How many models were there for each car?
And, most amazing, how many different models of the different cars were produced every year? I did not have exact figures, but they seemed content with my enthusiastic generalizations.
I told them I had once owned a 1952 Chevy convertible.
“Really!” “How much did it cost?” “You didn’t need government permission to buy one?” To them it was all new and breathtaking. We discussed express highways and thoroughfares, which also intrigued them. How many were there in Washington? I had no idea. We talked about jazz music. Pyotr confessed that when he was a student in Moscow, he listened to the Voice of America every night and often danced with fellow students till dawn. We spoke about the Empire State Building, and the other skyscrapers that defined the New York skyline. The Russian word for “skyscrapers” was the verbal concoction skayskreperz, and every Russian knew it.
Most touching to me was our conversation about my family. They were astonished that my father was a tailor, a workingman, and my mother a housewife. How could I be a diplomat, working at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and my father a workingman? How could that be? I tried to explain that my job, translating the Soviet press, was not really important—it was way down on the totem pole of power and authority—but they didn’t believe me.
They were even more astonished when I told them that my mother and father owned their own home and their own car, and that it was not that extraordinary for a workingman to own his own home. Many did.
“How many?” Pyotr demanded.
“I don’t know,” I said. Pyotr smiled—he thought he had caught me in a fib.
“How many suits does your father own? One or two?” asked the bookkeeper.
“Five, I think.” They looked at one another with knowing skepticism.
“And how many dresses does your mother have?” asked Pyotr, the number one skeptic.
“I’m not sure, maybe five or ten.” Pyotr wanted to believe me, but could not.
The bookkeeper, somewhat flummoxed by my description of my family, which obviously did not fit his image of the oppressed American worker, decided on the spot that we should talk about Russia. Enough about America. And we should talk about Russian casualties and suffering during World War II. That, he hoped, would explain why most Soviet workers did not have their own home or car. “The ordinary people of Russia hate war,” he said soberly. “We want peace.”
It was time, I thought, for me to invoke Khrushchev’s call for “peace and friendship.” I raised my cup of green tea and toasted “peace.”
They all joined me.
The driver shot a hard glance at Pyotr. “Isn’t this better than hating Americans? Why can’t we just get along like this always? Why must we always be told about ‘inevitable war’”? He had not yet been told about Khrushchev’s new formula of “peaceful coexistence.” We all agreed that peace would be better than war, and we should all strive to achieve a world where “peace and friendship” prevailed.
That evening I noted in my diary: “I had a wonderful time today, and driving back I felt I had known these two men all my life. They were good people, who would much sooner get along with me than carry the torch of enmity.”
After dinner I walked over to Gorky Park, bought an ice cream cone, and sat on a bench, watching the people of Samarkand walk by. No more than a minute or two passed before two Uzbeks joined me. One was talkative, the other silent but clearly interested. They worked on a nearby collective farm. They came to Gorky Park almost every evening.
“Where are you from?” the talkative one asked.
“America,” I answered, and watched as his jaw dropped.
“I want to travel to America,” he said with excitement. “Now we can, you know. Now we can do many things we couldn’t do before.” He grinned with satisfaction. “Oh, things are much better now. Things are much better.” He repeated his last sentence, almost as if he was trying to convince himself that indeed they were much better.
I asked, “So you are now confident that things will get better?”
He answered, “They must. We cannot go back again. There have been too many going-backs. Now we must go forward to better things. The ‘pope’ is dead, and now things have to be better.”
He paused, and looked up at me. “Don’t you think so?” he asked in a plaintive tone.
“Of course,” I replied. “Of course.”
“Oh, God, I hope so,” he said.
His friend, looking at his watch, leaned over and whispered something in his ear. “Oh, I forgot,” the talkative one exclaimed, “we’re going to the movies tonight.” They both shook my hand, looked me in the eye and, with a friendly wave, left.
I had asked myself when I arrived in this historic city whether twentieth-century Samarkand could somehow match the allure of fifteenth-century Samarkand. My answer was no. The beauty of old Samarkand had an unmatchable allure, if it was fully restored, and the Russians were making a good-faith effort to do this. But the effort, in my judgment, would ultimately fail, because everything imposed by communism ended up being corrupted by the underlying injustice, arbitrariness, and cruelty of the system. Old Samarkand, even if restored, would probably look like an artificial tourist trap, a prop against the cheap reality of the new Samarkand.
It was a short plane ride from Samarkand to Bukhara, but it took me to a backwater town that was clearly not a priority concern for Soviet authorities. Why it had recently been opened to foreign tourists and diplomats was puzzling. It was not ready for prime time. If Tashkent and Samarkand could charitably be described as “Soviet” in appearance, a mix of old and new, Bukhara was only old, an apparently untouched relic of a much earlier time. Even the usually bright red communist posters urging fulfillment of the sixth five-year plan, which were everywhere, had already faded to a pale pink. The airport lacked a paved runway and the terminal building looked withered, hardly a welcoming mat for an arriving tourist. The road to the city was also unpaved, and the city itself was old and tired, like the donkeys that meandered through the central square. My hotel, the best in town, I was assured, resembled a large outhouse, or so I wrote in my diary at the time. The odor was oppressive, and the rooms felt cramped. None had a bathroom. Near the city center was an old mosque that had been converted into a pool room with three tables. Another mosque now housed the directors of the political indoctrination center.
If Peter the Great had been on my plane, he would not have been surprised by the city’s sagging skyline. I had the impression that not much had changed since 1717, when the ambitious czar sent his army to central Asia in an unsuccessful effort to conquer the Khanate of Bukhara. The Khanate, though backward, proved to be an agile and stubborn foe. Not until 1868, when General Konstantin von Kaufmann led the Russian army in attacks against both Samarkand and Bukhara, did the czar succeed in extending Russian power into that corner of central Asia.
In his book Eastern Approaches (published in 1949), Fitzroy Maclean, a Scottish writer, diplomat, and explorer, described Bukhara as an “enchanted city” whose edifices rivaled “the finest architecture of the Italian renaissance.” He had visited Bukhara in 1938. Could Bukhara have changed so drastically in eighteen years? I had my doubts. Maclean must have been a very generous guest, whose imagination was constrained by the requirements of British diplomacy.
The streets were dirty and dusty and ran in odd patterns. Women adjusted to the heat by wearing dark, heavy khalats, their faces hidden behind veils, their heads down. The men wore white turbans wrapped loosely around their heads. Everyone was going somewhere, and yet seemingly nowhere. I had hoped that Bukhara might be another Samarkand, but I was wrong. One was a city of promise, the other a city forgotten in the desert sun. The marketplace had none of the outdoor charm of the Samarkand market. Here the marketplace was indoors, functioning under three round, hollow stone covers, looking from a distance like three huge walnut shells placed upside down near the center of the city.