I just read a beautiful essay by my friend Maria, whose family emigrated from Russia to the U.S. when she was quite young. Maria wrote about a recent return visit, and the flood of fractured memories it brought back.
The essay summoned memories of my own. Not of a childhood geographic upheaval—my own family’s emigration from Hamden, Connecticut, to Morris Plains, New Jersey, was much less of a culture shock. But I did, at age 18, go on a high-school-sponsored trip to the Soviet Union.
So here are my own fractured recollections, aided only by a Trenton Times clip I saved, and the nine packets of photos I took.
Our West Windsor-Plainsboro contingent was one of 19 schools representing New Jersey in a national student-exchange program with the Soviet Union that summer. (That’s from the newspaper article, if you couldn’t guess.) Leading our group was Mrs. Fiscarelli, who also oversaw the school’s Model United Nations club. That’s probably how Sean, Steve, and myself got involved—we were total M.U.N. nerds. Sean and I were leaning pretty far left politically by then, so a chance to experience communism (!) first-hand was pretty exciting. (A year or two later, life and Billy Bragg had modulated my politics to “democratic socialism.”) And it was also very cool to be traveling with my cross-the-street pal John, who had been my first friend when I moved to town just before 7th grade. (There were nine WWP students on the trip—also Mark, John P., Mike, Noreen, and Jenna—and chaperones Fiscarelli and Mrs. Pope. From my photos, it seems I spent nearly all my time with the boys.)
We flew from New York to Oslo, and then on to Moscow. Moscow! It still seems crazy that I was over there. What did I know of the Soviet Union? Stores had names like BREAD and SHOES and you had to wait in lines to get some generic product. We boycotted their Olympics and they boycotted ours. Hebrew school taught me that they treated Jews very badly. Everything else we learned from inexplicably popular comedian Yakov Smirnoff. (“In America, you watch television. In Russia, television watches you!”)
But the times they were a-changin’. Just a couple of years earlier, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and instituted the new policy of glasnost, or “openness.” Also, he had a spot on his head. However, by 1987, glasnost still hadn’t had a huge effect. Billy Joel would perform majorly publicized concerts in Russia that summer, but we beat him there by a couple of months.
We arrived. By bus we were taken to a big fancy building where we were served dinner. Which was a piece of meat. Which looked like… tongue. Not an auspicious beginning. Food would prove problematic for us unsophisticated young westerners. But my buddy John would not be daunted. He’d heard there was a Pizza Hut in Moscow. If anyone could find it, it was John.
It began to feel like an urban legend. There were few indications of Western influence beyond the instantly recognizable signs for Pepsi, or as it looked to us, spelled out in Russian, “NENCH.” But John refused to give up.
At last we found it. Sort of. The sign didn’t say Pizza Hut. It said “La Pizza.” We entered, we ordered pizza, we got pizza. Pizza with… olives on it. Whole green olives. This made us sad. Still, pizza is pizza. We all picked off the olives and ate.
We visited a student center. Some sort of disco night. Cheesy flashing lights. Maybe I’d meet a girl, dance with a girl? Of course not. Why would anything be different on this side of the Iron Curtain.
We learned a few Russian words. “Da svidania” meant goodbye. “Spasiba” meant thank you. (Or as Sean and I liked to say to each other—and still do—”spacoobus.”) And as we learned at a weird old hotel, you had to say something like “luchay for the duchay” if you wanted the key for the shower. “Do please!” the imposing female clerk enthusiastically instructed.
Churches, churches, visiting old churches. Yawn. Confused. There is no religion here. So why so many churches?
A Russian guide accompanied us wherever we went. Tour-company etiquette, government assurance that the country would be presented only in its best light, or a bit of both? We didn’t really know, but it was OK; we liked our guide. At least, the boys did.
Moscow was cool. It was an interesting mix of old and new, which I kept trying to capture in photos, mostly unsuccessfully.
Red Square was very impressive. We visited Lenin’s tomb (seen to the left in the photo below). We went back at night to witness the ritual changing of the guards. The cars all looked like they were from the ’60s.
We went to see the Moscow Circus. That was fun.
Our proximity to the action was cool, though it did raise some safety concerns.
There were cool statues. This one of Lenin, in October Square, was the last one ever put up (in 1985). It still stands today.
Even better was the one of awesome Russian astronaut guy Yuri Gagarin.
Hey, it’s Anton Chekhov’s house in Moscow! Though it would be a few years before I read The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. In fact, at the time, I was much more familiar with Chekov from Star Trek. (“Nuclear wessels!”)
It was great hanging with my, ahem, fellow travelers: Sean and Steve, Mark, Mike (seen at La Pizza above), John and John (with video camera).
