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There is no unemployment in the Soviet Union: everybody can, and indeed must, work; and so far as I know, everybody does. As a kind of offset to this universal activity, everybody--when not working--sits about and waits.
At the Leningrad Hotel I also sit about and wait. I wait for the Intourist Bureau to telephone the people to whom I have brought letters of introduction. I wait for the lift, which has just taken three Comrades upstairs, to come down again--which it never does. I wait for my ten o'clock supper--ordered at nine, and brought--with any luck--at about eleven. I sit in the hall and wait, for nothing in particular. I am becoming Russianized.