UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 24, Page 4
March 19, 1992
Winter Session;  Up close and personal in new, capitalistic Russia

     The homeless wander the city streets now in Russia, where once the
police loaded the poor on trucks or trains and herded them to concentration
camps on restricted settlements outside the cities. The old, the young and
the sick suffer most, Alexander Lehrman said.
     Lehrman, as assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures at
the University, was an eyewitness to this brave, new world of Russia as he
and his wife, Susan Amert, associate professor of foreign languages and
literatures, led a Winter Session trip to St. Petersburg.
     For Lehrman and Amert, this trip to Russia brought a special
perspective-he was born and raised in Moscow but had not returned to his
homeland in 16 years, and she had last been there when she studied in St.
Petersburg in 1981.
     Some sights, such as the bread lines, were familiar from American media.
Lehrman explained that when the old system collapsed, the bureaucrats
sabotaged the distribution systems. The new government is trying to
reorganize the system, but the process is just beginning, he said.
     Northern cities depend on the provinces for their produce. When the
changes began, the provinces began keeping their food for themselves.
Although food is not readily available, he explained that Russians are still
particular about their bread. It must be baked fresh that day.
     "Pre-packaged bread will not sell; it's not an item anyone would ever
think of buying in Russia. It probably will take years and years of consumer
education, marketing propaganda, to convince people that it's okay to buy
bread wrapped in plastic," Lehrman said.
     The changes there amazed them both, especially the lack of political
propaganda, where once, communist slogans had been abundant.
     "Wherever you looked there was some huge poster with a sturdy,
brawny-looking worker on a red banner, a hammer and sickle and a large
inscription saying something like, 'The victory of Communism is inevitable'
or 'The party and the people are one,' " Lehrman said.
     However, Amert added that vestiges of the Soviet state remain. She
described driving past the empty pedestal which used to support a statue of
Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the KGB, the Soviet secret police.
     "There was just this pedestal in front of one of the most feared and
terrible buildings in Moscow," she said.
     For this Winter Session trip, Delaware students could choose from three
morning classes while studying at the Gornyi Mining Institute in St.
Petersburg: Lehrman's contemporary Russia course, Amert's myth of St.
Petersburg course and a Russian language course.
     Lehrman's course included lectures from "all of the new movers and
shakers of the new Russia," including artists, political activists, municipal
activists and business people.
     He also kept the students up-to-date on Russian political changes and
American current events, because the students could not read the newspapers
or understand the televised news.
     In Amert's course, the students studied images of St. Petersburg in
Russian literature, including Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Pushkin's
The Bronze Horseman.
     Both courses required afternoon and evening excursions. Lehrman said it
was surprising to the students to see the country's cultural life continuing
and growing in the midst of crisis. He said the theatres were always full,
acting troupes were collaborating, new art studios were opening and new
ballet companies were forming.
     The students attended several operas and ballet performances at the
famous Maryinsky Theater.
     They also visited Tsarskoe Selo, the "Czar's Village," the Russian
Museum and the Hermitage. One evening included a tour of a renovated
apartment house where underground artists lived and worked.
     The excursions allowed the students to experience Russian culture and
understand the people's reaction to the new reforms.
     The country's central health system collapsed early in the reform
atmosphere. Now, charitable organizations, previously illegal, have formed to
help the sick and poor.
     One example is Alexander  Margolis, a friend of Lehrman who created the
Rescue Foundation to aid children's hospitals where they need the most basic
equipment and medication, including such necessities as aspirin.
     Lehrman and Amert said that the people's morale is amazingly high during
the economic hard times. Amert heard Russians constantly lament that they
don't know what tomorrow will bring, but said the majority support the
reforms.
     They will sacrifice today so that the lives of their children will be
better, he said.
     The opinions of the democratic government varied according to
generational lines, said Lehrman. The opinion of those over 40 ranged from
skepticism to hostility, because the communist government educated them to
think of the government before themselves.
     But the majority of the younger people are excited about the reforms and
potential for a better future.
     Lehrman said that people always astonish you though "Even older women
said, 'Oh this is great! I am going to die soon but at least I have a few
years to see these things I've always dreamed of. All of these lines, that's
nothing. We've always lived with difficulty and great hardship. We know how
to bear it and at least there is some reason to live.' "
     The importance of Russian culture is no newcomer to the world, Lehrman
explained. He said it bloomed and became recognized in the 18th century and
has continued to grow in the 19th and 20th centuries. He described it as
"cosmopolitan, a little from everywhere."
     Even the children know what a good thing high culture is. They know that
to understand it is difficult, but that the effort is worth it. Lehrman said
he believes these cultural values have kept Russia alive while communism was
trampling human individuality.
     He said he wishes American culture had the intensity and passion of
Russian culture. "One of the purposes of our trip was, to me, to try and
infect our students with that as much as they're ready for it," he said.
     "If a little seed fell somewhere, it could produce a plant. If art and
culture changed their lives in any way or made an impact, then the trip was
successful."
     Laura Reisinger