& Company
PHONES, COUPS, & TRANSFIGURATION
IN THE USSR
The Cates Tapes
Is The Party Over?
by Matthew-Daniel Stremba,
an item from 1991 published now again 15 years later
"Some men outside want to see you,
Mr. President."
Gorbachev reached for a telephone. Dead.
A second phone. Also out.
Scrambled to a third. Not a hum.
"Who are these men?" he asked.
EVERY SOVIET PAY telephone looks alike, whether in Uzhhorod or Bukhara, the same dingy dirty aluminum box. The coin slot, also different from Ma Bell's, is designed so the face of the coin faces you when you insert it, and sits there like the sun ready to drop below the horizon upon the right signal, which in this system is the ringee's answering at the other end. No answer, no need to sweat coin-return; it remains right where you set it, from whence you retrieve it yourself.
After this point, un-Soviet individuation sets in. If there are a thousand long-distance telephones in Kyiv (Kiev), there are a thousand different ways the connection is maintained and paid for. Once the initial 15-kopeck piece drops below the horizon, some phones will wait a bit before swallowing the next coin (which you must have hurriedly inserted upon the first one's disappearance); others will suck up one, two, even three before catching a breath. Some will pace their consumption—polite bites from start to finish. A few others will gorge themselves on the initial half-dozen and never require another feeding, allowing you to talk all night if you like. Then there are the bastards that take your three, four or six coins and then disconnect you from the ringee, but not the ringee from you. So you can hear the voice at the other end, but she can't hear you, doesn't even know you can hear her.
Never knowing which one of the thousand phone systems were to be at my disposal (for the same phone often did not behave the same from one night to the next), I regularly checked-in with my Cates from Kyiv (where I was for six weeks at the Mizhnarodna shkola ukrainistikiv). During the August coup attempt—a series of particularly urgent calls. Next pages—authorized tappings from those calls.
Our last newsletter out of Moscow, September 1991. This web-page reprints the text of that fifteen-year-old PLOTthickens.
MONDAY EVENING, 19 AUGUST 1991
[2006 ED. NOTE: This was the sixth and final week of my attendance at a summer course in Ukrainian organized in Kyiv for adults from all parts of the USSR and the world: Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Poland, Rumania, UK, USA, and Yugoslavia. My Bride, Barbara Cates, a consul at the US Embassy in Moscow, came down for my penultimate weekend in Kyiv, then Sunday she boarded the night train for Moscow, while I stayed on till the sweet end. Monday morning's news surprised us all. And I rushed to get in touch with Cates.]
SHE::
Hello?
ME::
Cates!
SHE::
Love!
ME::
How are you getting by?
What's going on in Moscow? Are you ...
SHE::
Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
ME::
Cates! Oh, Cates! You can't hear me???
SHE::
Hello? Hello?
ME::
Sh_t!!!
SHE::
Hello! Love?
ME::
Cates, you can hear me?
SHE::
Yes, yes. Oh, good to hear you!
ME::
What's going on there? Are you safe?
What's the Embassy doing?
SHE::
Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
ME::
Cates? Hello? Geezus! What a system!
What a country! Only 6 coins left!
SHE::
Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
ME::
Listen, Cates.... Oh, of course, she can't hear me.
I'll just try another phone.
SHE::
Hello? Hello?
ME::
Cates, sweetie.
SHE::
Love!
ME::
Are you all right?
SHE::
Yeah. So you've heard?
ME::
At breakfast. Then all morning. Gorbachev's ill and country's in crisis. All the Sovietologists among us were glued to radios and TV, scribbling notes, names of the emergency committee. When did you hear, Cates?
SHE::
On the train back from Kyiv this morning. The radio went on in the compartment like it sometimes does on the trains to wake you up. Right at 8:00, and it launched into the news, and I paid close attention since I was conscious of having been out of touch with world events while I was down with you in Kyiv. And there came this announcement, deadpan. The conductor, when she brought the tea, assured me I'd heard right. My cabdriver thought the coup was long overdue. I didn't tip him.
[PAUSE]
Love? Are you there? Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
ME::
Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead. Hah!!! Again, she can't hear me.
SHE::
Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
ME::
If she would only keep on talking. Ah, but she doesn't know I can hear...
SHE::
Love? Hello?
ME::
Cates? Listen, Cates. Listen. Quick. If we get cut off again, I believe my connection with you will continue, so just keep talking. I'll listen.
SHE::
Okay. So did you hear what I was saying about—
ME::
Right. So the word here at the school is that Gorby's under house arrest in the Crimea. Also heard there's a human chain of Gorby fans around his dacha. But one of the Americans here called her mother in the States who said some news media are reporting rumors of his death.
