Dancing Bears

by Witold Szablowski

  “Since its collapse, everything is worse. In the past, the doctors couldn’t refuse to help a poor person. Now the health service is private, and even if you break a leg you have to pay. It’s the same with education. A retired person used to have the phone for free, and paid less for electricity. But now? You get a pension of twenty dollars, and the prices are like in the West.

  “And life gets worse and worse for women. In the USSR men had a good life. There were no wars. And if a man hit you, you could go and complain to the party committee. The committee informed the party cell at the factory, and the abuser could get into big trouble.

  “These days the men have no work and they’re frustrated. And when one of them hits you, you’ve no one to defend you.

  “But at our museum most of the staff are women. Even in the support services, which I haven’t encountered at any other workplace of this kind. Most of the space here is dedicated to Stalin as a son, a husband, and a father. Less to him as a soldier or as a strategist. Women are much better suited to this.

  “I also think Stalin’s magic is at work here. Women were always mad about him. The wives of diplomats wrote in their diaries that he was very attractive.

  “Something of his charm remains to this day. Sometimes when I stop at his death mask, I only have to glance at it, and it sends such a shiver down my spine that I have to go outside into the fresh air for a while.”

  Larisa Gazashvili: I love his poetry

  “My parents were the Romeo and Juliet of the Stalin era.

  “My paternal grandfather was a Georgian prince. He rode a white horse, he had a large estate, and in his house he kept a padlocked chest of gold. When Communism came along, they called him a kulak,* they took away his land and his gold, and left him with nothing but the chest. I still have it to this day.

  “My maternal grandfather was from a peasant family. Thanks to Stalin, he went to school. Thanks to Stalin, he worked on a collective farm, and later on—also thanks to Stalin—he became its manager.

  “The worse life became for my paternal grandfather, the better it was for my maternal one. When my parents fell in love, neither of their fathers would hear of them getting married.

  “My grandfather, the manager, shut my mother in the house under lock and key. Later on he sent her to college in Moscow. He sought out suitors for her among the sons of his friends.

  “My other grandfather, the prince, sought a wife for my father from the former aristocracy. Later on he shouted at him. And even later he cursed him.

  “But as we all know, when young people dig in their heels there’s no one more determined. My parents got married, with neither set of parents present at the wedding. They never went to visit each other, and pretended not to know each other. So it was to the end of their lives.

  “So when I got a job at the Stalin museum, my grandfather the manager kissed me heartily. And my grandfather the prince was mortally offended.

  “At the museum I was responsible for propaganda. It was a very serious role. We used to publish a newspaper, Stalin’s poetry, and other literature. He wrote beautiful poems. Romantic, tugging at the heartstrings. If he hadn’t become a politician, who knows, maybe he’d have won the Nobel Prize?

  “The newspaper was called Bulletin. Or rather at one time it was called Bulletin of the Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin Museum. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was reduced to Bulletin. To avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.

  “When the USSR collapsed, we had awful confusion. First they closed our museum; then they opened it again. They changed the exhibition, then went back to the old one. Nobody had the money to replace the entire display. Nor did anyone have the courage to close the museum down entirely. Too many Georgians still love Stalin.

  “Now, unfortunately, there’s no money to publish the Bulletin. And I’m a tour guide.

  “I went to college in Kaliningrad. I had a good life there. I worked at a school, but when Mommy fell seriously ill I had to come back to Gori.

  “Some people we knew said a woman at the Stalin museum had gone on maternity leave. So I went to the party committee to ask about the job. They said first I had to pass an exam.

  “The exam was hard. I had to quote by heart from the history of the Communist Party, Stalin’s biography, and the history of the USSR. But I had studied history. I knew it all by heart. So I passed with flying colors.

  “So many bad things are said about Communism, but in the past the director understood that on Sundays I had to have the day off because I’m a churchgoer. Yet now they’ve put me down for Sundays. Out of malice, I’m sure.”

  Tatiana Gurgenidze: I’d have been good to him

  “I was born in a bad system. Because I have the mentality of a socialist hero of labor. When something needs to be done for society, I go and do it. I’ve produced a wall newspaper for the employees and classes for single mothers bringing up children on their own.

  “In the Communist era, everyone would have respected me. But now that we have capitalism, they look at me as if I’m an idiot.

  “So when I really can’t manage anymore, I come to the museum to calm down. And I say, ‘Mr. Stalin, I know you’d appreciate it.’ And it helps. And when I dream about Stalin—as I told you, he looks at me, twirls his moustache, and leaves—it’s usually a few days after one of those relaxing museum visits.

  “I’m not really in the right era when it comes to my attitude to men either. You see, there wasn’t any sex in the Soviet Union, at least not obviously. There was ‘intercourse between the genders.’ There wasn’t any of what the young people watch on television these days. All those music videos and naked butts, if you’ll pardon the expression. Instead of a kiss, someone just lightly stroked someone else’s arm, and that was enough. A woman had to be a good worker, dress and behave modestly. So whenever I’m shocked by the sight of today’s young girls, I go to the museum too. And I say, ‘Mr. Stalin, you wouldn’t like it either.’ And once again it helps.

