The Russian Far East, when I first arrived in Vladivostok with my Peace Corps friends on Monday, July 10, 1995, was a chaotic place. The end of Communism a few years earlier had resulted in greater economic opportunity, increased political freedom, and improved access to Western culture and goods ... but also in increased crime, social disorder, and a gnawing sense that things were spinning out of control. It was a fascinating time for me to be there, but I'm not sure most of my Russian friends think back on those years with as much enthusiasm.
In any event, I thought, to kick this blog off, I'd share some of my most vivid memories from that colorful period. Like:
Although the 30+ volunteers who arrived that summer trained in the Vladivostok suburb of Artyom, after a few weeks four of five of us felt competent, one Saturday morning, to take the rattling old "elektrichka" urban train into the Vladivostok city center. Some of us, after all (though not me), had studied a semester or two of Russian in college and knew how to order coffee and ask where the bathroom was! We were (we thought) ready.
As the train came into the terminus — the Maritime Station, or "Morskoy Vokzal" — and we stepped off, a guy in his thirties came running up to me, fast ... waving a pistol in my face, and screaming in Russian. My friends immediately came to my aid by slowly stepping as far away from me as they could and watching me with expressions that could clearly be translated as, "wow, David, what did you do?" Eyes wide, I stammered to the guy (in English) my ignorance of Russian, and expressed in every way I could my absolute helplessness.
Frustrated, the guy yelled a bit more, then finally swore (at me? at God?), and ran off, still waving his gun.
My friends, their confidence and concern for my well-being help returning, coincidentally, at approximately the same speed as the guy moved away from me, stepped closer, and one suggested that, based on his understanding, there had been a thief of some kind (a pick-pocket, perhaps?) on the train, and the guy who confronted me was a cop of some kind, asking which way the criminal had gone.
Especially in a time where there were relatively few foreigners of any kind in Vladivostok — and even fewer who didn't speak Russian — I can only imagine the cop's frustration at coming upon an idiot like me. Though ... honestly, considering my shock and alarm at seeing that handgun waved animatedly in my face without any understanding of what was happening or what was wanted from me, I'm not sure I could have stammered anything productive out anyway.
Still, I managed to survive, somehow, shreds of my dignity surprisingly intact, and we had a good rest-of-the-day. It was quite a way to experience my first moments on the ground in Vladivostok, however!
Moral of the Story: Instead of "I like cheese," or whatever, perhaps the Peace Corps should have started my Russian language lessons off with "I think the criminal you're seeking ran that-a-way!" A phrase that is perhaps not quite as common, but when it's called for, you really want to have it ready to go. Hmm. It occurs to me that, while my Russian students and friends were happy to point out to me how much "richer" the Russian language was than English, I doubt they have a word for "that-a-way." Which language is richer now, hmm?
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