Russia – March 1991

Part 1 - Moscow

Prologue

Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, the country was split into four zones under the
protection of the occupying allied forces, Britain, America, France and Russia. The ideological
differences between Russia and the other three brought about increased tensions, particularly
within Germany. The first post-war German government met in a sleepy little town on the Rhein,
Bonn, chosen partly because the new Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, lived just across the river.

In 1961, Germany was partitioned by an intra-German border creating two separate

countries; West Germany consisting the British, American and French zones, while the Russian
zone became East Germany. As the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Germany or GDR) became
increasingly independent and free, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or DDR)
developed into a Russian satellite state. The Russians built a barrier along the length of the
internal German border and would shoot anyone trying to cross (in either direction). Berlin itself
was partitioned in a manner similar to the whole country and here the barrier was the famous
Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, Berlin lay completely within the Russian zone (or DDR) meaning the
British, American and French zones of Berlin (which formed West Berlin) were now a Capitalist
island in a Communist sea. East Berlin was the capital city of East Germany and Bonn remained
only a ‘provisional’ capital of West Germany until the two countries were reunified.

I’d moved to West Germany in 1987 and had settled well into life there. But in the late
eighties things began to change. The events of the summer and autumn of 1989 brought an
unexpectedly swift end to the division of Germany. A miscommunication between an East
German Government department and their press secretary meant East Germans were informed
on 3rd October 1989 that they could move freely westwards across a border where normally they
would risk being shot! This opened the floodgates and East and West Germans were reunited in
emotional scenes. Formal reunification was pushed through by West German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl and achieved in October 1990, a few months after a newly reunified German national soccer
team had become world champions in Italy.

Similar changes were taking place all over Eastern Europe, not least in Russia itself. Lenin,
then Stalin, had ensured Russia was ruled as ruthlessly as by any of the Tsars they had replaced in
the revolutions at the start of the twentieth century. But, people were growing tired of
Communism and change was needed. The old guard tried to hang on as long as possible but new
blood, in the form of Mikail Gorbachov, could sense that change was necessary and set the
country on a course of glasnost and peristroikia.

It was this atmosphere of great social and political upheaval that made a trip East so
exciting. A Chemistry teacher new to the school where I was working proposed a trip to Russia for
March 1991 but she needed also a male member of staff on the trip. After advertising for
volunteers and receiving six responses, she held a ‘drawing the name from a hat’ one lunchtime in
the staff room. Mine was chosen and, from that moment on, I have been fortunate enough to
take part in many school trips to locations all around the world.

Our group on this occasion consisted of nine boys, seven girls, two teachers and, unusually,
a parent.

Day 1

Although we didn’t know it when we assembled at the airport, the coming week would
include meeting Muscovite skateboarders, eating in the dark, appreciating art in the Arbat, being
frequently mobbed by money exchangers and, on a personal note, an unexpected icy shower.

We arranged to meet at 06:00 at Köln/Bonn airport, ready for the 07:10 Lufthansa flight to
London Heathrow, which was then delayed by 25 minutes. Fortunately, our connecting flight to
Moscow wasn’t due to leave Gatwick until 18:55. After arriving at London Heathrow we
transferred, by tube, to Victoria, left our luggage there (after it was searched) and took the tube to
Tower Hill where we wandered around the Tower for half an hour, followed by an enjoyable boat
trip down the Thames to Westminster. From there we moved to Leicester Square for a pizza lunch
and then on to Trafalgar Square before strolling down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. This tour of
London was done mainly on foot and very ably led by the trip leader who had lived there
previously. Although we didn’t realise it at the time, this tour of London was to prove a sharp and
interesting contrast to what awaited us in Russia.

After reclaiming our baggage at Victoria, we took the train south to Gatwick airport. Our
Britannia Airways flight to Moscow left on time and, as we neared our destination, the clear sky
gave us great views of the night-time Moscow lights. So far, so good – we thought.

