The Midnight Train From Moscow By: Paul Beals

THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN FROM MOSCOW
BY: Paul Beals
To: Ken Ervin
It is my privilege to share this story with you and I hope that in the telling I may honor the place in you where your spirit dwells.
As is my custom, I would like to dedicate this telling of the story to the warriors who are gone but not forgotten, and to the men and women who have returned in body but not in spirit; and to the mothers who still wait for sons who will not return: may they know the peace that I found - in the eyes of my enemy.
In 1986 documentary film producer Stanley Odle was in the Soviet Union filming a documentary for a group of North American businesswomen who were there on tour. He approached the Central Studio of Documentary Films in Moscow with an idea for a television series. He wanted to do a twelve part series, made for television, filming in both countries with a single crew made up of half Russians and half Americans, with each position paired. Six episodes were to be filmed in each country, setting aside party lines and politics, and dealing with issues of the people of our two nations. The idea was to communicate with each other and to increase the opportunities for peace through understanding. The series was to be filmed, edited, and aired in both countries, uncensored by either government. The Soviets liked the idea and the first pair of episodes was filmed in Armenia and Washington State.
In late 1988, after seeing the premier and knowing the difficulty Stan had in finding corporate sponsorship, I volunteered to try to find Rotary support for the project. The goal of the series was the same as that of Rotary International - ‘Peace Through Understanding’. Initial Rotarian reaction to the project was good and I found myself headed for Russia in January of 1989 to assist with the production of the second Soviet episode.
We were going to Leningrad, site of the nine hundred-day siege during the Great Patriotic War, to film a segment on the effect of war on Soviet thinking. We were to spend two days in Moscow meeting our counterparts and preparing for the three-week shoot in Leningrad.
At midnight of our first night there we walked to Red Square to stand in front of Lenin’s tomb and watch the changing of the guard. A bell chimed the hour from high up in the star topped tower of the Kremlin as three young guards marched in slow, high goose-steps to relieve their comrades at the tomb. On our left, through the clouds of our own breath and the light snow we could see Saint Basil's Cathedral looming in silence above us. Behind us we could almost feel the presence of the infamous KGB head- quarters. I recall a chill shiver that shook my spine and the hair standing on the back of my neck: being there was like touching the enemy flag.
The next night we boarded the train for Leningrad. Called the midnight train because of the time of its departure, it was to deliver us to Leningrad early the next morning. A passageway runs down the right side of the compartmentalized sleeper cars. At the aft end of the passageway there is an oil-fired boiler, or samovar, that supplies heat for the compartments and hot water for tea. In each compartment there are four bunks and a small table where tea is served shortly after leaving the station. Each traveler is given bedding and a cup of tea, and a small fee is extracted for these services. About an hour after the train departs the lights are turned out and most of the travelers bed down for the night.
Still eleven hours out of sync and very excited to be there, I did not sleep well at all and at 4:30 or 5:00 o’clock in the morning I was standing in the passageway sipping my tea and looking out the window as we rolled through the Russian winter night.
Uneven tracks and stiff suspension caused the car to buck, lurch, and sway with dramatic sound effects, and the moonlight flashed like an old black and white film leaving my memory with distinct snapshots of snow covered fields, birch tree forests, and old villages where small houses were connected only by foot trails in the snow. I felt like I was somehow involved in scenes from Doctor Zhivago.
I was standing there, not-thinking, just being a part of all that was happening, absorbed into the movement and the moment, when a compartment door opened near me and a man in a Soviet Colonel’s uniform stepped out into the passageway.
He motioned toward my cup of tea and spoke in Russian. With a smile and a shrug I said, "I’m sorry, I speak only English." He hesitated a moment and again motioning toward my tea, closed his door behind him and came forward. I went to the samovar, washed out a cup, and with the few leaves that were left from my long night of self-indulgence, prepared a cup that was not much more than hot water. I handed it to him and we shared the view and sipped our tea. I didn’t know a word of Russian and so we communicated by showing each other our papers, and with gestures and smiles.
After a half-hour or so, he invited me into his compartment and he took a small book from his briefcase. He showed it to me and pointed to the cover, indicating that it was he, Boris, who had written it. Fanning the pages I recognized it as some form of high mathematics and I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and signaled that it was all over my head. Then from the third page of the book he read the dedication, and I recognized the last word as Afghanistan. From his wallet he showed me a picture of a young Soviet soldier and Boris made me understand that this young man, whose picture he had showed me, his son, was killed in Afghanistan.
I went and awoke our interpreter, and said, "Victor, come quickly, I think something important has happened here."
