!!! SPOKE TO A LADY BARTENDER IN RUSSIAN!!! I could write no more. Either the rolling of the ship, the beer, or both made me dizzy. I shut the diary. There were seasickness pills in a small square paper envelope on the desk. I took them and passed out on my bunk.

I slept until 5:30, when the intercom blared that dinner was being served in dining rooms A and B.

Groggy, I went down to A. The lanky headwaiter told me to go to B.

Dining room B was almost a replica of A: pristine white walls with dark oil paintings in heavy gilt frames and chaste white tablecloths on round tables. Waiters and waitresses, dressed in starched white and black uniforms, set tables and ushered customers with cold efficiency. I was politely hustled to my assigned table and was joined by a Ukrainian-Australian family.

Boris and Tamara were in their early fifties. Their daughter, Lara, was twenty, (not that much younger than I). The father and mother were cheery, outgoing people; their daughter was friendly but shy. They spoke Ukrainian among themselves and to our waitress.

«Thirty years have passed since we left the Ukraine,» Boris said. «We were refugees, but we had all the luck. I found a job the day we got off the ship. A lousy job, naturally, but a job. And I’ve not been out of work since.»

This was Boris and Tamara’s first time out of Australia since immigrating, and Lara’s first trip abroad. They were traveling around the world more for her education’s sake than for pleasure. They too would be on the Trans-Siberian railroad to Moscow.

We were exchanging life stories when the waitress brought our borscht.

«Best borscht I’ve tasted in years!» Boris exclaimed after a few mouthfuls. «The sour cream is fresh too.»

«I’m quite surprised,» Tamara said. «We’d been warned that food on the Baikal is terrible."

I had also been warned about this, as well as about dirt and bellicose service. Yet, our entire meal was excellent, the dining room was spotless, and the politeness of the servers was a little unnerving.

Now I remember! Boris said raising his index finger in the air. "Those terrible things we heard about the Baikal were true. Some ex-passengers who knew Russian were so mad they wrote letters to Pravda. You see—it’s all typically Russian. One extreme to the other. Good for us!"

I was experiencing déjà vu. The odors of food were like those I had smelled as a child in the musty, cluttered San Francisco flats of bovine, ever-cooking maiden aunts. Here was the tea mixed with raspberry jam—served in tea glasses resting in silver holders. I had forgotten how much I had loved «Russian tea» as a child. I recalled the sharp, sour taste of berries in strong tea and the smell of tarnished silver tea-glass holders on which the double-headed Romonov eagle was engraved instead of the hammer and sickle.

«After dinner there will be live music and dancing in the music salon,» a woman announced over the intercom. We went there after we finished eating.

In the salon we met a group of Polish students: young men with long blond hair, bushy mustaches, beards, tank tops, and blue jeans. They said they had been in Japan for a month on a cultural exchange tour and would be flying from Khabarovsk to Poland, via Moscow. We all sat down together.

«How’s the political situation in Poland?» I asked them.

«Bad!» «Terrible!» they said. «But paradise compared to the Soviet Union.»

They did not whisper; nor did they care who heard them.

«What about literary freedom?» I continued. «Can you get Gombrovich in Poland?»

He was still banned. They were surprised that I had heard of Gombrovich. Was he read widely in America? Did Americans know Milosz?

«Milosz teaches at Berkeley, my alma mater,» I said. «A lot of Americans know his book The Captive Mind. A few know Gombrovich."

I asked if they had experienced any official trouble in the Soviet Union or Japan.

Only one problem, they said. In Nakhodka. Shortly before they were to sail, the custom inspectors took away a huge sausage they had brought with them to take to Japan. They begged for the return of their sausage, promising not to let it spoil. No, it was against Japanese regulations. They could have it back on their return. They did not expect to see their sausage again.

Boris began a political discussion with them, speaking in Ukrainian, while they spoke Polish.

The plump blonde whom I had seen sunbathing joined us, apparently attracted by the handsome Poles. Myra, badly sunburned, cried out whenever anyone brushed against her. She was Canadian and a diplomat’s daughter. She had lived in the Soviet Union as a child. She was returning home after a spell of teaching English in Japan. She too would cross Siberia by rail. From Moscow she would take a train to Odessa. Once there, she would sail on a ferryboat to Athens.

