NA ULITSE
OUT & ABOUT
IN RUSSIA AND UZBEKISTAN

"I tried reaching you by phone, but no one answered."

When you have occasion to say that to a Russian-speaking person in this part of the world, s/he may explain s/he was "Na ulitse," which means s/he was outside, not necessarily out in the street. Literally, "na ulitse" means "on the street," but even folks in some backwater with no paved roads will tell you they were "na ulitse" getting a breath of fresh air.

The conversations collected here (excepting the very first one) began and ended outside, and sometimes that was indeed out on the street.

1. A Soviet Classic Endures

SCENE: The collective consciousness of Soviet children and their heirs since the early 20th century. It's a classic telephone conversation done as nursery rhyme.

SOURCE: Collected Works of Korney Chukovsky (1882 - 1969).

[The translation below is prose aiming only for content.]

"Who's calling?"
"The Elephant."
"Where're you calling from?"
"The Camel's."
"Well, what's on your mind?"
"Chocolate."
"For whom?"
"My boy."
"A lot of chocolate?"
"Oh, say, five pounds
Or six.
More than that he won't eat.
My boy's still just a little thing."

2. Real Soviet Youth March Forward.

SCENE: Ascension Hill, Yekaterinburg, Russia, the EARLY Soviet period. The new Komsomol monument has just been installed on the plaza between the street and old Ascension church. The Bolsheviks have already turned the church into some kind of museum. The church, the plaza and monument on one side of a street, renamed Karl Liebknecht, while on the other side sits the house of Ipatiev, where the last ruling Romanov family was murdered in 1918, which at this time is also a museum. The Komsomol monument consists of two young Communists, a brawny male, a trim female, striding forward as if in parade, Ascension church to their backs.

SOURCE: Lore found in Uralskiy rabochiy (The Urals Worker), 7 December 2002, dramatized here.

One local:
Well, will you look at that?

Other local:
The new monument?

One local:
Yeah. Those two youths, just look at them — the future of our great socialism, and — heh, heh — it looks like they're coming out of church. Like they've just said a prayer or two. Ain't that a scream?

Other local (dropping to a whisper):
Tsk-tsk, better keep such jokes to yourself.

3. Cuba and Sverdlovsk Oblast Meet

SCENE: Yekaterinburg, the Soviet era, when the city was known as Sverdlovsk. Fidel Castro is touring Russia and comes to the region. Grand street parades. Throngs of tovarischi.

SOURCE: The new weekly, Gorod E!, 23 April 2004, p. 4.

Local men:
Fidel, Fidel, this too is your home!

Local women:
Fedya, Fedya, you're the best! We love you!

Fidel (arriving at a Sverdlovsk heavy industrial plant, its furnaces roaring):
Hot like Cuba in there.

4. Nixon and Sverdlovsk Chat

SCENE: Sverdlovsk, the Soviet era, post-Stalin, a factory site. Richard Nixon touring Russia comes to the region. Grand street parades. Throngs of tovarischi.

SOURCE: Gorod E! 23 April 2004, p. 4.

Plant Supervisor:
Mr. Nixon, if you wouldn't mind, please show us now that iron curtain you keep talking so much about among yourselves over there in America.

5. Real Soviet Youth Suffer Indignities

SCENE: Yekaterinburg, Ascension Hill, December 2002. The monument of the Komsomol pair striding forward, as if in parade, still stands on the plaza in front of old Ascension church, which now these days, over ten years after the collapse of the USSR, rings once again with Orthodox worship. Across the street, on the site of the infamous Ipatiev house, destroyed on official orders back in the 1970s, there rises up the new Temple Over The Blood. The Komsomol couple are regularly besmirched with paint tossed by vandals about the age of the pair depicted.

SOURCE: A reconstruction from Uralskiy rabochiy (The Urals Worker), 7 December 2002.

One local:
Well, will you look at that?

Other local:
That old monument?

One local:
Why, it looks as if they've just been to a service in Ascension church and are now headed for yet more liturgy over at the new church.

Other local:
Tsk-tsk, how you talk. Pity the poor Komsomol veterans.

One local:
Pity! Let them move the damned thing to some godless spot if they can find one.

6. The Ice Melts

SCENE: The Prud, i.e. central city pond in Yekaterinburg, March 2003. Though early spring, in the Urals it is still late winter. Two hand-lettered signs on the banks of the wide pond carry on their respective monologues.

