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15 Years in the Former Soviet Bloc The following aspects of missionary life are excerpted from the historical diary of Steve R., MJ who, with Tom C., MJ, spearheaded Miles Jesu’s launch into Ukraine in 1990. Later they were followed by Dan O., MJ, Steve D., MJ, and Fr. Sullivan, MJ. So many things that made up our lives in Ukraine were new to us, often strange, and sometimes quite stressful. The culture, which although it looks Western on the outside, is actually rich with an Eastern and Slavic character, was not easy for us to adapt to. The Cyrillic alphabet can be a mindbender. Having read the letter ‘P’, for example, like ‘P’ all my life, it was quite troublesome to tell my mind it was no longer ‘P’ but ‘R’. We existed for quite a few years mainly on cabbage and potatoes. Other foods were available but at high prices at the ‘free market’. We were feeding up to thirty and forty young men at a time. The way we express our hopes and fears, our petitions, our thanks and our love to God through our religion is something so deep in us, and yet now i see how much i took this for granted. I had a life long familiarity with the Latin Rite. Something so simple as not celebrating Christmas on the 25th of December but rather on the 7th of January proved to be quite an emotional challenge. I remember the first Christmas, the 25th that is, when everybody went to work and nobody stopped to celebrate. It was a very sad moment for me. I thought everyone had truly lost the faith, the sense of something special about Christmas. I listened to the Christmas Carols coming in over the short-wave from Poland. ‘Everywhere the world is celebrating the birth of Christ today - everywhere but here.’ Oh, how wrong i was! We were to be more than amply compensated for our little sacrifice when we joyfully celebrated that first Byzantine Christmas, to our surprise, on January 7th. ...We swam in an environment of political uncertainty. More than once, early morning conversation centered on the latest decrees of Gorbachev. Would he order out the tanks in Ukraine as he had in Lithuania? Would there be declared martial law or would the ‘status quo’ be allowed to continue? There was so much uncertainty. Many people seemed to move in an atmosphere of fatal inevitability. Coming from the relative security of the United States, discussing the merits and possibilities of martial law, tanks and soldiers descending upon our city, could prove to be quite unnerving. Sometimes i thought, ‘This isn’t possible. It just isn’t happening’. We would soon find out just how possible it was. There was so much fear in the winter of 1990. The great Soviet Bear was still casting his shadow over the entire Soviet Union. It was during the winter of 1990-91 that the dreaded Black Berets stormed government and communications buildings in Lithuania, seemly crushing the budding independence movement in its infancy and spreading terror throughout the region. The official line coming from Moscow was, ‘See our heroes. With men like the Black Berets, the Soviet Union will always be strong, always proud.’ The evening news was showing reams of film on the actions of the Black Beret in ‘defense of the Homeland’. Wherever we went in Western Ukraine, in the cities and villages, the ‘blue and gold’ of the patriotic Ukrainian flag could be seen flying from door and window, and at the end of every flag pole there was tied a black ribbon to show the people’s mourning and solidarity with those who died and those who still struggled on in Lithuania. To understand the danger of flying that flag of national hope and to see the courage of so many, was something that touched me deep down inside, for the official flag was still black, gold and red, the flag of the ‘Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine’. There were so many reasons to fear, to look over one’s shoulder. There were nights, especially in the beginning of our time in Ukraine, when i heard a car door slam down in the yard and began to imagine government agents running up the stairs, pounding on the door, and taking us away because i was in a religious Institute. Not just any Institute, but a ‘Soldier of Jesus’! We were no stranger to frustration, pain, and sometimes – just a little terror ... Our whole way of life was also a relentless lesson in the handling of stress. Once when taking a long awaited weekend of rest and mutual support with our brothers in Czech Republic, one of them told us about an article he read in Reader’s Digest some time before. The title was something like, ‘How To Rate Your Stress.’ There were various categories with ratings from 1 to 10: the higher the number the higher the stress. Have you changed jobs?’, they asked. ‘No, but my salary was decreased from $185,000 a month to only $145,000 a month. Wow, that’s stressful. 6 points. Do you have a new pet in the house? Yes. My gerbils run the wheel without stopping and it ‘drives me up the wall’! Understandable. 4 points.’ And so the questions went. Just doing the test, he saw his score was fairly high using the relatively tame questions presented in the article. But he noticed certain important questions were not included. Have you eaten anything besides cabbage and potatoes in the last few years? No? Hmmm, 9 points. Have you recently started living in a relatively hostile communist country? Yes. 12 points. Is it a Soviet Bloc country or within the Soviet Union itself? Soviet Union? Great! 