Chatting with Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski last week, we began to reminisce about lines.
Funny, since he was born in 1980 and almost didn't experience them in Poland -- at least not the way his parents and grandparents did.
He is descended from generations of school teachers (what does it mean that he became a journalist instead?!), and his grandfather was the director of a school. In Communist days that translated into respect. He was a good school director -- fair, open, reliable. And whenever rumors began to go around about some important, desirable product (refrigerators, electric stoves, you name it) that was about to arrive in nearby stores, his neighbors would come knocking on his door.
"Will you organize the queue?" they would ask.
This spontaneous, organized queuing was a constant across the Socialist bloc. Someone would keep a list, and according to that list of names a "line" emerged for desirable goods. Often supplemented by actual standing in line, this virtual queue needed a trustworthy leader, and Witold's grandfather fit the bill. He would try to refuse, but eventually give in to his neighbors' requests. His status in the community thus came from his official job, but also from his unofficial one.
I love teaching about queuing in my Russian literature courses. My favorite work is Vladimir Sorokin's The Queue, first published in 1985 in tamizdat, in Paris, and in Russia in 1992. The work is simply brilliant -- a long-running conversation with no dialogue markers to show who says what as people stand in a Soviet line, not even sure what they are hoping to buy. (There's a new, equally great novel by Olga Grushin called The Line: I see a future seminar topic!)
It reminds me of my roommate Barb back in Leningrad in 1987 who rushed into our dorm room one day shouting: "Canned pig meat!" "What?" we asked. Turns out she saw a line, got in it, and learned when she arrived at the front that she had earned the right to purchase canned pork. So she bought it. There was a line for it, so surely it must be a good thing...
I have a whole collection of images of lines (from the internet, where else?) that I like to use to teach about the concept. When I lived in Moscow, I often shopped at metro stations, where I would get into line at a kiosk such as this one (right). I would join fellow queuers who might be buying tobacco, but were more likely to walk away with bags of frozen pineapple from Vietnam, or an enameled teakettle. In the winter of 1988-89, that pineapple made up much of my vitamin intake!
During my first trip to the Soviet Union, I worked hard to negotiate line culture. The complications of requesting a certain amount of cheese, say, and then standing in the cashier line to pay for it, and then taking your receipt back to the cheese lady to pick up the food, made shopping exhausting. Especially when your Russian wasn't particularly fluent yet. But even in the late Soviet era, when more and more universams began to open [supermarkets, where you could take what you needed off the shelf], the concept of the line did not disappear. In fact, one of my very favorite memories of Moscow was of trying to buy a ticket to leave.
At the time I thought I was fairly insane, but now I wonder why I didn't have more such experiences. I might have become an anthropologist -- or a journalist! When my year in Moscow was ending, I wanted to meet my sister in Frankfurt, Germany. (We spent a fantastic month traveling together around Europe. But that is fodder for a different post.) I had the opportunity to travel to Budapest first to attend an International PEN conference (where I saw, and even met, such luminaries as Susan Sontag, Danilo Kis, Adam Michnik, Czesław Miłosz). I also had a considerable quantity of rubles sitting around my dorm room, and I wanted to use them to buy a plane ticket to Hungary.
I suppose I could have used the money to buy vodka, for example, by standing in a line like this one (left). But honestly, there had simply not been a lot to purchase for rubles while I was in Moscow that year. Romanian wine (which was very cheap, and very sweet); books, of course, and magazine subscriptions; Геркулес, or Hercules -- Soviet oatmeal. One time some unripe bananas from Cuba. A ticket to a Pink Floyd concert. (Yes, Pink Floyd, in Moscow -- I can't remember, I may have paid dollars for that ticket. Another story for another blog...) But I had my monthly stipend, plus some rubles I had made working as a research assistant for Zoya Boguslavskaya, who was writing a book on American women. (It later came out as a series of essays in the literary journal Iunost', or Youth.) And those rubles were burning a hole in my pocket.
Nowadays, with Aeroflot and related planes of the Russian fleet(s) falling out of the sky, I'm not sure why it seemed like a good idea to fly. But I didn't want to take the 37 hour train trip by myself, so I headed to the Aeroflot office near the Park of Culture metro stop.
Where there was a line. Remember, I was young, and I had never experienced anything like this. I tried to go into the building, but people there instead directed me over to a statue nearby. In the shadow of the statue, a woman in her mid-50s was holding a school notebook ... filled with names. She took mine, and explained the system.
I was to check in for the pereklichka, the "roll call," every four hours. If I wasn't there to answer and
get my new number, I would be stricken from the list. Gradually I would move up in the virtual line until I arrived at the door to the Aeroflot office. I hesitated, given that I did after all still have classes at my institute, which was a metro and a bus ride away. But then I thought of the easy flight to Budapest and settled in to wait. And wait. And wait.
