SUMMER IN SIBERIA
with the Friendship Force
July 1997
by
Bob and Kathleen Duggan
Introduction
In 1997 the Friendship Force celebrated its 20th anniversary, and several rather special exchange programs were set up to commemorate this. One such program was “Summer in Siberia”, which included an opportunity to circle the world by traversing the length of Russia: A short visit to Moscow, a home stay with a Russian family in Irkutsk, and brief visits to Lake Baikal, Ulan Ude, and Khabarovsk. Our group included 26 people from all over the United States: Utah, Colorado, Wisconsin, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia.
29 June Leaving Atlanta
Our Delta flight from Atlanta arrived on schedule at Kennedy, where Delta and Aeroflot share the same terminal. Our Aeroflot flight SU-316 was on a Boeing 767, leased from an Irish company, and thus carrying an EI tail number. As we left the terminal at 3pm, Yanni music calmed the Aeroflot passengers. Following the coast of eastern North America, we saw numerous icebergs in the Atlantic off Labrador. Still only a week after the summer solstice, the sun shone all night long on our trip to Moscow.
30 June Moscow
Passing over Helsinki and St. Petersburg, our Aeroflot plane landed on schedule at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-2 (International) airport. There we were greeted by Friendship Force representatives with a bus. As one couple’s bags failed to arrive, we were delayed by the requisite claims filing. Our Hotel Moskva was 25 miles away in downtown Moscow, and en route in our bus we encountered a huge traffic jam. Everyone in Moscow, it seemed, was returning to the city from a weekend at their country dachas. Along the Leningrad highway we noted a couple McDonald’s. Russia is trying to compete with McDonald’s by setting up Bistro shops, but so far McDonald’s is doing much better. The Leningrad highway eventually becomes Tverskaya Street (no longer called Gorky Street), the “Fifth Avenue” of Moscow.
Our Moskva Hotel was conveniently located, and our room had a great view of Red Square and the Kremlin. Supposedly, a 3-star hotel, it really seemed to us more like a Motel 6 with a 3-star bidet! Moscow is aggressively preparing to celebrate its 850th anniversary in September 1997, and there is construction and renovation underway everywhere almost 24 hours a day. With very little darkness at this high latitude, long hours of construction are easily achieved. With no air conditioning, the hot Moscow evening required our keeping our windows open, but this in turn admitted much noise from jack hammers and related construction noises.
On our first afternoon we took a bus tour of Moscow: Red Square, the Moscow River, Novodevichy Monastery (where are buried Chekhov, Gorky, and Khrushchev), Lenin Hills, St. George’s Chapel, the new Nike monument, and the huge new Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (slangily referred to as the “Cathedral of the Garage”) which is being built where stood the earlier big cathedral that was blown up by Stalin in 1937.
1 July Moscow
We have numerous old friends in
Moscow. Lydia Kostina whom we met in 1971, ‘75, and ‘78,
was unfortunately away on a month’s vacation. Henrich
Lantsberg
On the morning of 1 July, we took a walking tour through the Kremlin. Our Friendship Force guide Svetlana led us to the Cathedral of the Assumption with its side frescos, where the tsars were crowned. Next we saw the Archangel Michael Cathedral where several tsars are buried. Then we visited the tsars’ home chapel at the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Cathedral of the Deposition, and finally the Cathedral of the Patriarchs where holy oil was boiled for distribution to churches throughout Russia. Next we saw the Tsar Pushka cannon and the large Tsar Kolokol bell, similar to our cracked Liberty Bell. We were told that priests can marry, but only celibate “black monks” can become Patriarch. We found Lenin’s statue had been removed from the Kremlin (stealthily one night with no fanfare). To minimize filth from pigeons, the Army maintains falcons in the Kremlin.
In the afternoon we toured the many exhibits in the Pushkin Museum -- many priceless paintings of French impressionists and treasures from Egypt. For dinner we had hamburgers at the American Bar & Grill at Tverskaya and Yamskaya. Afterwards we attended the Russian-American Youth Symphony concert at the Tschaikovsky Theater. This program was held under the auspices of Hillary Clinton and Naina Yeltsin. The last encore was “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, which brought down the house.
