Chapter Ten:

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"

(...Winston Churchill on Russia)

IN OUR SEALED PASSENGER CARS, we were now speeding through the pine forests of the Karelian Peninsula. This was where so many had died in the see-saw struggles with the Germans 1941-1942. Suddenly a town flashed by: the homes were all made of ...logs! The entire place was all log structures ... lined up along these mud-and-dust roads! An old "babushka" (means grandmother – the babushkas and the Kremlin were all that kept Russia running when we were there!) was sweeping the "street" with a broom made of pine branches. She never waved. She never even looked up. The village vanished.

Soon we pulled into Vyborg. Our first Russian city. The train was boarded by a cadre of big Russki soldiers – with prominent fur hats and a central Red Star on each. They meant business, one could tell!

"Get off train!" they said in gruff, but passable English.

We got off.! Pronto!

On the platform they collected all our passports and then disappeared into an office in the Station. No one then seemed to care where we went or what we did! (I figured it out pretty fast: those in Russia without passports to show, and not speaking the language, were undoubtedly on the fast track to a Siberian Gulag...). Many in our group sat down somewhat disconsolately – on the benches. I wandered into the Waiting Room. A few comrades in rumpled clothing, were sort of heaped up at one end of a long bench – sound asleep and some snoring. Trains came and went but the Comrades slept on. (My Italian father-in-law taught me "First-a we eat!" In Roosha, it's "First-a we sleep!" Sigh... What we Amerikaner know anyhow about the rest of the world?).

I spied a Bulletin Board on the wall across from the sleeper's bench, and wandered over.

It was covered with printed Press Releases – all in Cyrillic - and graphic photos. The Cyrillic I fancied I could kinda fathom – if I puzzled over it – get the drift anyhow. The Amerikaner had detonated an atom bomb (again?) – or they had fired an atom missile – I could not quite tell... But the photos removed all doubt: you don't need to know any specific language to understand a picture!

There were photos of mushroom clouds (had this all happened in our absence? Had everything gone to hell in a handbasket in just one week? Jeezul!). Pictures of babies with scarred, warty faces squinted at me from the shelter of the Bulletin Board. (How had they grown up so well to show healthy – if –granted – distorted – visages to the cameraman in – presumably – maybe only a week – the time we had been "out of touch"?) I was very puzzled. I stepped over the snorer's legs (they seemed curiously indifferent to these affairs...). The Bulletin Board covered acres of square feet it seemed – I ogled on and on... Dimly, I heard Millie's voice breaking in – tinged somewhat on the edges with hysteria:

"Bernard! Bernard! The Guard wants YOU!"

Oh Damn! This guy filled the whole doorway and all I could see was that Red Star in his fur hat!

"YOU: Come!" he said.

I came! (You betcha!)

Outside on the platform they lined us all up. Now we were civilians, understand, and Americans, and tourists and foreigners, etc. Real rabble. The biggest Red Guard (I inferred that is how they promote there: the biggest rise steadily in rank) physically pushed everyone around till he was satisfied with the lineup he wanted and then said simply: "Get on Train!"

So we all "got on train".

Then came an interminable wait while the passports were found and lost and sorted and resorted and questions asked over and over and finally everyone got his or her passport back again. I sat and looked out the train window. Across from me was a big building with a blank, windowless wall – maybe six stories high. On the blank wall was a huge picture of Lenin and some kind of slogan painted under it. Very nice!

(It would help if we were all taught Russian in school... but I had to make do. As to the slogan, that is. Hell, back in America, 80% of the population, according to one recent study, still believes in Noah's Ark! So how could such nerds ever learn Russian? Already yet!)