SHE::
Lots of rumors flying around and if the Embassy knows what's going on, it hasn't filtered down to the Consular Section. We're still getting CNN, though.
ME::
They haven't cut CNN??? From Moscow to Atlanta and back to Moscow again. Wow! What's it like on the streets?
SHE::
Pretty tense in the center. Lots of tanks. A column went by right behind the Embassy compound at lunchtime. Very noisy.
ME::
Right behind? Where exactly?
SHE::
Well, you know, the Russian Parliament is just over the west wall from the townhouses where our big shots live, so they've got front row seats.
The Bely Dom, Russia's White House was the seat of Soviet Russia's republic government. The Kremlin several miles away was the power center for the whole Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and that's where the plotters were organizing. Of the fifteen constituent republics, only Russia had the clout to resist. Now, in 2006, the Kremlin serves as Federated Russia's power center. As for the role of the Bely Dom today, not a clue.
ME::
And what do they see? What's going on? Isn't that a bit dangerous?
SHE::
Well, our Mila was down there at noon! With Gene, her 5 1/2 year-old kid! He just had to go see the tanks, y' know.
[2006 ED. NOTE:Mila was a former citizen of the Soviet Union who, once she was allowed to emigrate, met and married an American who, by a strange kind of fate, got a contract job with the US Embassy in Moscow; back in her old "home" country she too got work at the embassy, her background making her an excellent interpreter of the Moscow scene to her American colleagues.]
SHE::
Anyhow, the building is surrounded with tanks, and the tanks are surrounded by people. And the people are climbing on the tanks!
ME::
How's that?
SHE::
Mila says they've covered all the hatches and peepholes, so the guys inside can't see out. And they obviously have orders not to shoot. For now, anyway. They even put little Gene up on one of the tanks!
ME::
What?
SHE::
Yeah. They were standing by a tank and a woman says, "Give me the child," and up goes little Gene. Great symbol! There was an Orthodox priest there and an old woman cried out, "Father, help us." He cut her off, saying he was for the coup.
ME::
What about the rest of the city?
SHE::
People on the metro seem more lifeless than usual, though of course it's difficult to tell. Nobody's reading newspapers, 'cause there's nothing to read anyway. There is a notice from Yeltsin posted outside the Metro entrances, and people were clustered around reading it. I couldn't get close enough to read the whole thing, but he's calling for a general strike.
ME::
How about our neighborhood?
SHE::
Pretty normal here outside the apartment, except for the three tanks parked over by the bridge.
ME::
The bridge by Novospasskiy monastery?
The Novospaskiy monastery in quieter times before the putsch. Up until the Gorbachev era, this monastery had been closed to religious use. During renovations, some of which are visible here on the church cupola, a burial pit on the monastery grounds was by chance uncovered revealing corpses of victims of Stalin's repression.
SHE::
That's the one. We passed right by on the way back from church. There are little knots of people standing by the tanks. Looks like they're trying to talk the soldiers into resisting.
ME::
Which church?
SHE::
We went over to Novospasskiy for services. It's Transfiguration Day, you know. We'd been planning to go before all this anyway. But right now, especially, seems like the only thing to do is pray. Saw two soldiers lighting candles. One would like to believe they were there to find strength to do the right thing, but who knows? Things are looking pretty bleak.
A hazy view of the Novospaskiy monastery at dusk from our apartment. "Spas" is a shortened term linked to the religious event ikonized as the Transfiguration of the Lord. Novospaskiy, i.e. new Transfiguration, must have reference to an older monastery also named for this holy festival in August of the church calendar.
ME::
So there's no curfew in Moscow?
SHE::
Not yet. There's a lot of talk about it, but nothing yet. How about in Kyiv?
ME::
Here in Kyiv no one's enforcing any junta measures. People still assembling on the square, speeches. Except for the content, seems like any other normal downtown evening.
SHE::
No tanks?
ME::
Ah, tanks! This past Saturday morning, before anyone knew anything about any coup, half the school took a bus north to a museum outside Kyiv. I chose not to go. They all saw a column of tanks headed in the direction of Kyiv. But didn't think twice about it. In fact no one mentioned it till today when this news hit. "So that's what the tanks were all about" they said. "Tanks?" I said. "You saw tanks and never said anything?" Anyhow, no tanks in sight downtown. Poised somewhere in the suburbs, I guess. What's the news about the Baltics? The Bolshevik goons cracking heads there again?
SHE::
I wish I knew. There's been zilch about that on CNN, and I don't know if that's because communication to the Balts has been cut off or whether it's typical CNN just spending airtime promoting themselves and never telling you what you really want to know. Say, Love, you're still there?