We landed ahead of schedule at 23:15 (local time) at the wrong airport! The décor in the
arrivals lounge was such that we could have imagined our plane had also been a time machine.
Dull, wooden panels lines the walls and the lighting was presumably done exclusively through a
collection of 40 watt bulbs; such a contrast to the glass, steel and strip lights we had left in
Köln/Bonn. If you are familiar with the work of composer Brain Eno you will be aware of his
groundbreaking piece, ‘Music for Airports’. Really, this is where modern ambient music begins. It
seems Eno had to spend some time in this airport and was struck how the piped music failed to
match the mood of transient visitors. He decided he would create alternative music for Köln/Bonn
airport and a new genre was born. It is sobering to consider how ambient music might have
developed had Eno stopped over in Moscow instead.

We waited a long time for our luggage to arrive, followed by a further wait while our guide
travelled across Moscow (from the correct airport) to meet us. An antiquated coach took us to the
Molodyzozhny International Hotel on Dmitrovskoye Highway, arriving at around 03:30; and then
straight to bed. The hotel was built for the Olympic Summer Games in 1980 and was later
renovated in 2000. The hotel has 200 rooms on 25 floors and is now part of the Best Eastern chain;
and judging by the Google images from the web, it’s in much better shape now than when we
visited. The hotel’s website describes its location as “in the North of Moscow, at Dmitrovskoe
schosse, near metro station “Timiryazevskaya”, 15 minutes’ drive to the historical center and only
18 km from Moscow International Airport Sheremetyevo.” (https://hcm.ru/en/about/ )
 It was while staying at this hotel that a bizarre incident happened. Arriving back after a
day’s sightseeing, I disturbed by a middle-aged man in a trench coat who had been in my room
and who left swiftly without a word, pushing passed me to reach the door. This was the Cold war
era, so was he a spy? Or did he think I was a spy and that MI5 were so desperate that they needed
their 00-agents to take part in school trips as a cover? “Ah, Mr. Bond. You will not escape the
country with the secrets of the Russian education system.“ Was his mission to bug my room so
the Russians could discover the advanced teaching techniques from the West? Perhaps this will
inspire a new wave of James Bond films – The Spy Who Taught Me, On Her Majesty’s Education
Service, The Man With The Golden Stars.

Day 2

We all had a much needed lie-in, followed by lunch at noon. As with the airport décor, the
restaurant was like stepping back a couple of decades. We were seated together at long tables
with mirrors around the room. Our first Russian meal was like so many others I would experience
on school trips. We would begin with a tureen of soup, in this case cucumber, served to the
students by the teachers at the table. This would be followed by a meat dish; today though the
meat was of an unknown variety, causing much speculation among the students as to its origin. I
have no recollection of there being vegetarian or vegan options. Ice cream for dessert is usually a
safe bet when catering for school parties and so it was in Moscow.

Generally, the food was of poor quality, often cold or lukewarm and usually with
unidentifiable meat. The only meat we did recognize was chicken but that arrived served with
what today would be described as a ‘grease jus’. Also on each table was a bowl of apples that in
the West would have been thrown away but here in Moscow remained on the table for several
days. Had I brought along a camera with stop-motion facility, I could have made a short film
entitled ‘Decomposing Apples’. As the days progressed, the lighting above the tables grew
dimmer, presumably to make it increasingly difficult for us to identify what we were eating.
Another explanation for this dimming of the lights was that it seemed to be in direct proportion to
our refusal to exchange Western currency with the waiters who were always loitering around the
restaurant looking for a quick deal; “You have dollars, yes?”. Following the trip some students
shared their thoughts and experiences in the school magazine; one wrote: “I didn’t dislike the food
but I wouldn’t want to live on it.”

In the afternoon we were treated to the first of several interesting coach tours. Being
March in Moscow, warm clothing was still needed, along with good boots because of the snow.
First stop on the tour was the Hotel Ukraina, one of the so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ or ‘Stalin’s High
Rises’, a group of structures in the Stalinist style, built between 1947 and 1953. Generally drab
and uninspiring, yet functional, they are not something to warm the heart as you walk to work on
a winter’s morning. In the post-trip school magazine article one student wrote, “The thing that
struck me most was the greyness of everything. The weather was grey, the buildings were grey,
the parks were waterlogged, the tress were still bare, there was dirty snow and slush still on the
ground, even most of the people were forlorn and depressed. It’s not surprising really, considering
where and how they have to live. Not many of them smiled.” We would meet one of Ukraina’s
sisters later in the morning.

