Part 3. Our Young Astronaut Trip to the Soviet Space Camp. 1989

Rangi and Kyle on the shores of the Ob Reservoir

Our Trip to the Soviet Space Camp.  Summer 1989
Part 3

Half way through the three week camp, the camp staff asked if Mila and I would put together an America Day for the 300 children and teens attending the camp.  Our delegation, with the help of our new found Bulgarian friends, prepared large banners announcing "America Day" and the activities we had planned.

A Skit we Performed During America Day

I'm teaching the lesson on America Day

Mila and I taught the morning space lessons on America Day.  After the lessons, we took the 300 children in the camp to the soccer field to teach them American games. Rocky taught them one how to play our version of dodgeball called Bombardment.  Rangi taught them American football, and Kyle taught them how to play baseball.  In the afternoon we showed them a video of America's space program.

We arranged a special meal for America Day's supper.  A few days before the camp Mila met with the camp's head cook.  She explained french fries.  The cook seemed to understand.  She explained what a hamburger was.  The cook seemed to understand.  She explained that we needed mustard and ketchup.  The cook seemed to understand.  "Seemed" is what I counted on.  Something got lost in the translation.

Our American Delegation to the Camp.

Kyle Sanderson, Rocky Smart, Me, Rangi Smart, Mila and Mila's two boys from 

Northwest Middle School in Salt Lake 

That day we hung home made Mila McDonald's sign outside the cafeteria door to great the Russian campers as they eagerly crowded to their tables.  The American meal was underway.  I had my fingers crossed all would work out. The hamburgers and fries were served first.  The hamburgers were made of boiled meat on a roll.  The french fries were fried whole potatoes.   The camp director spent much of the day searching every grocery store in Novosibirsk for ketchup.  He was lucky.  At one of the state stores he found ketchup in large tins imported from Bulgaria.  The director found another treat while shopping for ketchup - Pepsi.   Ice cream finished off a very successful meal (for us at least.  The Russians found the meat sandwiched between two halves of a roll very odd.  They also didn't seem to care too much for the ketchup).   

The camp's music teacher asked me to provide the music for America Day's evening disco.  There was dancing every night during the camp. That afternoon Rangi, Rocky, Kyle and I went through our cassette tapes looking for danceable songs.

 

We were featured in the city newspaper.

The only music most of the campers ever heard was music approved by the communist party.  Most western music was prohibited.  It was considered unsuitable for Soviet youth.   What little western music had to be smuggled in.  The camp director made an exception for our America Day disco.  We were permitted to play anything we liked.

  I'm showing the DJ what to play next during the American Day Disco

The camp square was full.  Everyone, including people not a part of the camp, had come to hear our forbidden western music.  I sat on the stage and cued the music before handing the tape to the DJ for playing.  It was fun to see the faces of hundreds and hundreds of young Soviet children hearing America's top 40 hits for the first time over the camp's impressive sound system.  Many stopped dancing so they could focus on the songs themselves.  Afterwords, the DJ asked if he could borrow the tapes for copies.  I'll bet he made a handsome side income selling black market copies of our tapes.

We were allowed to go into Novosibirsk twice during our stay.  The boys saw what life was like for the average Soviet citizen in Novosibirsk.  We saw long lines to buy vodka, clothes, food, etc.  We saw lines where  the people in the line didn't even know why they were in line.  They just knew something good was about to be made available for purchase.  Rumors dictated your day's shopping.  Women would hear a rumor that state store whatever would have a shipment of meat at 4:00 P.M.  The line at the store would form at daybreak.  Sometimes the rumors were true, other times they weren't - or the shipment just didn't arrive.

Discussing shopping with the Camp's English Teacher

On one shopping excursion we were standing outside the city's largest department stores when an announcement was made over the loudspeaker on the street.  The translator said it had to do with an unexpected arrival of toilet paper.  We quickly got out of the way.  There was a mad rush of hundreds of people making a beeline for the store's entrance to pick up another item in constant short supply.

