My 1975 visit to Russia began even before I left London. Shortly after I boarded Aeroflot's IL-62 to Moscow, before I had taken my seat, the airplane began taxiing. The two seats next to mine were occupied by two delightful middle-aged women who had boarded in San Francisco and who now helped wedge me into my seat. Almost all the floor space was taken up by their numerous bottles and packages of goodies (apparently no need to secure carry-on items!), but after a bit of rearranging, I was fine. Soon they were offering me all kinds of yummy pastries, and insisted on adding cognac to my coffee.
Russia, what will I do with you? You beguiled me from those first moments on the plane and all through the twelve days of my first and only visit during the Soviet era. I knew a lot about your history, including your capacity for cruelty to your own citizens, but your language and culture had been my fascination from my mid-teens on, and now (that is, fifty years ago this year!) I was going to see you for myself. For the most part, I only saw your good sides during those twelve days in 1975, but now you're slipping back into those old ways....
I've mentioned my first visit to Russia several times, but now I'd like to give a few more details, if only to express a bit of the combined nostalgia and grief that accompanies these memories. I choose not to indulge in russophobia, and won't apologize for my life-long fascination, even as I agree with Dmitrii Bykov's sad assessment after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: "It is clear that Russia crossed many red lines. It cannot live any longer as it did in the past. The world will no longer see [in Russia] a place of spirituality, a place of great culture, a place representing victory over fascism."
Back in this post—Mississippi mellowing?—I wrote about my other significant involvement in 1975, my months at Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall, Mississippi, which were directly followed by my departure for the Soviet Union via the UK. I said then that, between those two places, Mississippi was the larger culture shock.
In the post Sapsan shorts, I mentioned the feeling, during that 1975 visit to Russia, of being so far away from everyone I knew. And in Return to Sergiev Posad, I explained how there was actually a link between those two experiences, Mississippi and Russia, and that link was the American Friends Service Committee.
In that last post, I described my first visit to the city of Sergiev Posad, to the Orthodox campus known as the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, back when the city of Sergiev Posad was still known by its Soviet name of Zagorsk. But there I only told the story of our tour group's visit to the worship service in progress. But as we left the service and were on our way to the next stop on the tour, I spoke quietly to our guide, telling her that I wanted to visit the Orthodox seminary if possible. To my surprise and delight, she told me how to get there, and promised to hold the bus for me when the others had completed the planned tour.
At the seminary, I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get as a Protestant, possibly a sectarian (Quaker) in their eyes, and moreover as a 22-year-old American with long hair and (to put it charitably) undistinguished clothing. A dignified man who seemed to have the title of "inspector" greeted me very kindly just inside the front door, and soon I was on a fascinating tour of the seminary, while he listened to my story. Everyone along the way treated me as an honored guest! Needless to say, I was walking on air when I rejoined our tour bus, and to this day I wonder what kind of intuition that tour guide had. It's hard to imagine the same thing happening now, but, honestly, who knows?
Churches played a role in several other incidents during those days in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). On my first full day in Moscow, I went to the Novodevichy Convent, in whose cemetery many famous people are buried—Khrushchev, Gogol, Chekhov, Scriabin, and (just before my visit) Shostakovich, among many others. As I approached the convent's gate, I saw an artist at work in a clump of bushes, and his paintings were on the grass, available to purchase. I asked him if he was a believer, and he said, "Of course!" When I asked whether painting was his work, he laughed and said, "I'm a parasite on society." In the language of Soviet sociology, the term meant that he was not usefully employed within the approved structures, but he seemed to enjoy announcing his title! Of course I bought a painting, which is included in the slide show above.
I brought the painting back to my hotel room at the Mozhaiskaya hotel, which was on the Mozhaisk highway beyond the main circular highway around Moscow. The next day, when I returned from my sightseeing in the city center, I found that my painting had been carefully pinned up on the wall. When I asked the service staffer taking care of my room whether she know how the painting got there, she just gave me a quiet smile.
