Tuesday Seventeenth April I woke up at
8.00, which is pretty standard these last few days. I went to breakfast, not
much waiting this time but I shared a table with David Withell and Nigel.
Breakfast consisted of some sausage, hard-boiled egg, bread, pickle (or
cucumber) and caviar (untouched by all but Nigel and David W.). I also drank a
glass of tea, but only for the liquid. 1.80R. [I wasn’t usually a tea or coffee drinker in those days.]
I
didn’t see much of the countryside that day as I was running around trying to organize
people to share compartments on the TSR with compatible people. A very hard job
to do, what with people being people. Some are obviously not to be satisfied
but if they want to change I hope they don’t expect me to sort things out for
them as it’s not really my job.
But what I did see of the countryside was typical of this part of the
USSR, which is the Far East. It’s probably also typical of parts of Siberia
that we’ll see. For instance, a lot of leafless trees – millions of them,
really. It makes everything look so bleak.
Long brown grass lying like strands of wet blonde hair on the ground,
probably frozen into shape by the winter snow and later winds.
Patches of ice covered in ice, wide and shallow.
Mountains. Other trains. Stations, small townships, buildings, people.
The sky was cloudy.
We
arrived in Khabarovsk at about 11.40. There is no platform for the trains, just
several tracks. We were met by a short-haired blonde Intourist guide Tanya, and
another one whose name I think is also Tanya [seems to have been Larissa] but she isn’t a
short-haired blonde. They led us to a structure down which stairs descended
into a cold damp subway. Most of the cigarette butts thrown down onto the
tracks are only half-smoked; perhaps a comment on the quality of Russian
tobacco, or not.
In
a high-ceilinged , large-windowed, blue-walled, literature-strewn room we were
allocated our hotel rooms as we said goodbye once again to our passports. It
was the the Intourist Hall.
This done, we got into our two Intourist buses (there being so many of
us) and were driven to the hotel, which I think is the Central Hotel. It faces
onto a large square and is next to some building used by the medical people
from the hospital on the other side, I think. There is a statue of Lenin here,
and a Fashion Design Centre.
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| Supposedly Khabarovsk Station in the Soviet era (since rebuilt and enlarged beautifully) |
We
went up to our rooms. I am sharing with Mr. John Basely, a retired 64 year old
Briton who goes to sleep very quickly and immediately starts snoring. LOUDLY.
We
had lunch at 1.00. I sat with the Hampsons (Brian and Joy) and the Solers (Leon
and Joyce). It started off with some vegetable concoction with sour cream, and
then some kind of Russian stew the name of which escapes me with chips. Ice
cream! Cherry juice.
After lunch I went with Wayne for a photographic walk. We ended up with
Chris and Linda in a bleak park behind the hotel. It’s not a flat park. Icy
streams with steep banks bare barely treed (the trees were bare as all the
trees are around here are [not
full Spring yet]). We met Avril from another group (Mospac, with the
Japanese). Kids playing around a pond. A wooden house, 2nd floor
verandah, bathtubs, stainless steel, hanging up outside. Carved climbing
apparatus/playground type thing – beautiful carvings.
Back to the hotel to do a little bit of washing and hang the
handkerchieves on the heated rail.
At
3 o’clock we boarded our two buses for the city tour, and away through the
streets of Khabarovsk to a bank to change some money ($US5 = 3.50 R).
Khabarovsk was founded in 1858 and was named after the famous Russian
explorer, Joe Smith. It is built on three hills on the Amur River, the longest
such water course in Russia, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t have its
own coastal plain. It is ice-bound for five or six months of the year, and even
now it still has a lot of ice on it, which actually looks like salt pans.
There
are at least 28 movie theatres, for, not only is Khabarovsk a great industrial
centre, it is also a cultural centre. It even has medium to high tension power
lines running through the streets.
There is an extensive public transport system for this city of 562,000
people – Far Easterners (we don’t get to Siberia until we reach Chita). [Population 577,441 in the 2020
census.] A bus fare is 6 kopeks, the tram is three and the trolley bus
is five.
Our first stop after the bank was in Komsamosk Square, on the site of
which used to be a cathedral.
[A new cathedral was built there in 2002.] The komsamos is the Young
Communists League. There is a monument with three statues representing
something or other, and an amusement park with a ferris wheel. The library
faces onto the square, opposite the digital clock which also displays the
temperature from time to time (+8 C). Some of us got out to take some
photographs. Two little girls gave Bernadette a postcard but she didn’t have
anything to give them, so I gave them my kangaroo stick pin and hopped about
like one.
Next we went to Glory Square, on Lenin St., which overlooks the river.
The river is so wide that there is a lot of ice still unmelted which looks like
salt. In the distance, four chimneys belting out smoke like billio. But if one
cuts off one bank out of one’s mind, then one could be forgiven if one thought
one was at a grotty coastal town. [Of course, if you go there in summer you would have a different feeling.]
