Three Sisters at the Revolution

Three Sisters

At the Revolution

An Eyewitness Account of How America’s Export

Of Overwhelming Freedoms Helped Produce

the Russia of Today

Jeffrey Manber

Published by C.P. West Productions

Copyright 2016 Jeffrey Manber

All Rights Reserved

http://www.jeffreymanber.com

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

As a memoir it is a retelling of what I heard, saw and learned in Russia at the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have recreated events and conversations chiefly from my writing notebooks and at times from memory. The manuscript was finished by 1994 and subsequently only minor points were copyedited or edited. In some instances I have changed the names of the characters, and there are instances when the sequence of events are presented out of order, in keeping with the flow of the story. Historical events and characters are presented as I recalled them at that time.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Part 1: Olga’s Dream

1: In the Jewish Club

2: First Lessons from Olga

3: If You Are Believer

4: The Fortune Teller

5: The Scars of the Dissident

6: Nun of the Club Fantastique

7: The Jewish Pioneer

Part 2: Billy’s Business with Little Irina and the Church of Russia

8: Lost In Freedom

9: Six Lane Highway of Salvation

10: Olya’s Moonshine

11: Little Irina Schemes

12: Church Business

13: Evil Plans Are Hatched

14: Caught in the Net

Part 3: Danny, Crazy Irina and the Christian Chechens

15: Random Observations

16: Moscow After the Coup

17: Getting Through Russian Customs With Madonna

18: Chekhov in A Gypsy Cab

19: Shakedown

20: The End Game

21: Kidnapped

22: Never in Our Dreams

23: Not the Time for Foreigners

Epilogue

Also by Jeffrey Manber

Foreword

A Comment from Ekaterina Khvostova

Let me begin by telling you that I’m not one of the Russian women whose life is chronicled by Jeffrey Manber. Nor is my mother, nor my aunt, nor my cousin. Why I’m writing here is because Jeff happened to mention that he had written a manuscript recounting his lessons learned from being in the Soviet Union as it was collapsing. For months I asked if he might let me take a look, and when he finally relented, I quickly realized that somehow, despite decades separating myself and the three sisters, these memories felt instantly familiar. These stories of Olga and Little Irina and Crazy Irina made real for me so much of my own family history, one that for so long has been incomprehensible to me and many of my friends.

I was born in Russia and was still an infant in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. My parents always recount the story of the first time they told me I needed to learn English because we would be moving to America. I was four years old and without giving it any thought, I defiantly shouted, no! I’m a Russian girl (not much differently than Little Irina when meeting Billy, the American evangelist in the Jewish nightclub.) But despite my opposition toward this place called America, we made the big move and I assimilated quickly into North Carolina suburbia. I became me, but with a limited understanding of what it meant for me to also be a Russian girl.

Most summers my parents would send me to visit my family in St. Petersburg and in Liepaja, Latvia to keep up my family relationships. No one talked about what it was like in the past, in the dark times before and during the breakup of the Soviet Union. I inferred what I could from books and whisperings here and there. Still, I hoped to one day, on my own, discover just a glimpse of what that world was like.

When Jeff first told me about Three Sisters, he said it was a memoir about his time in Moscow–the personal side. He said he had lost the book, encapsulated in a thumb drive, almost a decade ago. In quite the Russian fashion, as he will admit, he decided to leave it to faith, or sudba. If the thumb drive was meant to be found, then the book was to be read. When it was rediscovered, Jeff let me take a peek at the first couple of chapters. I couldn’t contain my excitement and demanded he share the full story.

Those first chapters transported me into the world of my parents, in a way I didn’t think possible. Jeff captured the Russian spirit so well and so honestly, I found myself constantly smiling and thinking, oh we are so mysterious…! And why wouldn’t we prefer to talk about the spiritual and morality instead of politics and personal lives? And that’s why my parents spent time selling goods in Poland, when they were getting one of the top educations in the Soviet Union. And that’s why we left.

I was immediately drawn to sister Olga — so tough and resilient, and yet so charming and beautiful. There is a higher sensibility and mystique to the way she conducts herself against the Soviet system and the chaos of her everyday life that I recognize in my mother and cousin, and our female family friends. Olga’s relationship with religion, being Jewish but wearing a cross, and Crazy Irina’s eventual adaptation of a nun’s habit as part of her job in a gentleman’s club, and all three sisters’ fascination with the American evangelist and his absurd mix of American optimism, Elvis and Christianity; I see why my parents never cared to speak about religion in our house.