16 points. Have you recently survived any coup d’etats? Yes. The one which removed Gorbachev from power and led to the dismantling of the former Soviet Union. Oooh, good. That’s worth about 38 points. Wait, no tanks entered your city so we deduct 8 points. Sorry, but this is a serious test and we must rate fairly. Has your life been personally threatened in the last week? No. But in the last month drunken villagers shouted obscenities and threatened us. Golly, that’s exciting ... must be worth at least 40 points! ... You get the picture? Life in the Soviet Union was not easy, and the Reader’s Digest test came across to us as a little bit silly, especially after the things we had been going through. We devised our own test, some of the questions which you have just read, and had quite a lot of fun with it for a long time afterwards, using all kinds of absurd situations and wondering how Reader’s Digest would have rated it. How does one deal with the unexpected twists and turns of missionary life? It is indeed stressful and sometimes dangerous. The Ukrainians had not only survived but thrived, and so could we. At the end of more than one frustrating day, Tom and i would find ourselves very tired and ready to drop right off to sleep. Yet, time and again, we would begin to recall memories from our childhood, from school, from family life, and soon we would be laughing out loud. I can’t remember how many times i laughed till i cried. I am sure that our laughter was the best medicine for the loneliness and the disorientation of adapting to a new culture, a culture, as i mentioned earlier, appearing Western but very Eastern. It helped us to bear the homesickness we felt for our families and friends. And so, late at night, tucked snugly in our beds, we laughed. The laughter was free and it helped us to keep our balance. Our laughter helped us get through a lot of days that were dark, confusing and frustrating. It helped us not to take ourselves too seriously nor to allow ‘The System’, the changes in our lives, or the ‘unknown’ of tomorrow to get us down. There were always the failures, but with laughter they were shrunk down to size and kept in perspective. ...It took a while learning how to deal with a people of a different mentality. Tom and i were coming home on the trolleybus. I was looking out the window and saw a man lying in the middle of the street with a large pool of blood around his head. People were looking down at him as they walked by, but no one stopped to help him. We decided to get off at the next stop and go back to him and see if there was anything we could do. I noticed a large truck stopped ten yards away. The chauffeur was nervously smoking a cigarette and his eyes were red. Had someone told me he was drunk, it wouldn’t have surprised me. It seemed evident that he had hit the poor fellow lying in the road. Tom and i were talking to the unconscious man, trying to get some response. Nothing. It was only then the people walking by heard us speaking to each other in ‘some foreign language’. How quickly did the crowd start to form! ‘They’re Germans’, some whispered. ‘I think they’re Americans.’ ‘Well, they are definitely foreigners.’ Meanwhile the man was bleeding to death and profusely. ‘Go call the police and an ambulance!’ we yelled at some old ladies staring at us from nearby. One old lady shuffled off quickly to call for help. The man started to move and moan. We told him not to move, that he’d be better off lying still. I doubt he even heard us. He started to get up. Tom and i steadied him as blood poured out from his ears and nose. I am sure it poured out from somewhere under his mop of hair as well. We got him to the bench at the trolley stop and there he somehow produced a handkerchief and started to wipe his face and head. I remember noting the handkerchief was soon soaked and his face wasn’t getting any better. The old lady came waddling back to inform us all that an ambulance was on the way. Breathing a sigh of relief and thinking all would end for the best, we hurried away before the crowd began directing questions at us. The next day, our landlady was telling us about a man who had been hit by a truck, was helped off the road by two ‘foreigners’ and then died sitting on a bench waiting for an ambulance which never came. That was such a shock to me. She never asked us, as i recall, if we were the two who had helped the man the day before. I do remember hoping that he had received the Last Rites. I prayed a lot of Hail Mary’s for him in my heart as he lay in the street and later, as we carried him over to the bench at the trolleybus stop. These people were afraid to get involved. It just meant more trouble in a life already full of trouble and pain. Why go out of your way? Just take care of your own problems, your own life. No questions asked, no hassles. That was the mentality of many people. Oh, you could find exceptions, but not very easily. And the ‘foreigner’ was still rare enough to attract a lot of attention. We were the ‘Americantsi’ the Soviets had warned them about for so long. Mind you, most folks knew that if the Soviets warned them of the ‘evil Americans’ so strenuously, then the Americans must be very good people. But most of all, we were there as Catholic missionaries, truly thankful to be |