Part 2: East meets West: Bomb Drills and Pirated Monopoly

                                                Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
November 9, 2024 marks thirty-five years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The dramatic end of “The Wall” – a symbol of the tensions between East and West, Communism and Capitalism – served as a climax to what became known as the Revolutions of 1989. Thirteen months later, the Soviet Union would dissolve, ending a sixty-nine year experiment with communism. This podcast series, Over the Wall: Remembering Life Behind the Iron Curtain, features interviews with Champaign-Urbana residents who grew up in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Through this podcast series, we hope to better understand daily life under communism, Western influence, and resistance movements.
From Uni High, I’m Maya Viswanathan, a member of the Class of 2024.
This episode in our series is East meets West: Bomb Drills and Pirated Monopoly. In this podcast, we will hear about Eastern bloc countries’ relationship with the West, exploring education, travel, and hearsay about what life was like on the other side to better understand the beliefs that the United States and Soviet Union had about each other.
While the Soviet Union and the United States were allies during World War II, tensions grew following the war. Both world powers fought for global dominance and competing visions of a post-war world created a rift between them. During this so-called “Cold War” era, the Soviet Union sought to disseminate communism beyond its borders, while the United States created a “containment” policy - an intense effort to stop the spread of communism to more nations. As tensions escalated, general distrust and fear grew within the United States that communist sympathizers had infiltrated American government and society. In 1950, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy rose to political prominence with a famous speech claiming that this infiltration included 205 communist spies working inside the U.S. Department of State, the executive agency responsible for foreign affairs. In the following years, anyone with any connection to communism, no matter how remote, faced scrutiny - a panic coined “The Red Scare” by historians.
Champaign - Urbana resident, and University of Illinois political science Professor Carol Leff, grew up in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC, during the Red Scare. Her father was born in Ohio, to parents who had emigrated from pre-communist Czechoslovakia. His knowledge of a critical Cold War language, Czech, led to a career in U.S. military intelligence.
Carol Leff
My father after World War II stayed in the military intelligence, he was in the Army. And in the 1950s, there was the big McCarthyist Red Scare. McCarthy really liked the idea that the army was infiltrated with communists. And our family still had people back in Czechoslovakia, in a communist country. So, I can remember, and I was told by my godfather, who is also in intelligence, that my father's career was really ruined by coming from Czechoslovakia. He was lucky that the US government, instead of just firing him, moved him to an area where he was not as vulnerable.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Meanwhile, in communist Eastern bloc countries, people feared the United States. University of Illinois Professor Eda Derhemi describes the constant anxiety that was part of her youth in Albania’s capital, Tirana, and how it was brought about by the facts and beliefs that were taught about America.
Eda Derhemi
We were taught about America. We were taught about the revolution. Historical moments of the past would be discussed in our history classes. But America of today was discussed in a kind of mythological way. Like, the mythological America was more the America of today than America of the past in our history books. Because America of today was just extremely negative. So we called America “the imperialist”. And I remember that the party would train us as militaries and so on in order to defend ourselves from an attack from the imperialist America. And I remember that sometimes we would have alarms in the middle of the night so that all the people of Tirana would be prepared for an attack from the United States. And there will be huge lights and altoparlante, what do you call them, megaphones, high speakers, and we would hear in the middle of the night that “United States has invaded Albania from this coast.” It was just a drill. It wasn't true. And we knew that it was a drill, and they would ask us to wake up even old people that were sick in bed, they had to get up and go in basements that everybody knew where your basement would be if America was to attack us. So that fear that, “Oh, America is going to attack us now or tomorrow” or so, because we were so important as opening the eyes of the rest of the world, how bad America is. That was something that we lived under that pressure for a long time. And I remember once we would go in this basement and I remember once with my dad when I was growing up that he told me “I wish America would take us. But they aren’t.” There were families that really believed that we were under threat, daily threat to be attacked by America.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Driving this fear was the introduction of nuclear weapons, first used by the United States during World War II, which escalated into a “nuclear arms race” between the two countries. Citizens in both nations grew up fearing a nuclear attack. Professor Valeria Sobol, raised in Soviet Ukraine, recalls this fear.
