16 - VLADIMIR-IVANOVICH

Vladimir ... or a reasonable facsimile

     I grew up during the red witch hunts, a time when a portion of the U.S. Congress, spearheaded by the eminently unlikeable Joseph McCarthy, spent years and vast sums of public money hunting down communists and their sympathizers, often in the most unlikely places.

      Though still a child, I started to pay attention when McCarthy's committee on un-American activities turned its attention to the movies and television.  It managed to wreak havoc and destroy any number of careers, and as far as I know, no one in the entertainment world was ever uncovered who might have actually been posing a threat to the security of our country.

      It was only years later, as an adult, that I began to understand some of the injustices carried out during the 1950's in the name of democracy.

      Caution ! If I am beginning to sound like a bit of a Bolshevik, myself, please believe I am assuredly not, never have been, and certainly never will be. I grew up a child of the free enterprise system, convinced that the harder you worked, the more successful you'd become. If this didn't necessarily prove infallible as I stumbled through the workplace part of my life, it has nevertheless remained imbedded somewhere within me.

       A few years into UNESCO, I found myself working for a Soviet spy.  I must point out that Vladimir was nothing like the sinister villains in the old movies I grew up on like « I Was A Communist For The F.B.I. » or « Comrade X » ; but although salaried by UNESCO, his real employer was definitely the KGB.   He gave his time and devotion to them, and managed to pretty much leave me in peace to get along with producing my little statistical office documents without any supervisory interference.

     I don't know exactly what he did for the KGB, but it was apparently more about reporting on each other than anything directly connected to UNESCO or the French Republic.   Although Vladimir was fairly inept at his UNESCO job, he appeared to be quite high-ranking with the soviets.

     He was treated with respect by his colleague-compatriots who would regularly troop to his office.   The door would always be shut while they conferred, and after-lunch meetings would usually include rounds of vodka for which Vladimir had a special fondness.  About once a week he would leave with other KGBers for unannounced destinations.  I always assumed they had been called to their embassy for whatever raison d'état.     

      I went into this unlikely relationship with what I considered an absolute open mind, accepting the possibility that everything I had grown up being taught about the Soviet Union having as its sole driving force the desire to destroy America, well that this was perhaps a bit exaggerated.  I had learned in grammar school about the downtrodden, unhappy common man in Communist Russia, how he was shipped to work camps and deprived of Democracy.   As time went on, I realized that perhaps not ALL of the Russians were quite as miserable as I had been led to believe.  By the time I arrived at UNESCO, I tended to think that most countries had their good and their bad, and as a former journalist I learned it best not to over-generalize.

      Then along came Vladimir, and I discovered that he was every bit as brainwashed about America as I had been about Russia.

      The irony was that, due to my exotic nationality,  he was completely fascinated by me.   Every word I spoke, every action, every gesture was of interest, and invariably attributed to what he saw as my unfortunate Western indoctrination.    I  learned to keep a low profile and avoid controversy.    Despite everything, Vladimir seemed to have a real affection for me.   Frankie-Norfleetovich, he would often call me, making a Russian hodgepodge of my name as well as that of my father's.  I would occasionally reciprocate by calling him Vladimir-Ivanovich.

      There were moments --days even-- when he seemed normal enough, then suddenly I would be catapulted back to reality.   I once reported on a tender and  moving Russian play that I had seen at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees.  It featured two of the French stage's greatest stars of the day, and I highly recommended it.

      I felt a tension in the air, and Vlad curtly announced he had no interest in seeing the work of a dissident and a traitor, that this was yet another example of western propaganda putting the Soviet nation in a negative and politically-motivated light.

      I learned to go to whatever lengths to avoid political discussions with him, because I found them profoundly depressing and above all futile.  Sometimes it was hard to stand silent.  One day he came back from home leave, excited with new knowledge.  He had recently seen a shocking television documentary of life in New York City.   He could hardly retain his excitement as he recounted how infants throughout the city were regularly attacked and devoured by rats.

      He asked how I could continue to go to New York, knowing of these dangers. « But where in the world did you hear such things ? » I asked. « On television in Moscow. It was produced by PRAVDA, » he replied with the trusting innocence of a child.

     Although his tendency to irritate is the thing that most sticks in my mind today, there were certainly good moments as well.   He was convinced that Russian cuisine was superior to all others, and he frequently invited me into his home for meals.  This in itself was exceptional within the UNESCO-Soviet community, as it was always assumed that staff were discouraged from much fraternizing with Western colleagues.  I interpreted these invitations as both a personal compliment and a sign of his importance in the KGB hierarchy.   Although I refused more dinners than I accepted, I remember with a certain fondness meals with Vlad and his long-suffering wife who would occasionally roll her eyes in exasperation as he recounted one of his lengthy stories.

     Then there was the Bolshoi Ballet.   One afternoon out of the blue, Vlad proposed  that I join him at the Palais des Congrès where the troupe was appearing in a sold-out engagement.   To my surprise I was taken backstage which was much better than any orchestra seat.   It remains an extraordinary memory:  from a vantage point at the edge of the curtain, I could see both the performance and all of the backstage interaction.

       Whenever a traveling troupe was visiting, the KGB would be out in full force.  I couldn't tell if they were there to supervise, to make sure no one was about to defect, or just to confer among themselves.  It was probably a little bit of all three.   Backstage, I observed  the artists who looked like any theatrical company, clearly in their own world, and alongside them a dozen or more black-suited diplomatic figures of authority (including Vladimir), bustling about, whispering.   Only, each of the two different worlds seemed somehow oblivious to the other.

     When the iron curtain definitively fell in 1990, Vladimir's life was momentarily thrown for a loop.  The KGB had heretofore taken care of almost everything.  Until then the embassy pocketed all their nationals' salaries, then gave back what it considered appropriate pocket money (the government took care of lodging, automobiles, travel, food, etc.).    Suddenly he was "free" to make his own decisions, handle his own paycheck and plan his own future.   Along with many of his compatriots, he went through a period of disorientation, but he soon picked himself up, sensed which way the wind was blowing, and changed his political persona accordingly.

     Suddenly, democracy seemed not such a bad idea after all, and it was as though communism had never really existed .    Everything American was now somehow wonderful, and he couldn't get to New York fast enough.  Before I knew it, he had his tickets for a week's vacation there, his first trip to America.   

     I couldn't resist.  "But Vlad, what about all the rats?" I asked.    

     "What rats?" he said.  It sounded genuine.  I never brought the subject up again.

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