Soviets Arrive in Occidental Exchange

It wasn’t until Aug. 29, the day before he left Leningrad, that Stanislav (Stas) Rymyantsev learned that his year of study as an exchange student in the United States would be spent at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Irina Koroteeva was a bit luckier. The Muscovite was notified 10 days before she left the Soviet Union that she was being sent to Los Angeles.

But neither of the college’s first two Soviet students greatly minded the late notice.

“I knew it was sunshine, it was surf, it was beach, it was ocean,” said Rymyantsev. “Hollywood. Beverly Hills. Those names everyone knows in the Soviet Union.”

Koroteeva and Rymyantsev, who both began studying English at the age of 8, are two of 71 Soviet students attending American schools this year through an exchange program coordinated by Middlebury College in Vermont. They are the first from the Soviet Union to attend Occidental.

The program, begun three years ago by the American Collegiate Consortium for East-West Cultural and Academic Exchange, involves 35 U.S. colleges. Occidental joined this year and is the only school on the West Coast that participates, said Larry Ebner, director of international programs.

“Until a few years ago, it was impossible for Russian students to study in the United States,” Ebner said. “This is one of the things that has happened since Mr. Gorbachev came into prominence.”

Occidental sent two students, Karin Patterson and Stacey Snider, to Moscow State University and the Moscow Institute of History and Archives, he said.

Students from both countries submitted applications, were interviewed and were tested in the foreign language they would be speaking. A Middlebury College panel selected the Soviet participants, consulted with American schools and made the assignments.

Choosing and placing the students took time, and processing them through Soviet authorities added to the delay in notifying participants of their assignments, Ebner said.

Koroteeva and Rymyantsev, both 20, began their classes on Monday after spending about two weeks doing such things as touring Venice Beach and Descanso Gardens, bodysurfing in the Pacific and trying out different restaurants.

The two arrived about a week earlier than the college’s 19 other new international students and stayed with staff members until they could move into campus dormitories. That allowed Occidental officials to assess their needs and introduce them to the campus.

“I know that in the first week or 10 days the students were here, one of the most difficult things to deal with was choices,” Ebner said. “Like, ‘how do you want your eggs?’ and ‘what kind of apple do you want to buy?’ ”

Studying at Occidental, a four-year liberal arts college, also will be an academic departure for Rymyantsev and Koroteeva. Each already has finished two years of school, they said, and most of their classes have been specific to their majors--psychology and social philosophy, respectively.

Rymyantsev, clad during a recent interview in faded blue jeans, high-top sneakers and a Leningrad University sweat shirt, is not used to being on “campus.” At his own university, departments are spread throughout Leningrad, he said.

Although Koroteeva’s Moscow State University is somewhat more centralized, it is made up of just two buildings, said the student, who was wearing a black denim jacket and black skirt.

Both students are accustomed to taking mostly oral exams--in which a student, if his first try fails, can “put noodles on a professor’s ears,” a popular Soviet expression that means using a different explanation to persuade instructors that they know the material.

“It’s quite different,” Koroteeva said. “I prefer oral exams to writing papers in a class. But I like this system because you can take a lot of subjects that are not connected to your major.”

Los Angeles’ social trends, too, may take a little getting used to, the students said. Rymyantsev is used to holding doors open for women, carrying their books and paying for their food. But during an orientation session in Vermont earlier this month, he was warned that chivalry in Los Angeles might bring trouble.

“They told us that we shouldn’t offer to help girls carry heavy bags, because they’ll whistle or spray something in your face,” he said. “I guess life for guys is much easier in the United States than in the Soviet Union.”

That puzzles Koroteeva, who said she wonders why some American women rebuff the courtly treatment. She has enrolled in a women’s studies class at Occidental, in fact, to find out.

“The problem is most of your women are feminists, and it’s not like that in Russia,” she laughed. “I cannot imagine a situation when I will pay.”

But there are those aspects of college life that seem universal: The students said they have a hard time attending early morning classes, put off studying at times and don’t always like living on a student budget.

And, just one week into the school year, they already are thinking about their winter break--a trip to Washington, D.C., with the 69 other Soviet exchange students studying at American schools.

“I’ve never before left my country,” Rymyantsev said. “I had a very small knowledge of Los Angeles. But I would like to take a trip all over the United States. Just to see how they are living and to see all they have.”