Valeria Sobol
I think there was kind of general fear of America because of the Cold War and the Arms race just reached the peak during my childhood. It was early 80s- and there was so much rhetoric about nuclear weapons and drills and so on that I would hear like an airplane or see a shooting star, and I was terrified and thought this was already nuclear. America’s bombing us, so there was kind of generic fear.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Professor Leff describes experiencing similar drills in the United States in her childhood hometown in the Washington, DC suburbs.
Carol Leff
We had duck and cover when I was at elementary school and I think all the way through middle school. We were 10 miles from ground zero. So, hiding under the desk would not really have happened to be very useful, but we still did those atomic bomb drills probably every month. You know what those desks looked like, it wasn't really going to protect us from an atomic bomb, especially in a ten mile radius.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Communist governments emphasized that the United States was an enemy, both as a power that could start a nuclear war, but also in terms of lifestyle, using news and propaganda to criticize the capitalist consumer culture of the United States. Professor Sobol describes how this ideology influenced her outlook on Americans and how that affected her experience when Americans visited her school.
Valeria Sobol
We had some foreign visitors and the Americans would come to our school to see our museum and all that so it was a mix of curiosity, I think, and excitement, but also fear. And this stereotype about Americans being all about money, it kind of came partly with through propaganda, but also through even early Russian literature that America is all about mercantile interests like pragmatism, money, and we're sort of, like, elevated and idealistic.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Yet, despite the government’s criticism of Western capitalism and consumerism, it often seemed fantastical and wonderful to average people. University of Illinois professor Zsuzsa Gille, who grew up in communist Hungary, recalls the awe she experienced when viewing Western media.
Zsuzsa Gille
Hungary was very fashion-forward because it was seen as this exceptional, almost liberal country. Most of the fashion trends kind of trickled into us from the West. Sometimes people would get hold of a western magazine or catalog. And, so, we would just drool over all those images. Compared to those magazines and catalogs, our country always felt so drab. And the West always felt so colorful. When I first saw an ad of a toothpaste in a German magazine that had blue and red stripes in it, I just felt like ‘this is insane, how can they make toothpaste so beautiful?’ But, you know, we had plain toothpaste, but we could afford it, right?
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
This tension between the wonders of the West, and criticisms of capitalism was omnipresent. Champaign-Urbana resident, Tania Ionin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, recalls playing a pirated Monopoly game and how, although it created excitement among her family and friends, teachers condemned the capitalist ideology of the game.
Tania Ionin
My family had managed to get a copy of the Monopoly game. You know, it’s a Western game, so of course it wasn’t something that was sanctioned in the Soviet Union at all. But some friends of my parents, somehow managed to get an actual Monopoly game. And it was a very big deal. All the adults were playing it. And my parents really wanted to have their own copy so they managed to get a photographic copy of the game. It was amazing the lengths to which people
went. So we ended up with kind of a copied Monopoly game. And when I was old enough to play it, I introduced my classmates to it and it was a big hit. So the whole class or half the class was playing Monopoly. And at some point I remember, somehow our teacher found out and she called us together and gave us this big lecture about the evils of playing Monopoly and cards and these are horrible Western games and kids who play them will just grow up to be criminals and etcetera etcetera.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
The influence of the Cold War throughout daily life was ubiquitous from board games to learning foreign languages in school. University of Illinois Professor Yuliy Baryshnikov describes the post-World War II language education changes made by the Soviet Union.
Yuliy Baryshnikov
In general the foreign language in Soviet Union always served a strategic role before the Second World War, when the big enemy, of the Soviet Union was Germany, 90% of the kids were taught German in schools. After the Second World War, when Germany was not a threat anymore but the United States was, everybody was taught English.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
In other Eastern Bloc countries, students were often taught Russian in solidarity with the Soviet Union. Professor Derhemi describes how important this was, even following the death of Stalin, when disagreements about the future of communism strained ties between Albania and the Soviet Union.
