childhood and it attracted me the same way as the Wild West did
with almost all European people in the middle of the 19th century.
Having seen the (manipulated) appearance of ever more Russian
and Soviet juvenile books in the bookshops from the end of the '40s
on, I have read almost everything from Civil War diaries to Russian
folk tales and from the tales of Bazhoff to "Dersu Uzala". No need to prove that a great part of them is real treasure. This world came to
ruins by my first trip to the periphery of the empire. This I have
narrated to you within the history of my Danube boating. During the
following years then my English and German linguistic knowledge
helped me to get real information of the topic, as e.g. Pasternak's
novel "Doctor Zhivago" that I was lent for a reading in German in a time when most Hungarian knew about this book only from the
foreign press. But this happened much later, as following my two
disappointing visits, I happened to get to Leningrad at the first op-
portunity in 1969.
My employer, the Ship Repair Yard of the Hungarian Shipping
Lines MAHART was building a self-propelled gravel unloading con-
veyor for the Gravel Exploiting and Processing Company that year,
and I was assigned supervisor for that project. Simultaneously with
this assignment I got into contact with another job. Our company
had been selected years before to be the partner of a Soviet re-
search institute for shipping in a so-called co-operation in the field of
automation on ships. (That time everything happened as I describ-
ed it in connection with my assignment on Danube boats.) My col-
league Steve S. was leaving the company for a job at the university
and he handed back his assignment as a representative in this co-
operation. The boss in turn named me for new representative. Be-
fore I could have done anything, our office was instructed by the
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person in charge within the management to delegate the represent-
ative for automation to a business trip to Leningrad in July. The ma-
chine started to grind. As a man of the field for a long time, my pre-
decessor would have deserved the trip, but as it could involve
measures to be taken in the future, he, who was on a departure
track, would not have been able to effect those measures.
It has been decided I would be sent on the trip. And so my first
ever business trip -- not to mention my practice in the GDR six years
before -- began. My wife might have felt the traditional dilemma of
wives. She has been happy that I had this opportunity to become
one of the important figures of the company and to see more of the
world, but she must have sensed envy at the same time for being
left alone, left out of something, in which I would take part. She was
to get accustomed to this feeling, as I was to repeat it to her many
times. Only years after, to my African mission would I be able to take
her with me.
My trip-mate was an elderly man, a very simple person, but well
known in the trade by his book about ship-modelling. He spoke
German and, having been a POW in the last days of World War II,
he spoke Russian on a level, most POWs did. He had the ability to
become adapted to any type of environment in a short time -- a
spiritual chameleon --. But his assimilation has not been internalis-
ation, it has reached only the depth of his skin. As soon as the
necessity of it vanished, he became his old self again.
Our trip has not been very well organised. Although there was a
direct flight to Leningrad via Warsaw, we had to take the plane to
Kiev and there to board a domestic one. Only he who tried it, knows
Soviet domestic flights.
It has been my first flight on a big jet -- not very big exactly, as it
was a TU-134, Russian alternative of DC-9 --, but to flying I had
become accustomed as a teenager in the eight years of my life on
the housing estate by the airport of Budaörs as the relative of an air-
plane mechanic -- my brother-in-law --. As a 16-year-old I slipped
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through the fence frequently -- officially I would not be allowed to
step onto military premises --, and once inside, I could see every-
thing from the hangar with World War II fighters through speed-limit
breaking jet air-plane models to biplanes for parachute crews.
There were light training planes for two -- flying coffins -- of Czecho-
slovak manufacture. Fortunately, I have tried it only once with an old
friend of my brother-in-law, as they have been very prone to fall.
They were objects Czechs had been learning plane-building on.
There were other Czechoslovak planes called Aero, later their suc-
cessor, Super Aero, became the first type used by our flying am-
bulance.
There were also IL-14s, built by licence on DC-3s, they had
flown infrequently, as their fuel need was high. The type of plane, I
was allowed to ride most times, was AN-2, a biplane designed for
high altitudes above the Caucasus mountains. I could go in, if the
group of parachuters consisted of less than sixteen people. I have
lost any fear of height that had been within me too during those
short, twenty to thirty minute, flights.
So, when I had my first opportunity to fly a commercial plane, we
took a flight by our national airlines to Kiev. The developed techn-
ology impressed me very much, a comfortable airliner is not the
same standard as a puritan military aircraft of the thirties or forties.
Then came our arrival at Kiev. We landed on the old Zhouliany
airport used now for domestic flights only. Our baggage has had to
be taken, as we have stepped over the frontier. From now on, all the
responsibility for them has been ours. The crowd was enormous at
checking in to Leningrad and no queue existed. Every man for
himself as on shipwrecks. When at last we managed to fight our-
selves inside the plane (just another TU 134, only in a much worse
condition), and succeeded to get two seats near to each other, our
provision for the route Kiev-Leningrad has been a piece of candy
and a glass of water with air bubbles. That was another supplement
to my earlier studies of the Soviets.
