The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

56 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL even the most obstinate bureaucrat—whether in Lukashenko’s Belarus or Karimov’s Uzbekistan—to, eventually, get their way. They were mainstays of communities where economic depriva- tion after the fall of the USSR was rampant. I listened to them, did my best to provide whatever assis- tance they requested and learned a lot from them. Their tutelage helped me greatly in dealing with the State Department’s bureaucracy. Sometimes, if not most times, it pays to listen to the people with whom we work. My experience in the former USSR led me to suggest that FSI should conduct a course in listening for diplomats. Lesson Seven: Team Is Supreme. After the collapse of the USSR, as we struggled to establish new embassies, we did not have the “conveniences” of estab- lished diplomatic housing, medical staff, commissaries, or even Marines and security guards. We relied on ourselves but mostly on our new local hires, who took us in almost as family. We trusted each other and built strong personal and professional bonds as colleagues, not as superiors and subordinates. Ah, how fleeting those halcyon days were—before all the department’s rules and regulations, and other agencies with their rules and regulations, arrived to separate us and complicate our lives and our work. Yes, we all knew the day would come when the “real” world would intrude on our lives and work. But, in many respects, it is often a world of our own making that hinders our diplomatic work, blinds us to essential insights and inhibits our ability to empathize. Thirty years ago, American diplomats in the former USSR had a unique opportunity to get to know peoples and places like we never had before. We experienced the exhilaration but also the pain, uncertainty and humiliation the people around us felt, from Vladimir Putin to the babushka next door. We learned to communicate; we learned to listen (well, at least some of us did). We also learned how to explain ourselves, our country and our society, not as superiors but as people like them, journeying on a path that was hard, rocky and uncertain, but one that offered hope and something dear to which to aspire. Living History Back in Riga, on that fateful August day, I stood together with the leaders of the Latvian nation to witness what we all expected would be the death of a dream, and possibly of ourselves. Instead, the Soviet security forces halted their advance and never entered the parliament building. By the next day, an eerie calm had descended as news began to seep out that, back in Moscow, the coup was unraveling. I decided to travel on to Vilnius where, earlier in the year, I had stood with Lithuanians in their embattled parliament building as they suffered the onslaught of Soviet repression in their own drive for independence. As I drove out of Riga, my car radio delivered astonishing news: The Russian Parliament had declared the Communist Party illegal, and the coup plotters were being arrested. On the road to Vilnius, I encountered a stream of military trucks filled with Soviet forces heading in the opposite direction, returning to garrison. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing—at once terrifying and exhilarating. On that beautiful summer’s day, as I drove with the windows down through the idyllic Baltic country- side, I thought: I represent the United States of America; I can’t believe they pay me to do this. The experience of those years transformed me as a diplomat and as a person. It taught me a lot about the Baltic republics and Russia, and provided a foundation I continued to build on in Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It taught me to understand these countries and their highly diversified, complex societies as they are and as they strive to be, not as we want or expect them to be. Most of all, it taught me humility and patience. It also gave me a sense of confidence in the resil- iency of the human spirit and its extraordinary adaptability to change, adversity, deprivation and uncertainty. And it exposed to me an essential goodness and often greatness in people under duress. It saddens me greatly to see, 30 years later, our consulate in St. Petersburg closed, our missions and diplomats in Russia and Belarus confined and harassed. But nothing in life is permanent. Even in the midst of the gloom, pessimism and adversity of the dark and difficult days in the Baltics, or in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus or Uzbekistan, I was and remain heartened by the profound spirit in people to endure and hope for a better time, however long that might take. Above all, I came to appreciate the inestimable worth of our diplomatic craft, which strives to understand, to empathize and ultimately to build, rebuild and maintain bridges. For such is our stock in trade, our vocation and our duty. n In many respects, it is often a world of our own making that hinders our diplomatic work, blinds us to essential insights and inhibits our ability to empathize.