From Russia With Love : Or How a Soviet Bride Finds Bliss in Rancho Bernardo

Once upon a time, there was this archconservative, free-market ideologue named Fred Schnaubelt.

Schnaubelt served on the San Diego City Council from 1977 to 1981, but he possessed a deep distrust of government. He railed against downtown redevelopment, subsidized housing, and any community group that would dare trek to City Hall to ask for--in Schnaubelt’s word--a “handout.”

But the best example of government abuse, he thought, was the monolithic Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was big and drab and devoid of hope. In a speech he gave to the Daughters of the American Revolution a couple of years ago, Schnaubelt borrowed a term from President Reagan and called Russia the “evil empire.”

Today, Schnaubelt, a commercial real estate broker, is smiling about that so-called evil empire, because it produced the woman of his dreams. Now, after four trips--at a cost of $8,600--and uncountable interludes with Soviet bureaucracy, he has brought that woman home to the bastion of world capitalism--more specifically, Rancho Bernardo--to live out their fairy tale.

“I remember the first moment when I left Russia,” said Irina Antonova, Schnaubelt’s 36-year-old bride. “I came through Customs and I got on a Pan American airplane, and I felt as a person who left jail.”

Jail is exactly what Schnaubelt, 47, considered the Soviet Union in October, 1986, when, at the last minute, he decided to travel there to witness the emotional and political prison he was sure existed.

See ‘What It’s Like’

“I said, ‘I’m going to go there, and I’ll see for myself what it’s like,’ ” Schnaubelt said. “I took the trip, really, to reinforce my own beliefs, to have more conviction and be more convincing when I give these talks.”

Little did Schnaubelt know what he would find. When he arrived in Leningrad, he saw thousands of well-dressed people walking the streets. They had fine coats, fur hats, bright boots. Eventually he would learn that they were acquainted with such names as Rolex and Christian Dior.

But what really got to Schnaubelt were the women. He expected to see millions of 250-pound peasants carrying water pails on their heads.

Instead, most of them looked like Irina.

“I’m looking for all this dullness and gray,” Schnaubelt said. “And so the visual impact is absolutely enormous. Preconceived ideas are being shattered, preconceived ideas that I had that were fostered by the U.S. government and the schools--what have you--are suddenly being highly suspect.

“And I was irritated for two to three days, very irritated at being taken in by having this concept,” Schnaubelt said.

In Moscow, Schnaubelt continued to be amazed. He was impressed by the grandeur of the Bolshoi Theater, where he and his grown sons went to see a ballet one evening.

But nothing could compare to what would happen next. During the first intermission, Schnaubelt followed the patrons as they descended several flights of stairs to line up for a buffet.

She was standing across a crowded room--a petite blonde with smiling blue eyes. She was Irina Antonova, a microbiologist.

“It was just like there was a light on her on the other side of the room,” Schnaubelt said. “And, wherever she went, this light was following her. It was just like being in a spotlight. I stood there, just kind of awe-struck.

“There is a certain chemistry, a certain electricity, that cuts across everything,” he said. “So I just watched her, and then the bell rang after a while, and we were back in (the theater).”

How could Schnaubelt ever hope to concentrate on the ballet? His mind was swimming with thoughts of the woman. During the second intermission, Schnaubelt scurried from anteroom to anteroom.

Finally, he spotted her in another food line. Schnaubelt then did what every red-blooded American male would have done: He leaned against a wall and stared.

It worked.

Worried He Was KGB

Irina, accompanied by a woman, went over to Schnaubelt and said a few words in Russian. Schnaubelt said he didn’t understand.

“Please help me,” Irina said in the English she had learned in school. She handed him a plate to set on a nearby table.

Recalled Irina: “I started to worry that he was KGB. He was looking for me. He was so stupid. . . . If he was KGB, he should not make it so obvious that he was watching for me.”

They chatted. After the performance, Schnaubelt’s two sons joined the party, which adjourned to a nearby restaurant. Irina peppered Fred with questions about America. When he shot back sensitive questions about Russia, she shushed him and looked around the room for electronic bugs.

The next day, Schnaubelt joined Irina and some of her friends for a late-night gab session in a private apartment, where it was safe to answer those questions. On the last day of Schnaubelt’s tour, Irina also joined him for a whirlwind shopping trip through Moscow.

Schnaubelt was learning about the “illusions” of the “evil empire.” For instance, those nifty electronic items in the shop windows--they weren’t actually for sale, but were “models” for what would purportedly be available to the public in five years.

Nothing to Smile About

And the abundance of cars? There are only 50 cars for every 1,000 people in Moscow, Irina explained, but they look more numerous because most are concentrated in tourist spots.

Schnaubelt wanted a picture to take back to America. “I asked her to smile,” he recalled. “She said, ‘There’s nothing to smile at in Russia.’ ”

Later in the afternoon, Schnaubelt and Irina took their last walk, to an underpass near Fred’s hotel. It was beginning to rain.

“I kissed her at the head of the stairs,” Schnaubelt said. “She asked me if I would ever come back. I said, ‘No.’ So she turned around and walked down the stairs, maybe 30 to 40 stairs, turned around and looked up at me, and then disappeared down the tunnel.”

