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Recently in Salon People

Nothing Personal
Buffalo 36-D
Christina Ricci's Love Hewitt jones; Streisand just says no to running; Monica Lewinsky's zipless clutch. Plus: Auctioning child's baby clothes on Internet? Zero dollars. Drew Barrymore's childhood? Priced.
By Amy Reiter
[11/18/99]

Nothing Personal
Celibacy bites
Janeane cops feels; Rodney's pop heals; and at the Gary Coleman auction, collector plates a steal!
By Amy Reiter
[11/17/99]

Column
Hillary, Naomi, Susan and Rush. Sheesh!
Clinton requires emergency intervention; Wolf's mind is amazingly slack; Faludi's "Stiffed" is a stiff. Meanwhile, Limbaugh brings a genuine intellectual service to American culture.
By Camille Paglia
[11/17/99]

People Feature
He don't love you
It's the talk of the T.O.W.N.! Tony Orlando and Wayne Newton square off in the Show-Me (the money) State.
By Lance Gould
[11/17/99]

Nothing Personal
Shave me
Sharon Stone's close shaves with dairy; Dubya gets 2-D for "King of the Hill"; Christina Ricci, not fat; and ... Porn again? Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez bring the Mitchell brothers to the screen in "Rated X."
By Amy Reiter
[11/16/99]

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Not that I, a 21-year-old American college student, had much to do with the war effort. As even a casual perusal of the files of the Selective Service System will reveal, I sought to distance myself from both the war and the military as far and as fast as the torn ACL in my right knee would carry me. Besides, I had protested, I protested. But none of this mattered a whit to Comrade Natalia. This was her moment to defend the cause of international communism while practicing her English. So as any hopes faded that she might prove a deliciously corruptible Ninotchka, I looked for a path of retreat to beat.

Across the grand boulevard slicing through the heart of Russia's second city stood Dom Knigi, the House of Books. I made for the imposing building, the largest bookstore in Leningrad, with Natalia dogging my steps, saying things about Richard Nixon that I then thought quite paranoid but, years later, had to admit were oddly insightful. My hope was that the library-like atmosphere of a bookstore would, if not silence her tirade, at least mute its volubility. That worked, up to a point. She calmed down amid encyclopedic collections of the works of Marx and Lenin. She even asked what I intended to purchase. The prices were unbelievable. Everything was sharply discounted, presumably to move the merchandise to the masses.

Still, I had no intention of buying anything. For one thing, I had a train to catch early the next morning from the Finland Station. After 10 days visiting Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad, I was bound for Helsinki and a decent meal, and I planned to travel light. Moreover, my pocket contained but four rubles (then worth a handsome $4.40 at the official rate). And, even if I could have shaken Natalia, I had no desire to engage in any last minute money-changing on the black market. But then, glancing about, I was beckoned by a full-size poster of the founding father himself, V.I. Lenin, hanging in a back room down a dim corridor.

As I approached, it was evident the entire room was given over to posters that were nothing like the posters then common at home. There were no psychedelic montages idolizing a Lennon, a Hendrix or a Joplin. There were no Richard Avedons and no saccharine pleas for world peace adorned with daisies or the sentiments of Kahlil Gibran. And there was certainly nothing even vaguely reminiscent of Robert Indiana's insipid but wildly popular Love poster. No, what we had here were seriously classic works of agitprop, posters drawn in a range of styles from socialist realism to fantastic primitives. At least a score were variations on Lenin, whose waxy remains I had viewed days earlier at his Red Square mausoleum in Moscow. Most of the others showed brawny workers of both sexes building monstrous dams or reaping bountiful harvests. (In retrospect, it's remarkable how closely these selfless icons of Soviet industry resemble today's personally trained, buffed-up celebrities.)

Then there was the most striking poster of all. Against a dark red background stood a shirtless and exceptionally muscular black man of indeterminate nationality. In his right hand, he held an ancient rifle while a broken chain dangled from his wrist. In the lower right corner of the poster was a silhouette in white of the battle cruiser Aurora, the warship that had fired the shot signaling the start of the Bolshevik coup in 1917. Inscribed in Russian across the top (but needing no translation) was the famous command: "Rise up -- you have nothing to lose but your chains!" As propaganda, it was, even for that time, well over the top. As pop art, though, it was to die for.

I asked Natalia to inquire about the cost.

"They are 10 kopeks each. Do you wish to buy one?"

"Of course I do. But I want not one but ..." (pausing to do a quick calculation) "40."

Natalia was puzzled. Had I suddenly undergone some revolutionary epiphany here among the icons of Soviet life?

"Why so many?" she asked hesitantly, not quite knowing what sort of answer she might receive.

"To bring home with me. This is a gold mine. A license to print rubles. You can't imagine how much these posters would be worth in America."

She was confused. Worth is a variable concept. But she had her suspicions. After all, to her I was already a warmonger.

"What do you mean? You would not sell them, would you?"

It wasn't clear whether it was anger or disappointment that hit her first.

"So you will give them to your friends?" she offered.

"No, Natalia. Sell. I'll sell them to friends and anyone else who wants to buy one."

Cautiously eyeing me, obviously praying to her socialist gods that I would redeem myself with charity: "Oh, you mean you will sell them for what they cost you."

Silly Communist. "No, you have no idea how much these will fetch. Maybe $10 each or more. The profit margin will be incredible."

Profit margin. The concept, of course, was as familiar to her as it was antithetical. She may have been the most beautiful woman east or west of the Urals, but the look she now assumed was horrid. Before her stood not only an agent of U.S. military aggression in Vietnam but a gold-plated capitalist.

Next page | He was introduced as Cooz, a nickname he'd appropriated from a decidedly white basketball player