Memories of Russia

Maybe it was the sound of the language; maybe it was the music; maybe it was both of those things combined with the time of year—mid-March, just before Passover. In any case, a couple of weeks ago, as I sat in the audience and listened to the magnificent sound of the Moscow Men’s choir as it performed at Temple Emanu-El, I was mentally and emotionally transported to another time and place in my life, another time in the life of the world. Back then, in 1989, Islamic fundamentalism was confined to the backwaters of civilization, or so we thought. The enemy was the Soviet Union, though we knew it was in decline—but in decline it was still dangerous—would this be the time it would launch a weapon of mass destruction? We didn’t know. Already first the Poles, then the Czechs, the Hungarians, even the East Germans had thrown off the burden of Soviet domination. Already the Baltic republics were showing signs of clamoring for independence, soon to be followed by the Ukrainians and other peoples subject to Russian domination.

Here in Rhode Island the Community Relations Council of the Federation had a Soviet Jewry task force. I was chairman. We wrote to refuseniks in Russia offering support, we wrote to Congress our support of the Jackson-Vanick amendment; we adopted a sister city (Rostov on Don); we marched in Washington when Gorbachev was there. And we decided to pay him a return visit. In Russia. Many said they were interested in coming, but in the end, it was only four of us—Paul and Sheila Alexander, Wayne Franklin, and myself. Paul is a physician, Sheila is a community leader, Wayne is a rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, I’m a professor of history.

For months before hand we learned some rudimentary Russian—“Yes” “no,” “please,” “thank you,” “are you sure this is what Marx had in mind?” (All right, we didn’t use that one a lot, but we did learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that we could navigate the subway system when we absented ourselves from the official tour to visit refuseniks and Hebrew teachers and “the pharmacist”). We received instructions from national Soviet-Jewry organizations (naturally there were two competing such groups—they are Jews after all). We had names of people to call, books and religious objects to bring and pharmaceuticals ranging in potency from aspirin to antibiotics, none of which were available, all of which had to be brought into the country clandestinely, so, I guess, this is my confession. I was part of a ring of international drug smugglers. There, I’ve said it.

We flew to Kennedy airport after sleepless nights—would we be caught, if so would we be prosecuted, if so, would we be found guilty, if so would we spend time in the gulag? Foolish fears I now realize, but they seemed very real at the time. At Kennedy we met the other members of our tour group and, being suspicious, wondered if these perfectly normal looking Americans were really Soviet agents provocateurs—yes we (I at least) were paranoid. Our American tour director was a nice young man who discovered a love for the Russian language and its literature in college. He now shuffled back and forth between Russia and the United States acting as translator and facilitator for visiting Americans. As soon as he saw us lifting our suitcases which weighed a ton while we pretended that they were light as feathers, he knew something was up. “Those are pretty heavy talleisim” he commented. “Talleisim?” we feigned ignorance. “No, just the stuff we’ll need for a ten day trip.” “Right.” This was not encouraging. We’d not even left New York and already we’d been spotted as smugglers. Could we trust this smiling young man?

We flew to Helsinki and from there to Moscow. The first ordeal awaited us. Our passports were checked very carefully by a uniformed young man in a booth. He looked at the passport, he looked at us, he looked at the passport, he typed something into a computer, he looked at us and again at the passport. “Purpose of visit?” (It was really less of a question than it was an accusation.) “Tourism,” I said, so did the others in their turn. “Occupation?” (Same tone of voice, all the while my right arm was separating at the joints—wrist from forearm, elbow expanding, shoulder rising as I tried to hold on to the ten ton suitcase without showing signs of strain.) “Teacher,” I said as I grit my teeth in pain, pretending it was a smile. (This question was a tricky one for Wayne. If he said “Rabbi” we were told they’d really give him the third degree or prevent him from coming in at all—certainly his suitcase would be examined, which is why we kept the incriminating materials in our bags, not his. His answer was the technically correct, though disingenuous “teacher.”)

Once this gauntlet had been passed we had customs to get through. Not all bags were checked, but there was no green sign saying “nothing to declare.” All bags and their owners had to be OK’d by a human in uniform (a ubiquitous species in Russia, it seems). Amazingly, all of us, each pretending not to know the others though obviously Sheila and Paul were traveling together, were just passed through. Some chalk on the bags, a “Welcome to the Soviet Union” from the customs agent. “Is that it?” I asked our guide. “Yes.” “That’s what I lost sleep over for two weeks?” “Wasn’t worth it was it,” he answered cryptically. Only later, on the plane coming back from Helsinki did we learn his role in getting us through customs unscathed.