A fat Russian, about fifty, with white wispy hair joined us. Vasya told innocuous jokes in broken English. He insisted on English, though I spoke to him in Russian.

The band began with a blast of horns and a clatter of kettledrums. Boris and Tamara danced. One Pole danced with Lara, another with the sunburned Canadian, for whom every movement brought a grimace. Being a hopeless dancer, I remained in my seat, drinking and listening to Vasya’s banter. When Lara returned to the table and he asked her to dance, I saw my chance to escape the horrid racket.

I’m going to the aft bar, if anyone wants me, I said.

The only music in the corridor was that of the Baikal’s engines and the waves, as the ship cut through the choppy Pacific.

I walked into the aft bar. The rotten music from the salon was being piped in through speakers behind the counter. What the hell, I thought. I sat down at the counter and told the fortyish woman bartender in Russian that I wanted a beer.

Drinking, I watched people. The crowd was mostly foreign. The few Russians sat together in small, tightly huddled, low-voiced groups.

On my right, an old man with a Midwest twang sat talking to a tall, dark-haired woman, who sounded as if she might be from Australia. When I spoke to the bartender again, they interrupted their conversation and came over to sit on either side of me. Their breaths told me they’d been drinking for a long time.

The man asked me: How do you say in Russian, ‘Can you play Schubert for a change?’ This music is gawd-awful.

Can you shut off this infernal racket? I asked the bartender in Russian.

She turned down the volume. Is better? she said in English. Is best I can do.

Say, Miss, the American said, is this fellow’s Russian any good?

Better than ours, the bartender said.

You from Russia? the tall dark-haired woman asked. She was very drunk.

When I said I was Russian American, she said, Lots of Russians come to Australia. Worst immigrants in the world. Hardest time adjusting. Oh?

Lots of studies been done, she insisted. I’m a psychiatrist. I know. Blokes can’t get used to new countries. All sorts of psychic disorders. Divorces, suicides, you name it.

I’d like to buy a bottle of vodka, the American said to the bartender. Which is better—Stolichnaya or Moskovskaya?

All the same. Different bottles. The bartender winked at me.

Is it really true, what you said about Russian immigrants? I asked the psychiatrist.

What the studies say.

Probably accounts for all the problems in my family, I said.

She was too loaded to be interested in my family’s problems. Soon her mother came to take her to bed. She was ill for the rest of the voyage.

I returned to the music salon after the aft bar closed. It was deserted, except for two sailors drinking at the darkened bar. One was a heavyset, gray-haired man. The other was slender and about thirty. The older sailor waved me over. Six bottles of beer we have. Assist us! he said in Russian.

In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I was from San Francisco. The younger sailor said, I’ve been there. Liked San Francisco. Wish to hell I’d jumped ship. America’s rich. Anyone can work hard and get rich.

America has unemployment, I said. We have poverty. It’s easier to be poor than rich, even if you work hard.

How’s that? he said. Anyone who works gets paid, right? So you get money, and you can live. It’s the same everywhere. In America, you get more money than anywhere. So you live better. It stands to reason.

Depends, I said. You might not be able to find a job. Jobs aren’t given to you automatically in America.

That’s all propaganda. You can always dig a ditch.

If you can find someone who wants a ditch.

You can always find work. Next time I’m in San Francisco, I’m jumping ship. That’s that.

Don’t do it, I said. America’s got enough ditches. You’ll starve.

All propaganda! Look, suppose I’m starving. I go to any American and say: ‘Hey, I’ll clean your fucking toilet. I’ll clean your fucking toilet, and you feed me.’ Stands to reason.

Our discussion became progressively more absurd the longer we talked and the more we drank. The older sailor listened to us in bemused silence. Finally he said, No, there is no paradise anywhere. You can jump ship anywhere, and it’ll be the same old thing.

Later, the young sailor and I wandered over to the aft deck and bought four cans of beer from the Sapporo machine. We were now comrades by virtue of having gotten drunk together. We sat down in a couple of damp deck chairs. He held out a pack of cigarettes in front of my face. We smoked and said nothing for a while.

