00:00:27.140 - 00:00:58.090

Hello, I'm Mike Cannon, and this is conversation. Recently, a historian and an anthropologist at the University of Florida made their first visit to the Soviet Union. The historian said that he had a fair knowledge of Russian history but no mental pictures to go with it. The anthropologist said that he had certain preconceptions, that he thought it would be interesting to test out on the visit, which he did, And we're going to hear a little bit about the pictures a little bit about preconceptions when I return in a moment with my guests.

00:01:05.140 - 00:01:29.670

Conversation from the University of Florida a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Michael V. Gannon, professor of history and ethics and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. Okay, mhm. My guess on this conversation are David Chalmers, professor of history.

00:01:29.680 - 00:01:57.660

Welcome, David. Thank you. Welcome back to conversation and Paul Dowdy, who's professor of anthropology in the university and again welcome back to conversation. Thank you. It's nice to have you here in a somewhat different capacity to talk about a common experience and from your perspective. As an anthropologist, I'm sure you approached the Soviet Union and its people with certain views and, of course, a certain professional curiosity.

00:01:57.660 - 00:02:15.250

And you said that you went with certain preconceptions. I wonder if you would tell me one that proved not to be true. Well, when I say I went with certain preconceptions, everybody has somewhere in their mind an idea of what they're going to see. Or maybe what they expect to see.

00:02:15.750 - 00:02:35.050

Certainly with the Soviet Union given our relationships and the kind of things that are one reads and sees in the paper and cartoons and jokes and so on, you expect to see, I think, very gray place. I did expect to see a, uh rather colourless overall environment.

00:02:35.060 - 00:02:55.340

The other thing is that you expect, perhaps to be followed around by people with guns and weapons protruding from their pockets and maybe even some spider sprinkled on them. And, um, I must say that just looking at the Soviet Union, I didn't get the sense of either of these two things.

00:02:55.340 - 00:03:23.750

I didn't find the Soviet Union particularly grey or colorless, although there were some things that I thought were fairly dull But on the other hand, cities like Kiev were delightful, colorful, interesting looking places which I did not expect at all. And as far as being followed around, they personally did not have any sense of that either, although again some may have felt that.

00:03:23.760 - 00:03:39.460

But I didn't and for example, in the streets the traffic police didn't carry weapons. They only carried a billy club and a whistle. Ah, which is not to say we didn't see people with arms, but they were not as prevalent as common as I had expected to see.

00:03:39.470 - 00:03:55.150

Those are just two things. If you were not followed around, were you perhaps led around in the sense that your in tourist guide or whoever happened to be the person in charge of your tour took you only to those places where you would have the best impressions of Soviet life?

00:03:55.640 - 00:04:17.940

Well, I'm sure that's true. We're in a very short trip two weeks and so that it was fairly little time we didn't weren't able to run around everywhere where one might certainly wish to go in. The Soviet Union is a vast country. I don't think people in America have any real understanding of how big it is.

00:04:17.940 - 00:04:39.020

It's much bigger than the United States, so that even from our American perspective, it was large, so you can't hope to see a lot. The other thing is, of course, none of us really knew where we were going. What was interesting to see all these things in these things?

00:04:39.020 - 00:04:56.260

We benefited certainly by having a guide. The interest organization which runs tourism in Russia assigns you a guide, and the guide stays with you the whole time. You get to know the guide quite well. In this case was a very attractive and pleasant and efficient young woman with the very Soviet name of Natasha.

00:04:56.840 - 00:05:17.730

Mhm. The mental picture that you described of more color than gray is that also the picture that you come home with. David I was interested that the architecture is highly elaborated and sometimes only almost to be a kind of foo foo or wedding cake, a kind of architecture.

00:05:17.900 - 00:05:36.160

This is what you see in Moscow, particularly that with piles of concrete made attractive, and you get the sense that the Russian people are perhaps still farmers because on all the balconies they have plants and Sometimes the plants will flow over, uh, and almost cover the whole facade of a building.

00:05:36.640 - 00:05:58.450

And then sometimes now there's a period. They called late Stalin the late 19 fifties middle 19 fifties, when he decided he was going to build the tallest buildings, things in Europe. And so there's about five of them. The tower over the city of Moscow. One of them is Moscow state, and they are highly elaborated and ornamented.

00:05:58.460 - 00:06:18.020

There's a joking poet, may I tell you, post joker in the middle of Russia? Yes, In the center of Warsaw, the Russians built a monument. One of these monumental towers is the palace of culture, and there's a birthday cake architecture. And there was a Polish joke that I was told again and again when I was in Warsaw several years ago.

