1976 USSR Adventure

Friday 16th July; Day 1

Arrive in Moscow, welcome by Youth Travel Bureau

After a long bus journey to Victoria coach station, I found Steven & Dave had joined the bus from Doncaster. We met the party and found out two others were to join us at Heathrow. However at Heathrow we found we had a new member or our group who was not on my register. He was called Jim and was from the USA and … don’t ask any more questions

The Aeroflop flight was bumpy adn the long customs delay filling forms and queuing was the first of many such experiences. First impressions on trip from airport; no fences, boundary lines, no fields. All is green, much wood and shrubs with small wooden houses surrounded by the remains of private gardens. These are now used as second country homes of Muscovitees and our Russian guides, the beautiful and young Nataschia her parents had one in Kalinin. No animals of any sort, no cows dogs etc. No crops ripe though much pasture. No gardents and park or roadside grass cut, a general uncared for messy appearance. In the city trams, trolley buses, taxis and only Fiat or Muscovitch cars.

Saturday 17th July; Day 2

Moscow guided tour and independent sightseeing

Shower is a hand held rose with the water running into the drain in the bathroom floor. Toilet paper doesn’t get wet because they don’t have any! Newspaper is recycled as the toilet paper but we also made it into paper hats. Some hotels had the picture of Lenin as the first sheet of the toilet newspaper and since all sheets were pushed onto a nail in the wall it was difficult to remove it, use the other sheets then carefully replace the revered Lenin back to his rightful place of gazing serenely and severely at one’s contemplations; privy to all Hah! Seriously we were told that the Babushka ie the old lady that was the cleaner / supervisor / keeper of an eye on all things untoward was likely to check Lenin in the loo and if you had wiped your … well that was treasonous. It may have been a joke but we weren’t going to risk a holiday cut short even if we were caught short!

Breakfast of sour yoghurt, franfurter sausages, sugared roll, butter and cheese in wafer thin slices, so thin they were nearly transparent. Heavy brown bread and jam. Hot black tea in glasses without handles, a challenge to hold. I wish someone would introduce yeast to the USSR.
After a rushed 10 minute breakfast, hurry hurry, bus next – a two hour wait for this hurried bus!

Our first organised trip was to see, guess who, yes the all pervading Lenin preserved forever in his Mausoleum. The changing of the guards outside Lenin Mausoleum was a slow motion mesmerising almost comical but deadly serious show, and we kept thinking “deadly” we were in a tense place but were also students with attitudes. Newly weds had come to the tomb of the unknown soldier then Lenin’s Mausoleum to pay respects, get blessing and have photos taken. We take national pride for granted but Russia sacrificed 26 millions of lives to save Europe from Nazi domination and every Russian family living today will be personally connected to the suffering and sacrifice of that time.

Standing at the Museum of History looking one way, Steve points out the plain square apartment block buildings that look like the old 1950s USA block shaped buildings. Look the other way and you could be in the East with minaret domes of St Basils providing a colourful contrast to the monotonous concrete shape of modern buildings.

Lenin’s Mausololeum was a unique experience. Shining clean red marble solid blockhouse. Inside the strange blue twinkling gems in the red marble. We pass by plastic guardsmen with shifty eyes. They are like clockwork when they goosestep. Down we go down dark steps, every few yards and inspection to check we don’t have cameras and are in pairs. A peculiar smell, like the cemetery trees. Then even darker with pink lights; it’s cold, the air pressure changes, the effect instils awe as we walk around the glass sided tomb. A small body, waxen face, and the feeling of recognising Him. Definitely feeling of reverence.

Eva says all human culture needs something to believe in that is not of this world and Lenin and Marxism is their substitute for religion. Perhaps thinking about what is an unknowable entity requires us to enter abstract thought and move above the level of animal behaviour. Perhaps that leads us to all the self awareness, thought, logic, and constructs of theoretical behaviour that creates cultures and civilisations from Marx to Capitalism. Is that why I’m really here, not for a holiday, but to see a mirror on what I’m immersed in during my normal UK life?

Eva also says that Russian people have always needed to be led by a strong authoritarian system with a person at the head. She said that if Communism disappeared that something else would take its place that would have the same elements of a central figure or authority that led the population in an authoritarian way. She said the worst thing for Russia would be to be without a strong leader because there would be an implosion and anarchy.

[This was honestly what she said and now after the implosion and cleptocracy and anarchy of Yeltsin we have the authoritarian of the iconic authoritarian figure of Putin in 2016]

Tourist visit of Moscow tourist square finishes with a rush back to the hotel to collect bags and a quick glance in the GUM store. The cleaner cleans around the plastic guardsmen and we find our bus. Eva (our translator) is ill and goes back to the hotel. 

Oh, I nearly forgot; in the square in sight of the Kremlin the usual husslers come around because we are foreign tourists and I am not joking, a young man in broken English asks me to take my trousers off!! The gist of what he was trying to communicate was that I had jeans from the west and he had jeans from Russia but mine were so prized that he knew that other Russians would try to buy them from me so he wanted to clinch the deal there and then with a quick change of trousers and a few roubles for my trouble. I could just imagine telling “Well your honour that was the truth and I rest my case!!

We have a Russian average type of meal (awful) in a town cafe then sightseeing of the city in a bus. Most people fell asleep in the bus and missed th Lenin Hills. We stopped at Hotel Ukraine by the University ski jump.

We return at 530 to the hotel, dinner at 6 and bus leaves at 610 and we were late for our evening cultural experience.

Opera was Barber of Seville and the late bus meant we had to sit on stairs up stairs whilst we waited for the interval and our seats. At least I managed to make an memorable occasion from it by buying caviar and champagne at the opera in Moscow, beat that! So knackered I fell asleep and missed the plot, maybe the champagne had a price to pay in missed opportunity but I saw enough to remember the occasion. Back to hotel via the Metro, super clean spotless underground. I bought Eva some flowers and nearly missed the group in the underground Metro – I could not have read the signs to our destination. Southern Comfort and a debrief meeting.

Sunday 18th July; Day 3
Moscow. Visit to religious centre at Zagorsk; visit to Exhibition of Economic Achievement; hydrofoil trip on River Moskva in evening.

