Emerging from its Communist past, Russia tests the waters of democracy as the author travels what were once known as the waterways of the czars.

By Cork Millner

Moscow. Red Square. And I’m in awe. Here I am, a retired American military officer, standing in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. This pyramid of cubes cut from red granite and black labradorite was — until 1993 — used as the platform where rows of grim-faced Soviet leaders watched the May Day parade, the annual spectacle of Soviet military might. Today, a lone Russian militiaman strolls in front of the tomb, replacing the goose-stepping honor guards of years past.

I shift my attention to the twisted, multicolored onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1561. Ivan was so amazed at the beauty of the work, he had the architect blinded so he would never be able to design anything so exquisite again. As I raise my camera to take a picture, I notice … American soldiers! In front of the cathedral I see 50 — perhaps 60 — American soldiers in camouflage fatigues sporting Ranger insignia, laughing and jostling with each other as they gather to take pictures in Red Square.

I smile as I think about the T-shirt I bought from a sidewalk vendor only a few hours earlier. Emblazoned on a red background, McDonald’s restaurants’ golden arches (there are 22 in Moscow) outline a profile of Lenin; below it reads, “McLenin’s.” On the back of the shirt is a drawing of a shattered Soviet star and the words “The party is over.” It was almost 15 years ago when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Russian Federation was created.

I am about to leave Red Square when I notice a bedraggled Russian soldier, no hat, uniform in tatters, standing in the center of the square. His eyes, hollow and black, stare at nothing. Around his neck hangs a cardboard sign with hand-printed words in Russian, unreadable to me. I reach into my pocket and pull out a 50-ruble bill (about $1.50 in American money) and press it into the dented cup he holds. The mute expression on the soldier’s face doesn’t change. Behind him, I can hear the American soldiers laughing as they crowd around the uniformed guard at Lenin’s Tomb for another picture. Yes, the Soviet party is over.

The Viking Pakhomov

Ten days earlier, in St. Petersburg, I happened across another Russian soldier whom I saw as comic relief rather than metaphor of metamorphosis.

Catherine, my companion, and I arrived in St. Petersburg after a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles. We boarded a Russian cruise ship called the Viking Pakhomov, which would be our 212-passenger floating home while on a tour of the lakes, canals, and rivers between St. Petersburg and Moscow. After a “welcome aboard” glass of champagne, a light snack, and a drop-dead night’s rest, we boarded a bus for a city tour. The first stop was the Hermitage, one of the greatest art museums in the world.

As we got off the bus, Catherine noticed a pudgy little man of indeterminate age looking at us with watery eyes. Over his slumped shoulders, he wore a threadbare khaki jacket on which were pinned several medals. With his week’s growth of beard, floppy shoes, and baggy pants, Catherine said he reminded her of the sad-faced clown Emmett Kelly. In his hand the man held a balalaika, a triangular instrument with three strings. He strummed a few discordant notes, then said, “dollar.” When we didn’t react, he pressed his finger over an imaginary camera, squinted an eye, and said, “photo.”

Because of my fog-shrouded jetlag, I had left my camera on the ship. I pulled out a dollar and handed it to him anyway. He groped in his jacket and came out with a browned, frayed photograph. It was of a young soldier in uniform. The little man pointed at the photo, then at his chest of medals, and rattled off a flurry of Russian words.

Our Russian guide, Olga, happened to walk by, and I said, “Please ask him if he was a soldier during the siege of Leningrad.”

Before the trip, I had read Harrison E. Salisbury’s monumental book, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, and was mesmerized by the epic story of the city’s survival. The Nazi siege (1941–43), when the city was cut off from the rest of the world, was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. Almost 3 million Russians endured it and almost half of them died, starving or freezing to death.

“Da, da!” the little man was saying, one arm gesturing wildly as he continued in Russian.
Olga said, “Yes, he says he was in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, during the German siege. He was 14, a student, and they gave him a rifle and a uniform from a dead soldier and sent him to the trenches that defended the city. He —”

The little man interrupted, jabbing at the medals on his jacket. Olga translated. “He says, he killed many Germans.”

“And now begs on the street?” Catherine asked.

“Strange things happened in Stalin’s times,” Olga said as she began to herd her group into the Hermitage to view the art. Leaving our soldier behind, we entered the building.

The Hermitage

The Hermitage, originally the winter palace of Catherine the Great, houses a staggering 3 million pieces of art, and we only had three hours to see it.

Catherine and I quickly broke away from our slow-moving tour group, picked up a guidebook with floor plans of the museum, and took off. We found ourselves in a gallery that housed two famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, the Benois Madonna and the Lina Madonna.