Later that afternoon the translator had me conduct a shopping demonstration for the boys.

"Now you see how we shop," she said in her faulty English.  "You go stand over by that  glass counter.  You see there is nobody there.  Pretend to be looking at something interesting."

"What will happen?" I asked.

"You will see," she answered.

I walked over to a fairly empty part of the department store.  I stopped at a glass case and pretended to be looking at something in the case.  Within seconds a crowd had gathered.  People were pushing and shoving to get up to the glass to see what it was I was looking at.  

We were invited to the apartment of the camp's English teacher on our second trip to the city.  We talked about life in the Soviet Union in her small cramped living room.  She served fresh raspberries and cream.  I knew it was a special treat.  I knew how difficult it was to find fresh anything.  Her family had gone out of the way to make us feel welcome.

  Pictures at the two War Memorials

We visited two Soviet war memorials during our two excursions into the city.  Twenty-five million Russians lost their lives in World War 2.  We saw several newly married couples placing flowers on the memorials, customary at that time.

At my request, we stopped at one of the few functioning churches in the city.  The Russian Orthodox Church was beautiful.  We entered the church and found the priests performing two marriages.  Church weddings were rarely done in the USSR at that time.

The Russian children stayed in the buses and waited.  They were either uninterested in religion or fearful of their camp leaders.  Our Bulgarian friends came with us even though Bulgaria was an athiest Communist country at the time, and Stan's father was Communist Party official.  It was the first time either boy had ever been inside a church.  They asked about the cross and wanted to know why a man was nailed to it.

Our boys learned to appreciate their own country and our lifestyle.  They learned to appreciate the basics of life like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, toiletries, cars, full supermarkets, decent housing, etc.

A typical gathering outside our Dorm wanting to talk America, religion, politics etc.

The boy I'm talking to was nicknamed 'blue eyes'.  He spoke the best English of the teens and 

acted as their translator.

We were treated like celebrities during our three weeks in Siberia.  We signed dozens and dozens of autographs and gave several people our addresses. The boys were photographed everywhere they went.  Everyone wanted to talk to us about life in America.  The teens were interested in our culture and politics.  It was so bad that often we had to politely plow our way through the small crowds waiting to talk to us outside our dorm and lock ourselves in our room and ignore the knocking, just to get a moment's peace and quiet.

Rocky on the day of departure.  He is saying goodbye to his Russian friends.

He is wearing the red neckerchief of the Young Pioneers given to him by a friend.

The most touching scene came the day we left.  Before leaving, we gathered all our toiletries and left over food items and gave them to our newly found friends.   The 300 campers stood around our bus to send us off.  You could see the sadness in their faces.  It was hard for them and hard for us to say goodbye to people that we had learned to admire and respect.  Just before boarding the bus a young Russian teen ran up to me and gave me a present wrapped in tissue paper.

"You Christian.  Me Christian," she whispered.  I got on the bus and unwrapped the gift.  It was a home made Russian religious icon of Mary and Jesus.  It hangs on my living room wall today.  

 Many campers ran up to touch the bus as it pulled away.  They tried to catch a last glimpse of their American friends.

Our final camp photograph.  The camp's English teacher is beside me.  

These were some of the children in our class group. 

We left the camp on August 14th.  Our bouncy bus took us back to the MIG fighter jet plant for the flight back to Moscow. The plane was scheduled to leave at 2:00 P.M.  At 3:00 P.M.  when we were told that due to heavy fog in Moscow, the plane would be delayed until 5:00 P.M.

They let us exit the plane to stretch our legs with a warning not venture off.  Armed soldiers kept a close eye on us. The boys found a ball and played soccer and basketball.  Rocky acted as the basket.  The boys entertained us while we waited and waited.  

