RUSSIA: The Old Tribute

Tip. A special form of wages, a survival of serfdom days when the lord, pleased with his servant, gave him a reward of money.—The Soviet Encyclopedia

The decadent old capitalist custom of tipping is on the rise in the increasingly class-conscious Communist society that Nikita Khrushchev is building. Though what are called chaevye (literally: “for tea”) gratuities may still be refused in the provinces, Moscow is full of waiters, doormen, taxi drivers, barbers, grocery delivery girls and manicurists who do not spurn, but come to expect and even to exact the servant’s tribute. Komsomolskaya Pravda told of barbers who “scalp” non-tippers to show them up as “cheapskates,” and Izvestia reports that, since barbers share in the gross, half the barbers’ income now comes from spraying overpriced Eau de Cologne on customers, thus raising their bill for a 2-ruble haircut to 10 rubles. Soviet Culture printed a cloakroom attendant’s confession that on a good cold night he took in as much as $20 in tips.

Last week the Soviet press launched a campaign against tipping in restaurants. “Restaurant employees,” said the magazine Literature and Life, “must be made to realize that they forfeit their human dignity by accepting tips, which are an insult to those who give and those who take.” Asked whether there was one waiter in Moscow who would turn down a tip nowadays, Nikolai Fedorovich Zavyalov, head of the Moscow Restaurant Trust, sighed: “Not one.” Zavyalov confessed that a recent experiment of adding on a 4% service charge in Moscow restaurants (6% at the posh Praga) had failed to stop the under-the-teacup tribute.

Most controversial figure of all is the doorman, usually an impressively mustached oldster who expects at least 2 rubles (20¢) for opening the door, and is in a position to grant favors, for when the restaurant is full he locks the door and reopens it only as the spirit moves him. Literature and Life suggested abolishing doormen.

It also recommended experimenting with relay service (“One waiter brings the pickled herring, another the borsch, yet another the main course, and so on”), so that no one would feel he was obliged to anyone for individual attention. This seemed hardly consistent with another of Literature and Life’s ambitions—to speed up the service, which most of the 12,000 U.S. visitors to Russia this year discovered is a sometime thing (average breakfasting time: one hour).

The magazine also printed a rebuttal from one V. Reznikov, a waiter at the Hotel Sovietskaya. Pointing out that the pay was low (it is) and tips were “the only form of reward for extra efforts,” Waiter Reznikov, a true member of his trade, went on to pay his respects to those whose tribute he accepts: “They don’t even know how to sit at the table correctly. They think you should tie your napkin round your neck. Not all of them know that you should not prop your elbows on the table. Some come in without a tie or a jacket.” In short, they lack class.