01-01 Moscow

It’s the bold architecture and beauty of Red Square in Moscow that takes your breath away and provides the lasting memory of a trip to Russia.
Our visit was in 1987 just as the country was opening up to tourism and foreign investment. So we saw what it was like living in the Soviet Union under strict Communist rule, and what it does to a nation’s culture.
It was a two-week tour starting in Moscow. But I came early to meet with Canada’s trade commissioner and Russian officials. My first surprise was a warning from the Embassy that my hotel room was bugged.
I told them all they had to do is stand outside my room to listen to our conversations because the door was not made correctly, and we could see the hall light shining in from along the top of our door.
And that was just the beginning of what I called Communist surprises. When we went for a walk near our hotel, we were warned to walk in the middle of the road and not on the sidewalk, because the cement was falling out from between the bricks that could land on one's head.
And in the public parks, where people were enjoying family time, the grass was three feet deep. No one seemed to be maintaining their public facilities.
I asked to meet government officials interested in encouraging small scale development now that they were opening up their economy. Well, I got a meeting with 12 people interested in selling me Russian trucks.
The meeting was in a government building for the top officials, what we would call in Canada, Deputy Ministers. There were also buildings for Assistant Deputy Ministers and buildings for Directors. Each building had stores where officials could buy western goods. The higher you were in the bureaucracy, the better the products that were made available.
The whole organizational structure was so incredibly inefficient. You would think you would want everyone working in the same department located in the same building.
There were other shocks. All cars had their hubcaps removed because people steal them. And even worse, when drivers get out of their cars, they take the windshield wipers off and put them in their pockets.
Getting back to touring Moscow, we never used taxis but preferred to travel using their incredible subway system. The stations were breathtakingly beautiful in design.
In Red Square, you can visit the Mausoleum where they hold the embalmed body of the founder of Communism, Vladimir Lenin. And there are the Kremlin walls which front the headquarters of the Russian government. And, of course, the GUM department store.
Going through the GUM store with several couples from our tour, we played a game. Is there anything you would keep if it were given to you as a gift?
But the people, themselves, all seemed well dressed and their children looked like “show pieces”, with every family making their own outfits.
And of all the famous buildings around Red Square, nothing compares to St. Basil’s Cathedral. This kind of amazing architecture goes back to the 1500s. What was built under communism was seriously ugly and seriously huge.
We travelled by plane from Moscow for our first stop, and everyone was given a gift. A tube of Bulgarian toothpaste. Wow. The locals were delighted. There was only one flavour of toothpaste in Russia.