THE WAY IT WAS...
...in Russia
by Al Eicher

Most of the topics I write about draw attention to lifestyles, times and places or events in Michigan’s History. I hope you don’t mind the variance! A few months ago, I went to Russia with my wife, Kathryn, for a 16-day tour, starting at St. Petersburg and ending in Moscow using the 1200-mile Russian waterways. The image and/or lifestyles of the Russian people that I thought we would see were not at all what we experienced. We went to an elementary school and sat with the children in their classroom, which had a picture of Jesus on the wall. Our group also went, as dinner guests, to six peasant family homes in a village of 600 people. We talked with Russian WWII veterans and young people in business. Young people like the new democratic way of life and many go to church. Naturally, in our 1200-mile journey we saw at least 500 hundred churches, cathedrals, museums and palaces and visited about 48 sites along the way.

People ask me, "How was the weather?" Being there in late October, we experienced some rainy days but July and August would be the preferred time of the year to enjoy the best weather. Our first three days in Russia were spent in St. Petersburg. We stayed at the Ambassador Ltd, a new hotel in the heart of this city of 5 million people. The hotel had wonderful food, a pool, the Internet, ATM machine and 31 channels of cable TV with English channels of CNN and BBC, plus American movies. You could also get the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Financial Times. During our time in St. Petersburg we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Neva River, built in the 14th century. Here we visited the Peter and Paul Cathedral where the remains of Russian Tsars and 32 other royals are buried.

The visit to the Hermitage was also a wonderful experience. Upon our arrival by private bus, we Americans were greeted by the music of WWII Russian soldiers, who formed a band. They were playing the Star Spangled Banner, as we stepped off the bus. The Hermitage has 1,100 rooms of priceless pieces of art from a collection created by Catherine the Great. In the evenings we went to the Russian Ballet Theatre and another night for a dinner theatre performance of a Russian Folk show.

Walking the streets of St. Petersburg during the day or night was a real eye-opener, seeing so many people on the streets and in the subways. They have shopping malls and high fashion shops with many of the same brands we see here in the USA. Russian women were wearing the latest styles…very well dressed. There were several McDonald restaurants, which had lines of people standing outside the doors waiting to get food. By the end of three days, we had been in several palaces including the palace of Catherine the First, several museums, six churches and a number of restaurants, plus traveling the subway. I even found 400 American dollars, one evening, in the gutter of a street, while walking from a theatre. I told the tour guide that the money must belong to one of the 200 American travelers in our total group. The next day a person approached me, and identified the assortment of bills by denomination; naturally, I gave the money back.

By the time we left St. Petersburg, I had shot over 300 photos and two hours of video, some of which were interviews and several Russian History presentations by the tour guides. Many of our guides were English and History majors having taught in high school and in college. I was amazed to find that Russian children are required to go to school by age seven and must know how to read to enter school…It’s the parent’s job!

English is a required course each year of their schooling, through high school. All students are encouraged to go to college as the Russian government pays the tuition. At age 14, students not going to college begin a trade school program and get work experience. In their Literature classes they are required to read stories by Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, not the Russian Classics.

On the afternoon of the third day, we boarded an American-owned riverboat called the Tikhi Don, which had a Russian registry. The ship is 358 feet long with five decks. The passenger capacity is 216, with a crew of 109. For the next 10 days, we travel on five rivers and several large lakes. We will go through 25 locks and be raised 354 feet by the time we get to Moscow, on the Volga River. The view from our cabin of the shoreline and riverbanks always lets us see Russian people in leisure time fishing or working along the river in a logging operation. On occasion, we could see people talking on cell phones outside their living quarters. By the way, most Russians live in large apartment complexes, not in houses.

On the river, there was a lot of traffic, mostly small oil freighters and barges loaded with sand from the bottom of the river. Cranes on barges were many times seen lifting sand from the river. There were tugboats pulling rafts of cut logs, and we saw many private yachts and powerboats, 40 to 50 feet in length. Russia has two natural resources, great forests for lumbering and the second largest oil fields in the world. Only 7% of their land mass is arable soil, and another 4% is usable pasture.

If you think we, in the USA, have problems doing business in three time zones, the Russians have 11 time zones and there are 10 languages spoken in the Russian Federation of 89 states.

On board the ship we had many activities and orientation meetings before each stop at an island village or mainland city of 30,000. There are over 1,650 islands along the way. The smallest village had 600 people and that is where we had our home visits. Russian people are very friendly. Several times our group was approached by a Russian WWII veteran who thanked us for helping them beat the Nazis. In The Russian War Museum there were about 10 Russian veterans touring and when they saw us Americans, they wanted to know if there were any WWII vets in our group; we had six and naturally they wanted a picture taken, using their camera. Several of these Russian Vets spoke English. We also met a Russian woman whose picture was on display in the Air Force Exhibit. She, along with 200 other women, was a bomber pilot in the Russian “Night Witches Squadron” in WWII.

About 20 miles from Moscow on the Volga River, I began to see many marinas with sailboats and big powerboats. Big houses, some made of logs, were under construction; beautiful colorful apartments lined the riverbanks. In Moscow we stayed at the new Holiday Inn. At the hotel, a trout dinner was $59, American money. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, I noticed the older apartment complexes looked like concrete built factories.

During the next three days in Moscow, we went to the Kremlin and the Red Square where we again toured many churches, cathedrals and museums. Every day we were in a traffic jam, as Moscow has 10 million people. One in six Russians own a car. Many married couples, college educated, who both work, will each have a car. By the way, school age children use public transportation to go to school; there are no school buses. They use the subway and the electric street cars. We passed by the site of the 1980 Olympics and the KGB building several times but didn’t stop…We did walk by President Putin’s residence a couple of times but did not stop to visit.

We were never restricted in our travels and when I think about it, our group didn’t go through any metal detectors anywhere, not even at the War Museum or at the Russian Space Center. Russian mothers in the small towns, while going to the grocery store with their baby in the buggy, leave the buggy and baby outside the store unattended while they do their shopping. When the trip ended, I had shot five hours of video and 1,200 digital photos, which will be used in a lecture series. All in all, it was a pleasant surprise to see democracy taking hold and a free market economy working with only a 3.5% unemployment rate. If you get the urge to go to Russia don’t miss the Russian Folk Shows and the Moscow Circus, they are a must-see. Russia is certainly not The Way It Was…

Al and Dave Eicher provide television production services to corporations, ad agencies and nonprofit organizations. They also create Michigan town histories and offer lecture services on a variety of Michigan History Events. You may contact them at 248-333-2010; E-mail: info@program-source.com; Web site: www.program-source.com; Address: PSI, P.O. Box 444, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303.