Reflecting on Russia and Palestine
Thirty years ago, I traveled to the Former Soviet Union as part of a Women’s Leader exchange and later I hosted a group of our Russian counterparts in Minnesota. It was a different world in 1992, just opening after Gorbachev and Perestroika. Yeltsin was the president. Putin had just resigned his career in the KGB in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg where he was appointed head of the Committee for External Relations in the Mayor's office and was responsible for promoting international relations and foreign investments.
Our group that included a lawyer, doctor, a government official, several businesswomen, and educators. We visited Moscow, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg as part of the organization CONNECT Minnesota/Russia, and we with our counterparts visited schools; government offices; the Bolshoi ballet; sat in on a book club in the sauna; a hospital that looked like something I imagined from the 1950s in the US and a slick, modern ophthalmology clinic that performed Lasik. I ran aside the canals in St. Petersburg and was amazed at the grandeur of the golden domes in the spring’s morning light. And, of course, we sampled an array of food; my favorite dish was blini with caviar and sour cream. We had hosted our counterparts in Minnesota in January! We visited in May, no doubt, we had the better end of the deal.
CONNECT was founded by psychologist Susan Hartman who had chaperoned her child’s school trip in 1984 and saw how the teenagers connected. Their shared love of skateboarding and food eclipsed the politics and the cold war distrust between the governments at the time. CONNECT (closed in 2004) went on to host exchanges for 20 some years that brought business leaders, farmers, government officials, and educators together. Susan garnered a grant during the Clinton administration to sponsor learning sessions about communities responding to domestic violence. Focused on improving the health care response to intimate partner violence (IPV) at the time, I joined six different visits along with police, government officials, social services, IPV advocates, and Susan, a psychologist, to meet with our counterparts in the Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and several cities in Russia. My big take away at the time was that the US focused on the autonomy of the victim/survivor and they focused on preserving the family unit.
Because of those experiences with the Russian culture and the health care system, Doctors without Borders placed me in Chechnya/Ingushetia in 2000. Unbeknownst to me, Putin was in charge of ending the Chechen war. You know the rest of the story. Russia is at a very different point now. I think of the people I met, their hope and dreams, all of whom I have lost contact, and wonder about their lives.
Ten years ago was my first visit to the Occupied Territory of Palestine as part of a medical learning trip with family physician David McCray whose father was an archeologist engaged in digs at Caesarea in the 1960s. I’ve made well over a half-dozen trips to the Middle East since 2012, and it too is a very different place. Most recently friends there sent me reports of the IDF’s recent attacks in Nablus, the city where I was based for my Fulbright Award. Eleven killed and over a hundred wounded.
How does one respond to such horrors? I am unsure, but I sent an email to my colleagues that I was praying for them, holding them in my heart and wishing them safety and peace.
Personal experiences and visits like those of the past are much more difficult and perhaps impossible now in both Russia and Palestine. I recognize the fragility of life and how quickly situations change. This is a difficult world today. So much out of our control. So much anger and uncertainty. May you find your own safe place and peace.