When I was a little boy, I couldn't imagine visiting Russia as a tourist. I thought of it as a cold, gray country filled with unsmiling people led by a sour-faced bald guy who pounded the table with his shoe while he shouted. As I grew older, I learned more, and every new revelation made it less desirable. Somewhere I heard they didn't believe in God, because they thought the government in effect superseded god. Their country was based on the philosophy of Karl Marx, who famously said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” I wasn't sure what it meant, but I didn't like it. They wanted to destroy our country and the freedoms and liberties for which it stands.
I vividly remember playing four square in my drive way with Glenn Rocha and a few other kids from my street as we talked about the Cuban Missile Crisis, repeating what we overheard our parents say, and fearing nuclear missiles from Russia (without love). Russia's “democracy” allowed them to vote for the Communist Party's official candidate or abstain. Their government forced them to work in assigned jobs, and not unlike slavery, regardless of their personal output, they all made the same income, except for the fortunate few in government and those deemed worthy by them. The Politburo, not the free market, decided what was fair.
Their athletes were powerful foes at the Olympic Games, and I hated when they beat our American team at anything. Where smiling Americans sacrificed all the fun of living in our great country to pursue the honor of winning gold for our country, the unsmiling Russians had been forced into training while children as the only chance for their families to possibly move above the sorry state of being part of the proletariat. It was a country of equality, where all were equally miserable, except the privileged few. This is what I believed growing up. Why visit a country like that even if I could?
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan called Russia the Evil Empire and told them to adapt to the rising tide of freedom. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Reagan's policy, posture and speeches told the world he wasn't afraid of Russia, giving courage to satellite states of the USSR to stand up to Russia, too. Reagan called Russia's bluff, and raised it. He raised it again. Everyone was surprised when Russia folded, including me. It happened after Reagan's Vice President, George Bush, had succeeded him as president, but it was the relentless efforts of President Ronald Reagan that wore Russia down.
The day before St. Petersburg we had visited Finland, which stood up to Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to gain its freedom, and again after World War II, when Russia undoubtedly would have liked to drag Finland behind the Iron Curtain. While Russia's state run economy floundered, next door capitalist Finland became the country with the highest per capita income in the world. After St. Petersburg, we would visit Estonia, Poland and East Germany, remarkably brave countries that followed President Reagan's lead and threw off the shackles of communism. It was a fitting preamble and exclamation points to our visit of Russia.
Due to circumstances beyond their control, our ship arrived in port an hour or two late, which led to chaos getting ashore.
While Russia has opened St. Petersburg to tourism, it is still Russia, not Florida, so there is plenty of red tape even in the best of situations. Visitors must be escorted and officially be guests of other Russian citizens. Visas must be purchased with schedules of what will be visited and when, unless you have a hosted shore excursion. Most passengers take the path of least resistance, booking tours through the cruise line. Even our family, which almost never buys shore excursions through the ship, were among the throngs waiting for Princess to sort out tours going ashore. While they announced the excursions would leave an hour to two hours behind schedule, people still showed up at their assigned times, overflowing capacity of the meeting area and staff. Others going ashore who were not on Princess excursions could not debark until Princess shore excursions had been processed, so going with Princess was still the right choice.
To make a long story short, we eventually made it to the customs area, which was actually actually modern and quite attractive, just as they are when built by cruise lines all over the world. As might be expected in a bureaucratic country, few of the booths were occupied, so the lines were long, but the civil servant stamped our passports without incident. On the bus, we waited longer than we would have liked, because apparently someone scheduled to join us got lost in the shuffle. Eventually we left without them.
Riding through the streets of St. Petersburg, I was surprised that the traffic jams reminded me of Long Beach city streets. This wasn't a Scandinavian city of bicycles like we previously saw on this trip. It kind of felt familiar in an odd way, although the signs were written in Russian instead of in English or Spanish.
As we drove along, our guide spoke about how Peter the Great, upon returning from traveling abroad, wanted to build a more European capital which would be located on the coast to open the country to the world. He built this city in marshes using his greatest resource among an impressive store of natural resources: a massive labor force. Everyone was told to bring a bag of rocks when they came to St. Petersburg, and if a worker died, his body became part of the foundation of St. Petersburg. Peter built a city of canals that the Russians like to call the Venice of the North, although I would have to say a lot gets lost in the translation from sunny Italy to St. Petersburg. As our guide the next day, Sophia, said, quoting a local truism, “There are two seasons in St. Petersburg: the season of expectation and the season of disappointment.”
I think that applies to not simply the weather but also the plight of the people. As we drove past apartments, our guide pointed to those built in different eras and described what they were like inside. Those built under Lenin when communism was young were larger and relatively comfortable. Lenin was a mass murderer, killing tens of thousands of political dissenters, but he must not have been a bad real estate developer. As times went by, many of those units came to be shared by several families, sharing common spaces like kitchens and bathrooms while cramming a whole family into one bedroom for sleeping and private space. Under Kruschev, the apartments got smaller, with low ceilings to squeeze more units into the same city block. They kept getting smaller, and a joke is that the small units are great for the housewife, because she can remain seated at the kitchen table while she takes things from the stove or puts dirty dishes in the sink.
Now, with the emergence of capitalism, deluxe units have become fashionable. Large and comfortable, they unfortunately are beyond the reach of most citizens. If you're an ex-KGB agent running a nightclub or oil company, however, then you can live in style. As we continued on toward the monument of excess known as Peterhof, I found myself hoping that the unfairness of their transition toward the freedom we love doesn't get sidetracked in Russia. Even more, I pray that my own country doesn't get blown away from the freedom and liberty we have always cherished by the winds of change. Karl Marx said, “The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism.”
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