Visit vies with sugar shortage as conversation topic

Press, 28 May 1988, Page 10

Visit vies with sugar shortage as conversation topic

By HELEN WOMACK NZPA-Reuter Leningrad The impending arrival of President Reagan has almost replaced a sugar shortage as the main topic of conversation in the Soviet Union.

People are excited and believe the American President's first visit to their country from May 29 to June 2 will be important, even if no new arms agreements are signed.

“I don’t know where Mr Reagan got the idea that the Soviet Union is an evil empire,” said a 60-year-old Leningrad shop assistant, Nina, referring to the way the President once described her country. “On the contrary, it is full of good, friendly people and we want to give him the warmest possible welcome.”

Hospitality was the feature cited by almost all on Leningrad’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, when asked by Reuters what Soviet people wanted to show the President.

Mr Reagan will stay in Moscow but his wife Nancy is due to visit the former Russian capital on Tuesday. Anxiety about not being able to maintain traditional Soviet hospitality lies behind the national obsession with sugar. It has disappeared from

shop shelves as people have turned to home brewing to beat Mikhail Gorbachev’s drive against liquor sales. Posters have appeared all over Leningrad saying citizens may buy sugar with coupons only after producing evidence that they had paid their rent. The news briefly distracted attention from Mr Reagan.

The main streets of Leningrad were bustling with workmen doing painting and repair jobs neglected for months. The people of Leningrad who, because of their geographical proximity to Finland are more familiar with the West than other Soviet citizens, seemed concerned that Mr Reagan and his wife should see the “real” Soviet Union. To two students, Slavik and Andrei, this meant that the American couple should see beyond the poverty in which many Russians live and understand that Russians can be happy. “We may be poor in our dormitory but we are very jolly,” said Slavik. “I don’t think the Americans realise this. I’d be glad to invite the Reagans back for a party.”

The students added that they would like to have more information about the lives of ordinary

Americans. But for Rima, aged 50, an economist, the “real” Soviet Union is a place of food shortages and bad housing still, despite Mr Gorbachev’s "glasnost” (openness) policy, not adequately described by the official press. “The Reagans must see not only the good side but how poorly people live, for example in the old districts of this city,” she said as she wandered through a supermarket stocked with uninspiring basic foodstuffs. Rima, unlike . many Russians who criticise Reagan for interfering in Soviet affairs, added that she was grateful to him for pressing for free emigration and she hoped he would maintain his stand on human rights in talks with Mr Gorbachev. Viktor, a member of a youth theatre, said he hoped Nancy Reagan would get a sense of the exciting cultural life of Leningrad, which has long been at the forefront of developments in the Soviet arts. “But I fear she will get the standard tour,” he said. Nancy Reagan’s oneday programme includes a visit to the war memorial and Petrodvorets, the summer palace of Peter the Great, the city’s founder.