Schnaubelt ran back to his hotel, threw his clothes in his bags, and dashed off to the train station to join his tour group for the trip back to Leningrad. Still enraptured, he frantically tried to call Irina from a pay phone at the station, but her line was busy, and later there was no answer. He had no way of knowing she was wandering through the station, searching frantically for him.

He got on the train. “You know where they get these ideas in the movies,” he said. “I remember. I was crying. Tears were streaming down my face.”

Began Sending Post Cards

Irina haunted Fred’s thoughts after he returned home to San Diego. He wondered if she was actually a KGB agent, so he asked a friend with relatives in Moscow to investigate. Someone met with her and reported that she was safe.

Schnaubelt began sending post cards, Western magazines. Many didn’t make it through. He started calling her.

Despite his pronouncement that he would never go back, Schnaubelt knew he had to return for the woman he loved.

He took a second trip in March, 1987. The couple arranged to meet in Leningrad. Schnaubelt waited anxiously outside his hotel, then looked up and saw Irina walking toward him through a huge war memorial.

“As soon as I saw her coming toward me, I got those same feelings,” Schnaubelt said. “They’re kind of fun to have, especially at my age. I figured I’d never have those feelings again toward anybody.”

During the trip, he proposed to her, and she accepted immediately.

The Ultimate Test

Ah, but the fate of the star-struck lovers had to be tested by the powerful force of--what else?--government, Soviet style. They couldn’t just find a local Chapel of Happiness or travel to the Russian equivalent of Las Vegas to tie the knot.

No, paper work had to be done. Schnaubelt returned to San Diego for copies of his divorce papers, then flew back to Russia in May, 1987, to apply for permission to marry Irina. She had to fill out an application to marry an American. They were assigned a date and time--1 p.m., Aug. 26--for the ceremony before Schnaubelt flew home and applied for another visa to re-enter Russia.

Just to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems, Irina drove the route the couple would take between the hotel and the marriage bureau. It took 15 minutes, so she planned to rent a limousine for an hour before the ceremony--plenty of time for even last-minute snafus.

Or so she thought. On their wedding day, Fred and Irina showed up on time at the hotel for the limousine. Yet the desk clerk couldn’t be found for 10 minutes. That wasn’t so bad, but the limousine conked out two blocks down the street.

Schnaubelt, his bride-to-be, and his 23-year-old daughter ran back to the hotel and prevailed on a friendly tour bus driver to take them as far as another hotel, where the wedding party picked up Fred’s best man, Bernard Siegan, a University of San Diego law professor.

But the bus couldn’t get through the traffic. With difficulty, Fred and Irina hailed a cab. Everyone piled in and headed to the marriage bureau--only to find that it had been moved, with no forwarding address posted.

Full Tilt Up the Stairs

Their driver headed off in another direction, and Fred and Irina eventually found the new location with the help of several pedestrians. They pulled up on the opposite side of the street at exactly 1 p.m., then ran full tilt up the stairs to the second floor.

“The lady said: ‘You’re late three minutes. You missed your time. You must start again and make application,’ ” Irina said, noting that that would have meant waiting another three months for a wedding date.

Instead, Irina persuaded the woman to let her and Fred sit around, just in case there was enough time at the end of the day to squeeze in their 15-minute ceremony.

There was. But, before Schnaubelt stepped up to take his vows, a check of his visa showed he lacked the necessary stamp from his Moscow hotel. Bureaucracy, it appeared, would foil the free-market advocate from San Diego after all.

By this time, the couple had attracted a following. Several people from Schnaubelt’s tour had shown up for the ceremony. They all produced their visas and argued that the Moscow hotel had refused to put a stamp on anybody’s visa.

The Russian administrator was convinced. Fred and Irina were finally allowed to exchange vows.

One Blissful Day

But that wasn’t the end of the indignities. Irina was almost barred from entering the hotel where her wedding dinner was held. The reason: As a Russian citizen, she was prohibited from entering a tourist hotel. Finally, the doorman relented and allowed the bride to accompany her American husband to the festivities.

They were allowed one blissful day of marriage. Then Schnaubelt boarded a plane for his return to San Diego, where he waited for Irina.

For four months, she tried to get an exit visa. She was finally allowed to leave Russia in late December, but not without an unnervingly thorough search of her luggage at the Moscow airport.

Five months later, Irina says she is happy living in Rancho Bernardo with Fred. She is trying to learn to write English, and has her learner’s permit for driving.

She says her biggest adjustments have been the weather--oddly, she feels cold in San Diego’s climate--and the way Americans make heavy use of mustard, mayonnaise and dressings on their food, contrasted with cream and sour cream in Russia.

An Easy Habit to Acquire

And there is the shopping.

“At first, it was very difficult for me,” Irina said. “In Russia, to buy something, you have to go shop to shop. . . . You cannot buy what you want. And you have to search to find what you need.”

Here, she said, there is so much stuff that it’s difficult to make a choice.

Overall, however, freedom has been an easy habit to acquire.

“It’s a natural condition for people to feel free,” Irina said. “When you are free, you feel happy. But, as time passes, you don’t appreciate this freedom. . . .”