Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

complex when faced with free citizens of the western world, especially Americans.

The questions they ask most frequently are: How much money do you make? How big is

your house? Do you own an automobile? Each one is a dead give-away.

So if you make it clear that Intourist service is contemptible by free-world

standards, a Russian may want to take a poke at you but he is much more likely to

attempt to restore face by meeting those standards. The rest of the picture has to

do with socialist “equality,” another example of Communist semantics, because in the

egalitarian paradise there is no equality, nowhere anything like the easy-going

equality between an American taxi driver and his fare. In the USSR you are either on

top or underneath-never even.

An American does not fit. Some Soviet citizens react by subordinating

themselves to the tourist; grandmothers sweeping the streets will scurry out of your

way, taxi drivers will rush to open doors, porters and waitresses and such are

servile in a fashion we are not used to. But an employee of Intourist is in an

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indeterminate position vis-à-vis a tourist. Dominant? Or subordinate? It must be one

or the other. Often there is a quick test of wills, then an immediate assumption of

one role or the other depending on how the tourist responds. For example, we were

met in Kiev by a guide who gave his name as “Sasha.” I asked his surname; he told me

quite arrogantly that there was no need for me to know it.

We had been in the USSR several weeks and I had had my fill of arrogance; I

told him bluntly that I was not interested in his name, that I had asked out of

politeness as practiced in all civilized countries-but that

if good manners were not customary in his country, forget it!

An American or other free man might have given me a rough answer or icy

silence; he did neither, he groveled. When he left us at the hotel he thanked us

effusively for having been so kind as to talk with him. His manner was cringingly

servile.

I don’t like servility any more than the next American-but if there is going

to be any groveling done it won’t be by me. Nor, I hope, by you. In dealing with

Intourist people you will often run into situations where one of you must knuckle

under-and many are much tougher cases than this man. It will be a clash of will and

all too often polite stubbornness won’t be enough to get them to honor your

contract-then you need to model your behavior after the worst temper tantrums you

have seen Khrushchev pull on television; this they understand. In the USSR only a

boss ever behaves that way; therefore you must be entitled to Red Carpet service.

The Intourist functionary knows you are just an American tourist, to be frustrated

and cheated, but his conditioned reflex bypasses his brain; a lifetime of

conditioning tells him to kowtow to any member of the master class.. . which you

must be, even though his brain tells him you are not.

It usually works. In a bully-boy society often nothing but bullying will

work.

The “Coupon Game”: When you arrive you will be handed a lot of documents in

exchange for your tour voucher; one will be a book of meal tickets, four coupons for

each day. For Luxe class their values are twelve rubles for a breakfast coupon,

twenty for a lunch, three for tea, thirty for dinner. If you and your spouse have

contracted to spend a month in the USSR, your meal tickets have cost you one

thousand dollars (3 Dec 79-Kremlin rate $6,080.00-World free-market $12,343.00)

(281/2 oz. of gold). The gouging starts here, because Diamond Jim Brady and his twin

could

not eat a thousand dollars of Intourist food in a month. Intourist eateries range

from passable to very bad. Hotel Berlin in Moscow is perhaps the best but even it

would have trouble making the Duncan Hines list. There are three or four good

restaurants in the Soviet Union but their prices are very high and they won’t accept