Starting on August 1, the US embassy in Moscow, US consulate in Ekaterinburg and US consulate in Vladivostok will no longer have the ability to hire Russian citizens or citizens of any other third party country to work for them. They will be only able to hire American citizens. These regulations were implemented by the Russian government as a result of putting the US on the list of “unfriendly countries.” The State department said that these restrictions forced them to fire 182 employees from the embassy and the consulates, most of whom were local staffers and Russian citizens. This had happened before: in 1986 the USSR’s leadership banned the Americans from hiring Soviet citizens in response to the U.S. expelling more than 50 Soviet diplomats for “espionage.” In this interview, Jack Matlock, who at the time served as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, told Elena Chernenko about his diplomatic mission’s way of handling the situation.
– What was the atmosphere like at the embassy, when you arrived in the USSR?
If I’m not mistaken, I got to Moscow in April of 1987. By then, there were no Soviet employees, the Soviet government had prohibited them from working at the embassy after this one “espionage” case. Before that happened, we used to be able to hire locals through a special structure under the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (note from Kommersant: Main Directorate for Servicing the Diplomatic Corps). But then we lost almost all of the administrative staff and technical personnel. At that time, such services were not provided by outsourcing companies. There were no such private firms in the USSR. We had to replace these employees with the U.S. citizens.
– Did it work?
The process took us several months. But, I must say, it had a lot of advantages, too. For example, we were able to bring several professional employees from different cleaning companies from the U.S. They were between 40 and 50 years of age and happy to experience such a shift in their lives, a move to a new place, and they gave their all. For other vacancies, such as waiters and others, we managed to hire American students studying Russian in the country. They would come work with us for two years, then return to the U.S. with significantly improved language and cultural knowledge, and so on. Many have gone on to built great careers afterwards. A student from the states worked in my residence as a housekeeper, then she moved to the public relations sections of our embassy, and three or four years later she became Vice President of an international bank.
A few years later, my driver took up a high position in one of the Sakhalin-based energy companies. On one hand, it was a difficult period of time, and we had to do a lot of things ourselves. But there were also many long-term benefits, especially for those who had the chance to come work with us.
– So you don’t think things were that bad?
No, but on the whole, this practice of mutual cutting of employees of diplomatic missions has many extremely negative consequences. I don’t know what the authorities gain by expelling diplomats of another state from their country. And I don’t understand what the authorities are guided by when they limit foreign embassies’ right to hire local employees. I blame both sides for the current situation. To me they don’t seem very far-sighted. The mass expulsion of diplomats as a punishment for another country is just stupid.
During the Cold War I spent 11 years working at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in different positions and I remember really well how our main goal was to open up more communication channels, to create more opportunities for dialogue. And now I get this impression that both sides are, on the contrary, striving to narrow these channels.
But, in my opinion, this does not meet the interests of either of the sides. Of course, the American embassy will cope, they’ve coped in more difficult situations; but in general it’s very strange, in a free market economy, to deprive its own citizens of being employed in positions they’ve worked in for years. Once again, I repeat: I believe that the current impasse is caused by the actions of both sides. [I know] someone will probably say that the U.S. started all of this, and Russia simply reacted in an extreme and emotional manner.
– Russian diplomats tend to say that all of this started with the President Obama’s decision to expel several dozen employees of the Russian diplomatic mission from the U.S. (and to seize Russian diplomatic property). The White House called it a response to “Russian interference in the U.S. presidential elections.”
Back then, I criticized this decision, it immediately seemed ridiculous to me. They just shouldn’t have done it. Both countries have suffered and will continue to suffer the consequences of this series of retaliatory expulsions. I would like for our presidents and foreign ministers to find a way out of the current situation. Neither side should be interested in limiting the possibilities of interacting with the other. Yes, these steps are presented as punishment for real as well as imagined unacceptable actions of the other side, but it seems to me that such steps no longer benefit either side.
– If you were to return to 1987, how well do you think the embassy was coping? Given that it was a difficult period, as you said.
The first months were especially hard. It was difficult for maybe up to a year. We had to perform the functions of the retired local employees of our consular department. And they were entrusted with most of the bureaucratic work. The same applies to the section of the public relations. As far as I understand, this will become a significant problem for the current employees, since the embassy has already stopped issuing visas. Russian citizens will have to obtain U.S. visas in other countries, and I have no idea who could possibly benefit from such a situation. But I also understand why the embassy is forced to curtail these services in the absence of personnel to carry them out. There’s a large amount of information to be processed and the requirement for the processing from the U.S. authorities are serious. The fact that our mission is forced to work in such conditions is bad for both the Unites States and Russia. I really hope that the people involved in the decision-making process on both sides will realize the perniciousness of this situation and will begin to rewind everything back.
– What was the most difficult aspect of your day to day life as an ambassador?
Honestly, it seems to me that we, as Americans, are good at doing everything ourselves, including performing functions unusual for our particular profession. It was quite easy for me to get behind the wheel of an ambassador’s car myself during the months when I had no driver. The only difficulty came up when someone called on the road and I had to urgently find a parking lot to talk with them. I suppose, when you’re a driver, you don’t think about it.
I did a lot of things myself. For example, when a group of senators from Washington arrived in Moscow, I poured and served them drinks myself. But for dinner, I invited them to another place!
The only thing is that due to the need to combine several functions, you have less time to complete your actual main work. But we did it, somehow. I remember that while we did not have new personnel from the United States, we paid extra to our Marines for help with cleaning, they did it in the time they had off from their main work. It might not have been as good as it should’ve been but overall it wasn’t bad. And then people themselves began to try and keep their offices in better order, cleaner. It really wasn’t difficult for them to go and shake out the trash cans or wipe the dust themselves. Yes, these everyday issues were annoying, but we dealt with everything thrown our way.
By the way, the Soviet authorities then made one exception: we were allowed to continue studying Russian from out local teachers. We just had to hire them privately instead of through the embassy.
The main problem was that there was no logic to these restrictions. They were introduced as a response to some actions deemed unacceptable, but after that or side reacted in a mirror-like manner. And a spiral of mutual sanctions and expulsions was created, with everyone suffering from it. To me, this is somewhat reminiscent of self-harm. Such measures don’t help solve any shared problems, and we have a lot of them. Then and now.
– Like what?
Today, the United States and Russia (and China, too) face many challenges in common, from the coronavirus pandemic to climate change and migration flows, and so on. We need to jointly solve these issues instead of quarreling over much less significant ones. By artificially limiting the diplomats’ ability to do the job, we undermine the chances that we successfully join up to overcome global challenges, I am absolutely convinced that we actually have many more common interests, including in the field of security, than divergent ones.
ACURA would like to express sincere thanks to Finley Muratova for their work on this translation.