Autobiographical

Voronezh was the epitome of a smaller Russian city, defined by the focus on the past, the mythologisation of the Great Patriotic War and the constant refrain of the all-encompassing nuclear risk that could only be averted by the constant vigilance of the USSR. Any external interference from the West should be prevented at all cost. And so it was. 

We had all hoped that we would have an opportunity to interact with Russian students at the local university. However, it transpired that this avenue was closed to us over fears that we might indoctrinate Soviet youth with our bourgeois values and vulgar ways. Naturally, this was a downer, especially given the alternative. We received language lessons from one sole teacher a floor down from our rooms in the hostel. I suppose the commute was short, a positive feature when winter struck or one of the regular vodka sessions went on way too long. 

However, the teaching was good and definitely improved my Russian language skills. The lessons involved the perusal of the press, mostly about the war, although I remember in particular the discussion of one article where the author was criticising the bias in the USSR against left-handed people who had been forced to change and join the right-handed majority if they wanted to avoid social stigma. 

Looking back on that time, I suppose this reminds me today of a particular trend in the UK in previous centuries, and even in those days when the BBC, other media and professions were biased towards graduates from the right schools with the appropriate accent or people with good connections.

And if we consider the appalling attitude to non-conformism in general in the 20^th century, we don’t have far to go – it is hard to believe now, but homosexual acts were only legalised in England and Wales in 1967 for men who had to be at least 21. One excellent film describes such amoral treatment of one of our heroes in World War II, The Imitation Game, Alan Turing, the famous mathematician and codebreaker, convicted in 1952 of the crime of “gross indecency”. What a superb performance by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I apologise for the digression. That film stands out compared to the movies on show at the time at the local cinema in Voronezh, as well as imported foreign “masterpieces” that would obviously criticise Western society. I recall to this day viewing The Prize of Peril, a French-Yugoslav collaboration based on a science fiction tale where an unemployed individual is hunted by five armed men for a big cash prize in a popular reality TV show. Our cultures were apparently overrun by corruption and degradation.

Other outings as part of our studies included afternoon performances of plays by Chekhov, Ostrovsky and modern Soviet playwrights, once again where there were hardly any locals. We were also brought to events which emphasised the continuing relevance of the Great Patriotic War to the country’s communist leadership (politburo), with constant references to nazis and the immense sacrifice that the peoples of the USSR had made. It is worth recalling here that the Soviet Union only entered the war in 1941 after it had been invaded. The country had signed in 1939 with Nazi Germany the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression. In 1939 the Soviet Union had invaded instead both Finland and Poland with the blessing of Nazi Germany. For some reason these events did not merit any discussion.

And while it is true that the country subsequently played a significant role in World War II, no mention was made of the assistance provided by the allies back then, in particular, the supply of weapons under the Lend-Lease Act adopted in 1941. It is worth noting that even in 1984 Stalin remained a hero among the people and any talk of the repressions of the 1930s was out of the question.

Indeed we gained the impression at the time that other countries (excluding the 15 USSR republics) had not really featured in the fighting against Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan. Today, in 2026 over 80 years later, as the past is portrayed in nostalgic tones, the same tale is being told on Russian TV, albeit with one marked difference. Now it transpires from this new revision that Russia fought Germany on its own, notwithstanding the greater casualties per capita suffered by the peoples of Belarus and Ukraine in the Great Patriotic War. No wonder George Orwell is one of the most popular authors in the country today. The influence of the war was also palpable on countless nights where tanks could be seen and heard manoeuvring past midnight outside the hostel, another bizarre anachronism almost 40 years after 1945. Meanwhile the present was dominated by a sense of angst propagated by Soviet TV about a possible nuclear world war that could break out at any moment.  

However, life at the time for a naïve 20-year world was not as bad as it might seem. But that is for another day.