Rushed shower, breakfast, pack for 9:30 bus – it’s 1 hour late. Steve is sick, partly aimed over me. Dave seems hard minded and still going to drink, asks embarrassing questions about mental health etc.

Kremlin

Leave bags outside. Photos of CCCP congress building then of me by the Kremlin, parliament equivalent sign. Then photo of me & Liz with Russian soldiers. Then photo of Archangel Cathedral. Quickly round cathedral of Annunciation – icons & paintings then Archangel of Cath, more of same & Tsars’ tombs. Golden Cupolas gleam in the hot sun. Heads suffer, brains get scrambled, we are all in tourist overload.

The Tsar’s bell is 200 tons and fell down in a fire losing a 15 ton piece (photo). The clapper is 12feet and 1 ½ feet thick. Past the Tsar’s canon. There are bells in a bell tower, the heaviest 20 tons. Then in to the Cathedral of the 12 Apostles which is a museum of “applied art” of the 18th century.

The sun gets Jan and my hangover dehydration gets me. We walk around the Kremlin walls the long way to the coach park by St Basil’s. There a quick photo of our 4 pretty Russian girls, Jan’s 2 friends, our guide & Maria. Oops I shold have included Jan, our leader.

[I later find that because of shortages then if there is a queue then everyone thinks there is suddenly a secret supply of xyz and they start to queue and jump the queue. We saw that later with a sudden delivery of oranges and later of bananas in Leningrad]

After a 2 hour smooth fast train journey on the electric railway we land in Kalinin.

Kalinin

Natasha the elder meets us and with alarming efficiency marches us around, tells us to be ready in 1 hour for sightseeing tour. Jan, our leader, and I check the program ready for a battle. The previous group hated Kalinin, no photos had been allowed during their stay, the programme was hectic and everyone suffered from exhaustion. Our program is OK. Breakfast 9, out at 10, lunch 1 and a half hours, dinnerat 6, evening free. The tour was in a daze. We heard beautiful Pushkin poetry, Kiriov chubka (? In my notes I realise I am cultured out of my mind).

A free evening so I suggest a party. At the hotel there is a group of UK students from a university and they are game for an adventure. Young Natascha takes us to a cocktail bar over the road. It was a hassle to get in and Wiggy says Kruschov at the wrong time, not the way to quietly get in a Russian drinking den! Down we go to the dungeons with painted brick and low vaulted ceilings, pine furniture and a hushed repressed intimate atmosphere, nobody saying much, or did they all clam up when these odd foreigners came in? The decor is a cross between their idea of the Liverpool Cavern and The Third Man with Harry Lime. I think their spies in the West are feeding back out of date design secrets.

We take over a room and I read out the main ingredients, or my guestimate of them, it could have been a list of household cleaning fluids for all I really knew. Drinks were 2 roubles for a cocktail for men, 1.80 for a cocktail for men. The difference seems to reflect the potency of 5 spirits mixed with champagne(ish) and sucked through a straw. We have a fizzy sweet brown wine at 3.50 each and suck it through the straw like the locals seem to do. Eventually I’m lubricated into exploration and another snifter and I’m trying to waltz with Natty Natashia. Snifter again and the 3 piece group plays 50s jazz and “In Russia our young people do ze shaky shake” I’m told. Well, 30 celebrating student bodies suddenly in a competitive shaky shaking frenzy soon got the place going. Comrades either let it all hang out or sloped off to form a complaint delegation. We wiggled and wobbled in the cause of international cultural conviviality (hic). Sexy Sadie (Lena) lithely Lena tries to outdo Nat, me and herself with erotic writhings and I almost forgot myself, my facade of British coolness nearly slipped.

When we thought we were asking to pay for the drinks the drinks order was repeated but that would have been a quaffing too far above our gentle Western sensibilities We hadn’t collapsed or disgraced ourselves and my job was to make sure we were convivial but not comatose. Maia sort the bill out and we have a throat busting sing song with actions, sauce and sincerity mixed in international ambiguity. My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean, and Swing Low Sweet Chariot with hand signs and actions may not teach Russians English but it taught them that we were nuts. I drew the line at Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes or we might have all ended on the floor. Eventually singing mixes with the dancing and the bank is taken over by over happy students. The management tell the band to disappear and we take the not so subtle hint and we disappear back to the hotel.

The uni students are in room 81 and we are in an adjacent set of bedrooms so we get the bottles out and start another party. The uni students in room 81 show us behind a picture on the wall are two wires where the microphone would be connected if there were any business people staying there or if there was any potentially compromising gossip to pick up.

The old lady “cleaner / supervisor” by the entrance to our floor keeps an eye on things and unfortunately I had persuaded one of the gentlemen from the grotto cellar bar thing to come and join us in the cause of international goodwill, peace and conviviality. I say unfortunately because consorting with westerners is potentially an offence in the Communist USSR and the babushka must have informed the authorities because just when we were plying this innocent stranger with another drink, along came two rain-coated severe looking men who gabbled something to him and he turned and started to go with them. Unfortunately I was too convivialled to see sense and I tried to get these KGB types (actually from Sputnik) to join in with our party and have some peace and love. Their response was to grab this unfortunate by each arm and march him through the door, without opening it! I was assured he would likely just be told to leave these westerners alone and stick to his own type. Actually, now I type this some years later I realise that I wouldn’t want anyone getting mixed up with the alcoholic crazies that were supposed to be the best the West could offer as a cultural exchange. I note that in case my diary was read on the way out of Russia I make the incident anonymous, wasn’t me gov I just heard about it honest!

Monday 19th July 1976; Day 4

Up early with heavy heads; Barioska Russian Doll, Sparda Vodka.
Another long wait for bus, it’s too small. 2 hour drive to student work camp. In the 3 month university vacation students should go to country camps to help on worthwhile projects, especially building sheds for farmers, building machine stations and building apartments. The students at the work camp live in wooden shacks, the girls cook for them. 8 girls and 40 men but because country folk emigrate to town Lena explains that country girls are “eager”. No drink (suprise) but Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here” plays while we have the best meal of the trip. Students get 45 roubles a month at university and if the quota is filled then teh group share up to 200 roubles. They pay 2 roubles a month for a student room shared.

