Deciding seeing the city was far more interesting than the hydro plant and Nursery school, I ditched the group and wandered down to the river bank, which was still covered with what I assumed were metal bands once used around ammo boxes. At one point two young Russians spoke ot me as they knew there were Americans in town and had ditched school to see if they could find us. No matter what I offered them they refused to show me areas still not yet built up from the war (which they admitted there were) nor could I pry as much as a fired cartridge form them. So I eventually just gave them a pile of rock tapes to do my part in the downfall of communism. Oddly, Intourist refused ot let us see the panorama museum until I, using an old trick, announced ot the veterans that we should not press them to let us visit it as clearly they were embarrassed by the place and we should respect that. The next morning we were rushed off to the place which supposedly had been opened up especially for us. The one thing I regret is that I met a Hero of the Soviet Union who had been a young Lt and held out at his Machine gun post on the front lines for something like 37 days or so. I always wanted to find his story – I am sure, however that there were many such awards, but he was one of the few H oft SU awardees to live in the city in the early 80’s so someone might know who that was. Anyway, at the time everyone still just wanted to forget the war. The most important thing they showed us in the local museum was a telephone that, during the revolution, Lenin actually spoke to from the other end of the line!!! Imagine, one of the most amazing sites of WW2 and there most impressive item was a phone that Lenin once was on the other end of.
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