Equality In New York, Clinton In Russia - 12 May 1995

To put it mildly, President Clinton did not go to Moscow in a happy or expectant mood.

Ever since it was announced that he would join the British and French leaders to celebrate V.E. Day in the Russian capital, Mr Clinton was criticised by practically everybody. Liberals were appalled that he would appear to be sanctioning or at best choosing to ignore the brutal invasion of Chechnya. The leaders of the Republicans both in the House and the Senate forewarned the President that if he were unable to dissuade Mr Yeltsin from selling a billion dollars worth of nuclear technology to Iran, the prospect for this congress giving much economic aid to Russia would be, said Senator Dole disastrous. Conservatives of all parties echoed both lamentations over Chechnya and nuclear help to Iran, but alone so far as I could see, protested the choice of Moscow for the main celebration on the ground that Moscow was, throughout the war, the symbol of Stalin's tyrannical hold on the whole Soviet Union.

What happened between Mr Yeltsin and Mr Clinton in the little time they had together to talk about these prickly topics we shall no doubt find out in time, but these political criticisms – which were mounting before the Moscow visit – were overwhelmed for the time being by the surprising majesty the grandeur of the Moscow commemoration. What most of us expected was a massive display of tanks and soldiers and droning bombers and grey men in grey suits saluting from the top of Lenin's granite mausoleum. First, there was no statue of Stalin and no mention of him. The new statue looking down over the Central Square was that of Marshal Zhukov, the defender of Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad and the commander of the final offensive on the Odor that led to the fall of Berlin.

As for Lenin, his name chiselled on his tomb was tactfully covered over with foliage, and instead of an immense wooden statue of him leading the revolution with his right fist aloft, there were two even more immense portraits, four storeys high of a Russian soldier embracing an American soldier. And the bands played cheerful bouncing marches, one by the immortal Sousa, and folk songs and the scene that impressed everybody into an awed silence, was that of the 6,000 Russian veterans, solid men blazing with medals, all of whom had survived the most murderous of the battles.

Mr Clinton's reported comment is one I think that's likely to go into the dictionaries of quotations: "I just can't get over the faces, their faces are incredible." Perhaps because these men were so old, so granity in appearance and most of them wore business suits and caps, they underlined in the most memorable way the stress that Mr Yeltsin wished to put on the whole ceremony: the ordeal of the ordinary citizens of those three capital cities fighting with old guns and sticks and frozen hands, one million of them lost at Leningrad alone.

Somebody at the White House – we hope of course it was the President – had the idea or the explanation for the decision to go to Moscow that the American people had never really taken in the enormity of the Soviet casualties in the Second World War. It's true, a recent survey asked how many American casualties in the Second War and how many Soviet casualties, most Americans thought maybe they lost three times as many as we did. The true answer is 54 times as many. United States lost half a million men, the Soviet losses, including many millions of civilians were, 27 million. Mr Clinton said it simply and eloquently: "I have come here today on behalf of all the people of the United States to express our deep gratitude for all that you gave and all that you lost".

After a day and an evening of V.E. Day, the return to the everyday facts of life was like getting down to a mortgage and an insurance policy on the first day after a honeymoon. And what, for instance, are the facts of everyday life to which people returned after the glory and the cheering and the fireworks? Well I take three instances, the first that came to hand in the morning paper, each very typical of the sort of problem that Americans are dealing with and never really solving everyday.

I made a note, three notes at the time, I read about them to remind me. The notes read: "Code 23, the gaze of Notre Dame and Jimmy Duke of Liverpool the smoker's friend." A scholarly young woman, 23 years of age, a degree in psychology went looking for an apartment in New York. She was black, she arranged to look over an empty apartment with an estate agent, a white woman who happened to be an immigrant from South Africa. They went off together and came on the landlord sitting in front of his house. The landlord was sorry, he'd just had a phone call from his daughter, a friend of hers had just taken the apartment. The estate agent knew something the black woman didn't and eventually the two of them brought a complaint before the New York City Human Rights Commission. The white estate agent told them that her agency listed the address of the empty apartment with a number attached, 23. It was a regular thing, a code used by the landlord and observed by the estate agency to alert the agents not to rent such apartments to blacks or Hispanics, a practice a lawyer for the commission said that is pernicious and illegal. The commission fined the landlord $40,000.

