Dear CCI Friends,

One near disaster after another has hit my small world since arriving back from Russia. I’ll explain later after first getting this “overview” emailed to you. I’ve searched all over my computer for this draft created over the ocean, and today found it lodged in “Archives” along with a number of other emails that should have been in “Sent”. Strange? Yes. I wondered if I’d dreamed that I’d written it! Here it is. Kindly read, as is. Other pieces will follow this one.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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Dear CCI Followers,

My best intentions to send you emails during our travels throughout Russia, came to naught! Paula Day, our stalwart CCI volunteer, Volodya Shestakov, CCI’s 35-year Russian VIP, and I were kept busy day and night from September 20 to October 17.

Our first city was Moscow where we settled on which hotel to use for our large June 2022 trip ahead, and met with numerous CCI friends. There was no time to capture these happenings on computer after meetings in the evenings.

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Dear CCI Friends,

I am prepping for an autumn trip to Russia, leaving on September 26th and returning on October 17. You will receive fewer CCI emails during this time. However we will send trip reports as we travel throughout Russia.

CCI volunteer Paula Day will travel with me for meetings in Moscow, Irkutsk out in Siberia, then south to Krasnodar, Crimea’s three cities, Volgograd and St. Petersburg. At about the same time on another route, CCI volunteers Krishen Mehta and Dennis Orblad will travel to Moscow, Kazan and several other Russian cities. We will explore various aspects of each city. Also, we will meet with our Russian PEP Fellows to see if they wish to host CCI delegates traveling to Russia (June 20 – July 5, 2022). More about this large delegation after we return home in October.

Unfortunately, CCI travelers are about the only Americans getting fresh eyes on Russia these days. During my June trip, tour buses were absent on Russian streets, hotel lobbies appeared near empty. It was strange to observe. But happily, Russians had their cities all to themselves during COVID! Russia’s “White Nights” of June and July have always been packed with tourists from abroad.

The upside was clear — Russians were really enjoying their parks, canals, sidewalks and streets. Even auto drivers seemed patient to share space with bicycles, roller skaters and scooters! It all looked like great fun …and there was no honking of horns. My apartment balcony looks down on an intersection of four streets and two driveways to other streets. I watched this flow of traffic and people for hours at a time. When COVID vanishes, Russians will remember these years when they had their streets and canals to themselves, a time when they didn’t have to dodge tourists.

From the beginning of COVID, travel between our countries all but stopped, except for Russians living here in the United States who take annual trips home to Russia. This past June I traveled on a huge Aeroflot plane along with hundreds of Russian mothers taking their babies and young children back to Russian grandparents for the summer. This is a long, long Russian tradition which apparently those living in the West still consider important. I saw no other Americans on the plane.

More to follow as time permits during the coming weeks!

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives