Photography: I took all of the photos in this collection, except where noted otherwise. I used 35 mm Kodachrome slide film and a Kodak Retina Reflex S camera (a 1960 vintage SLR camera) borrowed from my uncle. All credit for quality goes to German engineering, and I take all blame for mistakes in composition, etc. To prepare the photos for this collection, I scanned the slides to digital format, and then edited them for sharpness, exposure and color balance using Windows Live Photo Gallery. I retouched the photos only to remove scratches, dust spots and the like. Nothing is“photo-shopped.” What you see is what I saw.
Itinerary: I have not found a contemporaneous record of the dates of our travels and visits to various cities, but I have been able to reconstruct parts of it from recollection or other sources, as explained below. Some dates are approximate. All dates are in 1969.
Itinerary: I have not found a contemporaneous record of the dates of our travels and visits to various cities, but I have been able to reconstruct parts of it from recollection or other sources, as explained below. Some dates are approximate. All dates are in 1969.
June 22-23: Depart NYC - overnight charter flight from JFK Airport to Stockholm. (This is truly a history geek moment: The German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II started on June 22, 1941. I recall thinking it a curious coincidence that my travel group was leaving for the Soviet Union on the anniversary of that date.)
June 25-26: Overnight ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki.
June 28: Arrival in Tallinn by ferry from Helsinki. Flew to Riga via Aeroflot the same evening, after visiting Laulupidu - the Estonian Song Festival - and our welcome dinner. (We arrived in Tallinn during the 1969 Laulupidu, which was on June 28-29.)
June 30: Travel by train from Riga to Tallinn.
July 2: Travel by train from Tallinn to Leningrad.
July 4: In either Leningrad or Novgorod. (Intourist hosted a picnic for us in Novgorod to celebrate the US Independence Day, but I think the picnic was probably a few days after July 4. The time frame seems too tight for us to have visited Tallinn, Riga, Tallinn again, Leningrad, and then traveled to Novgorod between June 28/29 and July 4.)
July __: Travel by bus from Leningrad to Novgorod.
July __: Travel by bus from Novgorod to Kalinin.
July __: Travel by bus from Kalinin to Moscow.
July __: Travel by overnight train from Moscow to Kiev.
July 20-24: In Kiev. (July 20 was the date of the first moon landing, by Apollo 11, and July 24 was the date of its safe return to earth. We were in Kiev during those events.)
July __: Aeroflot flight from Kiev to Vienna.
July 30: Travel by train from Vienna to Munich.
July 31: Charter flight from Munich to NYC (JFK Airport), with re-fueling stop in Shannon, Ireland. Our flight arrived in NYC late at night, and I traveled by train the next morning to my uncle's home near Hartford, Connecticut. (A letter from my mother to her parents reports that I arrived at my uncle's home on August 1.)
(Source: http://euroheritage.net/warsawpact.jpg - shading of city names and travel route added)
Place Names: Some names of cities and places that we visited have changed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Most notably, the cities of Leningrad and Kalinin have reverted to their pre-Soviet era names, “St. Petersburg” and “Tver,” respectively. Some spellings have changed, to reflect the primacy of the local language. For example, while“Kiev” is still the correct transliteration of that city’s name in the Russian language («Киев»), today one more commonly sees “Kyiv,” which is the transliteration of the city’s name in the Ukrainian language («Київ»). In this account I generally use the name and spelling that was current at the time of my visit, but I try to note the changes that have occurred since.
I use "Soviet Union" and "USSR" interchangeably to refer to the national entity, the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." In Russian, "USSR" is written «СССР» and the full name is: «Союз Советских Социалистических Республик» (Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik). "Soviet Union" is written «Советский Союз» (Sovietskij Soyuz).
Regarding the constituent republics of the USSR, I generally use familiar names such as “Russia” and “Ukraine.” The full names of these countries (in English), during the Soviet era and today, are:
Then: Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Now: Russian Federation, Ukraine, Republic of Latvia, Republic of Estonia.
The Russian Language: More than 120 languages were in everyday use in various parts of the Soviet Union. The Soviet constitution upheld the right of national and ethnic minorities to the use of their own languages, but Russian was the dominant language. It was the language of government and economic activity at all but the most local level. It was taught to children throughout the USSR, and proficiency in Russian was necessary for personal advancement in Soviet politics, academics, or employment.
Today, Russian is the official language in the Russian Federation, which is formally the successor state to the Soviet Union and by far the largest nation to emerge from the dissolution of the USSR. Russian is also an official language in several other former republics of the USSR, and it is still widely used in many parts of what was the Soviet Union. The non-Russian republics that I visited – Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine – all have large minorities who speak Russian as their first language. Russian is not an official national language in any of those countries, and its status has been the subject of controversy.
By most accounts, the role of Russian language in international, economic and academic activities is in decline. Proficiency in English, today’s world-wide lingua franca, is increasingly seen as a necessity for personal advancement among younger, better-educated citizens in most countries of the former USSR.