We left Vyborg I guess maybe in early afternoon. Bound now for our destination: Leningrad! Birthplace of the Revolution! Onetime home to the Czars! Peter's great capital, named after him, and then renamed after Lenin when the Reds took over. And once again now renamed back to St. Petersburg. But Leningrad will always be ...Leningrad to me. She of the one million dead in the 900 Day Siege laid by the German invaders of WWII. And Piskaryove Cemetery where they are all buried – the largest cemetery in the world!... And Motherland the famous statue, stands with her oak sprig over their tumuli yet... Home of Rasputin, the Black Monk... With her unstructured spontaneity of the mid-summer "White Nights," and the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and the Hermitage and the gilt and painted icons on the walls of Orthodox churches that the Reds left standing... A beautiful city, indeed, with grand canals and everything.

As best I recall, our train pulled into a long covered train shed type station with lots of platforms and throngs of people and tourists. We were mass-herded into Intourist buses and driven to our hotels. I remember sitting on the bus and looking out the window at an intersection where we had stopped. A stray cat was sitting on the wall doing its toilette'. I said out loud to the bus (I was already getting the name of "tummler" here you see... What you don't know your New York Yiddish? What kind of traveller are you, already anyhow? Yet).

"Quick! Come! Here is a Communist cat!"

There was a rush to the starboard windows: if we HAD been a boat, we would have capsized...

"Where? Where?" everyone chimed in.

"There on the wall, I said. "See! Right there!"

Twenty pairs of eyes strained. The cat with just one pair (green, not red) - looked right back at the bus and yawned, stretched, and jumped down off the wall just like an American capitalist cat. Everyone went back to his or her seat - and to Mill's relief I cracked no more "funnies" clear to the hotel.

There were, however, countless political slogans (presumably) lettered on the sides of buildings and on blank walls as we sped by. Once or twice they were even presented "Burma Shave" fashion on spaced-out signboards... one I recall in particular was along the roadway in front of a grim-looking old "official" building of some kind, and I called the Intourist guide over to read it to me as we passed. In rather bored fashion she translated for me: "The Will of the Party is the Will of the People" - a sentiment that was oft-repeated during our stay there...

We were in a large, massive looking building (everything in Russia looks like it was built to double as a fort in time of need...). We got off the bus and walked into the lobby. The whole place was faced with a nearly midnite black granite – I have never seen such black stone! As there were only a few windows it was really dark – the only light being spots of glow here and there where the desk lights were... The hotel was run largely by Finns who disdained their employers as well as their employers' guests – but all in all it was not too bad. We had a room on the sixth floor I think it was, and there were many stories above us.

In Russia, when you get off the elevator, you can't just walk down the corridor to your room. You must first sign in (or out) with the (usually female) factotum or party apparatchik who is in charge of that floor and sits at a desk right in front of you when you get off - the omnipresent hammer-and-sickle armband prominently displayed, of course. She then unlocks the iron grill gate to the corridor (kinda like a prison cell block) and takes you to your room and checks you in – remaining to watch that you go inside and shut the door! "You...GO..IN!" LOL!

The room was quite nice and furnished in equivalent style to its counterparts in the West – including a thoroughly modern bathroom – which put our minds at ease. There was a TV set, so I flicked it on. Immediately I became engrossed in a show that was all about the Revolution – you didn't need to be Russian to understand that. It is all State TV over there, of course, and the message is the one the State wants to put out! The show went on and on and it was about a village of happy peasants and then the soldiers came and there was fighting and singing and dancing and midnite torching of homes of the rich and just about everything you could ever want! LOL! So I had a video cam at the time, and I set it up and shot maybe a couple hours of this stuff (and it was still not finished!).

I have this tape yet in storage and if providentially someday I can get to it and check it out and it is not all deteriorated, then maybe I can post it or at least some frames from it here – it is really interesting.

Meals were served in the dining room on the first level. It was more or less open seating four to six people around a table. The tables were rather sparsely set – but there were cloths. In the middle of the tables sat a cluster of what looked like rust-stained soda bottles. Most unappetizing appearing, but this is what you drank: mineral water – and we were assured over and over it would "make you strong." Making oneself strong is an over-arching Russian concern...