The rest of the story is anticlimactic. We saw the sights of Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad, we rode the magnificent subway system, we met refusenicks and teachers of Hebrew and the pharmacist. He wasn’t really a pharmacist, of course, but a link in the chain of getting scarce drugs to sick people. Paul had a long talk with him as he described the medicines they needed brought by the next contingent of Americans coming in. Paul gave him the medicines we’d brought. We received names of refusenicks we’d not known about and hoped that that list would not be the cause of our arrest and incarceration as we passed through the external customs agents. In the Soviet Union everything had to be accounted for—how much money did you bring in, what did you buy, how much money do you have left? If we’d gotten black market rubles so that we could buy more Russian goods or leave the money with the Jews we were visiting, we’d have to account for how we could purchase things with so little money, or conversely if we were not taking much out with us, what happened to the money we brought in.

In Kiev we were not scheduled to visit Babi Yar, but we insisted and our Intourist guide relented. There’s not much to see there now, but we knew had had happened. Between 1941 and 1943 over 100,000 Jews had been killed there. The monument, with tablets in Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish states only that over 100,000 “citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war” were executed there. The Jews, apparently, deserve no special recognition. Except from us. Wayne, Paul, Sheila and I, along with a few others from our group said kaddish in memory of those who had been massacred in the ravine the Germans, and later the Soviets, tried to hide by filling it in, making it a level meadow, disguising the remains of the atrocity.

We shopped in the stores that Russian citizens were not allowed to enter, where only foreign currency was accepted, where goods scarce or impossible to find in the stores of the Soviet Union were readily available to foreigners. So, we came with lists of what our new friends needed, and we bought. We also gave. We brought jeans from America (am I the last person on Earth still to refer to them as dungarees?), a hot commodity in the Soviet Union’s black market which could be sold by the Jews who had been let go from their jobs because they had had the temerity to ask to leave, some of them years ago denied their exit visas, and having to make do however they could. Those jeans, we hoped, could be converted into cash. On the streets people who wanted to buy my sneakers—off my feet, approached me with rubles to purchase the rare western footwear. I politely declined. It was too cold to walk barefoot in Moscow in March. On the plane flying from Kiev to Leningrad my neighboring passenger noticed my Cassio wristwatch which told the time, is a calculator, holds phone numbers and appointments, is a stop watch and a timer. By rubbing his thumb against his middle finger he indicated with what is apparently a universal sign that he wanted to buy it from me. “I don’t speak Russian,” I politely said, and feigned sleep.

When it was time to go, we had our lists of medicines and refuseniks and our gifts for friends and relatives back home and we endured the wait, as we had to pass through external customs. Sheila had most of the incriminating papers in her suitcase. This was a clear-cut example of hiding behind women’s skirts. We had been told that Russian men were uncomfortable rummaging through ladies undergarments, so the papers were under her underwear. As the unsmiling customs agent opened Sheila’s suitcase, it tipped and her clothing and the papers we had so carefully secreted went flying onto the floor. Flustered at the sight of these garments, he helped her to scoop everything up, including the incriminating documents, all of which he hastily shoved willy-nilly back into her case and (we think) apologized profusely for the inconvenience.

Once on the Finnair plane, we felt safer, but even more so once we had taken off. In Helsinki Wayne told Peter, our American guide what we had done. He laughed at our naivety. As we’d thought, he’d spotted us immediately for what we were. In the Moscow airport he found a pretty customs agent and encouraged her to flirt with the agent examining our bags. The agent, apparently thinking that the girl was really interested in him, paid no interest in us, and so into the belly of the beast we were allowed to enter with all our contraband. Thanks Peter.

We came back to America filled with stories of our adventures, just in time to celebrate Passover with the Matzah we’d bought in Leningrad at the only Jewish bakery in town. It was the best tasting Matzah I’d ever eaten, made with the hands of people as much prisoners in their country as the ancient Hebrews had been in Egypt. As I sat around our Seder tables and recounted our experiences to friends and relatives the idea of freedom suddenly meant a lot more than it ever had before. There was no Moses to lead the Jews out of the Soviet Union, certainly Paul, Sheila, Wayne, and I were no Moses, but we had done our bit to bring cheer and supplies to a people cut off from the rest of their people. We had let them know that we knew of them, that we were working for their liberation and eventual re-settlement in Israel or in the United States. I don’t know how much good we actually did for them, but we each felt that we had made a contribution in our small way to the betterment of mankind. I think (though cannot prove) that the international effort to free the Jews of the Soviet Union played a huge part in the disintegration of that great empire. Once the Jews started agitating for their liberty, others followed; once the Jews broke the silence and said, this is not working, let us leave, others joined the chorus.

And a couple of weeks ago, the Moscow Men’s Chorus, singing in Temple Emanu-El, brought it all back to life in my mind. Paul, Sheila, Wayne, I think we did good.