Soviet Tourists ‘Meet Middle America’ in Pasadena Visit

Alexander Povolotski was delighted when students at the Polytechnic School in Pasadena sang for him in Russian. The three most beautiful sounds come from “the ocean, the forest and children’s voices,” said the 37-year-old Moscow native.

Povolotski, an information officer for the Soviet Peace Committee, one of about 150 groups in the Soviet Union that work to promote world peace, was among 16 Soviet citizens who arrived in Los Angeles earlier this month as part of an ambitious experiment in Soviet-U.S. citizen diplomacy.

Povolotski and three others spent most of their time in the Pasadena area, while the others stayed with families in Ventura, Yorba Linda and Irvine. After each group visits two other cities, the entire group will sightsee in Washington before returning to Moscow June 17.

The program, called Soviets, Meet Middle America!, is sponsored by the Center for U.S./U.S.S.R. Initiatives, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to improving Soviet-American relations.

Since its formation in 1984, the center has taken more than 1,000 Americans on tours of the Soviet Union, “not to look at the monuments but to see the people,” said Barbara Machado of San Francisco, coordinator of the Soviets, Meet Middle America! program.

During those trips, the Americans made friends with Soviet citizens and set up the Soviets, Meet Middle America! program to return the hospitality.

Over the next two years, the center hopes to bring 400 Soviet citizens to the United States and expose them to American life.

During their stay in the Pasadena area, the four Soviet visitors met with some of the 13 high school students from the San Gabriel Valley who will visit the Soviet Union in July under a separate program sponsored by All Saints Church in Pasadena.

“There is great difference between our countries, but still, you are human beings, we are human beings,” Povolotski told the students. “Now the problem is we live together or we die together.”

The visitors toured such attractions as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and ABC Television studios and later discussed at a reception such topics as perestroika, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s revolutionary social and economic reconstruction program.

Two of the visitors, Irina Fomina, 44, a Moscow Medical Institute professor, and Mikhail Roshchevski, 52, a vice president of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, spent their four days here at the home of Judy Felton of Altadena.

Building Bridges

“We need to build bridges,” said Felton, who will accompany the high school students to the Soviet Union. “The only way we’re going to understand each other is to get to know each other.”

Felton, who has visited the Soviet Union twice, said she found that Soviet citizens want peace.

“Peace is on their lips so often, you’d think it was a cliche if you didn’t understand what they’ve been through,” Felton said, referring to World War I and World War II. “They tell you so often they don’t want us to go through what they’ve been through.”

Machado said that so far, three groups of Soviet citizens have visited the United States, and the program is “going beautifully.”

One Soviet engineer was so enthusiastic about his stay in Cupertino near San Francisco that he arranged for 14 Bay Area youngsters to attend a computer camp in Pereslavl-Zalessky near Moscow.

Povolotski and Roshchevski said they hope to establish an exchange program between U.S. students and children at a school for orphans in Komi, A.S.S.R (the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), where Roshchevski lives.

“We don’t know where all this is going, but this is exciting,” Machado said of the program.

She said 240 cities have agreed to serve as host to the Soviet visitors, and each has contributed $1,000 to the program.

The Soviet Peace Committee is paying for the Soviets to travel to this country, Machado said.

Private Funding

Money for the Soviet peace organizations is drawn from the 25-year-old Soviet Peace Fund, maintained by private contributions with “not a kopeck from the government,” Povolotski said.

The students’ summer trip was coincidental, but the Soviets’ arrival in Pasadena provided a good opportunity to introduce the youngsters to people from the country they will visit.

Carri Patterson, youth ministries director at All Saints, said the church has declared itself a “Peace Church” dedicated to breaking down barriers between nations, and the students’ visit to the Soviet Union is part of that effort.

“I’m encouraged to dream really big and try to expose the youths to as many different cultures and people to help them become more citizens of the world, rather than just of Pasadena,” she said.

Many Changes

Later in the week, the Soviet visitors had a chance to meet with the public at a reception at All Saints, where Americans asked the Soviets about their life styles and their views of the United States. One visitor, Konstantin Hudoley, 37, a history professor at Leningrad University, said Gorbachev’s perestroika had brought changes in foreign, as well as domestic policy.

In Hudoley’s opinion, “for the first time in history, there would be no victor in a war. . . . From this point of view, we see the necessity to put human feelings higher than the interest of the state, even if the state is more powerful.”

Roshchevski, who is also director of physiology at the Komi Science Center, said that although the older generation thinks kindly of Americans because “the old men know about your help in 1921 (and) 1922,” those familiar with the Cold War “think about you, I’m sorry, with anxiety.

“They think about you as imperialists or capitalists who would like to destroy our country.” It is “very important that more young ones build contact with you,” he added.

In that vein, the visitors tried to ease concerns of the students who will leave July 15 on a 10-day trip to Moscow, Leningrad and Minsk.

“I keep hearing that my telephones will be bugged,” said Katie Moore, a student at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena. She asked the Soviet visitors if they felt “like you have more freedom here, like you can say more?” Povolotski said he regretted that Americans do not get to read Soviet newspapers to see how well glasnost (Gorbachev’s openness policy) is working.

A spirited Roshchevski was upset that the students could not name many Soviet scientists or writers. “This is a pity,” he repeated several times.