American-Soviet Peace Walk – Odessa to Kiev – August-September of 1988.
Each time I revisit my life changing event/story/essay, new meanings and feelings come up. Now it’s revolves around the Russian invasion of Ukraine and wondering what has happened to the people I met.
This march represented citizen diplomacy initiatives promoting peace and Nuclear disarmament through direct person-to-person interaction among the citizens of the two Cold War opponents.
The Soviet Union’s General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev held summits with United States President Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War.
Gorbachev would later go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and was praised for his pivotal role in ending the Cold War, curtailing human rights abuses in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the reunification of Germany bringing down the wall between East and West Germany in 1989.
Looking back now, this was the one period of my lifetime that it seemed possible for Russia and the US to form a relationship and start a process towards world peace.
I wrote the following story for The Coloradoan, in Fort Collins, Colorado in October of 1988 published with many of these photographs.
As we walked through 23 Ukrainian cities and villages, the scenes were remarkably the same: the streets lined with children, dressed in their uniforms, staring curiously, then hurrying to greet walkers with flowers and pins.
Other kids held signs, saying such things as “Peace begins with us” and “We shall over come.”
There were tears in the eyes of many of the older women as they shook hands and hugged the walkers. The women are known as babushkas. They wore colorful scarves and their tan, weathered faces were accented by smiles, filled with the sparkle of silver and gold teeth.
The walk had special meaning for many of these women. Almost all of the men of their generation were killed during World War II when the Soviets and the Americans were allies against Germany.
The walk took a month, from Odessa to Kiev, a distance of about 400 miles. We spent a good deal of our time on buses, but still managed to walk more than 200 miles.
Members of the Peace Walk quickly fell into a ritual that became a habit: At each of the 23 cities and villages we passed through, Americans and Soviets alike paid tribute to the victims of World War II.
Many of the memorials were built on the sites of mass graves, some of which held the bodies of thousands of people killed by German troops.
We visited Babi Yar on the last day of the walk. Babi Yar was the site in Kiev where 100,000 villagers, including 60,000 Jews, were machine-gunned in September 1941.
It was a powerful experience, particularly for the many Jewish Americans and Jewish Soviets on the walk. One Ukrainian woman had three of her family members killed and buried at Babi Yar.
The peace walk was a major media event in the Soviet Union. We were on television and in the newspapers across the country every day.
At times the walk seemed like a peace feast. We were fed three huge meals a day. Then, at every town and village, the babushkas set up tables loaded with food – cookies, pies, cakes, juices, milk. There were 10 to 12 tables outside many villages.
Then there were the times we’d get done with dinner and be invited to spend the night at someone’s home. You just knew there would be another table full of food and you weren’t going to be able to says no.
I stayed in people’s homes three or four nights during the walk. The first time, I stayed with a family of four who lived in a five-story apartment building.
There was no running water – the kids had to haul it up to the top floor from a well in the courtyard. The water had to be carried for everything, from cooking to flushing the toilet.
There were 480 people on the walk – half from this country and half from the Soviet Union. About 20 Soviets served as official interpreters and there were roughly 15 Americans who spoke Russian. Though speaking Russian doesn’t necessarily mean you speak Ukrainian or that a Ukrainian can understand you.
With the walk drawing to an end in Kiev, tensions grew between the two organizing committees – The Soviet Defense of Peace Committee and International Peace Walk Inc.
Many walkers, both Soviet and Americans, wanted to hold a demonstration in Red Square to draw attention to a nuclear bomb test that day in Siberia.
The idea of having a demonstration and what it would entail had been talked about in several all-camp meetings.
Many of the Soviet walkers and members of the Soviet committee felt it would be wrong to protest against their government’s test. They reasoned that their country was only reacting to what they termed this country’s failing to live up to the INF Treaty limiting the testing of nuclear bombs.
At that point, both sides came together on the idea that the demonstration wouldn’t be so much of a protest against the Soviet test as it would be a joint statement between the Soviet and American walkers against nuclear testing, period.
The final decision by the committees allowed the peace walkers to have a demonstration. Walkers would be allow to form a human peace symbol in a large parking lot near Red Square in Moscow and then walk to the Grave of the Unknown Solider to lay a wreath, much as the walkers had done at the war memorials throughout the Ukraine.
Once in Red Square, the walkers immediately began to form a human peace symbol eventually forming into a circle, walking around, chanting “Dear friends, dear friends. Let me tell you how I feel. You have given me such pleasures. I love you so.”
For many people, the walk proved as educational as four years in college. In only four weeks of walking, camping, and living together in a tent city, the walk became a metaphor for personal and physical involvement.
Many of the American walkers returned home wondering what to do with their lives. John Colson of Aspen said, “It was like coming home from Mars.”
While Colson planned to quit his job in Aspen and pursue additional Soviet studied in college, other walkers were preparing slideshows to share their experiences and perhaps to interest others in future walks.
Note: Colson still works as a reporter and columnist at the Aspen Times 32 years later.
I went on the walk because I wanted to document the Soviet Union walk after covering the Great American Peace Walk.
The Soviets and the Americans found out that we have a lot of things in common – desires for world peace, a nice family life, a job you can count on, the basic qualities of life.
Our walk allowed the common people of both countries to meet each other face-to-face in a very personal way. With that much time to get to know each other, you could really see that problems between the two countries are basically between the governments. The people can get along quite well.