You’re lucky you live in Japan, he said. Know Kobe? I like Kobe—

I thought of the Soviet sailors I had seen in Kobe’s Sannomiya shopping arcade. Not a talkative lot—probably afraid of spies. A stray memory hit me: the front page of the Japan Times at my hotel. Two dissidents had been arrested the previous day.

…but I like San Francisco better.

Did you hear about the two dissidents in Moscow arrested for spying yesterday? I blurted out.

So?

"We were all cheering each other and waving when the Baikal was leaving port. We shouldn’t have—not when people are suffering unjustly."

It’s natural that people suffer. What can you do? He looked down morosely at his shoes. I was expelled from my university.

What for? Politics?

Fighting.

We smoked and stared into the blackness.

My friend dropped his cigarette and ground it into the wooden deck with the toe of his shoe. See you, he said abruptly and left.

We met the next morning by the purser’s. Without a word, he offered me a cigarette. We smoked together in guilty silence.

In the late afternoon, I was sitting in the aft bar. Vasya, the fat Russian who made bad jokes in broken English, came over and asked if he could join me. His white belly protruded from under his checked shirt, hanging over the waistband of his beltless blue jeans.

Please, I said.

He sat down with a tired huff, made a few jocular remarks in his funny English, and was silent for a moment.

Russian—you study in school? he asked.

I told him why I knew Russian.

Vasya brought his large face close to mine. "Let us talk dusha na dusha (soul-to-soul)," he said in Russian, looking into my eyes.

All right, I said.

He pursed his lips and sighed deeply, a man searching his heart for words.

I’m telling you this soul-to-soul, Alex, he said softly. "You are a Russian. You have Russia in your blood, so you’ll understand what I mean. When you go to the Soviet Union, you will find the most open, the most sincere, the most generous people in the world. It is true! Alex, do you understand the word rodina?"

I said I did. Rodina, literally translated, means birth land, but this does not convey its full emotional meaning.

"You know, the Russian loves his rodina, Vasya said. He cannot leave it for long and be happy. Me—I live in Tokyo. I’m a businessman; I sell Russian toys. It has been a year since I have seen my rodina, and my heart burns—burns!"

Vasya put a fist to his chest. He then unclasped his hand slowly and laid it on the table. Do you understand?

Yes.

He cocked his head to one side, looking as if he were about to smile. He did not smile.

Do you know about the Great War for the Fatherland? This is a common name for World War II in the Soviet Union.

Yes, I said.

I fought the Germans in that war. We lost more than twenty million people. Everyone lost fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Every family, without exception, suffered. He told me which members of his family had been killed. I was lucky. I was only wounded.

Vasya raised his hand from the table and held it before me. The tip of the index finger was missing. German machine gun. Hit me so fast that I didn’t feel it. Pam, pam, pam, and my finger flew off. He saw that I was shocked and seemed pleased. "We are a peaceful people, but we’ll fight to the death for our rodina. He nodded as if needing to agree with himself. Switching to his funny English, he asked, After Khabarovsk, then—fly?"

Trans-Siberian railroad, I said in Russian. I can meet more people that way.

Good, good, he said in Russian. It’s good for you to make many contacts and find your roots. Very, very good. He got up, touched my shoulder, and walked over to some Russians who were standing together at the other end of the bar. He put his hand on the arm of one of them. They whispered briefly together. Vasya left.

At dinner, Vasya walked past my table without acknowledging me when I greeted him. But later, in the music salon, he was friendly again. As the crew entertained us with folk songs and dances, he teased me by saying that I was lucky to live in Japan, where the women made the best wives in the world.

The same afternoon I spoke with Vasya, the Baikal passed through the Tsug-aru Straits, separating the main Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Myra, the sunburned Canadian, and I were on deck. Neither of us had been to Hokkaido. All we saw of it was a thin black strip of jagged cliffs jutting out of fog.

Where did you teach? I asked Myra.

She named a wealthy private university in Tokyo. The students were dumb, she said.

She did not like Japan. People in the street come up to you to practice their English. No one cares about you as a human being, she said. "I used to say, Anata-no eigo-no sensei ja arimasen—I’m not your English teacher."

Before Myra could make another anti-Japanese remark, I asked, How long did you live in the Soviet Union as a child?

"From five to ten. Entirely in Moscow. Then my father