Victor and Boris talked for a while and Victor said, "Yes, this is important. This man is a Colonel, in charge of a military think tank in Moscow. He is the author of this book and he delayed publication of it for two years, waiting until he got official permission to dedicate it to his only son who was killed in Afghanistan." The book is about mathematic models of communications, of all things. This was the first time a military book was dedicated to someone who had nothing to do with the research, and the first to be dedicated to a soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Through Victor I explained that I am a Vietnam Veteran and that I thought I saw similarities between our involvement in Vietnam and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, and that it was important to me to communicate with those affected by that conflict.
We further explained that we were going to Leningrad to make this film to improve the chances for peace through understanding.
Boris said that he was going to be in Leningrad for three days to teach a two day seminar on his book and then, on the third day, to go to rededicate the grave of his son. His invitation for me to join him at the grave of his son turned quickly into an invitation to film at the cemetery.
But, he said, there were problems, and he would have to call us the next day after talking with the boy’s mother. Anna and Boris are divorced. She lives in Leningrad and would be accompanying him: He said that he must have her permission.
Over the next two days there were several telephone calls between Boris and our Russian director. Many questions and problems were worked out before we heard that we would, on the morning of the third day, accompany this couple to the grave of their son.
We awoke early that day and piled all our equipment onto the small bus that the Studio had provided for us, and then we met Boris at his hotel. On the way to Anna’s home I told Stan that, though I didn’t understand it yet, I felt a very strong and mysterious need to communicate with this woman we were about to meet: a woman about whom I really knew nothing. He grinned and said, "Welcome to Russia, Paul."
When we arrived at Anna’s building, Boris went in and soon returned, followed by Anna. She was wearing a black fur coat. Her scarf formed a lovely frame around her beautiful but sad, almost emotionless, face. When she got on the bus she didn’t make eye contact with anyone, but sat quickly in the first seat. She sat quietly holding a bouquet of red chrysanthemums, very much alone on this pilgrimage to the grave of her son.
The paved roads, with their bomb crater-like potholes, eventually gave way to even rougher dirt as we approached the cemetery. There were no houses in sight, only a tired old barn standing on three of its legs, the fourth one buckled, bending the roof to lean into the merciless wind. It was a Russian January kind of cold: well below freezing, with a constant wind blowing off the Gulf of Finland. The only sounds were the wind as it breathed and sighed through the pines that grew in the old grave yard, and the ravens who lived there and obviously did not appreciate our intrusion. Cameras were set up, equipment checked, and Stan and Alexander, the Russian producer, began to quietly, gently interview Boris and Anna there at the side of the cemetery.
Boris is a small but powerfully built man. His words and gestures became stronger as he talked and we were surprised that his answers were so frank. He told us about his son, Igor, and how proud he was of him. When asked what he might tell his son, knowing what he does now, if he had it all to do over, Boris said that even though they did not have a Canada to run to, as he had heard many of our young men did during Vietnam, he would tell his son not to serve. He would tell him to resist - not to go. I asked that the cameras stop for a moment and with Victor’s help cautioned Boris about saying anything on film that he might regret. He went on to say that he felt that the four or five men responsible for Soviet involvement in Afghanistan should be ferreted out and, he said, "criminally prosecuted". He damned Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, he damned war in general, and he damned the loss of his son in that "immoral war". Again, I stopped the camera and cautioned him, explaining that we must reserve the right to use anything on film, that the documentary would be shown in both of our countries, and that I was afraid that he might jeopardize his career or standard of living.
He put his arm around smiling, and, me said, "I promise not to say anything I do not believe."
He also told us about the headlines that had appeared in the newspaper Pravda. "We did not send you to Afghanistan", they’d said. He told us that early in the war the ‘official’ statements said that the Army was planting trees and building orphanages.
During most of this interview time Anna stood quietly, shyly at Boris’ side. We asked them if they would like to go to the grave of their son without us, so that they could have some privacy.
Each grave is surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and inside there is usually a small table and just enough room for one or two people to sit. As Anna approached the grave she lowered the chain gate, and, from the satchel she carried, she took a soft cloth and wiped away the snow and dirt from the head stone. She placed the flowers she had carried on the grave and kissed the face of her son, etched into the tall granite slab. Then she set out a table cloth, some bread and meat, and a bottle of cognac. She poured a small glass of it and set it, and a piece of the bread, at the base of the headstone. Boris and Anna sat and talked quietly, occasionally sipping their cognac.
At their invitation we joined them there inside the fence, and I sat at Anna’s side for what seemed to be hours - or maybe it was a lifetime.