Eda Derhemi
The way Russian became part of the very basic curriculum in Albania is related to the fact that we were friends of the Soviet Union, right? But then it was very hard to get rid of it from the curricula. And the fact that Lenin and Stalin were Russian, it was a justification to say that, well, yes, these new Russians are no longer in the correct way to communism, but still, we need the Russian language.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Yet although the government established Russian as the most common foreign language taught in schools, the public didn’t always agree. Professor Derhemi describes the unspoken language preferences among many Albanians.
Eda Derhemi
We did not respect Russian language. We learned Russian. We always thought that learning Italian, and learning French, and learning English was much better than learning Russian. So, although you might be going to a school that had Russian, because the schools were separated, like a school that had Russian, a school that had French, a school that had English, and most of the schools had Russian as their language. So if you were in a certain neighborhood, and you had to go in a school that had Russian, then usually the families tried to give to the child a possibility to learn a Western language because the Eastern languages were not considered cool enough.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Yet as much as Western languages were desired, studying Western languages like English did come with challenges since travel to Western countries was prohibited, and access to Western media was restricted.
Yuliy Baryshnikov
Like one of the problems was that not only our teachers never saw a person speaking English natively. My feeling is that even their teachers never saw a person speaking English natively. So, like, English was taught sort of by hearsay. But English was taught extremely poorly. So, like, we learned some vocabulary, but you know like we never learned how to speak. So I knew how to read, but the pronunciation was completely garbled and you know, you were told that English is so difficult. But as a result, nobody was ever exposed to English speakers. Nobody was comfortable speaking. So, yeah, so I didn't speak English at all until I sort of came to university.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
These challenges in learning English were partially caused by the strict travel restrictions, imposed to limit citizens’ exposure to new ways of life. Ihor Dzhaman who grew up on a collective farm in the Soviet Union called a Kolkoz, describes the travel restrictions placed on his community.
Ihor Dzhaman
That was a small village. And people have to work in Kolkoz. It was like governmental-ruled farming that everybody who lives in this area they have to work in. And there was a very low chance to go out from this village, because government didn't give, like, for example ID until 1974. So I remember this time when government starts gives ID document. Without this document, you can not go out of this village. You must work at least 200 something days a year. If people serve to Army or, like in my case, my parents, they were teachers in school. So it gives me some chance to, let’s say to escape this village to go somewhere because parents are connected with some education system with books, something like that, but for most of my classmates, they stay in village like I will say, all life, until Soviet Union collapsed.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Michal Ondrejcek, who grew up in Czechoslovakia, shares his memories of travel restrictions.
Michal Ondrejcek
We actually couldn't go freely to the Soviet Union. We needed an invitation and we couldn't move beyond Moscow, like 20 kilometers from Moscow. We could actually go to the friendly foreign countries, like we could go to Cuba, could go to Vietnam. We are not allowed to go to Poland since 1981 because of the solidarity. So we couldn't go there. So it was pretty much East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. And that's it. And you need special permission to go to Western countries.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Countries with stricter communist regimes, like Albania, were even more isolated, even within the Eastern Bloc, as explained by Professor Derhemi.
Eda Derhemi
We were not allowed to leave the country. Unless the state would send you somewhere - and these were very, very rare events in which somebody would leave the country and go into another country. In the very beginning, there was lots of friendship communication between Albania and other members of the Eastern Bloc, especially. But very soon after 1948, we started dividing with them. And first the ex-Yugoslavia then the Soviet Union, and all the members of the Eastern Bloc. We, for a period, were friends with China. And that ended up as well before the 80s even arrived. So it was a lonely country. It was extremely prohibited to leave the country, so there were many people that were killed in the borders just for leaving. So when you ask me “were you always there?” the only possibility I had to not be there was to go in another town. Even that was not allowed. Like you couldn't move from one city to another unless the state send you. But I could go in the other cities of Albania just for pleasure. I could travel inside Albania anywhere I wanted. But outside of Albania, it was impossible.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
Some Eastern Bloc countries were less restrictive, and would allow travel to other socialist countries, although getting approval to go to a Western country was still a difficult process. University of Illinois Professor Lawrence Rauchwerger describes the process of getting a passport in Romania.
