chinese food, donuts & propaganda

I ran a couple errands on my ride home tonight.  First stop, Costco.  I rushed in, looking like some sort of a post-apocalyptic nomad, halfway dressed in cycling gear, big full backpack with rolled up yoga mat (or sleep roll) attached, carrying my helmet as a container with various bike accessories thrown inside.

After I flashed my card upon entry, I passed by the overemphasized plasma and LCD TV’s when low and behold — I am visually struck by  an  enormous display of  Russian lacquer boxes, multitudes of amber objects, ‘old’ icons, and of course, nested wooden dolls.

I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. My vision was filled with Russian treasures of times so long gone.  I am fortunate to have traveled to Moscow and (then) Leningrad in the winter of 1987-88,  right at the apex of Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika.  I traveled with Henry Dersch (Historian extraordinaire) and my fellow Russian Studies classmates.

While there’s a hundred thousand stories in that trip alone, the so-called glory gifts of the pilgrimage were exactly what was being displayed at Costco before me.  In fact, I vividly recall our departure from Moscow back to Copenhagen and the security officers we encountered in the Moscow airport. 

The security queue, if it could be called that, took place at the gate of our Aeroflot plane. We’d pass by security, our bags filled with Russian propaganda and paraphernalia. Luckily, I passed, without so much as eye contact.  Had they nabbed my  bag, I’d have been most disappointed about the loss of a Soviet military coat (complete with medals) and four small books written in English. The military coat rests in my front hall closet,  while the books are still in my living room. The pocket-sized propaganda books are:

• Lenin on the Great October Socialist Revolution
• Lenin on Marxism
• The Retribution
• A Policy Reappraisal That Had To Be Made

Only one of our mates was not so lucky passing by security at the gate. An officer called this classmate over, turned his backpack and luggage inside out.  The officer collected something like 12 lacquer boxes among other items and articles of clothing for the black market.

As I continued riding home through the Mission this evening, I thought about the extreme culture clash of viewing these artifacts at a Costco.  Somehow this experience tonight reminded me of the likelihood of marrying Chinese food & Donuts into an inviting culinary fusion.  Not to mention, the capitalist connotations associated with the sale of old-school artifacts which pre-date, not only the current socio political climate, but the communist paradigm which preceded it.