We took turns lugging around and operating the video camera. Boy, would I love to see that video again! But the camera caused a little friction between me and my roommates. We had the camera for the night. And we recorded something funny; I forget what. But we accidentally taped over some earlier footage. Steve was sure we’d get in trouble and wanted to erase our new footage. I insisted we keep it as-is and not make the situation even worse. Steve, better with technology then and now, won out. Sean just had a good laugh over the whole thing and snapped this very rare photo of an angry me (with a crazy double exposure, no less).
But generally we had a whole lot of fun together. This was only partially due to the easy availability of beer. Hooray for underage drinking! The Soviet Union was a strange place where they didn’t have Amstel Light, just regular Amstel beer. Weird! Sean, Steve, and I decided to play “quarters” one night. Steve is not a drinker so we adjusted the rules: Instead of beer, he had to have a swig of Coke and belch.
We were told that Russians were crazy for American blue jeans. You could trade a pair for Soviet military garb. A few in our group made such exchanges—I think I recall an impressive-looking hat being obtained. Steve wanted to get in on the action. Alas, he could not find a taker for his corduroys.
After Moscow we went to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). While Moscow had been characterized as grey and utilitarian, we were told Leningrad was, like, the Paris of Russia. And it was a cool-looking city! The fountains at the Czar’s Winter Palace were awesome.
The Hermitage museum had an incredible collection of international art: Monet, Caravaggio, etc.
We went to a department store. It was crowded and not extravagant, but not the dismal bread-line retail experience that propaganda had led us to expect. We quickly found the record department, where the selection was admittedly slim. I bought UB40’s Rat in the Kitchen, and I think Sean picked up Whitney Houston’s debut?
At some point I also bought a poster. The illustrated image was of a half-businessman/half-American soldier. The text must’ve said something anti-U.S., but I don’t know what. Still, I think I hung it in my freshman dorm room.
We all threw a party in someone’s hotel room. It must’ve been the 4th of July. This was the real deal: We had beer on ice in the bathtub. It was us and another group of U.S. students, perhaps the ones we’d been traveling with? I don’t remember. Sean impressed Mark with his partying prowess—”Sean, I never knew,” the big guy said—a quote we geeks have treasured ever since. But the best part of the party: I met a girl! Petite, with curly-ish dirty-blonde hair, bright eyes, and a great big smile. From Kingston, New York. We drank, we talked, we decided to go see the famous middle-of-the-night opening of the city’s drawbridges. (We were there during the “white nights” time of the year, with nearly round-the-clock daylight.) Was it just she and I that went? Probably not, but that’s how I like to remember it. The evening was mysterious and funny and maybe a little romantic. We met a drunk young fellow who claimed to be the only unemployed person in the Soviet Union. We all laughed and laughed.
Did anything happen with the girl? Nah, I’ve been a coward for a long, long time. I did get her address, and we exchanged letters for a brief while. I’m going to have to dig those up sometime. I wish I’d taken a picture. I don’t even remember her name.
I was the last one back to the room that night and continued a running gag from the trip: Taking photos of each other sleeping. We were always nodding off, on trains, buses, subways. Sleeping in bed probably didn’t count, but I was tipsy and lovestruck.
I took one of myself for good measure.
We flew to Stockholm to spend a couple of days before the return to the U.S. It was a vibrant city and helped us re-acclimate to Western society. There was pop culture…
Graffiti… (She had visited just a month earlier, spreading the “Just Say No” campaign.)
Good ol’ American food…
And scatological humor.
But it had been an exhausting couple of weeks, and we were definitely ready to return home.
To bring back our souvenirs…
…and catch up on the latest news.
But some of us could not return home, not yet. The mission was far from over.
That was awesome ! Were you that prescient were you to take a picture of Oliver North on TV for added period atmosphere and context ? Did you foresee that one day there would be a thing called a blog post ? Or did you find it somewhere else ?
mangled that last post, but I hope you get the meaning. Did you stand in the living room and think… “hmm a picture of Oliver North is going to come in useful some day… I just don’t know how exactly”
Thanks PT! No it was literally the now obsolete concept of “using up the end of the roll.” I had 8 complete rolls and 1 incomplete so I took photos of…. the dog. the backyard. And good ol’ Ollie was on TV constantly upon my return so I snapped one. For some reason I thought it was funny at the time.
What a lovely recollection – and the pics are stellar! Who knew Yuri G. was as pumped as Hulk Hogan?
Jack, this brings back so many memories and a vague sense of shame for Russia. Peaking behind the iron curtain is like looking under a rock–what you find is scary and the only stuff that’s edible is pretty gross.
ugh–peeking, that is. English is not my first language 🙁
Thanks Maia! And thanks Maria for the inspiration. And I just wrote to an illustrator and asked if his “curiosity was piqued/peaked/peeked.”
