Eastern Block 91-2

Scenes from the Twilight of Communism

From Sept 1991 until Jan 1992 I left Australia to travel through the Eastern Bloc. My original intention was to catch up with relatives I hadn't seen since childhood, so it was only by accident that I stumbled onto the post-Glasnost upheaval. Frankly the purpose of the trip was to have a break between university and starting full-time work — not to become a European-History Primary Source (!)

All up I spent seventeen weeks in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and what was still the Soviet Union — experiencing first-hand "The Fall Of Communism", and deliberately avoiding gap-year clichés of London, Paris, Rome or any other part of Western Europe.

Needless to say it was a fascinating trip! To paraphrase David Stark, it was a moment when Eastern Europe "played Capitalism with Communist pieces", and when millions of formerly placid Socialists went completely berserk.

The following is an informal photo-diary of the visit. Further down I have also included personal vignettes, cultural references (songs and movies), plus a list of relevant books and articles.

Image Gallery

Click on any of the following thumbnails to view an image in greater detail…

Personal Vignettes

Budapest

• The decommissioned radio tower in Csepel, used during the Cold War to block radio broadcasts from the west.
• The hundreds of Gypsy street-vendors alongside the Danube, or inside every underpass or Metro entrance, selling amazingly shoddy goods (three banana chillies, a broken porcelain doll, a left shoe etc.)
• 10cm of show drops in an afternoon and all of Budapest is paralysed. Like it has never snowed in Hungary before, right?…
• Trying to shake off my (elderly) relatives so I can have more than five minutes alone.
• Every meal starts with an argument about me wanting to drink plain water: "Just water?" Yes. "Not coffee?" No. "Tea?" No. "Coke?" No. "Fanta?" No. Beer? No. "Wine?" No. "Pálinka?" No. "Er, would you like perhaps a little Málna-surp in your water?" No. "Just plain water?" Yes. "Like peasants." Yes.
• The Post-Com Magyar retail business model: first set up a used-car dealership; then sell fur coats and leather jackets; then TV's and video recorders; then (finally) confectionary and soft-drinks.
• For weeks on end the only time I see the sun is when the plane rises through the cloud over Ferihegy airport.
• Every time I re-enter the country (I had a one-year unlimited-entry visa), being asked more and more questions by customs officials until I was finally detained and interrogated at length. Lucky (?) I could speak fluent Hungarian…
• The Failure Of Contracts: Weeks wasted trying to get IBUSZ to book accommodation in Moscow for December. Eventually had to give up and fly to Warsaw over the weekend to book from there.
• A ninety minute trip to an outlying suburb to walk forever down a long street to find a US law firm which was not there. Then wandering through the corridors of the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement, then the US Embassy, then the Budapest office of Baker & McKenzie — all to obtain the Moscow B&M office address.
• BTW taking photos of Marines outside the US Embassy is unbelievably forbidden!
• Riding through the countryside in a Trabant with a couple of relatives. Who needs excess leg or elbow room? The mighty two-stroke engine had a lot of "oomph" as well (sort of).
• At the movies: (1) Fritz Lang's Metropolis — increasing anxiety-attacks over having to speed-read silent-movie title cards in Hungarian. (2) A forró porno-film — badly dubbed by voice actors who were obviously bored, shown on a standard TV in a darkened basketball court, seated on fold-up wooden chairs.
• Every time I was introduced as a visitor from Sydney, I'm greeted with: "Wow! Did you go to see Fernando?…" Instead of the soppy Abba song, it transpired "Fernando" was actually an obscure Hungarian yachtsman who visited Sydney in '91.
• The Failure Of Contracts: A month after I leave Hungary, IBUSZ apply pressure on my uncle and aunt to get them to pay an extra amount for the rail ticket I bought to travel to Czechoslovakia.

Moscow

• On just about every street corner in September, small groups of young men nervously gambling on shell-games or three card monte, on cardboard boxes or old suitcases.
• Opposite every lift entrance, the "little old ladies" knitting or reading on every floor of the Moscow Belgrade Hotel.
• The '70s era Pepsi vending machines which didn't dispense cans, just the liquid soft-drink. A few machines provided (amazingly soiled) perspex cups secured with a string, for others you had to bring your own cup.
• Bribing a waiter at the Moscow Hotel Ukraine so I could have lunch during a private WWII reunion. $US 5 got me a small table at the side of a dining room, and I spent the entire meal being stared and pointed at by veterans with medals (and pinned-up sleeves or deeply scarred faces). Приятного аппетита…
• Being mobbed by a dozen street-urchins outside the Hotel Ukraine. It started out friendly enough, but a dark-eyed girl reached down my jeans to grab my wallet, while the others grabbed my arms to stop me from fighting or running away.
• The plain-clothes policeman who ran towards us and fired his pistol into the air to make the brats scatter.
• Security guards outside the Moscow Baker & Mckenzie office, shouting and waving guns until I produce my Australian passport.
• The smell of diesel-truck fumes when walking along the main ring roads.
• Shop assistants using wooden abacuses to total purchases.
• The ice-cream vendors along the Prospekt Kalinina in the dead of winter. Any flavour you like so long as it was vanilla.
• A homeless man with a long matted beard silently begs a piece of pizza out of my hands.
• Muscovites always seeking me out for guidance when travelling on the Metro. As if I knew where we were, or where to go, or what the hell they were saying!
• December '91: some hotels run out of food, making you pay black-market prices until EU aid trucks arrive. For a week the city also runs out of foreign exchange. This closes banks to foreigners and makes traveller's cheques useless, so you have to change dollars via shady doormen, taxi drivers or miscellaneous characters in leather jackets.
• The realisation that a man alone with a Nikon is also a bulls-eye for prostitutes.
• The young bloke who followed me around one morning and kept insisting on buying my wristwatch/ camera/ boots.
• The famous State Tretyakov Gallery. I was hoping to see Kandinsky's, 1920's agitprop and Stalinist "socialist realist" works… but instead found two rooms of (boring) icons and not much else. It turned out the rest of the museum was closed for extensive renovations, for an entire year.
• At the movies: a spy-caper dubbed in Russian; the КИНО half-empty, teenagers walking around during the film, socialising and yelling at each other.
• The kindly taxi driver who dodged on-coming traffic and reversed 500m up a one-way road, at full speed, to get me to Sheremetyevo airport on time (!)
• Bribing a custom's bloke $US 5 so he would stamp my passport with his red "CCCP" exit stamp.

