Re: Alexis de Tocqueville, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mahan (whatif?)

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Re: Alexis de Tocqueville, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mahan

Posted on: Sun, 28 May 2006 14:04:36 +0000 (UTC)

The Horny Goat wrote:
> On 27 May 2006 21:36:14 -0700, am05@... wrote:
>
> >> Chess grandmasters were no more ordinary Soviet citizens than Olympic
> >> athletes or other sports stars - and make no mistake about it the top
> >> 50 or so chess players WERE seen in this catagory.
> >
> >Don't you worry on this subject: I have an idea about who was who in
> >the former SU.
>
> Obviously Tretiak would never have worked in the West in before 1991.

Obviously. However, Plisetskaya was allowed to work for the Spanish
ballet and,
IIRC, some of the top divas were allowed to have contracts abroad. Of
course, they
have to give up most of the hard currency they earned.

> >Well, in the late 70's a car was not something only the members of elite
> >could have. The question was: which car and sometimes car of which color.
> >For example, as an ordinary citizen you could have Zaporozets (bottom of the
> >line), Moskvitch, Giguli. Volga usually indicated that you are 'less ordinary'
> >than others. Higher brands or foreign cars indicated higher rank or very good
> >connections (Vladimir Visotsky, who formally was nobody, had a Mercedes, probably
> >thanks to Marina Vladi).
>
> Yup - I would have to go back in my books to check but I recall
> Taimanov's was an Italian-built Fiat paid for out of hard currency
> tournament winnings in the West.

Ah, this of course was make a difference.

>Definitely not in the catagory of
> that Mercedes

Because most of his winnings would go to the state (to pay for keeping
the relatives
of the functionaries on the cushy positions abroad).

>but 'very good connections'. I've no idea what color it
> was.

I remeber an old cloack and dagger book (by an american writer) where
one Soviet
personage waits for another in 'inconspicious black Moskvitch'. Taking
into an account
class of this car, _black_ Moskvitch would by as inconspicious as a
crow on a
snow. :-)

>
> >> Did he say much about it? Iume there were restrictions on the kind
> >> of work they were allowed to do?
> >
> >Not by 60's. And don't forget that the bulk of the GULAG prisoners were quite
> >ordinary people. I met person who got few years of the hard labor for picking few
> >apples from the collective farm's garden. By profession he was, IIRC, a carpenter
> >and he lived far away from Moscow.
>
> My reading suggests there was little restriction on residency outside
> the major cities - is that generally correct?

Probably, but by the 60's it is mostly gone if you are talking about
the old GULAG
prisoners. As for the new convicts, usually sentence (including a
criminal one)
involved some predefined period of restriction. In practical terms, in
Breznev's
times, restriction to live in Moscow meant that the person could not
live inside Moscow
Circumvential Road. For the 'political' people (at least those with the
'name')
it meant that they could live within Moscow suburban zone. Just like
many people who
worked in Moscow. For those without connections things could be
considerably more
rough.

>
> >One more typical mistake: there was plenty of blacks in the SU (African-Russians?).
> >A most common nickname was 'children of the festival'. Hundreds and perhaps
> >thousands of students from Africa had been studying in the Soviet colleges. You can
> >easily guess a most likely by-product. :-)
>
> I believe you are referring to your typical university student's
> SECOND major pastime (the first of course being mass consumption of
> alcoholic beverages).
>
Exactly. Take into an account that many of these African students had
hard currency...

> [I'm not too worried about my daughter (who just finished her first
> year in university in Ottawa) though she has told me (and swore me not
> to tell her mother) that she made several trips into Quebec which is
> significant since in Ontario the legal drinking age (which is also the
> age you can buy alcohol) is 19 while 18 in Quebec.

Perhaps she just wanted to eat crepes in Quebec? :-)

>Her 19th birthday
> is in 5 weeks.]

Definitely crepes. :-)

>
> >[Another typical mistake is an attempt by an American writer to
> >describe how Russians drink vodka. :-)]
>
> Heh heh. That there are stereotypes in this area doesn't surprise me
> at all.

One description I remember involved the following sequence:
put caviar on a cracker, eat it, wash it down with vodka. Obviously,
author tried to
reconcile american habit of sipping vodka on the rocks (and caviar on a
cracker being
washed down by a reasonably weak drink) with what he heard about
Russians
drinking unwatered vodka in a gulp.

All sequence is wrong and so is one of components. It should be:
put caviar on a _soft_ white bread, drink vodka, eat caviar. In Russian
culture you
drink 1st and than you eat. The word for what you eat is 'zakuska',
something you
eat _after_. Cracker is out of question because in this sequence you'll
have crumbs
in your mouth and throat.

BTW, the same cultural differences resulted in a seriously different
Russian version
of the Bloody Mary.

>
> [I don't know how relevant the following factoid is but I am the
> national secretary of the Chess Federation of Canada
>- this means I
> hear all KINDS of stories.

I must confess that my knowledge of the chess is limited to the very
basic knowledge
of how to move the figures and to knowing some major names (Taimanov
and Fisher
being among them).

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