2 July - Moscow to Irkutsk
Our young friends Dimitry and Dimitry met us after breakfast at our hotel, seeing us off on our bus to the airport, Sheremetyevo-1, now a domestic airport for Moscow, though formerly Moscow’s international airport. It’s across the airfield from the newer international airport at Sheremetyevo-2. Here we saw many Russian planes: Il-62, Il-76, Il-86, Il-96, An-12, Tu-154, a DC-10, and a two-engine transport similar to Boeing’s STOL plane developed in the 1970s. (En route to the airport our bus broke down, but the driver applied TLC and (thankfully) eventually made it to our flight).
Our Aeroflot flight to Irkutsk was on a Tu-154 (like a small 727). After departure we were served peanuts from the Peanut Factory in Rome, GA! Our flight path passed over Nizhny-Novgorod (ex-Gorky), Kazan, and Novosibirsk, arriving in Irkutsk around 10:30pm with the sun just setting at that high latitude.
There we were met by our hosts, Iraida Smol’kova, her husband Viktor Pulyayevsky, and a family friend with a Lada compact car, Gavriel. Piling all our bags and the five people in the car, the tires frequently rubbed against the fenders as we were driven to their apartment at Pereulok 8 Marta d. 4 kv. 6, 664011 Irkutsk.
Our hostess Iraida (47) is a professor at the Economics Academy, a large institute with several thousand students in Irkutsk. She’s also a former Colonel (one of only ten women in all of Russia) in the Militia. Viktor (49) works with the electric power generating plant in Irkutsk. Inside their apartment it was very attractive, though rather compact: bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Their appliances included a microwave, camcorder, cordless telephone, VCR, and two remote control TVs -- everything Japanese.
3 July Irkutsk
Our Friendship Force group met at the Angara Hotel for a city tour. Irkutsk was founded on the Angara River back in 1661. The oldest building still there is the Church of Our Savior, built in 1706. Numerous frescos are on the exterior. Services are normally held on the second floor. The Church of the Epiphany is also nearby and now open. Many Poles were exiled to Siberia, and there is now a Polish Catholic church there. The main street is Karl Marx Street, and many other streets still retain their communist names -- it’s expensive to re-name streets, they said. Irkutsk has some 730,000 inhabitants, of which 26 percent are students. Before the Revolution, there were 40 churches in Irkutsk, but that was reduced to only one. Now there are five open. Many wooden, unpainted Siberian houses are seen in Irkutsk, with their wooden lace-like trim around the windows. Quite a few are with two stories (people live upstairs, downstairs is storage). Larch is the preferred wood, as it withstands the temperatures well.
In the afternoon we visited the Decembrist House, where noblemen were exiled for trying to bring about democratic reforms in Russia. Several of their wives followed them into exile, and they brought some measure of culture with them to remote eastern Siberia. In the Princess Volkansky reception room we were treated to music by Glinka, piano music, and operatic singing -- along with champagne.
Afterwards we were greeted by our old
friend Dr. Boris Shmakin
4 July - Irkutsk and Listvyanka
In celebration of the July 4 American holiday, our host family took us to the shores of Lake Baikal, about 35 miles from Irkutsk, Accompanying us as a translator was a young Russian, Olga Lonskakova, who had studied in Germany with the University of Maryland. Driving a second car was another young friend, Yevgeny. We rode with Olga and Yevgeny; our hosts rode with friend Gavriel in his Lada. Yevgeny had a Japanese Nissan with the steering wheel on the right. Our road to Baikal generally followed the Angara River, going to the village of Listvyanka where the Angara leaves Lake Baikal. At Listvyanka we were given a short boat ride on the lake, as we celebrated the 4th, but it was really quite frigid. Afterward we had lunch at a small restaurant on the shore. Cows leisurely wandered the streets of Listvyanka. You need to watch your step!
After lunch we visited St. Nikolas’
church, which was built in the last century. Next we visited a
Japanese cemetery. Following World War II, quite a few Japanese
from Manchuria were interned in Siberia, and some subsequently
died there. We next visited a small art gallery in Listvyanka.
While there we met another computer user, Grigory Berezovsky
5 July - Irkutsk
Our hosts again drove us down the Angara from Irkutsk, but we stopped at the open air Ethnological Museum of Wooden Architechture. There we saw an Evenki native tepee among the birch trees, a three-level water grist mill, a Cossack town, a psalm singer’s home, an old Ilimsk church dating from 1667, and an Ilimsk fortress “Watchtower of the Savior” (also from 1667) with a chapel above the gate. An old one-room schoolhouse there had four grades (maybe 15 students). All houses open to the west. (Normally, in the house the husband faces west, the wife faces east; an ideal Russian family is seven). Buryat (Mongolian) yurts have eight sides in an octagonal shape and face south. Even in the hot summer, the house remains comfortable. The Buryats can make vodka from milk! We also visited the house/yurt of the shaman (medicine man) there. In their shamanism Buryats appease both good (white) and bad (black) spirits. We also visited the old village cemetery chapel there. In the frigid winter, there were no burials; common graves were used when warm weather arrived.
