Soviets, Americans Cruise for Peace on Mississippi

Valery Malakhov, Michail Shein and Boris Zrezartsev of the Soviet Union were sitting on a bench on the shady side of the street in Hannibal, Mo.

Across from them stood Mark Twain’s boyhood home and a partially whitewashed fence with a sign testifying, “Tom Sawyer’s Fence.”

A few hundred yards away at the river bank was a paddle-wheel steamer, the Delta Queen, that was bringing the three men, along with 43 of their compatriots and 130 Americans, on their weeklong Mississippi Peace Cruise.

As the men sat on the bench, a woman in shorts and a striped top walked by, gave them a friendly grin and asked, “Are you having a good time?”

As they were responding, an American from the cruise started to thank the woman for the wonderful welcome that Hannibal was giving them.

“Oh, I’m from California,” the woman, Charlotte Ryan of Chula Vista, answered, “but if you came there, I’d do the same.”

Ryan admired Zrezartsev’s dove of peace pin and asked if he had any more. He looked down at his chest, removed the pin and, over her protests, handed it to her.

It was “USA/USSR Peace and Friendship Day” in Hannibal, and it was going well.

Mayor Richard Schwartz had made his proclamation for the day at breakfast on board the Delta Queen. He had been accompanied by Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, a.k.a. seventh-graders Chris Comer and Kerri Lauterbach.

Tom and Becky had brought souvenir packets for the Soviets which they eagerly received: Svetlana Khokhlova, a teacher from Rostov-on-Don, waving excitedly across the room, “Becky, I am here!” Cosmonaut Gregory Grechko, inadvertently overlooked, approaching Tom Sawyer from behind and whispering hesitantly, “Tom,” so that he could get his packet.

Mark Twain, in the person of cruise passenger Bill McLinn of Washington, was on board. McLinn, an actor and scholar who regularly performs as Twain and has taken his act to the Soviet Union, was in costume and in form, making deprecating asides about the official goings-on. After breakfast, he, Tom and Becky led passengers down the gangplank.

Hannibal was waiting for them. Ever since the ship had arrived at 7 a.m. a crowd had been gathering, among them a few hecklers with anti-Soviet signs about one-sided peace efforts and slave camps.

‘I Just Want to Welcome You’

By the time the passengers disembarked, however, the hecklers had disappeared. Instead Chamber of Commerce members, wearing tan linen blazers, lined the gangplank for the first handshakes. Next to them were women offering passengers little homemade bouquets of carnations and baby’s breath, and behind the women were hundreds of ordinary people like the farming couple who had driven into town. “I’m nobody special,” the farmer said, as he approached one of the Soviets. “I just want to welcome you.”

And when they left at midday it would be more of the same: 300 cheering people, calliope music, calls of “come back and see us.” People stood on the shore with desperately friendly faces straining for the last possible moment of contact. One man kept trying to get his dog to wave its paw.

The Soviets were moved by Hannibal’s warmth and welcome, but not astonished, they said. Their astonishment had begun to die a few days earlier, as the response of the Americans in the heartland began to sink in. It was beyond their expectations and beyond the wildest dreams of the Americans who had planned the trip. It had been so ever since they left Minneapolis/St. Paul for St. Louis.

The trip, sponsored by an organization called Promoting Enduring Peace, had been planned for the past two years by the organization’s directors, Howard and Alice Frazier of Woodmont, Conn. It was modeled after seven Volga Peace Cruises that have been held in the Soviet Union from 1982-1985.

Outpouring of People

Alice Frazier described herself as overwhelmed by the outpouring of people. Several times in the middle of the night they would discover dozens of people waiting when they came to a lock, she said. And no one had expected the crowd at Keokuk, Iowa, between the Burlington and Hannibal stops, to be so large. Hundreds waited along the river banks there, just for a glimpse as the ship passed by. Those on board stood and waved, but there was too much distance for anything but the cheering and the sounds of “Moscow Nights,” being played by a local band on shore, to make their way to the ship.

“I think this is a turning point,” Frazier said of the trip. “You see it in their faces. It’s almost as if this was something waiting to happen.”

There seemed to be consensus about that on board.

“This was a creative moment in the American peace movement,” Pat Coy, a campus minister from St. Louis, said. “Martin Luther King understood the importance of creating moments of tension where the truth was revealed. The Peace Cruise has created a similar environment. The American people have shown up en masse to sing, throw flowers, touch the Russians. It’s a new moment. It’s been forced, created, but it has shown that the Americans have begun to doubt their doubts about the Russians.”

Real Story on Shore

Stanislav Kondrashov, a political observer for the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya who was twice a correspondent stationed in the United States, tended to agree that the real story was happening on the shore. “I want to be sober and realistic about it. It tells me that at least they are curious. Here we are right in this very beautiful heartland of the country and then all of a sudden, the Russians are coming. We look like more or less normal people,” he said, starting to laugh.

“To go deeper, it’s very difficult to describe,” Kondrashov said. “The silence itself--not many words have been pronounced--this silence is almost more expressive than words. It makes us see this tragedy of our time. . . . I don’t want to exaggerate it. It’s a very emotionally charged thing.”

Regarding the importance of these exchanges between Soviets and Americans, he said, “It is not a decisive action, but it puts some additional weight to important public questions. It’s always better to have more contact of this kind.”

Meanwhile, on board, the cruise participants dined and partied together and, despite their exhaustion, made it through a series of workshops about the arms race. By the time the trip ended Saturday in St. Louis, they had agreed upon “A People’s Appeal for Peace,” a petition to President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev that a coalition of peace groups has been drafting in New York.

The actual appeal will be signed by 13 Soviets and 13 Americans in New York on Friday.

Citizen exchanges between Soviets and Americans are not new. Some passengers, however, saw a difference this time. Among them were Edward and Mildred Lewis, film producers and writers from Los Angeles.

‘Soviets Are More Open’

“There’s a new element to the peace movement story now--with Gorbachev,” Mildred Lewis said. “The Soviets are more open. Suddenly there is a new atmosphere.” Also new, she and her husband agreed, is a different public posture on the part of Americans in the peace movement. They have always been careful to stress their problems with the Soviet side of the arms race, less they be accused of campaigning for unilateral disarmament of the American side. Now they are sounding unapologetic in their remarks that “the Soviets have stopped testing,” putting out the message that the ball is in the American court.

“It’s so obvious now. The problem is here,” Edward Lewis said of the change. The cruise ended Saturday under the arch in St. Louis where the band played, the hecklers booed and the crowds cheered. The last few minutes on board had been frantic ones of tearful farewells, people autographing their pictures in each other’s souvenir books, kissing and hugging.

Clearly a good time had been had by all. Yet even in its lightest moments, the cruise was never entirely free of the specter that brought the Soviets and Americans to the Mississippi.

One such moment came when they were touring Mark Twain’s Cave in Hannibal. There they were deep in the earth, the Soviets more familiar than the Americans with the stories of Tom and Becky and Injun Joe’s hideout.

Tour guide Amy Collins led them down a narrow corridor, lighting two chambers for them to see--Jesse James’ hideout with his authenticated signature etched in the rock, and “our civil defense chamber,” stockpiled with food and supplies during the 1960s, currently empty.

“It can still be used as a fallout shelter if necessary,” Collins brightly assured her guests.