Excellent writeup, comrade. Hide it all you want, but it’s clear that you were sent over as a CIA spy, posing as an angsty teen from New Jersey.
There’s a screenplay here.
“Moscow on the Hudson: Part Deux”?
Great look back at our 1987 trip Jack, your photos turned out much better than mine! While fascinating to visit I do recall Moscow as being rather dreary overall and I distinctly recall local Moscovites telling us that back in those days, if they saw a line of people in front of a store they would simply get in it without necessarily knowing what the others were waiting for. One place had a line for shoelaces. Seriously.
Lenin’s tomb was quite cool, I remember one of the Soviet guards berated me for not buttoning my Levi’s jean jacket all the way up to the neck as I approached the glass coffin – language barrier prevented me from explaining that you just didn’t button up Levi’s jean jackets, but as you mentioned, Levi’s were scarce.
The visit to the small monastery village outside Moscow was one of my favorite jaunts and I have a decent photo of the bell tower where Peter the Great used to climb up and shoot birds with a gun as a little boy.
Leningrad/St. Petersburg was so much nicer; the architecture, modeled to rival the great European capitals was, incredible and the Western design made it more comfortable. That fact that it was White Nights while we were there made for some interesting trips to the bar and two bored looking guys in rumpled dark ,ill-fitting suits would slowly follow us wherever we went at night in a sedan that look like it was from 1962.
Funny that you posted this Jack, I just began reading ‘The 900 Days’, Russian scholar Harrison E. Salisbury’s massive account of the horrifying Siege of Leningrad by the Nazi’s during WWII. Our tour guide took us to this immense wide open park that serves as memorial to the thousands of Leningrad civilians who died during the siege. I recall standing there looking out at row after row of these huge, dark rectangular mounds and the guide explaining that each one contained 25,000 corpses.
Because of the freezing winters and lack of food there was no spare wood for coffins and people were too weak to bury the dead. It affected me deeply as a HS senior and I think many Americans don’t appreciate the scale of suffering inflicted upon Soviets between 1940 – 1945; some estimates put Soviet WWII casualties as high as 50 million people; there’s no way to actually know how many perished.
But unspeakable Nazi atrocities aside, it was amazing to walk around the city at night while it was light out – the light combined with the vivid colors of the buildings gave Leningrad an almost ethereal, other-worldly kind of view. Mosquitoes were BRUTAL as Leningrad, like Washington, DC was laid out over a marshy swamp.
I was stunned by the level of opulence in which the Tsars lived – Versailles has very little on the Winter Palace; the cost (human and financial) to construct it must have been mind-bending even back then. The Luftwaffe almost completely bombed it into rubble and the Soviets spent untold sums rebuilding and restoring it back to the same way it originally was in the 40’s and 50’s.
Above all I recall how kind the people were (there were some assholes, but we got a lotta those here too) and how eager they were to simply talk with us. It opened my mind because Reagan had famously labeled the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’ during one of his foreign policy speeches to whip us support for his gargantuan defense budgets in the 80’s.
The place I saw was NOT the evil empire at all. The bulk of people were simply hard-working folks trying to make a living. Many told me that most weren’t even really active Communists at all and that politics mean very little to them. I’ll never forget one evening in a Moscow park as we were preparing to leave, a tiny older Babushka-type woman came up to me and grabbed my arm looked at me with a pleading expression and told me in broken English: “Tell Americans we want NO war. NO war.” Meeting people like that helped me to understand just how completely full of shit Ronald Reagan and many of our foreign policy “experts” really were.
They were people just like us, despite the years of American propaganda fueled by dim-witted zealots like McCarthy, who portrayed the Soviets as monsters to fuel their own agendas. Now the Soviets weren’t perfect obviously (see Gulag…), but despite the years of narrow, one-sided caricatures of Soviets portrayed on film and TV, I found the Russians I met to be passionate, well-read skeptics with a sharp sense of humor who appreciated good literature, music and vodka and knew EXACTLY what was going on even if The State rarely let them talk about it.
Thanks for sharing those images Jack – as someone posted here, there’s a screenplay in there. Mark (tall guy with the camera)
Mark, thank you SO MUCH for sharing your recollections and filling in a lot of gaps in my own memory. (I so wish I had kept a journal on that trip.) It was such a pleasure to be there with you.
You and I might have to write this screenplay….
Thank you for sharing, Jack! Makes me nostalgic and even “homesick” for those days! Living in Moscow now, I search for a sign of the past, they are everywhere and yet nowhere — so much has changed and been lost in the razzle-dazzle of “Westernization.” Thank you, again! — Tania