To my surprise, Leningrad, the people, and even the shops,
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have been different from my memories about similar things in the
Soviet Union. Leningrad, especially during the earlier weeks of
summer, was a beautiful, even you can say, European city. There
were clean broad streets with normal road traffic, civilised-looking
trams, and the town's underground railway, the METRO, was a mar-
vel to me, accustomed to three hours of daily shuttle on crowded
trams and buses. From uncle Ervin, my mate, I learned that the
METRO in the Soviet Union had been introduced by an American
engineer. I have learned a lot about this topic since. Our first
METRO line, built on Soviet design and by their machinery, would
open the next year in our capital.
We have been met by our guide for the next two weeks at the
airport. He took us to our hotel named “Oktyabrskaya” in the centre
and promised to come for us in the next morning. The hotel room
was satisfactory, only the excess flow in the toilet could not be re-
paired by maintenance men in the coming two weeks. Sleep has
been a little difficult because of the “white nights” period. For these
two months in summer, it had not been worth putting up shutters to
the windows. At last we developed an ability to sleep by broad day-
light. During that two months in June and July the sun rises at half
past one in the morning and sets at half past ten in the night. Of
course, there is only a twilight between setting and rising, even
street lamps are not lighted.
We had a tight program to go through, and our hosts provided us
with everything from transport to food. The latter was usually taken
in canteens of the institute's many offices and sites. Sometimes a
surprise has not been avoidable. One day we sat at the table waiting
for food, and before us there was a glass of coloured fluid for each
person. After the morning walk in the hot weather I wished to taste it.
As I lifted it to my lips, I sensed a smell of smoke like the inner wall of
a chimney. Alas, the fluid has started to flow down my throat. And it
went on that, until the glass became empty, as the fluid was a kind of
jelly, not to be stopped. It was a jelly cooked of smoke-dried fruit.
After that, I would always take a smell check, before trying to gulp
anything similar.
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Making long walks together in our leisure time, we could see the
city well and could also buy useful things in the numerous “univer-
mags” (general stores). Nylon stockings were a relative novelty at
home that time, I wanted to buy some pairs for the women in my
family. But, because of his fixed idea, that stockings would be made
with different foot sizes for the same length, uncle E. did not want to
help me. When I said:
“Please, tell her (the salesgirl) to give me a pair of stockings fit
for herself.”, he answered:
“My dear boy, I do not see her feet.”
At the end I explained it in my own broken Russian and, of
course, they would fit the owners.
I think more is to be said about univermags. Our hotel was situ-
ated at one of the the crossings of the avenue Nevsky prospect, not
far from Moskovsky Vokzal (railway station), we have taken our
walks mainly on Nevsky. This is the finest avenue of the city, it
stretches over some miles long. It crosses some canals, the Little
Neva, passes two cathedrals, the Isaac and the Kazan ones, and
ends at the river Neva, where the Bronze Horseman stands that
Poushkin wrote a poem about. It is the statue of Peter the Great, its
three fixed points on the foundation are two hooves of the rearing
horse and the tip of its tail. At about the middle of Nevsky you find the
department store Gostiny Dvor, a vast three-storied square building
with entrances at every corner and in the middle of each side. The
three floors and the ground-floor are identical in arrange-ment, the
store is actually made up of endless rows of shops for different
goods. These specialised shops are arranged one after the other
and they follow in a periodical order. It all makes loosing your way
very easy. But all the same, that was the place we bought almost
everything, although there were other department stores
everywhere, on the Nevsky too, and they would have fitted our
needs more.
Living in a multicultural country these people invented a system
in these shops that can make it absolutely simple to customers
coming from distant places or from abroad -- in case they aren't il-
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literate -- to identify different goods and to determine their prices.
Entering the shop the visitor faces a counter, behind which the
salesperson stands, mostly a young girl. Before the customer would
turn to the "devoushka" (young girl, miss), he or she discovers all the goods that are stored on the shelves in uncharacteristic boxes
lying under the glass cover of the counter, taken out of carton boxes,
assembled for use, even notes are provided with names and definit-
ions for those speaking Russian, also the prices are shown there.
The Russian name of the ware is mainly not needed, you can guess
without it -- except in odd cases --, what is the gizmo that you see.
