On that occasion, I also escaped with merely probation. The editor-in-chief
ended the conversation with, what seemed for a moment, a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes: Since you proved yourself entirely incapable
of writing anything publishable in the Soviet press about East Africa, we are
sending you to West Siberia. Try to write something more upbeat about the
summer construction brigades of student volunteers who are helping build
homes for the wounded internationalist fighters returning from Afghanistan.

Needless to say, I failed that assignment too. A group of young Sandinistas
from Nicaragua, who studied engineering at a famous technological
university in Moscow, stopped my interview with a bitter question in
Spanish: Compañero, if all this disorganization, drinking, and corruption
that we are witnessing at this construction site is really a socialist planned
economy, then what are we fighting and dying for back in our country?