Russian Surveillance: Somebody's Watching Me

I made a few friends on the Mys Kuznetsova. One of them was the helmsman on the second mate’s watch, a strapping young lad named Dima. Second mate watches were always the best ones on the joint venture. Usually the captain would be asleep or relaxing in his cabin, and since the watches fell in early afternoon or the middle of the evening, chances were always good the ship was loaded up with fish. It was a good time to go up onto the flying bridge and lift weights while catching a view over the wide Pacific, or maybe grab a cup of coffee and practice Russian with the mates. Second mates were uniformly among the mellowest Russians I ever met – officers still with one foot in the camp of the regular sailors, not yet infected with ambitions to become captain.

Dima and I were roughly the same age and we struck up a nice rapport after a while. He was from some small town in the Black Earth region of Russia and entertained me with stories of village life in Soviet Russia – water from the well, chickens in the yard, a milk cow and vegetable garden out somewhere on the lower Volga wastelands. I told him about my life in the States and the long unlikely path that led me out to the Bering Sea. We kept away from politics and spent some free time working out together and bonding in the ship’s banya, or steam bath; afterwards, we would hang out in my cabin, listening to music and enjoying the wee calm hours. Work was tough on me that first expedition and spending time with Dima – making one of my first Russian friends – kept me going.

One day were laying up on drift waiting for a catcher boat to haul up his bag. I took a few minutes to go into the chart room to check on a few things for paperwork and while I was looking around, noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the manual typewriter. I took a nosy glance at it and saw the word, DOHOC written in capital letters across the top. I recognized the word from my Russian classes – donos, meaning denunciation or information – an ugly little Soviet word with bad KGB associations. Donos was something a person wrote when he had suspicions about his neighbor or colleague at work. A donos meant a 3 a.m. knock on the door, beatings and questions administered by shadowy sadists in a dank cellar, deportation, GULAG, death…not a word with which you want any association. I looked closer and saw my name in the text, then picked up the pile of papers next to the typewriter and started reading. The donos was about me. Dima’s name was at the top. He was writing a denunciation about me. I took a furtive few moments to look the pages over. It was mostly harmless stuff – our conversations, which frankly were just not that interesting. Still, it put a chill in me. Here he was, the creep, acting like a friend, all the while reporting on me. I decided not to do anything about it – after all, mentioning it would mean admitting I’d been snooping around in papers on the bridge. I could see scandal and the end of my career at MRCI. I kept my head down, did my work, and tactfully avoided taking Dima up on any more friendly invitations to the banya or the bridge.

Since then, I have wondered often exactly, what kind of file the Russians have on me in their security services. Certainly, it is a good-sized one. I have been in Russia too many times, been involved in too many things, not to have one. I worked for two years at the US Embassy in Moscow, which in itself was enough for the KGB to put a tail on me. Then I spent two years living on Kamchatka, the only American for thousands of kilometers. I have had Russians and Americans both ask me if I worked in the CIA or FBI – the answer is no, I have not, never have, never will. It is not in my DNA. The nature of work brought me into some deep research, though, and I like to think that, since I spent so much time living outside of major cities, I have learned more about Russian context than most. Finally, the shipping business touches on any number of strategic nerves in post-Soviet life – economy, foreign trade, market penetration, not to mention violence, corruption and social policy – all taken in unadulterated raw shots absent the niceties of art and politics, raw business, with real people staking real money interests, and quite candid in expressing themselves.

Most Americans will never see their FSB file, but I got lucky a few times, and saw mine. The first time was when I was on a two-year writing Fellowship with Institute of Current World Affairs. The Fellowship sent me to the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski, a hardscrabble fishing city jammed along a harbor on the North Pacific Ocean. My research topic was officially Privatization in the Russian Far East Fishing Industry, but the real subject of study was How Will Pete Christiansen Manage to Survive? This was back in 1992-1994. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski suffered horribly back then from the severe economic and social dislocations provoked by the fall of the Soviet Union. The Russians there were the poorest people I ever saw – their salaries were ravaged by inflation, the city experienced electricity brownouts and blackouts because the regional government ran out of money to pay for fuel, and the shops were devoid of all but the most basic of foodstuffs. My consolation was that the Fellowship paid me in dollars, enough to keep me as well fed as the local economy allowed, with some left over for some fun every few weeks.

There were no ATMs in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski back in those days. I kept my money hidden in the bookcase in my apartment. I figured the local security people had an eye on me and I was careful not to get involved with in the black market or any business whatsoever, except for some freelance teaching and translating jobs. When I needed to change my precious dollars into rubles, I would go to the Sberbank downtown, or the closer currency exchange booth at the Gorispolkom, or City Hall. This worked fine until one day, a huge blizzard hit Kamchatka. A Kamchatka blizzard, or purga, is like no other snowstorm in the world; masses of moist, tropical air from southeast Asia trundle up past Japan and China before running full-on into a wall of Siberian cold air. A purga lasts for days and can easily drop five feet of snow before bouncing out into the north Pacific. Gale force winds lash the land and force even the indomitable Russians indoors. When the storm finally blew itself out enough for the buses to start running again, I hurried down to my office to finish a research paper. I ran out of rubles during the purga and during a break, decided to go to the bank to change some money.

