Living like a Russian

By Jack Krayenhoff

Ever heard of Krasnoder? We hadn't, when in 1966 we were invited there. It's a city of over a million, in the western end of the Caucasus, not far from Sochi, where the winter Olympics were held in 2014. It stands for the krasno (beautiful) dar (gift) that Catherine the Great in 1793 made to the Cossacks who had helped her to keep the Caucasus tribes in line.

The reason I was invited was that Burt Dumerton, formerly assistant to Bob Birch of St. Margaret's in Vancouver, knew that I had retired and presumably was available. He had started a work among the students of Krasnoder University a few years before, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the esteem of the Russians for the West was (temporarily) very great. Youth With a Mission (YWAM) was quick to take advantage of that and moved in, under the leadership of Burt. He started the church with the converts but now he had a bit too much on his plate because these Russians knew absolutely nothing about the Christian faith. They badly needed some teaching. The YMAMmers had gone elsewhere, and he thought of me. "You have been around the block. I thought it would be an ideal job for you". I agreed and we, Joan and I, were off to Krasnoder.

We would stay for three months, and another three months later that year. Where would we stay? In a furnished apartment, that had been vacated by the owners? We paid $395 a month, which for us was very reasonable but a veritable godsend for the owner, who like all Russians was poverty-struck. For staples Joan was shown the market. Here one could see what one bought.

I had taken the precaution of learning the Russian alphabet, which firstly enabled me to recognise some words that were international, like KIOSK, and secondly to make sense of some names that looked like gobbledegook but made sense when you pronounced them. Street names for instance, like Lenin Ave or a painter's name of a portrait that had all the characteristics of a Rembrandt, that was (surprise!) r-e-m-b-r-a-n-d-t. That way Russia became like any country where I did not speak the language, like Sweden,

In the room which the church had rented from the Sunflower Institute (which had obviously fallen on hard times) I met my students. There were twenty or so, varying in age between 18 and 25, who spoke little or no English, so that I needed an interpreter. This was a student whose English was flawless. For instance, she used the article "always" correctly, which for a Russian is very hard since they have no word for 'the' and 'a.'' The sentence I just used would become "she used article always correctly." So I spoke one or two sentences, and she would without any hesitation, translate them into Russian, often with the same inflection of voice I had used. I had seen this done on television, and was very impressed that the speaker could do it, though with what sounded like a severe handicap, but I was doing it myself. I taught the interpretation of scripture, Philippians, the Gospel of Luke, and related subjects. Burt Dumerton spelled me off with different topics.

What was the impact I had? It is difficult to say: Usually the teacher is better remembered by who he was than what he taught. Here was somebody who had made his mark as a doctor, who nevertheless thought it important to teach spiritual subjects. Why wasn't he content to leave that to the professional in that area? Were they life-imparting, did he himself feel it? This is where the knowledge of Russian would have made a distinct difference: As it was, I could only count on the Lord.

At least they could see that my marriage worked, and that we gave the Lord the credit. My wife was active in the church, and led a bible study in our apartment. When she mentioned that we had gotten along peacefully for forty years, and rarely had fights, they were astonished. Forty years? They had never seen that! This seems extreme and was perhaps not representative of the high divorce rate, but it certainly underlined that the role of women under communism was not as free as they made out. They had to work, just like the men, but continued to have the responsibility of the home front.

The men did not feel responsible for the apartment they lived in. After all, it was not theirs; they only rented it. So what they did, was go to the garage where they had a Lada car (they were the Volkswagens of the communists, only less reliable). To get there, they had a long way to walk till they got outside the city, which was not built to accommodate garages. There they built an enormous expanse of garages, shoulder to shoulder. That is where the men spend their time, working on the Lada, or else merely talking and drinking vodka. The car obviously did not have many functions, for it was too far from home.

That was communism at work: central planning, and the consumer accepting it all. It will be a long time before it will change, for people's whole existence is shaped by it. What difference will a relationship with the Lord make? We can only teach the gospel: How it will influence life we can leave with Him.