A National Union of Students trip to Russia in 1969.
I hesitated before posting these photos, but for perspective, 1969 was closer in time to the 1917 revolution than it is to today’s invasion of Ukraine. To have been to Kyiv is poignant, to have been to Russia does not indicate support of the current regime.
We must have spent a lot of time on trains. 72 hours from Ostend to Moscow, all door locked as we crossed East Berlin. Poland is large, 24 hours to cross. Bogies changed at the Polish/Russian border as the gauge changed from standard to five foot. A posh overnight sleeper train to Leningrad (The Red Arrow). Another 24 hour slow train south to Kyiv before exit via Minsk back to Ostend.
We had an Intourist minder with us all the time, and as well as the tourist sites we had factory visits, and comradely meetings with student and worker groups.
Visits were subject to “prior coordination” and excluded “specifically designated zones” such as a limited number of neighborhoods in a limited number of cities. This is a “principle that would define Soviet regulation of foreign travel for all categories of foreigners until 1991” and beyond.
Even in Moscow, foreigners were rare, and I remember some hostility as we were taken about, and queue jumped for “attractions” such as Lenin’s mausoleum. Food in general was not great, and in Moscow it was pretty terrible. Most of my photos come from a visit to the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy abbreviated as VDNKh or VDNH, Russian: ВДНХ, a permanent general purpose trade show and amusement park.
In Leningrad, St. Petersburg since 1991, I remember a gathering in a cafe in the Nevsky Prospect to meet other students, but without interpreters. Football seemed to be the common, and safe, ground with lots of drawing on napkins to try to illustrate a point. Champagne from Georgia was served. We had the choice of visiting the war memorial or the summer palace and Petrodvorets (The Peterhof Palace) As the photos show we chose the palace, and only later did I read about the war and the siege of Leningrad, and often think that a return to pay respects might be a good idea.
In Kyiv we had another comradely meeting (with lots of vodka, I think). An elderly couple (well, older than us) insisted very strongly on taking one or two of us in their car to a special place. It was in the woods and very dark; nothing to see but all I remember is the name, Babi Yar. Shortly afterwards Yevtushenko had a poem published in the West, and we now know that Babi Yar, or Babyn Yar (Ukrainian), is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany’s forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II.
All photos are half frame images taken in slide film with an Olympus point and shoot. I thought it was an RC35 (which I did have) but that model didn’t come out until 1970. So perhaps it was a Olympus PEN Half Frame 35mm Film Camera w/ 35/2.8 D. Zuiko Lens. (Lots on Ebay). Digitisation by photographing the slides on a lightbox.
Moscow
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Leningrad / St. Petersburg
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Kyiv, Ukraine
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One reply on “Russia 1969”
Hi David. Some wonderful photos in there as ever. I too went on a post O Level school trip to Russia a bit later on, and obviously fairly similar to yours. We went by boat via Copenhagen and had the very long train journey home. Lovely to see the pictures going way back to a different era. I remember the food we were given in Russia was awful and I lost lots of weight! I remember the Summer Palace in particular. Thank you