It pours down and we are travelling on unpaved dirt roads with backward field drainage, no fences. 2 cattle herds and horseback riders. A bogged down tractor that had been delivered from Moscow on the train. Old wooden shacks still private with land attached. Apartments conspicuously out of place. Factory mending sheds. Lots of deciduous trees.

Farms; Collectives have a committee which decide the crop etc. The State pays a small regular wage but a good crop gives a bonus pay for the committee to share out. “States” are around towns to supply towns with food and have directives and quotas from the government and from the town Soviet.

Private plots by rural house supply food on the street corners but these are disappearing in and around towns with either apartments taking their place or factories or rich individuals buying them for holiday homes.

We stopped impromptu at a country church which was more ornate than the Kremlin cathedrals. The Comsomol (our youth tour guides) people laugh. The gold and art work is wonderful. Built in 1831 – 47 it must have needed a huge proportion of the peasants’ wealth to build and furnish it. Incense. Eva buys a candle. I shake the priest’s hand for he can’t last. The young people seem interested in the church. A long drive back.

8:20pm panic – the boat leaves, not the bus, at 8:30. The river is wide, polluted, with struggling industry around the banks. I politely say it was nice but …

9:30pm Early night, I cannot organised a social for the night, you’re on your own. Jan leads on.

Somehow we find there are 60 English university students studying Russian here. A party is on. I get second wind and half a bottle of vodka later our sing song brings a casual lecturer and floor woman. We have a rather irate lady outside. Off to other rooms and I think I help Steve to his room. I remember beer cans piled in a can version of lego from floor to ceiling.

Tuesday 20th July 1976 Day 5

Up dead early and dead on my feet. Off to a factory. I’m so dozy I take some slides with the lens cap on. I re-wind the film, is some lost?

The factory was making pre-cast concrete walls of houses complete with windows with glass in them for when they were transported on railway flat cars to distant parts of the USSR where new towns were being created in great haste. How many walls would arrive with the glass still in the windows?! Some have pebble dash put on and extra bits have different coloured cement. Young lasses are doing light manual work. A showpiece repair shop with an aviary and aquarium and posters of “quality …” “praise to the poser of the hands” etc. The factory has a sports shed and volley ball court. The 5 minute presentation becomes a 20 minute formality of book signing. I have to give a speech but forget my lines and waffle. They give us badges and little picture books. We give 3 books to the 3 girls presenting the talk. Liz hung back, maybe my pertinent or impertinent questions disfavoured me like asking about sacking, productivity, motivation, money.

A good lunch then a sleep somehow then time to wander around the shanty town – wooden buildings dark and lopsided. A play area for kids hidden behind tenement blocks and shanty buildings. A suspicious soldier came over while I was taking photos, more rough roads and a church being repaired or destroyed. Lena gets some posters so I run to get her some flowers.

No meal but 7:00pm we meet, me with my 3 piece suit looking like something from Burton’s gents clothing store. Down to conference room and we split up to small tables, me with Maia, Jan, Uri and Veronica. There are snacks, egg with sour cream, salad, cake, 2 bottles of dry white wine, 1 bottle of vodka on each table of between four and six people. We expected a meal but this was serious drinking Russian style with the snacks only to be played with and drinking the real game. The rules were toasts and counter toasts. Great fun for the first few drinks but this was a formal senior international cultural politically significant event. And I got drunk!

Fortunately so did most other people but when I was trying to remember my lines and be witty I had never had a translator doing the real time half a sentence behind translating and it is very unnerving when you want to ad lib and try to be witty and in the middle of a punch line you have to stop while the poor person has to gabble on with their version of me toasting the beautiful girls of blah blah. It was a cockup. Eventually it became convivial and I could get them going with a song and eventually some disco-ish dancing with some Russian version. Somehow Eva got close and we collapse into each other. The evening drifts into a haze, another party and dizzy sleep.

The speech that I gave:

“Thank you for film, food, hospitality, presents.
Many of us work with young people in our country, and we are aware of the challenges that are met when dealing with the recreation and informal education of youth.

We have seen tonight that Leningrad youth are very fortunate in having such a wide variety of activities and such keen and pleasant helpers. We have all been impressed with the beauty and culture of Leningrad and we admire their people and we look forward to the next few days of exploring your city.

We know that we will return to Britain with fond memories of our stay and we hope this visit will promote friendship between our two peoples.” 

Wednesday 21st July 1976 Day 6

Walk to the Folk Museum where we see funny overshoes and realise it must get very cold, snowy, wet and muddy here. These Russians are tough. Icon carved from ivory, finest craft I’ve seen. Lots of gilt. Bought carrots and ate raw. Had strawberries with crepes. Lena shays she would have come up but … next year..? We are holding hands but still formal, there is no crack in the Comsomol shell. She’ll write but she’s not human, she seems a programmed marionette with an efficient but over conditioned brain. She has researched the phenomenon of rhythm in poetry or prose that stimulates an emotional response especially Pushkin. She won third prize at the university at 20 years old. Natasha is 19. At the station a long train of 50 trucks go by as we do action pre-planned fond farewells.

An awful argument to get Russian peasants out of our reserved seats but then we have a quiet journey of six hours on a smooth train but we are late to our next hotel in Leningrad. I am impressed by beautiful sights and want to take a taxi ride around but fatigue suddenly wins over. Steve is sick on sheets so 3 roubles to clean them.

Thursday 22nd July 1976 Day 7

Leningrad
Boiled egg and salami for breakfast. Programme meeting.
9:00am no Sputnik guide. 9:30 meet Maia Jan Eva. Well mannered Uri with flowing hands explains that Moscow have sent cancelled 4 days, so programme only for 3 days! No Way Baby! We politely leave the cock up for him to sort out and go at 10:00 for the bus. It’s broken down so we wait until 11:30. We have a tour of the city with an excellent guide. The fleet is in and the temperature is 80 F but I snap away for posterity. A lousy lunch. Berioska (museum) and slides of Leningrad. Lenin Museum we see a film of the 900 day seighe with Shostakovitch composing during the shelling.