I was surprised to read that in the whole of last year, there were only 169 cases, complaints filed on this score, surprised at so few. The Human Rights Commission is not more than 30 years old. When I first came to New York looking for an apartment it was 1937. This pernicious and illegal practice was universal and legal, outside the front door of all the large apartment houses, blocks of flats there was always a rectangular board on a stand, nothing furtive about it, standing tall handsome wood panel carefully inscribed with printed letters in gold. It would say something like: Three to six room apartments to let, restricted. The single word "restricted" was such a normal addition, I didn't enquire for some time what it meant. It meant one thing: No Jews. No need to warn blacks to stay away. In those days – my goodness the word blacks was highly insulting to begin with – what we politely called negroes – which is now insulting – wouldn't dream of looking in any part of any town that carried such signs or such rents.

But in the early '40s, there came along a very active and aggressive governor of New York – he'd made a name for himself successfully prosecuting first the boss of the New York City Democratic Party and then a raft of gangsters. His name was Thomas E Dewey. He pushed through the New York State legislature the first fair employment practices, law punishing discrimination because of race or religion and he did the same for housing. He was, by the way, a Republican in the twilight of the time when the Republicans in this state were the progressive party and the Democrats with one or two striking exceptions were routine fairly corrupt machine politicians.

Second note, the famous Catholic University of Notre Dame, which is called here Notre Dame, has denied recognition to a group of students and graduates calling themselves the gays and lesbians of Notre Dame. In doing so, the University spokesman/woman banded no words, chopped no logic, she said straightforwardly that while Notre Dame has a genuine desire to acknowledge the presence of gays and lesbians, the university must follow the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and calls for chastity from all unmarried students whatever their sexual orientation.

At the same time, the Jewish University Yeshiva has just provided an office, an indirect subsidy, to the lesbian and gay student alliance at Yeshiva Law School. The President was as direct and uncomplicated as the Vice President of Notre Dame, he said: "As a Rabbi I cannot condone homosexual behaviour, which is expressly prohibited by Jewish law, but as president of a non denominational institution Yeshiva University must conform with secular law." How come, the cry went up, that Yeshiva, which is known as a pillar of Orthodox Judaism can proclaim itself to be a non religious institution? The president could point to a 1967 ruling or declaration that it considered itself non religious, it did this to take advantage of tax exempt bonds. Therefore, the Yeshiva's lawyers point out "Yeshiva is not exempt from a fairly new New York City law, which prohibits discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation".

Uptown, but several ethnic rungs down from religion and sex, there is a new American, a former rugger player from Liverpool who's the first, certainly the most conspicuous, rebel against New York City's new and very strict ordinance went into effect on the 10th of April against smoking in any public place, and in any restaurant bar or cafe that can seat more than 35 persons. Jimmy Duke, the owner of a saloon – he prefers to call it a pub, Drakes Drum – has become a New Yorker quickly enough to cry, once the law went into effect, 'enough is enough is enough already'. So he threw out over three dozen chairs and tables leaving seating for precisely 34 humans. He did the place over. He put in a new ventilator, he hired a superior chef, he improved the menu, it cost him $40,000. He renamed the place: Drakes Drum the Smoke Inn, he sent flyers around the neighbourhood and he simply explained: "I run a pub, I'm not a psychologist, I don't do behaviour modification." He hopes soon to recoup his considerable investment. The place is packed night and day with contented customers who would give the city's Department of Health a fit – they smoke and eat and laugh and smoke and drink and smoke.

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