Let me hear those balalaikas ringing out

It’s not often I can remember where I was four days ago, let alone four decades, but 40 years ago this week I was standing in a very damp Red Square in Moscow. It was the first (and last) time I visited Russia and was quite an experience. In 1977 it was still called the Soviet Union, a place Winston Churchill described as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, something President Donald Trump is currently discovering.

I was on my way to England from Bangkok and decided to take advantage of flying Aeroflot to stop off in Moscow for a couple of days. OK, Aeroflot also happened to have the cheapest fares.

Things did not begin promisingly. There are possibly worse places to be than Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport at 7am after 11 hours of flying, but none immediately spring to mind. We cleared immigration in reasonable time, but bureaucratic customs officers delayed us in a tedious pantomime for no apparent reason. We eventually reached the hotel four hours after disembarking.

Despite being a typical Soviet blocklike structure, the hotel even had piped-in opera music, a considerable improvement on piped-in Spice Girls I was to experience later in London.

My knowledge about the place was quite appalling. Being familiar with the song Midnight in Moscow wasn’t much help. Neither was Back in the USSR by the Beatles: “Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out/ Come and keep your comrade warm.” Of course, while I was there I never heard one balalaika.

Plastic Kremlins

Despite it being summer, it was raining hammers and sickles, which might explain why the Muscovites were not exactly visions of joy. Stepping out of the hotel, the first person I ran into was an old fellow selling miniature plastic Kremlins, but he quickly disappeared when a couple of soldiers approached.

It was the height of the Cold War, with Leonid Brezhnev at the helm, and I was half-hoping I might bump into one of those slinky female spies that pursued 007 in From Russia With Love. No such luck, of course, although there were plenty of grimfaced women in headscarves.

There were no obvious restrictions on travel within Moscow, a freedom I was to regret after getting hopelessly lost in the city’s outskirts. I remember asking a policeman directions to Red Square and he responded with a helpful “nyet” (no).

I eventually hopped on a bus that was pointing roughly in the right direction and was quite relieved when it stopped close to my hotel not far from Red Square. I was impressed that the buses ran on a trust system whereby you dropped a few coins in a box when you got off.

Red Square

I admit to getting a buzz visiting Red Square, which I had only witnessed before in grainy newsreels of mighty May Day parades with the politburo waving to all those soldiers, tanks and missiles.

Just standing there, you could feel the history despite being soaking wet from the incessant rain. Bridal couples ignored the precipitation and lined up to be photographed against the magnificent backdrop of St Basil’s Cathedral, its iconic minarets looking like fancy ice cream cornets silhouetted against the sombre skies.

It was a time when young Russians were obsessed by Western jeans and I was regularly asked if I would sell my faded Levis. Everywhere you saw queues, especially at an enormous department store adjacent to Red Square. There were long lines to purchase coupons and even longer queues to spend the coupons on rather unattractive shirts and shoes.

In the hotel the only English-language newspaper available was the London-based communist journal The Morning Star, which I bought in an unsuccessful bid to find out the English cricket scores. Instead the paper was full of stories about industrial disputes in England.

One night in Moscow

That evening I sat in my hotel room looking at the rain and wondering how to pass the time. I didn’t have to worry. I took a stroll along the hotel corridor and came across a couple of security guards watching a televised football match between two Moscow clubs, Dinamo and Locomotiv.

When I expressed interest in the football, a bottle of vodka miraculously appeared and that was the rest of the evening sorted without even having to leave the hotel. Not exactly a wild night, but it suited me despite the thundering headache in the morning courtesy of Mr Smirnoff.

Candid camera and caviar

Thailand was still grappling with a communist insurgency threat in those days, so relations with the USSR were a little “frosty”.

The Soviet embassy in Bangkok was in a lovely old mansion on Sathon Road which still had a khlong down the middle flanked by mango trees. The trees were later sadly culled in what became known as the Great Sathon Tree Massacre of 1979.

Because of the communist threat, the Thai police had a hut placed not very discreetly opposite the entrance of the embassy to keep an eye on people going in and out of the place. Photographs were reportedly taken of anyone entering the embassy.

This might explain why my flight to Moscow was half-empty. Even though I was in economy class, on the second leg from Moscow to Heathrow I was treated to a breakfast of omelette and caviar. You didn’t get that on British Airways.