What resolute people to take such punishment and pain and hardship and not give in. It must be engrained in their soul, in their national identity, in their psyche. We in the West will always have difficulty understanding this. I remember my mother saying that in the Second World Way when Britain was in despair she remembers how when Leningrad and Stalingrad held out it was a beacon of hope for us at home, yet the USSR sacrificed millions to hold out against the Nazi assault. I think the exchange is educating me about Russians.

Eva and I stay in town when the party returns to the hotel and walk the length of Nevsky Prospect. Searching for cafe I feel like a little lad being shown around – well she knows Russian, Leningrad and big city ways including surviving in traffic and I am a country uncultured lad. Beautiful comedy theatre now a store, with queues. Underpass has surrealistic advert posters such as a head wtih an umbrella for an eye and people for the outline of the head.

We queue for sweetmeats, first queue for the ticket for what you want, and then queue for half an hour for the actual goods with people pushing in. Maybe because of the lengthy waits or ignorance of a good diet, the Russians were buying one kilo each of nougat, chocolate cake etc. Hence the gaudy gold teeth and obesity. But normal diets aren’t available. Oranges are the only fruit available and for them there is a 100 metre queue for 1.7 r/kilo (5 oranges) ie 26 pence each in 1976! More queues for theatre tickets, queue for kvas, the non alcoholic flat Mackeson type drink and more queues for shops. Lunch in a Caucasian restaurant, short queue.

We take a tram ride for free with self punched tickets. On another occasion when I tried this I was tut tutted and I handed my money to a passenger who handed it over to others until it reached its destination and then the ticket was similarly conveyed overhead back to me. I cannot forget nor live down the memory of tut tutting when I genuinely dropped my ticket and they thought that I was dropping litter, oops.

Dinner is cold curried chicken wing with strong garlic sauce with huge pork steak kebab with salads and wine for 12.60r ie £10. Eva’s life story is fascinating and I feel a great respect bordering on awe which makes me feel almost subordinate to this very competent self sufficient person, a Greek learning Russian at an English university and managing on her own. I notice we are half way through the exchange and relationships are forming in the group and people open up in their tiredness, you cannot keep a facade when exhausted and expose their inner strengths and weaknesses. Humour doesn’t sparkle so easily and excitement has changed to stamina. A long 2 hour walk home with a long climb up the fire escape because we are locked out but sleep comes easily at 1:30am.

Friday 23rd July 1976 Day 8

Leningrad

We are all late for the bus to the Peter and Paul Fortress, a 122metre tower gilded and rebuilt after being destroyed by Nazis in WW2. A gun goes off at 12 adn a tour of the cells in which political prisoners were kept in Tsarist times showed that aristocracy had favoured treatment even when in prison, their cells were bigger. Our guide Nick answers and evades questions about the current situation by (probably intentionally) confusing dissidents with dissenters and gives stock Comsomol answers. Everyone in the group were interested in my questioning of him because I would not accept the shallow answer and we are all aware of dissidents being persecuted. To find out anything I must keep asking and insisting and reading between the lines especially when “I don’t understand” is their attempt at evasion. I have the confidence to ask and the group say they appreciate my almost interrogation.

A beautiful building has a symmetrical half rebuild with ugly prefabricated unit that was specially commissioned to house political prisoners who were freed in 1917, presumably freed from the Tsar’s political prisoner program so that a new batch of anti communist political prisoners could occupy the vacant cells.

2:30 Hermitage, the Winter Palace, so called because in the summer the Tsar went to the Summer Palace at Petrodvorets. The Winter Palace’s gates were stormed in the revolution in October 1917 after the shot from the Cruiser Aurora gave the signal and the Provisional Government was arrested here.

One of the Tsars had built a building called the Hermitage, a refuge for art. This idea of a refuge for art has been kept after the Revolution and now art and museum pieces are accumulated their from all over the world. From a dugout boat found in the permafrost to two Leonardo de Vinci painting of only ten known in the world. There are so many exhibits that if two minutes were spent on each item them it would take nine years to get round the Hermitage. It is bigger than the British Museum and has more variety than the Uffizi in Florence. The building and remaining furniture are as interesting as the exhibits but the place looks like it could never have been lived in. The ballroom is full of display cabinets but most works of art are touchable but it is not the done thing we are advised by our guide. The floors match ornate ceilings and are inlaid with different coloured woods, shells adn gilded and a huge table of malachite and 20 ton weight of a silver chest, the only one not to be melted for coins when the Tsar fell on hard times (aw shucks!). An excellent guide explaining art periods, artists, styles and techniques. We all felt that we needed days there.

In the evening a party at the Comsomol turns out to be a very super smooth seaman’s mission. We had been on the Cruiser Aurora and had seen some modern warships moored nearby so there was a naval theme that was appropriate to the occasion. I’m confronted by a speech and reply nervously, I’m so nervous that when we exchange badges I almost stick the lapel badge though my host’s neck and my finger – would that make us blood brother/sister? They show a film of youth of Russia at play; they all ski and swim and … oh yeah?!

Some beer and more Russians to talk to. I talk to our Sputnik host Yuri and try to find some common ground and we agree with no armies, just society, no anomalies, peace and friendship, every country has its own path to true communism, but he admits Marx’s doctrine that democratic socialism is a fob to placate the masses. True revolution is needed or there’s no hope; peace through strength. I think Jan gets the message of deaf ears so calls for dancing company on the huge empty dance floor. The free library is raided and Uri says he reads Huxley so I promise to send him Brave New World. Hasty arrangements for jazz club tomorrow night then home to zonk out.

Saturday 24th July 1976 Day 9

Leningrad

Summer Palace 1 hour 20km drive, no tickets. The huge grounds with pretty fountains and a huge palace were rebuilt after being destroyed by the Nazis from drawings that survived the deliberate demolition in spite when the population of Leningrad survived the starvation and continuous shelling from this vantage point. Because we did not have tickets we could only admire the building and what it stands for from the outside. It would have been better to get there on the river by hydrofoil.

The afternoon is free so I organise a trip around the harbour on a ferry that is more like a tug but so what. We see lots of big ships and some pleasure craft.