In the evening we took our hosts to a new small restaurant near their home in Irkutsk, the “Home of the Blacksmith”. There was excellent decor and tuxedo-clad waiters. Obviously catering to the rich “new Russians”, the restaurant featured strolling musicians, gypsy dancing, and a blonde Russian belly dancer. Some of the patrons were using their cellular telephones while dining. It was a fine place with good food. Including wine, music, and service our total tab for four was only $83.
6 July - Irkutsk
This was our last day in Irkutsk for a while. Our hosts took us on a casual stroll through the city. We visited the Baikal Flora & Fauna Museum and later walked along the Angara River embankment. Russians were soaking up the warm Atlanta-like sunshine. There was much “summer snow” in the air (milkweed-like seeds from the topol trees). We passed the “White House”: Formerly the seat of the Siberian government, it is now the library of Irkutsk State University. When Eisenhower was president, a meeting was being planned for him to meet in Irkutsk with Khrushchev, and special new buildings were built. Following the U-2 incident, however, the meeting was canceled. The building subsequently became a hotel.
We planned to attend a Bach organ
concert at the Polish Assumption of the Virgin Mary church at 2 p.m.,
but strangely the organist failed to appear. A final Friendship
Force get-together was scheduled that evening at the Irkutsk
School of Art. Oleg Kagarmanov (Friendship Force - Irkutsk,
7 July - Lake Baikal
Up early, our hosts drove us to the Irkutsk boat terminal on the Angara River, just above the large hydroelectric power dam. There we boarded the catamaran Barguzin for the long trip up the Angara to Lake Baikal, then up the length of the lake and across it to the port of Ust Barguzin. The large catamaran had over 120 passengers, many of them young people headed for camps along the lake.
Our stops included Listvyanka, Bukhta Peschanaya, Mala Morskaya, and Ol’khon. After 12 hours(!) we finally docked at Ust Barguzin. It then took another hour (25 miles by bus) to arrive at our camp site about six miles south of the village of Maksimikha. There we were housed in a large multi-room cabin. Support facilities were minimal, however, with only two sinks serving about 25 people. Toilet outhouses were 750 feet away in the woods -- not convenient for 2 a.m. visits!
8 July - Lake Baikal Camp
In the morning we rode into the town of Maksimikha, visiting several of the wooden homes and their associated gardens and walking on the shore of the lake. As it was becoming quite hot, we appreciated getting a lift the remaining miles back to our camp. That afternoon we sampled the Russian banya (sauna) and feasted in the evening along the shore. There by campfire we enjoyed tasty baked omul (a fish unique to Lake Baikal), white trout, and potatoes, roasted shashlik, and plenty of Russian chai (tea). A visitor there, Anatoly, was a great singer, singing “Katyusha” and “Evening in Moscow”, then leading everyone in other songs. Anatoly, we found, also had a bottomless thirst for vodka. Following doing the Macarena and Bunny Hop, some 13 empty vodka bottles were counted!
9 July - Onward to Ulan Ude
After lunch our bus began the arduous 130-mile trip south to Ulan Ude from our camp. Little did we know it would take six hours of slow, hot, dusty, bumpy travel in a bus with no cooling. Along the way we stopped briefly at the hot springs at Goryachinsk. Dodging cows and many large pot holes in the road, we passed through the villages of Turka, Gremyachinsk, Kika, Nesterevo, and Zyryansk. Now and then we’d again see their odd multi-element satellite antennas on homes. To pacify the shamans, our bus stopped atop a mountain and left coins before descending down into Ulan Ude (which means Red River in Buryat).
Ulan Ude, the birthplace of Genghis Khan, has some 400,000 inhabitants. It’s maybe 200 miles north of Mongolia, but 40 percent of the population is Buryat (Mongolian), 55 percent Russian, and the rest a mixture. A large head of Lenin still dominates the town square on which our Hotel Baikal was located. Glasnost hasn't yet removed "The Head"!
