The Road to Moscow
Sexton, Patricia Cayo
The road from Leningrad to Moscow stretches some 450 miles, a distance that I, on advice of my doctor, my conscience, and a consuming curiosity about some hidden aspects of Soviet life, set out...
...They only pretend to work...
...In this case it was a vital part of the complex religious, pacifist, and countercultural motives that inspired the walk in the first place...
...The walk left vivid memories, good and bad— incessant rain, carnivorous mosquitoes, penetrating cold (in mid-July), rotten plumbing or none at all, decaying teeth in otherwise healthy-looking Soviets, white nights without a trace of twilight, multitudes of blue-eyed Russians, parks, woods, white birches and flowers everywhere, the new beauty of Moscow (compared to the ugly Stalinist Moscow I saw twenty-five years ago), late-night camp fires, the innumerable babushkas weeping over war losses, receptions in mosquito-infested woods with giant woodburning samovars set on white linen tablecloths, dozens of naked women frolicking in steaming Russian baths, a high school graduation in the town of Proletariat, sleeping in tents, collective and state farms, worker and student dorms, rest homes, Pioneer camps, trailers— and masses of courteous, generous, tough Soviets...
...One Russian dissident who joined us said, "Having a job is the Soviet unemployment compensation...
...Like it or not, rock has become an international language for the young, creating a collectivity if not a total culture that often transcends national borders, inspiring a devotion among followers that was once reserved for church and state, and so it may be as subversive of established orders as the Soviets have charged...
...The advice proved largely irrelevant, however, for we were besieged by people seeking to talk with us, in whatever English they knew or whatever Russian we knew (quite a lot in the former case and pitifully little in the latter)* or to get our addresses in order to correspond with us later...
...Embassy in Moscow, a beautiful though bugged installation, we learned how restricted official diplomacy can be and by contrast how freewheeling our own hands-on diplomacy was...
...Nikki, Capo Beach, Calif...
...Or they register for work but never go there...
...tens of thousands of Soviets who may have seen in us some hope for peace...
...Last month I read a book called the Ukrainian Egg Mystery...
...The outpouring of grief and peace sentiment overwhelmed us on the walk, sentiments rooted in war experiences such as relatively few Americans have known...
...In fact, the six-hour concert was the first such U.S.-USSR collaboration and the first rock concert to be held outdoors (in the soccer stadium), where security problems are magnified...
...At the new U.S...
...As for myself, having long spurned united fronts, it seemed immaterial to me in this instance, given the priority of the peace issue and the insanity of the arms race, whether or not communist-sympathizers had penetrated our ranks...
...Do you have skating rinks or a Burger King...
...It said you have cabbage, tea, lettuce, and spinach flavors of gum...
...One critic summed up the complaints: "The socialist system and the nervous system," he said, "are incompatible...
...The letters we carried from American children seeking Soviet pen pals suggested how primitive our knowledge of each other's life-styles could be...
...the audience of the Soviet mass media, which gave us top billing every day of the march...
...and about peace...
...The road from Leningrad to Moscow stretches some 450 miles, a distance that I, on advice of my doctor, my conscience, and a consuming curiosity about some hidden aspects of Soviet life, set out to walk recently, in the company of 420 other American and Soviet walkers, and to the dismay of many friends who feared some tragedy would strike me or who were simply stunned to learn that the Soviets would permit the walk to happen...
...Left to their own devices," Hedrick Smith says, "Russians are generally an easygoing, disorderly and pleasantly disorganized and not very efficient people...
...We learned that even a few people can move a small mountain, that it need not take forever to do so, and that Soviets, whatever their reputation, can do very efficiently what they really want to do...
...The political auspices of the walk were a legitimate concern of many walkers, since some critics had described them as "commie dupes...
...By clearing the air of hitherto muted criticisms, however, it proved a highly constructive finale to the walk...
...We had little cause to complain of inefficiency on the walk, but given the hardiness of the Soviets we met, we might yet be thankful for their relaxed and quite un-Teutonic approach to work...
...The walk's intent was not to assess the virtues or vices of the Soviet system but only to promote the prospects of peaceful coexistence...
...They voiced their gratitude for America's role in the war and their sense of cultural kinship with Americans, yet a question recurred: "Why do you hate us so much now...
...One child's letter read: Dear Russian: I am wanting to be your friend...
...The figures are reflected in the size of the officially sanctioned Soviet peace movement, which dwarfs that of the U.S...
...We visited war memorials ad nauseam, some * There are said to be more teachers of English in the USSR than students of Russian in the US...
...Starting in Leningrad, a city that endured a 900-day Nazi siege during the war, most places we visited were sites of bloody invasions and occupation, and the words of a popular song dogged us on the walk, "We'll give you anything, but give us peace...
...We want peace...
...Although the U.S...