00:06:18.030 - 00:06:32.990

What is the best view of Warsaw? It's from the palace of Culture because you can't see the palace of culture from there, and it isn't so. It isn't until you get to Leningrad that you see what we consider to be a European city. Well, I would disagree.

00:06:32.990 - 00:07:09.660

I think that was a little bit because Kiev is also has very much that character of many European cities. Um, despite the fact that it was substantially destroyed in the Second World War. But it did. It does have a downtown which has a lot of all buildings and what you might think of as the word general European architecture, not the poured concrete block apartments that you see sprouting all around the area around all the big cities to handle the acute acute housing shortage, which Russia has.

00:07:09.780 - 00:07:31.380

How about the people on the street? Were they wearing color colors? Bright colors? Did they surprise you with the brightness of their styles, or did you find their general clothing drab? I don't know how you found it, but we were riding on the subway in Leningrad.

00:07:31.380 - 00:07:49.130

In fact, David and I went on a four a together in Leningrad, searching for the great historic places on our own. And I did a count in the subway or the number of people wearing jeans. Now you could say jeans are drab, right? So that, uh so the drabness wasn't necessarily account.

00:07:49.130 - 00:08:14.250

But anyway, in my account and riding the subway several times, I came up with a minimum percent of people wearing jeans among those wearing pants was 40%. That's remarkable. May I tell you a subway story before I answer it as well? We were riding on the Leningrad subway, and Paul turned to me and said, They can pick you out immediately as an American and I I wasn't wearing my Grubbers or I couldn't tell what you've noticed what Paul just did.

00:08:14.260 - 00:08:30.560

He said, You have your knees crossed. Oh, and that's something I didn't know, said The Russians don't do that. They may cross the ankles like this, but they wouldn't be sitting the way that you and Paul have. So if you intend to be a secret agent, they've got you right away.

00:08:30.570 - 00:08:49.820

Comment on your question about how people look. I thought people tended to look drab in Moscow, and particularly there. You saw the women in the sort of what way on shapeless dresses after they reach where we guess the middle thirties and there really wasn't much color.

00:08:49.830 - 00:09:08.800

But then when you got outside of Moscow, Kiev and further south than it seemed to me, I would have great difficulty in distinguishing between American people on the streets and Russian people on the Street. It's the The young men were probably the best dressed according to America, to American style.

00:09:09.140 - 00:09:34.910

I found after a while I would not have basically made much in the way of distinction. How about the stores and creature comforts, automobiles, things of that nature. There aren't their art in the Soviet Union. The estimate now is basing upon what the figure I saw three or four years ago There properly about 10 to 12 million automobiles for a population of 270 million people.

00:09:34.930 - 00:10:05.960

Do you have any idea how many automobiles we have? What's your guest, Dr. Well, what are we? We're a country of 130 million people. 252 150. Oh, I'm way off. 250 million approaching it. All right, Well, I would expect there are 250 million automobiles. Campus might indicate that we have slightly more than one automobile for every two people, so we should be close to 100 20 million automobiles.

00:10:06.340 - 00:10:24.360

There isn't really very much in the stores because we had basically taken close for somewhat cooler time. And there was a heat wave in the Soviet Union it was 100 and four Novorossisk. It was hot in Moscow, and Jean thought she'd like to go out and buy a light cotton dress.

00:10:24.440 - 00:10:47.460

And we broached this subject to everybody and everybody looked, shook their heads and said, No, just just can't be done. Of course, it is alleged in our press that one reason the Soviets do not have items in the store consumer goods in the same measure that we have them in this country is that so much of their gross national product goes into armament.

00:10:48.040 - 00:11:04.220

Of course, a great amount of our gross national product goes in by 3% wise. It would not be the same. In other words, since we are wealthier country, the percent of our gross national product going to Armand's is probably less than that of the Soviet Union in that respect.

00:11:04.280 - 00:11:26.880

The other thing going back to this thing of appearances and automobiles. When you looked on the streets in Moscow at rush hour, why there were cars, but it wasn't you didn't see any traffic jams. We did see an accident or two, interestingly enough, and when we went out to the collective farm outside of Krasnodar in southern Russia.

00:11:27.040 - 00:11:45.870

I was quite surprised and the fact that there were private cars in the collective farm, as we want drove by the through the farm. There were houses along the road and every 10 or 12 houses or so there would be a private car in the driveway to collect with a lock on the garage door.

