Russia and Ukraine 1992 - 1995

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Russia & Ukraine 1992-1995


Another of the work and travel memoirs extracted from my archives. This one, assembled twenty years later, is based on travels in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s immediately after its collapse. Others in the series: Japan, Attention to Detail China 1977 ★ Character Oaxaca ✺ Mexico 1970-1979 Men&Boys/Women&Children, Pakistan Honduras, an ATA Project Senso di Posto, Italy in the 1980s Egypt, a Portfolio Ghana ★ Travel & Work & Portraits Memoir of Hungary


Russia & Ukraine 1992-1995

by Clare Brett Smith

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Russia & Ukraine 1992-1995 Photographs & Text by Clare Brett Smith Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: ISBN 978-1-4675-4167-1 Copyright © 2012 by Clare Brett Smith, All Rights Reserved Previous Titles -Travel & Work Series Japan, Attention to Detail China 1977 ★ Character Oaxaca ✺ Mexico 1970-1979 Men&Boys/Women&Children, Pakistan Honduras, an ATA Project Senso di Posto, Italy in the 1980s Egypt, a Portfolio Ghana ★ Travel & Work & Portraits Memoir of Hungary

Clare Brett Smith 80 Mountain Spring Road Farmington, Connecticut 06032 United States of America

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Russia & Ukraine 1992-1995 I never expected to visit Russia. It was almost completely shut off to Americans by the Iron Curtain during the Cold War 1947-1991.

been shocked at the tactics of Senator McCarthy, the black-listing and the red scares, and also by the British spies, double agents Burgess, MacClean and Philby.

What did I know of Russia? Not much. My parents knew several White Russians, members of noble families who had emigrated to America, and I remember them too, Tanya and George Meyer, Agoyeff, the Gagarins, the artist, Boris Artzbasheff. When we were children, my sister and I roared out the Volga Boatmen’s song along with the Red Army Chorus on our wind-up victrola, and we had been given matrushka dolls, kerchiefed peasant women, one inside another. During WWII one of my teachers at Putney School left periodically to join his merchant marine ship, ferrying supplies through the icy North Atlantic to Russia’s northernmost port, Murmansk. We were allies with Russia then.

In spite of the size, power and importance of the Soviet Union, I never considered trying to learn Russian when I was in college. On my first trip, in 1992, I apologized to our guide, a former KGB agent, who, after a pause, said firmly, “We were sure you would all have to learn Russian”. He added that, in his training as an agent, preparing for work in England, it had been considered an essential skill to play tennis.

Russian composers and conductors were familiar, Russian ballet too. Required school reading included War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina. I read Doctor Zhivago and loved the movie too and I like Martin Cruz Smith’s Russian detective, Renko. This year I’ve been reading Robert Massie’s Catherine the Great, and, with this newly acquired background, I really want to return to Russia to see what I did not properly see twenty years ago. After World War II we learned of the incredible loss of life in the Soviet Union and it is hard to reconcile their heroism with the horrors under Stalin, the exiles, the Gulags, and the invasion of Hungary. Here at home I’d

Representing Aid to Artisans, I was invited by the U.S. State Department to join a group of non-profit organizations on an exploratory trip to figure out how to be helpful in the change from communism to a free economy. There were three more, all working trips, some winter, some summer, between 1992 and 1995. Artisans were, of course, my focus, but working in thirdworld countries with rural, often uneducated artisans, had been my previous experience. Russian artists and artisans were the opposite; they were educated, highly-trained and well aware of their cultural significance. I liked that awareness as I always want to see and understand the culture, the context, the lives, the places, and the people with whom Aid to Artisans works. Clare Brett Smith, August 2012

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Welcome to Russia, Bread and Circuses Considering that Glasnost & Perestroika (Openness and Restructuring) came in the mid 1980s under Gorbachev, and that the fall of the Soviet Union was undeniable by the end of 1991, and that, until December of that year, we had been suspicious of Russians and they of us, it was amazing to find ourselves so welcome everywhere. At the Artists’ Union in Odessa, only a year after the breakup, we were offered a loaf of fresh bread, traditional symbol of hospitality. Odessa had been Russia’s major port on the Black Sea but now belonged to Ukraine, and Ukrainians retained the same respect, affection and support for artists as in the days of the Soviet Union.

Give them Bread and Circuses, old metaphor for pleasing the public, patronizing in tone, but bread is the earthy staff of life, and the Moscow Circus is one of the best in the world. I have thoroughly mixed metaphors along with my mixed feelings, further mixed by the image of the Russian bear on a pole in the spotlight, a symbol of strength and power caught in a delicate balancing act.

