The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

tions, the embassy could not, by reg- ulation, provide protective clothing, so we mail-ordered coveralls and heavy gloves at our own expense. The embassy and consulate imported food, supplies and equip- ment each week, all of which had to be cleared through Soviet customs. Howard Clark spent all day at Butovo clearing one shipment, and wrote a telegram about his experi- ence that was read by Secretary of State George Shultz. Mike Einik recalls this work as “[a] cross between Monty Python and Dante.” We brought in monthly air shipments of fruit and veg- etables on Pan Am, and had to send people to Shereme- tyevo Airport in sufficient numbers both to clear the ship- ments and to keep them from being stolen. On Wednesdays, we received our weekly food shipments by train from Helsinki, including a metric ton of milk (Soviet milk was unsafe). To take just one day, Dec. 19, 1986: Administrative Counselor David Beale reported by telegram that APDers had “unloaded 80,000 pounds of commissary dry goods, 15,000 pounds of lumber and 7,000 pounds of mail. All of it got ware- housed and/or delivered on the same day … We also had a snow- storm on Saturday/Sunday. It has been dealt with as well, and by the same people.” At least Moscow had the luxury of rotating its all-pur- pose duty cadre. Leningrad was a different story, as Jim Schumaker relates: “Early on, it became clear to us in Leningrad that we did not have the personnel to run a rotating roster. All of us would have to be on APD all the time. Fortunately, we F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 Moscow’s decision to withdraw our FSNs was just as much a shock to our Leningrad Diplomatic Agency counterparts as to us.