Michael Smith
“From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
(Winston Churchill, Westminster College, March 5, 1946)
Churchill’s quote defines the boundary between two wars, the Second World War and the Cold War. This Cold War divided Europe for more than four decades, until an unexpected announcement at a press conference in East Berlin began the process of drawing aside this “iron curtain”. The Cold War saw deep distrust between the generally capitalist Western allies, led by the US, and the communist Eastern Bloc nations, under Moscow’s wings. Propaganda was an easy weapon to deploy in this so-called cold war, particularly as ordinary citizens in both camps had no real access to the realities of life ‘on the other side’.
Following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, visiting former Eastern Bloc countries became possible and increasingly attractive. As a teacher in West Germany, I was able to take groups of students to visit these formerly unreachable destinations. Our first tour, in 1991, was to the current Russian capital and center of the former communist world, Moscow, and Russia’s former capital, Leningrad (formerly, and currently, named Saint Petersburg). One year later, I led a coach party of around twenty students, starting in Germany, visiting what was then the single country of Czechoslovakia, Hungary’s capital, Budapest, and finishing in Vienna, Austria.
On both trips, I had my Russian Zenit camera to record events. The resulting photographs are far from HD, but retain that grainy, ‘otherworldly’ quality of pictures taken in those times.
Moscow, USSR, 1991
Prologue
Following Germany’s World War 2 defeat in 1945, the country was split into four zones under the protection of the occupying allied forces: Britain, the United States of America, France and Russia. The ideological differences between Russia and the other three brought about increased tensions, particularly within Germany. The first post-war German government met in a sleepy little town on the river Rhein, Bonn, chosen partly because the new Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, lived just across the river.
In 1961, Germany was partitioned by an intra-German border, creating two separate countries: West Germany, consisting of the British, American and French zones, while the Russian zone became East Germany. As the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Germany or BRD) became increasingly independent and free, the ironically-named German Democratic Republic (East Germany or DDR) developed into a Russian satellite state. The Russians built a barrier along the length of the internal German border, and would shoot anyone trying to cross (in either direction). Berlin itself was partitioned in a manner similar to the whole country, and here the barrier was the famous (or infamous) Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, Berlin lay completely within the Russian zone (or DDR), meaning the British, American and French zones of Berlin (which formed West Berlin) were now a Capitalist island in a Communist sea. East Berlin was the capital city of East Germany, and Bonn remained only a ‘provisional’ capital of West Germany until the two countries were reunified.
The events of the summer and autumn of 1989 brought an unexpectedly swift end to the division of Germany. A miscommunication between an East German Government department and their press secretary meant East Germans were informed on October 3, 1989, that they could move freely westwards across a border where normally they would risk being shot! This opened the floodgates, and East and West Germans were reunited in emotional scenes. Formal reunification was pushed through by the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and achieved in October 1990, a few months after a newly reunified German national soccer team had become world champions in Italy.
Similar changes were taking place all over Eastern Europe, not least in Russia itself. Lenin, then Stalin, had ensured Russia was ruled as ruthlessly as by any of the Tsars they had replaced in the revolutions at the start of the twentieth century. But people were growing tired of Communism, and change was needed. The old guard tried to hang on to old ways as long as possible, but new blood, in the form of Mikhail Gorbachev, could sense that change was necessary and set the country on a course of glasnost and perestroika.
It was this atmosphere of great social and political upheaval that made a trip East so exciting. A teacher new to the school where I was working proposed a trip to Russia for March 1991, but she also needed a male member of staff on the trip; I volunteered. Our group on this occasion consisted of nine boys, seven girls, two teachers and, unusually, a parent.
Day 1
Although we didn’t know it when we assembled at the airport, the coming week would include meeting Muscovite skateboarders, eating in the dark, appreciating art in the Arbat, and being mobbed regularly by money-changers.
Our Britannia Airways flight to Moscow left on time and, as we neared our destination, the clear sky gave us great views of the nighttime Moscow lights. So far, so good — we thought. We landed ahead of schedule at 23:15 (local time), but at the wrong airport! The décor in the arrivals lounge was such that we could have imagined our plane had also been a time machine. Dull, wooden panels clad the walls, their dullness enhanced by a lighting effect achieved by the exclusive use of a collection of 40-watt bulbs — such a contrast to the glass, steel, and strip-lights we had left in Köln/Bonn Airport. If you are familiar with the work of composer Brian Eno, you will be aware of his groundbreaking piece, “Music for Airports”. Really, this is where modern ambient music begins. It seems Eno had to spend some time in Köln/Bonn Airport, and was struck by how the piped music failed to match the mood of transient visitors. He decided he would create alternative music for the airport, and a new genre was born. It is sobering to consider how ambient music might have developed had Eno instead been forced to stop over in Moscow.
