The reception office of the Winter Palace only really got busy after nine in the morning.
The heating in the room was not bad, but because the window frames were in disrepair, the desk by the window always made one feel a bit cold.
The sky outside the window remained overcast, and the cold wind blowing from the direction of the Neva River kept trying to squeeze in through the cracks in the glass.
The secretary, Lyudmila, sat there, her fingers stiff from the cold.
She inserted a piece of carbon paper into the typewriter, straightened the edges, and looked down again at the list that had just been delivered.
Today's small reception.
Location: side hall inside the Winter Palace.
There were quite a few people coming.
Leningrad City Soviet Chairman, Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak.
Director of the City Economic Reform Committee, Anatoly Borisovich Chubais.
Two associate professors from the Economics Department of Leningrad University.
A division chief from the Municipal Infrastructure Administration.
A deputy director from the Food Supply Committee.
And then, personnel from port management.
When Lyudmila typed "personnel from port management," her fingers paused for half a beat.
She read that line twice.
The port's people did not specify a specific position—either this person's name was inconvenient to write on the paper in advance, or it had not been decided who would attend.
She continued typing.
Foreign guests: Saionji Group representative, Saionji Shuichi.
Saionji Group consultant, Saionji Satsuki.
There were also the names of several attendants following; the Japanese names were transliterated into Cyrillic, looking somewhat awkward.
Lyudmila was not familiar with Japanese people; she only knew about a batch of humanitarian supplies in Moscow a few days ago.
She also heard that these Japanese people were arranged to stay on Kamenny Island.
Kamenny Island was not a place for ordinary foreign tourists to stay.
She finished typing a line, stopped again, and reread the words "personnel from port management."
Why would the Winter Palace reception need people from the port?
She did not dwell on it.
Or rather, she was not qualified to dwell on it.
She had to make three copies of this list.
One for the museum reception, one for security coordination, and one for the translation office.
Another handwritten summary would be sent to the Friendship Association branch, which still needed to arrange the arrival time of the motorcade and the foreign guest passage.
She continued typing.
After finishing, she put the three documents into envelopes, marked them with numbers, and handed them to the next room.
At noon, Lyudmila sat in the corner with a bowl of cabbage soup.
There was not much oil or fat in the soup, and the potato chunks were pitifully small.
Her colleague was complaining that there was no butter in the shops near her home, and halfway through the complaint, she suddenly mentioned today's reception.
"You know those Japanese people, right? The ones who donated a lot of things in Moscow last week."
"Yes."
"Is it another cultural exchange?"
Lyudmila stirred the soup in her bowl with a spoon.
"Maybe," she said, "but there are people from the port on the list."
Her colleague looked up at her.
"People from the port are coming too?"
Lyudmila moved the list aside a little, as if afraid of splashing soup on it.
The woman opposite her looked at her.
"Since when does the Winter Palace handle cargo unloading?"
"Who knows." She put the spoon back into the bowl. "Everything is in short supply now. Even those who look at paintings might be looking at warehouses on the side."
The woman opposite smiled.
"Do not talk nonsense."
"I am not talking nonsense." Lyudmila lowered her head, her voice a bit softer. "It is written on the list."
After saying this, both of them fell into a brief silence.
After a while, as if to suppress the unease from just now, Lyudmila whispered a sentence:
"That Japanese person, it seems, is not just here to see the Winter Palace."
A spark was quietly planted, planted in the snow.
When she said this, she probably would not have imagined what her words would eventually evolve into.
It just drifted from one desk to another.
And sitting next to the other desk was a young man who had come to pick up documents for the deputy director of the museum.
He did not interrupt, just finished the last bite of soup, picked up his hat and folder, and left the office.
An hour later, at the other end of Leningrad, in the back room of an old bookstore, someone heard the second version of this sentence.
"The Japanese are going to the Winter Palace."
The room was not big, and the light bulb was dim yellow.
Besides several stacks of history books piled against the wall, there was only an icon in the corner.
No candles were lit beside the icon, only a small piece of black bread was placed in front of it.
A dozen young people gathered around the table.
Some wore black coats, some wore old military boots, some looked like students, and some looked like idle youths who had come over from factories or docks.
They did not belong to any strict organization; they usually gathered together to read old books and write leaflets.
They cursed the liberals and also cursed those foreigners who called the Soviet Union "backward."
Someone finished saying the news they had just heard.
"Sobchak is also there."
A thin young man at the table raised his head.
"Of course Sobchak is there. That man wants a hand in everything right now."
"And that Chubais."
"Who is he?"
"Doing economic reform."
Several people let out disdainful laughs.
"Reform." Someone pressed a cigarette butt into a tin box. "Besides reform, what else can they say?"