At 5:00 P.M. they extended the delay to 8:00 P.M.  At 8:00 P.M. they told us the flight was canceled.  We spent the night in Novosibirsk at a hostel used by the MIG plant employees.   It  was rough sleeping.  There were ten or so of us in every room.  It was like sleeping in a homeless shelter. 

We left Novosibirsk the following morning at 9:00 A.M.  We landed in Moscow at the same time due to the four hour time difference.  We waited three hours for our bus to take us into the city.  It arrived, we got on board.  Ten minutes later it broke down on the highway into Moscow.  We sat on the roadside for a few hours and waited for another bus to come fetch us. We were loosing precious Moscow sightseeing time. 

The following day we toured Moscow.  We saw the Moscow circus, Red Square, and Star City - the place where Soviet Cosmonauts are trained.

We left Moscow on August 17.   Our Lufthansa flight had mechanical problems which delayed our departure from Moscow for two hours.  It was blessing in disguise.  Because of the delay, we were upgraded to business class for the flight to Frankfurt.  We enjoyed the extra benefits of business class.

We had several hours in Frankfurt, Germany before our next flight to New York.  We spent the time sightseeing.

We discovered our luggage was lost again (because of the delay in Moscow) when we landed in New York.  I had to go through the hassle of filling out the lost baggage forms again.  Because of the delay in Germany, we lost our connecting flight to Salt Lake and spent the night in New York City.  The boys phoned home.  There were tears.  The boys weren't able to call home during our time in Russia.  The camp had one telephone in the camp director's office.  He tried, but couldn't get a call placed through to America.  Such calls had to go through the central telephone exchange in Moscow - making it almost impossible.





We arrived home on August 19.  Our luggage was waiting for us.  It was a trip of a lifetime but we were glad to get home.

My Photographs of the Trip:

On the flight to Novisibirsk.  Rangi and Kyle

The Flag Ceremony in the Camp Square at our arrival

The Boys waiting through the ceremony.

We are officially welcomed to the camp.

The Young Pioneer Banner

Rocky holding the Young Pioneer Banner

The boys getting a tour of a Soviet helicopter

Rocky in a Soviet Cosmonaut suit

The boys on the camp podium.

Kyle, Rocky and Rangi

The boys on the camp's playground

A late night game of chess in the dorm

America Day skit

The boys in one of the space lessons

The boys learning how to make a model rocket from scratch

Forming the nose cone

Our room at the end of a day.  The man is the leader of the Dutch delegation (himself and his daughter).

The boys take a break from soccer for a picture

A birthday celebration for the leader of the Dutch team

Working on one of the America Day banners.

One of our translators showing her internal passport necessary to travel within the USSR

The boys at a hydroelectric plant.

The boys at a fruit juice vending machine.  You put in your coin and filled the glass glass.  You had to rinse the glass out when you were done for the next person.

Lunch during one of our city outings.

Our stop at the Russian Orthodox Church

America Day supper

Our McDonald's Sign and the young Russian waiters

A day on the lake

Getting them to stay awake during the lectures was impossible

Shopping in the city

Our visit to the English teacher's apartment.  This was their living room.

The sign at the front of the camp.

Svet's turn to wear American clothes

Rocky letting one of his new Russian Friends try his clothes and shoes.

The boys hated buckwheat. 

Friends in the dorms

Our field trip bus

Broken down on the road to Moscow.

The boys in front of Lenin's Tomb

The boys on Red Square

The boys at Star City

Our return to Salt Lake City

Space Center History. Our Young Astronaut Trip to Siberia. 1989. Part 2

Siberia!

TY-134 Aeroflot jet.

We departed Moscow the next day on a TY-134 Aeroflot jet.  The seats were flimsy by American standards.  I noticed the carpet was coming up between the aisle and seats.  One of the boys was assigned to a broken seat.  I had him moved.  I got settled and looked around the cabin to get my bearings.  I noticed something strange above the escape exit over one of the windows.  A small compartment labeled "Escape Rope".   We laughed that one of the emergency procedures on the plane consisted of an escape rope!   I told the boys that in the event of a crash landing, we would take our chances and jump out instead of waiting our turn on the escape rope.

