Moscow Memories ‘73

The Fabulous Moscow University

Memories of Moscow 73

Unbelievably and coincidentally, I am writing this piece around fifty years after the event.

I attended Loughborough University to undertake a Master’s degree in Leisure Management in 1972 after a year of teaching in Coventry. I was unaware that the VII Summer Universiade would be held in Moscow in the summer of 1973. Through the grapevine, I soon came to realise that a Great Britain student water polo team would compete at this prestigious event.

A little while later, an official letter informed me they had chosen me for the initial training squad.

They held half a dozen training sessions in Liverpool, at the university pool complex, and London’s Crystal Palace over the next few months. The selection process culminated in some final trials after they had held the British Universities championships in the Spring. We, as the UAU or English Universities, won this tournament, which put several leading players from the team, myself included, in a prime position for selection.

The officials selected a large squad to be trimmed down to the final numbers at a later date. The plan was to train in London in the early summer before embarking on a week-long trip playing against continental opposition in Germany.

Before the training programme in London and the visit to the Duisberg area, I worked on my fitness with another Loughborough guy at the newly refurbished outdoor pool on campus. In the glorious, warm, sunny weather, we both worked hard at honing our fitness. Both of us were in the best shape of our lives. We recovered from intensive swimming sessions on the poolside in the sunshine and could build impressive early-season tans.

We supplemented the pool work with some strenuous weights sessions in the gym later in the day.

The Moscow Student Games were to be a test to see whether the Russian capital could make a success of the projected Olympic Games planned to be held in 1980. Over time, we realised that this would be a trip of a lifetime. Just travelling beyond the Iron Curtain to Moscow would be an amazingly exciting adventure. Few British people had visited the highly secretive epicentre of the USSR, the capital of a vast empire. The USSR stretched, as the world’s largest country, across the whole breadth of Eurasia from the Baltic states to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.

I really enjoyed our training camp in Germany. The wonderful weather continued, and we played against tough opponents in full-sized outdoor facilities. At the end of the week, the coach, amiable Scot David Barr, called a meeting. He read out the names of the successful squad players who would go to Moscow. To my relief, I had made the cut.

After final training sessions in London, measurements and fittings for uniforms took place. The allocation of kit and other paraphernalia took place at the Sports Council offices in Gower Street, and we were soon ready for the off. It was a proud moment to wear the navy blue blazer, complete with the union jack on the breast pocket.

We flew in an ancient Aeroflot plane, the Russian state carrier, held together with gaffer tape and bits of wire, but it got us there. Most of us had brought spare Levi jeans, Beatles LPs and biros in our luggage. We had heard these items were highly sought after and could readily generate black market funds.

They billeted us, along with all the other teams at the hugely impressive Moscow University. In ’73 it was the highest building in Europe, topping out at 239m and offering thirty-six floors. This spectacular and handsome building would be our base for the two weeks of the Universiade.

We were on the sixth floor and had decently sized accommodation, although I was concerned about the full-height windows which opened all too readily. They seemed to be a horrible accident waiting to happen and didn’t help my mild vertigo.

After settling in, I remember going down to the foyer and exploring my new surroundings. I stepped outside onto the frontage of the university entrance hall as a couple of coaches turned up. One contained American athletes, the other their kit and necessary provisions such as candy bars and thousands of cans of Coke.

“Anybody around here speak fuckin’ English? An overweight gum-chewing official with a loud, demanding voice threw this out at no one in particular.

As the only person within earshot, I responded. In my best received pronunciation, I confirmed that indeed I spoke the Queen’s English, as I was, in fact, one of her subjects.

“Could you help carry some of this fuckin’ stuff up, then?”

“Certainly,” I replied, “glad to help.” A little scam was in prospect here.

Luckily, they were just a floor above us. So it was a matter of delivering cases of Coke to their floor, having carefully left the odd ones discretely tucked away for later retrieval for our consumption. Seemed fair enough to me.

Unfortunately, our assistant coach spotted me with my ill-gotten gains and I had to return the purloined goods smartish, although he saw the humour in the episode. Arrogant twat, why should I help when he did not even ask any of his own athletes?