The young man in the corner had not spoken until someone added:
"Heard that people from the port will go too."
The room went quiet for a moment.
"The port?"
The young man finally stood up.
"Talking about the port in the Winter Palace?"
"Just heard."
"Heard." He repeated, his eyes turning cold. "Every time before they sell something, it starts with 'heard.'"
Someone frowned.
"You be careful what you say."
"Why should I be careful?" The young man pointed outside the window. "The Germans came, the French came, and now the Japanese are coming too. Yesterday they talked about cultural exchange, today they talk about the port. In a few more days, will even the window Peter the Great opened for Russia be tagged with a foreign price?"
Someone at the table said in a low voice:
"Maybe it is just a visit."
"Does a visit require staying on Kamenny Island?" He sneered. "They are treating us like fools."
He pulled a piece of rough white paper from the table, picked up a pencil, and wrote a line first.
Do not sell out Russia.
Someone looked at it.
"Too mild."
Another person took the pencil and added a sentence below.
The Winter Palace is not a capitalist's reception room.
Someone in the room whispered approval.
The young man standing in the corner did not smile.
He fished a small bottle out of his old military bag and placed it on the table.
Black ink sloshed in the glass bottle.
Someone saw it and frowned.
"What are you going to do?"
"Holding signs, they will not see them while sitting in the car."
"Then shout."
"They will not hear shouting either."
He pushed the bottle toward the center of the table.
"There will always be something they will see."
No one answered immediately.
Outside, the snow was still falling.
At the same time, in the shipyard cafeteria, another kind of news was spreading.
There were no icons here, nor dreams of an old empire.
This place was made of high windows, long tables, enamel plates, and hands reddened by the cold.
Petrov sat against the wall, slowly breaking apart his bread.
He was an old worker in the workshop, had been to Moscow when he was young, attended the Advanced Producers' Conference, and had once believed that as long as the machines in the factory were still running, life would not be too bad.
Now the machines were still running.
But wages had already been delayed once.
The second time had not been officially notified, but everyone knew in their hearts.
"Uncle Petrov."
A young worker sat opposite him with a tray.
"Have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Over at the Winter Palace, the Japanese have arrived."
Petrov did not look up.
"What does the Japanese coming to the Winter Palace have to do with us?"
"Chubais is there too."
This name made several people nearby look over.
The young worker lowered his voice.
"They say they want to discuss enterprise reform, and people from the port will go too."
Another young worker put down his spoon.
"Who said that?"
"Old Andrei from the district committee. He still has acquaintances at the City Soviet."
Another person threw his spoon into his plate.
"Reform, reform, it is reform again."
No one at the table spoke.
"The reform in their mouths is just selling our things to foreigners."
"Last time they said adjustment, the night shift subsidy was gone. The time before that they said optimization, the workshop lost half its materials. What are they going to take this time?"
"Do not talk nonsense." Petrov said in a low voice.
"Am I talking nonsense?" The young worker's eyes were red. "Then tell me, why are they drinking tea in the Winter Palace and talking about enterprises? Have they ever seen our workshops? Do they know how long it has been since the No. 4 machine tool had its parts replaced? Do they know my wife waited in line for three hours, and only bought half a bag of potatoes in the end?"
The table became even quieter.
An older worker whispered:
"My son still needs to pay for daycare next month."
This sentence was heavier than the curses.
Petrov put down the bread in his hand.
After a long time, he took a piece of cardboard from the side.
The pencil tip landed on the paper, but it did not move for a long time.
The young worker looked at him.
"What to write?"
Petrov did not answer.
Finally, he wrote stroke by stroke:
Don't decide for us.
The young worker took a look and frowned.
"Too soft."
Petrov pressed down on the cardboard.
"We are not going to fight."
"Then what are we going for?"
"To let them see."
He raised his head, and there was nothing to be seen in his eyes.
"Let them see, there are still people in the factory."
"We workers, we are not dead yet."
In a small office near the port, the third piece of news turned into a third version.
The curtains were drawn in the room, and the smell of smoke was heavy.
There were several cardboard boxes piled against the wall, containing imported canned goods, medicine packaging, and some small commodities of unknown origin.
An old camera was placed on the table, next to a shiny foreign watch.
The man in the leather jacket sat in the chair, used a knife to pry open a can, looked at the contents, and put it aside without much appetite.
He did not care about Sobchak, nor did he care about Chubais.
He only cared about the doors.
There were doors everywhere in Leningrad.
Shop back doors, warehouse back doors, port back doors, hospital back doors.
As long as there were queues at the front door, there was a price for the back door.
The shortage of materials had become more and more serious in the past two years, and things that could not enter through regular channels flowed from him.
Medical supplies, canned food, electronic product components—as long as there was hard currency, everything could be obtained from the direction of Finland, and the price difference in the middle was quite considerable.
