By Peter Galuszka
It is a cruelly damp and cold day in the autumn of 1986. I am sitting in the lobby of Vnhestorgbank in the Mezhdyunarodnaya Complex, one of the few modern-looking buildings in Moscow at the time. The “Mezh”, also known as the “International Center” or the “Armand Hammer Center” after the U.S. oil baron who made billions trading with the Soviets since the 1920, is an ugly mass of steel and glass chock-a-block with foreign trade representatives, souvenir shops and a few expensive restaurants. Snarly guards keep ordinary Soviets out to limit illegal hard currency trading and prostitution scams.
I am there as the newly-arrived bureau chief for a major U.S. news magazine. The Soviets don’t allow open trading of hard currency yet to pay the bureau’s bills, I have to go the Vneshtorgbank which can do exchanges and handles foreigners.
With me is George, a Bolivian national and a short fireplug of a man who has worked for the bureau for years and is married to a Russian woman. As a foreigner, he can do things for news operations that ordinary Soviets cannot do and, since he carries a Bolivian passport, he can work for an U.S. company without having to belong to Y.P.D.K., or the Soviet Diplomatic Service Corps which provides translators, drivers, secretaries and newspaper readers. Y.P.D.K. people likewise work for us and part of their job is to issue regular reports to the KGB which also has our apartments and offices electronically bugged.
In the fall of 1986, reformist Mikhail Gorbachev was in power but it was still very much a police state. I brought George with me because I am too new to handle some of the more complicated financial transactions needed to run the news bureau. George is an expert on Soviet finances at that level and bureaucracy in general.
He’s extremely effective. But he has one big problem. Of Inca ancestry, he is short, swarthy and dark-skinned. Russian officials, especially police and KGB, are unabashedly racist. If they see a dark-skinned man in the Mezh, they automatically assume that he is a no-good Chechen or Armenian or Georgian or Azeri in the middle of conducting some kind of con, be it illegal money exchanges, women, dope, whatever.
We sit in the torn easy chairs waiting for our numbers to flash on the big screen. We sit for hours and have to remain. If you miss your number, you have to start all over. Finally our number flashes. We go up and George and I conduct our business.
As we finally leave the bank lobby, two goons with gold teeth and bad suits stop us. They take George away. I am truly scared since they won’t let me come with them. I race back to our news bureau and send an alert over our ancient West German telex that one of our staffers has been apprehended for no apparent reason. It is still predawn in New York. I wait for a response. Finally it comes from the head of our worldwide news service. Luckily, he is an old Moscow hand and understands. “Looks like you are having a Soviet experience,” the telex clatters. “Sit tight.”
A few hours later, George shows up, badly shaken and in need of a hit of vodka. His crime? Being darked skinned. It led to hours in the KGB office on the fifth floor of the Mezh while the officers checked out his bona fides.
The point? The Supreme Court is considering Arizona’s racist immigration law this week that allows police to roust anyone they think may be a foreigner without papers. How do they know? They just sort of guess. Prince William County Supervisor Corey A. Stewart, now running for lieutenant governor, has backed a similar law.
As for me, it all brings back bad memories of Moscow. The laws are anything but American. They are entirely something else.