There were sideboards throughout the room – but the only thing on them so far was lots of big bowls of sliced cucumbers. There were lots of waiters (and waitresses) standing and lounging about. Many of the women still wore their babushkas even indoors. They brought us some cucumbers to eat. We dived in, if that is proper way to describe starting dinner with a bowl of fresh-sliced cucumbers. But in time, regular fare arrived – chicken maybe, and potatoes, and so on. I don't recall exactly.

What I do recall is that at one point the waiter replenishing the rusty water bottles leaned over me and I asked him could I have some more cucumbers. This seemed to bother him and shortly thereafter I saw him talking to a gal who was guarding one of the cucumber sideboards. But nothing seemed to be forthcoming. Soon a third individual was in conversation with them and then this latter guy came over to me. He spoke English and asked if I were the diner who wanted more cucumbers. I said, "Yep! You got 'im!

He said, "Well, Sir, you cannot ask the water man to get cucumbers – you must always ask the cucumber lady herself". But I said that most of his workers (he was some kind of maiter d' or more like maybe a foreman on the job maybe) ..."chose to ignore us here and look off into space". So what was the harm in letting the "water man" bring them to me?

A look of shock passed over his face. "Oh, Sir! He said in some alarm, "you can never do that! Their duties are assigned by the Party (!) and they must never stray from them!"

Now it was my turn to be speechless! (Fortunately for my own good, and likely the good of the entire company so-seated there). Still – those immortal lines from Orwell's Animal Farm rose unbidden to my mind:( remember?)..."All pigs are equal, but some are more equal than others!"

Later we strolled outdoors to see the sunset and look over the city. We were assured the vicinity was safe enough, and besides the hotel sat back from the banks of a large river – the Neva - and there was kind of an enclosed park back there where you could take a short spin and regard the sights. On our way out of the lobby, we had to pass through a rather narrow entryway to the revolving door – and on both sides of this entryway stood three elderly men in sort of worn, but presentable outdated and poorly tailored suits. They said absolutely nothing but their eyes rotated in their sockets like video toys, ogling you all over, whenever you walked past in front of them.

They were there again when we returned – unsmiling, distant. Ogling. Like Bobblehead dolls sorta...And they were there again on duty next morning and all the days thereafter when you came and went, too.

I asked our Intourist Guide about them.

She said, "Those middle-aged men are all old veterans of the Red Army. Some are survivors of the Great Siege (of Leningrad). The State gives them this job of "watchman" – what they must do is stand there all day long and watch every movement of everyone who comes and goes through that entryway. They check your face (which they memorize) and your clothes and any packages or changes about you coming or going. (pause) One thing they check especially is to make sure no "locals" sneak in with you and get past them. There are many what you call "scammers" around in these streets, and sometimes they try to gain access to the tourist hotels, which is forbidden."

Like most "middle-aged" men in Leningrad (indeed in most of Russia!), these guys always wore row upon row of military medals pinned to their civilian suit coats...

All very sobering and underscored the sentiment often voiced by those in the know: "We in the West have no idea – no idea at all – what the war was really like compared to the East here – with its thousand mile fronts and millions of dead..."

Later, I told Millie what I had found out... and we both pondered the fact that back in our own country, those six veterans would be instantly replaced by just one TV security camera... We came from a different world, indeed...

There was sort of gallows humor to be had now and then, though. Right outside the hotel and across the street in a sort of little fenced-off park area was a big, round, sunken circle in the ground – grass and flowers were planted all about it. We walked right by it coming and going all the time. To my further query one day as to what it might be, our Tour Guide replied with a rather wan smile: "That," she said, "is what you call a "missile silo" in your country, I believe. In fact, it is probably aimed right now at the U.S. of A. – protecting our beloved Motherland."

So there, too! Please bring money!

And so began our tour of Leningrad.

