Stuck in Russia
Evan Gershkovich’s story is chilling for those of us who almost didn’t get out
“They arrested Gorbachev.”
The Soviet driver muttered this over his breakfast of muddy kasha in the same disinterested tone as someone might have said “they’re out of cucumbers at the grocery store,” or “the bus is running late.” Bothersome? Sure. Troubling? Not really. Another leader deposed. Another autocrat in the pipeline.
Same dog, different leash.
Except that for me and my American colleagues who had been shooting a sort of Michael Moore-esque exposé of industrial pollution in Siberia, the detention of Russia’s first liberally minded leader could have meant that, soon, we too might be arrested. It was 1991 and certain parts of Soviet society had turned sour on Mikhail Gorbachev’s experiments in “Openness” and “Restructuring.” And so, on that day in August, the old Communist guard rose up, seized the First Secretary at his dacha on the Black Sea and threw him in prison. News and information programs on TV were cancelled. Swan Lake played antiseptically over the old Soviet boob tube.
We soon learned that all our hotel reservations had been cancelled as had all our interview appointments. The driver fired up his van and instead of continuing around Lake Baikal as planned we started…