The long wait for our luggage to arrive was extended by a further wait while our guide travelled across Moscow (from the correct airport) to meet us. An antiquated coach took us to the Molodyzozhny International Hotel on Dmitrovskoye Highway, arriving at around 03:30, and then straight to bed. The hotel was built for the Olympic Summer Games in 1980, and later renovated in 2000. It has 200 rooms on 25 floors, and is now part of the Best Eastern Chain, and judging by recent Google images, it is in much better shape now than when we visited.
It was while staying at this hotel that a bizarre incident happened. Arriving back at my room after a day’s sightseeing, I disturbed a middle-aged man, dressed in a trench coat, who had been in my room, and who left swiftly without a word, pushing past me to reach the door. This was the Cold War era, so was he a spy? Or did he think I was a spy, and that the MI5 were so desperate that they needed their 00-agents to take part in school trips as a cover? “Ah, Mr. Bond. You will not escape the country with the secrets of the Russian education system.“ Was his mission to bug my room so Russian Intelligence could discover the advanced teaching techniques from the West? Perhaps this will inspire a new wave of James Bond films — The Spy Who Taught Me, On Her Majesty’s Education Service, The Man with the Golden Stars.
Day 2
We all had a much-needed lie-in, followed by lunch at noon. (It was like being a teenager again.) As with the airport décor, the restaurant offered us the opportunity to step back a couple of decades. We were seated together at long tables with mirrors around the room. Our first Russian meal was like so many others I would experience on school trips. We would begin with a tureen of soup, in this case cucumber, served to the students by the teachers at the table. This would be followed by a meat dish; today, though, the meat was of an unknown origin, causing much worried speculation among the students. I have no recollection of there being vegetarian or vegan options. Ice cream for dessert is usually a safe bet when catering for school parties, and so it was in Moscow.
Generally, the food was of poor quality, often served cold or lukewarm, and usually with unidentifiable meat. The only meat we did recognize was chicken, but that arrived served with what today would be described as a ‘grease jus’. The centerpiece of each table was a bowl of apples that in the West would have been thrown away, but here in Moscow remained on the table for several days. Had I brought along a camera with a time-lapse facility, I could have made a short film entitled Decomposing Apples. As the days progressed, the lighting above our tables grew dimmer, presumably to make it increasingly difficult for us to identify the food we were eating. We noticed also that this dimming of the lights seemed to be in direct proportion to our refusal to exchange Western currency with the waiters, who were always loitering around the restaurant looking for a quick deal. “You have dollars, yes?”. As one student later commented, “I didn’t dislike the food, but I wouldn’t want to live on it.”
It is easy to be critical of the food we were offered in Moscow. However, it could also be argued that we were a group of relatively rich Westerners, visiting for a few days, and complaining about depravations that would be unheard of in West Germany but were commonplace in Russia. Surely, a big part of any cultural visit is to experience at first-hand life in an alternative culture. It might not always be palatable, but it should give us wider awareness.
In the afternoon, we were treated to the first of several interesting coach tours. Being March in Moscow, warm clothing was still needed, along with boots sufficiently strong to deal with snow. First stop on the tour was the Hotel Ukraina, one of the so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ or ‘Stalin’s High Rises’, a group of structures in the Stalinist style, built between 1947 and 1953. Generally drab and uninspiring, yet functional, they are not something to warm the heart during a walk to work on a winter’s morning. As one student later wrote, “The thing that struck me most was the greyness of everything. The weather was grey, the buildings were grey, the parks were waterlogged, the trees were still bare, there was dirty snow and slush still on the ground, even most of the people were forlorn and depressed. It’s not surprising, really, considering where and how they have to live. Not many of them smiled.” We would meet one of Ukraina’s sisters later in the morning.
