Chapter 5
Everyday Work
The Moscow office of our company had been an unimportant representative before my time. There were only about 100 trucks monthly arriving from home with our export goods, textiles, medicine, canned food.
Years before my time, during the term of Veronica, attempts have been made to improve that status, but transport is generally only a side-effect of trade. No trade, no goods to be carried. My predecessor had accepted this situation, it has been a very comfortable place for him. He had even neglected minimum reporting obligations. After my Baku trip I wrote my report about it and sent it to the man in charge, Louis D. He called me by phone and said, it was fine, but what about my reports.
"What reports?” I asked.
"The monthly compulsory reports about the office”, he said.
"Well, I am sorry, if I neglected any obligation, but I did not know about it. I would write them and send them to you in a week. Joe B. has not told me anything about reports to be sent monthly, he only said there was an annual report.”
He grumbled and said:
"Oh, Joe B., he must be content to have had the possibility of a 4-year recreation in Moscow.”
Well, as soon as I sat down, I leafed through the history of the office. Also Joe S., my room-mate, has informed me about details. It was really necessary as Joe B. has not helped me to settle in the duties, the only introduction has been in Sovinteravtoservice, a giant state firm for fuel stations, service shops and hotels, as well as truck parking places along the roads of the S.U. At that meeting a remark has caught my attention from their general manager, that it was useful to have a new partner with a good Russian knowledge. He did not say frankly, but I learned it later – and earlier from John at the personnel division – that Joe B. had actually learned Russian in Moscow.
Joe S. has been very helpful. He has opened me the network of his acquaintances. He was completely honest to me at the beginning. Later it has changed, but not by his fault. It was the fault of "responsible” managers of the two companies sharing the Moscow office.
From the first days of my term something started to change in respect of orderliness in the office. First I established a precise register for traffic data on the territory of the office – it meant the whole Soviet Union. Instead of incomplete registering of the trucks arriving to Moscow only by their plate number and date of arrival, I registered 13 various data of every truck, including driver’s name, unloading address, consignee, exporter, etc., beside the plate number of the truck. One of the most important details have been customer of the return load and payment details for that load. Those have always been missing from Joe B.’s register, causing me hard months of detection for the customer’s data to refund our costs.
The other change has been partly a consequence of this precision, partly the result of our switching over to a dollar-based settlement with the S.U. The number of trucks began to increase. At the end of the year it reached a monthly 180 to 200 trucks, the majority of those with a consignee within the S.U. – called loco –, but there were some in transit to Finland.
There was an excellent advisory-system by our agreement with Sovinter. Every border station reported us by telex plate numbers, exporters, goods and consignees for all trucks entering or leaving the S.U. every day. When the S.U. fell apart, advises became unreliable and I had to force our own traffic departments to send us regular advises to be able to do my job.
The third change has been caused by Mr Gorbachev’s nod to the re-unification of Germany. That nod of his cost Germany 14 billion marks in humanitarian aid, mainly raw pork carried by our refrigerators from the GDR to Moscow, and later to other towns. This has been a big project won by our company from below the noses of many competitors. At the same time it has almost damaged my first chance to see my family after five months.
From reports of the office in previous years I could see that the end of December and beginning of January was a dead season usually. As Joe S. promised me to be on duty, I sent a telex to Louis D. asking for a leave during Christmas on my own expenses. The answer was a rejection with the argument that before Christmas the above project would start carrying pork to Moscow. This annoyed me and I called Veronica to get details of the truth. She said it was a practical joke prepared for me exclusively.
I asked Joe S. to cover me, bought the air ticket at the Aeroflot and went home. The three days of Christmas and the next day I spent at home and then flew back.
