Getting "taken" in St. Petersburg

[Alina Israeli]

>Dear Fellow List members,
>        I just wanted to add a historical note.  It was not too long ago
>that St. Petersburg was Leningrad. At that time, there were no ATM's.  One
>could not use a credit card and cashing a traveler's check required a trip
>to a bank, as did exchanging money.  It is perhaps the contrast between
>the Leningrad of the Soviet era and the St. Petersburg of today that is
>shocking to some people.  But not everything has changed.  Charging
>foreigners and locals according to different fee scales is a Soviet
>legacy.  During the Soviet era, the different rates masked the disparity
>between the real and the purported value of the ruble.

During the Soviet era, different scales applied only to the hotesl, where,
to my knowledge there were four different rates, one for the Soviets and
three for the foreigners, depending on the country of origin. Then, of
course, there were Berezka stores, technically off-limits to the Soviets.

The scale applied to the Soviet elite: not only were there special store
for the party elite, but also there were scales within the so-called
"certificate" stores, created for those Soviet citizens who came back after
working abroad who brought some money back which was converted in
"certificates". If I remember correctly, there were three types of
certificates (which looked like play money), marked by different color
stripe, again depending on the country where the Soviet citizen had worked.
Some goods were sold for one type of stripe and not the other, or it would
cost differently in different types of certificates.

So the division was mostly within the Soviet system. Such stark levy on
being foreign is a post-Soviet innovation. In fact, foreigners were treated
as more privileged than the Soviets in the olden days: shorter line to the
Mausoleum, for example. Then there were other interesting, not as obvious
ways of making foreigners priviledged. I can tell you one story when all
ballet tickets to a remarkable performance were sold (that was the troupe
of Leonid Jakobson), and then all of sudden there was an influx of
foreigners who all had to see the Soviet modern ballet. The solution was
simple: another set of tickets with a different color stripe was sold for
the same performances, and then the ushers were told that only, let's say,
green line ticket holders should be let in, and the blue (or yellow) line
ticket holders should exchange their tickets for another performance.

_____________
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Mass. Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20016

phone:  (202) 885-2387
fax:    (202) 885-1076

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