Next was the Novodevichy Convent, or New Maiden’s Monastery (later we would visit the Old Maiden’s Monastery, located within the Kremlin), founded in 1524, and looking very much the same as it did following renovations in the seventeenth century. During its history, many female members of the Russian royal family have been housed here, and in 1812, the nuns managed to thwart Napoleon’s attempts to destroy the convent.
The oldest building within the Convent is the Russian Orthodox Smolensk Cathedral, dedicated to the icon, Our Lady of Smolensk, and adorned with onion spires displaying opulent gold leaf, topped with crosses looking like holy television aerials tuned in to receive God’s messages. Unlike Western cathedrals, there was little stained glass, making interior lighting predominantly candle-based. In terms of gold-leaf adornment, though, more impressive than the cathedral was the diminutive Prokhorovs’ Chapel, built as a burial vault in 1911 for the Prokhorov family, and standing patiently next to its more illustrious and much older sister.
In 1922, the cathedral was the last in Russia to be closed by the Bolsheviks, who turned it into the Museum of Women’s Emancipation. The atheistic dogma of the Soviet government thawed somewhat during the Stalin era, to the extent that he encouraged theological courses to be taught there. However, it wasn’t until 1994 that nuns returned to the convent, and by 2004 the site achieved UNESCO World Heritage status.
After the convent, we passed the impressive main building of Moscow State University. Its award-winning design was by Lev Rudnev, and is the highest of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers of Moscow. Stalinist buildings are to architecture what heavy metal is to music. Why use aluminum and glass when you can use an impressive 40,000 tons of steel and 130,000 cubic meters of concrete? Its central spire reaches a height of 240 meters, which made it the seventh-tallest building in the world, and the tallest in Europe, when it was opened in September 1953. It remains the world’s tallest educational building. (Who makes these lists?!)
Next, we visited the Dollar Store. This should not be confused with the Pound Shops now blighting most British high streets, or the One Euro shops on the continent. The Dollar Store was where the more exotic goods available in Moscow could be bought legally in a government-controlled environment, rather than having to resort to the illegal (but much more exciting) black market. I suspect the use of Dollar Stores had much to do with the Soviet authority’s desire for Western currency and the taxation possibilities not available via Black Market trading.
Red Square is the central feature of any tour of Moscow, and this was our next port of call. Up to this point in my life, Europe had been divided by what Churchill named an ‘Iron Curtain’. Places like Poland, Bulgaria, and, of course, Russia seemed as inaccessible as the moon. However, in 1969, the moon had been reached by the Americans, and it was, in part, Western capitalism, led by the Americans, that had suddenly pulled back that Iron Curtain in 1989. Until a couple of years beforehand, standing on Red Square seemed as unlikely as standing on the Sea of Tranquility, yet here we were surveying the delights of Russia’s most famous square. Of course, to say that it was American Capitalism that defeated Communism would be a gross over-simplification of the issue, and an insult to the thousands of brave citizens of Gdansk, Leipzig, Dresden and other cities who risked their lives for freedom from dictatorship. However, without the promise of something better (the promise of the American Dream, perhaps), any resistance to Communism may have lacked drive.
We saw many of Moscow’s iconic buildings in Red Square. The Kremlin dominated one side of the square, in front of which was Lenin’s Mausoleum. Opposite the Kremlin stood the GUM department store, and nearby the stunning St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Monday, 6th July 1936, is a day that saw one of the more bizarre entries in the annals of soccer history. On this day, around ten thousand spectators witnessed a football match played in Red Square, primarily for the pleasure of the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. He desired to witness his first soccer match and, rather than simply calling in at a local stadium, ordering a mug of Bovril and a meat pie, and shouting “Come on, you Reds” from the terraces, he dictated that the whole show be brought to him. As he sat in his white jacket from a vantage point on top of Lenin’s mausoleum (how many of us can say we’ve watched a football match while sitting on a tomb?), and surrounded by the usual hangers-on, the A and B teams of Spartak Moscow played out a highly orchestrated exhibition match for the benefit of the dictator. To turn Red Square into a green football pitch, 300 helpers rolled out a 9,000 square meter felt carpet prepared by a Moscow textile firm.
