The Russians Are Going, Along With a Host of Warm Memories

Despite kid-glove treatment by their North County hosts and a schedule that would have taxed a marathon runner, four Soviet visitors found a way to play hooky during their week’s stay here.

The group, all professionals, have been visiting in the San Marcos area--with a side trip to Disneyland and an unscheduled junket or two. The tour is part of “Soviets, Meet Middle America,” a program jointly sponsored by U. S. and Soviet organizations to acquaint the visitors with their American counterparts and vice versa. Although San Marcos is geographically a bit left of Middle America, the city made a bid to host the Russian visitors and raised $2,000 to handle their expenses during the stay.

First to Break Away

Givi Talakvadze, the only male among the group, was the first to exert his will and break away from the schedule of tours, lunches, interviews and more tours.

“He managed to get a couple of good tennis games in,” Talakvadze’s host, Fred Sherman, said. Sherman’s brother also whisked his Russian guest off to an unscheduled night on the town in Las Vegas.

Talakvadze is deputy minister of education for the Republic of Georgia, an avid tennis player and a physicist.

The three women visitors--Biruta Shneidere, Nina Pahkova and Vera Romanova--managed several shopping trips, unescorted by the usual bevy of photographers and reporters. Pahkova also extended her Disneyland visit by spending the evening with friends in the Los Angeles area Wednesday night, returning to her duties just in time to make a 9 a.m. speech at Lincoln Junior High School in Oceanside.

Don Chapman, one of the San Marcos hosts, called Pahkova “a moving target who had her own peace program going.” She also escaped the schedule to visit a friend in Palm Springs, where her most unforgettable experience of the trip occurred. She was taken for an airplane ride over the affluent city and the surrounding desert, a trip she said was “most beautiful.”

The Russian visitors say they have met no hostility during their stay, which ends Friday, and only a few cynics who couldn’t believe that these average-looking folks were really Russians.

Sneaker-Clad Angels

A Thursday tour through the labyrinths of Palomar Community College was the final test of glasnost in San Marcos. Palomar students, known to have pulled a few high jinks, such as flying the campus flag upside down or staging food fights in the student union, were sneaker-clad angels during the Russians’ visit.

The visitors toured the college from stem to stern, pronouncing the planetarium “ochen horoshaw” (very fine) and raising an eyebrow or two when they discovered only one Russian-language novel and two Russian-English dictionaries in the otherwise well-equipped college library.

The visitors learned that the Palomar seismograph registers not only earthquakes but also the pounding feet of hundreds of students exiting and entering their classrooms. The satellite weather charts informed them that their next stop on their U. S. tour--Pittsburgh, Pa.--was going to be cold and windy.

San Marcos townsfolk capped their visitors’ stay with a farewell party Thursday night, treating the Soviets to what may have been their first Mexican fiesta.

Talakvadze took the floor to thank his hosts and request addresses from them all, promising to start pen-pal relationships with his friends in Tbilisi.

He said that Washington, the tour group’s first stop was “fine,” and Duncan, Okla., was “better,” but San Marcos was “the best of all.” Of course, he reminded his audience, he hadn’t visited Pittsburgh yet.

‘Only the Beginning’

“This is only the beginning of a great idea,” Pahkova, a teacher of English in a Moscow university, said of the tour. “It is very important sharing ideas with you.”

Shneidere, speaking through an interpreter, Anna Rollins of Vista, praised California’s sunny skies (despite Thursday’s inclement weather) and said the people “are equally sunny.”

Romanova, hugging an armful of envelopes filled with photographs of “unforgettable memories,” could not tell a lie when asked about the high point of her visit.

“Most of all, I loved Disneyland,” she said.