Commentary : What a Difference Glasnost and Perestroika Make

Repeat visitors to Moscow, returning for Sotheby’s auction of Soviet art, are likely to note striking changes initiated by glasnost and perestroika (restructuring). The bureaucracy may seem as willfully sluggish as ever and the city appears to be the same ungainly mix of oppressive modern buildings and charming old ones, overwhelming stretches of concrete and wooded parks that amble on forever. But the place feels different.

Six years ago when I entered the country, a passport agent looked me over so intensely that I thought I would melt into a puddle of humiliation. This year a similarly stiff youth simply demanded, “What is your name?” and stamped my passport. I steeled myself for the customs inspection, remembering the agent who opened each suitcase and examined every page of every book I had packed. But this time the inspector couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. He opened nothing and asked no questions.

No metered cab was waiting, so I made a quick deal with a free-lancer who wanted cigarettes but settled for $10 to take me to my hotel. Checking in promptly, I found that the whole thing--including a wait for luggage--had taken less than two hours, compared to nearly twice that in 1982.

Apart from soaring prices for lodging and food, the most perceptible changes are in the people. Cab drivers who speak some English tend to chatter away, crack jokes and drive like madmen, but there are those who stare at you stony-faced and refuse to honor a request for a ride, even when uttered in Russian.

Mean, lumpy matrons still guard the Metro entrances and exits, but some of the KGB types who served as hotel floor supervisors have been replaced with attractively dressed young women who smile and say, “I am at your service.”

The same handsome young fellows still introduce themselves as “businessmen” on the street and offer to buy your clothes or change money, but they take rejection cheerfully. When I asked a man for directions to a Metro station, he took pains to explain carefully, throwing in a few words of English and wishing me a nice stay in Moscow.

Experiences like that lead one to overlook the usual frustrations of traveling in the Soviet Union and to accept a 30-minute wait in line for an ordinary ice cream cone as entertainment. Change is in the atmosphere.

This remains a city of contrasts, however. Just before Sotheby’s opened its exhibition, four women were at work on the carpet, three with vacuum cleaners, one with a straw broom.