They invited all of us to join them and they shared their food and drink, and their grief. Boris told us about the inscription that appears at the base of the head stone. "I am buried here with you my son," it says, and it is signed, "Mama". He told us of how Anna had gone to church just two days before her son’s death. She had written a prayer asking God to protect her son from the danger she knew he was in. And he told us of how, on the morning of Igor’s death, Anna had awakened from a terrible dream in which she saw her own blood on the floor of her home, and how she had known at that instant that her son was dead - though she was not officially notified for some three weeks. Boris told us that it was at that instant of understanding that she too, had died. Anna had stopped going to church, had severed her relationship with her God, and, he said, she had "just ceased to live".
I told Anna that I saw in her tears the tears that my own mother might have shed at my grave, and that I could not be there at the grave of her son without realizing that a part of me - a part of all of us - was buried there, too.
Anna talked about her guilt and her grief. Her guilt, she said, at having raised a son to be so patriotic that he requested in eight letters to be sent to his death. Even though Igor had less than a year left to serve in his military obligation, he had requested, in eight letters, to be sent to Afghanistan. And Anna talked about her grief. Igor was her only child and she said that it is through our children that we are connected to the future. She had no children now, and so, no connection to the future. In that sense, she said, she was dead.
I told Anna that I thought I understood something of her guilt. In Vietnam the tin roofed hut that I was supposed to be sleeping in one night took a direct hit from a Russian made rocket, killing five of my comrades, and in the fire that had ensued the only Bible I’d ever owned was destroyed. That fiery death and destruction was, for me, symbolic of the entire Vietnam experience - for me and for my country.
I’ve found a definition for religion that I’m comfortable with: it is that Religion is that system of beliefs by which a man defines his relationship to the universe. In Vietnam everything we had believed in was turned upside-down - my entire belief system was destroyed.
I had volunteered, like many of us, early in the war. We went believing that it was our duty. We had grown up the sons of those who had liberated Europe - defeating Hitler’s evil and conquering the Japanese aggressors - and we believed that our country would never do anything that was not Right. We went off to do our duty for God and Country - and we came home to a country at war with itself over what we had done. We came home to a president who was impeachable for his crimes.
And I told Anna that I thought I knew something of her grief, as well. Just three years after my return from Vietnam I was in my second year of pre-med when my only child was born with a rare genetic disorder. With twenty-one months in Vietnam I was afraid that his condition had been caused by my exposure to the defoliants that were used there. My own grief that accompanied his birth was no different that what one suffers with the death of a child. That grief and other unresolved psychological issues of Vietnam made it impossible for me to continue my studies and we never had another child.
I came to understand that much of the grief that I suffered near Leningrad on that cold January day was grief for the boy in me who died in Vietnam. I hadn’t dealt with much of my own guilt or grief until I found myself at the grave of a boy who might have been my mortal enemy.
Through my own tears, I told Anna that I had been a Navy hospital corpsman with the Seabees and Marines in Vietnam and that during my almost two years there I’d held a lot of boys as they died, and that I knew, beyond believing, that the spirit of her son was at peace. And, I told her; I could not imagine a loving son who would not want his mother’s spirit to be at peace here on earth as well. I told Anna that because of what was happening there that day she would speak to thousands of people - in fact, an estimated hundred and twenty five million people saw that episode of the documentary, across the Soviet Union and in Canada and the US - and I told her that through me she would speak to many more. I told her that I would tell her story to anyone who would listen. And that was the first time we saw her smile.
Later, on the way back to Leningrad, Anna and I sat together on the bus and, with Victor’s help, we talked. She changed somehow and became much more alive, asking questions and occasionally laughing shyly. She insisted that we all join her in her flat for dinner.
Anna has remarried. She and her husband are both electrical engineers, and we were surprised to find that they lived in a two room flat, sharing bath and cooking facilities with three other families. We all crowded into her flat and all kinds of home-prepared food appeared from all over the building to add to our feast. Toasts with cognac or vodka were made, and answered, and we ate. Sometimes the conversation was loud, animated, and filled with laughter: other times it grew very quiet and there were many tears.
Eventually a guitar appeared and Boris sang several songs for us, songs that he had written. One was about how Igor had made his one man assault on a Mujahadeen sniper holed up in a cave high above Igor’s patrol, and how Igor had been shot, "Like the slap of a stick, four times in the chest", with a captured Russian made rifle. Boris’ song went on about how this Russian family held no animosity toward the 16 year old Mujahadeen boy who had only done what he believed was right, this boy who had paid for Igor’s death with his own, but rather, how sad it was that the only thing left was two mothers grieving on opposite sides of the world.
And we toasted, "to tea and providence", for it was tea and providence, Boris said, that had brought us together on that Midnight Train From Moscow. And we toasted tea and providence a lot that night.