Next morning, the bus took us to Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery, which you may have "peeped" at in the link for same above. Here is where are buried most of the dead from the absolutely horrific Siege of Leningrad said to be history's second most costly battle ever (1.5-million dead... civilians and soldiers!)... the first such also a Russian achievement: Stalingrad, with yet another 350-K additional dead just to take first place. Such figures, and such sites, simply cannot be handled by the mind... But they happened. They really did...

Mill had to hit up the ladies' room. (Female bladders.. Bah!). I swear it was in that white building on the left of the entrance (see). When she came back, she was amazed, and reported that it was super clean and nice and old babushkas were everywhere in evidence, handing out towels and soap and whatever.

Then we began walking toward "Motherland" far in the distance – the mounded dead on both sides of us. The day we were there, there were large parties of Russian laborers working in the cemetery. Most wore big heavy boots I recall. Our group had sort of broken up into individual couples, and so we just pushed trough the labor parties. They paid no more attention to us than to the ghosts of their countrymen who must surely have surrounded them. They were chopping weeds and clearing paths and god knows what else – over there, some were digging...

Those low squared off plots you see in the pictures – "tumuli" I call them – contain the remains. Thousands in each section – and the sections themselves stretch into more thousands: 40 acres in all! "Motherland" loomed closer and closer, and then we stood silently before her – looking up. US military losses – total! – in WWII are usually given at a bit under half-a million killed. In this one Russian cemetery alone here in this one city in Russia, lay 1.5 million dead!

What a place! What an experience! It will haunt me forever.

That night, back at the hotel, I ate cucumbers and drank rusty water and – for once! – was content with "my" portion.

I remember once strolling down broad, major boulevards, lined with handsome buildings on either side. There was an air of bustle and activity – a number of new buildings were being erected here and there. I stopped to watch. Then suddenly it hit me: as I gazed down this broad street past al the construction sites and all – I noticed that the builders' scaffolds over them all – were made of unpeeled pine logs! Fact! Workers were climbing up and down them many stories to the top and all, hauling on ropes, lifting up burdens and materials and so on – but these edifices were just cobbled together rough-cut poles out of some nearby forest! Whereas along Mad Avenue back home (one of my onetime major haunts), highly engineered metal scaffoldings, with high-speed elevators to raise and lower men and materials were "state-of-the-art", here the Russian woodchopper's art was still regnant... I thought to myself: "This is the country we have been locked in mortal fear with during all these Cold War Years? What in hell do we have to fear from the likes of them?"

My reminder came in the ubiquitous military presence everywhere. It seemed like every other Russki was in uniform. And half of these were driving around the streets in Red Army trucks and vehicles of all types. And about half of these were always broken down: they never traveled in convoys anywhere like in the U.S. - mostly they just sat curbside somewhere with their hoods up, while their drivers and one or two others tinkered endlessly with carburetors and other malfunctioning parts – for all the world like American teenagers on a Friday night back home with their hotrod dragsters on Main Street.

And I remember crossing the street once, too. I was alone and Mill had stayed back at the hotel or something. And I came to a subway kiosk – and peered down in: hordes of pedestrians were descending into its cavernous depths down long flights of stairs. Occasional faces looked up at me and then were gone. I felt like a diver when he peeps over the edge of an unknown reef – and the flashing faces were like fleeting fishes somehow... And I had the wildest thought: what, I thought, if I were suddenly to descend into these depths all these these Comrades and disappear off the map altogether... Never to be seen again. (In the West). What kind of life did they live? What kind of life would I live? It was sort of like the "nitrogen narcosis" rapture-of-the-deeps that divers must always guard against... and with an effort I pulled back and surfaced again into the sun and fresh air... Sheesh!

Churchill sure knew his Russians alright!

What can I – or anyone else, including Native Russians – say of the Hermitage? This IBM site says it well, for my money (make that my ruble...), and if any of you want to follow the many related links you will be well-rewarded with a magnificent tour of Russian history past and present... all you ever wanted to know about Mother Russia but were afraid to ask...