SOURCE: Both signs signed by one Petrov; Stremba's journal entries.

First Sign:
The ice is thin, man. Go to bed with your wife. Sleeping with a water fairy is very slippery.

Second Sign:
Go on, man, step on this thin ice and either the crawfish or the bream will gobble you up.

7. Taxi Talk "A"

SCENE: Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 2003. MDS has just picked up a custom-ordered Formica top at Parkent Bozor. Wrapped, it looked like a large picture. Its heft, heavier than a picture. Across the street, gypsy cabs and one real cab. MDS heads for the real cab, a Tico.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

MDS:
Would you be interested in a fare to the ostanovka khudozhnikov?

Taxi-driver:
Sure. Where are you from?

MDS (seated in cab):
My Russian gives me away, eh?

Taxi-driver (driving and talking):
Just a bit of an accent, though I am sure you are some sort of Slav.

MDS:
What makes you take me for Slavic?

Taxi-driver:
Your eyes. A dead give-away.

MDS:
You don't say? Well, yes, my grandparents emigrated from the Carpathians. Arrived in America, end of the 19th century.

Taxi-driver:
You're American!!! How unusual. Americans, I had always thought, are not very talkative. Another sign of your Slavic roots.

MDS:
You're Uzbek, yes?

Taxi-driver:
Actually not by ancestry. I am Arab!

MDS:
Arab?

Taxi-driver:
I am from Arabs who've been in Uzbekistan for a thousand years.

MDS:
No wonder you found American clients not talkative: these days we're particularly afraid of Arabs.

Taxi-driver (gesturing with one hand):
Not to worry. Ah, is this where I turn?

8. The Lady Prays

SCENE: Outside Kupets supermarket, Yekaterinburg, December 2003. A lady in drab clothes stands by a post in the posture of a beggar. MDS slips a Russian bill into her open hand.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

She:
Oh, that's too much money.

MDS (making up grounds for her to accept easily the donation):
My mother wants you to have it.

She:
What's your mother's name?

MDS:
Mariya.

She:
What is your name?

MDS:
Matvey. And yours?

She:
Natalya. I will remember your names: Mariya; and Matvey, a good Russian name. I will pray for you.

Middle-class Russian lady (just then approaches and hands over a ruble note and whispers a name),:
Lyuba.

She:
Yes. Lyuba. I will remember.

[Later, at home I tell the Bride about it.]

The Bride:
Wow, the woman's running a streetside prayer service!

9. Taxi Talk "B"

SCENE: Yekaterinburg, January 2004, in a taxi on way to English teachers' seminar.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

MDS:
How well do you remember your school days?

Taxi-driver:
I remember some.

MDS:
How about literature? Which American writers did you read in translation?

Taxi-driver:
American literature?

MDS:
Yeah, like Edgar Allan Poe. Would you remember which Poe stories were taught?

Taxi-driver:
Look, I trained to be a hockey player. Some of the best hockey players in the USA and Canada are from the Urals region. And here I am, driving a cab.

10. Albert Sings a Song or Two

SCENE: Yekaterinburg, January 2004, corner of Engels and Gogol streets.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

Young Man:
You wouldn't know how to get to Bolshakova street, would you?

MDS:
Unfortunately, no. Bolshakova, mmm -- what street is it near?

Young Man:
Where are you from?

MDS:
Would you believe I'm from here?

Young Man (smiling at the improbability):
No, no. You've a bit of an accent.

MDS:
What's your guess, then?

Young Man:
Swede?

MDS:
No.

Young Man:
Hungarian? Armenian?

[The US Consulate and its flag flies just behind them less than half-a-block away.]

MDS:
I'm from America.

Young Man:
You are??? [Here he removes his glove and thrusts out his hand] Let me shake the hand of a real live American. Merry Christmas!

MDS:
Merry Christmas to you too! Have you been to church?

Young Man:
Uh, actually, I am Muslim.

MDS:
You? What's your name?

Young Man:
I'm Albert. Let me shake the hand of a real live American.

[They shake a second time, not the last time.]

MDS:
Tatar, yes?

[MDS remembers having met Tatars named Albert and Robert]

Young Man:
No. I'm Uzbek.

MDS:
An Uzbek named Albert!!!

