COLUMN: Carillon Flashback May 5, 1971 – Carillon News editor looks behind the ‘Iron Curtain’

The promise of a classless society, land for the peasants, and all power to the people that Lenin used to spark the Russian Revolution in October of 1917 have become a mockery, looking at the Soviet Union today.

Today, Lenin’s stern visage looks down, god-like, from grimy Soviet factories, bridges and public buildings, upon a drab nation whose leaders have traded personal freedoms and the well-being of 230 million people for a military and scientific mess.

This is the Soviet Union today; an incredible nation, the world’s largest, the second most powerful, and the third most populated.

Carillon News editor Abe Warkentin sought answers to questions about life behind the Iron Curtain during a visit to the country earlier this year.

A first impression of Russia came when Warkentin’s group crossed the border from Finland into the Soviet Union. Though the countryside remained similar to that which the tour had seen in Finland, the jolts in the road were an instant reminder the bus was in a different country.

The landscape changed too, as the group travelled along the highway connecting the border to Leningrad and Moscow. Villages and collective farms abounded and the drab rural settlements were in sharp contrast to the neat, attractive little farms seen in Finland.

Photos taken from the bus, which made few stops, was the only way to record conditions in Russia, outside of the tours of venues of tourist attractions provided by their guide.

Rubber-booted women with black coats were a common sight in Russian villages, where women do the hard work, including the building and repairing of roads.

The trip to Norograd gave Warkentin and the group a closer look at the collective state farms as the bus passed through hundreds of them.

“All the farms were depressingly alike. It’s no wonder that few foreigners get to see them.”

Entering a great Russian city like Moscow, after passing through hundreds of miles of backward villages and farm areas, was like stepping out of the 19th century into the 20th, Warkentin said.

For a westerner used to suburban residential areas, it is a strange experience, for there are no houses at all in Moscow. The city consists entirely of large apartment blocks and government buildings.

The magnificient gold domes of the ancient churches behind Kremlin walls are perhaps best seen in the daytime, but Red Square is most impressive at night. It is here that Moscovites greet the Soviet astronauts following space flights.

On the surface at least, the school visited in Moscow towards the end of the tour was not all that different from those at home, but the difference, especially in what was being taught, became more apparent the longer one stayed.

And there were a few moments when Abe Warkentin wondered whether he would be asked to stay a little longer than he wanted. Russia is a nice place to visit, but not really a very fun kind of place to stay permanently, especially if you value your basic rights, like freedom of religion and speech, he said.

His first attempt to get a little closer to the rural Russian was met with near disaster. Instead of joining the others to purchase food at a village stop, Warkentin strolled down a side street to take pictures of a horse and wagon. When he got there, a tractor and wagon carrying a load of women came around the corner and he couldn’t resist the temptation to snap their picture. The end result was a policeman entering the bus, and a lengthy harangue of the Finnish bus driver, who couldn’t understand a word the officer was saying.

Warkentin was worried his film may be confiscated as a result of this little misadventure, but the policeman left the bus and the group was treated well for the balance of the tour, despite a few more “incidents” along the way.

In his “Here and There” column April 14, “A.W.” invited Carillon News subscribers to read about his tour of the USSR in a three-part series, beginning the following week.

with files from Abe Warkentin