Finally, I must say that I’ve never experienced an American expressing so much compassion and patience with learning about Russians and their culture. When Jeff meets Boris, a first generation mafia businessman controlling the north side of Moscow, he focuses not on his warehouse full of money, but on Boris’ own patriotism towards a new, non-Soviet pro-market Russia. In all the stories Jeff recounts, where he meets Russian people from all walks of life doing their best to cope with a new societal framework, he doesn’t seek to use these people to glamourize his own story or experience – he gives an honest and sympathetic account of their struggles and their triumphs.

When I finished Three Sisters, I found myself understanding more than ever what the options may have been for my parents’ generation. Receiving similar feedback from friends with whom I shared the stories, I urged Jeff to publish the book.

Three Sisters is a story of lost opportunities and yet, in the end, of understanding that the future of Russia was a challenge to be solved by the Russians themselves, whether the three sisters, the emerging class of oligarchs, the religious conservatives or other citizens in search of realistic Russian freedoms. Jeff’s eyewitness account is the most vivid I have read or heard and I am quite grateful for having the opportunity to peek through this unique window into the Russia of my parents’ time.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

Ekaterina (Kat) Khvostova

Washington, DC

Preface

Moscow Circa 1990

Imagine a world of too much freedom. Imagine having too many choices. Imagine foreign languages flooding the television. Imagine gangsters being the only ones making good money. Imagine your parents losing all of their life savings in a matter of weeks. Imagine your children enamored with another country and dreaming of leaving. Imagine your nation imploding from being a world leader to a supplicant for aid in a matter of a few short years.

Because of an invitation to witness the last rocket launch of the 1980s to the Russian space station Mir, I saw this unholy world. I became both an eyewitness and a participant in the desperate efforts by good people to live and thrive and understand their own world as their country collapsed. Three Sisters is the true story of what I saw.

The manuscript was finished by 1994. I’ve changed none of the opinions and occurrences from that time. I will add that the book was written far before the attacks of 9/11 when America became painfully aware of just how disliked we are in many parts of the world.

Yet, even in the early 1990s there were the signs of the troubles soon to come. For those of us on the American frontiers, in places like the Soviet Union, it was clear some of the world felt threatened by us. Not our music. Not our fashion. But from our relentless drive to install our values onto other societies. While so many Eastern European countries embraced much about the American way of life, other parts of the Soviet Union felt differently.

One can see in the pushback from my very special friend Olga, who introduced me to her life in Moscow. And with another of the three sisters, Little Irina, who ended up doing business for the Russian Church. And in the comments from the future oligarch Boris Anatolievich. From just about all of the friends in Olga’s circle there were the first signs in the early 1990s of the nationalism that has overtaken Russia today. It is my hope you can come to understand, as I did, just how wrong were the ambassadors of American religions like Billy, the Florida evangelist, who sought to change the very soul of the Russian people at their weakest moment. That Billy was in way over his head only made him more a target for those defending the Russian Orthodox Church from foreign invaders.

What I saw in Moscow at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how much the three sisters changed me, is the focus of this memoir.

Washington, DC

2016

Part 1: Olga’s Dream

1989-1990

Chapter 1: In the Jewish Club

There should be no uncertainty as to how we met. It was a chance meeting, I’m sure of that. She and a group of friends from a cooperative were celebrating the birthday of their boss. Cooperatives were part of that new experiment in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Russia, which allowed small organizations to buy and sell goods from non-government sources. And Olga Ivanovna Alekseyevna was just one of at least two dozen Russians enjoying life in the Uzbekistan restaurant on Neglinnaya Street. The place itself was nothing unusual. According to our guide Katyia this restaurant was one of several private clubs in the center of Moscow that were frequented by Jewish businessmen. What’s unusual about that?

We were discovered by the Russians that night because it was just about impossible to dine anonymously at a local Moscow restaurant in December of 1989, one far from the places frequented by the infrequent number of foreigners.

It is somewhat embarrassing to say now, but Americans were folk heroes to many Soviets in the early days of perestroika, the political reforms launched by Mikhail Gorbachev. Especially to the sort of businessmen who could afford to spend 300 rubles on a Thursday night, equal to the monthly wages of a full professor at Moscow State University.

It was uncomfortable being a folk hero for no reason other than the color of one’s passport. Mine was blue. Blue was a good color.