The following Sunday, I decided to go back to Novodevichy Convent for a church service. It was a lovely service, but I noticed that I was about one-third the age of most people there, and one of the few males. Afterwards, outside the church, I was approached by two young women, Lara and Sonya, who wanted to know what possible interest a young person like me could have in attending an Orthodox church service. They were mainly interested in the architecture, they explained. I tried to explain a little about my own faith. We decided to hang out for a while, and they took me to a nearby museum and exhibition. Lara then had to go, so Sonya and I went on to Gorky Park, where Sonya tutored me in the Soviet skill of working two lines at the same time: one for an amusement-park ride, and the other for shashlyk. The only problem: we arrived at the front of both lines simultaneously, so, laughing, we had to try to eat our food while twirling around on the ride.
Every day I ran into interesting people and unplanned encounters. For example, I visited the Kremlin, but the church/museum I wanted to see was closed, so I sat down in a nearby park. Pretty soon a Polish man came up to me and started a conversation. Somehow Zbigniew and I got onto the subject of political humor, and so there we were in the heart of Soviet power, trading jokes about Brezhnev and his tribe.
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| The hotel. A photo from the 1970's. Source. |
All my travel and transfers (airport to hotel to train to hotel to airport) were part of a package, which for most ordinary private tourists was the only way to visit the Soviet Union. In my case, everything seemed to work well, and in one situation, extraordinarily well: I was already at the train station for my overnight train to Leningrad when I realized, to my horror, that I'd left my Novodevichy painting in my hotel room, still pinned to the wall. No problem! An Intourist staffer got on the phone, and well before my train left, someone met me in the station with my painting securely packed into a tube. Five decades later, it's on our dining room wall in Portland, Oregon, reminding me of the faith of a "parasite," and our shared laughter.
From Leningrad I went to stay with my grandparents in Oslo. A few days later, I got a call from my cousin Johan Fredrik Heyerdahl: would I like to hear a presentation by the writer Andrei Sinyavsky? Of course! Another chance to connect with Soviet reality. Sinyavsky, accompanied by his host in Oslo, the journalist Per Egil Hegge, gave his lecture at the Nobel Institute, and Johan Fredrik and I were there.
Sinyavsky had served six years for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. His co-defendant Yuli Daniel had also been sentenced under this same charge—it may have been the first time this charge was applied to fiction. After Sinyavsky 's release, he had eventually emigrated to France where he was a professor of Russian literature. (Per Egil Hegge had his own brush with Soviet power; he was expelled from the USSR while serving as Aftenposten's correspondent in Moscow.)
At the Nobel Institute, Sinyavsky told us that there were three principal types of dissidents in the USSR. Some fought for a nationalist myth or the communist ideal, and sometimes even welcomed their punishment. But Sinyavsky's highest praise was reserved for those, such as Sakharov, who were ready to help anyone without exception, especially for the sake of freedom.
Later, I had my own couple of minutes with Sinyavsky, during which he confirmed something that I thought he'd hinted at in his lecture—that he was a Christian believer. I realized that he also valued being a writer, rather than being stuck in the category of "political dissident."
If you've managed to read this far, thank you for your company! Most of my diaries will probably never see the light of day, but it has been both pleasant and sobering to leaf through some of these pages from 1975.
Now I have a question for you. Are you interested in Russian language or culture or spiritual resources? I'd love to hear from you (privately if you like) because I personally know very few people younger than me, particularly among peace church people, who have this interest. In my desire to accompany spiritually grounded peace people in Russia one way or another (and they do exist), I'd love to think that there are more potential partners out there for this ministry.
I originally got introduced to this whole field because I took Russian language classes in high school. I think the popularity of high school and college Russian language and area studies has shrunk dramatically over the last fifty years, so it's not surprising that this specific concern might attract fewer people, but I figured it was worth asking....
PS: Even if you're not younger than me, I would still love to hear from you!! And if you know someone I should contact, I'd love to reach out. Finally, I'd also love to know whether there are other organized efforts to respond to this concern.
The Guardian's Anna Betts: Mariann Edgar Budde, a bishop and (as it turns out) evangelist for the actual Christian faith.
Some advice for U.S. Catholics on discipleship during Trump 2.0 ... and not just for Catholics.
Sarah Scott speaks to Spokane Friends on grief.
"No hatred will be tolerated." A repeat from one of those earlier posts about Russia. It seems like a song whose time has come again.
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