The Parable of the US College Kids and the Komsomol

Tild sez: Still on the topic of “the Woman vote”…
I get the feeling that I didn’t state clearly enough in my previous post why I think Freud’s famous question “What do women want?” is nonsensical. I intended to make the following anecdote a part of that post, but time got away from me a little and I ended up leaving it out.

Between December 26th, 1971 and January 31st, 1972 I was in the Soviet Union a part of a 5-week Slavic Studies program tour. There were 17 students in our group; kids from Minnesota liberal arts colleges including Gustavus, St. Olaf, Carleton, Macalester, St. Kate’s and St. John’s.

Our itinerary: we flew from MSP to Frankfurt, then to Helsinki, and then on to Leningrad. Immediately upon our arrival there we boarded a train for Ukraine and a weeklong stay in Kiev which included welcoming in 1972 at the flat- out best New Year’s Eve party I have ever attended or ever hope to attend. Then, another trainride to Moscow where we spent a couple more weeks, with a brief side trip to Novgorod, and finally back to Leningrad again for two more weeks before we departed for Helsinki, then again to Frankfurt, and finally back to the US.

In the past I’ve written a little bit about this trip… about the salmon loaf that wasn’t; about the washing machine built out of three Oldsmobiles worth of steel; about the temporary, incredibly high tolerance for alcohol that we all acquired as a result of drinking vodka daily for five weeks.

One event I’ve never written about was the very odd meeting in Moscow between our group and a group from the Komsomol, a Scouts-esque national organization for Soviet young people; the Youth wing of the Communist party. This get-together was a part of the study tour that had been arranged long in advance. Your average US college kids meet with some typical Soviet kids of the same age group. The friendly exchange of ideas. The meeting of minds. The reaching out across the ideological divide. Hands across the water! Can’t we all just get along?

All these years later I don’t remember exactly where in Moscow this was; some ballroom in some hotel or government building. Down the middle of a long banquet table, crystal bowls full of oranges and candy in bright colored wrappers were interspersed with bottles of vodka. We were ushered to seats on one side of the table, while our Soviet counterparts the Komsomol “youth” took their places on the other side.

It would be an understatement to say that the term “youth” was being applied a bit broadly that day. Nobody in the Soviet contingent looked a day younger than 35. They were all probably Komsomol functionaries; adult advisors or ’scoutmasters’; long past their own Young Pioneers days.

They had designated one man to be the speaker for all of them. He stood and started asking a series of questions, most starting with “What is your opinion about… ? “, after each of which he would sit down and with the rest wait expectantly for one of us to stand and give the response for our group. Except we never did it that way.

We hadn’t even thought about designating one person to speak for us all. All 17 of us had at least a middling fluency in Russian at the time, and many of us were eager to show off our language skills, either out of pride at our level of accomplishment, or (and I definitely fell into this next group) we knew we were all too prone to make amusing mistakes in grammar and vocabulary, and had learned what a powerful icebreaker that could be in social situations.

At any rate, for whatever reasons, each time the Komsomol Speaker Guy posed a question,it got several different responses from several of the US kids.

What is your opinion about the future of the US space program?

7 answers.

What is your opinion about the Negro problem [sic] in the US?

11 answers.

What is your opinion about the Viet Nam war?

17 answers.

After an hour or more of this, Komsomol Speaker Guy had a brief whispered confab with his companions and then with a note of exasperation asked:

But out of all of these answers, which is the American opinion?

Our response? 17 variations of:There isn’t an ‘American’ opinion. Or, there isn’t just one American opinion. We each have our own opinions.

This went over like a solid steel Soviet washing machine size balloon, and it was a relief when a 3-piece band — one guy with a guitar, one guy on sax, and the 3rd on drums — came in, set up and promptly launched into “I’m Your Venus”(you know, the song by Shocking Blue, that Bananarama redid in the 80s).

The vodka bottles were finally opened,and we all got up to dance.
Tild sez:: Any questions? Not even a “What do women want?” Then here endeth the lesson.

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