00:11:45.880 - 00:12:02.300

But anyway, I mean, there were There were cars there, and people obviously enjoy them very much. They decorate them up for weddings. We saw a lot of people like that with their cards done up with weddings, with a big ring on the roof tied on the roof, or to announce that this was a wedding.

00:12:02.940 - 00:12:26.310

Now I've been reading in the newspapers of late about a crackdown by the new Soviet Premier on alcohol and, uh, what apparently was, uh, abusive drinking by people of all ages in the Soviet Union. And it gave me the impression that people were stumbling over all the streets drunk on vodka.

00:12:26.310 - 00:12:48.460

Did you see this abuse in the only drunk that I saw? And David, we were together coming back from the park that night in Moscow. The only two that I wasn't saying other than the two of you are. The only two drunks were in that coming out of when we were coming out of the park that evening, and we quickly got by them.

00:12:48.840 - 00:13:19.660

We have been led to believe that we would be asked to toast and drink at every opportunity, any public function, and so on. This did not happen. The only place there we were invited to drink by Russians. Was that a wine tasting? A state farm near Novorossiysk and, um, at the state farm.

00:13:20.140 - 00:13:42.860

Um, in your Krasnodar? Yes, we had several. We had several toasting moments, but nothing like we've been led to believe. This is a direct result of they're cracking down. The country is practically gone dry in a matter of just by decree. So if you went into a liquor store to buy anything, the stories are open for only a few hours a day.

00:13:43.440 - 00:14:05.850

And when they're open, people are just struggling to get to the counter. So you better be prepared to speak fast and have your money ready. And if you were like we were not speaking Russian, we got shut out at the gate there pretty regularly. So if people are drinks, no drinks at bars and restaurants, either what this means is vodka.

00:14:05.920 - 00:14:29.130

This doesn't mean beer, wine and beer, but Gorbachev apparently is going to dry up the Soviet Union. And so no more will you see people of stumbling drunk around the streets. Particularly, this is an economic measure because they're falling behind in their increase in production. And so he's decided that this is going to happen and he's doing it.

00:14:29.330 - 00:14:54.460

When people identified you as Americans and you say that they could do that quickly and with some ease, did they seem to show some appreciation of the fact that you were there? Were they friendly, or did they show reserve suspicion? Um, well, I think you have to promise that by saying that only three of our group of 43 could speak any Russian.

00:14:55.810 - 00:15:13.150

So it's very difficult for us to really understand how people were going to react to us or how they were reacting to us because we couldn't really understand what they were saying, where we did have these opportunities for exchange of views and have things translated and so on.

00:15:14.610 - 00:15:43.120

I found the reception was very positive. Great curiosity. A certain eagerness to find out about who we were. Well, there was one experience that you told me about when you first return. I'd like to have you related where you were in a large gathering. Perhaps it was at the state farm, and, um, there was an occasion to exchange opinions about each other's country.

00:15:43.120 - 00:16:06.700

And it turned out that the Soviets, the Soviet people whom you did have the chance to speak through interpreters, were as afraid of the United States. As it appears our population is of the Soviet Union, and the conversation must have been very interesting. It was very short, but we were standing around, milling around, sort of.

00:16:06.700 - 00:16:33.590

And they had a group of people from the State Farm, or rather, the collective, um, talking with us. And we had a couple of interpreters there so that we were able to exchange views. And the director of the collective had said in his speaks speech to us and introductory remarks, how he wished that the Americans wished for for peace as much as the Russians did, and something to that effect.

00:16:33.590 - 00:16:49.480

And you're going on well, this came up again later on where we were sort of talking and we said, Well, you realize, of course it was afraid of you and as you are of us that we think you're going to you're the menace and that you're dangerous to the rest of the world.

00:16:49.480 - 00:17:08.940

He was quite surprised that anyone could think of him. You can see it register on his face. It was quite a spontaneous thing. He really took him back. So it's something he hadn't thought about of them being considered a menace, something that enter his. I was thinking the same thing would be, I'm sure true of the U.

00:17:08.940 - 00:17:28.830

S. I mean, we don't think of ourselves as a menace usually in the run of people would not, so that you can see the mirror image aspect of our relationships with Russia. We think they're terrible and they think we're terrible. Uh, maybe the rest of the were always the one with the or even opinion of both of us.

00:17:28.890 - 00:17:47.110

Well, basically, we didn't discuss us politics, and we certainly weren't going to get involved in confrontational situations. Generally, the comment would come from the Russians and would be a state. There were just two standard kinds of comments. One of them was, We don't want war. We don't want to have to fight you.