It
was windy and chilly there, and there is a building unfinished because the
weather didn’t let it work out. There are still quite a few wooden buildings in
Khabarovsk, they look shabby but interesting. Larissa the guide told us about
dachas, the country houses that people may have. In western USSR, these can be
no more 600m², but out here in the Far East they can be on an ‘unlimited’ area
of land.
Living standards. The average salary is about 186 roubles a month;
income tax is only 8% and rent is usually about 3-5%. Larissa, for instance,
pays 7.78 roubles for rent plus two roubles for electricity.
There are also what are called Consumption Funds, which is about 75
roubles per month (or year). I’m not really sure how it works but it pays for
free education, free medical costs for everybody, and free travel abroad or in
the Union (or 70% discount) for ‘advanced’ workers.
Outside some of the factories/work places are photographs of the best
workers for each month; and then of course they have the best workers of the
year.
Workers in the Far East are paid 20% more than their Western
counterparts, but further north the workers are paid 60% more. This is because
of the harsher weather conditions.
Khabarovsk is a good spot for heavy industrial development because there
is so much coal, oil, iron ore, tin, copper, gas etc in the surrounding area.
There are also many many poplar trees around town because they are frost
resistant. They tried once to grow fruit trees, which was rather pointless.
We
went to Railway Square where the station is, obviously, and the Institute of
Railway Engineers, and a statue of a serious-looking man called Khabarov. This
explorer came to the Amur with the view of finding settling land. This was in
1685 and in 1686 he probably went home. [Actually, his second expedition there was in 1850-53, but it ended
unhappily for him.]
We passed one park where a couple of kids
were riding in a go-cart [billy-cart?]; and a playground with more of the same kind of
carvings mentioned before. And we also probably passed some of the thirty-four
hospitals and polyclinics in Khabarovsk.
Next station of call was the grand Khabarovsk Sports Centre, which is
right next to the river. At the entrance is a big gate-type thing with lanes
for entrance. [What a stupid
sentence.]
On the right is I don’t know what and what
is presumably an ice rink judging from the statues outside it. [Khabarovsk hosted the World Bandy
Championship in 1981. Bandy is a kind of like field hockey and football played
on ice – but only Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden play it.] On the
left on a hill is huge building which is the hotel we should have stayed in.
Other than that I didn’t see much of what is in the sports centre except for a
lot of joggers and some boys and girls playing football. There are lots of
pathways and trees and a statue of Lenin painted gold. ‘Twas getting windy and
chilly.
We
then went to a berioska [Beryozka
– a name which means ‘little birch tree’], a hard currency store for
foreigners which mainly sells souvenirs and alcohol, cigarettes, fur hats,
wooden carvings, jewelry, painted wooden cups, plates etc, and also playing
cards, a pack of which was bought by myself and six hundred yen.
Back to the hotel where I washed some essentials and wrote some of this.
Dinner was at about 6.30 or 7.30, and I sat with the Dickinsons and the
Mullins. Horse doovers was left uneaten (salty raw salmon), and a soupy thing
with meaty dumplings in it. More cherry juice.
After dinner I went with the Hampsons, Margaret Walker, Grace Cull,
Elaine Dabbs and Adrianne Leach and maybe I don’t know who, up the street in
search of the famous department store. It was raining and windy.
We
passed the famous supermarket but didn’t go in, went two blocks without finding
the department store and decided to cross the road and go into the sportswear
store. In here is fishing gear, leotards, deflated footballs – piles and piles
of them – lots of gum boots, running shoes, some skis, a couple of sleds and
other things just as interesting. We decided to go back t’hotel.
However, we bumped into Leanne, Elly and Jane who were going to the
department store and knew where it was, so I went with them. It was on the next
block from where we had crossed over to the sports store.
The big buildings here have two sets of outside doors, which are
difficult to get through because of the outer one has a strong spring. They’re
hard to hold open and go through at the same time.
Inside, very spacious. First we had a look at Zenit cameras, all of which
looked terribly outdated; so too the light meters. In the Musical Instruments
there were thirty or more piano accordions, a few electric guitars, a double
bass, violin, clarinet, saxophone, tuba, and a display case of bits and pieces
such as cello bridges, clarinet mouthpieces and split reeds.
 | |
| Zenit Camera of around that time. Zenit still makes cameras, good on them. | Thanks to Dmitry. |
Then some large black and white television sets with four or five colour
sets; some antiquated stereo systems. Another department had souvenirs and
crockery; and another had school stationery. But the store closed at 9.00 so we
went back to the hotel for the night.
I
had to have a bath in ochre-coloured warm water because the shower didn’t work
and there wasn’t a shower curtain anyway.
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