A Leningrad Stroll Reveals Familiar Urban Woes

Natasha, 22, is an ambulance attendant who lives and works in the Soviet Union’s No. 2 city, Leningrad. This city of 5 million, like any of the world’s big cities, has its share of urban problems. And Natasha, with her ear-to-the-ground sort of job, is regularly exposed to the drunken brawls, assaults, vehicle accidents, rapes and homicides that any metropolis experiences.

What took her by surprise one day was the appearance of a strung-out looking young man who approached her ambulance while her co-workers were busy elsewhere. Natasha studied his bloodshot eyes as he attempted to make small talk. The idle conversation was soon dropped when he made his purpose clear: drugs. Illicit narcotics are hard to come by in the Soviet Union and here was a young, attractive woman who had access to a veritable treasure chest. Natasha brushed off his offers to sell what she had; she was a bit frightened by the man and besides, she knew how tightly narcotics inventories are controlled.

Drug problems may be nothing new in Paris, London or New York. In the Soviet Union, however, the existence of such social ills is downplayed, almost to the point of denial. But as much as officials and the media emphasize that drug abuse, unemployment, homelessness, homosexuality and acquired immune deficiency syndrome are pernicious symptoms of the oppression and decadence of capitalism, Soviet cities are not immune--neither to the problems nor their causes.

Since the 1917 Revolution, the government has been quick to emphasize that unemployment and poverty are endemic to the capitalist system. These two issues, say Soviet spokesmen, have been effectively banished as the opportunities and equality of socialism changed the society. Leaders like to brag, in fact, that the last unemployed person in the Soviet Union “finally” found a job in 1929 and ever since that comrade’s search came to an end, the country has enjoyed full employment.

Moreover, citizens are told that not only is every able-bodied person guaranteed a job, but that there is a genuine shortage of labor. Beyond these official claims, the reality is a bit different, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s government is beginning to acknowledge. Now the government indulges in a certain amount of self-criticism and issues mandates for improved performance. Not counting the “parasites” who supposedly refuse to work, Gorbachev’s policies emphasizing efficiency and reform have created “temporary displacements” in the economy--unemployment by any other name. The general secretary himself has questioned the need for five persons to perform a task that three could accomplish.

As rigid, inefficient and corrupt government ministers and managers lose positions to Gorbachev’s “young” technocrats, as slothful and absentee workers are told to shape up or be dumped and as attempts to catch up technologically with the Americans and Japanese bring turbulence to Soviet society, the rolls of the unemployed will lengthen. While the figures do not compare with the millions unemployed across the United States and Western Europe, the Soviet Union in 1986 appears to have more in common with its capitalist rivals than the Politburo would care to admit.

And there are other not-so-obvious things to see in the Soviet Union. Strolling off the beaten track in Leningrad--as opposed to walking along the main boulevard, where a church has been converted to a museum of modern industry--you may find a fully functional place of worship.

In front of one such church an old, toothless and hunched man was panhandling. Giving him 50 kopecks (about 65 cents) brought a responsive smile and a heartfelt “thank you.” Within minutes, however, a police van arrived and hustled him off to join other unfortunate individuals--men for the most part--at a city shelter for the destitute and homeless. A recent, locally produced television special focused on the itinerant and alcoholic men who wander the streets of Leningrad. As the camera panned the faces of the bedridden, it was easy to imagine the scene coming from a shelter in New York, Chicago or any other large American city.

In the media coverage of life in the United States, problems of poverty and the homeless are so magnified that the average Soviet thinks first of soup kitchens and people sleeping on streets atop cardboard mattresses when he considers life in a typical American city. The Soviet system boasts of providing a roof over everybody’s head and free medical care. Perhaps. Yet there was that sad little fellow with bloodshot eyes, begging for alms outside the church. Homosexuality is another issue that is not supposed to live in the Soviet Union. One young, educated party member was visibly taken aback when asked about the plight of gays in his country. “We don’t have any here,” he replied. “It’s against the law.” Soviet law decrees that homosexuality is punishable by an eight-year prison term. Yet in bars only a short distance from the popular Leningrad State Circus, gay men meet over drinks.

With the infusion of tourists in many Soviet cities and the significant, if minority presence of resident homosexuals, AIDS has arrived in the Soviet Union. Despite claims to the contrary from a high-level health ministry official, victims are being treated for the disease, even though individuals risk criminal prosecution for “unnatural behavior” if they come forward to report contraction of the illness. Among other indignities, each AIDS patient is required to list and identify all previous sex partners.

Considering the magnitude of similar problems in the United States and that America leads the world in murder rates, U.S. citizens have no reason to be smug. Many Soviets now admit to serious urban problems. The growing candor of the Gorbachev era is likely to expand such admissions. Yet an attitude that “it doesn’t happen here” still persists and, when Soviets discuss troubles in the capitalist world, that attitude is dominant.