00:17:47.120 - 00:18:07.320

And that might be or we don't want war between our countries. And then the other statement would be We don't like President Reagan. And so each of these would be a short exclamation and we thought there was. I think all of us individually thought there's no purpose in getting into arguments and we don't have the language, its reserves to do so.

00:18:07.330 - 00:18:25.870

And so what we did was to talk about other things. We weren't there to be political, although this was something of a problem for me. He ended. Uh, I'm a political person and I wanted to see the history of Russia, what they kept showing me. He was churches and palaces.

00:18:25.880 - 00:18:50.730

I thought this was rather interesting for a Communist Communist anti religious country. At one time, Paul and I got in line. We were going to go to the A museum for religion and atheism. And like most other place public places, there were doorman who supposedly, we assume, are there to facilitate people cutting in, but see as their rule will enroll to keep people out.

00:18:50.740 - 00:19:09.040

It's really very hard to get into museums and most other public buildings because there's a low level functionary there who basically is not letting people in. And so the Russians are used to queuing up in long lines and waiting. One finds that sort of petty bureaucrat exercising his power.

00:19:09.050 - 00:19:28.940

He has so little of it. He has to make it count when he has the opportunity. So these gatekeepers, uh, make their presence felt vis a vis the public. And so long lines are commonplace. People queue up very orderly fashion to buy ice cream. They queue up to wait for buses.

00:19:28.940 - 00:19:43.260

They cute by museum tickets, queue up to buy something at the store that has come available. Queue up three times in the store to buy anything, right? Yeah, You have a three times three times. Well, when you go to the counter, you look over the item.

00:19:43.260 - 00:20:05.060

If you've attracted the attention of the salesperson, which is not always easy to do, uh, you agree to buy the item, they write up a slip, you take the slip, then you go to the cashier, where you may also get in another line, pay the cashier, take the slip back and give it to the salesperson, who then gives you the good.

00:20:05.630 - 00:20:26.540

Now this, most Americans find is a very difficult labyrinth, all sort of system, and certainly not one that we would find in our own fast paced economy. It's not uncommon, however, in many countries in the world, it's not a uniquely Russian thing, and a lot of Latin American countries have the same system.

00:20:26.540 - 00:20:44.710

And it's a fairly old commercial system in which you trust very few people with the money. Oh, and each person we calculate. But you asked the question about what was in the store, and this is the kind of thing that you learn from study and you have to study if you're going anywhere.

00:20:44.720 - 00:21:05.830

You know that what the basic system is in the Soviet Union, and that is plants every kind of productive system where we port back to the central agencies, the gospel and eventually what they have the capacity to purchase and then decisions will be made to produce, and then the decision will be made as to what they will produce.

00:21:05.840 - 00:21:23.650

And then the word is sent down again, and they will then produce it. So in the short system I've shortly described, the customer is not mentioned. The system and the decision is a production system, and it's not in any way working to what the what the consumer presumably wants.

00:21:23.650 - 00:21:41.780

Sometimes they'll be decisions at the center, which Khrushchev started. Brezhnev attempted to carry on of increasing the availability of consumer products, and so these kind of decisions will be made. But they're not market and consumer oriented, which is which is a contrast to what you see in the stores.

00:21:41.870 - 00:22:02.660

While the system isn't oriented this way, the public I was very much impressed with this seems to have a terrific thirst for consumer goods. So if you went to the apartment store and looked around, they were mobbed. So the few really small stock it was available.

00:22:03.240 - 00:22:38.080

Uh, I was just being examined by eager customers anxious to make sales. And there seemed to be money, which is the other interesting thing. We're in Krasnodar, which is a provincial capital of the Cossack region, down southern in the Black Sea, um, Krasnodar City. Around five or 600,000 people have one main commercial street, along at bookstores and then sort of small department stores and various other specialty shops, among them a jewelry store.

00:22:38.090 - 00:23:03.670

And my wife and I went in, and I was quite surprised that the array of jewelry that was available was quite elaborate, quite nice and quite expensive. There are many items that went up into the hundreds and hundreds of rubles, which the official rate of exchange was a valued at a dollar 25 and people were in there buying stuff, plunking down 203 100 rubles.

00:23:04.440 - 00:23:18.790

Considering that a well paid person, Russia is getting 400 rubles a month, that represented quite an outlay. And there didn't seem to be any lack of people buying that sort of thing, which is a comment. I mean, they don't have a lot to buy, so they're buying things that count.

