Communism's Over Mate!

Russian communism collapsed in 1991! It was the end of a wieldy instrument that had pried and delved deep into millions of lives; some citizens won from it but equally as many lost so much and were given so little in return. A prime example of the loss is now seen with the older generation who under the protection of the state were guaranteed a pension, bread on the table and certain security (however minimal) till they popped their clogs! Then a new day dawned with a morning that had started off just like all those others before, but this time the comfy and cozy security blanket was abruptly torn away and those once snuggled underneath the covers were forced to seek work, to beg and borrow and to rely on their sons and daughters, even grandchildren for the next crumb to eat!

Communism in Russia relied greatly on the passage of information, the threat of report keeping the workers in their places. Most people have seen films like Red October, the movie about the submarine and its crew defecting to the States? Remember that man, the Commissar who everybody was wary of, and he with the ear of and link to higher authority? All Russian Merchant Navy Vessels used to carry such people, not to the extent that they carried titles like Political Officer, but whatever rank they held they were never told to scrub the decks or clean the bilges, they were treated with care and the mess room would go silent when they walked in.

In 1991, these party cadres, usually Second Engineers or Chief Officers suddenly found themselves out of work. This was partly because companies, personnel departments, captains and recently out-of-the-closet party haters found "revenge" being handed to them on a plate but mostly because they didn't have any or insufficient tickets to hold that rank in the first place. Those who managed to stay in employment were suddenly relegated to the position of a rag, were teased, bullied and abused by fellow crew members, many of whom had suffered all those years before!

To become a commissar was relatively easy! For starters there were no lengthy qualifications or exams to pass. No candidates for party membership were required to answer difficult questions or prove that they were capable. The first prerequisites to become a candidate for such a position was a clean slate, no reports of misdemeanors, no utterances made against the party and certainly no evidence or connections to anybody else who may have once upon a time said "Lenin sucks". The second helpful item on the path to party membership was a few pointers to the senior party members, destroy a couple of fellow officers, a written report or two on when the Engine Room Oiler had said "communism stinks" after hitting his hand with a hammer by accident and the Captain who had hung a calendar with pictures of raunchy woman on it above a scale model of Red Square (despite the fact that it was the most convenient place for it). Once secured in favor, life was on the up and up! After a lengthy checkup into their background, family members and suchlike, if all checked out then the future was secure. Two years at college, two years of having the brain twisted and adapted to the ways of the party and then out into the big wide world to report and watch over those around!

As the electrician, Alex, onboard here said to me one evening; "skills and ability as an engineer or deck officer had nothing to do with a commissars posting to a ship. As a Commissar and thus sent by the party to watch and report they could have walked up the gangway with a bus ticket and nobody would have stopped them". In short they were sent to watch and report not to fix engines or navigate a vessel. Certainly, this inability to do much more than listen into other people's conversations and to hang around knowledgeably all day did not help them gain employment after 1991; I mean, what sort of company would want to employ an unskilled, arrogant and snotty eavesdropper, especially these days when qualifications and skills are a pre-requisite.

On many western vessels engineers have been known to say "they built this ship around the washing machine". This utterance is the result of having to remove half the doors on the vessel, to dismantle half the door frames and to remove the handrails on the stairs to get a broken washing machine out of the laundry. On Russian vessels it might have been said that the "ship was built around the commissar". Certainly one would have to do allot more than remove a few door frames to get the Commissar off (to pull the bottom plug might be the only way) but looking at it in a different way - the Russian flagged vessels were fitted with a very intricate intercom system. The Radio Officer (C/O or 2/E) would sit in his radio shack and he would have access to everybody's cabins. Through speakers he could listen into all conversations for the slightest slip of the tongue, a hasty exclamation or frankly spoken complaint and then off that report would go, back home to ruin the career of "he who had dared to speak out".

The Commissars were of course very important on vessels of the state that sailed internationally. There job here was to make sure that the Chief Engineer did not make a dash for the American Embassy whilst the vessel was loading cargo in Singapore, that the drunken antics of the crew in a bar in Montreal did not lead them to start talking about the shoe-boxes they lived in back home and that the Captain did not sneak up to the Catholic Church on the corner of Bagel Street in Dover. One item that stands out clearly is that a report by the commissar would ensure that a career was all but over for those reported on. A seafarer who had enormous experience, who had excellent work reports from his superiors, who got on excellently with his peers and who knew his job inside out was effectively unemployable if his report had written at the top "is not faithful to the party" or "does not follow the ideals of communism in his daily work". The CV could be glowing but worthless, all that mattered was the first line, the rest simply the padding out!

Alex told me about the Catholic Church no-go law! I must research this further, once I regain access to a library again, but following the party faith did not include visits to the local church for seafarers.

Alex did go to a church once, here in Sahkalin and whether it was for a silent prayer, a show of defiance against the system or the result of a dare by fellow officers I know not. However, one fine day along he hopped to the church! As misfortune would have it, upon leaving the church the priest said that he had to sign the visitor's book. Now, signing this book is not simply the appliance of a half snapped bic biro to a worn, torn and well-thumbed scrap book but the casting in stone of ones Discharge Book Number (similar to a passport number) to the authorities back in Moscow. Now, a simple refusal and a quick dash back to the ship might have past muster, but the priest must have had the gift of the gab that day. He explained to Alex that god watched over his church and so ……. Alex signed and off he went. A few weeks later enough visitors to the church had passed through the doors to fill the page and so it was torn out of the book and posted to be were it needed to go for inspection. Had Alex's Discharge Number reached the office, the one concerned with those seafarers who had passed through the doors of a Catholic Church, then his career at sea on International voyages would have been well and truly over. Never mind the fact that he is an excellent electrician, simply due to his inappropriate action he would no longer be allowed out of the good old USSR. Alex was in fact very lucky indeed. Typically, the transit of documents from one end of Russia to the other took months and the person sitting behind the desk in the 'Catholic Church guest book checking cubicle' probably had enough stacks of papers on his desk that he could not see over them even when he stood up.

The priest was right though (about god I mean), just around about the time that the little bespectacled and party-faithful 'goon' behind the desk was about to pick up page 316004567 from the top of the ever-large pile, somebody came in and said "you're out of a job mate, communism's over"!

Ieuan Dolby
Author and Webmaster of SeaDolby.com
Copyright © Ieuan Dolby, 9th September 2006