10 July - Ulan Ude
In the morning our group rode a bus south of the Selenga River for about 30 miles, passing the Ulan Ude airport (with several Il-76 and An-12 aircraft there). We finally arrived at the Ivolginsk Buddhist monastery. It’s one of some 60 such monasteries in the world. Each of the 80 lamas there has his own home, but their “office” is in the large temple. Yellow is a sacred color to Buddhists. Numerous prayer wheels were noted, along with a “prayer garden” (prayers written on strips of cloth, then tied to tree branches to blow in the wind). In Buddhism only men can reach paradise; women as “the source of all evil” must eventually be reincarnated as men to attain paradise. The Dalai Lama has visited here several times, and CNN visited later in July. The weather was quite hot, with plentiful gnats!
En route back to Ulan Ude we noted three height-finder radars and two air-search radars implanted atop a hill near the highway, southwest of the airport. Our lunch was at the Geser Hotel. In the hot afternoon the group visited the open air Trans-Baikal Peoples Ethnological Museum, followed by a program of Cossack music by the Zabava song and dance troup. In the evening at dinner the Buryat Ministry of Culture presented a program of Buryat singing and operatic music and song.
In Ulan Ude there were three TV channels, with some programming in Buryat. Other programs were beamed by satellite from Moscow. On the TV was noted the soap opera Dynasty in Russian and ads for Santa Barbara. We noted that auto license plates in Ulan Ude included 03; in Irkutsk they used 38.
After dinner we proceeded by bus to the railway station where we boarded our sleeping car on the Selenga train (a segment of the Trans-Siberian Railroad) to return to Irkutsk. Each compartment included beds for four (two upper, two lower). Actually, the car was quite well made (maybe in Germany or Finland), obviously not of Russian manufacture. Our electric train made several stops en route during the 250-mile overnight trip.
11 July - Irkutsk
Our Irkutsk hosts met us when we arrived at 6 a.m. Our driver was Yevgeny again. After breakfast, we were driven across the Angara River to Akademgorodok (Academic City) where we were met by our old friend Dr. Boris Shmakin at the Mineralogy Museum of his Institute of GeoChemistry. There he delightedly conducted us through the museum with its extraordinary displays of mica, charite, nephrite, various gems, metamorphic coal (gagat), amber, obsidian, rhodonbite, malachite, garnet, fluorite (27 forms), stavrolite, amazonite, granitic pegmatite, and synthetic minerals (diamond, ruby, quartz, emerald, etc.).
Dr. Shmakin says his wife claims he’s married to pegmatites (his specialty). We were then invited to lunch at Shmakin’s apartment, where we met his wife Galina, also a specialist in minerals. He showed us his study, loaded with minerals from his travels over the world (both with his institute and as a UN employee). He expects to travel to Zimbabwe in September to see more pegmatites. For our final dinner in Irkutsk, Dr. Shmakin joined us at our hosts’ apartment. There we viewed some of the videos made by Viktor during our Irkutsk visit.
12 July - Khabarovsk
Our flight from Irkutsk to Khabarovsk was scheduled for 6:15 a.m. on Donavia 6139, so we rose early to be on time at the airport. By 6 a.m., however, we learned our flight would be delayed an hour, supposedly due to “bad weather in Khabarovsk”. But then it was delayed another four hours because of “fog in Khabarovsk”! The Irkutsk airport has connections with many exotic locations: Alma-Ata, Bratsk, Chita, Donetsk, Khabarovsk, Krasnodar, Magadan, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Rostov, St.Petersburg, Samara, Shenyang, Tashkent, Ufa, Ulan Bator, Ust Ulymsk, Vladivostok, and Yakutsk. On the flight line were noted An-10, An-12, An-24, Il-76, and Tu-154 aircraft, along with a 2-engine high gull-wing seaplane. It was said there’s an aircraft plant in Irkutsk. (We did notice Armstrong Steel had a facility near the airport). Finally we departed five hours late on the Tu-154 for Khabarovsk.
There our Intourist guide knew nothing about any fog or bad weather in Khabarovsk. One wonders what the real reason was for our delay in Irkutsk! By bus we were taken down the main street (Karl Marx) to our Intourist Hotel, where our room had a panoramic view of the Amur River. Khabarovsk has some 660,000 inhabitants, 80 percent Russian. It was founded in 1858 and is only 30 miles north of the Manchurian border. Siberia is adminstratively divided into three divisions: West, East, and Far East. Our hotel was the best we’d encountered in Russia, and the TV even included CNN International, a sports channel in English, NHK (Japanese), and three Russian channels.
