Russia

The first time Barb went to Russia, it was mid-winter in the late 1990s. The river in St. Petersburg was frozen over and the soles of her feet could feel the cold through her shoes as her group walked in the open-air market. They visited the Hermitage and the Church of the Spilled Blood before the tour guide in the beautiful mink coat took them from St. Petersburg to Moscow on the overnight Siberian Express. In Moscow, they saw the Kremlin Museum, and were stopped outside by police checking their papers. The bears and gymnasts at the circus and the traditional Russian dance at the ballet were also memorable. Barb had wanted to keep her visa as a memento, but it was removed from her passport when she left the country.

Barb’s second trip to Russia in 2011 was on a motorcycle. This time the group started in Moscow and ended up in St Petersburg. The roads were wide and lined with beech trees. They rode through many abandoned villages and saw abandoned factories with people standing on corners. Grandmothers stood by the road selling anything. This trip taught Barb how to ride a bike uphill in sand and she had the slightly scary experience of flying down a newly paved and unlined freeway as they arrived in St Petersburg on a Friday night during rush hour.

The local tour group for Barb’s motorcycle trip was subcontracted by Edelweiss to a woman physicist who grew up in Siberia. The physicist, the lead biker and the mechanic were with them every step of the way and they showed the group places that they had experienced as children. Every night before dinner, a local guide showed them around the village they would be staying in. One city was celebrating 1000 years in existence. In one town, they had their meat, potatoes, and vodka (in large glasses) at the home of the uncle of one of their guides. They spent some time in wooden cabins by a lake swatting away the huge flies and eating tongue sandwiches for lunch. They also had borscht.

I first learned how to make bortsch at the insistence of my Russian neighbor Liza. Of the many Russian restaurants I have tried, my favorite was when I took Mom, Dad, and Suzy to Babushka in Walnut Creek in 2019. We had chicken croquets, eggplant dip, pastries stuffed with potatoes, mushroom dumplings, borscht, smoked salmon salad with roe, chicken kiev, berry tart, chocolate lava cake, and sorbet. Everything was delicious and Mom says she will return to this restaurant for more borscht. There are plenty of Russian recipes online including these: https://vikalinka.com/collections/russian-collection/

Because Russia is so large, I want to sample a little from the various regions. Before we start however, here’s some history in two interesting videos:

· How Russia began from the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/renaissance-and-reformation/russian-empire/v/how-did-russia-begin

· Empire of the Tsars from the BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73eaNrTX3CA

Northwestern Federal District

I finally made it through War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy! I tried to read it in college but got bogged down on the first page because the translation I was reading left the French conversation untouched. I listened to an entirely English recording this last spring. It took sixty hours and I started before Russia invaded Ukraine and ended after, giving me plenty of comparisons and contrasts to think about. I was halfway through the book before I started figuring out the personality of the characters, but I persevered: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600

When my book group chose this week to discuss City of Thieves by David Benioff, I almost didn’t read it. I’ve read about the siege of Leningrad before, and I felt I had done my duty to St. Petersburg by completing War and Peace. But social pressure made me get the book and it wasn’t anything like I expected. It’s funny. It’s engaging. Even if several women in the group didn’t like it due to the violence, I’m glad I read it. To see Benioff discussing his book including his comments on the self-deprecating humor of Russians, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mFDSuk0zdM

Before we leave St. Petersburg, I need to include the movie that convinced me that ballet can be interesting. Mikhail Baryshnikov’s dancing is amazing and the movie White Nights was my introduction to what it was like to live in Soviet Russia shortly before the union dissolved. I was thrilled to find it online and watch it again: https://tubitv.com/movies/679207/white-nights

Central Federal District

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is another very long book that took me awhile to engage with but, again, it was selected by my book group and, not only did I make it through, but I ended up enjoying it. It covers much of twentieth century history of Moscow from the perspective of an aristocrat under house arrest in a luxury hotel. An interview with the author is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyWgaIStHOs

The Soviet dogs that were launched into space were strays from Moscow. There is an exhibit of paintings of them at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California that I find moving. There is also a party at the California Science Center in Los Angeles every April celebrating Yuri's Night to commemorate the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Kristen and Michele have gone twice and have enjoyed the astronaut talks, meeting sci-fi actors, and dancing under the space shuttle Endeavor.

Volga Federal District

I was eating at Kalinka in Glendale with Gladys, Erika, and Phyllis when the friendly young Russian at the next table checked in with us to make sure his country was well represented. We agreed that everything was delicious and discussed his hometown of Volgograd, at one point Stalingrad, as well as the movie Enemy at the Gates which represents it to much of the world.

Tchaikovsky is also from the Volga District and although my first experiences of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker were in San Francisco, you can find The Nutcracker all over in December and here online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_Z1LUDQuQ

The Urals

As you start the journey east to the Urals and the border between Europe and Asia, you enter the territory of Dr. Zhivago. Barb plans to take the “Doctor Zhivago: Reality and Fiction” course from Context Learning that starts on August 31. She is a fan of historian Vadim Malinovsky, who will be providing the instruction. Barb is refreshing her Dr. Zhivago knowledge this weekend before the course starts next Wednesday: https://www.contextlearning.com/products/doctor-zhivago

West Siberia

Fyodor Dostoyevsky spent time in the western part of Siberia as chronicled in The House of the Dead: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37536

I also appreciated this more recent short story by Aleksandr Chudakov as he remembers his grandfather in “Arm Wrestling in Chebachinsk”: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2004-08/arm-wrestling-in-chebachinsk/

Central Siberia

Allan tells me I have watched Happy People: A Year in the Taiga twice. Considering that I have been prepping for this blog for five years, it’s okay to repeat, especially when it’s from a part of the world I know nothing about: https://tubitv.com/movies/530331/happy-people-a-year-in-the-taiga

Raising the Mammoth takes me even further into a place I’ve never known, the Taimyr Peninsula: https://archive.org/details/Raising_The_Mammoth_Discoverly_WOC_2000-03-12

East Siberia

Arriving in the part of Russia that is farthest from Moscow, I find familiar territory because it reminds me of Alaska. I enjoyed Wild Russia on DisneyPlus and found two aerial videos with the feature that you can click and drag with your mouse to look around if the video passes something you want to examine more closely:

· Valley of Geysers, Kamchatka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QScwYvKEu_Y

· The Land of Bears, Kamchatka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpTWRX_WH0s

To travel to Russia while staying in California, the Russian Center of San Francisco has put on a Russian Festival in February or March for more than thirty years. Fort Ross also has a festival as they commemorate their Russian roots every July.

Barb reports from her actual trip to Russia that the people are nice even as they have a rough row to hoe and are trying to make something of themselves. She enjoyed the trees, flowers, and green fields of the gorgeous countryside. The beauty of Russia is demonstrated in the pictures from this list of the best places to visit: https://www.planetware.com/russia/best-places-to-visit-in-russia-r-1-2.htm

This isn’t the time, of course, but someday I would love to go to Russia. I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Russia and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: Viktor Solomonik https://unsplash.com/photos/Up8l6X63Opc