History repeats?

I first went to Russia in 1983 on a school trip, right in the middle of the Soviet/Cold War era, visiting many different places around the country. It was an amazing experience but to say the country was bleak is an understatement - practically no food in the supermarkets, we were rarely allowed out without our government-sponsored guide and every corner of the big shopping centre in Moscow had soldiers holding machine guns. We were told that under no circumstances were we to speak to any Russians, as this could lead to a long prison sentence. My friends and I took this very seriously however some of our group made friends with some Russian teenagers and - no joke - one girl's parents had to fly out because she'd been arrested for giving her jeans to a Russian girl and was being threatened with fifteen years in jail. She was eventually allowed to come home but we never did find out what happened to the Russian kids. It was very scary at the time but, back in those days, tourists' details were held by the KGB and it did used to tickle me to be able to say I had a KGB file!

My husband has also been to Russia a couple of times for work but thankfully his company hasn't had any dealings with the country for several years. His account of what it was like was so completely different to my own experience that around three years ago we went to Moscow for a few days with our children. It is so important to us to help our children experience first-hand as many different places as we can and what a change! It was all Starbucks and Burger Kings, with the main shopping centre no longer filled with soldiers but designer shops that were far out of our price range. What a difference a few decades makes!

One of the places we visited on my school trip in the 80s was a primary school. Their reading books were all about Lenin, how wonderful communism was and how terrible we were - pretty standard propaganda. This time, we just did the usual touristy things but still found that their attitudes were completely different. Even when visiting Stalin's bunker, the little film they showed us was very balanced, praising the US and UK efforts in the war and it very much promoted the idea of us all having been allies. Still propaganda, but at least we came out a bit better this time!

I started reading this book just after we came back but I never finished it as I wasn't sure how accurate an account it was and, after all, the world has changed since then, hasn't it? Unfortunately, as we are finding out, it seems not. I am very glad we were able to take our children to see even just a small part of Russia but my heart is breaking for the people of Ukraine. I'm trying hard not to blame the normal Russian people and I realise they are being very badly lied to but the soldiers actually carrying out these atrocities obviously now know the truth and must be telling their parents, siblings, partners, children and friends back in Russia so they must know how wrong this is. The reports of even children being deliberately targeted and shot is beyond evil and hopefully the rest of the world will finally step up and actually do something about it.