On Pins, Needles, and Red Tape in Russia

I remember going to a doctor in Russia, and it was a different kind of a doctor. They don’t go for a preliminary test; they go for [an] autopsy. And it hurts, you know? — Yakov Smirnoff

In 2005, when I had a few weeks until I was to lift off to St. Petersburg for my semester abroad, I had my blood drawn. It was my senior year of college, and I was about to leave the United States for the first time in my life. During my freshman year, I had done a short report about Russia’s subterranean HIV/AIDS crisis, so this requirement for a visa didn’t seem unreasonable.

However, as the days passed, I began to get nervous. Russian bureaucracy, for all its fearsome reputation, had to wait in line behind this phlebotomy lab’s. I called daily for my results, growing more and more impatient. The operator tried to calm me down, assuring me that while she understood that I was nervous —

At this point I laughed. This was a serious matter for so many people, but I was concerned only about my travel plans.

I got the results.

I got the visa.

I got on the plane.

Within a couple of weeks of arriving in the Northern Venice, the twenty-some student group was taken to a local clinic in where we had our blood drawn — again. I remember that it was inside a fairly modern structure across the street from something yellow and more regal looking. One of the students nearly lost consciousness, prompting the nurses, who wore little paper hats and everything, to swab his face with alcohol to keep him awake. When it was my turn, I cringed and looked away as the needle came closer to my skin, but I hardly felt anything when it pierced the surface.

Ten years and a new passport later, I was going through the same procedures. After my first trip to Russia, I had bounced around the United States, trying my hand as a graduate student, community college instructor, tutor, actor, and karaoke superstar. This was during the Obama presidency, but living in Texas, it felt more like the peak of Tea Party season, secessionism, and the like. There were even grumblings about a potential Donald Trump candidacy afoot. I wanted out.

I decided to go back to Russia.

This time, I was in a crowded clinic near the Montrose neighborhood in Houston, TX, for my bloodwork. I strode in, hungry and a bit dehydrated, prepared for the routine. I walked up to the receptionist and loudly announced that I’d like an AIDS test.

“HIV test,” the receptionist gently corrected as he handed me a clipboard to fill out my information.

Nearby I could hear other patients on the phone, lamenting their carelessness and dread.

“I just…I don’t know…I…”

I was surrounded by real, personal worries, but they were as good as in another world to me.

The bloodletting didn’t go terribly smoothly. I remember being on the brink of passing out when the nurse asked me if I wanted to give another sample for additional screening. No, no, I protested. This is the only one I need.

Puzzled, she let me go to wait in another room. What I didn’t realize was that the results would be with us within the next 30 minutes rather than 3 or so days.

I gathered my strength in the next room and waited. The nurse joined me a few minutes later and began by assuring me that this was a safe space and that she was there to talk to me about my circumstances and concerns and —

I just needed an HIV test to go to Russia, I told her. I hadn’t even been intimate with anyone in years.

She was more shocked by the first revelation than the other.

Are they that…prejudiced? she asked.

It being a safe space, the nurse told me that she was gay, and that just hearing this policy made her feel uneasy. It was a year after Russia’s widely mocked Winter Olympics in Sochi and its initial invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea. The Putin government’s persecution of political dissidents and the LGBTQ+ community was a regular feature in international news.

I assured her that there was more to Russia than its government and that I had enjoyed an inspiring semester abroad there in my youth. She became excited for me and gave me my results with a smile. I was shocked at how fast they came but instantly felt relief, too. One more piece of paper out of the way.

I celebrated with an obscenely loaded burger and a Guinness at Grif’s Pub. It was just past noon.

I haven’t been in the United States since the fall of 2015, over seven years ago.

Since landing in Russia, I’ve worked steadily and above board as an English language instructor. During this time, I have taken two or three more HIV/AIDS tests but have passed most visa renewals without them.

This past December, though, something different happened.

As I went to make copies in the middle of class, my manager breezily told me to cancel all of my plans for the next day because all of the foreign teachers would have to visit a clinic to undergo a battery of medical tests. I didn’t object to this but did wonder what it was for.

Apparently a new law required all foreigners to undergo these tests, so the next morning, two Englishman, my manager, and I were standing in the cold amidst hundreds of Central Asians trying to find the right building, the right room, the right line to stand in in order to stay on the legal side of Russia’s medical rules for foreigners.

The first room, one which we entered and exited several times, consisted of two lines that, in part, wrapped all around the wall, but which also featured huge seating areas in the middle of the room where people would take a break from standing and lose their places in line. Or not.

An enormous security guard was polite and helpful until he wasn’t, screaming at a tiny old woman “You don’t scare me — get in line!” as she asked him a question.

After relocating several times through the complex, our Russian-speaking manager found a way to pay 9000 roubles to get us an “express” service. We went to another building, another room, and gave our passports to some men at a desk. They proceeded to scan and copy their entire contents. Once the three of us had been so processed, we were given a white piece of paper.

This is how the scavenger hunt began.

We were to go to different doctor’s offices inside yet another building to visit specialists in several fields including skin/venereal infections, psychiatry, and infectious diseases. Before that, we were fingerprinted and photographed.

Afterward, we gave blood and urine samples, too. These were obtained in small jars with our names on them, seeming like legitimate items to be tested. All of the other doctors’ visits, though, were bogus. In most cases, I walked in, sat down, gave the doctor my piece of paper, and they signed and stamped it, nary a word exchanged.

The only exceptions were the infectious diseases specialist who asked me “Are you have infection diseases?” and asked my English colleague if he could give him English lessons.

The skin/venereal diseases doctor, a woman in her 40s, first confirmed that I could understand some Russian and then instructed me to pull down my pants and underwear. I confirmed that this is what was asked before doing it. After a cursory observation from behind her desk, she gave me her signature and stamp.

I told my colleagues that they’d have to show themselves to the doctor, a warning that caused them great confusion because…they didn’t.

After getting all of our stamps (and another paper copy of our passports made), we waited for the woman in charge of the cloakroom to give us back our coats. All in all, we spent about six hours, on a workday, in this place.

Throughout this strange day, my colleagues pointed out that the government already had most of this information from us — what was the point of all of this? One of them suggested that this was just a cash grab to funnel our expat earnings to the war effort.

It’s as good a hypothesis as any.

I still have a week or two to obtain my results. Despite all that’s happened in this country since my last visit to such a clinic, I remain unworried.