Hi all CCI followers,
We just received an article written by a CCI traveler in 2019. Tom Egan, an attorney from Florida, gives a really interesting account of his perspectives on Moscow, St. Petersburg and Krasnodar. Tom was anything but an excited traveler. He was a typical lawyer, asking tough and sometimes brusque questions and insisting on doing this trip to Russia his way.
I wasn’t aware he was taking notes or that he would consider writing an article. I’m impressed and delighted to get this piece in which he carefully outlines many aspects of today’s Russia. Enjoy!
Great job, Tom!!!
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Postcard from Krasnodar: How is Russia doing in an era of Western sanctions?
By Thomas Egan
March 26, 2020
This visit and the article based on it took place before the outbreak of the current coronavirus pandemic.
KRASNODAR, Russia—This was my first trip to Russia. I’ve had prior invitations that I couldn’t accept. I had taken enough credit hours in college to major in Russian, but college was over 45 years ago, and before I had begun my legal career. This trip was therefore long overdue.
Many things were unexpected and a great surprise. First off, there was the Moscow airport, Sheremetyevo. It is very modern. Red Square is smaller than it appears in pictures. And Krasnodar turned out to be a very bright, sunny city in the south, with new construction around most corners—a lot like Florida—with Crimea, Sochi and the Black Sea close by. Russia was not the dark place that I expected. We even had a barbeque.
I found so much that was similar to the USA. Even the people seemed like Americans, though of course, they all spoke Russian. There were no dull, colorless scenes of sullen, suspicious people. Instead, there were billboards, traffic jams, and neon signs, like any regular consumer society. It was certainly not what former Senator John McCain called “a gas station masquerading as a country.”
My trip was organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives, a group associated with the Rotary International, that organizes trips like this every year. The tour group consisted of 48 people from all backgrounds, some of whom had made this trip before. In Moscow, we heard speakers presenting on Russian politics, history, and finance. This lasted for five days. We also saw some of the city. Then we broke up into groups destined for twenty-one cities, four of us flying on to Krasnodar. After our visit to Krasnodar, we flew to St. Petersburg to reunite with the group for the final five days.