We arrived in Moscow early on the morning of May 29,1983, after an overnight train ride on the Tolstoy Express from Helsinki. The Intourist guide met the 42 of us at the central station and took us to the Cosmos Hotel on the outskirts of the city. We were on a Journey of Reconciliation, sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the Peace Studies Institute of Manchester College.
After checking in and eating lunch, we were to have an orientation tour downtown. Peter Klotz-Chamberlain and I decided to skip the tour, including the visit to Red Square, the Kremlin, and Lenin's tomb. Instead, we got a subway map and took the metro and then a taxi across town to the apartment of Yuri and Olga Medvedkov, one of the couples that belongs to the independent Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S. and the USSR.
At the apartment we discovered seven of the group having a meeting. They welcomed us with open arms, especially since I represented FOR, which had established a relationship with the Group to Establish Trust through my visit to Moscow the summer of 1982. For two hours we shared news and concerns with one another and arranged to meet again with as many members of our two groups as could get together that night at the apartment of Etalina and Valery Godyak. We decided to focus our seminar on learning about each other's efforts to establish trust between our two peoples.
That night 12 of us hailed taxis at the hotel and made our way (a 30-minute, six-ruble ride) to the meeting with eight Soviet peacemakers. At first we simply introduced ourselves to one another, showing pictures of our families and sharing the concerns that had brought us together. We Americans gave small gifts from the U.S.: posters and buttons, articles and books. They received Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth like a precious jewel, saying it had had an extraordinary impact among the few who had seen it. We also gave them photos of Americans with the FOR peace pledge on the back of each: "In the light of my faith, I am prepared to live without nuclear weapons in my country." We shared with them some marigold seeds representative of our project to get U.S. citizens to send friendship letters and "seeds of hope" to President Reagan and the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
Then our new Soviet friends told us about the work of their group. Made up of professionals such as teachers, doctors, and scientists, the group has 14 members and 590 supporters in 12 cities and towns. Their concerns are not specifically political or even focused on the arms race. Rather, they have come together out of the conviction that our two countries are heading inexorably toward war and that it is absolutely essential to decrease hatred and build trust between the U.S. and Soviet people. The present hostile, suspicious atmosphere that pervades Soviet-U.S. relations undermines any kind of arms agreements or other breakthroughs. Only as the attitudes are changed, they believe, can better relations be developed.
The Group to Establish Trust is concerned with initiating grassroots awareness and involvement and has held art exhibits and circulated peace petitions. They encourage a massive increase of citizen exchanges between our two countries and joint efforts in space, medicine, and education. They especially welcome meetings with peacemakers from other countries. Our coming, they said, was a "feast" that helped make their efforts worthwhile.
The members of the Group to Establish Trust are not dissidents, nor are they anti-Soviet. They seek to avoid all confrontation with the government and affirm its official peace program and the activity of the Soviet Peace Committee. Nevertheless, they have been continually harassed by a government that is accustomed to top-down uniformity and regulation and uncomfortable with the group's desire to be independent.
In attempting to do things their own way and build grassroots peace activism, they have been subjected to careful investigation, constant surveillance, and treatment that is often outrageous. Their telephone wires have been cut, and their mail often doesn't get through, especially letters from abroad. Most of them have had great trouble professionally; some have lost their jobs, others have had their jobs seriously downgraded and various charges leveled against them.
Various ones of their group have been jailed, and Sergei Batovrin, one of the group's founders, was placed in a mental ward for observation. Later when the Soviet government gave him the choice of exile or prison, he and his family decided on the former and left the USSR in the summer of 1982 for Europe and eventually the United States.
Despite this persecution, group members have continued their efforts, believing that trust will, indeed must, grow if we are to survive. They are wary, however, of becoming pawns in the Cold War and being used by Western groups who might support them to prove themselves anti-communist. They try to avoid those who would sensationalize events surrounding them; hence they publicize whatever harassment they face only with the aim of getting letters and cables of support, not to stir up confrontation.
Deeply impressed with their courage and strength, and with their commitment to nonviolence, I often asked them, "Why did you become part of this struggle?" During the 1982 trip, I asked this of Batovrin, an artist, just before he was exiled, and he said he had found it impossible to be other than true to his own artistic integrity and vision. Natasha Batovrin, his wife, asked, "Why should there be only one way of peacemaking?"
Now on this second trip, another member, an Orthodox Jew, said he had to do everything possible to stop a holocaust that will surely engulf all humanity.
Yuri Medvedkov, a geographer, said, "Since 1981 I have come to the conclusion that we are reaching the point of no return. It is now or never that we must turn back from nuclear war."
For Vladimir Fleishgakker, a bearded physics teacher, the issue was that of the moral imperative: "If I do not respond, then who will?" His wife, Maria, felt that her pacifism made it necessary to stand simply and resolutely against the course of organized violence. Vladimir Brodsky, a medical doctor, spoke of Passover and of God's helping and guiding us to overcome the present impasse between our nations.
While we were talking, the Godyaks were in the kitchen preparing refreshments. David Kidd, a United Methodist pastor from Detroit, learned from them about their son's tragic death in a mysterious karate accident at school. They also wondered if our group might be able to get them a Bible. To their amazement, David took a Russian Bible out of his bag and gave it to them. A number of us had each brought a Russian Bible into the country, knowing that although Bibles are printed in the USSR, the demand always exceeds the supply available.
It was after midnight when we decided to return to the hotel. Before we left, we shared that FOR and other groups had had silent vigils on January 1, 1983, in response to a call from the Group to Establish Trust for a worldwide observance of 10 minutes of silence, prayer, and general reflection on peace. Deciding that such moments would be a fitting close for the evening's seminar, we formed a circle, joined hands, and bowed our heads in silence. Most of us were in tears as we sang "Shalom" together and then embraced in deep love and solidarity with our newly found friends.
The Moscow subways stop running at 1 a.m., so we had to rush to get our ride home. Several of the group accompanied us on the bus, then on the metro. We reached the metro stop near the Cosmos Hotel at 10 minutes to one, and rode up the escalator waving goodbye to our friends. We wondered how they got home.
And we wondered what the future holds for them, and for us. While their immediate prospects are doubtless far grimmer than our own—and for that we offer special prayers for them—we know that all of us face the future together. The lives of our two peoples are interwoven in a common destiny, and we are called upon to save one another's lives.
Richard Baggett Deats was executive secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation when this article appeared.
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