Russia on the cusp – August 1990
Eric really wanted to go to Russia; that is to say it was on his list of travel priorities; that is to say he really didn’t have such a list, only my prodding ever got him out of his comfortable surroundings. Anyway, the only way one could go in 1990 was with a tour company, as there were few places for tourists to stay and practically none outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was a year before the revolution and under Gorbachev “Perestroika” was beginning to change things. Russian life had loosened up a bit, but what the Communists regime had wrought in Russia was apparent everywhere. Except for the Kremlin in Moscow and the Winter Palace and L’Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and Lenin’s home in Ulanovsk, nothing seemed left of the country’s historic and cultural past.
We signed onto a trip with a travel company whose name I can’t remember and don’t want to. We were 175 co-travelers and we felt like cattle most of the time. We spent a week in the two major cities and then a week floating down the Volga to Stalingrad. The subway system in Moscow was memorable, so deep the escalators were eternal, and well decorated. Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral lived up to expectations. The latter is one of the most glorious structures in the world but it was under restoration so we could not go in. But the hotels, apartment houses, official buildings and schools one would be reluctant to call architecture, unless there is a style called ‘prison’. Art after 1918 was limited to politically correct works extolling the regime. Theaters, restaurants, gardens, and fashion in clothing mostly disappeared. Shopping was a tourist’s nightmare, even the big department stores had mostly hideous items, from clothes to furniture, and crafts – well, we brought home a nest of wooden dolls and watches with the Kremlin painted on their faces which stopped working a week after we got home. The food was dull, although the vodka was good. In Leningrad L’Hermitage was falling apart (all the incredible old masters tilting on their ancient cords), and the famous Winter Palace in St. Petersburg had only one furnished room! It is miraculous that St. Basil’s, L’Hermitage and the Winter Palace were even still standing. The food was pretty deadly altho the vodka was good – and plentiful. The heavy hand of dictatorship was apparent in every aspect of life, the object to eliminate beauty and squelch imagination, to make life deadly dull and depressing and dedicated wholly to Communism. Today I would compare it with life under the Taliban. We met not a single fellow tourist we wanted to befriend, and looking back, I have only a few really good memories like the fabulous Moscow subway system, the nightly jigger of vodka on the boat trip down the Volga, L’Hermitage, and a day in Ulyanovsk, the town where Lenin was born and raised, and where we met Leo Morozov. Happily I had planned another 10 days walking in the hill country of England to follow Russia, and that redeemed the trip.
Here is my diary entry for that day in Ulyanovsk, the town where Lenin grew up, on the Volga somewhere between Leningrad and Stalingrad. (These names are now changed back to their pre-communist versions.) I was so tired of being a sheep, herded in a huge flock onto busses from one unimpressive place to another, that I staged a small rebellion. It looked like a promising town for a stroll, but not with 173 others. I wanted to walk it with Eric, who was not really happy about this, being naturally unadventurous, but the tour guide was utterly dismayed, and then firm about our not being allowed to wander alone in a Russian town. We were the last off the boat and just as I was saying this to the Intourist guide a young man walking by overheard us and came over to say he would be delighted to show us the town. The guide was at a loss for a reason to say ‘no’ and gave reluctant permission. And so we spent a day with this tall, skinny, animated, 20-year old college kid who spoke excellent English and turned out to be enamored of Europe, the US, and indeed everyplace but Russia! He was a sophomore at Moscow State University in Ulyanovsk majoring in Economics and ready for the world. Eager to learn, to know, to understand and asked if we would correct his English if he made mistakes. We never stopped talking from around 11AM when we met til we said goodbye around 4PM. He walked us thru the old section where Lenin had lived, now an historical area and in process of restoration.To his university where we were shown a wonderful room on the 2nd floor which had been a bank and was an art deco relic and had carved wooden benches all around the walls. Used now as an assembly room. His language teacher was brought in, a woman about my age with a poignant history. Her story of how she learned English and became a foreign language instructor was told in excellent but halting English. In 1935 when she was very young her father was exiled for speaking out at a meeting. Someone had been murdered and he said the man’s replacement was the perp. “They” came for him in the night and shipped him to Siberia. He escaped to Finland, then to Switzerland. The family learned all this 3 years later when he returned. They changed the family name and began moving to avoid detection. And he told his children they must learn English and German so they could manage in Europe if they had to flee. Then she said she wished her parents could be alive to see “Perestroika” but she choked up and couldn’t finish.What a moving story, a window into another life for us. I hugged her. She also said Leo was a not only an excellent student but a fine young man, which we had already detected.