In a quiet corner of Anna’s apartment hangs a picture of Igor; his black necktie draped over one corner of the frame. A calendar with the date of his death hangs nearby, and below, in a small box next to the white chrysanthemums, a button from the tunic of the boy who had killed her son, taken from his body and brought home by Igor’s comrades.
So, we experienced the grief of a Russian mother and, I think, the grief of mothers everywhere who have lost sons to war . . . I went back to see Anna before we left Leningrad, almost three weeks later, and I took some little bars of fancy soap, some small bottles of perfume, and a cloizenet blue heron pin that a fisherman had given me when I fixed his boat one time. I told her that they were gifts given in the spirit of a son returning from some far-off land. She clasped the pin to her breast and said, "Ah, this is perfect." She said, "This is the bird in Russian folk lore that brings us good luck and children." And she asked if she could adopt me.
We filmed for almost three weeks in Leningrad, aboard a Soviet Navy ship, at an army tank driver's school, and at a combat infantry school where they ran war games for the film. Almost daily we’d get a report from the Soviet director about how Boris had called from Moscow, and said this or asked that, and, with every report, "and tell Paul that he must come to see me before he leaves Russia." When our filming was complete we returned to Moscow and went to Boris’ home for dinner - with the entire film crew.
I expected to see a much higher standard of living. He was, after all, a colonel and in charge of an Army think tank. . . and it was higher - thirteen flights higher. We all remember it well because we had to hike up the thirteen flights, carrying our camera gear - because the elevator was broken. "Its normal," he said. His flat is much larger than Anna’s. He lives with his wife and two daughters in a comfortable flat with private kitchen and bath.
We ate a fantastic meal at his table. I know now, after several trips to Russia, that his wife had spent many hours in lines collecting all the things they thought we might enjoy - things they couldn’t afford. Each time we thought we’d finished, another course appeared from the tiny kitchen, and each time our glass was empty, it seemed, it was time for another toast: To tea, to providence, and to peace through understanding.
Boris brought out his guitar and sang for us once more. He read from a sheet of paper on which he had written his song, and next to the words was a picture of me that he had painted from memory. The song was about how we met on the Midnight Train From Moscow and how our two countries might take a lesson from us, who, though neither spoke the other’s language, sat down over a cup of tea and became friends.
Boris asked me once, what it was like for me to be in Russia. I told him that he had to understand that when I was a small child at school we practiced, at the sound of a particular bell, hiding under our desks - practicing for the day that the Russians would drop the atomic bomb on us. When I was nine or ten we watched as the leader of his country pounded his boot on the table of the greatest peace keeping organization the world had ever assembled and shouted that some day they would bury us.
Boris Felin represents the death of the Godless Communist Myth for me. He was the perfect Godless Communist: Soviet Army officer, Party member, scientist, and mathematician - but, I learned, he was also a singer, songwriter, poet, and philosopher, and a deeply spiritual human being.
A year passed and I was back in Boris’ home, sitting on the couch after another of those Russian feed-your-guest-till-he-groans dinners, sipping a glass of cognac and talking about the results of our meeting. He told me about the changes that had occurred in Anna’s life. I asked him what changes had occurred in his life and he said, "Well, they kicked me out of the army." After nineteen years of service, he had been stripped of all retirement benefits and dismissed. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach, and said, "Oh, Boris, I’m so sorry. I was afraid of something like this." "No," he said, "you don’t understand. It doesn’t matter. I’ve resigned from the Communist party. I’m doing the same work as before, but now with people I like. I don’t have to wear that damned uniform every day and I don’t have to put up with the military bullshit! My work is published just as often, and I even get to work with a computer now and then. But none of this matters - The only thing that matters is that the problem in Leningrad has been solved."
By this he meant that Anna had come back to life. He went on to describe how she had, at my suggestion, started a mothers support group, working with other women who had lost sons in Afghanistan, and counseled veterans who were disabled there. She had renewed her relationship with her God, and had returned to her church. Anna had truly come back to Life.
After explaining all this Boris was still concerned about my feeling guilty and he reminded me of the song he had written for me. "I realized that you were an American when I said, ‘Comrade, mercy for tea,’ and you answered in English. In my song I said ‘I feared an international incident and I hesitated as you offered your tea, but your eyes were kind and my feet carried me to you.’ I knew, at that moment," he said, "that there would be big trouble. I chose to continue! By the time we were at the cemetery it was already too late for me." And again we toasted, "to tea and providence".
