I spent a few months of my early teens in the Soviet Union after running away from a gang of German Yobs in West Berlin. It was before the wall and travelling into to the Eastern Sector was easy, like going down a street, I walked through with another family by infiltrating. I had been sent to be looked after by my father after Mum found she could not manage my behaviour. I was being chased because I was a son of a soldier in the British Army of the Rhine Occupation force.
He sent me to a German school in Dusseldorf and I joined street gangs their with Jewish children thrown out by their parents to preserve their lives and hiding from American jeeps in case they were mobile gas chambers the Germans had.
I ran into east Berlin with a family crossing the boarder.
I cannot remember much but it was peaceful and with ordered rows of flats which were better than the bombed buildings of West Berlin and the gangs of German youths who rampaged around.
I spent a short time with a circus and learned to throw knives and simple trapeze skills. I joined because I was hungry. I was not strong enough the other men did not trust me.
I was soon picked up and showed my British passport. Remember I had been sent to a local German School and spoke German quite well.
I was sent to a Gulag (low regime) in Siberia. Our work was to build a road. This was done by cutting a path through the forest of tall pine trees then cutting them to fit the width of the road then splitting them if half and laying them down across the road so the flat side was uppermost. I think there were pegs banged in to stabilise the wood. I asked what vehicles ran along and was the ox cart road and for the dog cart. The dog cart was faster.
There were other unmade roads, just great swathes through the forest, where huge trucks with multi caterpillar tracks carried huge cylinders painted green slowly northwards. I asked what these were and they told me they were hydrogen bombs on big rockets to go to the arctic to bomb American cities. This did not please me and I wondered how they got them to America, I did not understand the circle of the Earth over the pole and I did not understand where I was.
I survived by sleeping under the wooden hut so I could get under the stove. The pile of snow around the hut protected me from the wind. The soldiers came with bayonets and probed underneath. I ate little molluscs the grew under the hut and caught and ate mice sometimes. A little dog came and joined me and we snuggled to keep warm, he went off sometimes and came back. I was not spotted and was presumed dead.
I had not been shot for illegally entering the communist empire because I was under age (13) 14 and over is the legal age for execution.
I left the camp with a working party having befriended the wolf dogs that patrolled between the fences. I wondered off into the forest and joined a pack of wolves that fed me and looked after me. I found wolves nicer than men. I snuggled close to this tribe of wolves and learned the language of little snuffles, yaps and the meaning of their pointing muzzles.
I was of course caught by men from the village who shot the wolves I loved and I joined the men as I recognized them as my species. I hugged the she wolf as she died.
I was easily persuaded (the penalty was death) to become a supporter of communism but retained my British passport. An office clerk signed the party member booklet for me.
I had to learn Russian and how to be a communist. I got a good mark in my test on communism, one of the highest in the country, the three that gave a bad answer and said how they would make money were taken into the yard and we heard the gunshots. Those three boys did not return, there is nothing like the prospect of execution to help you to co-operate, and was I sent to a good school, where I was given lessons at a far higher standard than anything in Britain at that age. We even did sine waves and rockets, one exercise was to design a rocket and the trajectory to bomb New York which was something I did not understand (Why bomb New York – Americans are nice people) I was scolded and informed of the reason and then I shut up. I remember I thought parabola like a cannon ball but they said elliptical because the planet is round, it really was difficult.
Well I spent a while at a Siberian farmers home with his family and we ate ducks eggs one between the three children. He did not like giving his product to the communists (the new Tsar) and sold what he could locally we had plenty to eat and often had fish, like sturgeon (usually roes) potatoes and salad with butter. Cheese was a common dietary component. He had old roubles notes and old share certificates decorating the walls of his home.
One of my jobs after school was collecting firewood from the forest and another was to go hunting for an animal to kill to cut off the bones and take the pelt and flesh back in a bag for us to eat. I did get a bear once and we really had a feast. He was a bit heavy though. I think I wore his coat for a while as a reward.
There was a Stone Age farm in the forest with a family tribe of Mongolians with the pretty cloths of their clothing and the stone wall enclosure and a brush wood and turf roof. They had obsidian knives to cut up meat and a stubby bow and long arrows to kill there prey. They had a British gun (BSA) and some British ammunition dating to the 1890’s. They did have a Russian Steel axe but usually used stone axes. They did not know any Russian and spoke their own language. I made friends with a lovely young lady there who was keen on using her bow but also made cloth. She was really nice.
I was allowed to marry another young lady in an Eastern Orthodox marriage and we moved into a flat made from a room in a stately home taken over by the people. However she was an Uzbek and a Moslem my son was born after I left and I supported them from Britain and when he went to Moscow state university he had been to America but did not like it. I bought him a car while he was in Moscow. He was called up and then stayed and was sent to Afghanistan (I asked some friends who were going to fight with the Talisiban not to kill my son) then to Chechnya where he was captured and after negotiation defected to Islam and is somewhere in Asia.
I was happy. Then disaster! My parents traced me and I wrote a letter to say how happy I was. A British agent came and tricked me into going back “to visit my mother”. Shebidnazim let me leave Russia.
I was never was allowed to return, forced to speak English and brainwashed by Religious zealots to live in a culture of savages and villains that I hated. I was brutally attacked and these attacks have continued ever since. The diamonds and gold of London is only glitz and the food makes me sick.
I hate everything about the west because of the happiness I left behind in Russia.
Even if you give me the whole world and take my freedom then you give me nothing.
The west is a land of dancing monkeys, dancing for the money they throw.
Think Russia, think Stone Age. It was nice in the stone age.
Chris.
02/01/2010