The Iron Curtain still looked very solid in 1973, but a new era of détente was dawning. The USA and USSR made unprecedented, and seldom reported, arrangements to exchange technical information and to collaborate in areas of mutual interest. One of these superpower projects involved a real-time computing specialist from Dublin. Frank Cole became one of the few westerners, apart from diplomats, with official residency rights in Moscow.
For the next four years he lived in the capital of the Soviet Union and witnessed Cold War geopolitics from a unique perspective. He facilitated sales of Hewlett-Packard computers to state agencies and research institutes, gaining entry to organisations that were normally closed to outsiders. He learned how to navigate around the Soviet state apparatus. He studied the day-to-day experiences of his Moscow neighbours. And he found girlfriends among the daughters of the communist elite.
Frank took full advantage of the privileges available to foreign residents in the USSR. ‘We lived like millionaires and we were treated like pop stars. We had good apartments, good cars and good food. We were not subject to the constraints on meeting Russians that applied to embassy staff. And we did not have to obey all the rules that the Soviets lived by.’
Shortly before his death in December 2017 Frank completed a series of interviews with John Sterne and approved the text of this e-book. It records memorable encounters in hotel restaurants, the methods and actions of real-life spies and how to drive around a city without maps. Frank, moreover, came to regard Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard as real communists in comparison with the Soviet officials who bought their computers.
No One Ever Called Me ‘Comrade’ is available free of charge in the Apple Book Store. If you do not have access to Apple Books, please send an email to the address at the bottom of the page to request a PDF version.
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