COLUMNISTS

Deidre Dare

We live in a city of spies.

Years ago, before I ever considered moving to Moscow, a mysterious character named "Les," who I met when I lived in Sydney, got involved in some scheme here and asked me to come work for him. The job, he explained, only required that I spend time in Moscow, drink vodka with some rough guys, hire nympho hookers for said rough guys and report back.

I rejoiced.

I had decided that Les must be working for the CIA and that I was at long last going to be a spy, a job I felt I was destined to do since I've always been convinced that tight, black bodysuits would be involved in that occupation.

Thrilled, I said to almost everyone in my life: "Don't tell anyone else, but they've asked me to be a spy! Isn't that wonderful?!"

I never heard another peep from either Les or the CIA. It turns out that you're supposed to keep it secret if mysterious men named "Les" ask you to "report back" from Russia.

I just don't have the spy-bone. I don't have it for public spying and I don't have it for private spying either.

Private spying (aka spying on loved ones) is ubiquitous here. And it's this type of spying that makes Moscow a City of Spies.

Guiltier by far of this kind of spying are the Russians.

I've yet to meet a Western man married to a Russian woman whose wife hasn't somehow got into his e-mails or his texts and become enraged by whatever she found there. Russian girlfriends do this less frequently, but only because their access to the expat man's technological equipment is more limited. Private spying is nothing if not opportunistic.

Russian men are no different. They eagerly decode Hotmail passwords and read texts whenever a phone is momentarily left unattended.

"You really are a slut!" a Russian guy once screamed at me after purloining my BlackBerry in the middle of the night and reading through my Sent Items.

I can guarantee that if you go out with a Russian, you will be spied on eventually.

Expats generally don't engage in this type of spying because we have a much stronger sense of personal privacy in the West than exists in Russia.

But the main reason the Russians spy more on their spouses and lovers than we do is because they are a violently jealous people.

I just finished my third reading of "Anna Karenina" and hated Anna with a passion this time.

When I was in college, a women's school known for its militant feminism, I saw Anna as a victim of both Vronsky and society. Reading it again, I saw that Anna is everything a lover should not be: jealous, insecure, pathetic, clingy and given to hysterical green-eyed temper tantrums.

Anna makes life unendurable for poor Vronsky. And then she kills herself to make Vronsky feel bad for talking to a girl in a carriage who'd simply brought him a package of documents from his mother.

Suicide would seem extreme considering Vronsky's crime, but, of course, Anna is Russian. Having had my own experiences with Russian jealousy, Anna's crazed reaction almost seems natural to me now.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if someday I found myself identifying a body on the tracks at Belorussky train station.

I've never been jealous and what jealousy always says to me is that the jealous person fears you can (and will) do better. Because of that, the moment some lover is jealous with me, I start to immediately think to myself "Gee ... maybe I could do better ..."

Jealousy is a symptom of insecurity.

It's hard to blame them, considering their history and things like the United States always trying to surround them with deadly missiles and all, but the Russians lack confidence.

So, if you're on intimate terms with a Russian you need to do two things. First, be patient and understanding and second, hide your communication devices.  n

xxoo, DD

Deidre Dare's novel "Expat" and "Moscow Moment" video reports can be viewed at: www.deidredare.com