Absent for the Coup

IN LATE JULY 1991, I did something that, back then, was simply unheard of — I went to Israel for three weeks. It was not just that this was only my second trip abroad, but the fact that it was to Israel, which until recently had been considered one of the Soviet Union’s worst enemies. It was also the country many of my relatives had departed for in past years.

The Holy Land was a place to which a Soviet Jew might be able to emigrate, but visiting it was something you could only dream of. Now I was going to Israel as part of a group of Jewish teachers to study the history of the Holocaust. There were still no planes from Moscow to Tel Aviv, but there was a flight departing from Latvia, which already no longer considered itself a part of the Soviet Union. So our group set out for Riga.

The bedding we were given in the sleeper car was “single use,” so every time someone turned over there was a loud rustling noise. In the morning, one of the passengers said pensively, “It was just like being unemployed in New York, sleeping on newspapers, using newspapers as covers.” It was hard to tell whether this was a joke or he really believed that New York was full of people sleeping on newspapers.

At the Riga airport, we had to stand in line for six hours to check in. The line consisted of several categories of people — Israelis who were returning home after visiting relatives, Soviets flying to Israel to visit relatives (and, undoubtedly, investigate their own prospects, should they decide to leave), former Soviets departing for their new homeland, plus our group (whose members were also just as interested in visiting relatives and investigating prospects as they were in studying history). There was a chubby boy in an oversized t-shirt imprinted with a blue, six-pointed star and the word “ПОЕХАЛИ?” (“Shall We Go?”). He was walking up and down the line with a pensive look on his face. There was a comic unreality to the whole thing.

Things only grew more absurd as the line progressed. One of the members of our group had packed a huge quantity of household items to bring to his brother, who had recently moved to Israel. His baggage weighed far more than the permitted twenty kilograms. At some point, driven to a breaking point by the heat, his sleepless night on paper sheets, the crowds, and nervous anticipation, he began to pull pots and pans out of his suitcase and thrust them at his aunt, who had made the trip to the airport with him. At this point, a woman approached us and politely addressed the aunt, who was now loaded up with heavy cookware, “Excuse me, but are you by any chance Fruma Rothschild?” At the time, the idea of a member of the Rothschild family fumbling with pots and pans in a crowded Riga airport seemed the most fantastic thing imaginable.

When I finally made it to customs, it was immediately discovered that I was carrying terrible contraband — a tin of red caviar. “Not allowed,” the customs agent gloated. “You’ll be selling it on the black market!”

“I’m bringing it as a present to my grandmother’s sister!” I tried to object.

“Then open it and carry it opened!” When I asked for a can opener, he of course replied with a mocking refusal.

If this were to happen today, now that I have a lot more experience dealing with customs inspectors, I would know to turn to the rest of the line for help. But back then I was stymied. The pseudo Fruma Rothschild was still standing nearby. I gave her the caviar, much to the chagrin of the vigilant enemy of speculation.

My three weeks in Israel were over before I knew it. We studied history, went on tours, and visited relatives. I kept a detailed diary. After my previous venture abroad, to Italy, my friends had come around to hear my journal entries. Surely there would be even more interest in hearing about Israel.

After our daily classes, a tiny subset of our group went to the library. The rest went wild. Back then, no one could have foreseen how our countrymen would one day entertain themselves at the resorts of Turkey and Egypt. For me, it was an eye-opening experience to see what happens to Soviet tourists in the heat, when their hormones start to kick in. It was quite an impressive sight.

On the morning of August 19, I left my hotel room and saw some men from our group in the corridor of the education center. Instead of taking a hair of the dog or trying to pick up women, they were intently listening to the radio. “There’s been a coup in Moscow. Gorbachev’s been arrested,” they told me.

My first thought was this: “Well that’s it. They’ve drunk themselves to the point of hallucinations.”

Soon, however, I realized that it was not my companions who were going crazy, but the entire country. Our classes, naturally, were canceled. We all crowded around the television and watched Yeltsin standing atop a tank, over and over, on every channel. It was very difficult to get a hold of relatives back home, not that they understood what was going on any better than we did.

