What It's Like to Be a Soviet Operator

by E. Solomenko  (Reprinted from Pravda)

I first came across her when as an inter-city telephone operator in Novosibirsk she tried long and hard but without success to put me through to Ashkhabad.

Her efforts were in vain.  "I'm sorry," she said, "I'll try via Mara."  Getting through to Mara was no problem.  "Hello, Mara?  Can you help me get a line to Ashkhabad?"

The reply was anything but sisterly, "Dial it yourself!"  Then they cut her off.

I reflected sadly that the lack of solidarity in Mara was a far more common approach than that of my Novosibirsk guardian angel of the telephone exchange.  I remembered how on a previous occasion I had also been trying unsuccessfully to get through to the elusive Ashkhabad, when the operator told me that there was a fault on the line.

Just in case, I decided to try getting through without her help, by dialing direct from the telephone box.  Miracle of miracles - the inter-city code worked and I got through.  The operator had told me there was a fault in order to get rid of me.

Ashkhabad was notoriously difficult to get a line to.  Yet now her senior colleague was trying again and again to connect me and I could hear her saying to the girl next to her (she had forgotten to switch me off) that she hardly had any voice left from shouting down the line to Ashkhabad.

At long last I heard the voice of my friend, the artist Durdy Bayramov, over the line.  We both had to bellow in order to be heard; the line was terrible.  The operator's hoarse voice broke in as she started relaying my questions to Durdy and his answers back to me.  I felt very touched by her concern and just had to find out who she was.

Her name is Valentina Efimovna Vdovina and she works in what they simply refer to as the "inter-city," which is one of the country's largest telephone exchanges, connecting the Urals with Kamchatka and Kuril.

So what is Valentina Efimovna like?

"She's a conscientious worker," said the supervisor, T. Vereshchak.  "She never goes home until all the calls that have been booked have got through.  Sometimes she sits on into the night long after her shift has gone off-duty.  We have a lot of good operators here, but we all take our hats off to Valentina."

Then who should come into the room but Valentina herself.  About 40 years of age, small with a round face and short hair and very kind, homely eyes.  She sits down, obviously tired.  Before lunch today she was working on eight calls at once.

Her job isn't exactly a piece of cake.  She only has one day off a week and has es count of the number of national holidays she's spent sitting in front of the switchboard.  She works six hour shifts doing what amounts to a juggling act with both hands, connecting and disconnecting plugs from the switchboard.

Then there are the operators' fetters, the earphones with mouthpiece attached.  Just try spending a whole shift wearing those things!  You soon get bells ringing permanently in your head from the constant noise, and this leads to headaches.  Your voice suffers too from the constant shouting to make yourself heard over bad lines.

It is no accident that state legislation allows for early retirement in this job.  After ten years in the inter-city, you can retire on full pension at 50.  Only a few soldier on for longer.  Lilya Gleikh, Vera Raeva, team leader Elsa Vasilievna...  Ludmila Ilvanovna Gorbatova has served her for almost a quarter of a century and has risen from operator to manager.  Other girls come here straight from school and don't last two minutes.

"I'd get out myself," sighed Valentina Vdovina, "but I love my work.  I think of it as helping people to meet each other.  It's as if I had a hand in their fates, even if only for a minute."

I said that no doubt she overheard many conversations between callers, not on purpose, of course, but how else could she check the pony of line and make sure that they could hear each other, how else could she let them know that their time was almost up?

Whether she likes it or not, the tail must be party to other people's secrets, to their joys and sadnesses.  There must be calls from sons returning from the army, calls to announce the birth of a grandson, to say that somebody has been put in prison or that someone else has had a heart attack.

Sometimes they overhear whole conversations, late at night or on holidays when there are fewer calls going through.  During normal working hours they only have time to quickly listen to check that everything is O.K.  Twenty seconds for each call and on to the next one.

A local call comes in.  "Please put me through to Lesosibirsk as quickly as possible, my dear!"

"What number do you want?" Valentina asks.

"I'm afraid I don't know," sobs the voice.

"Please don't cry.  Let's try to think how we can find the number.  Who do you want to ring there?"

"My daughter's had an accident there," says the woman's tearful voice.

"Don't worry.  I'll get through as quickly as I can.  I expect the surgical ward of the hospital there will be able to help."

She got through to her colleagues in Krasnoyarsk who gave her a line to Lesosibirsk.  From there she got through to the hospital and then to the doctor in charge of the surgical ward.

"Hello, this is the Novosibirsk inter-city exchange.  Has there been a young woman admitted following an accident?  There has?  Hang on a second, I'll connect you to her mother."

Later the mother rang Valentina, this time crying with relief.

"Thank you my dear.  I can't tell you how much you helped me.  I don't know how to thank you for all you did."

She doesn't have to thank her.  For Valentina the main thing was that the woman found her daughter, knows that she is alive and will get better.  That is the best thanks she can get.

In the course of her work she comes across all sorts of different people.  Sometimes during the busiest time, when all hell is let loose with ten calls going through the switchboard at a time, you suddenly get an irate caller bursting in saying: "How much longer must I wait?  I haven't got all day you know.  If you don't pull your finger out I'm going to complain."

"Sometimes we even have difficulties with other operators," explained Ludmila Gorbatova.  "We can never get through to the Baku inter-city exchange, the operator on duty never answers.  She's either asleep or has gone off somewhere."

"When she does finally answer she shouts something in Azerbaidjani down the phone and hangs up.  After which you can never get back through again.  We have sent a complaint to the USSR Ministry of Communications and the Baku inter-city exchange, but without result."

Vdovina says that she doesn't very often come across operators like the one in Baku.  The other Siberian operators in far eastern exchanges are all considered to be "one of us" at Novosibirsk.

Valentina started off by working on the Krasnoyarsk district link and now is on the Khabarovsk line which includes the whole of eastern Kazakhstan plus a good chunk of Novosibirsk province.

She is an important link for miners, people working on the gas pipeline project and the agricultural industry.  When there is an accident on the pipeline for example, or problems with drilling.  When a couple of teams are needed urgently elsewhere - all this concerns her and she does her best to help.

Let's take, for example, the Novosibirsk Pipeline Construction Trust.  She knows as much about their business as its dispatch clerk, Vladimir Ivanovich Golitsin.  She knows that the Trust is involved in pipe he in Belgo and in Lower Tambovka, in Yagodnoye and in Krasnoyarsk.

"Hello, Mr. Golitsin, I'm putting you through to Belgo."

"Hey, Valosha, what about a hello first?  How are you nowadays?"

"Hello Vladimir Ivanovich.  I can't really talk for long now, the supervisor's here and I'll get told off for chattering!"

The supervisor, Taisiya Aleksandrovna just smiles.  "You seem to know the whole country, Valya!"

"Not quite," laughs Valentina, "only half!"

Her son Seriozha more or less grew up in the exchange.  When he was in the fourth class he was told to write a composition called My Future Career.  He wrote: "I want to be a switchboard girl."  When his mother saw it, she laughed and told him to change it to "man."  He looked at her from under his brows and said: "What do you mean, 'man', when they're all girls?"

Over the past two years she has not been very well.  The strain of the job is starting to tell.  Not long ago she did a break, but now her short, 18 days of holiday are over and she is back at work - how could they manage without her?  She hurries to light her beacon for the Sea of Anxiety, the Sea of Joy, and the Sea of Loneliness.

Tomorrow I shall have to ring Khabarovsk.  I'll dial the inter-city and book my call.  And how good it will be to hear that friendly voice saying, "Did you book a call to Khabarovsk?  Putting you through now."