Michael Smith
Editors’ Note: Michael Smith’s early-90s Eastern Bloc adventures began with Moscow. His travels continue in this instalment and over the next three.
Day 5
From time to time during this overnight journey we passed through areas of very bright lights shining deliberately on the train. I had been warned about this before we left for Russia. The purpose of the lights was to prevent travelers on the train seeing the military installations near the tracks.
The train journey itself was just about dead straight. This was because originally the rail track’s plan was made by the Tsar as he ripped through a wall map with his sword tip, declaring that the track, from St. Petersburg to Moscow, must follow exactly this route. And, because he was supreme ruler, it had to be built exactly along the line made by his sword ripping the map, creating some very challenging feats of engineering.
As we neared Leningrad, we were served tea from a traditional samovar. The train arrived at 08:50 and we were met by our guide. The Hotel Sovietskaya, situated on Lermontovsky Prospekt, was a big improvement on the hotel in Moscow, as was the food and service. Despite it being March, the River Neva and its canals still contained ice flows. The canals give the city the nickname—the “Venice of the North”.
After a late breakfast, we went on a sightseeing tour of Leningrad, viewing the Rostral Column at Belosel’skiy (Belozerskiy) Palace, the River Neva, and the Church of the Bleeding Saviour (our coach is in the bottom right of the photo).
The tour also included the battleship Aurora, from which the guns signalled the start of the revolution.
Before leaving, I had been asked by a colleague if I could take some detailed photos of the ship as he wished to construct a model of it. With hindsight, given the political tensions of the time, I suppose I could have been arrested for espionage — again!
After lunch, we were taken to Peter the Great’s log cabin for an hour or so. The log cabin, reputedly built by Peter the Great himself, was encased in a brick structure to preserve it from decay. There was just enough room around the cabin for tourists to walk around and look inside.
Day 6
The morning consisted of two museum visits. The first was to the museum of the history of Leningrad, which most students found reasonably interesting, but the second, the museum of the history of the revolution, was less so. Our guide at the second museum was an old lady who still believed passionately in Soviet politics and her tour was more like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Communist party.
The afternoon was spent shopping in Leningrad’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt. After Moscow’s Arbat, all of us were disappointed by what Leningrad had to offer.
We dined back at the hotel, and in the evening I planned to offer an alternative to the seemingly endless games of cards, by taking a party of students into Leningrad for the evening. We left at eight p.m. but, by then, the weather had deteriorated to very heavy rain, and only three students joined me to see Leningrad by night. Either we were misdirected by the hotel receptionist, or I misunderstood her explanation, but we never reached our destination of the bright lights of Leningrad’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt.
However, in our vain search for Nevsky Prospekt, I believe we saw the real Leningrad, and not the sanitized version we were expected to see as tourists. It was a drab, forlorn world populated by dispirited, frightened people. Even at around 9:30 p.m. all the shops were still open but they had almost nothing to sell. I have a recollection of seeing a butcher’s shop with just one piece of meat in the window. It was desperately sad to see people with shopping baskets wandering the streets looking for food that just wasn’t there.
After a while, we entered one café and asked (in Russian!) for a tea or coffee. The reply was a firm “Nyet”. Looking around, we realized that the shelves were bare, and all the customers in the café had brought their own food and drink; they were in there just for companionship and warmth. Later on our walk we did find one shop doing a roaring trade, so much so that it needed an armed guard outside to control the long queue at its door. (When we asked our guide about this the following morning, we were informed that this was the Vodka shop.) By the time we returned to the hotel, we were soaked through by the freezing rain but much wiser about the real Leningrad.
Day 7
Today we began by visiting the Peter and Paul Fortress. The SS Peter and Paul Cathedral inside the fortress was beautifully impressive. But, as a contrast, many students were shocked at the conditions inside the nearby prison.
We then had lunch at a nearby restaurant, before being driven across the River Neva to the Hermitage Museum inside the Winter Palace.
The Armorial Hall in the Hermitage Museum was particularly impressive, but one afternoon did not do it justice.
At the evening disco, many of our students were shocked at the poor facilities compared with what they were used to in Germany. We mixed with students and teachers from other schools, also on trips to Russia and a few invited Russian guests. In talking to the locals, it was clear that something exciting was in the air, some massive political shift seemed imminent.
Day 8
Sunday, and some of us decided to visit the Cathedral of the Resurrection.
As we entered the church, we were amazed by the lack of organization compared to a Western church service. Prayers were being offered to icons and people were wandering around from one section of the church to another. After a while a couple of trestles were set up in a central area, followed by the entrance of a coffin. The top of the coffin was then raised so that the congregation could pay their last respects to the body that lay inside. This was all done in a very matter-of-fact way, with little ceremony. It seems that we were not, in fact, attending a regular Sunday morning church service, but a funeral. We slipped out quietly and joined the rest of the group to visit the cemetery for the victims of the 1942 siege of Leningrad.
After lunch we visited St. Issac’s Cathedral, including climbing up to the top of the dome to gain a good panoramic view of the city. Returning to the hotel for the last time, we finished packing and prepared to travel to the airport for our 04:10 flight home.
Postscript – Friday, 6th September 1991
After a failed coup, the USSR is being broken up. Leningrad today announced that it is returning to being called St. Petersburg. Also announced today — Lenin’s tomb is to be moved to a grave next to his mother’s. It seems we went to Russia just in time.
Editors’ Note: Next stop in Michael Smith’s Eastern Bloc adventures is Prague, capital of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia, followed by Budapest (Hungary) and Vienna (Austria) over subsequent instalments. We meet Michael in Prague in the Weekly Features’ December 14 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/