Next was the Novodevichy Convent, or New Maiden’s Monastery (later we would visit the
Old Maiden’s Monastery, located within the Kremlin), founded in 1524 and looking very much the
same as it did following renovations in the seventeenth century. During its history many female
members of the Russian royal family have been housed here and, in 1812, the nuns managed to
thwart Napoleon’s attempts to destroy the convent.

The oldest building within the Convent is the Russian Orthodox Smolensk Cathedral,
dedicated to the icon Our Lady of Smolensk, and adorned with onion spires displaying opulent
gold leaf topped with crosses looking like holy television aerials tuning in to receive God’s
messages. Unlike western cathedrals, there was little stained glass, making interior lighting
predominantly candle-based. In terms of gold-leaf adornment, though, more impressive than the
cathedral was the diminutive Prokhorovs’ Chapel standing patiently next to its more illustrious and
much older sister. In 1911, this burial vault was built for the Prokhorov family.

In 1922, the cathedral was the last in Russia to be closed by the Bolsheviks, who turned it
into the Museum of Women’s Emancipation. The atheistic dogma of the Soviet government
thawed somewhat during the Stalin-era, to the extent that he encouraged theological courses to
be taught there. However, it wasn’t until 1994 that nuns returned to the convent and by 2004 the
site achieved UNESCO World Heritage status.

After the convent, we passed the impressive main building of the Moscow State University.
Its award-winning design was by Lev Rudnev and is the highest of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers of
Moscow. Stalinist buildings are to architecture what heavy metal is to music. Why use aluminum
and glass when you can use an impressive 40,000 tons of steel and 130,000 cubic meters of
concrete. Its central spire reaches to a height of 240 meters, which made it the seventh tallest
building in the world and the tallest in Europe when it was opened in September 1953; it remains
the world’s tallest educational building. (Who makes these lists?!)

Next we visited the Dollar Store. This should not be confused with the Pound Shops now
blighting most British high streets or the One Euro shops on the continent. The Dollar Store was
where the more exotic goods available in Moscow could be bought legally in a government-
controlled environment, rather than having to resort to the illegal (but much more exciting) black
market. I suspect the use of Dollar Stores had much to do with the Soviet authority’s desire for
western currency and the taxation possibilities not available via Black Market trading.

Red Square is the central feature of any tour of Moscow and this was our next port-of-call.
Throughout my entire life to this point, Europe had been divided by what Churchill named an ‘Iron
Curtain’. Places like Poland, Bulgaria and, of course, Russia seemed as inaccessible as the moon.
However, in 1969 the moon had been reached – by the Americans; and it was, in part, western
capitalism, led by the Americans, that had suddenly pulled back that Iron Curtain in 1989. Until a
couple of years beforehand, standing on Red Square seemed as unlikely as standing on the Sea of
Tranquility; yet here we were surveying the delights of Russia’s most famous square. Of course, to
say that it was American Capitalism that defeated Communism would be a gross over-
simplification of the issue and an insult to the thousands of brave citizens of Gdansk, Leipzig,
Dresden and other cities who risked their lives for freedom from dictatorship. However, without
the promise of something better, the promise of the American Dream, any resistance may have
lacked drive.

We saw many of Moscow’s iconic buildings in Red Square. The Kremlin dominated one
side of the square, in front of which was Lenin’s Mausoleum. Opposite the Kremlin was the GUM
department store and nearby, St. Basil’s Cathedral.
 Monday 6th July 1936 is a day that saw one of the more bizarre entries in the annals of
soccer history. On this day around ten thousand spectators witnessed a football match played in
Red Square primarily for the pleasure of Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. It was his desire to witness his
first soccer match and, rather than simply calling in at a local stadium, ordering a mug of Bovril and
a meat pie, and shouting “Come on, you Reds”, he dictated that the whole show be brought to
him. As he sat in his white jacket from a vantage point on top of Lenin’s mausoleum (how many of
us can say we’ve watched a football match while sat on a tomb?) and surrounded by the usual
hangers-on, the A and B teams of Spartak Moscow played out a highly orchestrated exhibition
match for the benefit of the dictator. To turn Red Square into a green football pitch 300 helpers
rolled out a 9,000 square meter felt carpet prepared by a Moscow Textile firm.