We all left between pereklichki, but we all showed up on time again. Or at least most of us did. Bogomolova. Here. 948. Gelemanov. Here. 949. Brintlinger. Here. 950. And so on. We received a new number every time. I began to relish the moment when someone did not respond to his or her surname being called out. Shul'ts. Shul'ts. He's not here, cross him off! There was something of the bloodsport about the experience.
And it went on. For three days. Now I am delighted that I participated in this extremely Soviet ritual. I didn't need a refrigerator, and I couldn't get in line for an apartment or a car. (I didn't have that long to wait, anyway, I needed to leave the Soviet Union at the beginning of June.) But I was able to wait for the privilege of buying an airplane ticket, and I will never forget it.
The denouement? When I was finally able to enter the building three days later, I learned that a new protocol had arrived by telegram. No longer would Aeroflot sell airline tickets to foreign students for rubles except to their home countries. I was no longer eligible to buy a ticket. So I took the train.
Funny, since he was born in 1980 and almost didn't experience them in Poland -- at least not the way his parents and grandparents did.
He is descended from generations of school teachers (what does it mean that he became a journalist instead?!), and his grandfather was the director of a school. In Communist days that translated into respect. He was a good school director -- fair, open, reliable. And whenever rumors began to go around about some important, desirable product (refrigerators, electric stoves, you name it) that was about to arrive in nearby stores, his neighbors would come knocking on his door.
"Will you organize the queue?" they would ask.
This spontaneous, organized queuing was a constant across the Socialist bloc. Someone would keep a list, and according to that list of names a "line" emerged for desirable goods. Often supplemented by actual standing in line, this virtual queue needed a trustworthy leader, and Witold's grandfather fit the bill. He would try to refuse, but eventually give in to his neighbors' requests. His status in the community thus came from his official job, but also from his unofficial one.
 |
| Cover art for 2007 Moscow edition (Zakharov) of Sorokin's The Queue |
It reminds me of my roommate Barb back in Leningrad in 1987 who rushed into our dorm room one day shouting: "Canned pig meat!" "What?" we asked. Turns out she saw a line, got in it, and learned when she arrived at the front that she had earned the right to purchase canned pork. So she bought it. There was a line for it, so surely it must be a good thing...
 |
| Queuing for cigarettes? |
During my first trip to the Soviet Union, I worked hard to negotiate line culture. The complications of requesting a certain amount of cheese, say, and then standing in the cashier line to pay for it, and then taking your receipt back to the cheese lady to pick up the food, made shopping exhausting. Especially when your Russian wasn't particularly fluent yet. But even in the late Soviet era, when more and more universams began to open [supermarkets, where you could take what you needed off the shelf], the concept of the line did not disappear. In fact, one of my very favorite memories of Moscow was of trying to buy a ticket to leave.
At the time I thought I was fairly insane, but now I wonder why I didn't have more such experiences. I might have become an anthropologist -- or a journalist! When my year in Moscow was ending, I wanted to meet my sister in Frankfurt, Germany. (We spent a fantastic month traveling together around Europe. But that is fodder for a different post.) I had the opportunity to travel to Budapest first to attend an International PEN conference (where I saw, and even met, such luminaries as Susan Sontag, Danilo Kis, Adam Michnik, Czesław Miłosz). I also had a considerable quantity of rubles sitting around my dorm room, and I wanted to use them to buy a plane ticket to Hungary.
 |
| Queuing for vodka |
Nowadays, with Aeroflot and related planes of the Russian fleet(s) falling out of the sky, I'm not sure why it seemed like a good idea to fly. But I didn't want to take the 37 hour train trip by myself, so I headed to the Aeroflot office near the Park of Culture metro stop.
Where there was a line. Remember, I was young, and I had never experienced anything like this. I tried to go into the building, but people there instead directed me over to a statue nearby. In the shadow of the statue, a woman in her mid-50s was holding a school notebook ... filled with names. She took mine, and explained the system.
I was to check in for the pereklichka, the "roll call," every four hours. If I wasn't there to answer and
 |
| I learned the word pereklichka in stories about prison camps. |
We all left between pereklichki, but we all showed up on time again. Or at least most of us did. Bogomolova. Here. 948. Gelemanov. Here. 949. Brintlinger. Here. 950. And so on. We received a new number every time. I began to relish the moment when someone did not respond to his or her surname being called out. Shul'ts. Shul'ts. He's not here, cross him off! There was something of the bloodsport about the experience.
And it went on. For three days. Now I am delighted that I participated in this extremely Soviet ritual. I didn't need a refrigerator, and I couldn't get in line for an apartment or a car. (I didn't have that long to wait, anyway, I needed to leave the Soviet Union at the beginning of June.) But I was able to wait for the privilege of buying an airplane ticket, and I will never forget it.
The denouement? When I was finally able to enter the building three days later, I learned that a new protocol had arrived by telegram. No longer would Aeroflot sell airline tickets to foreign students for rubles except to their home countries. I was no longer eligible to buy a ticket. So I took the train.
Comments
Post a Comment