Such an odd case would come for me in Moscow later, when in a
self-service shop of mixed household goods (named by Americans
simply a hardware store) I would spot aluminium bells with a maxim-
um diameter of 6 to 8 inches and a height of a foot. At the upper (!)
end of each bell there was a hole with a stick in it to be drawn up-
wards until it stops and it goes down by its own weight. Another two
years later I would find their purpose: garden hand-washers. Of
course, they were stored in the shop upside-down. You can use it by
pushing up the stick with the back of your hand to open the valve,
water flows onto your hands, and after scrubbing off dirt with soap,
you repeat the same to flush your hands. This device is so popular
that in wooden huts in the Ural mountains, where there is no running
water, it is used even inside the house.
Our hosts provided us also with tourist and cultural programs.
The Hermitage has been my greatest experience of that kind, be-
side the Louvre and the Zwinger. Even if it had only been an empty
building without art treasures, it would have been unforgettable. But
the thousands of European paintings -- mainly from Holland --made
our experience even more pleasant. The fine building stands on the
bank of the river Neva. It has been built by Italian architects on the
order of Peter the Great, it has been his winter residence. Just for
this reason it had been called The Winter Palace before the Russian
revolution. You can see at once that the person who had it built
didn't want to be left behind other monarchs of his time. The collect-
ion of the Hermitage contains only foreign works of art. The paint-
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ings and sculptures from Russian artists are exhibited in the
Russian Museum that can also be accessed from Nevsky via a
small street. The museum is visible from the avenue. As I mention-
ed Dutch paintings are the most numerous from the collection, it is
the largest collection of the world outside Holland. The Russian
Museum we visited by our own private interest, it has been worth,
there are wonderful paintings and sculptures.
The other fine sight has been Petrodvorets, the Summer Palace
of Peter the Great -- as the Hermitage had been his Winter Palace,
about 20 miles from the city on the seashore. Access has been for
us by hydrofoil on the sea. It has been the first time I saw their bigger
type called “Meteor”. The weather was windy, but waves did not
bother the craft, and that 30 minutes made a very short ride.
The palace itself has been closed on reconstruction, only the
statues in the garden and the big fountain in front of the main en-
trance had been finished. I would see it six years later. To the time of
my next visit even the statues of the fountain would get their golden
finish.
In the relatively new Musical Theatre we have seen a perform-
ance about Johann Strauss JR.'s adventures in St. Petersburg,
music has been picked from his works.
There was a private program for us in connection with a Russian
colleague at our company. Uncle E's office-mate at home has been
a Russian man married to a girl from our country. He sent a package
of gifts by uncle E. to his relatives. His brother was an engineer and
was living together with his wife and grand-mother. His grand-
mother was a precise copy of Frau Holle from the tales of the
Grimm-brothers. We met her at the dinner, where we were invited.
We have been given Russian national snacks called “pirozhki”.
They were small fried dough loafs, the size of a bun, and they were
stuffed with different smashes as cabbage, meat, sweet cheese.
They were extremely tasty. Especially, that we ate them with mush-
room salad. For a while there was a fear on me, as they disclosed
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mushrooms had been picked by themselves in the forest. We sur-
vived the dinner, however, there were no toadstools or deathcaps
among them. As a result of this dinner with the mushrooms, there
would come my hobby of mushroom picking. Soon in our capital a
small restaurant would be opened for the sale of pirozhki, and
sometimes we would take home a portion of them.
Another private program served only for my own recreation. I
think today I wouldn't do the same with the present knowledge in my
mind about things the Soviet authorities committed against foreign-
ers they thought guilty of intelligence activities. But then, in my
twenties, I have been naive enough to take risks. I had a desire to
get acquainted with the resort places around town. Our host provid-
ed us with a day-off two days before our leaving, Uncle Ervin decid-
ed to get a long sleep, and I started to my solitary trip. The METRO
station at the hotel was Vosstaniya (uprising), I started there and
rode to Finnlansky Vokzal (Finland railway station), there was the
terminal for electric local trains to resort places on the northern
shore of the Gulf of Finland. Well, they are far from being resort
places at the Lake Balaton or on the Mediterranean, people go
there not for sun-tanning or swimming, as the summer (in spite of
the White Nights) "generally falls on the Thursday of one week
around that time", but to carry on their usual life, they take sauna,
they drink or go fishing.
I have chosen the settlement of Solnechnoye by the map, it was
about one hour by train. I had some difficulty with buying my ticket,
perhaps I didn't have the necessary documents, only it was not
clear to what the problem was. After that all went smoothly, the train
was almost empty. I enjoyed the journey in the fine sunny weather,
only the sight of settlements in a very poor condition bothered me.
After the train left town the forested country was more attractive. At
the chosen place I got out, took a big walk along the dirt road in the
forest leading to the seashore. The weather turned a little cooler, for
this reason I didn't try to swim, only walked on the shore, then sat
down on one of the big stones. I saw an island in front of me over the
sea, it has not been Russian by character at all, side-by-side
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German-looking houses were crowding so densely that they almost
fell into the sea. From the map I discovered that it was Kronstadt,
the Russian naval base before the revolution. It must be a closed
area as before, as nothing is written in the guides about it, and there
are no prospectuses about it. Another discovery from the map after-
ward: I was very near to Petrodvorets, the summer residence.