We thought the evening was free and Sunday was for an arranged evening somewhere but with five minutes notice we have to get downstairs for a bus to tonight’s last minute arrangement with whatever tickets our tour organiser had managed to get. Jan and I had originally asked for Armenian folk dancers or if not then tickets for the ballet and if not then the circus. We got the circus and got it tonight, not Sunday.

A funny plainly dressed clown performed between acts that attempted to entertain with lethargic tigers being forced to dance the Kalinka. I suppose it is someone’s version of universal entertainment though a few of our party were against degrading animals like that, including me.

When we come out of the circus we find the Russian tour organiser had not told the bus driver to wait so we were stranded. We eventually get the Metro home and I organise a sing song on the bench while we wait.

Sunday 25th 1976 Day 10

Leningrad

Some of the party take the optional trip to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral with the biggest dome in the world [Wikipedia states it is the largest orthodox basilica and the fourth largest by volume cathedral in the world] I lie in, have lazy coffee with E and wander with a small group of us around Leningrad Beriosha. We see the 3 day Tsar palace preserved in brick outer shell. I peer through outer windows and see no interesting outside. Off to Sovietsky Berioska – long trip and its closed so off to restaurant for yuk meal and ill so back to hotel in a taxi.

In the evening we try for a local restaurant that does sashnick but ten of us wait twenty minutes to get in even after Eva has a battle of rudeness and lies with the door slamming commissioner. Eventually we get in and the meat is tough but the champagne is mellowing us. I smile at the waitress and she pulls a fat aggressive leer so we all feel subdued and quickly finish and go off to the Navy Day celebrations.

The fireworks were a damp squid, lots of lights on the ships reflecting in the water were more interesting than their fireworks. Lots of crowds. We see the setting sun over the water and run for a good photo but too crowded so missed it. We are all subdued, maybe it is exhaustion or frustration at some rude Russians but we decide to go home and our small group splits up to find our ways back to the hotel.

Eva and I wander the quieter streets to get a feel of the place and eventually she needs the loo so I guess the boiler room entrance to the block of flats nearby would lead to a loo so we went in and found a man stoking the boilers who obliged and then we engaged him in conversation, Eva being our group’s translator.

The story emerged that this stoker was studying law in the evenings and wants to take the higher diploma (presumably he already had a diploma or degree in law). His intention was to get a job as an advocate for clients without having to follow the Communist Party line because you have to be a member of The Party or follower of it to be able to practice law. Thus defence and prosecution are of the same political convictions and political convictions mean the same ideological and moral convictions. So what chance do offenders against the state have I asked, a somewhat rhetoric question. He said he doesn’t often meet non Russians and Russians aren’t supposed to talk with westerners but he manages to talk to Czechoslovakians and Polish people and that is his only way to find out what goes on in the outside world. He did seem a bit eccentric but he invites us to meet him 1700hrs Monday for tea at his place. What a strange and surprising meeting with a local which could not have been arranged normally under any circumstances.

We get lost on the way back and up in a park where lots of people are wandering around the unlit area seeming to be loitering or drunk. There are lots of vagrant looking people but we manage to get directions back to our hotel and we arrive exhausted at 11:30pm. But there’s a party in Lord Jim’s room so second wind was called for.

Monday 26th July 1976 Day 11

Leningrad

We were supposed to visit a Russian Orthodox service that started at 11am but the bus is late again so we arrive at 1145 and the service has ended and the museum in the grounds is locked so we wait half an hour while our guide tries to sort something out then we give up and go back to the hotel in disgust. Our guide tries to organise tickets for Armenian dancing but the full party weren’t on the coach so how many tickets and … what a mess.

2:00 The group visit via Metro to Sovietsky Berioska and some shop but I wander and cannot even find anywhere for a coffee or food; they say they are on lunch break at lunch time but I suspect they have run out of food.

I notice that shops and hotels sometimes have fridges but they are strangely silent so I went over to one and found out it was not working but had food inside it. One evening we had fish that was raw and Eva said in the Med it was the done thing to eat it raw but I could not stand the risk. Eva had an affectation of brushing her hair back with her fingers but also ate the raw fish with her fingers. Mediterranean habits are hard to appreciate.

Suddenly it pours down so taxis are summoned to return to the hotel.

6:30 At last the Armenian folk dancing. It’s great with simple stories and lively men and graceful women with intriguing folk costumes and strange instruments that sound eastern with a throbbing and stimulating drum. No kalinka, that’s Russian. At the interval I can’t find a programme but fruit juice and cake make up for an unpalatable meal that we had at the hotel. There are odd pictures of Russian mountaineering that I should have made more note of.

Caviar is available on soft holy bread with tomato and herb leaf. Eva is looking pissed off so I offer some caviar – cheap enough, but what a con, she says she wants champagne and in the heat and haste of the moment I buy two champagne and caviars at 4 roubles £3.50. I feel very guilty because I should have treated Marie.

The second half is not quite so lively but everyone leaves feeling happy. We return to the hotel to party in room 417 with apple brandy and vodka. I discover a brown coloured vodka which Russians say is the best because it has not had its taste filtered out but after a few I could not taste anything. It’s not a patch on good old Scotch whisky.

Tuesday 27th July 1976 Day 12

Leningrad

We are all packed and off at 10:15 and I meant to go on the hydrofoil first then shopping but I had a nightmare about running out of time and not having presents for home. But I end up at Nevsky Prospect in GUM, boring shop that looks like a jumble sale with expensive goods and queues for anything that seems worth buying. I give up and walk along Nevsky Prospect looking for pressies. Good crockery of small coffee cups with St Petersburg iconic shapes on it [still my pride of place in 2016!] My feet are hurting from too much shopping so bus to Hermitage for a quick tour on my own and saw Rubens, suits of armour, inlaid wood, daVinc paintings. Iff to Astoria and someone offers me 2 roubles for £1 twice the deal, so he can go to Berioska for American cigarettes. I rest and make shopping list out and he does a deal with a yank lady. Her father then get ¾ inch thick pile of dollars from cash desk and I leave for Berioska down the road and see them there.

