Peace Mission to Soviet Union: Fools’ Errand or Real Breakthrough?

E.T. thinks the idea is naive and shallow.

“These people think they can go out and spread love and change the world in two weeks! They need to spend a year! Learn the language! In two weeks, they will see what the KGB wants them to see. That’s all.”

E.T. is a San Diego-based Jewish emigre from the Soviet Union. He asks that only his initials be published because he still has family back home who might suffer because of his views.

“These people” is a group he has been advising, despite his feelings. Sixteen men and women, mainly from San Diego, who want to build peace by spreading love between the Soviet Union and the United States. They will put their money ($2,700 each) where their mouths are and fly to Leningrad and Moscow to “practice peace.” Start breaking down East-West barriers, without waiting for governments and their interminable negotiations to pave the way. Just go, meet “the people.” Defuse their fears of us. Learn to understand them.

Two weeks before departure, a sign is placed at the entrance to a Point Loma condo complex:

“Citizen Diplomats! Follow arrows!”

Inside the pink, deep-pile plushness of Zelah Kahn’s condo, looking over the blue lapping waters by Shelter Island, the citizen diplomats are gathering on this Sunday afternoon. A massage therapist, a mortgage loan officer, a divorcee, a 24-year-old real estate agent, a businessman, a high school junior, the nucleus of the group of 16 here to prepare for what might be the most important trip of their lives. Or, if E.T. is right, another Great Idea that falls flat in the face of reality.

They have each paid up and committed themselves for a two-week Peace Tour of Leningrad and Moscow, under the auspices of the Center for Soviet-American Dialogue, a peace group based in Bellevue, Wash.

The schedule is ambitious: 14 days packed with workshops, school visits, home visits and peace committee dialogues. They’ll start with orientation workshops in Helsinki, then go on to Leningrad and “small group dialogue” with the Leningrad Regional Peace Committee.

They’ll visit an English-speaking school, a children’s ballet class, a theological seminary and artists’ studios--as well as tourist “musts” like the Hermitage.

In Moscow, they will “meet informally with Soviet citizens to discuss areas of mutual interest and global concerns.” And they’ll meet with journalists, writers, educators, artists, musicians and film makers. They have also been informally promised visits with dissident groups, particularly Jewish “refuseniks”--those who have applied for permission to emigrate and have been turned down.

The adventure has attracted a variety of ages and types, united only in their essential middle-classness. Individuals with a modicum of money who for once want to step out of the plowed furrow of their lives and take part in history. Nudge it a little, at least, rather than the usual standing by helplessly as the larger world lurches on without so much as a glance at them.

But with real life and its comforting banalities ever luring them back from this limb they’re stepping out on, keeping the crusading flame alive is going to take a lot of group support.

This is why, from a cushion on the floor, flinty, gentle Mel Ingalls is holding forth on world peace:

“People talk about the need for national security. Well, sure. We know what they mean. Lots of weapons, space defense, stockpiling nuclear weapons. Why, we’re manufacturing six nuclear warheads every day in this country--three right here in California. If they use 1% of our two countries’ stockpiles, there’s a guaranteed nuclear winter. And what does this craziness come from? Not national security, national in security. And I believe that what exists between nations stems from what exists between individuals.”

He looks around at the dozen people, mainly women, scattered on cushions and sofas around him.

“That’s why I think we all should learn at the start to open out our vulnerabilities to each other,” he said. “Because peace comes down to trust. Between nations, between individuals. Sure, you and I are apprehensive about this trip. Scared. Dark fears. So let’s open out. Tell each other about our fears. Let’s just each say our piece, then touch the next person and they can say theirs.”

Ingalls, an industrial developer from San Diego, is co-founder of an organization called Celebrate Peace. He wants people to let go of war through a consciousness of love. He was never in any anti-war demonstrations of the ‘60s. But he got inspired by a peace activist and almost vice presidential candidate named Barbara Marx Hubbard, who led a group on a peace trip to the Soviet Union in January, 1986.

