BUREAUCRACY is the word I hate most. I have lived with it in Russia our years, found its mirror image during a spell in South Africa, and now it appears that while the evil virus is being eradicated to the east and the south, it has gathered strength in the heartlands of democracy.
It would be over simplistic to say that we westerners have given countries like Russia the benefits of liberal democracy because those benefits have not yet reached the citizens of that country. But after the opening of barriers, the knocking down of walls and the denunciation of the red tape which ensnarled our fellow Europeans to the east, one might have imagined that we westerners would have taken a leaf out of our owns book.
This column is being written, by the way, from a room in a Moscow hotel which, in order to ensure the safety of its guests, is surrounded by a large perimeter fence. Guests can only receive visitors who are in possession of a signed and stamped "propusk" (permission card) and the result is that the President Hotel is by no means a scene of the swinging (and sometimes shooting) nightlife for which the Russian capital has become simultaneously famous and infamous.
The place is as dead as the proverbial dodo, the cold, white marble enlivened only by posters which proclaim that Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is "our president" and "we" will vote for him on June 16th.
This form of bureaucracy is, however, tolerable in comparison to some of the problems faced en route from Dublin. Of course there were some delays at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport at passport control and customs and also, in my case, at the counter which deals with people who make it to Moscow but whose baggage does not.
BUT the seasoned traveller expects these things in the countries of what we used to call Eastern Europe; a strict psychological preparation is done in one's mind as soon as the captain announces that he is starting his descent.
Sheremetyevo is a purgatory but it is one that I knew was coming; what I wasn't prepared for in the slightest was the hell of Heathrow.
I should explain that my travel plans usually do not include London's international airport, not because I have had any animosity towards the place but because I don't like changing planes and I like changing terminals even less. But this time I had to be in Moscow early in the day and the Heathrow option looked the best bet.
The main foreseen problem was that I would arrive in the "Republic of Ireland Terminal" which is situated on the borders of Devon and Cornwall and I would depart from Terminal Four, which is to be found somewhere in East Anglia.
To make things easier, the authorities, apparently, had devised a "Flight Connection Centre." This turns out to be a door to the left of a corridor where one has to put one's baggage through metal detectors for the second time in the day and after this has been done, one has to go through passport control, a formality which should not be necessary for people travelling from Ireland.
On Saturday, May 18th, there was a queue at the passport check stretching, three abreast, for a good 300 yards. At the top sat a single passport controller who meticulously scrutinised each person's documents before allowing them to miss their flights. There was a good deal of shouting and screaming but the man who was holding the hordes of Europe at bay from the sacred soil was unmoved. He didn't even lift his head.
Had he undergone special training in the Soviet Union? That thought undoubtedly crossed my mind but reason declared that this was unlikely. Had his superiors been trained in the USSR? Unlikely too because the Russians, even in their most repressive times, always had 16 passport controllers on duty instead of one.
BUT still the suspicion lingered. The man's studied disdain for the passengers could only have been learned at a special school in the Urals. Not an eyebrow was lifted, not an expression crossed his face: Blood pressures rose all round him yet he remained as cool as a cucumber sandwich at a cricket match on the village green.
Suddenly another man arrived and waved people through, cursorily glancing at passports as people rushed in a panic to catch a bus towards the East Anglian terminal. The flight was caught as the stewardess was preparing to obey the command "all doors to automatic" and we were on our way. All Moscow bound passengers from Dublin made it, though none of their baggage did. We should be grateful, though, that none of us suffered a seizure during that frightful dash through the maze of badly signposted corridors.
At Sheremetyevo, the usual 16 passport controllers dealt with their clients with absolute dispatch in comparison to Heathrow's Gang of One. We were through in less than half an hour and the weather was fine and the temperature in the mid 20s C. The sunshine was gleaming against the golden domes of the Kremlin and most of the locals were out of town at their dachas in the forested countryside.
It was at this serene time that I realised that hundreds of thousands of Irish travellers must have been going through that horrible nightmare at Heathrow for years while I was sitting at my Moscow desk in the scorching humidity of summer or the snowy stillness of winter regaling some readers with tales of the bureaucracy that stunted Russian life.
And they may have been having similar problems at home in Ireland with the gas company or with the post office or with the 48A bus.
What the Russians and eastern Europeans did was revolt. They issued samizdat publications and were sent to the Gulags; they pulled down a wall, they gathered at the Moscow White House as the shots rang out. Then the big bureaucracy bit the dust and now the petty bureaucracy is slowly being eroded.
What we westerners did was write a letter to The Irish Times, seethe for a while and then go to the pub to sound off with our friends and family.
Perhaps we should take a lesson from our eastern cousins, perhaps we should complain when the main course arrives cold and 20 minutes late, perhaps we should march on the 48A terminal or on the gas company or on the ESB.
We should certainly boycott the "Flight Connection Centre" at Heathrow.