Young Man:
My father was a mathematician. Loved Einstein [pronounced Eyn-shteyn], so he named me Albert.

MDS:
How long have you been in Russia?

Young Man:
Since the Soviet era. My father moved us here when I was a child. Let me shake the hand of a real live American. Listen. Americans speak English, right? Listen. My English is not good, but I've learned this song. Tell me if I have it down just right.

[He proceeds to sing some unfamiliar pop song in unfamiliar English.]

Young Man:
How about this other song?

[Here he grips the American's arm preventing his drifting away and starts up once more. MDS begins to worry that consulate security will see this local, his grip on him, and interpret it to be some kind of trouble for the American, and then take measures that might end up in an Uzbek getting hauled away for booking.]

MDS:
Hmmm. Who sings it?

[He mentions a group that's completely off the American's mental horizon.]

Young Man:
How about this one?

[He starts up another undistinguished tune.]

MDS:
Listen, Albert. Gotta go. Keep up with those songs. Salomat bo'ling!

11. A Poor Soul Thirsts

SCENE: Karl Liebknecht street in Yekaterinburg, February 2004. Just up from the kiosks selling girlie magazines.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

Bedraggled guy (halfway between a grin and a smile):
Could you spare a few rubles?

MDS:
How much do you need?

Bedraggled guy:
Just enough to get a beer.

MDS (to self):
Wow, bless him! Such neat honesty. Begging for a beer.
(To him) Here you go.

12. A Babushka Crosses To The Other Side

SCENE: The corner of Karl Marx and Roza Luxemburg streets in Yekaterinburg, February 2004. A Brit and MDS are waiting to cross Roza, busy as usual. Also waiting is a babushka. Has she been at the Church of the Exaltation just a few blocks behind them? There is no light at this intersection. Have to wait for a gap in the traffic.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

MDS (to the Brit):
Okay, looks good to cross.

[The Brit and MDS step out, but the old lady, they see, is much slower, and the next throng of vehicles is barreling down with no sign of slowing up, so the expats slow down to the babushka's pace to create a critical mass. Who would dare run over three bodies? Just then, a car making a left turn out of Marx onto Roza wants to take advantage of the very same fast disappearing gap and honks impatiently for the three pedestrians to move it.]

Babushka:
That's the way it goes. These drivers think they own the roadways.

[MDS hears a favorite theme --- goddamn drivers --- so he slows down to listen to her.]

Babushka:
Why, once a car turning like that came so close its mirror struck my side. Driver rolls down his window and gives me grief. Can you believe that? He's giving ME grief. I made like I was going to let him have it once with my purse, but he drove off. Of course, I wouldn't have hit him.

[The right arm on which her purse hangs is, she reveals, really pretty much an empty sleeve.]

Babushka:
Lost my arm in the War.

[Something of her arm must have remained since the coat sleeve holds the purse from sliding to the ground. The three ease around a car that sits on much of the pedestrian walkway.]

Babushka:
Just look here. Cars park wherever they want. We can't even have the sidewalks. [She stops and looks directly at her companion-pedestrians.] You don't understand a word of what I'm talking about, do you?

MDS:
About 60 percent. If it's no secret, how old are you?

Babushka:
Born in 1922. Here in Yekaterinburg. But who was Yekaterina to me? I spent my most productive years in the city we called Sverdlovsk. Now we get old Yekaterina back once again.

MDS:
Are you Orthodox?

[He's still wondering if she was indeed coming from the church just two blocks other side of Roza. A pious lady with attitude?]

Babushka:
I guess I am. I'm Russian, am I not? But in the good old days I was a card-carrying member of the communist party. . . . . . .

[She seemed to be enjoying herself, talking on and waving her armless sleeve. Did she mention the Bogoroditsa (i.e. the Mother of God). Had her rapid Russian included some Bolshevik blasphemy? Another babushka farther ahead suddenly stopped in her tracks and turned as if to see who was mouthing such stuff.]

MDS:
What is your name?

[And she tells them Margarita Aleksandrovna; they tell her their names, and bid her farewell at the next corner.]

13. The Church Exudes Warmth

SCENE: By March 2004, the newest church in Yekaterinburg has not paid its heating bill this season. This is the Temple Over The Blood, a monument to the Tsar and his family killed on that site, as well as to all the martyrs of Russia. The heating bill comes to about a million rubles ($25,000).