ME::
Still here. The phone hasn't eaten any more coins since the first batch.
SHE::
So we can talk all night!
Novospaskiy monastery defines the horizon of the Proletarskaya district at sunset.
TUESDAY EVENING, 20 AUGUST 1991
SHE::
Hello?
ME::
Cates!!!
SHE::
Sweetie?
ME::
Lovey! Got 3 rubles' worth of coins. Let's see how long these last. Post Office was out of these 15-kopeck pieces yesterday. Listen, just saw Kravchuk on TV.
SHE::
Leonid Kravchuk? the head of the Ukrainian parliament?
ME::
Right He wants to know what's Gorbachev's illness. Says he had supper with the man just a day or so before the takeover. Says the whole world knew Bush's medical problems, so what's the secret with G's?... Cates, tell me. Is . . .
SHE::
Hello? Hello! Love? Hello?
Well, I guess I'll just keep talking on the assumption you can still hear me even though I can't hear you, OK? OK.
So, we've got a curfew here now; they just announced it on Vremya a few minutes ago. There are a lot of people over at the Parliament building. This afternoon we could see them all walking, at first just a few, then bunches, then it turned into a steady stream of them, all kinds of people, walking past the old Embassy building where we were interviewing visa applicants, trying to do business as usual, except in the circumstances it was difficult to believe that anyone who was going to the U.S. as a simple tourist rather than as an economic or political refugee would be applying for a visa at a time like this. Record refusal rate. Lots of mothers applying with children.
View of Yeltsin (anti-coup) supporters parading down Tchaikovsky street passing the US Embassy, where Cates and the rest of the consular staff continued their work. The crane is not part of the demonstration; much renovation had been underway in this old building when it caught fire, March 1991. Most staffers were moved into makeshift offices in cramped sections of the compound. The brand new embassy building around the corner was unusable in this time because of electronic listening devices found embedded in its very structural elements. The old damaged building still provided space for the consular and public-affairs sections.
SHE::
Anyway, it was an incredibly powerful thing, all these people walking past on their way to the Bely Dom—you know that's what they call the Russian Parliament building, the White House. What struck us was how varied these people were, a real cross-section of society, young and old. Most of them were walking quietly, with determination, although some of them were chanting, "YELTSIN!" "ROSSIYA!" or, for our benefit, "PRIVYET BUSHU," greetings to Bush. [ED. NOTE: A different Bush then; different feelings then, too.] And we were so proud of them: Finally, these people—both historically and in our experience so passive—are standing up for their freedom and taking their destiny into their own hands. And we were scared for them, too. Hoping and praying this wouldn't turn out like Tiananmen Square. There's something very powerful about being in the presence of people who are risking their lives for something unquestionably worth dying for. I get chills whenever I think of it. Tears even. Almost constantly today.... Love? are you still there?
[PAUSE]
Well, as long as I don't hear a dial tone I guess I'll keep on talking. Didn't take the metro home. Barrikadnaya Station had been closed earlier in the day, apparently in an effort to stop the flow of people over to the Bely Dom; I'd been worried about how I'd get home. When I was getting ready to leave I couldn't find anybody in the Embassy who knew what the story was. Fortunately I ran into Bubba, who had just been over at Barrikadnaya.
[2006 ED. NOTE:The years 1990-91 fit into a period when the U.S. Embassy "imported" many Americans as contract workers for tasks that in most other US embassies are done by local hires. At this time the US Government was not hiring Soviet citizens for these support jobs—drivers, mechanics, clerks, cooks, barbers, etc., because the Soviet government, in a hissy fit over one or the other usual sort of thing, had pulled out its citizens who had earlier worked there—a strange move, since having its own people on the inside benefited the Sovs maybe more than their support services benefited us. And Bubba, a man of many mechanical skills, was one of those contract hires, hailing from somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line.]
SHE::
Bubba said that metro station was open, but just too jammed with people headed toward the barricades. Bet that's one metro station they won't re-name! Since Bubba was driving anyway, he offered me a lift. We drove the long way around the Garden Ring Road because the road was completely blocked in the direction of our apartment, and they were turning all the traffic away.
As we neared our apartment, going clockwise, we could see a lot of traffic coming in the opposite direction, apparently away from the barricades. When we'd left the Embassy—at about 8 PM—they were expecting the tanks to storm the Bely Dom any minute. But so far either there's been no attack or the barricade s are still holding—CNN's not very clear on the point. The curfew takes effect at 11:00, but if fear of tanks won't budge those people, I don't imagine the curfew will.