The organisers had arranged that Alexander Kossarev, leader of the Party’s Youth
Organisation, who would be standing next to Stalin, should wave a white handkerchief when he
sensed that Stalin might be getting bored with the match. This would be a sign that ‘something
interesting’ should happen on the pitch – and quick! However, having an A and B team from the
same club meant that ‘interesting events’ could be planned beforehand. Stalin would, within one
game, see a headed goal, a goal from a corner, a penalty and so on. Hardly surprising then that
the final result was 4-3 to the A team. While it is not unusual to have a match with seven goals, in
this case the high scoring is remarkable when considering that the matched lasted only 43 minutes
(longer than the planned half-hour because Stalin was enjoying it so much). Black and white film
of the event shows Stalin applauding enthusiastically and so, thankfully, Kossarev’s white
handkerchief was not needed. This was just weeks before the start of ‘The Terror’ and several of
the players on display that afternoon, plus organizer Kossarev, would not survive its brutality.

Spartak Moscow was indeed named after Spartacus, the gladiator slave who led an uprising
against Ancient Rome. The team, created by the food workers’ union, was considered to be ‘the
people's team’ and would eventually win twelve Soviet league titles (compared to the eleven of
their arch rivals, Dynamo Moscow). Their golden age was the 1950s but they fell on harder times,
eventually being relegated in 1976. Promotion the following season led to a league title in 1979.
In the following decade Spartak were involved in Russia’s worst footballing tragedy when, on 20
October 1982, sixty-six people died in a stampede during the UEFA Cup match between Spartak
and Dutch club HFC Haarlem.

It is said that “if you lay down in Red Square at one corner and rest your chin on the
cobbles you'll find that the place is so vast that you can actually see the curvature of the earth?”
(Poolman). It seems emblematic of his regime that ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin, despite his Socialist leanings,
should order this match to be played on something other than a level playing field.

The most striking feature of Red Square is St. Basil’s Cathedral (or The Cathedral of Vasily
the Blessed, to use its correct name), built, on orders from Ivan the Terrible, between 1555 and
1561. Given that Russia is a secular state, with a strong atheistic history in recent times, it seems
strange that the country’s most iconic building is a church; although, in the late 1920s the
authorities did change its usage to that of a museum. The architect and his fate are surrounded in
mystery. It is unclear from records whether the building was designed by one of two people. The
myth runs that the architect was asked by Ivan the Terrible if he could design an even more
beautiful building than St. Basil’s. Sensing another lucrative commission, the architect said it
would be possible. However, Ivan did not want his new cathedral to be outshone and promptly
had the architect blinded. However, as the architect later participated in the restoration of the
Cathedral of the Annunciation following a fire in 1564, historians are convinced that the St Basil’s
story is merely a myth.

Next we were given some time to visit the GUM department store. A philistine would
describe it as little more than an indoor market; but having grown up with such markets in the
likes of Bolton in the north west of England, such a description would be like describing Mount
Everest as a hill. GUM’s interior architecture was near perfect. Any art student drawing the
interior couldn’t help but use it as an essential exercise in vanishing points. The vertical and
horizontal lines of the parallel walls complemented the hemispherical arches of the glass roof.
Rarely does a building take my breathe away but GUM was beautiful.

Actually, Moscow’s GUM is not a single department store, rather the most famous in a
chain of stores across the Soviet Bloc. GUM's goal was ‘communism through consumerism’ (a
mind-boggling statement of oxymoronic proportions) but, in the end, "only succeeded in
alienating consumers from state stores and instituting a culture of complaint and entitlement"
(Hilton) Russian economic planning was run under five year plans, started by Stalin. He needed
somewhere to plan these massive programmes and so, in 1928, he ordered the store be converted
into offices. It wasn’t until 1953 that the building reverted to being a store and our time there
coincided approximately with its move to privatization.

Why do MacDonald’s call their eating houses ‘restaurants’ and not cafés? My
understanding of the difference between a café and a restaurant is that in a café one pays for the
meal before eating, but in a restaurant payment (including that uncomfortable tipping or
“Bistromaths” as Douglas Adams called it) is after the meal. Back at school, our students were
used to having a pair of Golden Arches just three minutes’ walk away from school but on today’s
tour we were taken to Pushkinskaya Square to see the first (and at this point, only) MacDonald’s in
Russia.

