Our September CCI traveler, Michael Metz, gives Russians’ view of Communism today. His assessment is pretty typical of what one hears across Russia.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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What About Communism?
By Michael Metz

I’ve often wondered what Russians thought about the Communist system that ruled their country for 70 years. Generally they don’t talk about it, like most people they’re focused on the present and the future, not on the past, but I’m curious, so I ask. Here’s a random sample of answers.

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Dear Friends of CCI,

Our September 2019 mega-delegation of American citizens were dazzled by the beauty of current day Russia and also horrified to learn what today’s grandparents and great-grandparents endured in the Gulag work across the USSR. It is reported that over 17,000,000 persons, mostly men, were worked to death in frigid camps throughout the USSR from the 1920 to the 1950s.

Much of this history had been closed off to Russian society. However, the new Moscow Gulag Museum makes the history abundantly clear. The FotoJournal below is but a tiny sample of what is housed within the Gulag Museum.

How could a vast country like Russia become normal again after such tragedy and loss for 30 years … knowing their own leaders turned on millions of them? Those decades had a mass effect on the entire population. They never knew when a knock at the door would come … and their loved ones would be taken away. When we arrived in the USSR in 1983, people on sidewalks carried a silent blank look on their faces like they were registering no one. There were no smiles, the buses were silent, metros were silent. Nearly everyone had a small book to read in their hands, usually the front and back covered neatly with a newspaper wrapping. No one looked to the left or right. Russian people, I learned at that time, had very few friends and didn’t make new friends … they couldn’t trust strangers for fear of being informed on. It then became obvious that most Soviets seemed to have small, tight inner circles. They invited us in, we suspected because we wouldn’t inform on them and would soon be gone. They loved practicing English. I began to think of these small groups as pods, “pea pods” …their insides were surrounded by a tough outer covering that was difficult to penetrate.

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The Largest and Most Extensive American Citizen Diplomacy Delegation to Russia Completed its Work Today! 

Fifty American citizens investigated more than 20 Russian cities and peoples between September 1 – 17. Thus giving all of us “eyes and ears” into the life and the thinking of Russian people from Moscow to Yakutia in the Far East and from St.Petersburg south to Krasnodar and Simferopol, Yalta and Sebastopol in Crimea. Other cities visited were Perm, Kungur, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Irkutsk, Orenburg, Ufa, Torzhok, Sergiev Posad, Kaliningrad, Petrozavodsk, Tver, Kazan & Nizhny Novgorod. We sent our U.S. delegates in one’s, two’s and three’s out to these 21 cities with a list of 24 questions to be delved into while in these far-from Moscow cities and towns.

What did they find?

Among other important things, they found that Russia is not our Enemy.

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Dear CCI Friends and Subscribers,

A belated note to you. The rigors of getting our large CCI delegation to Moscow on September 2, plus starting Expert meetings less that 24 hours later (for a total of 10 such meetings) plus a visit to the new Gulag Museum, didn’t allow time to inform you until now.  Today we finished our meetings in Moscow and flew to our regional cities across Russia.

Here is the recap:  The four days in Moscow unfolded with speakers on the international, domestic, political, security and economic environments in Russia today.  We had two-hour Q&A sessions with independent TV journalist Vladimir Pozner; strategic and nuclear weapons analyst Vladimir Kozin; political analyst Peter Kortunov, standing in for Andrey Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council; Pavel Velikhov, son of Evgeny Velikhov, Gorbachev’s partner in building peristroika and glasnost; Richard Sobel, U.S. businessman in Moscow for 30 years; Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro Advisory and former chief strategist at Sberbank, Russia’s largest state bank; Dr. Vera Lyalina and Dr. Igor Borshenko, on Russia’s private and public medical care; Dmitri Babich, TV journalist; Alexander Korobko, documentary filmmaker and two young persons from Donbass.  President Gorbachev’s health prevented him from speaking to the group this year, but his trusted translator Pavel Palazhchenko spoke with us. In addition we had the opportunity to speak to numerous young Moscovites from a number of professions arranged by a Moscow friend of CCI.  All of this in four days!

The quick take-aways from our discussions:

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