[2006 ED. NOTE:Diplomats, their families, and these fresh American hires were normally housed in the embassy compound. But having to replace Soviet locals with Americans quickly filled the compound to the gills. We were among those installed into Soviet properties. We (and Bubba too) lived across town, five subway stops away, in the neighborhood adjacent to the Proletarskaya metro station. We were on the 12th floor of a 13-story building, but the 13th floor ostensibly had no apartments. What was on that top floor? The rest of the floors were populated by foreigners, of which the Americans and the Angolans were the most numerous. Our Americanized apartment, you could see, had once been three Soviet apartments.]
Another view from our 12th floor perch. The building across the way, though newer and shinier than ours, pretty much reflected the same boring block structure.
SHE::
Hmm, what else? Well, I guess that's it. Love you. Really glad you called, even though I couldn't hear you. You'll call again? Or pass a message through the Consulate in Kyiv if you can't get through to me? Take care. Don't get close to any demonstrations. Bye, love.
From that building across from us, did any agency keep us under surveillance? What value could we have been to them? Nevertheless, on sensitive and personal matters, we spoke with each other in brief code or we reserved a shielded conference room at the US Embassy.
WEDNESDAY EVENING. 21 AUGUST 1991
SHE::
Hello!
[Ding! Buzz! Crackle, crackle! Buzz! Ding!]
ME::
Sh_t! There goes the connection!
SHE::
Love? Sh_t.
SHE::
Hello? Love?
ME::
Cates!!!
SHE::
Love!
ME::
Where were you the past several hours?
SHE::
I just got in. I was working late, and then James and I went walking down the Garden Ring Road to see the barricades where the people were killed last night.
[2006 ED. NOTE:James, in his early 20s, was another of the contract workers hired from America. Speaking pretty good Russian, he worked the visa lines, interviewing visa applicants, and was reputed to be tough.]
Defenders of Yeltsin, holed up in the Bely Dom, rolled in and piled up all manner of goods and junk to forestall a quick assault by any military forces the coup-leaders might succeed in recruiting to their objectives.
ME::
We heard about people killed! What's the story?
SHE::
Well, we still don't have the whole story. One guy was crushed by a tank, and I think two others were shot. This was all right near the Embassy and our people living there on compound were afraid of stray gunfire, so they herded everyone out of their apartments on the compound into the gym where they spent the night on the floor.
ME::
Where exactly were these guys killed?
SHE::
Right on the underpass below Kalinin. The Garden Ring Road there is completely barricaded. About three or four, maybe five rows of trolleybuses parked sideways, smashed in, crushed, one of them very badly burnt.
Those lumbering blue trolleybuses, even without being torched or wrecked, could, once detached from their overhead power source, do quite a job slowing down any assault.
Here a yellow diesel-powered articulated "avtobus" has been thrown into the heap.
SHE::
Flowers, lots of flowers, stuck in the bus windows. Candles in front of it. Like a shrine. Also shrines on the pavement. Flowers and candles and icons there, too. And, of course, people gathered around them, looking and laying on more flowers and crossing themselves.
"Pilgrims" visit places made sacred by tragic death on a grimy roadway that descends under an intersection above. Scrawled on the wall is "Pomogi nam, Gospodi," which is "Help us, o Lord!"
ME::
So is it all over?
SHE::
Well, the rumors were flying fast and furious all day. People here still seem very cautious. When we were down at the barricades earlier this evening, one guy—claiming to be a leader of the resistance—got up on top of one of the trolleybuses with a makeshift paper megaphone and tried to convince the crowd to move the barricades to make way for rush hour traffic the next day, but the people just shouted him down: "Rano, rano!"
ME::
What? What'd they shout?
SHE::
"Rano." "It's too early." They were quite definite about it, and I've got to say I agree with them. I'm still not ready to break out the champagne.
THURSDAY EVENING. 22 AUGUST 1991
SHE::
Hello?
ME::
Cates!
SHE::
Hello! Love?
ME::
Cates, lots of people here at the school expect the full story from me because of you there at the Moscow Embassy. So what can I tell them today?
SHE::
The roads still blocked off in every direction approaching the Bely Dom. Still masses of people there, milling about, seeing the sights, savoring the victory.
ME::
With all the thousands of people we heard have been out on the streets and at the barricades, what about city services? Did you notice anything closed down, not operating? Anything that would reflect people's not being on the job?
SHE::
Not at all. Bread store's been open. Trash picked up. Not much lag time between trains. There was a long line outside the Soyuz-Pechat this morning; first time newspapers have been for sale since the coup.