There are cut glass goblets, little Russian dolls, plates, lacquered boxes. I cannot get a taxi back to the hotel because “they are zoned” whatever that means so I get the Metro back to the hotel and a missed dinner, but at least I got the souvenir presents. [In 2016 I cannot believe that I understood their alphabet and the layout to find my way solo on their underground, I think it reflects more on their clarity than my ability]

A blur of travel followed; Olympics, coffee & bun; sleeper train; compartment numbers confused so much changing of sleeping compartments; Glynys ill; booze & cards; chat with Yanks; poetry for Marie; staring through train window romantic trans European express. I suggest Gulf of Finland to Black Sea via Neva and Volga.

Wednesday 28th July 1976 Day 13

Moscow

I arrive in Moscow in the sleeper train with a vodka hangover ie still feeling giddy and lightheaded but three coffees and I’m ready for deputy leader duties.

9:30am We wait at the train station hoping to go the hotel and dump our gear but the bus that should have picked us up and taken us immediately to the gallery had not arrived!!

10:45 the bus arrives but now what?

11:15 the bus arrives at the hotel and we are told to go immediately to the gallery. We revolt No Way! Jan Eva and I march off to the office and try to arrange some sense into this fiasco but they say things need to be booked at least a month in advance and are inflexible.
Lunch is at 13:30 and depart at 14:00 and no time for a wash.
Dinner is 17:30 and we depart at 18:00

So we postpone the gallery and a Dutch party leader comes in and has exactly the same problem.

At least lunch is good and we go to the centre of Economic Achievement with a 360 degree cinema screen in a cylindrical room with the projector in the centre that shows a 360 degree film taken as a car travels around hairpins on a mountainous road. It was impossible to stay upright and we all had versions of vertigo or disorientation and some of us fell over.

There are lots of different exhibitions and each building is different and each looks tempting. Mini trains of carriages behind a mini lorry towed us around the grounds that had something for everyone including a fun fair.

KOCMOC is an exhibition of a rocket suspended by its tractor unit. Inside there are communication satellites, the docking collar for the Apollo to Soyuz link, space craft mockups of all sizes. Really quite interesting.

Then onto the neighbouring exhibition of photography. This was like a Cumberland Show display – stuff you should see in any decent shop window. Display cases with glass sides that were so rough and sharp that you could cut yourself on them. Everything was bare and unimaginative, functional and not artistic or pleasing in its design in either the items or the way they were displayed. Don’t lean on the barriers or they will fall off (we nearly did it to show them). Don’t run your finger along the show case or you’ll cut it off. Mind the steps, they are uneven; the rise varies from 4 inches to 6 inches. Don’t lean against the wall, it’s only thin plywood screwed onto a batten with nothing behind it to give support. Be careful of the parquet floor in the entrance kiosk – it’s a veneer that has warped and separated from the floor beneath so it has buckled and floats over it as much as two inches in the centre. We played at walking on one bit so it moved in a wave over to the next student who trod on it to send the wave back to us.

We walk home in depressed silence, hurried only by a tremendous downpour which soaked us. Perhaps it was soviet weather’s retribution for us looking down on them. We really need to remember the troubles that they are resurrecting themselves from after WW2 and unfortunately they did not have capitalism with its never ending debt to create a new economy.

We hadn’t been able to find out where the Comsomol party was going to be, even the guide with us who was a member did not know. We met some American High School students who were touring Russia doing Russian folk dancing. They were due to dance Thursday night but even on the morning of their performance nobody would tell them where they were playing that night!

The bus was too small, the road bumpy and the Comsomol part was boring. Drinks were 1 rouble for a vodka and grapefruit, yuk and there are 50 people there. We can’t afford to buy rounds so I send Maia to get the bus. Jan is otherwise engaged with vodka and a smooth Russian. Maia says the bus has been booked to return at midnight or 1 am! Everyone is bored and falling asleep. I am insulted by the lies of the vice president. Eva stayed at the hotel so we have no translator on our side, only the English speaking Russian official who is giving the party line; is he trying to convert me? The bus comes, I refuse to give my plaque that Carlisle City Council had given me to exchange on a suitable occasion to them and I am furiously bored. The only half interesting thing was walking round the halls of residence on my own and hearing some British rock being played and feeling like the KGB with my suit on skulking around the student halls.

Thursday 29th July 1976 Day 14

Moscow

Fish and fried eggs for breakfast and 10:30 off to the kindergarden except Eva, Jim, Liz off on their own so we need an interpreter and we are stuck and annoyed. Four others sleep in and miss the bus so we are seven short without them telling us so the bus sets off late. The kindergarden was very interesting with 20 children three an four years old dancing and singing for us. Very uniformed in clothing and behaviour. Parents pay 25% cost and the rest is paid by the local soviet. There is a special kindergarden for handicapped children. A research institute works out programmes for kgarden. 3 special groups for children who cannot speak properly, some of whom are residential with two nurses for each group. The kg is open 7am to 7pm with a doctor available for treatment and staff issuing preventative medicine with treatments available and isolation of infectious children. They have nature study, physical exercise and gymnastics, music, maths and art. They are taught to love the motherland, respect parents and adults and respect labour (work) and property and live as a community from the beginning with appropriate behaviour. A lot for infants!

Teacher training is for women three year teacher training and two year special course. Sick children can be taken home and treated by parents who would get a special certificate so that they still got paid. Cost for kg 12r50 per child per month for a married couple and 6roubles for unmarried mothers. In term time there are 280 children 3-4 yrs old but in the summer most parents take them on summer camps.

The dance of conciliation started with children back to back stamping their feet (=arguing) then turn round and dance together then embrace to make up and be friends. There are 10.5 million children in the USSR and 2,100 kgdns in Moscow taking 90% of the children with 15m roubles from the Moscow soviet for maintenance with 28,000 people employed and some kgdns are next to and supported by the factories that the parents work in.

We had lunch in a down town PECTOPA = RESTORA = restaurant. We wonder what next will come from our Sputnik and Comsomol organisers and dread another art gallery ordeal so we find the biggest Berioska shop in town but downstairs it is closed for inventory (perhaps another way of saying there was nothing in stock). Upstairs was too expensive.