In February 2004, the Sverdlovsk Heating Works sent its men to turn off the supply. At that time the clergy in charge pled for extra time, saying they were near to finding a benefactor who would come up with funds. The utility representatives themselves worried that the terrible cold then could indeed cause tremendous damage to an unheated building, and so relented and gave a one-month reprieve, which the clergy promised would surely be enough time to satisfy the debt.

Now it's March and the bill still stands unpaid. The Heating Works men reappear to do their job.

SOURCE: Reconstructed from an article by Yulia Pesotskaya in Vecherniy Ekaterinburg, Wednesday, 17 March 2004.

Reporter:
Iced-over manhole covers ring out as they're yanked opened. In the dark beneath lurk pipes and valves the Heating Works men must deal with. A priest, with several church security guards, comes and stands in the way of the agents of heat.

Father Aleksandr (announcing):
We've recently found a benefactor who's been apprised of the church's plight and he will very soon pay everything that's owed.

Reporter:
The Heating Works men look at the priest, then at the security guards, their appearance speaking eloquently of their being ready for anything.

Sergey Yefimov (Heating Works deputy director):
Well, then, what are we to do now? Get into a fist-fight?

Father Aleksandr:
Look. Think of the paintings inside, and the relics. You turn off this heat now and they'll suffer irreparable damage.

Reporter:
Walkie-talkies are chattering up a storm, the church security men summoning back-up. A cell-phone squawks.

Father Aleksandr (waving a cell-phone, voice raised):
His Lordship the Archbishop is on the line!

Reporter:
The priest's cry sounded much like what you'd expect if the Second Coming had occurred.

[Mr. Yefimov listens to the Archbishop for about five minutes, never gets in a word, then returns phone to priest.]

Mr. Yefimov:
Well, they've got the means to settle the bill, they only lack the mechanism by which they could assign payment to the Sverdlovsk Heating Works.

Reporter:
This is related to the question of whom the sacred complex really belongs to. The church and its monumental functions is somehow part of the oblast budget. The oblast administration had this church built. It seems not quite clear, at least for many taxpayers, how much of its operating expense will be publicly funded. All the time this bill has remained unpaid the oblast council has been in recess, not scheduled to convene until after 20 April.

[Days later.]

Yefimov ("with unconcealed joy"):
I can announce that half the bill has been paid and the remaining half will come within the week.

[P.S. While the heating season in Yekaterinburg normally goes into April, employees at the US Consulate can attest to the fact that the radiators, cooked by same central heating works, actually kept warm into early May.]

14. A Shtick Shtuck In Russian Reality

SCENE: Anywhere, Russia. Anytime, since the invention of the telephone. A classic telephone conversation.

SOURCE: Oblastnaya gazeta, 17 April 2004.

The Caller:
Hi, where are you now?

The Called:
I'm right here. And who's calling?

Caller:
It's me. And who is it I've just reached?

15. The Commandant Greets His Men

SCENE: Morning of Victory Day, 9 May 2004, 1905 Square, Yekaterinburg. Military units stand at attention up and down the plaza. The commandant, braced with straps in an open military vehicle, stands plumb straight as he is driven from one unit to the next.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

Commandant:
Vas pozdravlyayu s Dnyom pobyedy.

Soldiers in unit:
Oo-RAH! Oo-RAH! Oo-RAH!

[Vehicle takes commandant to next unit]

Commandant:
Vas pozdravlyayu s Dnyom pobyedy.

Soldiers in unit:
Oo-RAH! Oo-RAH! Oo-RAH!

[Vehicle takes commandant to next unit, and so on.]

16. Taxi Talk "C"

SCENE: Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 2004, Amir Temur Square. Before the Uzbeks erected Tamerlane on his horse, this spot saw a succession of monumental tenants: Marx, Stalin, and Governor-General Kauffmann. A real cab, a Matiz, sits in a row of taxis just across from Amir Temur by the Hotel Uzbekistan.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

MDS(settling into seat right of driver):
A café not far from here, Navoiy street. I was planning to walk there, but I'm worried I'll be late for friends who are waiting.

Taxi-driver:
Ah, it's the man with the Slavic eyes. Remember me?

MDS(a bit of a pause, then):
Yes! You picked me up by Parkent bozor.