Israeli television was filled with appeals to Soviet tourists to remain in the land of their forefathers. Everyone in our group agonized over this question in their own way. For me, the agony was of a different sort. I was dying to return home — to my children and, perhaps, to the barricades. One young man from Kiev who identified himself as “a Jewish activist” was plagued by indecision. Up to that point, he had daily informed us that finally, here, in his native land, he was able to breathe freely. He had already spoken with his mother by phone and she had told him that he would die if he returned to Kiev. “So what’s the problem?” I asked him. “You like it so much here.”

“Yes, but I’ve already been given refugee status by the American Embassy. If I stay in Israel, I won’t succeed in becoming a refugee to America.”

On the following day, we all went our separate ways to say goodbye to relatives and next saw one another only at the airport. I spent the evening of the 20th with my cousin and her family watching CNN. None of them spoke English and they kept looking expectantly at me, awaiting some amazing news. There was none. Television screens kept showing the same image: a shot of Moscow’s White House (the nickname for Government House) taken from the roof of the Hotel Ukraine. On the morning of the 21st, I went to a supermarket and used some of the money I had set aside for gifts to buy a packet of macaroni. I had no doubt that Russia was being plunged into civil war. Furthermore, I was pretty sure that Latvia had seceded from the Soviet Union, which meant it was far from clear how I would get back to Moscow.

In the bus I took to the airport with my uncle, the driver, like most bus drivers in Israel, cranked up the news. The broadcast was, of course, in Hebrew. The only words I or my uncle could understand were “Gorbachev” and “Yeltsin,” which came up over and over. Then, amidst the cascade of guttural Hebrew, we suddenly heard our own Russian language: “Dear listeners. This is radio station Mayak. Until now, we were unable to report the truth, but now we have an opportunity to do so.” Then the broadcast continued in Hebrew. What did all this mean?

A former pupil of mine who had emigrated to Israel, and with whom I had parted two days earlier, came to the airport in tears to say farewell one last time, now, it seemed, forever, and to tell me how much she too longed to join the fight. Our group moved toward our gate in a daze. The “Jewish activist” had made the “heroic” decision (for the sake of an American visa), to upset his mother and return to the USSR. There was a strong sense that we were not just crossing a threshold, but diving underneath a descending iron curtain. At the last minute, I turned around. My uncle waved mournfully. My former pupil was crying and showing a victory sign.

In the plane, we all immediately started asking the stewardesses what was happening at home. “It’s not so bad,” they answered evasively. A rumor started going around that the putsch was already over. I was very distracted. In my underwear was what in those days was a huge sum of money — 1500 rubles, all in fifties and hundreds. One of my relatives had for some reason — mainly to spite the government — taken this money to Israel when he emigrated. He soon realized that he had no need for it in his new country, and now he was sending it back to his relatives who had stayed behind and for whom it would make a big difference. The thought of declaring this sum at customs was terrifying. What if that same lover of caviar was on duty?

On August 21, 1991, nobody in Riga could have cared less about our flight, about inspecting our suitcases, or about anything at all other than the collapse of the coup in Moscow. I managed to quickly run to the bathroom and put the money, which felt as if it would slip out onto the floor any minute, into my purse. The next morning I was home. Food in the country was beginning to run out, so the packet of macaroni from the Tel Aviv supermarket actually came in handy. The children ecstatically reported that when they asked what was going on, Papa told them, “The Communists are in deep doo-doo!” My husband, slightly embarrassed, explained that he wanted the children to remember this day. What could be more memorable than Papa saying a dirty word?

I joined in the general rejoicing and started to watch television reports of Gorbachev’s return from his brief imprisonment in Foros. The only thing that upset me was that I hadn’t been able to join the defenders of the White House and the fact that not a single person wanted to listen to my travel journal.

My adventures didn’t hold a candle to theirs.