It
is hard to be truly wretched in our developed world even if you are
poor. Those who achieve that state are usually sick in ways we yet
do not know how to heal and that includes drug abuse. Otherwise you
can obtain shelter and food of some sort. If that is dealt with,
your social needs are easily addressed and mind candy is freely
available to stave of boredom. Include family and friends and all is
well with the world.
What
the Soviet world refused its citizens was the opiate of hope. They
lived in a world in which they knew they were nothing and they could
not escape except into the world of the loyal commissar and that was
only for a few. Their only escape was family and barring that a
bottle of vodka.
Huge
parts of the world still live in some facsimile of this existence
although it has been steadily waning.
My
glimpse into Soviet wretchedness
Robert
Fulford | 13/09/14
In
its world premiere this week at the Toronto International Film
Festival, a French film called “Friends from France” aroused in
me anxious memories. In the opening scene, the stars going through
Soviet passport control look extremely worried. It’s 1976 and they
are bringing gifts for refuseniks, Russian Jews who were treated as
pariahs because they had applied for visas to Israel.
Two
visitors, masquerading as tourists, are afraid they’ll be caught
doing something illegal. I know how they feel. I, too, went to
Russia, on the same errand.
The
Soviets severely punished Jews who wanted to leave. Bureaucrats
stripped them of their professional credentials, whether they were
mathematicians or kindergarten teachers. Unemployable, they were told
to wait for their visas. This meant living in limbo for years, maybe
(so far as anyone knew) forever.
In
France, Anne Weil decided to go to Russia to help them. The idea was
to reassure the refuseniks that there were people elsewhere, Jews and
others, who cared about their treatment. The visitors took along
goods (ranging from books in Hebrew to diapers).
Weil
is the co-author and co-director, with Philippe Kotlarski, of
“Friends from France.” The script, often touching but sometimes
clumsy, combines two love stories, an unintended pregnancy and a
smuggled manuscript.
What
I worried about at passport control was the computer I was bringing
so that a refusenik group in Moscow could use it to keep their
records. In 1988, I didn’t even know how to turn on a computer.
What if the border guards asked me to demonstrate how it worked?
None
did, as it turned out. They ignored it and instead insisted on
reading my file of clippings on refuseniks. One guard actually
summoned a friend to show him an article. After a half-hour delay,
they gave back the clippings and waved me through.
This
was on a two-week trip with Professor Irving Abella, Rev. John Erb
and John Oostrom, a former Tory MP. Our chief (and shepherd) was
Wendy Eisen, a veteran of the refusenik campaign.
In
Moscow and St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad), we spoke with
dozens of people who were in effect prisoners, caged by a state that
was methodically making their lives miserable. They were brave and
determined, and managed to see the comedy in their situation, most of
it related to ham-handed bureaucrats.
In
Leningrad, I went to a party for a family that had its visa and was
to leave the next day. The grandfather showed me the Second World War
medals that he would wear on his Red Army uniform as he left the
country.
The
Soviet bosses viewed all their citizens with contempt, not just the
Jews. I understood the depth of their disdain only when I saw the
Beriozkas stores and restaurants, state businesses accessible only to
foreigners with hard currency or credit cards. They had all the best
food and liquor. With just that one enterprise, the state imposed an
insulting class system on a society that claimed to be classless.
When I bought a drink for a refusenik couple in a Beriozkas bar, they
were treated as interlopers.
I
missed the last few days of our program in Leningrad because of a
brutal toothache. A refusenik recommended I consult a children’s
dentist who had lost her credentials after she applied for a visa.
Without much equipment, she carried on a clandestine practice in her
apartment. She said I needed root-canal therapy. “But go home to
have it. Don’t let a Russian dentist touch your mouth!” Russian
dentists had a poor reputation, apparently even among other Russian
dentists.
A
character in “Friends from France” says that in the USSR she
learned certain truths about freedom that never seemed crucial back
home. Similarly, my talks with the refuseniks made me realize, on an
emotional level, that you are never even slightly free when you do
not have the right to leave your country without official permission.
Homeward
bound, I got a plane to Helsinki at the Leningrad airport. More
education awaited me there. The people in the terminal were glum as
they drank their coffee, glum while they filed onto the plane, glum
when they took their seats. Then the cabin staff locked the doors for
take-off–and immediately, as if cued by a producer, everyone smiled
in unison, the biggest smiles I ever saw.
It
was a silent but eloquent critique of a political system that was
then (though no one knew it) coming to the end of its brutal and
wretched life.
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