09-13 The Soviet Union 1988

The new Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in 1985, promising perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) which meant tourism was open to the world. Mary and I arranged a two-week tour of the Soviet Union in advance of the International Small Business Congress in Helsinki, Finland. It was two weeks of shocks and surprises.
In advance of the tour, I met with the Canadian Ambassador and Trade Commissioner, and they warned me that my room would be bugged. They then arranged for me to meet with government officials interested in encouraging small-scale enterprise. What a joke. I met 15 people trying to sell me Russian trucks.
And what a crazy system with all the officials in buildings according to their rank. All the top people (that we would call Deputy Ministers), were all in the same building that offered the best quality western merchandise in their shops. So incredibly inefficient and stupid.
We wandered about Moscow in advance of the tour. The place seemed to be in decay. The grass in the parks had not been cut. Pieces of concrete were falling off buildings. People took off their windshield wipers when they left their cars because of widespread theft. There were no cars with hubcaps. We wandered into the large GUM department store. There was nothing available that we would have kept even if it was given to us. And lots of Lenin statues. Mary is photographed in front of one of them.
But the Russian people loved to dress up their children. And I have never tasted ice-cream as good as that sold in Russia.
We developed a friendship with Mariam and Arnold Edson of New York and this photo was taken in Saint Petersburg. Arnold was a young 2nd Lieutenant in WW2 and was part of the 1st US Marine Division that landed on Guadalcanal in 1942. He was told they expected 50 per cent casualties and wrote a final letter home to his mom telling her he loved her. A moving memory. The amazing part of this story, and one that has been told in the movies, is that the Japanese fled into the jungles and left all their food behind. He said that was when he learned to love sake.
I noticed as well how good their bread was as long as it was eaten the day it was baked. No preservatives was the secret. The photo of the shop girl was typical of the many fair-haired Russian girls. In the shop, you lined up to pay for what you wanted and then lined up with your ticket to buy your bread. There were long lines everywhere.
Mary is shown outside the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, which at one time was the home of the tsars. It houses the most extensive art collection in the world. It seemed everything beautiful in Russia was built before the communist revolution in 1917.
We travelled to the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova by plane and by train. On the plane we were given a gift of Bulgarian toothpaste, which to the locals was a real treat, since all toothpaste was the same in Russia. On a long train ride to Kiev in the Ukraine, we tried to open a window. The whole thing came away into our hands. It seemed everything in Russia was in disrepair. But they love their circuses, which were world class. And in Odessa, we went to an opera for only $2 each, but the place was filthy and the curtains in the condition of old torn rags.
Everywhere we went there were memorials to what they called the Great Patriotic War. As a child, all I heard about was the war in Europe with no concept of the Russians killed during WW2. And in every town and village, it was the custom for a wedding photo to be taken at the local memorial. I was deeply moved by the enormity of the slaughter.
It was not a really enjoyable trip. At every stop, everyone on our bus complained of locals cheating them when giving back change. We were continuously being hustled by offers of generous Russian currency exchanges. And at every hotel, a waiter was trying to sell us caviar for $10 US. The food was mediocre, and most of us were sick. Trying to board our plane out of Russia to Helsinki was an ordeal, with one line of inspection after another. And when we finally boarded our flight, most of the women were in tears.