On the last day of the year I was invited to the family of Maria to celebrate New Year with them. We had agreed in it even before my trip home. Early afternoon we have been doing our jobs both with Joe S. selecting gifts for different Soviet partners in the ministry, Sovinter, etc. I was also preparing my new account-blocks for my recently opened dollar account. The phone rang and Joe answered it. His friend from the agency called him. He offered him -- and me as he knew that Joe would let me have my share -- to buy as much goods from the agency’s store for roubles as he wanted. From the next morning only dollars would buy anything there. Joe left and it was past six o’clock, when he returned. He asked me to help bring up all. I had never dreamt that a Lada car can hold 70 cubic feet of goods beside the driver. We have paid the same sum in roubles for it, as it would be necessary in dollars the next day.
With the new year the project has started. Before that I have seen only two frigo trucks carrying medicine, but then their equipment was working on the opposite: in cold weather they heated air to prevent freezing of the cargo. Now every week about 30 to 50 came with fresh pork meat. It has been really well organized. My work became multiplied by numerous advises sent to traffic departments and at the same time to the deliverer that his goods have arrived. It was then that we decided with Joe to move our telex machine from the office room to the other. Its constant noise made conversations by phone impossible for the poor lines.
But the transfer of the machine also confused us sometimes. When somebody called us to the telex by bell sound, we had to go over and see who it was. Once a call drove me to the machine and it was Mr Bartok, a young man in charge with frigos. As he tried to type something with untrained hands, I cut into his typing and began to write the answer with my experienced fingers. He read it and typed back:
"How did you know what I wanted?”
I answered: "I guessed that a composer plays only the frigo.”
The big quantity of meat coming for the Gorbachev nod began to cause problems. In classical Soviet times no goods, least of all food, were too much. Always there was a shortage and this was the normal situation. Meat in the butcher’s went for 2 roubles a kilo, tenderloin for 7 roubles. Only, you could not buy them for the shortage. On the market their price was about 5 to 6 times higher. And there was enough as customers had not much money.
As the fine German fresh meat began to flow in by the thousand tonnes a month, the old meat from freezing stores came to the market and a little more frequently also to the butcher’s, and fresh one was frozen. It would not make any big confusion. But after two months stores became full and the "organized dealers” would not bring more to the market for fear of a price fall.
Every day there were trucks stopped instead of unloaded. When we phoned to the spot -- Joe was doing part of my work for no extra salary -- the girls available told us there were many trucks, they were to wait for their turn. By whole trains meat began to creep to far-away places even to Siberia, but supply was bigger than place. It could have been not so hard with frozen meat, but fresh meat was strictly programmed as for time, temperature, etc. Real problem would come with mild weather and at last the project would have to be delayed. You can guess the excuse from consignees: Russian veterinarian doctors were not content with the hygiene of German slaughter-houses.
In January I had my first chance to try real Russian winter. My first experience was glossy ice. I called the man in charge of service cars and asked for a set of winter tires.
The second lesson has been cold. First it was only around 0 degrees F. It could not cause any trouble. Then air temperature went lower and the car started with difficulty. I would have to wait till the weather warmed.
Cold made the car fool-proof against thieves, and also against me. The lock froze and sprays did not work. I learned quickly from my local neighbour how to solve that problem. With the side of my hand I rubbed the lock and the key was in my other hand in a warm place. After 20 seconds of rubbing the key went in easily and the lock turned.
My tucks have not been exempt from the practical jokes of cold, either. Some of them had not been properly prepared for the winter, their brake systems seized, inexperienced drivers did not know that Soviet Diesel fuel needs a certain percentage of petrol in winter. About 10 trucks have been grounded. I called the drivers of three trucks into the office and showed them their Finnish traffic road licences:
"You are to make for Finland, but these papers you will get only, when you have put the grounded frigos into motion.”
Drivers hated coming to Moscow – it would change in a couple of months –, but liked the Finland route. They did a good job and all my trucks became mobile in a day. One of the frigo drivers, a man not much before his retirement, had spent two nights and a day between in his unheated cabin in minus 33 degrees F during night and 0 degree F in daytime.
This cold wave has not lasted more than a week. As usually in Moscow during winter, temperature remained between 20 degrees F and freezing point. The air was usually very dry, my Russian device measuring temperature and relative humidity showed me in my room 62 degrees F and 25 percent of humidity, 5 percent below the lower limit of comfort field.