The streets were choked with snow and stranded cars buried up to their doors. Snowdrifts made the streets impassable. I lurched my way down towards Sberbank but decided it would be too much of an effort to go there – it might be closed anyway. I was near the currency exchange booth and it was closed. I stood there contemplating my dilemma when I noticed a young man in a parka standing next to the booth. You want to change money? He asked. He was illegal but I didn’t see much of alternative, and I needed to buy food. We ducked behind the corner and I exchanged forty dollars for the ruble equivalent, and that was that.

I was back at my office and just settling into work when three men walked into my office. What nationality are you? One asked. Why, I’m Japanese, I said brightly. Don’t joke with us, said another. We’re from the Militia. He pulled out a badge. Did you just change money on the street? I saw no reason to lie – I figured, if they were asking me, they knew already and there was no point in making things any worse. Collect your things, said an officer, and come with us.

They took me to the Militia Station and I found myself caught up in the slow wheels of post-Soviet justice. A sergeant took over my case – he sat and asked me pointed questions about the dreaded exchange of currency. Did I know the man with whom I changed money? No, I’d seen him on the street before but stayed away from him because he was obviously a black marketer. How much money did I exchange? Forty dollars. Blah blah blah. Finally, the sergeant wrote up a Protocol and I signed it. I figured, well, forty bucks, how bad can it be.

The next week I found myself summoned to the Station again, answering the same questions, in the same order. The sergeant seemed friendly enough – he mentioned to me that he had gone to Chicago on a police exchange, and showed me pictures from his trip. This being Russia, and me being a foreigner, he went out of his way to be polite, offering me tea and cookies along with his impressions of the Windy City. We talked, I kept to my story and I was released.

The week after, I was summoned to the Station yet again. I decided to ask the sergeant point-blank – what ever was their interest in me? For forty dollars, they sure had a lot of questions. Couldn’t I just pay the fine and get it over with? It wasn’t so simple, explained the sergeant. Illegal hard currency trading was a serious offence, carrying with it not just a fine but also a prison sentence. Wait a second, I told the sergeant. If this is such a serious offence, then why aren’t your officers down at the Market arresting the people in the booths who openly advertise that they buy and sell dollars? What about the nightly television advertisements from currency traders, with telephone numbers shown right on the screen? Do you investigate them?

The sergeant mumbled something about the law and militia resources but I could tell he was embarrassed, and I pressed on – surely, I said, those traders have more than forty dollars on them. Why are you worried about me? Don’t you have bigger crooks to catch?

He looked at me sadly and lit a cigarette. It’s not so simple, he said. We filmed you trading currency with that guy. We were running an operation against him; he’s one of the biggest illegal hard-currency traders in the city. You are evidence. Well, what do we do about it? I asked.

There was nothing to be done. It was November. I had three months left on my Fellowship by then, and when my visa expired, I was supposed to go home. Now that was complicated by the arrest. The sergeant called me down to the Station every few weeks to give me a progress report, but nothing seemed to change. By then I began to notice my file on his desk; a thick papka, the Russian type of file, made of cheap gray cardboard and tied together in the front by a ribbon type of thing. After every session, the sergeant would duly write up another Protocol, and I would duly sign it. We got to be somewhat friendly – I enjoyed his sense of humor, and he liked the novelty of talking to a foreigner. One day he let me know that a deal was in the works – I would give them some testimony in return for immunity. When this would happen, he did not know. Until then, I was restricted to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski and could not leave the country.

The case dragged on until March, just a few days before my visa expired. I was at home with a miserable case of the flu when a team of officers from the Federal Anti-Organized Crime unit showed up to question me. The Governor of the Kamchatka Region, Mr. Biryukov, would pardon my crime against the Russian State in return for my opinion regarding criminal activities among the bosses of Kamchatka’s leading fishing enterprises. Which ones were stealing money and sending it overseas? All of them, I answered. Where were they going when they went overseas? Seattle, Los Vegas, how should I know. It was inane – I had no idea whatsoever what the bosses were doing while they were in America. I didn’t go with their delegations and even if I did, they certainly wouldn’t give me details of their thievery. Finally, another Protocol was written and signed duly; I had my immunity, and left Russia a few days later.

My case wasn’t over, though. Far from it. About seven or eight months later, I was working in Vostochny Port, Russia, a container terminal on the Sea of Japan about 160 kilometers east of Vladivostok. One day the local Militia called me in for a get-acquainted session. This was a good thing because I was one of four foreigners in town and it is always good to know your friendly local policeman. The Militia office was a dingy room with four desks, a couch, peeling walls and a television blaring Brazilian soap operas. The officers briefed me on the criminal situation in town; the port company town had four active criminal gangs, and it was best to avoid them. Be careful with your car, always lock your apartment, and look out on the streets if you are walking home at night – especially if you’ve been drinking. Usual commonsense advice.

Then the officer took a file out of his desk, a familiar looking papka made of cheap gray cardboard. You’ve been arrested before for illegal trading in hard currency, said the officer. Yeah, forty dollars, it says so right there, I said. That’s right, said the officer, giving me a hard look. We’ve got our eye on you. I rolled my eyes. Tell me you’ve always changed money at the bank, I said. Anyway, I was pardoned.

Oddly enough, I never ran into that particular file again, but I’m pretty sure it is somewhere in a stack, waiting to come out and pounce on me like a spider at the least infraction. I wonder how big and swollen the spider is with useless information; Dima’s donos, my comings and goings, records of conversations, bits and pieces of the press – all about a foreigner with really nothing but good wishes for Russia and its people.