You might not believe me if I told you this, but I’m not a spy.
I’ve been asked if I am a spy a few times since I entered the post-Soviet world. It’s the fact that I’m a North American who speaks Russian that seems to inspire this question. Never mind that I don’t spend time with anybody who could be a remotely useful source of intelligence. The warning sensors start blinking as soon as a fully formed Russian sentence falls out of my mouth.
Mostly when people ask they are half-joking. What would I say if I actually were a spy? “Oh snap, you caught me! I was just plying you with vodka so that later I could seduce you and ask you sensitive national-security-related questions during post-coital pillow talk, but you’ve totally blown my cover. More vodka?”
Usually I say, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Then I laugh and tell them the truth – actually, I’m not a spy. I’m simply a North American who learned Russian because it’s difficult to communicate in the post-Soviet space without it.
Yesterday I finally made it to Russia, crossing the border from Georgia to the Russian Caucasus en route to Vladikavkaz. I was expecting that there might be some trouble at the border because I have 12 Turkish stamps on my passport.
If you haven’t been following the news, Russia and Turkey are locked in a war about whose president has a bigger penis. Turkey shot down a Russian jet, probably by mistake. Then Turkish president Erdogan didn’t apologize and claimed the plane was in Turkish airspace. In response, Russia imposed numerous economic sanctions against Turkey. The most important of these is that Russian travel agencies have been ordered to quit selling travel packages to Russians, and that Turkish citizens have been barred from travelling in Russia visa-free.
This is horrible because it means that virile Turkish men have been denied their supply of foreign blonde women to hit on.
On a more serious note, as Russia is one of Turkey’s main suppliers of tourists, this stupid contest is potentially devastating for the Turkish tourism/hotel industry, and not that great for Russian travel agencies either.
None of that has anything to do with me, but I wasn’t prepared to underestimate any possibility. I had money ready to pay a bribe if needed. I learned how to say that I thought Erdogan was compensating for his deficiencies below the belt in Russian.
All in vain, as it turned out. I arrived at the Georgian border where the Georgian border officer quickly checked over my Russian visa and then wished me “good luck.” “Good luck?” I thought. “Am I going to need it?”
A few minutes later, I was at the Russian passport window. “Zdrasvitse,” said the woman. “Zdrasvitse,” I said.
It became clear almost immediately that she spoke no English, not even English directly related to her job. She took my passport, then started asking me questions in Russian. Where are you going? How long will you be in Russia? Is it your first time here?
“Yes,” I said, in Russian. “It’s my first time.”
“Well how do you know how to speak Russian then?” she asked. Then she picked up the phone. “We have somebody who is coming to Russia for the first time here,” she said into the receiver. “Please come quickly.”
She motioned to the side of her office. “Wait there.”
She still had my passport, so I waited obediently. It was a few degrees below zero; my breath hung in the air and my nose turned pink. A crowd of other officials was standing two metres away from me. One of them looked at me incredulously and said, “Lady! What are you doing waiting there?!”
“She told me to.”
Finally, another official showed up. We exchanged zdrasvitses. He was baby-faced, maybe 21 or 22. He was also a few inches shorter than I. It was clear that he didn’t speak English either.
“So where are you going?” he asked unsmilingly. “Right now, Vladikavkaz, and after that Moscow,” I said. “Who are you staying with?” “In Vladikavkaz, a hostel, but in Moscow, with a friend.” “What’s the friend’s name?”
I didn’t know her last name, just had her first name, number and contact info. I showed him our Skype conversations.
“Where did you learn Russian? Why do you know how to speak Russian?”
I started to get frustrated, standing out there in the cold being asked stupid questions. “Well you little whippersnapper you,” I wanted to say, “you may not be aware that it is actually not easy to travel in the post-Soviet Union and not speak Russian. This situation is a case in point since you and the other 20 people working here don’t appear to speak any English at all. As you can clearly see from the stamps on my passport which you are holding, this is my fourth post-Soviet country. Doesn’t it stand to reason that it is NOT AT ALL WEIRD that I speak Russian?! Also, like nearly everybody else who has ever learned a second language in adulthood, I took classes with a teacher. What are you expecting me to say? ‘Oh hello, yes, I studied Russian in spy academy and as we all know, there is just so much going on in the dusty hamlet of Vladikavkaz that I just need to go there and spy on what’s going on.”’
That’s not actually what I said. I explained again how I learned Russian, showed him the relevant passport stamps, and a few minutes later he appeared to give up and sent me on my way. It was, by far, the most bizarre and intense border crossing I have ever experienced.
Later that night at the hostel, one of my hostel-mates asked me, “Kate, if it’s not a secret, how do you know how to speak Russian?”
I said, “It’s not a secret. I’m a spy.” We all laughed.
Here are some pictures of the spying I’ve been doing in Vladikavkaz.
Boss, this is the Vladikavkaz train station. You might also want to know that trains leave and arrive from here, and that usually these trains are carrying people who speak Russian.
Boss, should I ever need to stay in Vladikavkaz again, do you think you could set me up with a room in this hotel? It promises luxury, and I know it must be true because they’ve decided to write everything in Latin letters. I know I get to gather more information in hostels, but one night wouldn’t kill the spy budget, would it? C’mon. Hook a sister up.
Although the Soviet Union was built on the ideas of a guy who said that religion was the opiate of the masses, cinema might actually be the opiate of Vladikavkazians. I think I also saw a strip club. Now you know, foreign governments. Now you know.