She was working with Rama Vernon, creator of the Center for Soviet-American Dialogue. Vernon’s idea was to break down the fears instilled in Americans by the Communist stereotype and try to get through the “fear barrier” by meeting and getting to know Soviet people.

Vernon spent a year talking with Soviet peace committees, telling them how necessary it was to create true one-on-one dialogue with visiting Americans. The result was a landmark trip in May, 1985, that included “MASH” star Mike Farrell, Dennis Weaver and others, in which Americans and Soviets were matched by professions, to give guests and hosts common ground to build on.

On this and further trips, contacts gradually were built up, with the Americans making unofficial visits to homes of many contacts, including Jewish refuseniks. The Soviets are just now giving their official blessing to home visits, which are considered an integral part of any peace tour.

Ingalls was on the January, 1986, trip with Hubbard, came back charged, and has since been instrumental in uniting the peace groups in the area.

He has helped organize this peace tour with Ron Kaufman, an “international playmaster” who has used Frisbees--yes, Frisbees--all over the world to “pave the way for world peace and understanding through lighthearted and non-competitive play.”

Sandra Long, facing him on the couch, is the third organizer. She is a teacher who, among other things, is into “international transpersonal psychology.” She said she has traveled 89 countries “affecting positive, rewarding relationships with local citizens of each country.”

“Global peace,” she said, “starts with ourselves and learning how to harmonize our differences. (On this trip) we will be seeing through the eyes of love.”

Except she’s not going on this trip because she’s now involved in Youth Ambassadors of America, whose first project will be the exchange of 200 high school students between El Capitan High School in Santee and School No. 80 in Leningrad. (The project still is being planned.)

“Let’s start off with why we don’t want to be here,” Ingalls said.

“I don’t want to be here because I have three other parties to go to,” said Carolyn Moellar, the mortgage loan executive. “And as far as the trip’s concerned, I could just as easily go to Bora Bora. But I’ve come, and I’m going on this trip because I’ve met Mel, and I hope we can learn something. Plus I’m into metaphysics, and I hear the Russians are, too. Uh, do you think we are only going to be shown the nice things?”

“We’re going in as models of peace,” said Ingalls.

“Should we take presents, gifts?”

“Well, small things, like pins with badges on them. Ballpoint pens with ‘USA’ or ‘San Diego’ printed on them. They love that sort of little gift.”

“What about jeans? I hear they’re kind of a good trade. They say we can make millions on them.”

“Well, it could make a difference to what you do for the next few years. People have gone to prison for that.”

“What about credit cards? And how about my jewels; should I take them?”

Ingalls is having wavelength problems here.

“Well, if you dress in designer clothes you’re going to have trouble relating, if you are perceived to be flaunting your wealth,” he said. “We want to be people-to-people, pure and simple.”

“I had doubts about this whole thing at first,” said Zelah Kahn, the hostess, wife of a San Diego businessman. “Friends have been coming around, so afraid about me going to the Soviet Union. But I have a little friend. She’s 13. And she’s written a letter to the children of the U.S.S.R., so now I have to go. To deliver it.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” said Long. “Having the courage to stretch.”

Richard Busch did not complain about being here. He would be cleaning his two cars if he wasn’t. He’s prosperous, young (24), and ready to take on the world, while his real estate office lets him out on a leash. He’s a clean slate: “I’m opinionated, but I have no opinions.”

Shirley Woodward has been divorced 12 years. She has four children. Now all of them are married. The last one is graduating. She’s of modest means, but now for the first time she is free to explore the world that family life only allowed brief glimpses of for so many years. While she was rearing her children, the nuclear threat clouded the horizon with fear. She wants to see the object of that fear close up. As more than stereotype names of reds, Communists.

“I’m here because there’s such a need to work at peace,” she said. “The universe is becoming smaller and as it gets smaller, it becomes more dangerous.”