13 July - Khabarovsk
For our city tour, we first visited Komsomolsk Square (formerly Cathedral Square) with a big statue in memory of the Bolsheviks. Assumption Cathedral here was destroyed by Stalin in the 1930s, the furnishings were sold, and all priests were either killed or exiled. The territorial library is nearby with a red and gray brick facade. Part of Karl Marx Street is now named Murarevo-Amurskovo Street to keep everyone happy.
We also attended services at the Cathedral of the Nativity, the only one of the original 13 Orthodox churches (before the Revolution) in Khabarovsk. Now there are some other churches operating, we were told. There was an icon of Grand Duke Vladimir who before his conversion to Christianity was known as a big womanizer and a staunch pagan.
On our Amur River boat tour with guide Natalya we saw the prominent statue of Yerofeyu, an early explorer of Khabarovsk. We also saw the large 1.5-mile railroad bridge across the Amur. Autos use a tunnel at present, but a new bigger bridge is currently under construction alongside the railroad bridge. In the river the small Russian destroyer #140 was anchored. A large War Memorial overlooking the city names the 30,000 Khabarovsk warriors who lost their lives in World War II.
Auto tags in Khabarovsk include a 27. Radio Europa Plus operates on 105.6 and 71.24 MHz. The Jewish exile oblast Birobidzhan is just west of Khabarovsk. The poor quality apartments constructed in Khabarovsk are called “Khrushops” by the Russians, a pun for “Khrushchev slums”. The Russian Far East Army headquarters is now located in a former military school -- formerly top secret information, but now openly pointed out by our guide.
Leaving Khabarovsk for San Francisco at 4:15 p.m. on Aeroflot 809, an Il-62, we had to pay 127,000 rubles each as departure tax (about $23). Our flight path followed the great circle to Anchorage, passing over Komsomolsk and Nikolayevsk on Amur, following the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, past Magadan, Anadyr, and the Bering Strait. The sun was again visible almost all night. Refueling in Anchorage, everyone had to leave the plane. We finally took off around 5:15 a.m., following the west coast of Canada and the U.S., landing on schedule at 10:25 a.m. in sunny San Francisco. There we spent a very long and restful night at the Comfort Suites Motel near the airport.
14 July - Back to Atlanta
Our Delta flight 272 left at 7 a.m.,
arriving in Atlanta at 3 p.m. It had been a very eventful trip!
Conclusions:
Having previously visited the Soviet Union in 1971,
1975, 1977, and 1978, it was with interest that we sought to find
changes that had taken place during the past 25 years or so.
Surprisingly, we concluded that the changes have been relatively
few! There are more cars now, some of which have been imported
from Europe or Japan. The available food is somewhat better, with
more fruits and juices available from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and
Korea -- and Coke, Fanta, Pepsi, and Sprite available most
everywhere.
The average citizen is now able to purchase imported electronic appliances such as microwaves, remote-control TVs, VCRs, camcorders, and cordless telephones -- provided they have the money. The infrastructure of the country is still very inefficient. Roads and public transport are poorly maintained. Apartment buildings are crumbling. Aeroflot now has competition, and its services are thus somewhat better. Inflation still plagues the economy, though the rate has been slowed. Private citizens can own dollars, which are now almost universally accepted except in official offices. The exchange rate was about 5700 rubles to a dollar; in the 1970s one ruble was officially worth $1.60! Some Russians are now wealthy (legally or illegally).
We saw numerous private homes being constructed. Crime is much more rampant now. Even the Intourist guides warned us about strolling unescorted outside our hotels at night. In the 1970s there was never such concern. Our Russian hosts privately said they were embarrassed at the condition of their society, but no one seems willing or able to do something about it. Few liked Gorbachev (he didn’t keep his promises); few like Yeltsin (he’s felt to be incompetent); but there’s no star on the horizon.
Perhaps the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Lushkov, an engineer who is overcoming many obstacles in readying Moscow for its September celebration of its 850th anniversary, may turn out to be a “can do” candidate.
One wonders what or how many changes will take place during the next 20 years of Friendship Force exchanges with Russia. We look forward with some anxiety for our good friends in Moscow and Irkutsk.