I give up shopping and arrange a trip with Ian & Jim to Novadivish monastery which had interesting icons, paintings with recently renovated gilded bits showing a picture of heaven and hell with overtones.

Suddenly I realise that I have set the wrong film speed ASA number on my camera and my earlier film is likely to be rubbish over exposed so I rush to the Kremlin to get repeat photos but it’s closed so I get Red Square photos and St Basil’s. Feet and legs have cramp from rushing in Russia (very very hot) but I hobble to the Metric pausing for a shot of a neglected church. Sign language and luck get me the trolley bus but are not enough for me to get off on the correct stop so a long rushed walk back to the hotel for dinner which had been put back by an hour so there had been no need to rush for what was another lousy dinner, smelly fish and fatty ham which I gave back to the woman and I steal some sticky buns and ham from another table. I have had too much of the poor standard of food and the poor organisation and cannot face another party so I take wine and beer back to my room and write up the last parts of this diary.

I ignore the lads trying to persuade me to come to the party when suddenly the door bursts open, I’m grabbed and carried to the cold shower. Great fun! Party was fine, lots of silly speeches and handing of presents and I give Maia my plaque. We get yet another sing song and eventually we are told that it is too loud for the neighbours who are to get up at 6:30am so we drift back to our rooms with the Yanks and I drift around the various rooms. As we slow down and mellow Jim starts us all with Auld Lang Syne and we drift off to pack and collapse.

Friday 30th July 1976 Day 14

Moscow

6:30am up with a variety of hangover complaints and tea in hot glasses. 7:45 almost on the bus but keys missing so rush then OK then off we go. I’m shattered, everyone is shattered. I make a last attempt to plead with them to write their diaries. Change money to repay 5r, at baggage clearance the woman walks off as I approach so I shout but still no attention so I just walk through. Goodbyes to Maija. Hello plane, some instantly asleep, some are hangover sick, some food sick. We all sign cards and make cryptic comments on a hughie bag for the unfortunate ill ones. There are Aussies beside me and Pakistani hoping for a long stay. Food was good on the world’s biggest airline Aeroflop but I should not have made jokes to the poor Aussie lass beside me about the sudden descent and rumbling from our under carriage but actually even I was apprehensive in the sudden descent in an air pocket.

Back in UK and farewells and promises to meet for reunions in October. We have experienced a meeting of varied backgrounds and opinions within our group. That experience has been testing and revealing in itself and has created a group identity. Our own group’s cultural exchange has been as interesting as the political exchange.

Re-integration to home ways

No queues for goods in shops but lots of queues of traffic.
No boring looking apartment blocks, just acres of semis.
No substandard wooden slums, just brick ones and the signs of desperate squatters.
No suppression of thought, just immigrants and attitudes and a comment from a customs man – “Here The Revolution will be by the National Front”
No suppression of action, but look out for unattended bags [The IRA were active]

Back to litter everywhere; smooth surfaced but crowded roads; expensive bus fares.
Do we have “freedom of thought” or is it chaos and will our freedom bring strife or terrorism.

Food

We leave behind memories of rubber meat, raw fish like chewing gum, cabbage and boiled eggs that tend to repeat themselves, waterproof sugar lumps, self extinguishing cigarettes, fragile matches, sour cream with every course (all cream goes off so why not keep it sour), late buses, Sputnik disorganisation, constipation, the runs, Senakot, mouldy bread and food in open troughs above fermenting waste bins, the beauties of Tsarist times, the uglies of USSR, the obvious inhuman distribution of wealth in Tsarist times, the obvious social progress in 50 years, the effective education courses in English and Art, the conditioning of the Comsomol mind, lack of meeting Russians who weren’t Comsomol, queues for fruit.

We remember surealistic posters advertising the cinema, austere messages extolling the worth of the workers’ hands, then sincerity of the XXV Party Congress, the need to now work for quality in this 5 year plan.

We miss the clean cheap underground Metro with its artistic designs on posters and in ceramics in the walls. We miss the Progressive Tours people from youth clubs from all over England who paid £140 for 2 weeks including flights and one whole week in Leningrad even though we had been told Leningrad was not possible!
We don’t miss 5 days of travelling with no hot water. We feel sorry for the American dance group who didn’t know where they were dancing or if it would take place.

Taxis
We thank our taxi drivers for driving anywhere, not limited to the zones of Leningrad or Moscow where taxis cannot cross into another zone. At least the Russian taxi drivers do not accept tips, an odd experience when we were told that “I have done a good job for the correct money so why give me more?”

Shopping
Great to be back to our shopping around for price ritual because every item in Russia is the same price, but often in such short supply it is either not available or the queues are off putting.

We survived the currency fiddles. The exact extent and purpose wasn’t clear but often we got two or more roubles for a pound or even 3 or 4 when the official exchange rate was 1.338 roubles per pound. In the Astoria Hotel I refused a deal but saw a young Russian man accumulating American dollars. He said it was for the Berioska shop and sure enough I saw him there later where certain goods are only available for dollars or pounds.

Vodka costs 2r60 in foreign currency but 4r in normal shops. European strong cigarettes and the best quality and variety of goods are on sale only in Berioska elite shops, the name means silver birch which is the emblem of USSR and they only take foreign currency.
Clothes
Russians have a poor choice of clothes and a Russian lad said he had paid 90r for his awful jeans so was keen to buy mine for 40 – 60 roubles which I declined. Women wear Marks &S 1050s flower patterned dresses almost as a uniform.
Bars
Bars often shut at 9pm and occasionally at 11pm and when we either got lost or toured the city we didn’t notice many other entertainment places except the formal theatre.
Youths
Youths attend pioneer palaces or palaces of culture which have facilities for every cultural or sporting activity. Younger ages can play in the specially equipped playground areas behind the tenement blocks on seesaws, mini houses, table tennis outdoors etc. Every adult feels a duty and responsibility towards children, the sense of care and supervision is palpable.