Our Chariot to the Young Pioneer Camp

Instead of landing at Novosibirsk's airport, our Aeroflot flight landed at a Soviet Air force Base / MIG fighter jet production factory.  MIG jets were parked up and down the runway.  Others where being serviced in large hangars.  I was forbidden to take pictures until we were out of sight of the bus and well on our way to the camp.  A blue city bus was waiting for us as we departed the plane.  It took us the 70 miles to the camp, which sat on the shores of the Ob Reservoir.   Russia isn't known for its smooth roads.  Included the age of the bus and its non existing shock absorbers and you can imagine how comfortable the ride was from Novosibirsk to the camp.  I spent as much time in the air as I did on my seat during the two hour trip.  We actually got use to the ride after a few weeks.

We were met at the camp by hundreds of children, teens and their adult leaders.  Our American delegation was the object of conversation and stares where ever we went.   It was the first time any of them had met Americans.  In the past, Americans were not allowed to travel to that region of Russia.  The United States and Russia weren't enemies, but we weren't friends either.  The communists distrusted America and Americans in general.  Which was why we had our very own KGB agent assigned to us during our stay.  He took all the black and white pictures I'm posting with this article.  I asked him for copies; he was kind and obliged. 

The Young Pioneer Club was a division of the Communist Party.  It was a children's organization, like our Boy and Girl Scouts.  Its mission was to prepare Soviet children to become good Soviet citizens and future communist party members.   The Young Pioneer Club sponsored hundreds of summer camps all over the country.  Our camp was one of them.  It was funded by the MIG factory in Novosibirsk.   

The first thing we did after getting off the bus was attend a flag lower ceremony in the camp's central square.  The anthem was played as the flag was lowered.  I took several pictures and several pictures were taken of us.

The Boys and I watching the lowering of the Soviet flag.

I'm taking pictures and pictures are being taken of us by our KGB handler

Kyle, Rocky and Rangi.  The dark haired woman talking to Kyle was the camp's English teacher

The three boys at the flag lowering

They called it a space camp.  It wasn't.  It was a normal Young Pioneer Camp.  The international delegations made it special.  There was however one hour a day of space lectures.  They were boring.  The boys hated them and so did I.  They were in Russian, we couldn't understand a thing and the interrupter had trouble with the technical terms.  Regardless, we went anyway.  That was the reason we were there. The rest of the day was spent in regular camp activities with the Soviet children.  That is where the real learning took place.

The Dormitories

A camp bedroom with the odd green, glossy walls.

We stayed in one of the dormitories on the second floor.  All the walls were painted a peculiar green and trimmed with white.  The buildings were old.  The plumbing was old.  The boys restroom toilets were flush with the floor, meaning you had to squat to use the bathroom.  It was strange at first and took some getting use to, but we managed.  Every floor had a commons room were the campers gathered for games, cards and just hanging out.

  

We took our meals in the camp's cafeteria.  We had a table reserved for us and the Dutch delegation.
The picture above shows us 'enjoying' a meal.  The leader of the Dutch delegation is on the right.  Mila (the other American leader from Salt Lake) is on the right with her two boys.  You can see me at the end of the table on the left.  Kyle sat at the end of the table.  Rangi and Rock sat opposite me.  The sign on the wall read CWA (Russian for USA) and Netherlands.  I had to use all my powers of persuasion to get the boys to eat as much as they could.  I knew that food wasn't always plentiful in the USSR and so I thought we should show our appreciation and eat what they served to show them that we enjoyed their hospitality.   The food at the camp was bland at best.  The boys had a difficult time adjusting to it.  Rocky hated potatoes and Kyle hated tomatoes - both of which were staples in the camp diet.   The boys ate most everything, but no matter how I threatened, I couldn't get them to eat buckwheat.