We had a couple of training sessions, which were allocated over the next few days, according to a precise timetable, at the outdoor pool establishment known as the ‘Swimming Palace.’ This was where they would hold the water polo competition.

Unusually, swimmers entered the pool by going down some steps in the changing rooms and swimming through a sort of tunnel into the main arena. This made entering the water more palatable during the freezing winter months when the pool surrounds would be covered with snow and ice.

Another unusual feature of the place was that lumpy, old babushkas wearing wrinkled stockings, headscarves and careworn expressions were busily and unconcernedly mopping out the changing rooms. Scores of naked young men made their way to and from the showers, but they were unruffled.

***

They held the grand opening ceremony for the World Student Games at the Lenin Stadium, built in the mid-fifties and capable of holding 81,000 spectators. It was full for this prestigious occasion that was to be presided over by the Russian Premier Leonid Brezhnev. The excitement was palpable as we gathered outside the stadium with all the other competing nations. Dressed in our smart uniforms, we waited until called in to parade around the athletics track, waving to the cheering crowds. As we proudly entered the venerable arena, the noise of welcome from the full house was incredibly loud and sustained. The local populace appeared keen to embrace the world and provide an appropriate welcome. 

A day later, our competition started. The ten competing teams marched around the poolside in our speedos and towelling gowns as a senior politburo member made a speech of introduction and welcome. Then into the fray.

We were under no illusion that we were serious underdogs and would do very well to even come close to a victory in any game. That was soon proven to be the case. We initially had to compete in a round-robin format with the highest placed teams after this stage, going through to compete for the medals. They had forewarned us that the USSR was intent on dominating the medal table in all the sports in the programme and thus, in their eyes, gain significant political kudos.

Our first game was a baptism of fire as we played the Soviets. The cutoff age for students to be eligible to compete was twenty-nine, and the Russians were all around the twenty-eight, twenty-nine bracket. Men at the prime of their life, when compared with the callow opposition in their early twenties that we represented.

We played hard and competed well, but the sheer physicality of the intense marking took its toll. I remember when making a break and preparing to shoot, the extremely close attention given by my marker was such that I felt like I was wearing a concrete overcoat. I worked hard to get a shot away, but I could not generate any venom and the goalkeeper saved it with ease, as my opponent knew he would. A split second later, he had turned, counter-attacked with pace and power and was on a clean break himself.

They beat us well and we reflected on a few of the positives we could take away as we de-briefed on the poolside, disconsolate and completely knackered.

We won none of our four games, although we had a couple of close encounters. We also lost decisively to a very strong, fit and fast Cuban side. This was the first time I had seen black guys swimming at such a level. Cuba as a water polo team was not even on our register before coming out to Moscow. In the end, they competed very well in the final, just losing out to the Russians to win silver.

There were some regrets about not achieving more in the pool. But realistically, while at home we were big fishes in a little pool, we understood we were nowhere near the level of the top performers on the world stage. Competing in the Universiade was a tremendous honour and a wonderful life-enhancing and unforgettable experience.

With our competition over by the end of the first week, there was an opportunity to watch other sports. I was keen on seeing the athletics at the main stadium and the swimming events which were held at the adjacent Lenin Stadium Pool. We could also be tourists and explore this fascinating and very different Russian world. 

Walking out of the university one day, someone told me I had dropped something on the floor. I thanked them and went back a few paces to pick the item up. It was a banknote, and I did not think I had dropped it, but I pocketed it anyway, as there was no one else around. I later examined it and found it was a hundred rouble note. If the note was worth such an amount, it would be a sizeable chunk of money. But I thought it was more likely to be an old note that they had devalued and was probably just one rouble, or perhaps ten. However, on further investigation, I discovered it was worth a hundred roubles and the equivalent of a month’s salary for the average Muscovite. This was a bit of a turn-up.

I tried to get a round of ice creams in for the boys but was waved away after proffering the note. There was no way the vendor could change such a high-value offering. I changed it up eventually at a hotel. I was loaded.

Finding something worthwhile to buy was the next challenge. The Russians were after hard currency and I could only find any decent products on sale in the country at specialist foreign currency outlets. This, of course, defeated the object. The limited buying power of the rouble was immediately clear.