But where to go and what to do for a release of tension? This desire is not recognised so there are few casual coffee bars or drinking bars, everything has a utilitarian purpose. Perhaps drink is expensive, more likely we were not allowed to see the way that people get around restrictions and we realised after getting lost in the park that for many people getting a bottle in a brown paper bag and stumbling around the park was their big night out, at least life takes on the universal rosy glow of alcohol. Perhaps there is a reason that vodka is the drink of the nation because it doesn’t give the same hangover as whisky, just a continued high in the morning so maybe the workforce is more productive with a vodka hangover than … ?

Uniformed or military
I think that there is an obligatory two year conscription which accounts for so many uniformed people acting casually or marching or even digging roads. Many trucks that seemed to be carrying normal commercial loads were khaki as if the vehicles were ready for mobilisation but this is a cultural misunderstanding because there is no commercial organisation and all trucks are state vehicles so the state can use them when it wants for any purpose.
Shopping
On some street corners old women sell flowers from their little plots for 80kopeks to 1r40, usually smiling, fat in flower patterned dresses and wearing headscarves with gold looking thread.

Occasionally on stalls we found strawberries and once we saw carrots and radishes and a few times we saw oranges for 1r70 kilo, 23p each; everything is seasonal and mainly locally produced but their relationship with Cuba was boasted about because sometimes they got bananas.

Shopping is bizarre; queue to select your goods and hope you are in the correct queue for the item you want or you join a different queue, select the item but leave it alone and get a selection ticked; then payment queue to give the selection ticket and pay and get a receipt; then a collection queue with your receipt to finally get your item. And then you realise that you should have got something else so … give up and go home. Queuing frustration leads to subtle overtaking then pushing and queue rage.

Hotels are functional; Hotel Tourism in Moscow is 6000 beds in 6 blocks and we shared 3 or 4 to a room. The first block had showers and toilet by each room and showered straight over the drain hole in the floor, being careful with the substitute for toilet paper that was any serviette or newspaper. The second block had 4 shower units per floor, supposedly men on one floor and women on the next floor but nobody bothered. There was no hot water in this block for 4 or 5 days and one floor had no water at all! We ate very few good meals in a poky room or in a very large restaurant.

Hotel Seliger in Kalinin with 800 beds was 3 to a room with showers opposite working and a decent ish commercial restaurant downstairs. There were 60 English students of Russian language staying there.

Hotel Drooshba (Friendship) in Leningrad was not completed but had 800 – 1000 beds (eventually). 3 to a room, a few had two to a room and some rooms had a bath shower and toilet, otherwise one shower and toilet on each floor, awful if you are caught short! There was a TV lounge or bar on each floor but the food was disgusting and unhygienic with food on open tables not covered and open waste bins with rotting food beside them fermenting in the oppressive heat and flies crawling over the food and occasionally birds finding their way in to snatch food. No wonder many of us were ill.

Food

Milk goes off quickly; sour cream and yoghurt are popular and used instead of mayonnaise on salads, put as a blob in soup, drank as milk on trains, added to roll and jam or pancake and jam, anything. Butter was very expensive but lots of it were in the hotel though fridges often did not work so health risk management was required. Bread was black or white, heavy and continually used, ie not replaced even if it became hard, stale or mouldy. Breakfast might be salami and bread and a sticky bun or bun with pasta and mince, or sausage and cheese and a heavy bun with cheese in it , or boiled egg and cheese and bun. The cheese was always wafer thin and the salami had huge chunks of fat and gristle. The eggs were boiled en mass and stored in a cupboard and offered or replaced in the cupboard until they were all gone. Cabbage came on the market and we had it for saurkraut and cream, with pasta, as a soup, everything was cabbage and recycled cabbage until the glut was exhausted.

Attempts at steak were usually disastrous though once we had a beautiful cutlet and one other lovely meal. Salad and starters were good but raw smoked fish was like rubber. We had three oranges in the fortnight. Soups could be good or could be leftovers and I had one very off tasting piece of meat. I decided fish was not worth the risk and twice handed it back.

Religion:
Only parents can persuade children to follow a religion and anyone else attempting to persuade, whether a priest or teacher or other adult, is acting against the interests of the state and will be imprisoned. This is admitted freely. Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists especially are persecuted though Orthodox Catholicism is common and RC is common in Lithuania and other states as one gets further from Russia. There is even less future for their churches than ours because there are no young people there to have an interest, I thought. Before they can use sports facilities they must join the Pioneers where atheism is taught.

Political prisoners
“We didn’t imprison Solzchienitzin or Sarakof did we” was the answer to my question. Eventually an admission was made but no real answer given.

Quotas
Trade unions & farm committees work to fulfill quotas. A clever lad called Lysenko said he could increase the milk yield by 1/3 – just milk them an extra time each day, he said! He got a job as advisor to the minister. He then said he could breed chickens in Siberia that would survive the harsh climate – just keep shipping them out until they eventually have offspring, ignoring the dead ones and not allowing the conveyor to stop.

Kruschev wanted furniture production to be increased so medals and holidays at the Black Sea resorts were offered to factory with the highest output. But they measured the output in tonnes so someone made the biggest heaviest solid oak settees that weighed the balance in his favour literally. He and his factory workers got the prize but the furniture was too big to fit though any door so it had to be cut in half to get into houses!

Gifts
I took to give to our hosts:
Plaque/shields from Alnwick District Council, Wansbeck District Council, Carlisle City Council.
Tourist guides & postcards of the above places & Northumberland & Newcastle; an LP; bottle of Lindesfarne Mead, presentation jar of Cumberland rum & brandy butter tubs, Cumberland cheese curd, 16 packets of chewing gum (we were advised this was popular), Lindisfarne fudge, Kendal mint cake, Broomhill School and Amble School badges (I was teaching there half time and running youth clubs at Amble and area).

Tour organiser
The Education Interchange Council (Inc)
43 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DG
Ref BritYouth 1B
Half cost of visit to the Soviet Union £73 including air flight and hotels and internal transport and food.

============End of diary from 1976================

Typed in 2016 from my 1976 written notes in the notebook and from indelibly etched memories. Note from Decemberr 2020 when I uploaded this.

Remember that Eva said that Russians only knew how to be ruled by an authoritarian leader and would never know how to change; Communism -> Yeltsin ->Putin …!