He then took us to a rathskeller, newly opened, very European, where the food was good (he thought). It was a coop, one of the new private ventures. Then to a department store; ugly, with sullen salespeople and dismal merchandise. Linoleum floors, no displays, clothes on racks. Shoes you wouldn’t consider torturing your feet with. But I did buy a babushka, red with flowers, pure wool, for 9 rubles ($1.50). I fingered some jeans that looked good to me but Leo said no. He has some, but wears them to pick onions when he does his compulsory harvesting duty. But when he takes his girl out he he wears western jeans. He was wearing tennies that his Dad brought back from Czechoslovakia. His Dad is a computer software programmer and his ‘mummy’ a clerk at the same company. We went to a park as Leo wanted us to see some really great wooden sculptures of storybook figures. But first we sat on a bench and a little boy wandered over – there was a day-care nearby and a score of kids doing sidewalk chalk drawings. Eric took his picture and suddenly we were aswarm with kids. Their instructor tried to regulate them but it was not easy. Leo and I sat on a bench with kids all over us while Eric took polaroids of children and gave them to them until he ran out of film. They were just thrilled, crowding around whoever was holding a picture to watch it develop. Big introduction to western technology. Then we went for coffee to a little European style stand-up cafe where a beautiful girl came up to him, a fellow student whose English was far less fluent than Leo’s, but who wanted to join us. She did and we had excellent thick Turkish-style coffee and walked on together. Walking back to our ship, we went down a steep bluff and on the sides of the walkway were old wooden houses painted blues and greens and with carved wood decorations around the windows.
On the ship we showed him our cabin and then treated him to a coke at the bar – his first one! Our two Russian guides were in a booth and looked very disconcerted, and very cold when we introduced Leo. And Leo visibly wilted, going from bubbly enthusiasm to uncertainty, diffidence, withdrawal. I didn’t really know what was going on but later found that Russians were not allowed on board as guests! We saw him off but I raced after him some of the passengers said were eager to talk to him The ship’s officers wouldn’t let him on again and the captain was called. There was a 3-way discussion – guides, captain, passengers – and the upshot was that Leo was to return at 8PM and bring his International Relations Club pass or some such. So at 8 we went to the gangplank and Leo was already talking to two couples. We all adjourned to the lounge and talked for over an hour. He had brought photos of his family and we took some of him. He charmed everyone, an utterly amazing young man.
We wrote back and forth and the following year he came to the US! Russia had collapsed and new freedoms enabled him to come on scholarship to Washington and Lee in Virginia to finish his undergraduate degree. We funded a trip to CA for Christmas and spent it at Rancho sin Nombre. I can’t remember much of what we did when in Long Beach except a trip to Hollywood to Universal Studios, but I was getting sick and it was not a fun day for me. I also vaguely remember putting him on a bus for SF where he had friends.
A few years later he graduated and his Dad came over to celebrate. They both came to visit us and Leo proceeded to test his newly acquired credit card to its limits. I was afraid it would max out before he got over the thrill of credit buying. He had accepted a job with a brokerage in NY and was fast becoming Americanized. His Dad was a warm and lovely man who spoke no English, but we all communicated well thru Leo. I remember taking him to a big Apple show in LA where he was totally fascinated. He was computer savvy, being an engineer, and that was a language he was very comfortable with and he loved seeing all the new developments. A couple of years later he and his wife later left Russia for Israel and then settled in Europe. Leo was not real happy on Wall Street so went to London. There he met Joy and they married a year or so later. She is Lebanese and they are an exotic, sophisticated and fascinating couple.
We did not go to the wedding as Eric was pretty averse to travel by then. But I have two great memories of their coming to Oregon a few years after we moved here. First we met in Portland where we stayed at the Ace Hotel and we both loved Joy immediately. The hotel fascinated them, they had a suite with a huge tiger painted on one wall. They marveled at how ‘hip’ we oldsters were in booking us into this place. And a few years later they visited us in Ashland. My most vivid memory of that time together is walking on Mt. Ashland on a beautiful August day and coming upon a butterfly hatch. I was enthralled, but for Joy it was one of life’s most unexpected and glorious experiences. I’m sure that is imprinted in her mind as it is in mine.
They now have two nifty looking kids and live in Vienna (I think – they have moved several times in the past decade). We communicate periodically by email and I hope one day they will all appear on my doorstep for a catch-up visit, and I can meet their kids and show them the wild American Northwest.
Here are some photos of Leo, then Leo and Joy, and then Jan and Lilly.