One afternoon, a group of us were looking around the Kremlin area and Red Square, admiring the fabulous onion domes of St Basil’s cathedral. We watched the queues shuffling in line to pay homage to Lenin lying in state in his mausoleum.

St Basil’s on Red Square

We also mingled with other sight-seeing student-athletes. After almost getting arrested for stripping half-naked on the world-renowned square by an overzealous and aggressive police officer, I noticed the vast GUM department store over the road. (I should point out I was simply trying to swap tee shirts with an amiable Brazilian guy).

Putting on the charm to dissuade the surly, hatchet-faced policeman from sending me off to some Siberian gulag or other seemed to work. I then suggested to the gang that we should have a look at what was available in the country’s largest and most famous retail establishment. With the size, scale and grandeur of one of London’s vast Victorian rail terminals or even Knightsbridge’s Harrods, GUM looked as though it ought to come up trumps. With the cash burning a hole in my pocket, we walked over to investigate.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. Empty shelves, shuffling queues of disconsolate locals were hoping to buy, I don’t know what. The odd rotting cabbage or a few sad-looking beetroots, perhaps? It was unbelievable. We trawled through the vast and architecturally impressive emporium. After checking the sparse display shelves, poring over some shabby, extremely poor quality and misshapen tee shirts and jumpers that would fall apart after the first wash, I was disappointed. I concluded there was absolutely nothing worth spending my roubles on.

To spend my money would mean buying ice creams, snacks, and beers for whoever was with me. It meant, however, that I did not have to trade my old jeans and Beatles albums.

I later changed up some roubles into dollars with an unsavoury-looking exchange dealer on the street for a ludicrous rate. With the hard currency, I bought my girlfriend a very nice inlaid wooden jewellery box at a hard currency store. So at least that was something tangible I had achieved with my bonus.

Walking down to the riverside in the afternoon, we decided it was time to enjoy a drink in the sunshine. As the benevolent benefactor, I bought a round of bottled beers. It was no exaggeration to say that while the ale had a decent hoppy flavour, the smell of the stuff was disgusting. Consumption had to be accompanied by a simultaneous pinching of the nostrils.

While the food offered in the student village back at the university proved wide-ranging, tasty, and plentiful, I suggested to a few of the lads I could make a bit of a dent in my stash of roubles if I treated them to dinner in a restaurant. They were keen to take me up on this proposal. There were very few restaurants around, but when I eventually unearthed one, they had virtually limited the menu to baked carp and the ubiquitous borsch or cold beetroot soup. This did not impress us, and we headed back to the student village for something more appealing.

There was a great atmosphere back at the university and a warm camaraderie between the different competing nations. In the coffee lounge, after meals, we would mingle and chat with a wide cross-section of athletes from a range of countries.

One thing that I found odd was that many middle eastern competitors of the same sex wandered around holding hands. This was something I later realised was the usual behaviour between good friends in their culture and had no sexual connotation.

The officials had provided us with a stock of good quality enamel pin badges, complete with a Union Jack emblem, to trade with. These proved a highly desirable and valuable medium of exchange. One of our mates, though, took things a bit too far by trying to get a senior Russian military man to trade one of his campaign medals displayed proudly across his broad chest for one of our baubles. Not to be advised. The humourless veteran was distinctly unamused.

One early evening, we had to return to our rooms to get changed into our ‘number ones.’ We had received a prestigious invitation for cocktails at the impressive riverside mansion that was the British Embassy in Moscow. We piled on the coach for the brief trip across town.

On arrival, liveried waiters attended to us, serving us glasses of champagne and canapes of smoked salmon and caviar. They probably wondered what things had come to, having to serve cocktails to a bunch of long-haired students. For us, however, this was the life, sipping champers in such opulent surroundings. It was almost surreal looking out over the river and the Moscow skyline through the beautifully tall first-floor reception room windows.

We were all formally introduced to the Ambassador and his wife. Their student-age son and daughter, who were home for the holidays, were present at the event to make us feel more at home. Chatting with them about life in Moscow, they revealed little, other than they had fun playing games by evading the omnipresent KGB when out and about in the city.