ME::
We hear that the masses of people on the streets there amount to three-hundred thousand. Makes the demonstrations here in Kyiv look puny.
A Kyiv street demonstration. The Ukrainian lady's sign reads: "Russia has risen up. Ukraine, now you must rise up!"
SHE::
Nooo. We hear figures more like thirty thousand. In fact, I heard one Muscovite wondering out loud where are all the other people in this city of 9 million. Apparently more people have taken to the streets in Leningrad.
ME::
Is it true the junta members tried to escape and Yeltsin's people poured fuel on the airport runways to prevent their plane taking off?
SHE::
So where in the world would they be headed?
ME::
Cuba? Iraq? Libya? Can't you picture that Pavlov, the fat guy with the crewcut, disguised in some desert in a Yasser Arafat outfit?
[Ding! Buzz! Crackle, crackle! Buzz! Ding]
ME::
Hello? Hello? Gawd.
FRIDAY EVENING. 23 AUGUST 1991
ME::
Cates, should I be worried about getting out of here on Monday? Rumors have it Moscow's a closed city. No trains in. No planes.
SHE::
That may have been the case earlier this week. But it's normal now. And our visa applicants keep coming and you know they aren't driving in. I'll look forward to your coming back. I wish you could've been here to see it. You know, the Russian people have really done a good thing!
ME::
I hear you. One Ukrainian patriot down here, apparently also impressed with the Russians' triumph, and impatient with Ukraine's delay toward some dramatic move, was hanging up a sign that declared: "Glory be to Russia, but none for Ukraine!" A few Ukrainians, interpreting this more as an imperial insult rather than a goad, got into a scuffle with the guy. I watched until they finally understood one another. But I got to say, the sight of all those people on TV shouting over and over again: ROSSIYA! ROSSiYA! is a bit unnerving to me. And I don't imagine I'm odd in hearing what may again become the historic sounds of empire and arrogance. People chanting—
SHE::
You know who was in that crowd?
ME::
Hmmm. Lessee. Not Lou Carr? Barney Farnham? Jim Doyle? My sister?
SHE::
Get serious. The teachers from Tatiana's school! Your colleagues! They were all at the barricades Tuesday night.
ME::
Tatiana, too?
SHE::
No, she had just flown in from the US with the students who were part of that international West Side Story production. Coming in from the airport Wednesday night, they passed along column of tanks heading out. Talked with her yesterday. They had offers to remain in the States till things cooled, but the kids really wanted to be with their families.
[2006 ED. NOTE:"My colleagues," Cates says. Tatiana was a thirty-ish Soviet citizen who long chafed under all the restrictions on individual drive to get ahead, and when Gorbachev's perestroika made possible initiatives like starting up private schools, Tatiana was one of the first to put one together in space she rented from a regular school, and to begin making major contacts with westerners who had connections with American and British institutions, with English educational materials. One public-school system in Pennsylvania whose educators had been befriended by Tatiana found a way to ship to her school stacks of cartons heavy with old textbooks. Some parents enrolled their children in this new venture and paid tuition in a kind of barter, making xerox copies of school texts in lieu of monthly fees—the xerox copies, of course, coming out of some Soviet institution's budget. Then everybody but Tatiana et ali were state employees. I was one westerner who made a small contribution by volunteering some of my time to be the staff's native speaker who offered some courses in American literature, and even in religion!]
SATURDAY. 24 AUGUST 1991
ME::
Lovey! Listen!!! They've done it! The Ukrainian parliament this evening declared its independence!
SHE::
They did? ... Wait! There it is!
CNN is announcing it this very minute! My husband scooped CNN!
ME::
And the Party's over? Is it true Gorbachev put the commies out of commission?
SHE::
Yep. Yep. You've got it.
ME::
Wow! Now what about our apartment? If the Party's out and the KGB's being leashed in and Lenin's about to be buried, is anybody bugging us now?
SHE::
Yeah, right. Is anybody listening to us now?
ME::
Gee, this could be a lonely last four months in—in—in... Cates, is it still the USSR?
[2006 ED. NOTE:The location of our Ukrainian studies in Kyiv was the Communist Party School, where functionaries used to be sent for greater indoctrination. It had a very good cafeteria, a well-stocked canteen, and its high-ceilinged reception lobby was graced with the biggest head of Lenin you've ever seen. Fixed to the wall behind the Head were gold letters spelling out an oft-cited quote from Lenin regarding the Party's noble function in Soviet society. On my last day there, I noted that someone had managed to get high up on that wall to rip out Lenin's declaration, Russian word by Russian word—only holes remaining from the bolts. However, the Head still scowled in the center of the hall. Where would that be these days fifteen years after?]