The organizers had arranged that Alexander Kossarev, leader of the Party’s Youth Organization, who would be standing next to Stalin, should wave a white handkerchief when he sensed that Stalin might be getting bored with the match. This would be a sign that ‘something interesting’ should happen on the pitch — and quick! Of course, having an A and B team from the same club meant that ‘interesting events’ could be planned beforehand. Stalin would, within one game, see a headed goal, a goal from a corner, a penalty, and so on. Hardly surprising then that the final result was 4–3 to the A team. While it is not unusual to have a match with seven goals, in this case, the high scoring is remarkable when considering that the game lasted only 43 minutes (longer than the planned half-hour, because Stalin was enjoying it so much). Black-and-white film of the event shows Stalin applauding enthusiastically, and so, thankfully, Kossarev’s white handkerchief remained in his pocket, unused. This was just weeks before the start of ‘The Terror’, and several of the players on display that afternoon, plus organizer Kossarev, would not survive its brutality.
It is said that “if you lay down in Red Square at one corner and rest your chin on the cobbles, you’ll find that the place is so vast that you can actually see the curvature of the earth?” (Poolman). It seems emblematic of his regime that ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin, despite his Socialist leanings, should order this match to be played on something other than a level playing field.
The most striking feature of Red Square is St. Basil’s Cathedral (or The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, to use its correct name), built on orders from Ivan the Terrible between 1555 and 1561. Given that Russia is a secular state, with a strong atheistic history in recent times, it seems strange that the country’s most iconic building is a church, although, in the late 1920s, the authorities did change its usage to that of a museum. The architect and his fate are surrounded in mystery, and the myth runs that the architect was asked by Ivan the Terrible if he could design a building even more beautiful than St. Basil’s. Sensing another lucrative commission, the architect said it would be possible. However, Ivan did not want his new cathedral to be outshone, and promptly had the architect blinded. However, as the architect later participated in the restoration of the Cathedral of the Annunciation following a fire in 1564, historians are convinced that the St. Basil’s story is merely a myth.
Next, we were given some time to visit the GUM Department Store. A philistine would describe it as little more than an indoor market, but having grown up with such markets in the north of England, such a description would be like describing Mount Everest as a hill. GUM’s interior architecture was near perfect. Any art student drawing the interior couldn’t help but use it as an essential exercise in vanishing points. The vertical and horizontal lines of the parallel walls complemented the hemispherical arches of the glass roof. Rarely does a building take my breath away, but GUM was beautiful.
Actually, Moscow’s GUM is not a single department store, rather the most famous in a chain of stores across the Soviet Bloc. GUM’s goal was ‘communism through consumerism’ (a mind-boggling statement of oxymoronic proportions), but, in the end, “only succeeded in alienating consumers from state stores and instituting a culture of complaint and entitlement” (Hilton). Russian economic planning was run under five-year plans, started by Stalin. He needed somewhere to plan these massive programmes, and so, in 1928, he ordered the store be converted into offices. It wasn’t until 1953 that the building reverted to being a store, and our time there coincided approximately with its move to privatization.
Back at school, our students were used to having a pair of McDonald’s Golden Arches just three minutes’ walk away, but on today’s tour we were taken to Pushkinskaya Square to see the first (and at this point, only) McDonald’s in Russia.
Possibly more impressive, however, was the queue that had formed around the square, consisting of people of all ages, wrapped up warmly against the March cold. But this was small compared to the original queue that formed on January 31st of the previous year, measuring several kilometers in length. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the Muscovites, 30,000 customers visited the restaurant on that first day, more than tripling the previous record (Budapest). This figure is even more astounding when one considers that the price of a single Big Mac was equivalent to that of a monthly metro pass. This being McDonald’s, the service staff were all expected to smile. However, the Muscovite customers, accustomed to poor and rude Russian service, soon requested less smiling from the staff when they were being served. Two years after our visit, a second McDonald’s would be opened in Moscow, and this time, President Boris Yeltsin would be in attendance.
I remember being told two stories about this first McDonald’s. The currency situation was such that if you had a dollar bill, you could move straight to the front of the queue. The Capitalist Yankee dollar subverting Socialism by creating a two-tier system for entering McDonald’s. Also, the Muscovites chose to eat their Big Macs layer by layer, like the courses of a meal, rather than the Western approach of trying to get it into one’s mouth in one go!