Similarly, the following day, when we went on a pre-arranged boat trip down the river Moskva, we tried to pump our young and attractive female guide into giving us the lowdown about life in Soviet Russia. Again, not a lot was forthcoming. Her superiors had thoroughly briefed her, and she was obviously a diligent party comrade. Still, it was a pleasant enough excursion with plenty to catch the eye, apart from the guide, that is.

The athletics programme had started by now and we went along to support the GB team. Over the next few days, Frank Clement won the 1500m event, Berwyn Price gained gold in the sprint hurdles and David Jenkins, after a bronze in the individual event, anchored the relay squad to silver in the 4x400m relay. The latter had a fall from grace a few years later when, as the golden boy of British athletics, the courts convicted him of trafficking steroids and he served a prison term in the USA.

The gold medallist in the one-lap race was the brilliant Cuban Alberto Juantorena, who I remember achieving the unprecedented double of 400m and 800m at the 1976 Montreal games. David Coleman, a brilliant commentator but prone to hilarious gaffes as immortalised in Private Eye’s ‘Colemanballs,’ was describing the action. On this occasion, he pronounced something like “Juantarena just opened his legs and showed his class!”

I became pally with Berwyn Price and helped him to celebrate his gold medal success over a few days. One day, before we went off for a few beers, we were walking around the athletics stadium at the university. We saw the hurdles were all set out on the track. He egged me on to have a go and he clocked me at 20 seconds (as opposed to his winning mark of 13.69). It was not so much hurdles though as the continuous high jump event for me.

After we had battled through a few smelly beers and a few vodkas, later on, we were returning home. We spotted the distinctive hammer and sickle flag up a flagpole. Dutch courage persuaded us this would make an excellent trophy. However, after giving ourselves a stern talking to, common sense prevailed. Remembering where we were and where potentially, if they caught us, they could send us, we decided discretion was the better part of valour. The recently read Solzhenitsyn novel, the Gulag Archipelago, was fresh in my mind.

A few of us were sunbathing in the grounds one afternoon in the hot August sunshine, just in our speedos. Some chancer appeared out of the undergrowth. “Psst, psst” he went, catching our attention and beckoning to us. He wanted to trade our swimming trunks. Unbelievable.

One day, exploring a little further afield, a group of us took the Moscow metro, which proved to be a tourist attraction in its own right. Built as a testament to Stalinism and with many stations seen as ‘palaces of the people,’ it was wonderful. We were all amazed to explore stations which were vast cathedrals of marble, mosaics, statuary and elaborate chandeliers. The Northern Line, it was not.

Once we had cracked the Cyrillic code, which made navigation a little more straightforward, we spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the metro and the city’s suburbs. I funded the occasional ice cream stops out of my windfall.

On another day, exploring Moscow on my own, I walked past the massive yellow brick building known as the Lubyanka. This edifice was the notorious secret police headquarters and prison, and the site of untold human suffering through countless examples of inhuman torture and deprivations. I remember succumbing to an involuntary shudder as I walked along the pavement outside the ominous place.

Later on that walk, I again fell foul of the authorities. I walked across an empty six-lane highway and was about to step up the kerb on the other side when a gun-toting and angry police officer berated me. He gesticulated vehemently. He wanted me to go all the way back and then cross the highway via a pedestrian subway. I tried to explain that this would be pointless, but it did not seem sensible to antagonise him any further. He already seemed in imminent danger of blowing a fuse.

I had already sent some postcards back to my girlfriend, which showed doctored photographs of similar roads filled with modern traffic. It would appear the authorities were trying to make out that there was an enormous car-owning population in the city when there clearly was not. Postcards also showed attractive blocks of modern apartments, like those which would be found in estate agents’ windows, with planting and greenery and well-dressed people going about their business. Again, this was a complete fabrication.    

It was certainly a memorable visit behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ and I felt privileged to have been able to visit Moscow and see this fascinating but shadowy world for myself. We had not exactly covered ourselves in glory, although on reflection we acquitted ourselves reasonably well.