What brought me to Moscow at the end of 1989 was an invitation from a friend to observe the launch of a Russian unmanned rocket. A rocket known as a Progress was to blast off for the Russian space station called Mir, or peace. Onboard was a research project sponsored by a Boston company designed to learn if pharmaceutical drugs could be understood better in the microgravity of space. Given how NASA was grounded because of the space shuttle Challenger accident, my colleagues had turned to the Soviets and their newfound zest for capitalism for help. And amazingly, we were now in Russia for the launch.

Half of the overall delegation was in Moscow; the other half was at the launch site in Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Our days were spent at the Russian Mission Control meeting with officials and assuring all was in order at the launch site. In the evenings we timidly ventured into nearby restaurants. Our group included leading researchers and space technicians who were there only for the launch opportunity. There seemed little desire on their part to experience life outside the space program buildings or the hotel or the bus that took us from one to the other.

But in the evenings, the amount of drinking, and the friendly nature of the Russians once it was late, would usually lead to Russians inviting us over. The invitations had until now been declined by our delegation, since Katya, like every good Soviet, kept Americans away from unknown Russians. But on this night Katya, a distant friend of one of the company officers, had at some point disappeared with her boyfriend Gosha. And after my colleagues obediently declined the inevitable offer from the large table and at a civilized hour returned to the hotel, I accepted.

I can’t say I felt a new path would open in my life that evening. I simply was pumped up at being in the capital of the Soviet Union and didn’t want to return to the hotel. So I stayed in the restaurant, stayed to hear the Georgian music and accepted the invitation to join the large party at the center table. That’s all.

———————

Olga was sitting in the middle of the long table, and so we didn’t at first speak to one another. It was when I switched seats to be next to the boss of the group, who wanted the American next to him, that she took an interest. The boss was a tall, well-built man with bright blue eyes. He was seemingly pleased to have an American at his table, but then promptly ignored me, turning his back and resuming the serious art of drinking with his business friends.

But it was the woman who sat amidst the dozen empty vodka bottles and idly picked at the crumbs on the white tablecloth speckled with the hours of celebration that attracted my attention. With her long blonde hair, green eyes and thin, almost see-through black-lace blouse she was hard not to notice. But what struck me as I looked around the long rectangular table, at the drunken men and the laughing women was that this woman hardly smiled, and actually seemed honest enough to allow a look of boredom. Whether she was a hired escort for the night, as I had heard was common in Moscow, I couldn’t tell. But I knew I wanted to know more about her and the other people around the table. Here was a chance to see a glimpse of this foreign city, one I had seen only through the windows of our bus.

In the tiny free area right by the Georgian band, some of the Russians were now dancing in a way that reflected their own rigid world. The men barely moved and the women lacked any spontaneity, dancing with their arms rigid at their side. How different we were from one another I thought. Some couples even did the twist; the hit dance from the early ’60s. One man was different; he moved smoothly, almost in a rockabilly rhythm, swinging his arms from side to side, body bent over. His partner was a delicate angelic looking woman who had been sitting next to the beautiful blonde.

Leaning over the table I asked this unknown Russian woman whether she wanted to dance. With that quick almost arrogant nod of the head that I had seen from the powerful Russians in our space discussions, she declined. Instead she quietly began talking.

We be pen pals, would be nice, yes?

It was a quiet determination; she wanted to get to know this new man not because of how he looked or the Western suit, but simply because he was an American.

She had not been to America, though "I have traveled to Italy, Miliano, yes? But America, difficult to visit, yes you understand?

We teach each other English, yes?

I understand English, now. I answered with a stupidity I would wince at when I played the conversation back in my head.

The woman didn’t smile sweetly as did the other woman around the table. She wasn’t drunk.

Yes, of course, but we teach each other, isz nice for you. She spoke quietly while a businessman drunkenly pawed her left breast, an act she shooed away without so much as turning towards him or stopping our conversation. As a farmer might with flies.

We be pen pals, yes, she repeated. While pushing the hand away.

Pen pals. My view of pen pals is of a sixth grader in Idaho who writes to a convict on Riker’s Island in New York. Not a mysterious, sexy woman that appears as a mirage in the soup-gray world of Moscow.

I dream, my friends and me, we dream, she continued in that same serious way, of going to America. Yes, I tell you my big secret.

Maybe we meet (slapping the man’s hand as it disappeared under the table) tomorrow and I take you on a tour of (with a push of her shoulder the man slumped back,) Moskva. Yes, that would be nice?

I quickly accepted.

Good, she answered without a trace of a smile. I not spend time with America people but (pushing the drunk’s hand as it flung itself now over her right breast) you seem like nice boy.

She wrinkled up her nose. It’s no good to drink all the time, I am right?

