The Shadow
CLIFTON FORGE — Dr. Sue Rollinson highlighted a visit to Russia during a discussion presented Thursday, Jan. 24, at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College.
“Russian Revelations — Moscow to St. Petersburg” chronicled a river cruise that Dr. Rollinson and her husband, Lon, took in September, between Russia’s two largest cities.
The program, held in the DSLCC Moomaw Center, was presented via Zoom to the Rockbridge Regional Center in Buena Vista.
“It was a very nice trip,” said Dr. Rollinson. “We covered a lot of Russian history.”
Arriving in Moscow, the Rollinsons toured several sites in the capital city, including the Kremlin.
“Kremlin … means fortress,” she said. “This is the fortress that defended Moscow. This is where all the nobility lived back in the day.
“It’s kind of an interesting place,” she said of the Kremlin, noting that it was home to several churches and cathedrals, a palace, and many gardens.
“It’s amazing how much of this has been restored,” she said. “During the various wars of the Soviet times, much of Russian heritage was neglected at best, destroyed at worst.”
She noted that the Kremlin was home to “the largest bell that has never been rung,” and “the largest cannon that has never been fired.”
Saying of the bell, “[it] was actually too big to be made useful, and it cracked in the process of casting it.
“[The cannon] was pretty much built for ceremonial reasons,” she added.
From Moscow, the Rollinsons traveled for five days on a number of canals, lakes and rivers, including the Volga. “Our ship was a river cruiser, it’s size is pretty much dictated but the size of the locks we went through,” she said. She stated that they traveled through approximately 18 different locks.
On their journey to St. Petersburg, the Rollinsons visited a number of small towns, included Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kizhi and Mandrogi.
Dr. Rollinson noted that Peter the Great founded and developed St. Petersburg due to his dislike of Moscow. “Peter the Great hated Moscow,” she said, “so he decided he had to move his capital from Moscow to a totally new city with access to the Baltic (Sea).
“So he built his capital in a swamp; very, very unpopular with the rest of the nobility,” she continued. “They did not like the climate there, it’s cold, it’s dreary, it’s rainy … they hated it.”
While in St. Petersburg, they visited the Hermitage art museum, founded by Catherine the Great to display her extensive art collection.
“If you go to St. Petersburg, and you see one museum, you see the Hermitage,” Dr. Rollinson said. “It’s eye-popping, incredible. The czars collected art from all over Europe.”
She mentioned that throughout St. Petersburg, they encountered street bands looking for tips.
“They would greet the ship, they would greet the bus … they would come out and they would try to figure out where you were from,” she said, “so if you were from America they would start playing American songs, if they thought you were French they would play the French national anthem.”
The Rollinsons also visited the summer palaces of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. Both palaces are located in St. Petersburg.
Following her presentation, she took several questions from the audience. One audience member asked if Vladimir Lenin’s body was still in Red Square in Moscow.
“Yes,” she answered. “We were discouraged from going to see it.
“Lenin and Stalin are not something the Russian people are very proud of,” she continued. “They don’t speak very kindly of Lenin or Stalin.”
Another asked about whether or not they ever felt unsafe. “No,” she answered. “I really didn’t feel threatened at all.”
In response to a question about the cuisine in Russia, she said, “the food was wonderful. It was your typical eastern European — heavy on the starch … stick to your gums kind of food. The food was fine.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, Dr. Rollinson will present a program that she and her husband took in August to the Galapagos Islands. The program will be held in the Moomaw Center beginning at 11:30 a.m.