Possibly more impressive, however, was the queue that had formed around the square in
front of the place. The queue we saw today, consisting of people of all ages wrapped up warmly
against the March cold, was small compared to the original queue that formed on January 31st of
the previous year, which measured several kilometers in length. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the
Muscovites, 30,000 customers visited the restaurant on that first day, more than tripling the
previous record (Budapest). This figure is even more astounding when one considers that the
price of a single Big Mac was equivalent to that of a monthly metro pass. This being MacDonald’s,
service staff were all expected to smile. However, the Muscovite customers, accustomed to poor
and rude Russian service, soon requested less smiling from the staff when they were being served.
Two years after our visit, a second MacDonald’s would be opened in Moscow, and this time
President Boris Yeltsin would be in attendance.

I remember being told two stories about this first MacDonald’s. The currency situation was
such that if you had a dollar bill you could move straight to the front of the queue. The Capitalist
Yankee dollar subverting Socialism by creating a two-tier system for entering MacDonald’s. Also,
the Muscovites chose to eat a Big Mac layer by layer, rather than the Western approach of trying
to get it into one’s mouth in one go!

A constant feature of our travels in Russia was being on the wrong end of relentless black
marketeering. Everyone was selling something – for dollars! What would parents think when
their child returned home with a cap from a former Russian soldier? In fact, much of the black
marketeering was conducted by former soldiers keen to make a few dollars (not rubles) by selling
off their uniform. On offer also were the usual stacking wooden dolls, including a political version
with a small caricature of Lenin at the center, followed by a Stalin doll (now, there’s two words
you don’t normally see put together), and so on. The more daring versions of these dolls had an
additional outside layer depicting the rise to power of Boris Yeltsin, a prophecy that would come
true not long after we left Russia. The moment we stopped anywhere in Moscow, a crowd would
gather at the foot of the steps of the coach and we would have to ‘run the gauntlet’ of these
amateur money changers, all wanting US dollars. The worst part of this was explained ably by a
student writing afterwards for the school magazine; “We had many different kinds of people come
up to us in the street, and try and sell us things on the black market – they were everywhere, and
sometimes got a bit overwhelming – but the worst kind were the young children who wore hardly
any clothes, were dirty, and had rotten teeth, and they used to beg for chewing gum.” One of the
main areas for this black market trading was a viewing platform affording a glorious panoramic
view of Moscow. Central to this view was the Lenin Stadium that would, in 2018, be the venue for
the soccer World Cup Final.

We returned to the hotel for our evening meal and then, at around 19:30, went out with
our guide, Sveta, for a tour of the Moscow Metro. The walk from the hotel to the local metro
station, Savyolovskaya (Line 9), which had been opened for a little over two years, gave us an idea
just how badly maintained the roads and pavements were. This, however, as we were soon to
discover, was in stark contrast to the splendors of Moscow’s Metro.

The Moscow metro system is the busiest in Europe but its real claim to fame is that 44 of
its 212 stations are designated as cultural monuments. But what led to Moscow having such a
famous metro system? The main driving force appears to have been Stalin. Following the giant
traffic gridlock of 6 January 1931, he got construction planning started so that on 10 December
1931, seven construction workers, in the inner yard of 13 Rusakovskaya Street, broke the first
ground. Less than three years later, the first line was opened on 15 October 1934. The project
used the slogan, ‘Building a Palace for the People!’ Controversy surrounded the British designers
and engineers of the metro (formerly they had built London’s Underground system, the world’s
oldest metro) because many in the NKVD felt that, after having designed the metro, the British
engineers knew too much about Moscow and numerous of them were arrested for espionage,
tried and deported in 1933. Coincidently, “the design of the Gants Hill tube station in London,
which was completed much later, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station.” (Wikipedia)

There has been much written concerning the absolute power wielded by Stalin; unclear,
however, is how much is true and how much is myth. One such story concerns Moscow’s
equivalent of London’s Circle Line, the Ring Line,. “ It traces the Garden Circle (one of the main
avenues of the city). The ring makes changing lines wonderfully easy. It is marked brown in all the
official metro plans. Rumour has it that it was never a part of the initial design, but that Stalin put
a coffee mug on the provisional plans that left a mark in the shape and location of the current ring
line, and that it was then constructed because nobody then dared to oppose the Leader’s note.”
(Wiejak, theculturetrip)