Warsaw

• The roads torn to shreds due to the never-ending Metro construction.
• The congress of nocturnal prostitutes 100m from the Hotel Marriott.
• As evening falls, hopping onto a bus to "get around town", and being driven out to an empty field and left there.
• The "friend of a friend" lady GP who did a house-call and treated me for Bronchitis, with a level of competence and friendliness unheard of in Australian white-coats!
• Every leather-jacketed male you pass on the street is a money-changer. They walk towards you, rub their fingers and quietly say "Change money, Change money…"
• The Failure Of Contracts: The Budzynska's endless arguments with their builders about the costs of refurbishing their new restaurant.
• The Failure Of Contracts: Buying an airline-ticket from a "friend of a friend" travel-agent. When back in Sydney, my credit card statement shows unauthorised forex transactions, so the airline has to issue a full refund. By then the Warsaw agent has disappeared, so the flight ends up being free :?)

Bucharest

• Train carriage interiors unlit due to an electricity shortage — plunging you into terrifying darkness between underground Metro stations.
• The supermarket in a housing estate with completely empty shelves.
• Old men and women outside cinemas selling small bags of sunflower seeds.
• In the University district just about every woman you pass on the street is drop-dead I-don't-believe-it gorgeous!
• While leaving the Metro, M&M stop to buy me a packet of cigarettes. I thank them, but tell them there is no need as I don't smoke. Am greeted by dumfounded astonishment: "But… But here all men smoke!!"
• Gate-crashing a funeral at an Orthodox church in a housing estate. Stayed for the entire thing. "Who was that guy who came to uncle Gheorghe's funeral?…"
• At the movies: A double bill of (i) a "mockumentary" of Ceausescu footage dubbed with animal and fart noises — completely ignored by the audience who talked loudly among themselves. (ii) the feature — some kind of "extended family goes on sunny holidays and eats themselves silly" farce. This time everyone watches in rapt attention.
• All the abandoned tower cranes in the city, making the place resemble an oversized graveyard with giant rusting crucifixes.

Brno

• The incredible number of artist's supply stores, more than Sydney!
• The "me-too" houses straining for attention beside the famous Villa Tugendhat.

Songs

The following pop tunes, in no particular order, were all over MTV Europe in 1991/2. Because radio was still under State control, Satellite-TV was the only (free) option if you wanted to listen to contemporary music.

BTW Depeche Mode were also hugely popular, despite being ignored by MTV. It was impossible to walk through a housing estate and not see "DM" graffiti everywhere, or hear their music blaring from an 8th floor teenager's window.

Movies

The following depict the locations and capture the mood of the times rather well:

Trzy kolory: Baily (1994)

The second of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three-Colours" trilogy. Features currency speculators; peasant land-millionaires; black market smuggling and Julie Delpy (sigh) in a "love gone bad" plot. Filmed in Warsaw during the '93 winter, it brilliantly captures the go-go/ get-rich-quick atmosphere of the era.

Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

A moody and serious film about the paranoia of the GDR before the Berlin Wall came down. The filmmakers made a serious effort to avoid anachronisms, so the architecture, fashions and cars are straight out of 1984.

The Russia House (1990)

Okay it's fluff and Michelle Pfeiffer is totally unbelievable as "Московская Женщина" — but it was filmed extensively on location in Moscow and Leningrad in 1989 and features a beautiful film-score by Jerry Goldsmith, with soprano saxophone by Branford Marsalis.

Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

Despite the wild anachronism of one its characters wearing a Matrix t-shirt (!), it's an affectionate satire on the After-The-Wall transition in East Berlin. Also features news and documentary footage of the era.

The Rise And Fall Of The Russian Oligarchs (2005)

Part One of this Canadian TVO/ Human Edge documentary focuses on the economic chaos in Russia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It also features a lot of contemporary (1991-4) news footage and interviews with the main political players.

Luna Park (1992)

A French-Russian co-production with skinheads, anti-semitism and criminal hijinks in Moscow during the Yeltsin Era.

Sunshine (1999)

A moody period-piece by István Szabó, shot in art-deco and communist portions of Budapest.

The Inner Circle (1991)

The other film Tom Hulce made. The first foreign production to shoot inside the administrative parts of the Kremlin and Lubyanka. Also features a few other scenes from Moscow (the Metro etc.)

Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)

Like its stable-mate Harrison's Flowers (2000), it deals with the darker side of the Eastern Bloc transition: the civil collapse and insanely vicious war in former Yugoslavia. BTW the savagery is explored even further in Savior (1998).

Entre chiens et loups (2002)

A trashy, poorly lip-synched French crime-caper, filmed extensively in Bucharest. The rusting tower cranes might be gone, but it's fascinating (and depressing) to see how little things have changed since '91.

What's next / corrections…

In time I may add a few more notes and links, but I don't plan on adding any more images as the current selection tells the story well enough.

BTW if you spot any serious errors or omissions, don't hesitate to drop me a note via my Feedback Form.