A constant feature of our travels in Russia was being on the wrong end of relentless black marketeering. Everyone was selling something — for dollars! Much of the black marketeering was conducted by former soldiers keen to make a few dollars (not rubles) by selling off their army uniforms. Also on offer were the usual stacking wooden dolls, including a political version with a small caricature of Lenin at the center, followed by a Stalin doll (there are two words you don’t normally see written together), and so on. The more daring versions of these dolls had an additional outside layer depicting the rise to power of Boris Yeltsin, a prophecy that would be fulfilled not long after we left Russia. The moment we stopped anywhere in Moscow, a crowd would gather at the foot of the steps of the coach, and as we alighted, we would have to ‘run the gauntlet’ of these amateur money changers, all wanting US dollars. The worst part of this was explained ably by a student, “We had many different kinds of people come up to us in the street, and try and sell us things on the black market — they were everywhere, and sometimes got a bit overwhelming — but the worst kind were the young children who wore hardly any clothes, were dirty, and had rotten teeth, and they used to beg for chewing gum.” One of the main areas for this black market trading was the viewing platform affording a glorious panoramic view of Moscow. Central to this view was the Lenin Stadium, which, in 2018, would be the venue for the soccer World Cup Final.
We returned to the hotel for our evening meal and then, around 19:30, went out with our guide for a tour of the Moscow Metro. The walk from the hotel to the local metro station, Savyolovskaya (Line 9), which had been open for a little over two years, demonstrated the poor maintenance of the roads and pavements. This, however, as we were soon to discover, was in stark contrast to the splendors of Moscow’s Metro.
The Moscow metro system is the busiest in Europe, but its real claim to fame is that 44 of its 212 stations are designated as cultural monuments. But what led to Moscow having such a famous metro system? The main driving force appears to have been, once again, Stalin. Following the giant traffic gridlock of January 6, 1931, he ordered construction planning to start, so that on December 10, 1931, seven construction workers, in the inner yard of 13 Rusakovskaya Street, broke the first ground. Less than three years later, the first line was opened on October 15, 1934. The project used the slogan, ‘Building a Palace for the People!’Controversy surrounded the British designers and engineers of the metro (formerly they had built London’s Underground system, the world’s oldest metro) because many in the NKVD felt that, after having designed the metro, the British engineers knew too much about Moscow, and many of them were subsequently arrested for espionage, tried, and deported in 1933. Coincidentally, “the design of the Gants Hill tube station in London, which was completed much later, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station” (Wikipedia).
Much has been written concerning the absolute power wielded by Stalin; unclear, however, is how much is true and how much is myth. One such story concerns Moscow’s equivalent of London’s Circle Line, the Ring Line:“It traces the Garden Circle (one of the main avenues of the city). The ring makes changing lines wonderfully easy. It is marked brown in all the official metro plans. Rumor has it that it was never a part of the initial design, but that Stalin put a coffee mug on the provisional plans that left a mark in the shape and location of the current ring line, and that it was then constructed because nobody then dared to oppose the Leader’s note” (Wiejak, theculturetrip).
The Hotel Moskva is another example of the fear surrounding Stalin’s power. Designed by Alexey Shchusev and opened in December 1935, it was notable for its use of two different designs on the original plan. Shchusev submitted to Stalin a single drawing, with the left half showing one design, and the right half a different design. Stalin signed in the middle of the drawing, possibly assuming the building was meant to be asymmetrical. Afraid of informing Stalin of the ambiguity, the building was constructed with one wing of each type on either side of the building.
After the Metro tour, we arrived in Red Square just in time to see the hourly changing of the guard outside Lenin’s Mausoleum. Today, this is done in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier, which stands on the site of Lenin’s Mausoleum, and takes several minutes to perform. What we experienced back in 1991, however, happened ‘in the twinkling of an eye’. The two relief guards, accompanied by a third guard, goose-stepped (a style seen rarely outside of dictatorships) to the mausoleum’s main entrance and, in what appeared to be a single movement, changed places with the outgoing guardsmen. All this happened as bells were striking the hour, giving the impression of some sort of life-sized musical clock.
We had two skateboarders on the trip and, as with all skaters, they are very sociable creatures when amongst their own kind. On this evening, our two skaters met up with a Muscovite of similar leanings, who tried to help us reach our hotel. I think he was just glad to meet fellow skateboarders from the West and practice his English.
Day 3
Breakfast — and the food seemed to be improving, or maybe we were just getting used to it. After breakfast, we were taken to Red Square again, this time for a tour inside the Kremlin, entering over the Troitskaya Bridge, and through the ‘back door’ or Troitskaya Tower.