00:23:18.790 - 00:23:42.860

Apparently, Mike, I'd like to make a comment on where money is spent in the Soviet Union, and what happens when you go on a trip such as this is you find things that very much impressed you. And so you go through periods in which are quite amazed, and then you go find periods in which things seem to be falling apart, doing badly and your critical and and everywhere behind this, the hand of the state is there.

00:23:43.440 - 00:24:01.930

But we were very impressed first in Moscow and elsewhere, with the expenditure and the achievement in the public sector, how extensive it is and how well kept and maintained it is. It's not just the case of clean streets, always swept and clean subways and trains that run on time.

00:24:01.940 - 00:24:31.660

And the Moscow subway, which is built in the thirties, is a marvel. It really is. But the extensive expenditure on parks, how the well they're maintained, the flowers in the parks, on athletic activities, on sports stadiums on on youth centers. The public expenditure there is in the Soviet Union is predominantly in the public sector and made available as widely as possible and on the and it's often very well done.

00:24:31.840 - 00:24:54.130

But the expenditure in the public sector is often pretty crummy, and the workmanship is crummy. The hotel in which we stayed in the versus took nine years to build, and it was awful. At least when you get when you get to the plumbing or the workmanship, pull something of Carpenter, and he had here to look at door frames and such, and was just appalled by these kind of things.

00:24:54.590 - 00:25:13.510

Immediately call your attention. Seems to me, because there are real contrast to what you would expect if you look at Russian architecture. Historically, there were masters of wood. Construction House is very elaborately ornate. Gingerbread T would work very fancy carpentry. There's none of that in the modern buildings.

00:25:13.510 - 00:25:36.770

In fact, one of the people that was with us was describing the doorway in his room. He had 26 nails pounded into the corner, holding the the Wooden Place. This kind of workmanship was really called your attention. On the other hand, I think you can be misled by this, or it seems rather superficial to concentrate on it.

00:25:36.770 - 00:26:00.180

I think David is right and saying, You know that they've made investments in the public sector which have a very wide distribution, and use things that favour individuals are minimal. Mm. And this is a very calculated method of distributing wealth may be like the medieval cathedrals in a very real way.

00:26:00.670 - 00:26:25.170

Things that favour individuals. I'm glad to think of books and magazines and newspapers was there much evidence of this? Ah, lots of things available in the bookstore, inexpensive and, of course, of a certain select variety. Magazines and newspapers were made available to us in English. At every airport, there was stuff for sale and a lot of freebies.

00:26:25.180 - 00:26:42.960

A lot of free books, a lot of free pamphlets. If you were interested in Lenin's speech before the group in 1920 somebody, you could get all of those free any United States magazines or newspapers for sale. No, we were told you couldn't bring in bring Newsweek or things like that.

00:26:42.960 - 00:27:21.370

And they're all of us inadvertently did. We were told a couple of times to put those away. We brought in everything that we had with us, even though we had some apprehension. And among the things that Paul and I had bought as we both brought in tapes are Bruce Springsteen, and we also know that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and going through my group my baggage, we thought to give to our sister city of Novorossiysk, and when they're going through my baggage to the Customs agent and did pluck out these two who cassettes and he asked whether these and we called Natasha, Natasha came over, she said, Oh, they're bluegrass he said.

00:27:21.380 - 00:27:41.950

He said, All right. But there are some things in English. There's the Moscow News, which is distributed everywhere in English, and it's so propagandistic. It's just ludicrous. And we kept maintaining that this was a satire of the Soviet government. Paul keeps quote saying, running dogs of capitalism and things like things like that in the articles.

00:27:42.240 - 00:28:08.950

May I tell you a story? Okay, one minute. Sure, this is This is really in one minute. This is Rose Hashanah. And so Paul O and his wife, Jean and I, Paul and Polly wandered out. We wanted to go to Bobby, are in outside of Kiev, where close to 100,000 Jews have been killed by the Nazis and which the Soviets had not marked or commemorated in any way till after Schenker wrote a poem.

00:28:09.300 - 00:28:29.670

And so we wandered out there on our own. Which one can do after finding the way and we thought, probably the most moving piece of statuary, which had then been placed at this green dick levity. And this was the one, uh, non representational piece that wasn't Soviet realism or the Soviet War effort.

00:28:30.040 - 00:28:44.190

I found this very moving experience. The other thing about the statuary, which we saw a great deal of where the war monuments Russia this is. The other living impression is how devastated Russia was in the Second World War and how it lives today in their minds.

00:28:44.200 - 00:29:14.670

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, David, for being on conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.