"Russia Revisited" Russia by drolkar

At the beginning of September 2000, after much wheedling and cajoling, I was finally granted a two-week leave of absence from my job with a large U.S.-based tour operator -- and I knew exactly how I planned to use that time. Mother Russia was calling! Three years previously (1997) I had left Moscow to return home to Boston, Massachusetts and take care of certain family matters, but the circumstances were such that I never made it back to Moscow. Now was the perfect time for me to revisit my "old life", while also paying a brief visit to Kiev, Ukraine -- one former Soviet city where past travels had never taken me. Thus it was that on Saturday, September 2nd I boarded Lufthansa's flight to Frankfurt with connecting service to Kiev, and the adventure began...

Over the past few years, Moscow has been transformed into a beautiful, dynamic, glitzy city. I was truly amazed at the difference! Even the modest little suburb where I used to live (Ho Chi Minh Square) now has neatly-laid out flower gardens, a little fountain, new stores and signs advertising various products ("LG -- Washing Machines that are Digitally Yours"). The metro now operates on passes rather than little plastic tokens, and there are new, functional public telephones on every corner.

People's salaries also seem to have taken a turn for the better -- and it was about time for some improvement in that quarter. Not that there still aren't money distribution problems -- lack of government money to maintain military equipment (case in point: the Kursk submarine), unpaid pensions, teachers' and miners' wages etc. -- but things do seem to be moving in a positive direction.

My Moscow friends, Tanya and Vlad from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, were both well and we spent an entire afternoon drinking tea and catching up on the past few years. (I first met them four years ago because of a translation project, and we have been good friends ever since.) The Ministry now has a fully-equipped "Press-Video Center" with video cameras, camera lights, linear and non-linear editing equipment, etc., so for once I actually had the chance to see the direct results of a translation. (That's us in the picture up above, with me in the middle.)

I also revisited Moscow's Museum of the Peoples of the East, which has always been a favorite place of mine. (It was here that I formed my first impressions of Tibetan art in 1996, which led to a 2-month stay among Tibetan monks in India. But that is another story!) Here too, the change was incredible: the museum has expanded considerably and now has permanent exhibits from many Asian countries. It also has a gift shop where books, postcards and reprints are sold. The main exhibit being featured while I was there was some extraordinary Islamic calligraphy by an artist from Tatarstan. His technique was truly striking: intricate black-ink calligraphy combined with nuances of color to convey the silhouette of a mosque or other symbols relevant to Islam. In some cases, the places being depicted were clearly recognizable - e.g., the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

From Moscow, I journeyed on to St. Petersburg.

My friend Lena from the northern city of Petrozavodsk came down to meet me, and since we had not seen one another for about two years, there was a great deal of catching up to do. She is an amazing lady, having survived two major back operations and relearned how to walk at the age of 38. She is also very astute, I think, in her assessments of Russian society right now. For example: "We [i.e., Russians] have done a great disservice to our young people these past few years, in that we negated and discredited the values we lived with under communism without providing a viable alternative."

But not everything about my trip was serious and analytical. (With Lena I consumed more vodka in two days than I have in the past two years.... but then I'm not really a vodka drinker.) We spent the better part of a day sitting at a little cafe on Nevsky Prospect, the main street of St. Petersburg, and then went to the home of one of Lena's friends, Olga. She and her family live in a so-called "communal apartment", which I was very interested to see since I had never been in one before. Basically, it consists of four or five rooms, each accommodating one family, which adjoin a shared kitchen. This type of accommodation used to be very common during Soviet times, but is now less so.

The one "touristy" thing we did in St. Petersburg was to go on a little boat excursion around the canals, with a guide explaining the history of the various buildings along the embankment. St. Petersburg is still its lovely, pastel-colored self, but many of the old buildings are being renovated now so a great deal of scaffolding can be seen. The same is true of Peter and Paul Fortress. The year 2003 will mark the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, so I guess preparations for the jubilee celebration are beginning very early. The area around Olga's communal apartment (Sennaya Ploshad or Haymarket Square) is where Dostoevsky lived when he wrote Crime and Punishment, and I doubt that this area today differs much from the bustling, working-class market square it was in the 19th century. Indeed, nearly every building in St. Petersburg resonates with historical or literary significance of one kind or another, and the city has definitely earned its reputation as the true cultural center of Russia. Its atmosphere of nostalgia for past events and people makes it radically different from Moscow.

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