Yanks for Stalin
Interview Transcript

Sergei Dyakonov,  (cont)

Q.  Provision of food and services was separate, correct?

A.  Yes.  There was a store that was called Insnab, which served only foreigners.  Of course, the quality and quantity of foodstuffs were better and larger there than in other stores.  Thus, foreign workers were able to buy higher-quality foods and produce.

Q.  Would others walk in to look around?

A.  Of course.  There were no restrictions.  Anybody could go into that store.

Q.  Was it insulting for the Russian workers?

A.  Well, it's difficult for me to judge, because we children never talked about such things.  Perhaps the Russian workers were offended, but the fact is that the Russian workers received a wage lower than that of the foreign workers.  Some could afford to buy more expensive food and clothing, others could not.

Q.  What was the size of the wage disparity between foreign and Russian workers?

A.  I don't know.  I can't say.

Q.  What happened with the gardens?

A.  That's an interesting story.  The Americans, and not just the Americans, but all the foreign workers, the Germans and the Finns also, asked the management about land, because all around the plant there was empty land, and they asked to have plots of land provided to them.  The land was granted, and each could take as much as s/he wanted, even as much as a hectare.  But no one took that much land.  They all made gardens, where they planted cucumbers, tomatoes, or whatever they were accustomed to growing back in their respective homelands.  These were their individual little gardens.  I noticed one interesting thing:  the gardens of the German and Finnish workers were unfenced, but the gardens of the American workers were all fenced off, each and every one.

Q.  What were they scared of?

A.  I don't know.  I don't think they were scared.  After all, right next to their plots were the German and Finnish gardens, which were open.

Q.  Was it harder to sneak into the American gardens?

A.  Yes, it was much harder.

Q.  How old were you?

A.  Ten.

Q.  But everyone got along, you made friends with the Americans, with the other foreigners, correct?

A.  Yes, we were friends.  But not just friends.  We studied with many of the American children, and not only with the Americans, all in the same school.  I shared a school bench with an American boy called Vic, or in Russian, Victor, Cadarian.

Q.  What was he like, was he quarrelsome?

A.  No, he wasn't quarrelsome.  He was a very easy-going boy; energetic and enterprising, but not quarrelsome.  I saw him fight with other foreign boys when they made fun of me, or told jokes about me to my face in their own language, which would happen now and again, but he was always the first to stand up for me.

Q.  He defended you?

A.  Yes, he defended me.  I was his friend.

Q.  Did you sneak into the gardens?

A.  We sneaked into gardens, yes.  But the adults generally just laughed about it.  Nobody punished us boys, no one boxed our ears for it.  So what if the boys sneaked in and took something?  Russian boys were usually the ringleaders.

Q.  What did the Americans do in their spare time?  What sorts of recreational activities did they engage in?

A.  I don't really remember their summer recreational activities, but I remember their winter recreation very well.  They brought good skis with them, and good ski boots, and of course, their equipment was much better than what the Russians had.  Not far from the American settlement were some good hills, about 60 meters high, and the foreigners would gather there to ski, spend time, play in the snow.  It was a good time.  We boys would slide around on pieces of metal taken from a dump that was near the auto plant.  These pieces of metal were usually gas tanks from cars, or door panels, or maybe some other part, and they slid very well.  We could go farther than people on skis could.

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