"It was you who proposed that it was providence that brought us together and introduced me to the idea that maybe Divine Providence had played a role in our friendship," he said. "You have to understand that I was raised in the age of materialism, and by that we do not mean the accumulation of material wealth. We were taught that we are nothing but that of which we are made." I have known since I was a child that there was something, here, inside of me," he said, jabbing a finger into the center of his sternum, "something in here, much bigger than that which I am. I think it may be this thing you call God. I shall study on this some more."
There have been many changes in my own life, as well. After building dreams for rich folks for the last thirteen years I have closed down my yacht building business and have dedicated myself to building dreams of a higher order.
One of the interviews we conducted in Leningrad was with a group of Afghansti. These five Afghanistan Veterans were very excited to meet a Vietnam vet, and we went to the home of one of the guy’s parents to set up the interview. Because we hadn’t taken the camera crew with us what happened there was lost to film.
All five of them were there. At the invitation of our hostess we sat down for tea, and immediately began one of the most intense discussions I have ever been involved in. I was fairly well interrogated by my hosts. "We’ve heard that you all came back from Vietnam as wealthy men. Is it true?" one asked. "Were you drafted or did you volunteer?" "How did you feel about US involvement?" For an hour they continued. All this time one man sat quietly rolling a small yellow cylinder, about the size of a water glass, back and forth between his hands, never looking up, or changing his angry expression. Finally he looked up, straight into my eyes, and his tight jaws moved just enough for him to softly ask, "Do you know what an M-14 is?"
"Yes", I answered quickly, "That was the designator of the rifle our troops carried during my first tour in Vietnam. It was later replaced by the M16."
In the time it took to say that, the color of his neck turned crimson.
"No!" he said, "This is an M-14!" And, shaking the cylinder in my face, he continued angrily, "It is an all plastic anti-personnel mine, made in America. It was one of these that blew my legs off in Afghanistan. You’re sitting in the living room of my home, how does this make you feel, American?"
When I could, I answered, "I can only tell you that it was a Russian made rocket that killed five of my comrades and wounded me in Vietnam." Tears crept out of the corners of our eyes, and we put our arms around each other and came to an understanding of what had really happened to us that few who were not involved could ever understand. Each had faced the weapons of the other - fought each other - on the soil of third party nations. Later, he showed me his legs.
He had been on the waiting list for two years before he got artificial limbs that were hand carved out of wood. They were heavy, with steel hinges at the knees, and they did not fit properly. At the end of each day he poured the blood out of the sockets that continued to do damage to his stumps. I made a silent vow to find a way to do something about that, someday.
In 1993 I started a non-profit corporation called Prosthetics Development Group International. The purpose of PDGI is to establish laboratories that provide prosthetics to people in need, wherever they are needed, by providing the technology and training necessary for the sustainable operation of those laboratories and by developing international resources and relationships that enhance indigenous capabilities; to act in advocacy for the disabled by promoting their education and rehabilitation, and by generating opportunities for the fulfillment of individual potential; and to promote prosthetics development by fostering collaboration, adaptation, dissemination and replication of an ever improving technology.
In September of 1991 the organization of Rotarians I founded to support the documentary series sponsored a delegation of top level Soviets to come to British Columbia and Washington for two weeks of study. One of the members of that delegation was Fr. Michael Kirril, People’s Deputy and Archimandrite of the Russian Orthodox Church. After their farewell dinner I told the story of the Midnight Train From Moscow. Father Kirril put his arm around me and told me that the next time I came to Russia I must come to his church to be baptized.
In June of 1992, I went to the ancient city of Tula - older than Moscow itself - and was baptized in Father Kirril’s church - not because I wanted to subscribe to Russian Orthodox dogma, because I know very little about the church, but simply because I wanted to formalize my relationship with God there in Russia where I found Him. . . on that Midnight Train from Moscow.
There is an old Hassidic tale about a rabbi and a group of his followers who were studying life’s problems. They were trying to determine that point in time at which night becomes day. There were many proposals from the people, but finally one man said, "Rabbi, night becomes day when there is enough light in the heavens that a man can look into the field and tell the difference between the lion and the lamb."
The Rabbi shook his head sadly and said, "No, night becomes day when there is enough light in a man’s spirit that he can look into the eyes of another man and recognize him as his brother." That is the light we share with this story - The light I found in the eyes of my enemy.
I am convinced that each one of us has the power and the opportunity to have a positive impact on the evolution of this global society. I believe that the iron curtain has not fallen - rather, it has risen like a curtain on a stage, and on that stage stands one of the greatest creative potentials the world has seen since the industrial revolution. I am convinced that we have an opportunity to redefine defense - no longer in terms of stockpiles of arms - but rather, in terms of living relationships. And I believe that we are all children of one God, sons and daughters of one mother Earth, and brothers and sisters - all.