  “I don’t like drunks. Or drug addicts. Our president upsets me, because why does he have to antagonize Russia? It’s a known fact that you can even come to terms with a bear if you want to. But Saakashvili* is insistent—with Russia just across the border—on making a second America here. We’ve had a war because of him, and we’re sure to have another one too. When the war was on, they closed the museum, so I came to the park, to the statue, and I said, ‘Mr. Stalin, you’d have got a firm grip on it all, and there’d be peace.’

  “And sometimes I go and say to him, ‘If you were alive, maybe we’d be together. You’d have a good time with me. I know how to cook, I’m a cheerful person, and I can sing well too.’ And I fantasize about how nice it would be to be Stalin’s wife. But later on I reject those thoughts, because I’m behaving like an idiot. Stalin is dead. Communism has collapsed. It’s over. It’s finished. Been and gone.

  “If I dream about him when I’m feeling like that, I’m very cold and official toward him in my dream.”

  Natia Joldbori: son, be like Stalin

  “My momma told me, ‘Darling, don’t go for that job. Of course Stalin was a great man. But something like that looks bad on your résumé these days. One day you’ll want a different job, and they won’t give it to you. Besides, it’s embarrassing to work there.’

  “But I have a small son, and I needed the money. In Gori, if you have any ambitions, there’s no choice. You can teach at a school or work in the local administration. Or at Stalinland—that’s what some people call our museum. Young people especially like to make fun of it. They call the women who work here the Stalinettes or the vestal virgins—because it’s as if they’re doing their best not to let the flame of Communism go out. I keep all that at arm’s length, though I can see that for most people in Gori the world ended when the USSR collapsed. I have one elderly colleague whose grandfathers were both killed in the Stalin era, but even so she’ll nev
er stop defending him and loving him.

  “I can hardly remember Communism. I was born when it was in its decline. I remember seeing the tanks in Vilnius on TV. When we regained independence, my dad and I went to the main town square with a Georgian flag. Those are fine memories.

  “Dad soon understood the new times. He sent me to learn English when I was just seven years old. Thanks to my English, I got my job at the museum. There are only two of us here who can speak it. As a result, we have the most tour groups, while the ladies who are deeply in love with Stalin sit and make themselves cup after cup of coffee. Afterward, we get the same salary as them. But I’m not complaining. The main thing is that I have a job.

  “My son doesn’t know a single word of Russian. He’s had English since preschool. It’ll be a totally different generation. Stalin? A completely abstract concept.

  “What do I think about Stalin? Here, in Gori, it’s customary for parents or grandparents to take their kids to the museum and tell them about him. I brought my toddler here too. And I told him, just like it says in those American guides to success, ‘He was much worse off than you are. His father drank, his cottage was falling down, and the other kids were good-for-nothings. But he was hardworking, thanks to which years later he ruled the entire country. If you study, you can achieve a lot too.’”

  Anna Tkabladze: we boycott the carve-up of Poland

  “Here we have his favorite cigarettes. Here’s the watch he was given by his mother. He was a good son. An affectionate husband. A loving father. He cared for his staff as if they were his own children.

  “Nowadays they say he was a bad man. But in the archive we have pictures of him planting apple trees in the summer. I think a bad man would have been beating someone up or killing them, not planting trees. You have your views. That he murdered millions. But there’s no proof of that. All the documents were faked by Beria. Stalin only made one mistake—he was too good. He put too much trust in others.

  “I can’t say all that to the tourists. The management writes scripts for the guided tours. What’s in them? Just like I said: he was a good son and an affectionate husband. We can also mention that he defeated fascism. But not much more. Murders? I’ve just about had enough of you. Here we have a sort of unwritten agreement that if a tourist really gets under our skin, we can go outside the museum to argue with him. But right now we are inside the museum, and I have to stick to the script.

  “They’ve even posted a sign about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Of course, it was wrong from the start. Because for Poland it certainly wasn’t a good pact at all. But it gave the USSR a few years to arm itself, thanks to which fascism was defeated. But we’re supposed to give the impression that the carve-up of Poland was a myth. So we leave that sign out of our tours. It’s our silent boycott.

  “I’ll tell you frankly, I don’t know what to think about the Poles. On the one hand, when we had the war with Russia here, you people helped us a lot. Trucks full of clothes and food kept arriving every day.

  “But nobody harps on us as much as you people. Everyone else comes through here and listens with interest, but the Poles shout at me as if I were Stalin himself and had carved up Poland in person. And now they’re saying Poland is going to help rebuild the Stalin Museum as the Museum of the Fight against Communism. If that’s true, all Gori will come to a standstill. Because we have nothing here except for our Stalin.”

  IX. Dancing Bears

  When they see a human being, they stand up on their hind legs and start rocking from side to side. As if they were begging, as in the past, for bread, candy, a sip of beer, a caress, or to be free of pain. Pain that nobody has been inflicting on them for years.

  Greece: We’ll Sweep Capitalism Away

  Because the government is cutting our salaries but not their own.

