In Russia during hostile times
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It’s safe to say there’s no way they will ever forget the details of their trip to Russia in March, for a couple of reasons. The Holders traveled there twice to adopt their 16-month-old daughter and on their second trip, the bombing of Iraq began.
While experiencing one of the biggest joys of their lives, they were visitors in a country where people were less than appreciative of the U.S. military’s quest to oust Saddam Hussein from power and liberate the country.
Greg said the couple was on a flight from the town of Vladivostok after adopting their daughter there and headed to Moscow to finalize the adoption when the bombing started. They woke up to newspapers in Russia critical of the war.
While they felt more unsafe on their first trip in November due to problems in Chechnya, they nevertheless became unwilling representatives of the United States’ foreign policy when the war started during their return trip in March. Greg said they spent a lot of time talking to their interpreters – college-educated university women around 21-years-old – about the situation.
“They had very interesting opinions. The way they perceived us, especially in Vladivostok, some of the girls thought that George Bush was almost as bad as Saddam Hussein. They viewed him as more of a ruler. They saw him as like a power-hungry businessman, is what I thought,” he said. “I think they perceived him as more like being part of a regime, with his dad being president and keeping some of the same people in his inner circle. They would look at it like that.”
The couple said they never felt threatened but got an earful.
“Of course being an American, you have to have pride for your country and things like that. I just sort of looked at them on a lot of things as being misinformed,” Greg added.
The war was big news in Russia, and the couple viewed televised accounts of it on American news channels from their hotel room.
After experiencing different parts of the country and talking about the war with others, the couple eventually turned their thoughts to the Cold War with the former communist Soviet Union – a major concern for Americans up until just more than a decade ago.
Infrastructure was lacking in rural areas, a popular American fast food restaurant was considered “classy,” organized crime was a concern and workers had to have identification that classified their jobs, they said. Holder said he had to wonder.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘What were we so afraid of during the Cold War?'”
Since returning home and beginning to put the experience in political perspective, Lisa said being there made her feel tremendous patriotism, despite the anti-war sentiments.
“It makes you feel proud to be an American. You don’t realize what you have until you go there,” she said, referring to some of the poorer aspects of life in the country.
While many of the older citizens clung to ideals about communism and participated in a protest about the war while they were there, the younger generation, while debating the war intellectually, dressed in Western clothes and wondered about life in the United States, Greg added.
What they said perhaps said it all.
“All those girls in Moscow and Vladivostok, they had some doubtful views. They were real skeptical of America, but they all wanted to come to America,” he said.