She pushed the man away. He collapsed against his friend on the other side. Efficiently, she tore off a piece of a dark green restaurant receipt, which I still have in my desk drawer, and scribbled her phone number, and that of a friend, the one the rockabilly dancer was escorting back to our table, just in case I couldn’t reach her, and passed it under the table so no one would notice. That was not a major risk: most of the men were now semi-conscious, their heads on or under the table.

My name is Olga Ivanovna. She offered. I said her name aloud hoping to remember. In my brief time in Moscow I had discovered I lacked any skill for remembering Russian names. So I repeated her name.

The woman was not appreciative of my effort. She said her name again. "Olllga—Eeevannovna," with a richness impossible to duplicate.

So I tried again.

And again she was not pleased at my diplomatic effort.

Why you speak my name like peasant? She looked dissatisfied. You cannot say llll"; like many Yewish people. Then she sighed with regret at my inability to pronounce her name like a well-educated Russian, but gamely continued. I will teach you how speak like good man."

My inability to pronounce a word in Russian was because I was Jewish?

My friend is Irina Vasilievna. She nodded towards the dance floor. Tonight she drink too much, and dance as you know, but she good person and many powerful men like Irina.

The friend Irina had returned to the table and was tossing back a shot of vodka. Irina was tiny, with pale white skin and bright blue eyes that shone even in the dark of the club. And yes, many of the men were flirting with Irina and trying to get her to dance with them and not the apparent foreigner.

The men further from us at the long table were having another toast and round of drinks. This woman ignored all the commotion.

This is not good time for Irina; everything changing quickly for us. She shares my secret.

I tried to recall the secret, yes; she had said something about a secret, but what the secret exactly was had already been lost in my fogged head.

The foreigner, who had taken Irina back to the table, slammed down a vodka and let loose with an energy offensive to the dampened and drunken mood of the men around.

Good Lordy, good Lordy, he burst forth, head pointing high like Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, the-good-Lord-has–blessed-this-humble-servant. He was, without a doubt, an American. He shot me a quizzical look, sizing up whether I understand his outburst. Hey partner, he elected that I did, letting out of a laugh and throwing me his right arm. Names Billy. From Tallassee, Florida in the good old USA. Here to save a million souls.

I can tell you right now exactly how I reacted to meeting Billy from Tallassee. I turned away. It was not to meet an evangelist from Florida that I had broken from the delegation. I wondered what he was doing in the club; but then I realized that I had no idea why I was sitting there either. But I was in no mood to learn why he was in Moscow.

When I turned back the woman named Olga was gone. I waited, watching the American trying to speak with Irina. She didn’t seem to know English or was too drunk to speak. I tried to take in the scene. This was Moscow, 1989. What did these men do for a living? What did Olga mean about my speaking like I was Jewish? I half-saw the American stumble out of the club—dimly I realized it was getting late and I had better leave. But first I had a question. I pulled close to Irina.

Irina, I tried, where is Olga?

The angelic face looked at me blankly. Where is she? Irina only giggled.

I turned to one of the men. Do you speak English, does anyone speak English?

One of the men now trying to grope Irina answered. Soon, soon, we speak English, all people, here but not today, Mister American. More vodka, perhaps? You have such strong country, am I right?

Something very real was tugging at me. I sat in this club, this Jewish club, watching the men drinking, the women smoking, wondering where exactly was the restaurant, how I would get back to the hotel, why the businessmen were Jewish. Left to myself now, feeling terribly exposed, terribly alone.

Chapter 2: First Lessons from Olga

The next morning was a Saturday and for the delegation a day off. For the first time I was going to make a local call. Nervously I held the heavy old-fashioned phone. If someone else answered, I would hang up. If the woman asked anything about money, I would hang up. If it didn’t feel right, I would bow out. That’s what I promised myself. Then I dialed the number on the rotary dial. Nervously. Waiting.

Nothing.

Just a faint hum. A sign perhaps?

So I dialed again. Now there were all sorts of crackling, like a connection being made. Once, twice, a third time there was that short ringing beep, the kind you hear in the European movies. With each beep I grew more nervous and unsure.

Then a click, loud static and a woman’s voice. It was, I could tell with relief, the same voice as the night before.

Our conversation was difficult. There was the endless clicking, and static and an occasional intrusion from another conversation. Over all of this noise she calmly shouted that we should meet in front of the hotel, not inside. Russians were not allowed inside, I knew this—but now I heard the fear from a Muscovite towards even coming close to the lobby