 Buckwheat (similar to oatmeal) 

I'm known to eat everything, except liver and plain boiled buckwheat.

The food supply we had brought with us didn't last very long.  We packed Twinkies, jerky, corn nuts, licorice, fruit rollups, etc.   We used our home supply of goodies to supplement our camp meals.  Our private stores didn't last very long.

We enjoyed sharing our food with our floormates.  One day we invited a few of the Russian boys into our room for a treat.  Their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when they saw me open one of our suitcases full of goodies.

"What shall we give them?" I asked the boys.
"How about an Atomic Fireball," Rangi suggested.  He wanted to see their reaction, knowing they had never tasted anything like that in Russia.
"That's evil," I said.  "Let's do it."

We gave them each a Fireball.  They thanked us in Russian, gently unwrapped the candy and popped it into their mouths.  Five seconds later their faces began to contort.  Ten seconds later they took them out of their mouths and rushed out of the room for water.  I went to find someone who spoke some English and had him explain to the boys that the Fireballs were really candy and we weren't playing a trick on them.  They laughed and brought their friends in for the same treat :)

The Russians were surprised we didn't drink tea.  All Russians, including children, drink tea.  Tea was the beverage of choice at every camp meal.   We made do with water or milk.

Russian was officially atheist.  Christians were persecuted by the communists.  Russian children were taught that God was a fairy tell and that religion was the opium of the masses.  The Russians in the camp were surprised when I told them that the boys and I were all Christians.  Our faith opened the door to many interesting discussions on the subject of religion and the role religion played in American.  We also talked to them about the communist party's attitude toward religion in their country. The teachers in the camp were fascinated that Rangi, Rocky and Kyle were all planning on becoming LDS missionaries.

I was invited to many camp staff parties and always had to explain that my refusal to drink alcohol was not because of my health,  but because of my religion.  They considered my believe peculiar until a Soviet Cosmonaut came to the camp and attended one of the staff parties.  He was a friend of Jack Anderson, the founder of Young Astronauts who happened to be LDS.  He explained LDS practices and stated how he admired Mormons for their attitudes toward health.  After that, I no longer had to explain why I didn't smoke or drink.

One day I was pulled aside by a Soviet teacher.  "I understand that the boys are Mormons too?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
"May I ask how many wives they will be permitted when they become older?"  she asked.
You can see that a I spent a great deal of time correcting their viewpoints regarding Mormon life. 

The boys built model rockets and gliders while at the camp.  The Russians didn't have rocket model kits.  They made their rockets from scratch.  The nose cones were made of wood and fashioned in the wood shop.

The bonfire on the island and our rowing excursion on the Ob Reservoir

Life jackets - forget it. I kept the row boat right next to shore.

Many afternoons were spent playing soccer or other favorite Russian games.  We went to the beach often and swam in the Ob Reservoir.   We even got to go camping overnight on a small island.  

The Russian school teachers arranged many question and answer sessions with me.  They were curious about our schools, our curriculum and educational practices.  The old Soviet school system was very restrictive.  Teachers were told what to teach, when to teach it and how long to teach it. Their instructions were so detailed, you could leave Moscow on a Monday after having done page 212 in your math book, fly to the other side of the country, go to school on Tuesday and find the class you were visiting on pay 213 in the same math book!  They were envious of the academic freedom we had as American teachers back then.  Strangely, our current educational system is eerily similar to the old Soviet system with the heavy emphasis on managed curriculum and standardized testing.    

The Soviet children were likewise interested n the lifestyle of American children.  The boys were asked many questions about their life in the United States, their clothing, hair styles, what they like to do in their spare time, their interest, etc.  Our boys even exchanged clothes with two Bulgarian boys so they could feel what our clothes and shoes felt like.

 Our American Utah Boys with their two Bulgarian Friends made at the Camp.

Svet is standing next to Rocky and Stan is between Rangi and Kyle.  Stan is still wearing Rangi's clothes.

To Be Continued......