Back in the USSR
Outside the Russian embassy, Bayswater Road, last Saturday afternoon
It’s difficult not to be distracted by war in Ukraine. Shame on me that I only feel this now. Why did I struggle to pay so little attention to the plight of thousands of innocent Syrians when Russian planes were targeting hospitals in so called resistance strongholds? Resistant to what exactly, another dictator which Russia fancied, in this 8 year long civil war and counting?
Shiny new war
I wonder what’s happening there? The news spotlight is long gone, but this shiny, new war reminds me again of the total and utter devastation in cities like Aleppo. With all that destruction, what happened to the people who dared to want change?
Al Jazeera confirms that many Syrians are voicing their support for Ukraine, a view not surprisingly contrary to President Assad’s, who has only survived because of Putin’s commitment to provide fire power and maintain his position as another undemocratically elected puppet.
Syria’s war is a complex one with many vested interests. But that’s not the case in the Ukraine. It couldn’t have been clearer to see what was happening on the Russian side of their 2,300 km border. They even had help from Belarus, another country with an undemocratically elected leader, strategically important now in the campaign to conquer Ukraine.
Is it the unjustness of this invasion on a trumped up pretext or the proximity to home, friends and family which has really caught my attention?
Ukraine in 1979
I visited Ukraine when it was part of the USSR. As an 18 year old school boy, I watched Russian sailors goose step at The Monument to the Unknown Sailor at Shevchenko Park in Odessa on the Black Sea. Our coach from Birmingham’s Bull Ring drove every last mile to Odessa and then on to Kyiv in Ukraine. It’s not far, not far at all.
We spent a long time on the Romanian border crossing into the USSR. It included a thorough inspection of the 40 seater coach inside and out. Out meant underneath. It was standard practice to put vehicles over a pit so armed guards could wander the length of it with flash lights looking for whatever one hides under the axles of coaches?
They kindly made it up to us for waiting patiently, by providing an in-country tourist guide, who travelled on our coach and happily answered our questions for the whole time we were there. She never left our side but it also meant travelling with a spare seat all the way from Birmingham and back again from the Czechoslovakian border (now Slovakia) where she departed.
We thought it was good sport to try and provoke her by asking questions about East Germany and whether the Gulag still existed in Siberia and how many political prisoners were there? She’d heard it all before and provided beautifully, polished, stock answers about everyone being free and enormously grateful. There were no prisoners, at least not in Siberia.
Not dissimilar to the rhetoric which Putin has been spouting recently about his good intentions for his newly invaded neighbour. Her only blemish was the perfect English came with a Russian accent. We thought she must have been a spy or an officer in the KGB, having been raised on James Bond where everything was not to be trusted, east of Berlin.
Rude awakening
There had been several meetings as part of the onboarding for this trip, organised by some ex-teachers in the Midlands and recommended by our family friends, who’d done the six week tour the year before.
The rules and strictness of the communist countries visited increased the further east we went. Hungary shocked us as soon as the first night at a camp site after the relative comfort of Austria, where we’d come from. We were to sleep in basic wooden huts for two, next door to a large chemical manufacturing plant. It was like sleeping on a picnic bench with a pitched roof next to the gentle hum of an industrial complex, with a brightly lit night sky. The shock was finding out that the Hungarian people on their own holidays had no choice. They’d been instructed to go there by their government for two weeks. We at least, got to leave in the morning.
Wriggles, they shouted
A small crowd of children and adults gathered as our English coach pulled up shouting wriggles at us, holding up Hungarian forints? All of us had dutifully bought a big bag of assorted sweets and chewing gum and started doing brisk business. What they were really after was Wrigley’s chewing gum. After a few minutes, many of us realised how pathetic we were being and gave it away instead.
Whilst we were allowed to walk around in our western jeans wherever we went in Russia, we were under strict instructions not to sell them. That didn’t stop Charles from Buckinghamshire, selling his in Kyiv, where we stopped for a few days. He’d got to know a group of Ukrainians on our camp site and was sure he wasn’t being duped by government agents. It had happened before.
The government run tourist shops were the only ones which didn’t seem to have queues. There was nothing to buy in them and the shelves were mostly empty but constantly being cleaned by shop assistants who had nothing else to do. Ordinary Ukrainians seemed to queue for everything, bread, meat, fish and vegetables. Shortages was part of everyday life in 1979.
The one shop we all loved in Kyiv, was the poster shop, full of Russian propaganda. Everyone wanted the artist impressions of soldiers standing strong, defiant, silhouetted against the sun, hammer and sickle overarching all.
London walk
We’d been out for a long walk with friends on Saturday and ended up on Bayswater Road almost by chance. It took a few seconds to work out why police lights were flashing persistently further down the road. Of course, protests outside the Russian embassy.
It’s never been a welcoming place with barbed wire liberally distributed around the perimeter walls. Its location at the top of Kensington Palace Gardens, one of the most expensive streets in London, seems a perfect place to confirm Putin’s only real interests, power and wealth.
A crowd had formed outside. They seemed subdued, still shocked with the news from Thursday’s invasion. The police politely watched as messages of support were chalked onto the high wall. Sympathisers passing by in cars, stirred the crowd with their horns every few seconds and another chant broke out for a few more; Het Bonhe, No War.
Has Putin inadvertently started to reverse the clock waving in a new period of Russian isolation with the tank that crossed one too many lines? A reversal of fortunes has started, as a cash starved country can no longer access its war chest, western privileges gone in a coordinated stand against inexcusable behaviour which mustn’t go unpunished. Putin doesn’t care, he proved that in Syria. Let’s hope that the Russian people do.
I was fortunate enough to visit Russia in 1986. Similar experience except the Intourist guide took us to some dodgy illegal bars. We were offered £1000 for our jeans and any western branded clothes. That’s £1000 worth of rubles which we couldn’t take out of the country. We found the microphones in our hotel in Moscow but not in Leningrad. At the time the locals were lovely friendly people. In the intervening years I’ve had business dealings whilst at Motorola. Corruption was the norm.
You raise so many issues in this blog, many that resonated with me - the flood of refugees from Syria are living a very miserable life in countries that opened their borders but are themselves in crisis, especially Lebanon. But getting any coverage for this is very hard indeed- this is a war and a region only of concern when it is producing terrorists or threatening the West.
My daughter works with sea rescue where the realities of mass migrations, border hostility and the trauma of displacement are so clear- hundreds die as we holiday by the Med and again getting coverage is so hard.
Who now remembers the chaos and suffering in Afghanistan?
We can't care about everything, we are laden already after the pandemic and the shock of war in Europe is deep. Im so glad my Mum who lived through the war and hated war and was devastated that UK forgot the lessons of peace when they voted LEAVE, would be beyond heartbroken. She knew the terror of bombs and loss, of trying to protect a baby during the raids etc and the scars of war marked many in my family. I grew up in the shadow of a country and a people deeply wounded by war and I find it all quite unbearable to even listen to.
But the West carries responsibility here too - many military people have said the leaders were warned many times since 2014, especially about the drums beating in Russia- and the racism at the borders is deeply disturbing.
Thanks for opening up these issues and for sharing about your travels...I went on a long tour in a rickety van with others a few years earlier and your descriptions brought back many memories.