How I Learned to Hate (part 3)

    Two years and a lot of red tape later, I stepped off the plane in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia, located on the southern edge of Siberia. Khabarovsk was the second to last stop on the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok. It really is cold in Siberia. It is said that when the Ruskies tell jokes in November no one laughs until March, when the words thaw out. Maybe there is a connection to why the commies were so cold hearted as well, I thought.

    Galya, the department chair of the language institute where I was the visiting scholar was called ZAICHIK, (Little Rabbit) by the faculty under her charge. She greeted me with, “Welcome, my PTITSA (Little Bird)”, though I was at least twice her size. These affectionate exchanges puzzled me. Why not TOVARISH, comrade? That’s what Russians were supposed to call one another, I thought.

    Little Rabbit tutored me in the Russian language in my spare time. She also had it in her mind that I should learn something about the Russian heart. To do that she insisted I visit Moscow, the heart of the motherland - to know what real Russians felt, she said. I didn’t want to go. I blamed my lack of desire on not being a sightseer and on not knowing Russian history. It would be a waste of time, I responded in rebellion to her idea. There was another reason why I didn’t want to go. Little Rabbit, however, persisted and Little Bird eventually took flight to Moscow.

* * *

     It didn’t take long for me to remember that I really didn’t like sightseeing. I got lost in the Russian Metro, the Moscow subway. At every subway station, the stations were huge; everything is super-sized in Russia. Russia is big, three times the size of the U.S. and eight time zones wide. It took 10 hours to fly across the country, not counting the stop-over in Novosibersk -- literally the middle of nowhere.

     The ceilings of the subway stations were 20-30 meters high. There were murals on the walls with figures and figurines the size of three people, all of whom were engaged in various actions: battles against Germany, Poland and other ancient foes; invasions of countries; rebuilding of walls and harvesting fields and such. The murals would have been more pleasing had they not been so dirty, and more educational had I been more learned. Each station had a different story to tell from a different time period about a different event in Russia’s 800 year old history. What a trip it was to just visit these stations! I regretted my ignorance deeply. I also couldn’t find Moscow station.

     A dozen or more stops later, after disembarking, searching and concluding they were the wrong stations, I finally found MOCKVA. Mockva is the English transliteration of the Russian spelling for the city we Americans call Moscow. It’s not even pronounced like ‘moss’ and ‘cow. It is more like ‘mosque’ and the ‘vo’ in von Buren.

     The escalator, the longest and tallest in the world I later learned, carried me into the heart of Mockva, into the center of a square, a square large enough to give home to an entire town. To my pleasant surprise, I saw something I had only seen in posters on walls of travel agents in Japan. A large beet colored church-like structure with an olive green mushroom top and several pointed cones stood sanctimoniously on one end of this square. It was St. Basil’s Cathedral! And I was in Red Square. To my right was Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum. An army could have been buried there instead of just that one man. I reminded myself that Lenin was responsible for other armies being buried. Behind Lenin’s mausoleum was a giant pale yellow wall which stretched for nearly as far as I could see. On the other side of that wall was the Kremlin.

     I had learned the heart of communism was Moscow. The heart of Moscow was Red Square. The heart of Red Square was the Kremlin and the upper chamber of the heart of the Kremlin was the Moscow High Party School. Little Rabbit had arranged for me to visit all of them, including that upper chamber of the heart. Perhaps Little Rabbit had sensed the need for me to confront not only my past but my present prejudices against the Russian people. Though it was deep freezer cold outside I could feel my own heart begin to thaw.