More photos from Russia study tour

Red Square was closed most of the time we were in Moscow, being readied for the May 9 Victory Day parade. (Click on photos for a better view)

Man & woman hold hammer and sickle in Moscow park to show unity of peasants and industrial workers during the Soviet period.

Moscow metro station remembering those who suffered and died during Nazi invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union during WW II. Every metro station has incredible art of a different theme.

Karl Marx in Moscow offering rest spot for pigeons. Many people told us they miss the sense of national purpose and unity they had during the Soviet Union.   A vote of the Soviet people was held prior to its disintegration and the public was asked if they wanted to dissolve their country or not.  60% voted to remain as the Soviet Union - the politicians moved to dismantle the vast nation anyway. Former presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin and not well liked today.

On May Day in Simferopol, Crimea we marched in a huge celebratory parade and then were invited to listen and speak at a round-table event with local leaders.  Here GN chair Dave Webb (right) has just signed a cooperation agreement between our organization and Yan Epshtein the Director of an NGO called the Black Sea Association for International Cooperation.

Our group in Simferopol outside our hotel (on the left) before heading to the May Day parade.

The Livadia Palace garden in Yalta, Crimea.  This was a summer retreat of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family.  It was the historic meeting place in 1945 between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.   Today the palace houses a museum, but it is sometimes used for international summits.

The famous portraits on the wall inside the Livadia Palace in Yalta.

 

Down inside the solid stone bowels of the 35th Battery just outside Sevastopol, Crimea was this small operating room.  Over 30,000 Soviet sailors and soldiers were killed here by the Nazis when they retreated to this place along the rocky coastline during the war.  The museum focuses on the humanity and spirits of those who died trying to defend their nation from the fascist attack.  All together about 28 million people died at the hands of the Nazis in the Soviet Union during WW II.

Underground Memorial at the 35 Battery Museum in Sevastopol.

Will Griffin (who took all these photos) over looking Artek outside of Yalta, Crimea.  Artek is an international kids camp (a former Young Pioneer camp) on the Black Sea. Thousands of kids attend the camp each summer.  In November of 1982 Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old girl from Manchester, Maine, wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov to ask if he was going to wage a nuclear war against the U.S. The following July she toured the USSR and the Artek camp at his invitation and as a result, became known as America's youngest goodwill ambassador. Sadly, Samantha died on a rainy August night in 1985 while returning from London when the commercial plane she was in crashed killing all aboard.

Will Griffin standing at the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) where 500,000 victims of the Nazi two and one-half year siege of the city were buried.  Hundreds of thousands of people died in the city (mostly of cold and starvation) during the fascist attacks. About half a million of them, including 420,000 civilians, are buried in the cemetery's 186 mass graves. Not much of this history is known outside of Russia - especially in the west.  The fascists would rather we all just forget about it.

After the Russia study tour was over GN Board member Will Griffin went to Lapland in northern Finland to speak with a peace group that organizes against US-NATO war games along the Finland-Russia border.  They held this protest  while he was there.