Taxi-driver:
About a year ago.

MDS:
And you are descended from Arabs who've been in Uzbekistan for a thousand years.

Taxi-driver:
And you were carrying a large picture.

MDS:
Ah, the Formica top. You're driving a newer car now.

Taxi-driver:
This is the model they replaced the Tico with. But don't take that for a sign that times are good; the economy is awful. Most folks who have any work at all are earning only a tiny wage. Yo, a city like Tashkent, so much potential, yet so poor.

MDS:
Ah, I know, I know.

[The American quietly adds another bill to the fare-money he's clutching.].

MDS(changing tempo):
You know, this is the first time I've ever met a taxi-driver a second time.

Taxi-driver(easing to the curb):
Surely, there will be yet a third time.

MDS(getting out at café):
A fourth time, I hope! Salomat bo'ling.

17. Taxi Talk "D"

SCENE: Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 2004, intersection of Kunaev with Osmon Nosir Street, a seeming taxi stand, a good walk from the Taras Shevchenko monument. This conversation like all of them proceeds in Russian.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

MDS:
Are you a taxi-driver?

Man:
The car's a cab, but I'm not a cabbie.

MDS:
I need to get to the Urals Airlines office.

Man:
How much?

MDS(getting in):
Shouldn't that be my question?

Man:
Two-thousand soums. [Starts the drive.]

MDS:
Two-thousand! Why, that's what I pay to get all the way from the north end to way out past Beruni, to the Urological Center. Urals Air is just down that way, a right, a left, and then just before you cross the bridge. 1,500 would be more than generous.

Man:
Well, you aren't Russian for sure. Russians don't haggle that way about money. Where are you from?

MDS(changing momentarily to Uzbek):
I am Uzbek, of course.

Man:
Yeah, right.

MDS(back to clumsy Russian):
Been living in Russia, forgot all the Uzbek I ever knew.

Man:
Uh-huh. Where exactly in Russia?

MDS:
Yekaterinburg.

Man:
Ah, Sverdlovsk.

MDS:
Forget Sverdlovsk. Bolshevik name. Old. Obsolete.

Man:
You can't be Russian. Russians wouldn't talk that way.

MDS:
And that Sverdlov, what a criminal! And, can you imagine! His monument still stands, to this very day, in the center of the city. A monument to a criminal!

Man:
You definitely are not Russian. No Russian would ever say such things. You're Latvian, aren't you?

MDS:
You guessed it.

Man:
Figures.

18. Oleg Holds Forth

SCENE: Tashkent, May 2004. On board streetcar number 6, traveling with Oleg to the tramstop called ostanovka khudozhnikov.

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

Oleg(waving a soum note at the conductor and restraining MDS):
No, no! I'll pay, I'll pay.

MDS(waving his own soum note at the conductor, fighting Oleg for the right to pay for both of them):
Bet this is the first time the conductor's ever seen this kind of behavior.

[It's not unusual to see conductors cajoling or threatening riders to pay up what amounts to a 14-15-cent fare.].

Oleg(on foot now, walking with the American, slowing down to look back at the tram stop):
Let's see. You go from there across to here, straight . . . . I suffer from topograficheskiy kretenism. Me and Hitler [which Oleg pronounces, of course, "Geetler"] and Columbus.

MDS:
Topograficheskiy kretenism?

Oleg:
It's a psychological problem — someone afflicted with it can't get himself oriented — getting lost for him is easy.

MDS:
Columbus had topograficheskiy kretenism?

Oleg:
He set out for India, didn't he? And where'd he end up? And all he really needed was a compass. And you know, it wasn't till Columbus came back to America that Europe and the rest of the world became infected with syphilus and grape fungus.

MDS:
GRAPE fungus?

Oleg:
Syphilus and grape fungus. American diseases.

[And MDS quietly wonders how Hitler's topograficheskiy kretenism manifested itself. Just then a cart and horse roll by, the rider crying out for bottles. A bit farther along the way, two countrywomen scream what milk products they're selling.]

Oleg:
Oy, such noise.

MDS:
For me that's music. I spent a day taping those cries of hucksters. A way of life gone from America now.

Oleg:
I suppose you like the crowing of a rooster.

MDS:
More music, yes.

Oleg:
The best rooster is a rooster separated from his guts. That's a line from Yesenin. A great poet.