When the Japanese brought medical supplies, he already felt very uncomfortable.
Now hearing that they were going to talk about food supply and the port, that was not coming to see paintings.
Those people were planning to tear down his doors.
His subordinate stood in front of the desk.
"Should we get a few people to go over?"
The man in the leather jacket raised his eyes.
"Go over for what?"
"Shout a couple of times, let them know this is not Tokyo."
The man did not speak immediately.
He flipped the can over, looked at the production date, and threw it back on the table.
"Shouting is fine, but do not use knives."
The subordinate laughed.
"Are you afraid of this?"
The man looked at him.
"I am afraid of idiots."
The room became quiet all of a sudden.
He pulled open the drawer, took out a camera, and pushed it to the edge of the table.
"There will be people causing trouble at the Winter Palace tomorrow. You find someone with steady hands."
The subordinate looked down at the camera.
"Shoot what?"
"Cars, license plates, faces, and the guards' hands." The man said, "Do not shoot it like a tourist photo."
"If you can capture the scene of the Japanese bodyguards suppressing Russian youths, that would be best. The day after tomorrow, the whole city will know what Sobchak is doing."
The subordinate understood a bit.
"What if the Japanese are scared away?"
The man finally smiled a little.
"Scared away is best. If they do not run, they still have to know that the doors of Leningrad are not walked through for free."
It was not until the evening that the news reached a higher level.
Sergei Ilyich Volkov's office was on the second floor of a gray building.
He was fifty-eight years old this year and had spent his whole life in this system.
He managed 4,200 workers, three production lines, one supporting technical school, and two family dormitories.
He was not an engineer by training; he had come up all the way from the Youth League committee.
He knew which things were useful in documents and which things were useful in the corridors.
This afternoon, he received the news from an old friend.
The old friend worked in the City Soviet Secretariat; the rank was not high, but the position was clever—responsible for conveying decisions from above to the executors below.
The news was very simple: Sobchak took Chubais to Kamenny Island and talked with the Japanese for nearly two hours.
People from the port, food, and shipbuilding research institutes would all go to the Winter Palace tomorrow.
After listening, Volkov did not ask a second time.
He only asked one question: "What level is going from the Shipbuilding Research Institute?"
"Deputy Director."
Volkov hung up the phone.
He stood at the window, looking at the old cars in the parking lot downstairs, one of which was his gray Volga.
This old partner's engine had been changed twice, and the odometer had turned three times, parked in this yard for eleven years.
And in the past eleven years, there had not been a single day that the factory could not pay wages.
When quotas were not enough, he called the ministry. When the ministry did not answer, he went to Moscow. When Moscow did not care, he found a way himself.
Because he knew the rules.
The rule was: the factory belongs to the state, the workers belong to the factory, and the wages belong to the plan.
As long as this chain was still there, he was the head of these 4,200 people.
But what if the chain broke?
If someone walked in and said how much this factory is worth, how much this production line is worth, and how much the labor of these workers is worth.
Today they talk about the port, tomorrow they will talk about the shipyard.
The day after tomorrow they will ask: how much is your engineers' annual salary?
Volkov turned and walked back to his desk.
He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
It rang four times.
"Georgy, this is Volkov."
The other end of the phone froze for a moment.
"Comrade Secretary."
"There is an event at the Winter Palace tomorrow." Volkov's tone was very flat. "People from foreign financial groups will go. Sobchak and Chubais will also go. They are talking about the port, and it may also involve shipbuilding."
He paused for a beat.
"Sometimes I wonder, workers have the right to know their own fate."
Georgy was silent for a few seconds. "I understand."
"You do not understand anything."
"Yes."
The phone hung up.
Volkov flipped through an old address book from his drawer and found another number.
This number was written on the last few pages, the ink color was lighter than the others, as if it had been added later.
He dialed it.
"Fedorov."
"I am Volkov, from Northern Machinery."
"Yes."
"Regarding that event at the Winter Palace tomorrow, your people are in charge of security coordination, right?"
"What is wrong?"
"Heard that some workers might want to go and submit a petition, and there will be a few students as well."
"They are all young people, emotionally agitated. I want to tell you, no need to be too nervous."
"What do you mean?"
"The meaning is, let them go."
"Let Sobchak see for himself, Leningrad is not something he alone has the final say on."
The other end of the phone was quiet for a while.
"I know."
Volkov hung up the phone, turned off the desk lamp, and left only the wall lamp on.
A photo hung on the wall, taken eight years ago during the factory anniversary.
In the front row stood him and the then-factory director, and behind them were the labor models from the workshop, each with a red flower pinned to their chest.
At that time, the sky in the photo was still very bright.