“The painting looks like a sculpture,” I said, standing in front of the Lina Madonna. Then we were off to see Crouching Youth, a sculpture by Michelangelo, then to several galleries that displayed paintings by such Spanish masters as El Greco, Goya, and Velázquez. We rushed through the rooms displaying 40 works by Rubens, but slowed down when passing Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Our next stop was the French Impressionists, with galleries of paintings by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Renoir, and van Gogh. “Did you notice that none of these paintings is protected by glass? Some nut with a knife could slash away,” Catherine said.

I verified this by leaning forward, almost touching a Degas ballerina with my nose, and I got a disdainful stare from the only guard in the room, a little old lady in a wicker chair.

We ended our winged journey through the kaleidoscope of whirling colors and rejoined our group. Then it was off to the Peter and Paul Fortress, an island fort on the Neva River. Within the fortress is the Peter and Paul Cathedral, in which are entombed all the Russian czars, including ashes of the last imperial family: Nicholas II, Alexandra, and their children, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

On our second day in St. Petersburg, the temperature dropped from a balmy 65 degrees to a frigid 32. We kept warm in the bus that took us to Peterhof Palace, Czar Peter the Great’s “Versailles by the Sea,” which he began building in 1714. The palace was almost completely destroyed by German bombardment from 1942 to 1943, as it was only a few miles from the front lines during the siege, but since has been restored to its original grandeur. Even in the frigid temperature, we took a long walk through the gardens, enjoying the extravagance and sheer playfulness of the cascade of fountains and gold statuary.

The joy of river cruising

The next day, the Viking Pakhomov began its waterways cruise to Moscow, first crossing Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest lake. Frozen during the winter, the lake’s icy surface was used to supply besieged Leningrad.

We settled into the leisure of shipboard life, a life far from that of grand ocean liners with their 2,500 passengers, immense dining rooms, lavish floor shows, and glitzy casinos. The ship has a Sky Room with a dance floor from which a three-piece combo plays American dance music, as well as the intimate Panorama Bar, the place to meet for a predinner drink. There is also a library with overstuffed chairs and a small souvenir shop. From each room, including our stateroom, large windows let us keep track of passing riverside scenery.

There are two restaurants aboard ship, both with open seating so you can meet new friends. The four-course dinner was an appetizing blend of American and Russian specialties. As an appetizer (or amuse bouche) one might find blinis with keta and sevruga caviar, and for the main course, golubtsi, cabbage rolls filled with meat and rice. For the less adventurous, a second course, such as roast beef with baked potatoes or sautéed tiger prawns, was available.

On the fifth evening of the 10-day cruise, the ship offered a caviar tasting and a vodka tasting. The next day, somewhat fuzzy from the vodka, I asked Gindemann Dieter, the hotel manager, what he considered special about cruising on Viking Pakhomov.

“We don’t have three pools, a theater, and a disco, so we provide shore excursions, which are free of charge,” he said. “We want to make sure you experience certain parts of Russia that most travelers never get to explore. In addition to the guided tours in the big port cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, we offer tours to the out-of-the way towns, markets, churches, and monasteries. And that, we discovered, is the real joy of river cruising.”

Almost every day, we would tie up to a pier and go on bus excursions to small towns and cities to view churches, monasteries, and century-old collections of religious icons. Waiting for us at each stop was an array of Russian flea markets where one could buy matryoshkas, the little bowling-pin-shaped dolls with hand-painted designs. Open them up, and there are five to 10 smaller dolls nestled inside. Also popular are Russian military hats, shawls in bright floral patterns, and bottles of Russian wine and vodka. I bought a bottle of Stalin’s favorite wine (it is said he didn’t drink vodka), a red from the wine-growing region of Georgia on the Baltic Sea. We found it too sweet for our taste.

The new Russia

What did I learn on the river cruise? I learned that the people of Russia really do like Americans. They are having a hard time adjusting to their newfound democracy. “At first we thought we were going to embrace this Barbie doll of democracy,” explained Sev, our shipboard lecturer. “We expected paradise on earth and got inflation and unemployment instead. One of our politicians said, ‘Russia is doomed to be a democratic state.’ Realize that we have only been at it 10 years; we need time. You see, we toppled the Soviet system, but it is still in our genes. You Americans had to work over 100 years, abolishing slavery, approving voting for women’s rights, and solving inequality.” With emphasis he added, “Russia must be democratic to survive.”

As Catherine and I walk away from Red Square, we see an older Russian woman in a frayed, flowered dress. She pauses and cups one hand to her side. Catherine nods at the woman, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a 100-ruble bill. The woman takes it, touches her hand to her heart, and then presses her fingers to her lips. And she smiles.