From Russia With Doubts

when our eyes met, the adults would turn their heads or stare downwards. The most frustrating aspect of the journey to Leningrad proved to be my inability to converse with anyone. Even in the Hotel, the employees there met me--it seemed--very coolly and remained at a distance.

"Politics?" asked one of the employees at the hotel. "Why do you want to talk about politics? That's not people talk."

Only on my last day did I receive the opportunity to converse with a Russian adult. Sitting in front of the busy Hermitage Museum, a man introduced himself to me because, he said, he saw me from a distance and immediately knew that I was a foreigner with Russian descent and a Jew (both true). He, too, was Jewish and he worked as a Russian history and literature teacher at a local high school.

His English happened to be anything but fluent, but we had little trouble communicating, and we soon agreed to walk about Leningrad together. He appreciates the Soviet educational system because it stresses discipline and hard work (in America, he suggested, it is difficult to learn because no one has to study). His favorite American author: Mark Twain. His biggest political concern: Jewish emigration.

He took me to the most popular art exhibit in Leningrad, a cavernous hall filled with Latvian painting which stressed agricultural and industrial productivity. One picture depicted a truck overflowing with some fruit, and the subject of a towering lithograph was a factory full of men hard at work.

We then visited Leningrad's only Jewish Orthodox synagogue. At first, we were stopped because we didn't have yarmulkes, but the Russian man ripped his handkerchief in two. We then placed the torn halves on our heads and went inside.

The synagogue itself, on the exterior, stunk of decay like many of the other buildings in Leningrad, but the opulence and beauty displayed inside the temple was surprising. Candles were everywhere. Ornately carved, well kept wooden benches lined the room. Painted white pillars towered throughout the room.

At about three in the afternoon, the Russian Jew and I separated--he had to escort his pupils to the same museum which we had just visited.

"Tell your American friends that it's not that bad here."

In the evening, Leningrad becomes deserted and lifeless. After seven or eight o'clock on a Saturday evening, the activity and the animation, disappear. My first night there, I drifted about Leningrad naively, expecting to sit down in a bar or a restaurant to chart with some Russians. But that venture proved to be impossible. The only people who I came those fishing along the Neva river.

I soon became quite lonely, and, frankly, bored, so I returned to the Hotel Leningrad and listened to a Russian band play its stilted-- and rather humorous--versions of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree" and "Fddlings".

Prices in American currency are extremely low. Pravds costs about three cents, an ice cream sandwich a dime; a package of cigarettes, a quarter; subway entrance costs only five cents; and a voluminous bottle of horrible beer goes for about 20.

One afternoon, I rode the subway to the perimeter of Leningrad. There, I felt more at ease with the society; it, in fact, seemed almost suburban to me. A park echoed with the play of busy children. Their mothers sat, watched their activies and talked. This playground had no merry go round or swingset; a train, a play house, a turtle on which to climb.

But then I returned to the center of the city and once again found myself surrounded by the gaze of Lenin as his face loomed from the sides of buildings. And the communist slogans and the Red Star were visible wherever you went. In the taxi on a fence, in the bakery--constantly one felt the presence of this national religion.

At 10 in the morning on Tuesday, my Intourist escort promptly picked me up at the hotel and drove me to the train station. By then, the thrill of being a stranger land had dissipated.

Before the Finnish border, the train jolted to a stop. I stood up, looked out the window and saw a swarm of uniformed custom officers surrounded and climb onto the train. This had happened upon entrance into Russia but still the experience remains numbing.