The Hotel Moskva is another case in point. Designed by Alexey Shchusev and opened in
December 1935, it was notable for its use of two different designs on the original plan. Shchusev
submitted to Stalin a single drawing, with one half showing one design and the other half a
different design. Stalin signed the middle of the drawing, possibly assuming the building was
meant to be asymmetrical. Afraid of informing Stalin of the ambiguity, the building was
constructed with one wing of each type on either side of the building. Two days after this, our
group were to meet another product of Russia’s taste for rulers with absolute power.

After the Metro tour, we arrived in Red Square just in time to see the hourly changing of
the guard outside Lenin’s Mausoleum. Today this is done in front of the tomb of the unknown
soldier which stands on the sight of Lenin’s mausoleum and takes several minutes to perform.
What we experienced back in 1991, however, happened ‘in the twinkling of an eye’. The two
relief guards, accompanied by a third guard, goose-stepped (a style seen rarely outside of
dictatorships) to the mausoleum’s main entrance and in what appeared to be a single movement,
changed places with the out-going guardsmen. This all happened as bells were striking the hour,
giving the impression of some sort of life-sized musical clock. We were then left by our guide to
make our own way back to the hotel via the metro.

In the early 1990s, skateboarding was rapidly growing in popularity. Mind you, it took until
2020 for it to become an Olympic sport. (If Tug-of-war can be an Olympic sport (1900-1920), why
can’t skateboarding?) We had two skateboarders on the trip and, as with all skateboarders, they
took great care to make sure they didn’t look like they cared about anything. Skateboarders are
very sociable creatures when amongst their own kind and, on this evening, our two skaters met up
with a Muscovite of similar leanings who tried to help us to reach our hotel. I think he was just
glad to meet fellow skaters from the West and practice his English. To round off the evening, the
Metro ride back to the hotel proved uncomfortable for one of the girls in our group when she was
nearly eaten alive by the vicious doors of the train. On returning to the hotel, we had to organize
events for the following day. Students went to the disco bar and I went to bed.

Day 3

Breakfast was at 09:00 and the food seemed to be improving; or maybe we were just
getting used to it. After breakfast we were taken to Red Square again, this time to look around
inside the Kremlin, entering over the Troitskaya Bridge and through the ‘back door’ or Troitskaya
Tower.

We spent over an hour there looking around the churches and other places of interest,
such as the Cathedral of the Annunciation with its nine golden, onion-shaped domes. However, to
teenage minds anything impressively big is what really attracts. In this case that meant the Tsar
Bell and the Tsar Cannon.

The Tsar Bell is definitely impressively big. However, it has never been rung. Our guide
told us why; a story that must be repeated dozens of times each day within the walls of the
Kremlin. In 1733, Empress Anna ordered that the bell be made and entrusted its manufacture to
Ivan an Mikhail Motorin, a local father and son business. Preparations for the casting of the bell
took two years, in which time father Ivan died. Eventually on 25th November 1735 the casting was
carried out successfully. During the next two years work was carried out decorating the exterior of
the bell. But, in May 1737, before the decorations had been completed, disaster struck. A large
fire broke out within the Kremlin and spread to the wooden structure supporting the bell. The
guards panicked and threw water on the hot bell, causing it to crack. Worse followed when the
fire-damaged wooden supports finally gave way and the cracked bell fell into its casting pit. And
there it lay for almost a century; what a forlorn sight it must have been. When we saw the bell it
was displayed on a proper plinth with the broken piece propped against it. Later in the day we
were to visit the circus and I reckon a troupe of acrobats, standing on shoulders to form a human
pyramid, would be able to fit three high inside the bell.

Equally impressive is the Tsar Cannon. It is unclear if the name refers to Tsar Fyodor
Ivanovich, whose image is cast on the cannon or simply to its massive size. In front of the cannon
are four cannonballs, arranged to form a pyramid (the mathematician in me wants to use the word
tetrahedron but writing is about communication). These cannonballs are confusing for two
reasons. Firstly, the cannon itself was designed to fire 800kg of stone grapeshot, not cannonballs.
Secondly, the diameter of each cannonball is greater than the diameter of the cannon. According
to our guide, this was a deliberate tactic to impress, possibly frighten, any visiting foreigners. This
is at odds however with legend, which holds that the cannonballs, each weighing about one ton,
were sent from St. Petersburg, as a symbol of their friendly rivalry with Moscow.