I think we need some Russki mood music here to help get us started on our tour of the facilities...So here you are:

Our Intourist bus stopped right in Palace Square. Just over there was the famous Alexander Column commemorating the Czar who defeated Napoleon... And right here where we parked – right here – these very cobblestones in fact is where the Bolshevik Revolution began that dark October night in 1917 as the serfs and the downtrodden ripped up the stones and stormed the Palace before us. Sometimes it is hard to believe you are where you are... Ahead of us the Hermitage featured many caryatid figures (with maybe a few telamon for the heavy lifting...lol!) - those column supports in human form you sometimes see in Greek-inspired architecture holding up massive roofs the world around.

Inside, we were herded like cattle into a sort of mass and then with Red Guards and babushka ladies on our flanks driven somewhat hurriedly from room to endless room – as the spoils of centuries of conquest and invasion by the Czars and others unfolded before our eyes. (One of the enigmas Churchill cited elsewhere, too – is why Russia one of the biggest nations on earth (the sun never sets on the hammer-and-sickle flag either – did you know that? – border to border) cannot manage down through history to stay within those vast borders but must continually be invading others...LOL). Wall after wall gave up gilt framed Van der Meers, Van Goghs and every other Dutch, Flemish or French artist ever born. Antiques from ransacked palaces lined hall after hall and gallery after gallery. Hangings, statuary, art objects, Greek sculpture in just mind-blowing quantities stretched out of sight. And the wind blew in at the windows – many of them open to the city dust and pollution outside! (Familiar with American Museum fanaticism over "climate control" and all – I never got over that!) Best of all though were the ever-vigilant Babushkas.

You got to understand Red Guard Babushkas here first. Most were maybe in their forties or fifties. Youth vanishes fast – or did – in the Soviet! Most would weigh-in maybe 200 pounds - "dripping wet" as we used to say. And most have arms about like an average Western man's thighs – by way of comparison. You wouldn't want to arm-wrassle the most of them. They never smile and they have big bands with the Hammer-and-Sickle on it on their upper forearms. And Big Brother never had better watchers... No Sah!

And what they watched for was hands or any other body part that touched, brushed, or even threw a shadow on all these uncased, largely unprotected treasures. For if that occurred, they descended on you like hawks from a perch with a resounding smack (it's true!) on your offending member and a loudly proclaimed "Nyet!" (No!) Unlike the "no's" of later Nancy Reagan, they left no doubt about any part of their "Nyet" to be misunderstood by anyone! And Good Buddies – the Czar's treasures remain undefiled to this very day.

But little Bernard here had his own agenda... and after a while, the loot of ages of European Upper-Class folk began to bore me a bit. I sought out the Guide and asked her "When are we going to get to the Anthropology Section?"

"Oh," she said, "we probably won't have time for that you see – most peeples (she said it like that!) want these European Art, you know..."

"But," I complained, "I want to see the Archaeology Section and your famed Anthropological materials!"

I was feeling real disappointed.

"Then," she said, "why don't you just go off and see them yourself?"

Huh?

"You mean ...alone ... no guide?"

"Certainly, she said, "there is no problem!"

Then she waved her arm at a huge flight of marble stairs descending into the gloom below – "They are off that way somewhere...."

Wow! Outta here!

I grabbed Mill and we broke free of the crowd and away down the stairs...

We entered into another storybook land. Vast, cavernous exhibition halls stretching away in every direction. And there wasn't a soul about!

And we had stumbled on the right opening: before us lay the treasures of Oceania, the New World, and the Old World! I could hardly contain myself! For I found at last what I secretly longed to see and never in all my Life figured I ever would: I, Bernie Powell, have beheld at arm's length the famous skinned-out Scythian collection of the Russian archaeologists who first opened the frozen tumuli of these ancient people.

