Everybody has a Russian story. For me, maybe it’s the made-for-television movie, The Day After, which probably horrified and titillating children all across America, giving us the impression that we’d be responsible for making do without homes, cars, grocery stores, and even parents, in the event of a nuclear conflict with the Soviets. Or perhaps it’s just the awe I felt every time I walked by the Soviet embassy when I went to college in Washington, D.C.
Some stories are more light-hearted. One chemist in my division tells his students about how Rasputin survived a poisoning (he was eventually killed by other means) because the sugar in his wine is a natural antidote to arsenic. (He also smilingly recalls the disco song, Rasputin, with some fondness). My four year old talks about visiting Russia—the land of the mythical firebird—because a cartoon called Little Einsteins shows four children flying their spaceship past the Kremlin and a series of mad Russian (matryoska) nesting dolls in search of this bird. Another friend says I should mention how cold it gets in Russia, because that’s what has always fascinated her. A colleague on a trip mentions that he took a theatre trip to perform a play in Omsk, Siberia, staying there for a month and drinking lots of Vodka (because the water was dirty and there wasn’t anything else to drink in any case). He took an Aeroflot plane in and out of Omsk, which, he added, always landed at a sharp vertical angle with a thud.
So what’s your memory of Russia or the Soviet Union?
