One way to overcome the boredom of living in the USSR was to go on vacations. It wasn’t easy. There were restrictions on travel outside of Moscow, and you had to file a trip plan and get approval before you were allowed to go.
The following is a letter my dad wrote and filed at the Canadian embassy in Moscow to advise new residents about traveling to the resort city of Batumi (Georgia). I have reformatted it for the web and added some footnotes, but I kept the grammar and punctuation as it was. TRAVEL TO BATUMI To let … Read more
After I wrote about our apartment in Moscow, a few people asked why I was in the Soviet Union at all! The short answer was that my father – Sergeant George Boyko – was posted to the Canadian embassy. Canada has embassies in most countries. Embassies serve several functions, including serving their visiting citizens, working … Read more
We stayed in two different apartment buildings during our two-year stay in the USSR in the late 1970s. We were in the first apartment for the vast majority of our time in Moscow. I think we stayed in the second one for about six weeks as we had to vacate the first one for the next occupants. I don’t remember it very well.
When my family lived in Moscow, USSR between 1977 and 1979, my sister and I went to a school called the Anglo-American School of Moscow. This was a 5 story concrete building that housed students from English speaking embassies, so this included Canadians, Americans, Australians, British and so forth. We were both attending grades 6 and 7.
When we lived in Moscow back in the late 1970s, there wasn’t a lot to do. Russian television was of course broadcast in Russian, which I didn’t understand, and seemed to be mostly state propaganda. I read voraciously from the school library, but for family activities, we were pretty limited in what we could do. … Read more
I’m written before about how I was an “army brat” – my father was in the Canadian military – and we lived overseas twice when I was a child. On our second tour overseas, to Moscow, USSR (see Soviet Military Toys), I was apparently enrolled in the British Airways “Junior Jet Club”. This was a … Read more
I was doing some decluttering during this time of voluntary isolation – darn COVID-19 – and came across a box that had a few very special toys in it. Some of you may know that I lived in Moscow (USSR, not Idaho) for two years. My father was in the military and he was posted … Read more