When I got back to the hotel, Uncle Ervin scolded me for taking such
a risk by that trip without any permission. Anyway, I succeeded to
overtake this trip the same way as my excursion to Jima in Ethiopia
twelve years later, as I have already told you.
With my return trip there occurred a confusion from the part of
my wife, who wanted to receive me at the airport. She has been
informed by the airlines that our plane was delayed. However, our
pilot strove to make our delay as mall as possible and, instead of
two hours as the information desk announced, we arrived only one
hour late.
She started to the airport and there she waited, until it became
clear, something went wrong. Well, as I arrived, I did not see her at
the airport and started home by ordinary city transport. It did not
help that I went to a phone booth and called the airport information
desk. She was not to be found there. We were waiting for each other
until midnight, and when she came home, I was asleep.
My next visit to the Soviet Union has been a private holiday. I
won it as the second prize at a competition organised by my em-
ployer in 1973. The second prize was a solo travel bonus to the
Soviet Union, the first one the same for two persons. Also there
were numerous awards of books. It has not been decided where
and when to travel, I could cash it in the travel agency office of
IBUSZ and decide the details. My wife shared my joy. I was hoping
for a time to be able to convince her to take advantage of the bonus,
but she wouldn't leave our three years old son with me alone. And
so, it has been decided that I would go on that trip. In the knowledge
of this information I chose Yalta. Soon after my return from Poland,
where I took part in a conference, I went to enjoy the 8 days of my
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tourist trip won on the competition. It has been an economy trip, but
as the place I had chosen has not been spoiled even by belonging to
the S.U. -- today to Ukraine -- I really enjoyed it.
The Hungarian state travel agency IBUSZ has been true to it-
self, for this reason the planes we flew were those of the Aeroflot.
The flight has been interrupted in Kiev, that time on the new airport
far from town. The old one has not been selected for domestic
flights yet, both international and domestic flights were handled
there.
The old IL-18 four-engine turbo-prop was at the limit of its
capacity. It has made such a high noise that speaking on board was
impossible. About that noise here is an anecdote. One member of
our group was an old lady who had been taking a tourist trip every
year, but, as she had said she had been everywhere except the
S.U., she had decided to try it once. She fell asleep from noise and
vibration. As the pilot decreased the speed of propellers to glide --
IL-18 is said to have landed with only one engine on work --, a
sudden silence came over us. She woke up suddenly and asked :
“Jesus, why did we stop!”.
To Kiev it was only one hour, we consumed our rubber chicken
all right. In Kiev we boarded another IL-18, a domestic one for Sim-
feropol, seat of the Crimean peninsula. It was about the same flight
time, but too long for the glass of water with air bubbles to gulp
down.
In Simferopol we arrived in the evening. As we waited for the
bus to take us to Yalta, darkness became full. The route had been
used by trolley buses. It is no mistake, the longest trolley line of the
world is there between Simferopol and Yalta. The new tourist hotel
has been still in construction, we had to be content with the old one,
the “Yuzhnaya” (Southern).
The hotel building was typical of its kind, similar to those in
former English colonies from colonial times. Our group has been
assembled in the lobby and room allocation began. There were
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some women in the group, the majority of them wives with their
husbands, but also some singles. The majority of the group was
male. The rooms were double ones. As both single women and
single men were in odd numbers, it took me only a minute to
calculate: if I had not joined anyone, I would have a room alone.
Room-mates have been selected by voluntary joining. I did not give
consent for any mate, I remained alone, and that spared me a lot of
inconveniences.
There were some organised tours, but usually we spent our
time on the beach. As the harbour took a large part of the seashore,
to go to the beach by foot would need going up a 300-foot precipice
and after a walk on high ground to descend again. From the new
hotel the beach would have been a simple descent by stairs. Thus
we reached the beach by a free ride in a small boat over a bay.
The beach was covered with apple-sized round stones. As I
have been informed, the Black Sea shore is stone-covered every-
where, only on its western parts in Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine
can you find sands. You had to use the boarded pavements to walk,
as the big stones were unbearable for the feet. The water at that
time (June) was not very warm yet.
The first day was given us for free will, I went to town after a short
swimming. I was able to see the first day that the place was a two-in-
one. The harbour, the promenade on the seashore and the beach
looked as if in a western-type Mediterranean country. The town, its
streets, mainly its stores were true Soviet ones. In the only big
department store I saw the goods I wanted to take. They were there
until the last day when I wanted to buy them. Then they
disappeared. It was another lesson of Russia. I had to buy other
good