Enlarge A monument to Russian soldiers and the women who ran the country in wartime, in Yaroslavl.

Posted: June 29th, 2010 Aleigh Acerni

Travel, whether to another city, another region, or another country, often provides insight into other cultures and our own. This is an occasional series on what we can learn when we go somewhere else.

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As far as I know, I don’t have any Russian ancestry. I can trace my family tree through quite a few countries — Italy, Great Britain, Scotland, France, Germany — but not Russia, although that's the first question most people ask when they find out I just spent two weeks on a cruise ship with my grandmother, aunt, and uncle traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

“Are you…Russian?” they ask, apologetically, as if being Russian is something of which I ought to be ashamed.

“No, I’m not Russian,” I say. “It’s where my grandmother wanted to go, and she’s 89 years old, so what she says goes!”

“Oh,” they respond, puzzled. “Why would she want to go to Russia?”

Why not? I think.

The truth? I didn’t know much about Russia when I set foot in the former USSR. I didn’t live through the height of the Cold War, but I know the nearly 50 years of tension is still more than a faint memory to many Americans. It seems obvious, given recent headlines about Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the recent arrests of alleged Russian spies in the U.S., that our country is still pretty suspicious of Russia and its government’s global intentions.

What’s not so obvious to many Americans is that while we lived in fear of Russia, Russians saw America as an equal threat — second only to Russia itself. While the United States was creating bomb shelters and holding drills to practice survival skills in the event of nuclear war, Russians were in a daily struggle for survival within their own country.

Consider Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. From the American perspective, Gorbachev is a hero for his contributions to the demise of the Cold War. Not so to Russians. Under his leadership, they suffered through his perestroika (“reorganization”) and glasnost (“openness”), which led to massive food shortages and days-long waits in rationing lines for tiny handouts of sugar or meat. Gorbachev’s restructured economy saw many Russians lose their lives’ savings in a matter of days, while creating widespread civil unrest, the perfect environment for organized crime (a major problem even today) and allowing businessmen with the right connections to build immense fortunes while the rest of the country struggled with poverty.

One of our Russian guides, Natasha, put it best during a lecture: “We understand why Americans love Gorbachev,” she said. “But we do not agree.”

It’s heartbreaking to see evidence of these hardships in person; even paired with the immense pride and love Russians have for their homeland. As a country, Russia will continue to fight for its spot as a global superpower, and that will undoubtedly come with conflict. But it only took a few days in St. Petersburg for me to be utterly charmed by the country’s biggest asset — the hardworking, smart, Russian people, with their sardonic sense of humor and ability to take every hardship in stride. I’m hopeful the rest of the world will get to see it, too.

I know I’ll hear Natasha’s parting words in my head for a long time to come. “Let our leaders fight,” she said. “As for us? Let’s be friends.”

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