The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2021 55 country and its institutions, but I recognize their flaws and that nothing human is perfect. Having grown up largely in northern New Jersey, I’ve had the opportunity to observe practically every form of political corruption known to mankind, or at least to New Jerseyans. This helped me immensely in understanding the politics of St. Petersburg and other locales, and enabled me to “talk turkey” with officials and civil society activists alike. Human nature is, after all, human nature; any diplomat would be wise to keep that in mind and act, and report, accordingly. Lesson Five: Get Out of the Office. As a diplomat in those days, I spent a lot of time among what Russians call the “narod”—the people, the masses—stand- ing in lines, in crowds, shopping at local markets, and taking public transportation. I picked up quite a bit of unvarnished opinion while waiting in line, just listening and minding my own business, not to mention finding out why everyone was queue- ing in the first place. It was a habit I continued throughout my career, even as an ambassador, when people on the Tashkent subway or at a market in Astana would sometimes do a double take, perhaps recognizing me from some public event or news report. I’m open to just about anything that gets me out of the office, and it’s certainly better, and more fun, than attending speeches and formal meetings. Besides, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing—getting out among the people? Understanding the street as well as the corridors of power? Later in my career, I found too many col- leagues spent too much time planning their vacations outside the country or patronizing specialty stores for fear, it seemed, of the “foreigners” they might otherwise encounter. To understand a society and a people, I strongly believe it is necessary to experi- ence life as they live it and not focus too much on the English- speaking elite. Lesson Six: Learn to Listen, and Listen to Learn. Another part of our duties in the early days after the collapse of the USSR was providing educational and English-language teaching materials to schools and libraries, as well as speak- ing to audiences, large and small, in the Russian language, however imperfect. I found that the library systems and the librarians themselves were the greatest proponents of educa- tion, and of openness. The librarians, all women, were with- out a doubt among the strongest and most resourceful people I encountered in Russia and the former Soviet republics. They found all sorts of ingenious ways to keep their underfunded libraries going. They never took no for an answer and braved