Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

then. Russian hotels have room service but not at such hours. If you have your own

thermos bottle, room service can fetch you hot coffee and a cold breakfast the night

before. (They’ve heard of thermos bottles-the word is the same-but the hotel won’t

have one.)

Keep iron rations in your room and carry food and drink on long flights and

train trips. Both trains and planes often stop for meals but you can’t count on it

and usually can’t find out in advance.

Minor Ways to Improve Your Score: Go for walks without your guide; you will

usually be picked up by someone who knows English-but you will never be picked up

while a guide is with you. This is your chance to get acquainted and to get answers

which are not the official answers. Don’t talk politics-but these venturesome souls

may ask you political questions and you can learn almost as much by the questions

they ask as by raising such issues yourself.

Your guide may not be a hardshell Communist; he, or she, may open up once he

thinks he can trust you. If so, be careful not to mention anything even faintly

political when others are in earshot, especially the driver. The driver may be a

political chaperone who knows English but pretends not to. More than one guide has

told me this and all guides talk more freely when no one can overhear.

In this country children are brought to Moscow and decorated for having

informed on their parents. Never forget this.

When you are shown a party headquarters, a palace of culture, a stadium, an

auditorium, or such, ask

when it was built. We discovered that, in the areas not occupied by Nazis, many of

the biggest and fanciest were built right at the time Americans were dying to keep

the Murmansk lend-lease route open.

There is new brick construction all over the Soviet Union. We asked

repeatedly to be shown a brick yard, were never quite refused, but the request was

never granted. We have since heard a rumor that this is prison labor and that is why

a tourist can’t see something as unsecret as a brick yard. So try it yourself- you

may merely prove to yourself that Intourist exists to keep tourists from seeing what

they want to see, rather than vice versa.

Offer your passport to casual acquaintances; they will usually offer theirs

in return-internal passports. Intourist people have been coached to deny that such a

thing exists but everybody in the USSR carries one and the owner must get a visa to

Page 181

go from one Russian city to another. It is a brown book with “HAC11OPT” (passport)

on the cover. Try it when your guide is not around.

The USSR is the only country in which we were never able to get into a

private home. Other tourists report the same but one couple from Los Angeles almost

cracked this; they said to their guide, “Why can’t we see the inside of one of those

apartment houses? Are you people ashamed of them?” The next day they were shown

through a not-yet-occupied one.

This could be varied endlessly, as it works on that Russian basic, their

inferiority complex. The key word is “ashamed”-simply asking “Why?” gets you

nowhere. I think it could be used to get into farms, schools, courts, factories,

anything not a military secret. It tops my list of things I wish I had thought of

first.

In meeting anyone, including guides, try to use “democracies” as an antonym

for “Communist countries” as soon as possible-drag it in by the heels, i.e., “I

think all of us from the democracies earnestly hope

for peace with the Communist countries,” etc. The much abused word “democratic”

means “Communist” in Russia and it always introduces a propaganda pitch. If you deny

him his definition by preempting the word, you leave him with his mouth hanging

open, unable to proceed.

We got tripped on this several times before we caught on.

The official list of things you must not photograph is short but the

unofficial list is long and ranges from old, broken-down buildings to old,

broken-down women sweeping the streets. You can photograph such by having them