Back to the hotel for lunch, after which we were taken to the Arbat for an afternoon’s
shopping. We began by watching a six-piece Dixieland Jazz Band who provided a musical backdrop
to our shopping. Along with MacDonald’s, was this another example of the gradual
Americanisation of Russia? The most popular activity among the students proved to be having
their portraits drawn by street artists. These artists displayed their talents through portraits of the
stars of the day (Joan Collins, for example) although I doubt very much that these portraits were
done in person. The artists were also very pushy and even bartered for their time as well as the
price. Some artists used colour, others just charcoal. In the end, though, I think each student was
impressed by, and happy with, their portraits.

From there we continued down Arbat Street, stopping to look, or maybe buy, at many of
the street traders. I still have the carved wooden chess set I bought here. Stacking dolls were
popular purchases, particularly the political ones. The open trading was done in rubles but the
mention of dollars sent traders’ eyes scanning the vicinity for any police presence before they
proceeded with the bartering.

Following dinner at the hotel we were taken to the Great Moscow State Circus located on
Vernadsky Prospekt, an event enjoyed by everyone, particularly as the acts were of such a high
standard. Afterwards, back at the hotel, we rounded off the evening in the bar before heading for
bed shortly before midnight.

Day 4

After breakfast we were taken on a long coach ride to see a typical Russian school. The
headmistress greeted us and we were then split into groups. My group was taken to a class of 10
and 11 year-olds.

We were all overwhelmed by their friendliness, generosity and marvelous use of the
English language. Before we left the classroom the pupils unexpectedly gave presents to each of
us and exchanged addresses. We also saw a Physics lesson and had a tour of the school. Finally,
we were treated to tea and homemade cakes plus a floorshow of sketches written and performed
by the students in English.

The generosity shown to us by the Russian schoolchildren we had met left us all feeling ill-
at-ease because we had nothing to offer back to them. Had we known in advance, we could have
brought something with us but this information was not given to us before we left Germany. In
order to ease our guilty consciences, once we had returned home we heard of a mountain of
sweets that had been left over at the end of a large, local sweet fair. We tried to arrange for the
sweets to be sent to the children at the school in Moscow but, in the end, we were defeated by
the red tape involved in sending foodstuff to Russia.

The coaches returned us to the hotel for lunch, after which we split the group into two.
My colleague took the majority of students to the State Armoury, while I stayed with the four who
didn’t want to visit the Armoury and the five of us joined a school from Scotland who visited the
Arbat (again), followed by the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art.

On returning to the hotel we all ate a quick dinner because my colleague was taking most
of the girls to see the Bolshoi Ballet. I stayed behind in the hotel with the boys plus the only two
girls not interested in the ballet. Having vacated our rooms ahead of our transfer to Leningrad, we
spent the evening in the lobby protecting everyone’s luggage from possible theft. I seem to
remember there was a football match on TV too. This could have been Spartak Moscow (them
again!) beating Real Madrid 3-1 in front of 90,000 fans in the Bernabéu Stadium and thus,
following a 0-0 in the first leg, knocking the Spanish champions out of the European Cup at the
quarter-final stage. (This would be the last time the tournament would be a solely knock-out
competition.) It is more likely, however, the match being shown on the black and white TV set
was a UEFA Cup match between Torpedo Moscow and Danish club Brondby, which the local team
won 1-0 with a late goal.

At 22:30 we drove to the railway station to rejoin the rest of the group, ready for our
overnight transfer by train to Leningrad. School trips are littered with random, unplanned (and
generally, unwanted) surprises, and whilst waiting at the station we were accosted by a crazy
Bulgarian. Once on the train, we sorted out compartments. Then, due to the arrival of a Russian
gentleman in the girls’ compartment, sleeping arrangements had to be rearranged. At 00:05 the
train left Moscow station for Leningrad and a long, sleepless night had begun.