Sean Halsey is the high school junior. He has taken some flak for going on this trip. Santee has its share of kids and their parents who don’t appreciate any contact with the “other side.” It’s unpatriotic. But he’s not put off easily. At 17, he has his own definite ideas. “People,” he said, “that’s what I want to meet. People. Individuals. So I can bring back un-propaganda.”

“For me, it’s a personal challenge,” said Joy Berniet, the massage therapist. “This peace that I have in myself, if I can maintain it in a foreign environment. When I said ‘Russia’ to my son--he’s in the Navy--he said, ‘My God, Mom, why there?’ But I talked and talked, and he said, ‘You know, Mom, I think I’ve been brainwashed.’ ”

“You see?” said Ingalls. “You see what wealth we’re already getting from the trip? . . . Once you commit yourself, then you have to face the problem. Explore it.”

But soon the talk gets beyond idealism.

“But will they just want to show us the nice bits, not the truth?” Moellar said.

“On the trip, we’ll have to acknowledge they don’t want to show us their messy bedroom,” Ingalls said. “Just like if I were showing you my house. Of course, they’ll want to show us the best. I think we should respect that as guests. We’re not going with the purpose of uncovering scandals. We’re there to meet people. We want to press through that Cold War stereotype, that fear.”

Keeping up the fervor is a little more difficult the next week under the barrage of slides of Leningrad presented by Russian emigre Anna Berger. Somehow they feel like tourists, not missionaries. Like E.T., Berger, too, thinks that two weeks wouldn’t let them get to really know anything more than a village, let alone the Soviet Union’s two greatest cities.

But no one can accuse Zelah Kahn of not being serious. She is videotaping Berger’s talk and slide show. She will videotape the entire trip.

“The most important thing,” Berger said at the end of the evening, “is not just to hear their opinions, the Russian people, but let them know about American people. That they want to be friendly--and don’t worry too much about the refuseniks. It is not the business of the American people to interfere with this question anymore.”

Three weeks later, it’s over. They’ve been there. They’re back. The crusade has closed like an envelope on lives that are so eerily the same as before that the trip hardly seems a reality.

What happened? Did they spread the light of peace? Or was it just a tourist event with peace dressing?

“I’m just beginning to get a good feeling,” said Mel Ingalls, a week after his return.

“It was a constant struggle not to compare everything with home standards. . . . We had everything, from peace conferences to Jewish dissidents asking us to write to Gorbachev so he’d know foreigners are still conscious of the problem.

“I’m sure people were questioned for talking with us, but it must be like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike for the KGB now. With more and more of us over there talking, talking. Peace is going to reach a critical mass.”

The group members spent much of their time speaking with Soviets on various peace committees and meeting people in their own professions, as well as a blend of teachers, artists and government officials. They mixed a couple of meetings each day with museum and ballet visits.

No meetings were compulsory. Some, like Kahn, were at every committee, every school, every ballet class, every palace, rolling that video camera, recording every interchange to use back home to spread the word. Others wandered off, accepted invitations to the homes of people they met along the way.

“Everybody was great, really,” Ingalls said. “Sure, there were misunderstandings, but I think our own mistrust here in the U.S. is more than theirs over there. There is still an atmosphere of fear, of their own authorities. Young people who invited me back to their apartment in Leningrad said they listened to Radio Free Europe, but they still had posters like the one of the wooden peace dove, a sort of Trojan Horse, with American soldiers coming out bristling with guns. But they said they had talked to me about things they would never talk to Soviets about.”

Shirley Woodward found it an overpoweringly emotional experience, especially at the huge war memorial outside Leningrad.

“I just burst into tears,” she said, “when I realized what they had been through. One of our group came up and said ‘Shirley, that’s what they want. For you to feel sorry for them.’ But how can you not? Leningrad was under siege for three years! Anna Berger told us before we left she’s lost 10 members of her family in the siege.

