Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Rose and I always figured that things like this were remnants of Soviet bureaucracy,
with layers of institutions and agencies that don't communicate with one another. In this
case there is likely a domestic security agency responsible for maintaining security check-
points at many if not all of the country's train stations. After the recent acts of terrorism in
the country, the Kremlin has promised beefed-up security at transportation hubs. But then
there is the staffing, which may fall to another institution that never got the memo about
providing personnel to actually monitor the results of these security checks.
Yet, just as mind-boggling as the scene here is the fact that everyone—Sergei and myself
included—is simply going through the process without questioning it, walking through the
line, sending baggage along the conveyor belt. This would get Rose worked up. “Why is
this thing here?” I remember her once saying, as we waited in a useless security line at a
train station. “I'm not doing it. I'm not.” She then walked around the security checkpoint,
ducked under a rope and stood on the other side with a satisfied smile. I am more of a wimp
about these things and fully expected Rose to get tackled by a Russian security official. It's
a risk Rose nodded to when she told me she would probably get into a lot more trouble if
she was fluent in Russian and could engage more easily in “why” debates with authorities.
“I'd probably be arrested in this country if I knew the language,” she once told me.
I laughed. Nervously. “That's not funny, dear.”
But Rose had a point. In the United States, when things don't make sense, we ask ques-
tions. Rose has been furious at taxicabs in Washington, D.C. We and our friends have been
overcharged and hit with imaginary fees, our female friends have been verbally abused by
male drivers, and the city's taxi system was for a long time an unregulated free-for-all. Rose
began an online campaign to drum up support for change, and she attended city council
meetings to make her case. Things have changed, slowly. Recently NPR moved to a new
building in Washington. And one of our beloved colleagues on the facilities staff was not
offered a job in our new digs and was about to be unemployed. I banded together with sev-
eral other journalists, and we met with one of our top executives, pleading that the man
should be treated better and given his job in the new building. It happened.
Not everyone is a fighter. But there is a sense at home that if something seems unfair
in life, there are places to turn—at work, or in a community. Maybe you won't get your
way. Maybe a boss will tell you to shut up, and you'll be in the uncomfortable position of
having to listen to him or her, for fear of losing your job. Our system is far from perfect,
and people are mistreated. But the overall spirit, the sense of possibility, the sense that you
can raise your voice and have a chance to bring change, is something that exists at home,
but not so much in Russia. And I wanted to understand—yes—why.
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