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Moscow Circus,1992


Moscow Circus

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1992 An American flag wrapped a van in Odessa. Why? We had no way of finding out as there was nobdy in sight. Bill Clinton gave a friendly and informal talk at the main TV station in Moscow.

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1992 Bilingual road signs were few, but this one helped us learn a few letters. My camera and I didn’t go unnoticed , but at least no one seemed to mind my taking pictures.

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Onion Domes, Kiev


Zagorsk

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Novgorod,1995


Zagorsk in 1994, now Sergei Posad, was the center even during communism, of the Russian Orthodox Church.

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These two photographs were taken in the Ukraine in 1992 and they seemed appropriate symbols of power in the Soviet Union. Kiev City Hall, on the left, loomed dark and blocked the sky. Russian Orthodox monks at Lavra in Kiev, sat on the sidelines, but only, they point out, for the seventy years of communism, a short interval in terms of church history.

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Exposition Grounds, Moscow

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Palace gate, Pavlovsk, summer residence of Paul I, the son of Catherine the Great. Until I heard that they now belong to The People, I was surprised at the good condition and popularity of so many royal summer and winter palaces. 16


Palace of Catherine the Great in 1995

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Winter Palace, St Petersburg,1994

Entertainment at Pavlovsk,1994


Palace of Catherine the Great, Tsarskoye Selo in 1995

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Pavlovsk,1994


St. Petersburg Canal,1994

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St Petersburg,1994


Neva River, St Petersburg,1992

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Contrast in Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky),1995


Dacha North of Moscow,1992

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Into the Countryside, on the Gulf of Finland,1995


Dacha windows,1995

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Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River,1995

Springtime near Novgorod,1995


Folk Music on a Mandolin,1995

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Street Music, Moscow,1992


Dancer, St. Petersburg,1995

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Tennis pre-Sharapova, Moscow,1995


Vacation on the Black Sea,1992

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Young Artists,1992


Countrywoman,1992

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Old Man, Moscow,1992


Feeding Cats,1992 37


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Farmer on Commune near Odessa,1992


Commune Farm,1992

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Tomato Crusher, Odessa,1992


Commune Farmer, Odessa,1992

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St. Petersburg,1992


Moscow,1992

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Party at IRIDA art gallery, Moscow,1994


Fashion Designer and Magician (TV announcer) Moscow,1994

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Weekend Farmers, near the Gulf of Finland,1995


Maybe a Russian Borzoi? but it’s an Afghan hound, perhaps inappropriate considering that Russia occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Taken at a party on Moscow in 1994 47


Artist, St Petersburg; on a Volga River cruise Opposite page, Museum Director, Novgorod

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Russian women were not as serious and stolid as I had expected. Some, like this girl and the next three, seemed remarkably flirtatious.


St Petersburg,1994

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Moscow 1994


Lena Aloyshina, Moscow,1994

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Wedding in Zagorsk,1992


Wedding in Moscow,1992, celebrated on the hilltop near Moscow University

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1995 marked the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, a war in which the Soviet Union lost so many people that the actual numbers will never be certain, only that it was more than 26 million people. In comparison, the US and Great Britain together lost about 1 million. There is still a military atmosphere in Russia, some of it even playful, like the children who play on old planes and tanks. Heroic statues and eternal flames are found in most of the cites. When we were there the Cold War was only just over, and tank traps and rocket silos could still be seen on the Baltic shores. 56


Kiev,1992

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Ukraine,1992


Moscow Park,1995

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Playground 1995. I wonder, is this tiny plane an old WWII fighter, the feared MiG?


Playground,1995

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Tank traps near St Petersburg, formerly Leningrad,1995


Memorial,1995

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Aid to Artisans in Russia The ATA program in Russia was short, only two

government grants were used in small business

years, but we had a strong partner in the Alliance of

incubators. Among the artisans we worked with only

Russian and American Women and a contract from

the birchbark group, the glass blowers and one

USAID under World Learning. We would never have

Christmas stocking sewing group had become

known enough about Russia without the prior State

independent businesses.

Department trip, VEST. This next section is about

Even with that history of controls, and the dedication

some of the artisan cooperatives we worked with, and

to tradition, there was real flair in many of the things

the products we helped to develop for export markets.

we saw, and a lively interest in making money.

