My Extraordinary Aunt: Visions of Moscow 1969

…The Bolshoi theatre serving whole meals in the foyer at interval… the Arts Theatre, home of Stanislavski, where I saw a play in Russian… the woman sitting next to me trying to translate it for me… the mechanical perfection of the circus… crowds lined up at Lenin’s tomb in Red Square… convoys of tanks moving at midnight to Red Square from different directions, rehearsing for the October revolution celebrations… the greyness and uniformity of the residential  buildings outside the central area… dancing with Georgian dancers in a nightclub after a show… catching up with Australian travellers in kangaroo skin coats and being glad to hear that accent again… the telephone ringing in the hotel bedroom… and nobody there… a reminder that it was probably bugged….

These are my Aunty Joan Byrne’s impressions of Moscow in November 1969 when she arrived after seven days on the Trans-Siberian railway. She’d had plenty of time on the journey to ponder the realities of life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Now it was time to experience it. She was in contact with an Indian journalist who introduced her to Moscow’s expatriate scene. “We were always at parties for expelled comrades,” Joan said.

“I soon learned that fresh vegetables were a luxury for most of the year, and that I would be watched even more closely after forming contact with the residents there.”

All the cultural events Joan attended were booked long in advance, before she had left Hong Kong. For the grand sum of US$18 she arrived in Moscow with tickets to the ballet, opera, a play and the circus.

From Moscow, Joan boarded the train to Leningrad, as St Petersburg was then known.

“The size of the population in this beautiful city was tightly controlled. No new residents were allowed in to Leningrad until someone else moved out. This was apparently to preserve the architectural beauty of the city and the harmony of its symmetrical streets,” Joan said.

“I stayed at the Grande Hotel, a magnificent building where Hitler had planned his victory party over Russia. Even here, beauty had its dark side.

“At the magnificent Hermitage Art Gallery we had to divest ourselves of coats, hats and gloves on entry, join a queue and stay in that queue for a set time to view the selected artwork.

“I have always had a little trouble with enforced conformity, but I certainly had to accept it. There were a number of very large attendants ready to correct my transgressions.

“There was also the Winter Palace and the jail – yes, there was enough of a dark side to prevent my dreams of a world of beauty reigning supreme.”

A spiked drink with dinner on her last night in Leningrad sent Joan to bed ill, and she awoke to find the Intourist guide in her room going through her papers. “Ah well,” Joan said. “I had been warned.”

Next she travelled by train through Poland to Germany. “I should have worked harder on my German. I had booked through to Frankfurt on Oder rather than Frankfurt on Rhine. But then I ran into a bigger problem.

“I knew that OST meant East in German but in my tired state I left the train when OsteBerlin was called. Alas! I had hit East German soil without a visa.

“I was rescued by two handsome German engineers when they saw me sitting on my suitcase, utterly bewildered. They consoled me, fed me and took me to a checkpoint to get into West Berlin.

“Instead of taking me to Checkpoint Charlie, the usual crossing for foreigners, they took me to one for permitted local residents. But on that day, for the first time, they were letting through a group of people cut off from their friends and family when the Wall first went up.

“Emotions and tears were running high but I eventually got through, only to be confronted by a small room and a ticket window for a railway station, with no ticket, no money, no way out.

“But, once again, I was rescued, this time by a young woman. She was a French university student and she bought my ticket, took me to a hostel and set me on my path through Germany.”

Joan’s path included hamburgers in Hamburg, frankfurts in Frankfurt and a desperate attempt to understand the effects of World War II and the division of Germany which followed.

“The East, like Russia, was bleak and grey with flurries of red flags and portraits of leaders. The West was busy, colourful and prosperous. Even the dogs were well fed.”

Next stop, Switzerland. “So the call to me from this country was of the mountains, friends, the work of the United Nations and the notion of a neutral country so close to a war zone,” Joan said.

“Was this sitting on the fence a clever strategy or an accident of history? To my mind, it was a very clever strategy which would only have worked in a mountainous terrain. And the Swiss army was at the same time prepared for attack with underground aeroplane hangars and widespread conscription of people and transport.

“Then there were a couple of lines from TS Eliot’s The Wasteland…

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept.

Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song

“Yes I did weep there. I wept for the cruelty humankind has inflicted on its own species and on nature. I did weep for the difficulty of finding a way through what may be a lust for power in some individuals and some governments.

“And I wept for the people who have endured immense suffering because of all this. I had seen so many differences in race, religion, language and everywhere I found people pretty much as I had found them everywhere – eager, like me, to swap ideas and experiences.

“It showed me powerfully that there was a way through to international understanding, if only we could reduce our fear of the unknown. If only we could all learn to give and accept help.”

It was time. Time for Joan to dry her eyes and put on her travelling shoes. The sweet Thames was calling, and so was her ancestry. “I was ready to seek out the good and the problems of this important part of my country’s ancestry, and to experience the art, literature, history and drama of England and Ireland.”

It was also time to get personal, to find the family that her grandfather William Joseph Byrne had left behind, more than 70 years earlier. But that’s a story for another day.

© Maria Spackman 2017

This is the latest in a series of posts chronicling the adventures of my extraordinary aunt, who spent two years as a teacher in Hong Kong before resuming her travels. You can read more of her story here:

My Extraordinary Aunt: Taking the long way to London – before she joined us in Hong Kong, Joan travelled through Asia.

My Extraordinary Aunt: In the shadow of Lion Rock – Joan arrived in Hong Kong in May 1967, where working conditions were about to lead to one of the most turbulent times in its history.

My Extraordinary Aunt: College Days in 1960s Hong Kong – When the school year began in September 1967 Joan started teaching at Wellington College to earn enough money for the next stage of her journey.

My Extraordinary Aunt: The Adventure Continues – In 1969 Joan left Hong Kong for Japan, before heading for the USSR and the Trans-Siberian Railway.