From Russia with Fish

In the end, the scales do eventually become balanced, and nature takes its course,

no matter what.

For those of us who grew up during the throes of the Cold War, and before the internet,  the Soviet Union holds a special place in our collective memory. I still remember my mother telling me not to waste paper as the communists had to struggle for each blank sheet and sometimes die if they dared put their true political sentiments in writing. So when I was formally invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences to lecture on African food security and ocean health, I jumped at the chance to see the motherland with my own eyes. I was treated very well by my hosts as proof that close, trusting bonds can be forged among individuals regardless of the political nonsense that occurs between governments.

I am fortunate that my day job allows for extensive travel and thus gives me ample opportunity to cook up new characters and plots for my latest Luke Dodge sub series, Wet Africa.

My writing often looks at the great human struggle that never seems to fully be resolved—the great contest between the needs of the few versus the many, the tragedy of the commons, social justice, communism versus free elections and profit. The USSR and the U.S. never fully became friends after the cold war because we never went toe to toe. We never had an all-out war as we did with Japan and Germany that lead them to become our closest allies so, sadly, distrust still exists between our nations.

Due to tough Visas, I was the only American to attend the conference. Before I left, I met with a retired CIA case officer who worked the Moscow beat for ten years. He coached me on how to know if I was being watched or followed. He said to drop a lighter in a trash can and see if somebody fishes it out. I did exactly that.

In the attached image, in my best cloak and dagger look, I went to Gorky Park in central Moscow where I lit a fine Cuban cigar and enjoyed the sculptures of the hammer and sickle dedicated to Lenin. Before they could tell me “no smoking in park,” I dropped a lighter discreetly in a trash can and then hid behind a tree. Lo and behold, a man who had been sitting on a bench reading a paper got up and fished it out of the trash can as though I had dropped some sort of CIA intel for a spy ring. Much to his chagrin, he got only a humble world cup FIFA lighter half filled with gas. So old habits die hard and nothing ever really goes away.

Russia was ripe with people who will make amazing, deep characters for Wet Africa, part 2. I wanted to feel the depth of the Russian soul as I imagined from Crime and Punishment—tough athletes and the ballet. I did get a taste of that from the old folks who still tried to seek meaning through a long vanished collectivized society. One old man I met gave his fortune away to a children’s hospital rather than buy himself a long awaited new house saying, “he had everything he needed.” Compare that to the younger folks who will hustle you out of $1,000 worth of free drinks and then turn their backs and leave the second you stop paying the tab.

I did get a kick out of the Putin and Trump babushka dolls, and the newspaper saying that Putin had a 99% approval rating—funny, as I’ve never known 99 out of a 100 people to agree on anything. Also, I had one official tell me the proper name for Red Square was in fact Nice Square, and the name “red” was imposed by the West as negative propaganda.

The old folks, often nostalgic for the old days, liked to say how everything was free. They failed to realize that ain’t nothin’ in life free baby, and that very thought—that anything is free—is the main reason the Soviet system likely failed. Humans must account for their existence, it is that simple, as in the end everyone must pay the piper for any economy to function.

My books often look at the forced utopia of the extreme environmentalists who, like early communists, offer visions of a better tomorrow in exchange for cessation of basic human rights and freedoms. They seek to imprison humans and desire to be king and queen of vast nature preservers open only to them and their fellow elite. Like the communists who may have had good initial intentions—yet ended in oppression and wholesale murder to force their will—the extreme environmentalists will also dissolve and be reborn like the modern Russian state.

In the final analysis, the ENDs simply do not justify the means comrade, no matter well sounding the sales pitch. The laws of the universe seek balance and order through chaos no matter how badly we want to force equality and fairness for all.  We simply cannot escape the fact that the human race, economies and society are naturally a bell-shaped curve, and forced distortion of the curve in the name of equality always has unforeseen and often ugly consequences. In the end, the scales do eventually become balanced, and nature takes its course, no matter what.