Please Don't Eat the Babushkas

Whenever the Schecter family would have friends over to their Moscow apartment, they would turn their record player up full blast to foil the bugs that they assumed were planted around them. As Steven C. Schecter '78 recalled in an interview last month, this paranoia "even lingered when we first got back. We were secretive in talking about certain things, but gradually loosened up." After two years of inhibition, the Schecters did indeed loosen up--enough to to produce a book that seemingly leaves no stone unturned in its recollection of their Russian experience.

The book is not, as the blurb boasts, "one of the most revealing, informative, and insightful books yet written about contemporary Soviet society..." It focuses squarely on the experiences of an American family, and only examines Soviet society insofar as it is perceived through their eyes.

The Schecter family's story deals in detail with the personal aspects of daily life in Moscow. They report that from the second they arrive in the Soviet capital the family felt the oppressiveness of the Soviet bureaucracy. When they are finally given an apartment after waiting week for an opening, the family finds itself at the mercy of UpDK, the organization which supposedly handles the needs of foreigners--Leona Schecter had to bribe the UpDK carpenters with an agreed amount of vodka to get them to repair her apartment. While most Soviet citizens sincerely sing praises of communism, like the carpenters they are never ones to spurn the occasional niceties of capitalism that may float their way.

The descriptions of the differences between Russian and American consumerism are striking. The Schecter children report that adults in Russia repeatedly begged American students to bring them felt-tip pens, a rare commodity in Russia. American liquor is viewed as an important status symbol. Soviet stores are perpetually out of merchandise. It seems at times as if all of Russia is standing in line for one thing or another. On the other hand, children in Russia eat red caviar on black bread for breakfast. Overall, the Americans had to do considerable adjusting to survive in Russia.

In Moscow the Schecters became accustomed to a permanent element of secrecy in their lives. The transition from American to such a hushed atmosphere where they were constantly under suspicion was perhaps the most difficult adjustment for the Schecters to make. Leona, Jerrold Schecter's wife, remarks at the end of the book, "We could see it in the children. They had acquired the veneer of little Russians, reticent to speak freely and openly with people we didn't know well...trust became reserved, finally, only for the family." In an interview last month in America, Schecter described this element of secrecy as "something you accept. It's not a real extreme paranoia, but it becomes an accepted element in your life. It changes you, because you become much more closed and protective. It's kind of scary." This scary alteration Schecter observed in his family's behavior ultimately reduced their stay in Moscow to only an arms-length experience of Russian life.

The book does not, however, plow through one grim aspect of Soviet life after another; these are interspersed with light-hearted vignettes and pleasurable memories. The children in particular relate their stories with good-humor, almost bordering on blissful naivete. Katie's list of "what they have in Russia" includes on the Yes side "kvass, chocolate, prune soda pop, long lines, and the Kremlin," and on the No side "Band-Aids, gum, felt-tipped pens, comics, and Coke."

Stylistically, An American Family in Moscow has considerable problems. It is obvious that the father is the journalist in the family; his writing is far superior to the other's. The mother often uses awkward construction and sometimes misuses words ("the fulsome trees hide the drabness of the gray stone city sitting squat on its giant plain.") The younger children write clearly like children throughout the book. Although they complained to their mother years after the publishing about the immaturity of their prose in the book, their literary freshness is usually charming and always forgivable.

The Schecters began to compile their book about a year after returning to the United States. They never kept diaries, but simply recollected their own"individual stories for the book. As a result, this book sometimes suffers from a lack of coherence. At times, it seems to wander on like a formless series of recollections, with only arbitrary divisions between paragraphs and chapters. In this sense, An American Family in Moscow is not a book at all, but rather a loosely joined series of memoirs.

The value of this book's subject matter, however, is sufficient to compensate for its shaky literary organization. Despite the difficulties that the Schecters experienced in penetrating Soviet society, and perhaps because of them, this book is valuable as a record of first-person accounts of the Soviet experience. It goes beyond the standard platitudes about the Soviet Union to provide at least a frustrated peek at Russian life.