“When I was there I could suddenly feel it. Twenty million. They lost 20 million in the war. For me it’s a parallel to the Jewish Holocaust. I just walked silently in between the rows of mass graves, with tears running down my cheeks. These people don’t want war. They know what it’s like. Our guide said they had 1,710 cities and towns destroyed by the Germans.

“It was the most rewarding experience of my life. I’m committed to peace now as never before.”

“I came back completely depressed,” Moellar, the mortgage loan executive, said. “There was not much to do. Everything closed at 11. There was no dancing. People were blah, with dark clothes. We met people without jobs because they spoke out against the government. It was like a giant prison. The energy was very negative.

“There were some people into metaphysics--third eye, Tarot and so forth--but most people we met were still living in the past. As far as promoting peace, I believe you can’t tell any country how they should live. My attitude is ‘You live your life; I’ll live mine.’ ”

For real estate agent Busch, the whole thing was one long romance. Early in his stay in Leningrad, he left the group and strayed off with a young lady named Lyena.

“She took me to bars and coffee shops I’d never have found. She was a computer technician and analyst,” he said. “She recited poetry five minutes at a time. They’re so much more academic over there. Live much meaner, but somehow they seem happier. All that energy we spend on TV, they spend on each other. A real sense of community. I went back to her place. It was a 10-square-meter room. She shares her kitchen and bathroom with the rest of the floor. It was, well, just romance, you know? . . . The others thought I was crazy.”

In Moscow, he met Ixana, a medical student. She took Busch on a trail of caviar and vodka, financed in part by her black-market currency trade.

“Everybody was sure she was KGB,” he said. “But that is impossible. From everything she said, I could tell. . . . I think I could fall for her. I’m thinking of bringing her over. I tell you, I hardly saw the museums and the group meetings. I was on a two-week high.

“But I think I got more of a feeling for the place than most. . . . I think they’re warmer to us over there than we would be to them. We’re more narrow-minded, I think. Whatever else, we opened up communications. I didn’t want to come back so soon, that’s for sure.”

Jewish emigre E.T. still thinks the group couldn’t have penetrated the skin of real Soviet society in that short time, but Ingalls feels that just opening their own eyes justified the trip.

“The more of us get over there and keep talking, the less the KGB people will be able to control it all,” he said. “No real contact? My daughter Joy (who also went on the trip) has just received a letter from a young man whose interest is more than political:

“ ‘Dear Joy . . . How many brilliant minutes you presented us. I’ll never forget that evening and my new American friend. I can say that before this meeting I thought about peace in our world, about friendship among our peoples. But now these thoughts have become much more serious for me. I understand that our wide connections are necessary, and “citizen diplomats” helps doing that. I’d like to know . . . if it’s possible that I can take part in it.’ ”

In fact, the “peace dialogue” movement appears to be taking off at its headquarters in Washington state. Two more trips are planned for August, with 40 to 80 adventurers on each trip. One trip in September will be for the media, the second for fashion designers to exchange ideas.

In December, a group will go to help in a celebration for world peace that is becoming a regular fixture on New year’s Eve here and in the Soviet Union.

Thirty-two American professionals from “leading edge” industries who went to meet counterparts in the Soviet Union in March will meet together again in Washington in November to continue their dialogue, called “Social Inventors for the Third Millenium” with a view to co-creating projects on which they could cooperate.

“Things are really taking off, as we see more and more areas we have in common,” said Phyllis Grimes, secretary at the Bellevue center. “We’re experiencing incredible growth here.”

Ingalls’ next move?

“We’re working on a computer link so we can have round-table discussions between here and Leningrad. We’re even thinking of arranging a space bridge between there and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--one town talking to another!” he said. “Plus I’ll go back next year, along with the other groups around the country. It’s growing, all right.

“Oh, and I’m leading a group to Peru this summer. Harmonic conversion. Machu Picchu. It’s a power point on Earth. Interested?”