Chapter 170

12/26/2007

Foreign Policy

the Russians are coming                                  

I got to chance on Christmas Day (! what would Jesus have done) to bring world politics, history, and world peace together.

I gave a little assistance to Craig Jenkins who refs our hockey league and previously played at Brown and in the Swedish Elite League.  He set up a local 10 game schedule for these struggling kids on the Russian Olimp Hockey Club.

 It was special to attend the first 2 games, as they took place at Frear Park in Troy;  the same rink where my hockey career was born in 1993, the same year these kids were born. A local Colonie team coached by a sometime team mate, Ron Kuhl provided the opposition.

I was able to meet and greet Larisa Vaselenyuk, the interpreter by picking her out from her picture, fur coat and as the only English speaking Russian there. Craig came later to "discuss some game details" with her. She was very pleasant but the Lukoil company representative and sponsor of the team seemed agitated or grumpy when I suggested they should teach us a Russian cheer. Maybe lost in translation, maybe not.

When you realize these kids come from Vorkuta, Russia above the arctic circle in the bitter cold and the drab tundra landscape you begin to sympathize with them. This 3 min CNN video quickly encapsulates the gripping story of the harsh conditions there (many related atrocity videos linked). Vorkuta was established by Stalin as a brutal Gulag forced labor (video) camp for coal mining and exterminating millions of undesirables. This included dissidents, jews, Pols,  German WW2 prisoners and a some Americans. Having a Mother-in-Law of Lithuanian descent, I could relate to the article's tenacious 76yr old Lithuanian grandma ex-camp prisoner. Now, the mines are closing down and the city is a modern day drag on the economy.

The History Channel recently showed a relatively accurate documentary of "Charlie Wilson's War" and how we destroyed the USSR (really, they buried themselves, didn't they) and a little backfire like our current wars. Having been a life-long soldier in the Cold War, it was kind of nice to be a part of this "cold war" of better sort.

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