Lawrence Rauchwerger
We had to write an application, you had to wait, several - I don't know. Depending on where you want it to go. If you wanted to go next door, it wouldn't take that long, maybe 45 days. But if you want it to go to the West, for example, you could wait a long time and never get it. And that's mainly the problem. People were kind of locked up in the country.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
There were often intense restrictions on traveling from Eastern bloc countries to the West. Similarly, there were fears about traveling from the United States to the Eastern Bloc. Because Professor Leff’s father worked in U.S. military intelligence, American officials warned her to be vigilant while traveling to the Soviet Union during a semester abroad as an undergraduate student at Oberlin College.
Carol Leff
Before I went to the Soviet Union, and that was my junior year in college, American officials took me to the basement of the Pentagon and scared me to death. They told me that they would follow me around, that they would be looking to do something that would incriminate the US government because they would know that my father was still in military intelligence. And I thought that was just paranoia. When I got there, everybody else in my group were put on one floor. I was put by myself in another part of the foreigners’ hotel. And I was miked. When I walked into the room, the phone would ring and no one would answer. And then all these young men, who under ordinary circumstances, I already realized, would never go near a foreigners’ hotel, because people were sitting in the lobby to see if any Russian citizens would come in and try to visit us, right? But they didn't mind because actually they were KGB plants. And they were quite willing to come in and try to cultivate a relationship with me. Nobody else – and it wasn't that I was so attractive or anything else, but I was politically attractive, right? So after I'd been
there a while and I felt sort of isolated even from my group, I realized that the Pentagon hadn't been entirely as paranoid as I thought.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
The experience of a trip to “the other side” being monitored by government officials was also shared in Eastern Bloc countries. Just as American officials briefed Professor Leff for her trip, Eastern Bloc countries also took precautions. University of Illinois professor Olga Khessina describes the restrictions placed on the rare Soviet citizen traveling to the West. She explains how these restrictions loosened under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership as part of his Glasnost policies.
Olga Khessina
I think there was concern that people may not come back, or say something wrong. So in Soviet time, before ‘85, when people travel, there would be a KGB agent traveling with them to observe that nothing untoward happens. The income before the collapse of the Soviet Union was very low. Even if they could travel, if the borders were open, very few could find money to do that. When the Iron Curtain was lifted it became easier, but it took awhile for people to make money, to start traveling widely. My first time abroad was after fourth year of college. I went to Great Britain. And it was super exciting because it was the first opportunity to practice my English ever.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
After travel restrictions loosened, experiences traveling to the West helped expose people raised under communism to the capitalist way of life. However, moving to “the West” would still be a huge transition. Professor Baryshnikov describes his experience adjusting to a new way of life outside of the Soviet Union - first in Germany, and then in the United States.
Yuliy Baryshnikov
In the Soviet Union, your housing is given to you for free, you can’t choose it, you can’t sell it. It's really hard to change the place where you live, but you don't pay for it. You go to Germany and suddenly you pay a big chunk of your salary for rent. And then you go to the United States and suddenly you realize you have to pay not only for rent, you have to pay for education, you have to pay for health.
Maya Viswanathan, Narrator
For our interviewees, the journey of fear, curiosity, envy, criticism, and wondering about the West ends with coming here to the West, the United States, and eventually to Champaign-Urbana and seeing it for real, the good and the bad, the true and untrue.
Thank you for listening to “East meets West: Bomb Drills and Pirated Monopoly” the 2nd episode of “Over the Wall: Remembering Life Behind the Iron Curtain” a student-produced podcast by Uni High’s oral history project team. Each episode in this series focuses on part of the experience of Central Illinois residents who lived in the Soviet Union or other communist Eastern bloc countries, from daily life experiences to relationships with the West. All interviews featured in this podcast were conducted in Spring 2023 by Uni’s eighth-grade class. If you’d like
to listen to previous episodes of “Over the Wall: Remembering Life Behind the Iron Curtain,” check out the WILL website at will.illinois.edu/illinoisyouthmedia .