We spent over an hour there, looking around the churches and other places of interest, such as the Cathedral of the Annunciation with its nine golden, onion-shaped domes. However, to teenage minds, anything impressively big really attracts. And, in this case, that meant the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon.
The Tsar Bell is definitely impressively big. However, it has never been rung. Our guide told us why (it is a story that must be repeated dozens of times each day within the walls of the Kremlin). In 1733, Empress Anna ordered that the bell be made and entrusted its manufacture to Ivan and Mikhail Motorin, a local father-and-son business. Preparations for casting the bell took two years, during which time Father Ivan died. Eventually, on 25th November 1735, the casting was carried out successfully. During the next two years, work continued decorating the exterior of the bell. But, in May 1737, before the decorations had been completed, disaster struck. A large fire broke out within the Kremlin and spread to the wooden structure supporting the bell. The guards panicked and threw water on the hot bell, causing it to crack. Worse followed when the fire-damaged wooden supports finally gave way and the cracked bell fell into its casting pit. And there it lay for almost a century, what a forlorn sight it must have been. When we saw the bell, it was displayed on a proper plinth with the broken piece propped against it. Later in the day, we were to visit the circus, and I reckon a troupe of acrobats, standing on shoulders to form a human pyramid, would be able to fit three high inside the bell.
Equally impressive is the Tsar Cannon. It is unclear if the name refers to Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, whose image is cast on the cannon, or simply to its massive size. In front of the cannon are four cannonballs. These cannonballs are confusing for two reasons. Firstly, the cannon itself was designed to fire 800 kg of stone grapeshot, not cannonballs. Secondly, the diameter of each cannonball is greater than the diameter of the cannon. According to our guide, this was a deliberate tactic to impress, possibly frighten, any visiting foreigners. This is, however, at odds with legend, which holds that the cannonballs, each weighing approximately one ton, were sent from St. Petersburg as a symbol of their friendly rivalry with Moscow.
Back to the hotel for lunch, after which we were taken to the Arbat for an afternoon’s shopping. We began by watching a six-piece Dixieland Jazz Band, which provided a musical backdrop to our shopping. After McDonald’s, was this a further example of the gradual Americanization of Russia?
From there we continued down Arbat Street, stopping to look, or maybe buy, at many of the street traders. I still have the carved wooden chess set I bought here. Stacking dolls were popular purchases, particularly the political ones. The open trading was done in rubles, but any mention of dollars sent traders’ eyes furtively scanning the vicinity for police presence, before proceeding with the bartering.
Day 4
After breakfast, we were taken on a long coach ride to see a typical Russian school. The headmistress greeted us, and we were then split into groups. My group was taken to a class of ten and eleven-year-olds. We were all overwhelmed by their friendliness, generosity and marvelous use of the English language. Before we left the classroom, the pupils unexpectedly gave presents to each of us and exchanged addresses. We also saw a Physics lesson and had a tour of the school. Finally, we were treated to tea and homemade cakes, plus a floor show of sketches written and performed by the students in English. The generosity shown to us by the Russian schoolchildren we had met left us all feeling ill at ease because we had nothing to offer back to them. Had we known in advance, we could have brought something with us.
On returning to the hotel, we all ate a quick dinner because my colleague was taking some students to see the Bolshoi Ballet. I stayed behind in the hotel with those not interested in the ballet. Having vacated our rooms ahead of our transfer to Leningrad, we spent the evening in the lobby protecting everyone’s luggage from possible theft. At 22:30, we drove to the railway station to rejoin the rest of the group, ready for our overnight transfer by train to Leningrad. At 00:05, the train left Moscow, and a long, sleepless night had begun.
Editors’ Note: Michael Smith’s Eastern Bloc adventures shall continue over four more instalments. Up next is Michael in Leningrad, in our Weekly Features’ November 16 edition. Stay tuned.
In the past year, Michael Smith’s fiction has appeared in Fabula Argentea, Witcraft, Literally Stories, Heimat Review, The Hooghly Review, Little Old Lady Comedy and many other online literary journals. To date, he has self-published Gruseltal, a humorous novel, and two collections of short stories, Fonts, then Songs, all available from online bookstores.
Website: https://frucht-schleifen.weebly.com/