  Because the Germans have made Greece into a farm. They’re earning billions here, but they won’t stop criticizing us.

  Because we didn’t invent democracy just to have someone make all the decisions behind our backs.

  Because capitalism is crap. We’ve started a landslide that’s going to sweep it away.

  It’s March 2010, and for a few weeks now the center of Athens has been blockaded nonstop by demonstrators. Teachers, nurses, shipyard workers, engineers, and anarchists. Storekeepers shoulder to shoulder with gas-pump attendants. Pencil pushers side by side with punks. “Instead of tightening their belts, they’ve all come out onto the streets in jubilant mood,” says Jacek, who runs an import-export firm in Greece. “The ship known as Greece is sinking. The government is trying to save it: it has raised VAT and the price of gas, and has cut posts and bonuses in the state sector. But instead of cooperating, the Greeks are holding a general strike. And more millions of euros are going down the drain.”

  “Why is that?” I ask.

  “The southern temperament. In Ireland, people dutifully began to save, and they’re getting back on the straight. But the Greeks? They’re stubborn. When one of the factories canceled the workers’ coffee break, it went bust. That’s their character. Anyway, why are you talking to me? Go ask the Greeks. In Athens there’s a protest of some kind on every street corner.”

  Monday, or the hoteliers who bang their heads against the sidewalk

  Costas, owner of a small hotel below the Acropolis, hardly sleeps at all these days.

  “I’ve never watched the TV news before. Hell, but it sure sucks you in,” he says, stirring sugar into his fourth coffee of the day. “If anyone were to ban me from drinking coffee, I’d go on strike too. But they won’t. Going back to the television, the thing that really grabs me is the yellow band at the bottom. ‘Rail workers cancel.’ ‘Inspectors continue.’ ‘Doctors commence.’ ‘Sailors suspend.’ Cancel and continue what, you say? How do you mean, what? The strike, of course! It’s the only thing the guests are asking about. And these days every guest is worth his weight in gold stolen by the Germans.”

  The Germans have been reproached about the stolen gold by Theodoros Pangalos, Greek deputy prime minister, because they’ve been criticizing the Greeks for their failure to manage their finances. “Everyone’s letting their emotions fly,” says Costas, nodding his head with understanding. We’re sitting in the summer garden at his small hotel. The apricot trees have just begun to flower. “One lady came here from Germany and said, ‘You people have a crisis because you’re lazy and deceitful.’ I felt like telling her that if they hadn’t robbed us during the Second World War, we’d be living like Germans now. But I kept my mouth shut. We can’t offend the Germans. Too many of them keep coming here, and nobody knows what’s going to happen a month ahead. The customers watch the TV news too. And if there’s nothing in it about Greece, then I get twenty phone calls a day and twice as many e-mails inquiring about bookings. But they just have to show some little hoodlums burning tires, and I only get two or three calls and eight e-mails at most. What am I to do? How can I protest? Go outside the hotel and bang my head against the sidewalk? That’s all I can think of. We’re going to take a real licking over this crisis. One in five Greeks lives off tourists. If they don’t come this year, in the fall we’ll all be packing our bags to leave.”

  Tuesday, or bloggers versus drivers

  In Syntagma Square some happy, homeless dogs are mooching around the orange trees. In the middle there’s an elegant fountain. On the corner there’s a McDonald’s. On the far side guardsmen with garters and pompoms are guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Above it rises the parliament building.

  “This is where they rob us,” says Maria, a peroxide blonde approaching forty, who works for one of the foreign banks, puffing out her lower lip in disgust. “That’s why we’re blocking this farce.”

  During the general strike in early March, more than one hundred thousand people came past here. But the government said it would make deductions from state salaries in response to the strike. Nobody wants to lose their
daily rate of pay. So the trade unions decided to organize small protests by sector. “It’s better like that,” says Maria. “I finish work, take a shower, and arrive here at exactly the moment when there’s the biggest tailback. I work at a private bank, and there’s no question of protesting. If my boss saw me at Syntagma Square, I’d be in big trouble. Others are in a similar situation, so we’ve been making our protest as Greek bloggers.”

  “What do you do at the bank?”

  “I advise clients who have more than a hundred thousand euros.”*

  “What about you? If you had a hundred thousand euros today, what would you do?”

  “I’d get out of Greece. Various weird things are going to happen here. But for now we’re banding together on the Internet and urging the government to tax the church and the shipbuilders. Did you know that most of the land in Greece belongs to the church? And that it doesn’t pay a single euro for it? It’s the same with the shipowners, in other words the richest Greeks.”

  “And you’re protesting against that?”

  “Yes. And against rising gasoline prices—from one euro per liter (a quarter of a gallon) it has jumped to one and a half. We’re also protesting against the way the government keeps shifting the consequences of its bad political decisions onto the public. My salary won’t be reduced. But more expensive gas will affect the price of every last piece of bread and sausage.”

  The bloggers’ protest has only attracted a few dozen people. Nevertheless, Maria is thrilled. “Pretty good for a grassroots initiative.”