To try and collapse it all in interest of space and time: the Scythians once lorded it all over Siberia and even south down into Greece – they were the dominant culture of those long ago times and places long before Christ. And they tattooed themselves from head to foot (even soles of their feet – Dang! – Western potheads haven't hit on that yet...). Since their burial tumuli were in permafrost, they have been in cold storage ever since they died. Some time ago, Russian archaeologists discovered how to thaw these burial sites with steam spuds and remove the frozen bodies. These they later thawed and then get this (nice Russki touch, no?) – they skinned them out (LOL!): peeled them like oranges you might say – then flattened out the skins, and studied them minutely, and then tacked them onto the backboards of the show cases at the Hermitage! Go to the Scythian link in the overall Hermitage link (previous) if you like, and read about them. Unfortunately (for my money) this doesn't do the collection justice at all. Much better is this site, which I call What the Russkis Don't Tell You where we learn that one of the Scythian Chiefs even had his penis tattooed (it said "My Name" on it in some ancient script of theirs...Sigh!). But I'm telling you that for my tastes, there isn't a Van der Meer going that can hold a candle to a properly skinned out Scythian – with his interlocking symbology more intricate than a Persian rug...! Not to mention his interdigitating whatevers... And I had it all to myself one afternoon long ago. Mill tagged along, eyes on stalks, and wondering if stamp-collecting might be more appropriate hobby...

And thus we wandered 'midst the Treasures of Time, you see, and the day wore on and with somewhat of a start we realized that we had not seen anyone – no living one that is, with skin and all still intact anyhow – for a very long time...

"I wonder what time they close," I said. As my hollow-echoing words bounced back to me in the vast hall, I began to get a bit uneasy.

"Maybe we should rejoin the group," offered Millie....

We ascended a long flight of marble stairs. But nothing was familiar. No one about. We walked down an unknown, long, darkening hall – cases of jewelry and bottles and Chinese figures now – and on and on. We came to a little landing partway up another unknown flight of stairs – and there, thankfully! – sat a guard at a little desk. In vain, I tried to make him understand we were with an Intourist group and wished to rejoin them. He just looked at us uncomprehendingly, then at a clock on his desk, and stood up and said, "You Go Now!" and with that he opened a little door behind him, and sort of half-pushing and half-ushering, he escorted us into the street!

And the door closed behind him!

But what street was this? This was not where we had entered, and the Palace Square was nowhere in sight – nor the parked Intourist buses!

"Damn!", says I. "He has put us out on some other side of the building (which is about the size of the Pentagon, you see – give or take a couple football fields...), and we don't want to lose our group or the Intourist buses and all!"

What to do?

Well, I was still a jogger in those days, but Mill always had a bit of a limp and was not a fast walker. So I said,

"You wait right here, and I am going to try and find the buses so they don't leave without us."

And I took off running down an unknown Boulevard in Russia, unable to speak a word of the language, headed for just I knew not quite where...

Sheesh!

I came to a corner street and looked to my right. The "street" was more like an alley – narrow and sort of dark but way at the other end a block or more away I had a glimpse into Palace Square again – and saw a parked Intourist bus! Zippo – I shot up this alley toward the light at the end of the tunnel! LOL! What I did not see as I ran by, was one of those wooden Guard Boxes with a big Red Guard standing in it. I zipped right on by and he said nothing.

"Damn!" I thought, expecting to feel the bullet in my back. But he didn't even holler... In fact, "our group" had left the Museum and was re-grouping in the lot in front of me, so I was able to tell our Intourist guide what was going on. She smiled and said there was no problem – they would be another 15 or 20 minutes getting set here anyhow and for me just to retrace my steps and get Millie and they would wait. I mentioned the Guard in the Box and maybe this time he might shoot me...? But she just forced a smile – and said something terse like "Why do all you Americans expect always to be shot by us?" And added that he would not bother me – just run on by and see....

So I did, and waved at him as I ran back by and he did, too. I mean he waved back believe it or not, and did not shoot... so it worked out well. I got Mill in time and we came back (again) – this time the Guard stepped out of his box and grinned and gave us a hearty welcome in passing.

And so we regained our flock and none the worse for wear. What would Churchill have said?