Russia

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Russia in both 1990 and 1993, and it was a life-changing experience. In 1990 people were just getting their first taste of freedom, and it scared them to death because they'd never had to make such choices before. The Russian people on the surface appeared cold and gruff, but they had very big hearts and were so happy to meet Americans and talk with us. By 1993 the rich had gotten richer, and the poor had gotten poorer. The aged and the infirm felt the brunt of the economic difficulties, and those were the people we went to cheer with music, mime, and puppets in 1993.

The Places

The architecture and the history of Russia are both awesome when you stand before the palace of the czars, the Kremlin, the beautiful churches which for so many years were not places of worship, the Hermitage museum with its great works of art. I have included a few pictures of the places, the buildings, and the richness that is Russia.

The first three pictures are all of churches.

• The first is St. Basil's, one of several Kremlin churches and what most people identify with Moscow.
• The second is Smolny, an Orthodox convent that had been founded by Catherine the Great.
• The third church is the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood. It's on Griboyedova Canal, St Petersburg. The somewhat gruesome name comes from the fact that the church is built on the very spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 (thanks to Dave Huxtable who saw my Web site and sent me background on this church via email).

St. Basil's	Smolny	Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood

Remember when our leaders referred to Russia (or the USSR) as the "evil empire"? We had the chance to walk through the Kremlin, the seat of the "evil empire", and it was a very strange experience to be in that place that had filled the news for all of my life. The pictures below show a building with letters CCCP on the front, which is the cyrillic spelling for USSR. This building was the seat of power in the USSR. The second one is Lenin's Tomb.

Kremlin Government Building	Lenin's Tomb

Russian culture is so rich - the ballet, the music, the art - all with a uniquely Russian soul. The first picture below shows the outside of the Winter Palace of the Czars, which also houses the Hermitage art museum, which I spent two days in and certainly couldn't take it all in. The second picture was taken at the famous Moscow Circus.

Winter Palace/Hermitage	Moscow Circus

The Facilities

When we went to Russia in 1993, one of our team mottos was "keep your expectations of personal comfort low." Everything from hotel rooms to hospitals is outside our normal realm of experience. The toilets ran anywhere from bare efficiency to totally gross, and the toilet paper, when it could be found, was like using tree bark. I've included two toilet photos below. The first was in a hotel in St. Petersburg that was so bad we only stayed there one night. The picture doesn't do justice to it - you really need the smell as well :). The other toilet was sort of a communal situation - women are used to having doors on the stalls, but not here :).

Hotel Toilet	Communal Toilet

The People

I've saved the best until last - the Russian people. I grew to love these people while I was there. I could have chosen many pictures, but I chose to show you the very young, and the very old.

The first two pictures show the Babushkas, the grandmothers who often had much to do with raising the children whose parents were working for the state. These Babushkas tended to have a strong faith in God, and kept that alive even during the Communist repression. Many say it is only because of them that Christian faith survived in Russia through the generations of Communism. The first woman was weeping when we saw her, and we couldn't understand what was wrong, so all we could do was hug her and try to comfort her and show her some love.

Sad Babushka	Babushkas with Team

The final pictures are of the very young. In 1993, we sang at orphanages, where many of the children had been abandoned and had fetal alcohol syndrome. We sang at youth prisons. We sang at a TB sanitarium, and at a children's hospital. I don't think there was one of us who didn't break down and weep at least once. For me, my heart was broken by the "lying children", severely retarded children who would just lie in bed all day long. No one talked to them, no one took care of them - they were heartbreakingly abandoned. We stroked their hair, and talked gently, and sang to them. We didn't know if any of it got through, but sometimes they did seem to calm down or respond to us. The first picture is of me with one of those children. The second picture is children at a TB sanitarium that we stumbled on while we were looking for a hospital we were supposed to sing at. We felt it was a divine appointment when we were asked to sing at the sanitarium, and it was a wonderful time with these precious children.

A Lying Child	TB Patients