Russian art and crafts schools were very good and most of the crafts were made in factories not at home. We worked in a very different way from our earlier programs in Africa and Latin America. Programs were formal and almost academic, even theoretic. Probably the most unfamiliar aspect to Russians, having lived under communism, was the concept of profit, of figuring out cosing and pricing a product. No one had ever had to determine the costs of materials nor look for a market. The central governmnet decided everything, but private companies were beginning to emerge, and some

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U.S.

Arlene Lear, left, organized the State Department trip, VEST with Clare, Zagorsk,1992,


Lacquer Factory,1995

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Painting Matrushkas,1995


Learning to paint tin trays, Fedoskina,1992

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St. Basil’s inspired this small painted music box. For sale in Ismailova flea market for $12, it was too expensive for the normal 6X requirement of export, so the artist agreed to make miniatures for Christmas ornaments.


Ana Tsimbal, the artist, is at upper right. Her Christmas ornaments sold well. and several years later she was employing thirty painters. Blown glass ornaments were developed by ATA consultant in an idle technical glass factory, part of a nuclear power complex in Sosnovy Bor.

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Workshops at craft cooperatives throughout Russia; Above, Clare & Lena Aloyshina, ATA representative

Left, members of Tvorchestvo Cooperative, Narna & Tatyana; Right, Maria Esmont of IRIDA 70


Textile artists brought their work for evaluation. It varied from crochet flowers and laces to ponchostype capes and some extremely well-made Christmas stockings.

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Developing a succsessful export: Above left, an intricate birchbark container featured on the cover of a SUNDANCE cataogue. Above right, the original, a beautifully simple antique milk container. Birchbark, known as “tree leather� is watertight, flexible and durable (think of Chippewa canoes).


We got permission to go to the forests from the Novgorod Oblast forest chief, along with morning vodka. We consulted anthropologists in St Petersburg, lower right. The little bark cow was originally a salt holder.

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With Viktor Kurakin we went to harvest birchbark, something done in the spring, mosquito-time, which explains why we wore parkas. The harvest is government controlled and ecologically sensitive. Below, an artisan at work in the Stil Birchbark Factory, and Viktor himself working his new fax machine, a necessity for design work between his company and his new clients in Minnesota.

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Traditional building at Abramtsevo, an Artists Colony begun in the 19th Century, now a Museum and a School of Arts & Crafts,1995

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Ancient wooden church still in good shape in 1995. Russian artisans are exceptionally skilled woodworkers. 76


Entrance to the Bogorodsky Woodcarving Factory,1995 77


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Lathe worker in a Matrushka factory,1995.


Carver at the School of Arts & Crafts,1995

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Lindenwood plate at the School of Arts & Crafts,1995


Toy from the Bogorodsky Wood Carving Factory,1995

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Toy painter, Bogorodsky,1995


Happy customers, children in Novgorod Museum Shop,1995

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They say there is a market for everything - somewhere. This was Ismailova in 1995


Outside the subway station in Moscow, early spring,1995

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Ismailova and Zagorsk,1995


Nizhny Novgorod,1995

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Lilac Vendor,1995


Buyers, Nizhny Novgorod,1995

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I wish I had bought all of these Matrushka aprons. They were as cheeerful as the ladies who were selling them. Ismailova,1995


Ismailova

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White on white, embroidery and mohair shawls on a bitterly cold day, Zagorsk,1994


Hoping for customers on a snowy afternoon in Moscow,1994. We bought the pot.

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My first glimpse of Uzbek pottery in 1992. Two years later we were working with these potters in Rishtan.


From Maker to Market was Aid to Artisans’ tagline and it sounds simple enough, but only if the market is nearby and well-known to the maker. It’s more complicated than it sounds, and involves a lot of specialized knowledge, favorable government policies, design, and a good sense of timing. Reproduced from a painting we bought in Moscow.

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Some of the people that made this project successful: Top row, Docey Lewis, Gay Ellis, designers; Clare & Sasha Chalif & Ida Schmertz of the Alliance of Russian & American Women, Lena Aloyshina, ATA’s Russian representative. Bottom, Tim Lyman with an artist; Lena, Clare at a marketing seminar

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We met a wide range of people! Top row at center, the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova with Sally Montgomery of USAD and Clare; Docey and a belly dancer; Bottom row, Sasha, Grace Warnecke and Tim Lyman dancing; Home hospitality, Burge with artisans of Tvorchestvo.

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Considering the outstanding art, graphics, jewelry and decorative art that has come out of Russia over the years, I was sorry to concentrate only on folk art, but folk art’s popular and widespread hand skills formed

the basis of

ATA’s development of export products. Russian folk art has an informal charm and affordability that made it popular in foreign markets. CBS

Š 2012 Clare Brett Smith



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