Russia 1991

In March of 1991, while I was the Senior Army Instructor at a Jesuit high school in New York City, one of my senior cadets asked if I would like to go with him to attend a youth peace conference in Belarus to which he had been invited. I immediately said yes.

With all of the current news of Russia in the headlines these days it is hard not to think about that trip almost 27 years ago to the day. I’ll write about the visit in other future posts, but today I want to recall just a couple that always come to mind first.

After arriving by a flight from JFK to Moscow, we spent a couple of days in the city before going to Minsk, Belarus where the conference site was near.

I had heard about saunas in Russia. I think I even saw a scene in a Stallone movie once about them. Anyhow, we had an opportunity to experience one while at the conference. I went in and just like normal massages, undressed to my underwear (which I was told to wear swim trunks). At the end of the massage, I was then beat not too lightly by birch branches that had been specially cut for that duty.

Normally, what was to have happened next was that I was to run outside and roll around in the snow. Unfortunately, it had not snowed in several weeks and there was none. The fallback position was to jump into a shallow indoor pool of ice cold water which was in plentiful supply. After a couple of minutes of this, I toweled off and went into a sauna.

Then if I remember correctly, I repeated the pool thing again and dried off one last time. I must say that I did feel invigorated, but was not sure I wanted to repeat it. So far I haven’t.

I also remember having lunch with a peasant family near Minsk. We had gone to visit the grave of a young teenage girl, a friend of my student who he had met on a previous trip to Belarus, who died of the radiation from the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Afterward, her family invited us to have lunch with them.

I remember only vaguely the inside of their home; it was dark, but clean and orderly. It smelled of good food. We had sausage, bread, and soup. My student said it probably was a whole month’s worth of food that they set out especially for us.

And we had vodka at lunch.  And vodka for every meal. I had vodka everywhere. And when one drank vodka, one was expected to give a toast. Everyone around the table gave toasts, theirs mainly thanking us for coming and visiting them and their daughter’s grave.

When it came to my turn, I thanked them for their hospitality to us and their continued relationship with my student. I can’t really remember my words like most memoirists, but that was essentially what I said. They were a wonderful family.

There are many other memories, one in particular from 1943, that I’ll write about later.

(Georgia 12)