Way back in 1964 and 1965 I made extended trips to and around the Soviet Union. Memories that are 40 years old are hard enough to relate to the reality of the present, let alone when they are of a country that has ceased to exist. This, though, is precisely what I aim to do.
Being able to speak Russian, I traveled about with considerable freedom from Moscow, Leningrad and Novgorod in the north to Kiev, Kharkov and the lovely Crimean port town of Yalta in the south. I found a country that was multiracial and multicultural, despite the efforts of the government's cynical technocrats to suppress such variety. But wherever I went, I was greeted with a singular, almost obsessive, barrage of opinion. Everyone seemed to feel obliged to talk to me about World War II and their own or their family's experience of it.
I was reminded of these encounters by the upcoming anniversary of the end of that war. On May 8, it will be 60 years since Germany's Nazi-led government surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces. But when I was racing about the USSR in the summer of 1964, only 19 years had passed since then. There wasn't a single person in their mid-20s or over who didn't appear deeply affected by the German invasion of their country.