...sponsoring committee or the walkers were inspired by proSoviet rather than simple pro-peace sentiment, nor that sponsors on the Soviet side, the officially sanctioned Soviet Peace Committee (which deWINTER • 1988 • 29 scribes itself as privately funded), had motives any more ulterior than our own...
...Do you...
...He assumed that the Soviets would not tolerate such conduct...
...They cannot be dismissed as contrivances of the state, imposed on a forgetful population—any more than the Holocaust should be viewed as living now only in the memory of rabbis...
...Then too, an estimated twenty million Soviets died unnatural deaths during the Stalinist era, and before that some two million died in World War I, compared with 116,000 Americans...
...On a more advanced level, our own assumption was that greater cultural familiarity might help prepare the way for friendlier relations between the people, if not the governments, of the two nations...
...What is it like in Russia...
...Nobody works...
...Unofficial peace groups (such as the Trust Group), refuseniks, Hare Krishnas, separated spouses, Christians, gays, and various others spoke of their travails...
...walkers were a mixed political bag, the walk was endorsed by Senators Kennedy and Harkin (Iowa), Representative Pat Schroeder, SANE, the city of Portland, and assorted bishops and Christian clerics...
...and USSR had fought on the same side in World War II...
...That this peace walk, the first of its kind, relied often on buses and boats to get us to Moscow, did not detract from its astonishing scope and impact...
...press attention to the Red Army troops guarding it than to the rock stars performing in it...
...We like to skate, shop, and water wrestle, and we like to have friends spend the night...
...But no evidence came to light that the U.S...
...State Department had urged us to split off from our group as we walked and talk with people privately, out of the range of the KGB or other listeners...
...Various dissidents and critics came among us as we traveled, and one newly released political prisoner joined us in Leningrad and accompanied us all the way to Moscow, sleeping with us in our tents, riding our buses, and eating our food...
...In World War II some twenty million Soviets perished, compared with about 300,000 Americans, and this says nothing about the massive destruction of their homes and cities...
...28 • DISSENT We did indeed walk quite freely into scores of Russian towns where we were greeted, the press guessed, by some quarter of a million people, many of them waiting in heavy rains for our arrival, always with gifts of flowers, handshakes, kisses, embraces, and many tears...
...The walk's conception and execution were among its more remarkable features...
...In a few months the ambitious project was assembled and launched...
...All told, at least fifty million Soviets died of wars internal and external in this century...
...The Soviet committee, whose director was a recent Gorbachev appointee, appeared to embody the best we can expect of Soviet officialdom...
...By then we had acquired a rather sizable group of camp followers so the rule made some sense...
...Russian, it is said, has no word for "efficiency...
...Had it been in more seasoned hands it might not have happened at all...
...The walk's main event may have been the Glasnost Rock, as Rolling Stone called it, a July 4th peace-rock concert that drew more U.S...
...and all 15 Soviet Republics...
...All had grievances, some profound, others trivial, and all were at least somewhat hopeful about glasnost (a word closer in meaning to a "challenge to speak up" than to mere "openness"), but on that day nobody spoke much about peace...
...Its execution had the mark of inexperienced youth, but it worked...
...believed, but these memorials have a special place in Soviet life and are visited often by war survivors, newlyweds, school graduates, and those memorializing other events...
...On our last day, American walkers organized a session to which all the dissenting groups we could contact were invited...
...It was conceived almost in a twinkling by a few young people who had stopped over in Washington, D.C., after the Great Peace March across country in 1986, and who decided without much fuss to visit the Soviet Embassy and ask about an American-Soviet peace walk...
...The session was a slam-bang affair, pitting American and Soviet walkers against each other...
...Counting red noses was beside the point...
...A constant refrain in Soviet responses was their passionate desire for peace kindled by the heavy casualties and Nazi penetration of their land during the Second World War...
...Almost a third thought they had fought one another, and only 42 percent believed that more Russians than Americans died in that war...
...In style and origin the walk was very much a California affair, with other people from the West Coast and hinterland places (especially Iowa) mixed in with a handful of Easterners...
...30 • DISSENT...
...Orders finally came down that only walkers could ride the buses...
...respondents unaware that the U.S...
...It is great here in California...
...the example for others and the sequel now in the works, a repeat performance in the USA—not to mention the support the walk's success may add to the new glasnost crowd and to those negotiating disarmament...
...The Soviet committee had him picked up one day, but he returned the next...
...Our walk did not shake the world, but it did wake up quite a few people: 420 walkers (recruits from around the U.S...
...What do you do to have fun...
...So blinding has the effect of the cold war been that a New York Times survey found 44 percent of U.S...
...Before the walk, a man from the U.S...
...Mainly we talked about personal experiences (with jobs, schools, housing, etc...
...the people back home who sponsored them...
Vol. 35 • January 1988 • No. 1
