From Russia with Luck

The Russians have a proverb, “Na lovtsa I zver’ bezhit.” It translates, “Speak of the devil and he appears.”

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Enroute to St. Petersburg last week, we detour through Estonia, a former Soviet republic. Evidence of that failed era remains visible. We arrange a tour, “Back to the USSR” to get a ‘feel’ what living under post-war Soviet control was like. Such adventures are often ill-advised.

We walk through the gray, early smog of a parking lot to the point of departure. Our guide stands there to greet us. Beside him is a left-over Soviet-era bus, the kind you see littered along the countryside in rural Georgia.

He stands there in a rigid formation and eyes our small group with cold eyes and a slight Elvis sneer. He wears a gray KGB uniform with a colonel’s insignia. The metals pinned to his jacket are tarnished. They appear to have been purchased form a yard sale in Alabama.

“I am Colonel Boris,” he says. He is not a cheerful type. He means business. We don’t know what to expect.

“Line up behind this white line,” he demands. We do, obediently. He looks at me. “You are a spy, no?”

“No,” I tell him. “I’m a capitalist pig," I say. He’s not amused. He spits.

“Now, march around the bus three times, in formation, and get in.” We march. Nobody speaks.

The bus driver sits there mute, like a robot. We sit. Boris pulls out a used cardboard box, takes out a jar of pickles and a bottle of clear liquid. Vodka.

He pours stiff slugs of it into cheap plastic cups, passes them around. Steam rises from them, reminiscent of elixirs from fraternity parties of the past. “Bottoms up,” he shouts, and begins to sing something in Russian. We clap in unison.

He distributes pickles, smallish cucumbers that appear to have been cured in formaldehyde. “Russian snacks,” he says. “Drink, eat. Russian health food.” Immediately our day begins to look up.

The robot fires up the bus. It lurches forward about three feet, then chokes down. Colonel Boris grunts and say to three hefty men, “You, beefsteaks, out, push.” Nobody demurs. They get out and push. The engine catches fire, the tour begins.

We visit a closed Soviet prison. Its walls are dank with mildew; its windows appear as black, hollow eyes of skeletons that reveal the horror that must have occurred there. The devil still lives here along with the rusted hulks of machinery.

He says it was a transition impoundment, a temporary ‘evaluation’ facility to decide who lives and who goes to Siberia. We decline an inside visit after the warning. The bus moves on.

Throughout the city of Tallinn we see remnants of leftover obsolescence, buildings without maintenance for years, desperately in need of demolition. Detroit redux.

We pass green parks of people sunning, picnicking, perhaps escaping from some lingering fear of confinement. Apparently remembrances of Soviet eavesdropping are fresh in memory. We end at a closed Soviet meeting hall, now a historical monument filled with murals of Soviet propaganda.

Outside is a grown-over field of tall grasses. An unkempt cemetery of sorts. Littered throughout the tall grass are decapitated copper bodies. They lie oxidizing slowly in the chill Estonia air. Their heads are iconic replicas of Lenin, Marx and Stalin. They lay in strange juxtaposition to their former bodies. One is reminded of the tenuous nature of ideology.

The tour ends in the village market area, a bustling row of mainly flower shops. The ancient buildings in the town square appear unchanged for hundreds of years. They exude a quaint charm of a peaceful time.

Colonel Boris, we discover, is actually a comedian, an actor. He arranges these comedic tours as a reminder of what the old USSR was like, and what it may again become. As he said, they are now a NATO nation, but remind us that the acronym could translate, ‘No Action, Talk Only.’

Russia produces great musical composers. Much of their music is written in minor keys. I am told that while the big Russian sky is blue, there is always a cloud on the horizon. Their music conveys this.

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If you plan to visit Russia, I have only one suggestion for you: Ne puha, ne pera…good luck.


Bud Hearn
August 21, 2015