19. Taxi Talk "E"

SCENE: Tashkent, June 2004, on the road to the airport in a black Volga. (This American failed to get a picture of the vintage car. Next time. Next time in Tashkent. Then we'll install a photo of it right here.)

SOURCE: Stremba's journal entries.

Taxi-driver:
I didn't always work as a cabbie. Only started doing this to supplement my pension.

MDS:
What did you do before you retired?

Taxi-driver:
Built half of Tashkent. I was a construction engineer. Back in the 1980s, Rashidov [General Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party] wanted very much to build a grand convention hall, wanted to host the Communist Congress in 1986. Well, in those days, Moscow controlled everything. But he finally got his way, and building got underway in 1985. I was the chief engineer. We worked on that thing night and day, and by 1986 it was ready for the Congress. It's the Culture Palace of the Friendship of Nations — you must know it.

MDS:
I do.

Taxi-driver:
Well, in those days, you were rewarded for a job well done, but not with money. Sometimes with carpets, or a refrigerator, even an apartment. Now, I'm not Russian, I'm not Uzbek. I'm a Crimean Tatar, and there's Rashidov himself sending word, wanting to know what I needed. He was that happy the project was finished in time. Me, need anything? I said, I have an apartment, a wife, a job. What else is necessary? They asked me, how about a car? Well, having my own car was always my dream, but even if you could get the money together, you couldn't just go out and buy a car. Big-ticket items were so scarce. And what they were offering me was simply the opportunity to get to the head of the line for the next car in the showroom. Gave me an official piece of paper from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. Went to the auto-salon, and there I saw a nice black Volga sedan. Can I have that one? I asked. They glanced at the paper from the Centcom and must've thought I was some big cheese on the Committee and said right-a-way: sure. Well, it was priced at 16,000 Soviet rubles. Went home and put the word out to all the relatives, one of them a nephew who was more excited about the prospect of a car in the family, more excited than me. Dyadya Sergey, he said, we'll get the money together. And he did. He and another. They came up with what I needed to supplement my own savings. And I bought the car, my first ever.

MDS:
How long did you keep that car?

Taxi-driver:
Why, you're sitting in it.

MDS:
Wow, that's almost 20 years. How many kilometers on this thing?

Taxi-driver:
Over 450,000. Drove this thing to the Crimea and back.

MDS:
Wait'll I tell my wife about this Volga.

Taxi-driver:
She'll be wide-eyed.

MDS:
Dyadya Sergey, do you ever think about repatriating to the Crimean homeland?

Taxi-driver:
How old are you?

MDS:
Will be 63.

Taxi-driver:
Well, that makes us contemporaries. Therefore, "Dyadya" won't fit here. Moving to the Crimea? That's way more than I can afford. Shipping all your goods there, to say nothing of the cost of building a home there. No, home is here in Tashkent, for better or for worse.

MDS:
Ah, here we are. Can I call you next time I need a taxi?

Taxi-driver:
Here's my number. Call me next time you're in Tashkent. We'll talk more.

20. Lenin Endures

SCENE: Lenin, presiding over 1905 square.

SOURCE: Gorod E! 25 June 2004, p.9; and also Stremba's journal entries.

V.I. Lenin:
All that we have achieved shows that we rely on a power that is the most miraculous in the world — the power of the working class and the peasant.

Servant of God Olga:
Your Grace, our city carries the name of Saint Yekaterina.

The Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhotursk:
Yes, the good name of Saint Yekaterina.

Servant of God Olga:
And yet in the very center of this city named for Saint Yekaterina there stands that big old idol, the Lenin monument. Are there plans, Your Grace, to remove it and build something holy on that spot, if only a chapel?

The Archbishop:
What you wish would certainly be better and I approve of it. But it'd be necessary for more requests like yours to be put to city hall from many other citizens before they'll take that monument away.

V.I. Lenin:
All that we have achieved shows . . . .

Grigoriy Mazaev(chief architect of Sverdlovsk oblast):
To remove Lenin just to build a church would be no different from what we used to do once upon a time — razing a church to install Lenin.

V.I. Lenin:
. . . we rely on a power that is the most miraculous in the world —

Tourist:
". . . the power of the working class and the peasant," mmmm. Bye-bye, Mr. Lenin.

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