Nation: Who Needs Their Vodka?

At New York airports, traffic controllers and baggage handlers harass incoming flights of Aeroflot, the Soviet airline. In California, restaurants stop serving Russian or Iranian caviar, and in Chicago, Restaurateur Gene Sage publicly pours Russian vodka onto Lake Shore Drive.

These are a few indications of the national mood in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That mood, compounding the anger caused by the seizure of hostages in Iran, is unmistakably indignant, but it is also puzzled and frustrated. People feel injured in their national pride and yearn for tougher action. But they are not ready for war, and are unable to figure out what nonmilitary actions might impel the Soviets to pull out of Afghanistan or the Iranians to free the hostages. Kenneth Stein, an assistant professor of Middle Eastern history at Emory University, describes the feeling as “a sense of impotence and frustration.”

Accordingly, citizens are venting their emotions in symbolic actions. Some are meant simply to express renewed patriotism. The American Savings & Loan Association of Florida has given out 80,000 free American flag lapel pins since it began running newspaper ads offering “to give you something that money can’t buy: pride.”

But the anger that Americans originally focused on Iran, while hardly forgotten, is mainly being directed against a new target: the Soviet Union. In New York, a man in a ski mask left a bomb at Aeroflot’s Manhattan office Sunday night, Jan. 13; the explosion stunned three French passersby. At Long Island-MacArthur Airport, which handles radar controls for the area’s three major airports, Controller Tony Maimone refused to guide an Aeroflot jet into Kennedy. Said he: “If I have to lose my job to show the Soviets that we won’t be pushed around, it’s worth it.” At Kennedy baggage handlers, who belong to the Teamsters, refused to unload Aeroflot airliners, forcing Soviet management personnel to do the job. The Teamsters asserted that members would also withhold ground service for Aeroflot planes landing at Dulles International Airport near Washington.

Other citizens took out their rage on vodka and caviar.

In San Francisco, Victor Bergeron, owner of the 20-restaurant Trader Vic’s chain, sent a cable to all members forbidding them to buy or sell either product. Then he personally smashed his last six bottles of Stolichnaya vodka. The five Fairmont hotels throughout the country also announced that they will not stock Russian vodka, or caviar from the Soviet Union or Iran. Though no figures are available, the boycott will have little effect. Most vodka consumed in the U.S. is domestically distilled; the liquor from the Soviet Union sells in limited quantity at high prices.

In some cases citizens went beyond the Government in their expressions of anti-Soviet fury. Two weeks ago, the International Longshoremen’s Association announced that its members would not load cargo aboard ships bound for the Soviet Union. Last week President Carter called I.L.A. President Thomas Gleason to the Oval Office and told him, “as your President and Commander in Chief,” to “unclog the distribution system.” Gleason promised no more than to discuss the request with his membership. But the Government itself is moving to cut down cultural exchanges; last week it made it known that it would cancel a Washington exhibition of artworks from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.

These outbursts of indignation may make the Americans displaying them feel better. But their probable effect on Soviet foreign policy is too infinitesimal to calculate.